Bars of Atlantis

This landmark collection of essays by one of the world''s greatest living authors makes Durs Grünbein''s wide-ranging and multifaceted prose available in English for the first time and is a welcome complement to Ashes for Breakfast his first book-length collection of poetry in English.Covering two decades The Bars of Atlantis unfurls the entire breadth and depth of Grünbein''s essayistic genius. Memoiristic and autobiographical pieces that introduce Grünbein the man and the author and tell the story of the making of a poet and thinker toward the end of a century marked by global political strife unprecedented human suffering long decades of totalitarian rule and in its final quarter the dawn of a new post–Cold War world order; essays that focus on Grünbein''s major philosophical and aesthetic concerns such as the intersection of art and science literature and biology; extended reflections on the existential cultural political and ethical import of the poet''s craft in the contemporary world; and finally explorations of the meaning of classical antiquity for the present―all contribute to making.