Description

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Ever since Plato, literary criticism has been so stymied by the need to justify literature's right to exist that it has paid virtually no attention to what literature needs: tolerance, freedom, and diversity so as to give creative evolution a wider spectrum from which to select. That explains why sociobiologist Henri Bergson's views have found their way into anthologies of literary criticism by default. It turns out, however, that around World War I, the Polish poet and critic Boleslaw Lesmian successfully addressed this very problem specifically with regard to literature, not as an analogy of something else; his most seminal essays have been translated herein in the hope that they will replace Bergson in future anthologies.

About the Author

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The Author: Boleslaw Lesmian is a pseudonym for Stanislaw Boleslaw Lesman (1878?-1937), a Polish provincial lawyer of Jewish descent who is also one of Poland's greatest 20th-century poets and critics. He is virtually unknown outside his native country because he is so difficult to translate. Translator: Alexandra Chciuk-Celt, a professional translator who also trains translators at New York University, devoted her doctoral work at CUNY to an annotated translation-dissertation of his poetry, published in part in 1987. While researching the work, she was so impressed by the relevance of Lesmian's poetics that she decided to translate selections of his prose as well.