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by Bill Marx “Writing in the Dark” By David Grossman. Translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen Farrar, Straus Giroux, 131 pages, $18 Israeli novelist David Grossman fears his country is losing its soul. In this stirring but slim collection essays on the intersection of politics and literature by celebrated Israeli novelist David (“See Under:…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb The scientist Spalanzani (tenor Neal Ferreira) strikes an unlikely deal with the nefarious inventor Coppélius (baritone Gaétan Laperrière) in the BLO’s fine production of “Tales of Hoffmann.” One of history’s most famous and beloved French operas wasn’t written by a native Frenchman. “The Tales of Hoffmann” came from the pen of Jacques…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Translator Ellen Elias-Bursac On this week’s World Books podcast I talk to Ellen Elias-Bursac, who translates the work of two of my favorite writers from the former Yugoslavia: David Albahari and Dubravka Ugresic. Elias-Bursac is currently living in the Netherlands, but she recently visited Boston, so I got a chance to talk…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb An amazing pair of instrumentalists gave a concert at the Longy School of Music on October 25. Styling themselves Duo Diorama, they are the husband-and-wife team of pianist Winston Choi and Violinist Minghuan Xu. These young players (he is 30 and she is 31) have been concertizing together for a long time,…
Read MoreBy Gary Schwartz This question was asked by a Dutch newspaper last spring. At the time I did not get around to answering it. What they were after were experiences related to the students and workers revolt in France and other revolutionary manifestations of the Spirit of 68. My first reaction was that I was…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Earlier this month, Horace Engdahl, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, stoked up the cultural consternation machine when he implied that American writers are too provincial to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. American literary life is “too isolated, too insular” he opines, its writers don’t translate particularly well and they aren’t…
Read MoreBy Bill Marx Novelist and critic Dubravka Ugresic On this week’s World Books podcast I talk to novelist and cultural critic Dubravka Ugresic about her latest volume of trenchant essays and commentaries, “Nobody’s Home” (Translated from the Croatian by Ellen Elias-Bursac). My conversation with Ugresic circles around her contention that, despite European enthusiasm for culture,…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb Considered the father of Armenian music, Gomidas (or Komitas) was born Soghomon Soghomonian in 1869, and became active as a composer, singer, choir conductor, ethnomusicologist and priest. In 1915 he was one of 300 artists arrested and deported at the start of the Armenian genocide. He became so unhinged that he ceased…
Read MoreBy Caldwell Titcomb “The Winter’s Tale” is one of the glories of our theatrical inheritance. Of Shakespeare’s total output, the Big Four tragedies stand at the head. Then comes “Twelfth Night,” the greatest comedy in our language. Next I would place “The Winter’s Tale” as the finest of the late romances, though most people would…
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