Jacob, Max

Mr Nix was one of the settlers from a small town in Minnesota called New Ulm. Mr. Nix and other New Ulmers succesfully defended their city against two separate Indian attacks during the height of this war (he was shot twice, but survived.)

The English portion of this book was translated from the original German document written in the late 1800's, so the verbage is a little dated. The author still had strong prejudices against the Native Americans when he wrote this testimonial, and frequently refers to them as "Red Devils" and "Red Scoundrels." This book is hardly objective.

This is a good glimpse at one man's viewpoint of the war, but should be examined as just that, one man's viewpoint.

Hesitant Fire: Selected Prose of Max Jacob (French Modernist Library)

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Hesitant Fire: Selected Prose of Max Jacob (French Modernist Library)
Max Jacob
Manufacturer: University of Nebraska Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

French | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

European | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
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Selected Poems of Max Jacob

ASIN: 0803225741

A serious artist and a literary clown nonpareil, Max Jacob was born in Brittany in 1876 and died in a Nazi prison camp in 1944. His influence on modern French poetry was profound, and his modernist lyrical verse is still widely read. Much of his other work is equally exciting and original, but has waited decades for capable translators. Hesitant Fire makes available for the first time in English some of his best prose. The translators, Moishe Black and Maria Green, have succeeded in catching his gift for linguistic innovation, for mimicry and buffoonery often a millimeter away from melancholy.

This anthology displays Jacob’s versatility, for he wrote in a dozen styles. The Story of King Kabul the First and Gawain the Kitchen-Boy is a fable populated by Balibridgians and Bouloulabassians. Excerpts from In Defense of Tartufe reveal the poet’s mysticism and aestheticism. Those from The Flowering Plant offer brilliant social analysis behind a mask of the Absurd. Flim-Flam studies such characters as “The Lawyer Who Meant to Have Two Wives Instead of One” and “The Unmarried Teacher at the High School in Cherbourg.” The Dullard Prince blends autobiography and fiction. Letters to Mrs. Goldencalf and other imaginary members of the bourgeoisie are taken from The Dark Room. Never before published, “The Maid” was inspired by a contemporary murder case. Also included here are portions of The Bouchaballe Property, Jacob’s favorite of his own novels; entries from A Traveler’s Notebook; personal letters; and four religious meditations. For many English-language readers, Hesitant Fire will be in introduction to a writer who was an immediate precursor of Surrealism, who was a close friend of Picasso and Apollinaire, who converted to Catholicism but retained an intensely Jewish outlook, and who produced work that is still vivid nearly a half-century after his death.

Baudelaire laid the foundations for prose poetry as a genre in the 19th century, but it wasn't until the avant garde movement in the first half of the 20th century that the prose poem began a widespread emergence on the international scene. The three poets in this volume were major factors in this emergence. Max Jacob (1876â€“1944), a writer of surrealist cubist fables; Francis Ponge (1899â€“1988), a master of the language of things; and Jean Follain (1903â€“1971), who merged the everyday with the historical to create a world rich in anniversaries, lead us to the strong and growing interest in the genre that we find so prevalent at the beginning of the 21st century.