Djuna Barnes

Nightwood (New Edition) (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The fiery and enigmatic masterpieceone of the greatest novels of the Modernist era.

Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (Times Literary Supplement). That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Viennaa world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous.

The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fictionthere is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions. Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another persona woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature.

Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: New Directions
• Seitenzahl: 208
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Januar 2014
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780811221436
• Artikelnr.: 59591011

Autorenporträt

Djuna Barnes (1892-1982) was born in Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY, and worked as a journalist in New York before leaving the country to spend many years in Paris and London. She returned to New York in 1941, and lived in Greenwich Village until her death.

Rezensionen

"Robin ist das Nachtgewächs, die Schlingpflanze und die Nymphe. Ihr Leben ist Zufall in Permanenz. Djuna Barnes beschreibt Verwandlungen. Die Frau spielt Mann, der Mann möchte Frau sein. Das Kostüm und der Betrug retten aus der falschen Welt: Weil ich eine Frau bin, die von Gott vergessen wurde. Das Nachtgewächs ist ein Bekenntnis der Inzucht von Gefühlen. Man muß den Extrakt dieser Pflanze kosten, langsam, schlürfend und pustend, ganz so als handele es sich um eine kochend heiße Bouillon. Das Nachtgewächs ist ein Objekt des Staunens, kühn und kühl. Es ist komponiert nach der Melodie einer zeitlosen Zeit." (Verena Auffermann, Frankfurter Rundschau)

Nightwood is itself. It is its own created world, exotic and strange, and reading it is like drinking wine with a pearl dissolving in the glass ... From now on, a part of you is pearl-lined. Jeanette Winterson