Download or read book The Same Solitude written by Catherine Ciepiela and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Still, we have the same solitude, the same journeys and searching, and the same favorite turns in the labyrinth of literature and history."—Boris Pasternak to Marina TsvetaevaOne of the most compelling episodes of twentieth-century Russian literature involves the epistolary romance that blossomed between the modernist poets Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak in the 1920s. Only weeks after Tsvetaeva emigrated from Russia in 1922, Pasternak discovered her poetry and sent her a letter of praise and admiration. Tsvetaeva's enthusiastic response began a decade-long affair, conducted entirely through letters. This correspondence-written across the widening divide separating Soviet Russia from Russian émigrés in continental Europe-offers a view into the overlapping worlds of literary creativity, sexual identity, and political affiliation. Following both sides of their conversation, Catherine Ciepiela charts the poets' changing relations to each other, to the extraordinary political events of the period, and to literature itself. The Same Solitude presents the first full account of this affair of letters and poems from its beginning in the summer of 1922 to its denouement in the 1930s.Drawing on many previously untranslated letters and poems, Ciepiela describes the poets' mutual influence, both in the course of their lives and the development of their art. Neither poet saw any separation between a poet's life and work, and Ciepiela treats each poet's letters and poems as a single text. She discusses the poets' famous triangular correspondence with Rainer Maria Rilke in 1926, and she addresses the profound significance of Tsvetaeva for Pasternak, who is often perceived (mistakenly, Ciepiela asserts) as the more detached partner. Further, this book expands our understanding of poetic modernism by showing how the poets worked through ideas about gender and writing in the context of what they themselves called a literary "marriage."
Download or read book One Hundred Years of Solitude written by Gabriel García Márquez and published by Blackstone Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-11 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the twentieth century’s enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize–winning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America. Love and lust, war and revolution, riches and poverty, youth and senility, the variety of life, the endlessness of death, the search for peace and truth—these universal themes dominate the novel. Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling. Translated into dozens of languages, this stunning work is no less than an account of the history of the human race.
Download or read book The Invention of Solitude written by Paul Auster and published by Faber & Faber. This book was released on 2010-11-25 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'One day there is life . . . and then, suddenly, it happens there is death.' So begins Paul Auster's moving and personal meditation on fatherhood. The first section, 'Portrait of an Invisible Man', reveals Auster's memories and feelings after the death of his father. In 'The Book of Memory' the perspective shifts to Auster's role as a father. The narrator, 'A', contemplates his separation from his son, his dying grandfather and the solitary nature of writing and story-telling.
Download or read book The Art of Solitude written by Stephen Batchelor and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2020-02-18 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a time of social distancing and isolation, a meditation on the beauty of solitude from renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor “Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it. A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.”—Kirkus Reviews “Elegant and formally ingenious.”—Geoff Wisner, Wall Street Journal When world renowned Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor turned sixty, he took a sabbatical from his teaching and turned his attention to solitude, a practice integral to the meditative traditions he has long studied and taught. He aimed to venture more deeply into solitude, discovering its full extent and depth. This beautiful literary collage documents his multifaceted explorations. Spending time in remote places, appreciating and making art, practicing meditation and participating in retreats, drinking peyote and ayahuasca, and training himself to keep an open, questioning mind have all contributed to Batchelor’s ability to be simultaneously alone and at ease. Mixed in with his personal narrative are inspiring stories from solitude’s devoted practitioners, from the Buddha to Montaigne, from Vermeer to Agnes Martin. In a hyperconnected world that is at the same time plagued by social isolation, this book shows how to enjoy the inescapable solitude that is at the heart of human life.
Download or read book The Fortress of Solitude written by Jonathan Lethem and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2004-08-24 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review EDITORS' CHOICE. From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn, comes the vividly told story of Dylan Ebdus growing up white and motherless in downtown Brooklyn in the 1970s. In a neighborhood where the entertainments include muggings along with games of stoopball, Dylan has one friend, a black teenager, also motherless, named Mingus Rude. Through the knitting and unraveling of the boys' friendship, Lethem creates an overwhelmingly rich and emotionally gripping canvas of race and class, superheros, gentrification, funk, hip-hop, graffiti tagging, loyalty, and memory. "A tour de force.... Belongs to a venerable New York literary tradition that stretches back through Go Tell It on the Mountain, A Walker in the City, and Call it Sleep." --The New York Times Magazine "One of the richest, messiest, most ambitious, most interesting novels of the year.... Lethem grabs and captures 1970s New York City, and he brings it to a story worth telling." --Time
Download or read book How to Be Alone written by Sara Maitland and published by Picador. This book was released on 2014-09-02 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: IN THIS AGE OF CONSTANT CONNECTIVITY, LEARN HOW TO ENJOY SOLITUDE AND FIND HAPPINESS WITHOUT OTHERS. Our fast-paced society does not approve of solitude; being alone is antisocial and some even find it sinister. Why is this so when autonomy, personal freedom, and individualism are more highly prized than ever before? In How to Be Alone, Sara Maitland answers this question by exploring changing attitudes throughout history. Offering experiments and strategies for overturning our fear of solitude, she helps us practice it without anxiety and encourages us to see the benefits of spending time by ourselves. By indulging in the experience of being alone, we can be inspired to find our own rewards and ultimately lead more enriched, fuller lives.
