: Lawrence Durrell
: James A. Brigham
: Collected Poems 1931-74
: Faber& Faber
: 9780571288809
: 1
: CHF 14.20
:
: Essays, Feuilleton, Literaturkritik, Interviews
: English
: 278
: Wasserzeichen
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Lawrence Durrell's success as a novelist may have tended to obscure his achievement as a poet and in poetry. It is primarily as a lyrical poet of places that he was acknowledged to excel, but in Collected Poems it will be found that the range of feeling and ideas, of wit and experience, and also of style, is remarkable. The whole volume is charged with Durrell's response to the'spirit of place', which is one of this exceptional gifts as a writer.'They range from affecting and beautiful love poems to skilful, succinct portraits and robust ballads . . . Rich in ideas.' -- Alan Ross'As a lyrical poet . . . he is the equal of Auden.' -- Gavin Ewart'Durrell's poetry compels the highest standard of judgement . . . The effect of reading him is to have one's love of poetry rekindled . . . Genuine life, genuine emotion, genuine art.' -- John Wain

Lawrence Durrell was a British novelist, poet, dramatist, and travel writer. Born in 1912 in India to British colonial parents, he was sent to school in England and later moved to Corfu with his family - a period which his brother Gerald fictionalised in My Family and Other Animals - later filmed as The Durrells in Corfu - and which he himself described in Prospero's Cell. The first of Durrell's island books, this was followed by Reflections on a Marine Venus on Rhodes; Bitter Lemons, on Cyprus, which won the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize; and, later, The Greek Islands. Durrell's first major novel, The Black Book, was published in 1938 in Paris, where he befriended Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin - and it was praised by T. S. Eliot, who published his poetry in 1943. A wartime sojourn in Egypt inspired his bestselling masterpiece, The Alexandria Quartet (Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive and Clea) which he completed in his new home in Southern France, where in 1974 he began The Avignon Quintet. When he died in 1990, Durrell was one of the most celebrated writers in British history.