Willy S was English and European. As a geographical area he was born within the British isles but on its own that doesn't make him British. Nigel Farage would deny he was European
Willy S was English and European. As a geographical area he was born within the British isles but on its own that doesn't make him British. Nigel Farage would deny he was European
OK, but we're having WH Auden back!Originally Posted by mortalterror
Personally I see T S Eliot as an anglo-American. It's not a bad group to be in. Christopher Hitchens identified himself as one, and you could make a case for Winston Churchill, Henry James and Ezra Pound among others.
I don't think that England has the same claim on Pound as it does on Eliot. For one thing he never renounced his citizenship. For another, he only spent a dozen years in England. He spent 35 years of his life in Italy and 36 years in America. If any country besides the USA has a claim to him it's Italy. A Polish immigrant to England like Conrad definitely belongs to England because he doesn't start writing until he gets there and only writes in his adopted language. Expatriots like Nabokov are really hard to pin down that way though since he has a Russian period a German period and an American period of roughly even chunks of time. I generally think of him as Russian though, for the sake of his formative years. It makes one wonder though, if perhaps Rudyard Kipling or George Orwell don't belong to the Indian subcontinent as much as they do to England.
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This thread is interesting but it is an odd question to begin with. It's a bit like asking which country has the nicest views. It is too subjective to have a definite answer. Personally ( And here's tuppenceworth of opinion) I cannot see past America for both quantity and quality of prose fiction in the last sixty years. However my own country is unsurpassed in terms of song over the last three centuries (And that is literature too) Hmm I think that was fourpenceworth!
that is a loaded question. My opinion is Russia
Why would Celan represent Germany? He was born in a Jewish Romanian family. If it's because he wrote in German, then Cioran, Ionesco and Fondane are French authors? And what about Mircea Eliade? Is he French? Or German? Or Romanian? Or North-American? Because he wrote in them all. And Beckett? What is he? Irish, or French?
He was Irish but wrote in French. There are enough real problems.
He also wrote in English. And in German too. But he still is Irish. So, then, what exactly makes Celan a German?
I can't answer that as I don't know anything at all about Celan. I cannot recall ever hearing about him/ her.
Too bad, he's one of the greatest XXth century poets. Not saying that you should've heard about him, as there are a lot of famous writers that don't, in fact, deserve any attention, but you should really have a look upon Celan's work, it really is something else, pure poetry at its finest.
I'd say England has the best writers in the world. Then followed by Italy and France --- in that order.
There has never been a single, great revolution in history without civil war. --- Vladimir Lenin
There are decades when nothing happens and then there are weeks when decades happen. --- Vladimir Lenin
I wouldn´t chose a country and not even a language. There are several issues, besides personal preferences as for example there are older and newer literatures, there are literatures that more readers have acces to, because of the language they are written in and the comercial distribuition of the books.
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
...what exactly makes Celan a German?
He's not a German, but rather a Romanian-born German poet in that his poetic oeuvre was largely written in German.
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
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Some poems of Celan in English (don´t know if the translation is good.)
http://poetsofmodernity.xyz/POMBR/German/Celan.htm
"I seemed to have sensed also from an early age that some of my experiences as a reader would change me more as a person than would many an event in the world where I sat and read. "
Gerald Murnane, Tamarisk Row
The best translations of Celan into English are probably those by Michael Hamburger who is one of the finest translators of German poetry.
http://www.english.txstate.edu/cohen...Hamburger.html
Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
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