Download or read book Intimacy and Solitude written by Stephanie Dowrick and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1996-02-06 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A co-founder of the Women's Press in England and a trained psychotherapist explores the paradox of needing to enjoy solitude before one can be truly intimate with another. In this critically acclaimed work, Dowrick moves readers through the realms of solitude, intimacy, and desire, offering spiritual as well aspsychological guidance.
Download or read book The Art of Solitude written by Zachary Seager and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2020-04-23 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world where we’re more connected than ever, why is it that we’re also more lonely? Dip into this anthology of classic writing to reclaim the pleasure of your own company. Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning pocket size classics. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is edited and introduced by writer and academic, Zachary Seager. The Art of Solitude shows some of the myriad ways in which people throughout history have understood their experiences of solitary life, or have counselled others to benefit from solitude. It contains poetry, essays, autobiographical pieces and short stories from writers such as Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson and Ralph Waldo Emerson. These diverse works can teach us how to think in freedom, how to enjoy a profound inner life and how best to cope with the fact that, as the novelist Joseph Conrad put it, we live, as we dream – alone. Above all, they show how we might truly connect with ourselves and, in the process, how we can meaningfully connect with those around us, including the earth itself. Looked at in this way, solitude is always focused both outward and inward, towards the self and towards the world. The cure for loneliness is, in the end, the art of solitude.
Download or read book One Hundred Days of Solitude written by Jane Dobisz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2013-02-08 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In One Hundred Days of Solitude: Losing My Self and Finding Grace on a Zen Retreat, American teacher of Korean Zen Jane Dobisz (Zen Master Bon Yeon), recalls her first solitary meditation stint in the woods. Luckily, this is not just a recounting of a winter's worth of cabin fever. Instead, Dobisz takes us into her cabin, and into her mind, as she tries--at least temporarily--to live a Walden-like existence. All the bowing and meditating and wood-chopping that is part and parcel of her retreat is hardly first nature, but the good-humored and tenacious Dobisz is able to adapt, and to relate her hundred days with moving insight and humanity. Her Solitude in fact offers us all a chance to commune with her and to look inside and rediscover our own grace.
Download or read book Letters of Marina Tsvetaeva written by Marina I. Tsvetaeva and published by Ardis. This book was released on 2000-06-01 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the greatest poets of twentieth-century Russia is here revealed in all her difficulty and brilliance. This volume contains over 800 letters, most of which have never before been translated, dating from Tsvetaeva's childhood to her suicide in 1941. In her letters to Rilke, Khodasevich, Pasternak, Teskova and many others. Tsvetaeva reflects on all the tragic and comic shifts of her biography, as she goes from precocious success to mature accomplishment, lives in exile and then returns to the Soviet Union. The letters deal with everything from the tragedy of exile, to cultural influences, to the inspiration of love affairs. The main subject, however, is what it means to be a poet -- in the practical as well as the exalted sense. These letters are literary documents which provide insights into the nature of the poetic process, and into the cost to the poet of marriage and motherhood.
Download or read book Too Loud a Solitude written by Bohumil Hrabal and published by HMH. This book was released on 1992-04-27 with total page 83 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fable about the power of books and knowledge, “finely balanced between pathos and comedy,” from one of Czechoslovakia’s most popular authors (Los Angeles Times). A New York Times Notable Book Haňtá has been compacting trash for thirty-five years. Every evening, he rescues books from the jaws of his hydraulic press, carries them home, and fills his house with them. Haňtá may be an idiot, as his boss calls him, but he is an idiot with a difference—the ability to quote the Talmud, Hegel, and Lao-Tzu. In this “irresistibly eccentric romp,” the author Milan Kundera has called “our very best writer today” celebrates the power and the indestructibility of the written word (The New York Times Book Review).
Download or read book Solitude and Loneliness written by Sarvananda and published by Windhorse Publications. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Referencing cultural touchstones such as Into The Wild, the art of Edward Hopper, and the work of Charlie Chaplin, Sarvananda considers what we think about being alone. Buddhism suggests that solitude can bring about positive emotion and change. Exploring this idea through personal experience, psychology and myth the author shows how facing our essential aloneness can lead us to better understand our essential relatedness.
