Seamus Heaney Knihy

Irského nositele Nobelovy ceny za literaturu, básníka Seamuse Heaneyho, už věru není třeba po návštěvě v Praze představovat. Třetí vydání celoživotního výboru bylo rozšířeno o několik ukázek z jeho nejnovější sbírky.

The poems in Seamus Heaney's collection The Spirit Level keep discovering the possibilities of 'a new beginning' in all kinds of subjects and circumstances. What is at stake, in poem after poem, is the chance of buoyancy and balance, physical, spiritual and political.

Seamus Heaney's new collection elicits continuities and solidarities, between husband and wife, child and parent, then and now, inside an intently remembered present - the stepping stones of the day, the weight and heft of what is passed from hand to hand, lifted and lowered. Human Chain also broaches larger questions of transmission, as lifelines to the inherited past. There are newly minted versions of anonymous early Irish lyrics, poems which stand at the crossroads of oral and written, and other 'hermit songs' which weigh equally in their balance the craft of scribe and the poet's early calling as scholar. A remarkable sequence entitled 'Route 110' plots the descent into the underworld in the Aeneid against single moments in the arc of a life, from a 1950s adolescence to the birth of the poet's first grandchild. Other poems display a Virgilian pietas for the dead - friends, neighbours and family - which is yet wholly and movingly vernacular. Human Chain is Seamus Heaney's twelfth collection of poems.

Der Nobelpreisträger Seamus Heaney ist der vielleicht bedeutendste Lyriker Großbritanniens. Doch seine Gedichte sind frei von großen Gesten. In ihrer überraschenden Musikalität hört man den Dialekt seiner nordirischen Herkunft. Ihre Humanität entspringt der Aufmerksamkeit für das Werk der Hände – es sind Momentaufnahmen aus einer sich wandelnden Welt, deren Geschwindigkeit man nur ermessen kann, wenn man auch ruhende Objekte zulässt.

Seamus Heaney had the idea to form a personal selection of poems from across the entire arc of his writing life, small yet comprehensive enough to serve as an introduction for all comers. But now, finally, the project has been returned to, resulting in an intimate gathering of poems chosen and introduced by the Heaney family.

New Selected Poems 1988-2013 offers the poems that Heaney himself selected from his collections Seeing Things, The Spirit Level, Beowulf, Electric Light, District and Circle and Human Chain.

The letters provide us with an intimate, multi-layered understanding of this extraordinarypoet's life and mind.

This selection celebrates Czeslaw Milosz's lifetime of poetry. Widely regarded as one of the greatest poets of our time, Milosz is a master of expression and probing inquiry. Life opened for Czeslaw Milosz at a crossroads of civilizations in northeastern Europe. This was less a melting pot than a torrent of languages and ideas, where old folk traditions met Catholic, Protestant, Judaic, and Orthodox rites. What unfolded next around him was a century of catastrophe and madness: two world wars, revolutions, invasions, and the murder of tens of millions, all set to a cacophony of hymns, gunfire, national anthems and dazzling lies. In the thick of this upheaval, wide awake and in awe of living, dodging shrapnel, imprisonment, and despair, Milosz tried to understand both history and the moment, with humble respect for the suffering of each individual. He read voraciously in many languages and wrote masterful poetry that, even in translation, is infused with a tireless spirit and a penetrating insight into fundamental human dilemmas and the staggering yet simple truth that "to exist on the earth is beyond any power to name." Unflinching, outspoken, timeless, and unsentimental, Milosz digs through the rubble of the past, forging a vision -- and a warning -- that encompasses both pain and joy. "His intellectual life," writes Seamus Heaney, "could be viewed as a long single combat with shape-shifting untruth."

There is something about a treasure, wrote Joseph Conrad, that fastens on a man's mind. And, yes, there is something about the subject of treasure hunting that continues to fascinate us. One need only browse the Web to discover a whole netherworld of treasure-hunting magazines, metal-detector clubs, and lost-mine information exchanges that apparently engage the funds and spare time of thousands of hopefuls. Charles Elliott recaptures the essential romance of the search in this collection of classic stories. Many are true - or purport to be. They take place under the sea, in jungles, on desert islands, even in the attics of old houses. What is common to them all is the excitement of the chase and the possibility - irrational, perhaps, but unavoidable - that a fabulous treasure really is there for the finding.