Search results for ""author david gascoyne""

When David Gascoyne celebrated his seventeenth birthday in Paris in 1933, he already had a poetry collection and a novel to his name. He spent much of the next few years in the French capital associating with Eluard, Dali, Ernst, Breton, Peret and other surrealists. By the age of 20 he had firmly established himself within the movement with the publication of his groundbreaking A Short Survey of Surrealism and the poems of Man's Life Is This Meat. In 1938 Holderlin's Madness marked his move away from surrealism in 'a renewal of vision', followed by his milestone collection, Poems 1937-1942 (1943). After the war Gascoyne revisited Paris, publishing A Vagrant and other poems in 1950 and Night Thoughts, the acclaimed BBC radiophonic poem for voices and orchestra, in 1956. Despite several breakdowns he continued to write, particularly during the latter years of his long life, producing few poems, but many translations, reviews and literary criticism, memoirs and obituaries. Even so it was his contention that he was 'a poet who wrote himself out when young and then went mad'. This self-deprecating judgement could not be further from the opinion of those who knew him and valued his achievement. As his fellow poet and lifelong friend, Kathleen Raine, wrote on Gascoyne's 80th birthday: You are the chosen one To speak the words of blessing In this time. This New Collected Poems, compiled by Gascoyne's friend and editor Roger Scott, comprises work that the poet chose to preserve, together with uncollected and unpublished material; all meticulously researched from notebooks and manuscripts held in the British Library and internationally in academic institutions. It falls to present-day readers of Gascoyne's poems to experience the impact of his work, to recognize its significance in twentieth-century literature, and its continuing relevance.

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This is a major collection of more than seventy essays, critical pieces, biographical sketches, and memoirs by the renowned poet, translator, and essayist. It includes long-inaccessible contributions to journals and magazines together with previously unpublished material. Included are essays on Carlyle, Parchen, and Novalis, memoirs on Dali and Durrell, reviews of Miller, Ferlinghetti, and Watkins, and a number of pieces on Surrealism.These works reflect Gascoyne's continuing engagement with the changing context of his times, and his close involvement with and response to luminary figures in twentieth-century art and literature. The subjects include: Eileen Agar, Louis Aragon, W. H. Auden, George Barker, Andre Breton, Thomas Carlyle, Leonora Carrington, Rene Char, Salvador Dali, Lawrence Durrell, T. S. Eliot, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Vincent van Gogh, Geoffrey Grigson, S. W. Hayter, Friedrich Holderlin, Humphrey Jennings, Pierre Jean Jouve, Man Ray, Henry Miller, Novalis, Kenneth Patchen, Roland Penrose, Francis Picabia, Jeremy Reed, Elizabeth Smart, Tambimuttu, Graham Sutherland, Julian Trevelyan, Vernon Watkins, and, Antonia White.

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Gascoyne's membership of the Surrealist movement and his association with its leading members - among them Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst and Salvador Dali - placed him in an ideal position to witness and record the development and significance of its foremost artists and writers.

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This is a rich harvest from a renowned translator, an elegant survivor. In 1996, in his eightieth year, David Gascoyne was awarded the Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et Lettres in recognition of his profound contribution to French literature and art. This collection includes some of his best work - early translations, recent unpublished translations, and a substantial section of translations printed in journals over the past twenty-five years.Translations by David Gascoyne of: Guillaume Apollinaire, Andre Breton, Blaise Cendrars, Rene Char, Xie Chuang, Rene Daumal, Yves de Bayser, Robert Desnos, Andre du Bouchet, Paul Eluard, Pierre Emmanuel, Jean Follain, Benjamin Fondane, Andre Frenaud, Eugene Guillevic, Maurice Henry, Friedrich Holderlin, Georges Hugent, Edmond Jabes, Max Jacob, Pierre Jean Jouve, Valery Larbaud, Giacomo Leopardi, Stephane Mallarme, Loys Masson, O. V. de L. Milosz, Benjamin Peret, Francis Ponge, Gisele Prassinos, Raymond Queneau, Pierre Reverdy, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, Arthur Rimbaud, Gui Rosey, Philippe Soupault, Jules Supervielle, Jean Tardieu, Georg Trakl and Tristan Tzara.

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