Download or read book Solitude written by Michael Harris and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-04-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘An elegant, thoughtful book . . . beautifully expresses the importance and experience of liberation from the battery-hen life of constant connection and crowds.’ Daily Mail ‘A compelling study of the subtle ways in which modern life and technologies have transformed our behaviour and sense of self.’ Times Literary Supplement In a world of social media and smartphones, true solitude has become increasingly hard to find. In this timely and important book, award-winning writer Michael Harris reveals why our hyper-connected society makes time alone more crucial than ever. He delves into the latest neuroscience to examine the way innovations like Google Maps and Facebook are eroding our ability to be by ourselves. He tells the stories of the remarkable people – from pioneering computer scientists to great nineteenth-century novelists – who managed to find solitude in the most unexpected of places. And he explores how solitude can bring clarity and creativity to each of our inner lives. Urgent, eloquent and beautifully argued, Solitude might just change the way you think about being alone. ‘Speaks to a long-overdue conversation we still haven’t properly had in our society.’ Vice ‘A timely, elegant provocation to daydream and wander.’ Nathan Filer, author of The Shock of the Fall ‘The leading thinker about technology’s corrupting influence on our collective psyche.’ Newsweek ‘A poetic, contemplative journey into the benefits of solo sojourning.’ Elle
Download or read book Hermits written by Peter France and published by Random House. This book was released on 2014-09-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ours is an age where solitude tends to be discussed in the context of the 'problem of loneliness'. However in previous ages the capacity to seek fulfillment outside society has been admired and seen as a measure of discernment and inner security. In this lucid and highly readable book, Peter France shows how hermits, from the Taoists and Ancient Greeks to the present day, have something vitally important to say to a society that fears solitude.
Download or read book Solitude written by Robert Kull and published by New World Library. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Years after losing his lower right leg in a motorcycle crash, Robert Kull traveled to a remote island in Patagonia's coastal wilderness with equipment and supplies to live alone for a year. He sought to explore the effects of deep solitude on the body and mind and to find the spiritual answers he'd been seeking all his life. With only a cat and his thoughts as companions, he wrestled with inner storms while the wild forces of nature raged around him. The physical challenges were immense, but the struggles of mind and spirit pushed him even further. Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes is the diary of Kull's tumultuous year. Chronicling a life distilled to its essence, Solitude is also a philosophical meditation on the tensions between nature and technology, isolation and society. With humor and brutal honesty, Kull explores the pain and longing we typically avoid in our frantically busy lives as well as the peace and wonder that arise once we strip away our distractions. He describes the enormous Patagonia wilderness with poetic attention, transporting the reader directly into both his inner and outer experiences.
Download or read book A History of Solitude written by David Vincent and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-05-06 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Solitude has always had an ambivalent status: the capacity to enjoy being alone can make sociability bearable, but those predisposed to solitude are often viewed with suspicion or pity. Drawing on a wide array of literary and historical sources, David Vincent explores how people have conducted themselves in the absence of company over the last three centuries. He argues that the ambivalent nature of solitude became a prominent concern in the modern era. For intellectuals in the romantic age, solitude gave respite to citizens living in ever more complex modern societies. But while the search for solitude was seen as a symptom of modern life, it was also viewed as a dangerous pathology: a perceived renunciation of the world, which could lead to psychological disorder and anti-social behaviour. Vincent explores the successive attempts of religious authorities and political institutions to manage solitude, taking readers from the monastery to the prisoner’s cell, and explains how western society’s increasing secularism, urbanization and prosperity led to the development of new solitary pastimes at the same time as it made traditional forms of solitary communion, with God and with a pristine nature, impossible. At the dawn of the digital age, solitude has taken on new meanings, as physical isolation and intense sociability have become possible as never before. With the advent of a so-called loneliness epidemic, a proper historical understanding of the natural human desire to disengage from the world is more important than ever. The first full-length account of its subject, A History of Solitude will appeal to a wide general readership.
Download or read book Journal of a Solitude written by May Sarton and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2014-07-22 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The poet and author’s “beautiful . . . wise and warm” journal of time spent in her New Hampshire home alone with her garden, her books, the seasons, and herself (Eugenia Thornton, Cleveland Plain Dealer). “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.” —May Sarton May Sarton’s parrot chatters away as Sarton looks out the window at the rain and contemplates returning to her “real” life—not friends, not even love, but writing. In her bravest and most revealing memoir, Sarton casts her keenly observant eye on both the interior and exterior worlds. She shares insights about everyday life in the quiet New Hampshire village of Nelson, the desire for friends, and need for solitude—both an exhilarating and terrifying state. She likens writing to “cracking open the inner world again,” which sometimes plunges her into depression. She confesses her fears, her disappointments, her unresolved angers. Sarton’s garden is her great, abiding joy, sustaining her through seasons of psychic and emotional pain. Journal of a Solitude is a moving and profound meditation on creativity, oneness with nature, and the courage it takes to be alone. Both uplifting and cathartic, it sweeps us along on Sarton’s pilgrimage inward. This ebook features an extended biography of May Sarton.
