The Art of the Epigraph: How Great Books Begin - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1451693249 ISBN 13: 9781451693249

Verlag: Atria Books, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

A collection of more than 250 epigraphs from across 500 years of literature, a quick and lively way to immerse yourself in the world of books and ideas.

For many book lovers, there is no more pleasing start to a book than a well-chosen epigraph. These intriguing quotations, sayings, and snippets of songs and poems do more than set the tone for the experience ahead: the epigraph informs us about the author’s sensibility. Are we in the hands of a literalist or a wit? A cynic or a romantic? A writer of great ambition or a miniaturist? The epigraph hints at hidden stories and frequently comes with one of its own.

The Art of the Epigraph collects more than 250 examples from across five hundred years of literature and offers insights into their meaning and purpose, including what induces so many writers to cede the very first words a reader will encounter in their book to another writer. With memorable quotations ranging from Dr. Johnson to Dr. Seuss, Herodotus to Hemingway, Jane Austen to Karl Marx, and A. A. Milne to Marcel Proust, here is a book that allows us a glimpse of the great writer as devoted reader. This lively and distinctive literary companion traces not only the art of the epigraph but the history of the book.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rosemary Ahern is a writer and editor living in New York’s Hudson Valley.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

INTRODUCTION

I’m always surprised when someone claims not to read epigraphs. To me, that’s an offering refused, a pleasure skipped. Those intriguing quotations, sayings, snippets of songs and poems, do more than just set the tone for the experience ahead: the epigraph informs us about the author’s sensibility. Are we in the hands of a literalist or a wit? A cynic or a romantic? A writer of great ambition or a miniaturist? The epigraph hints at hidden stories and frequently comes with one of its own.

In hunting for epigraphs, I’ve discovered them as far back as the fourteenth century, in The Canterbury Tales, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a more serious scholar traced the tradition back even further. The cumbersome (occasionally amusing) prefaces found in early novels like Don Quixote (1605) and Gulliver’s Travels (1726) can be considered the literary forebears of the crisp, succinct epigrams that became the fashion in the twentieth century. Glamorous modernists like Hemingway and Fitzgerald popularized epigraphs, challenging authors to appear as learned and clever in their use of them ever since.

Some of my favorite authors are purists who present their work without outside association or adornment, without a wink or a clue. Flaubert, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Patti Smith. I respect and admire their silence before their books begin. However, this book celebrates the generosity of authors willing to part the curtain and show us a glimpse of their mental furniture; to give us a preview of what they think is vital, funny, and true. George Eliot, Vladimir Nabokov, C. S. Lewis, Lorrie Moore. Of course, their books would be every bit as memorable and important without epigraphs appended, but wouldn’t we miss that extra element of anticipation? It would be like going to see Vertigo or Midnight in Paris and not taking your seat until after the opening title sequence. I always want to see how mood is established—and to submit.

Epigraphs appeal to those of us who occasionally need the kind of bolstering an ingenious turn of phrase or inspiring piece of wisdom can provide. I’m with Dorothy Parker when she says, “I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound—if I can remember any of the damn things.” Thankfully, memory aides abound in the front matter of many of the world’s best books. All that truth, humor, and novelty of expression presorted for us by consummate artists and cherished friends.

So yes, The Art of the Epigraph can be enjoyed like any quotation book. Here you will find advice on how to live well, be brave, avoid mistakes, apply the correct etiquette, adjust your expectations, appreciate quirkiness (your own and others’), attract a lover, break out of a rut, and dodge obligations. But you will also encounter fascinating conversations conducted over centuries and across cultures and genres. Writers communing with other writers, sometimes resulting in odd but delightful coincidences, like the fact that Susan Sontag and Mary Higgins Clark both turned to Tennyson when selecting epigraphs for their books. Divisions disappear; ideas and affinities are more clearly revealed.

Epigraphs remind us that writers are readers. I suppose that is what I like best about them. The experience I have when I read, encountering lines that perfectly express what I believe but can’t articulate, that open up a new point of view, that make me feel understood or filled with joy, as brilliant and lofty as I might consider that book’s author—it happens to them too. And that’s what’s on display in the epigraph: an author acknowledging his or her place in the fellowship of readers.|LIFE

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever . . . The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose . . . The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits . . . All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

—ECCLESIASTES

In The Sun Also Rises (1926), Ernest Hemingway

Taking it slowly fixes everything.

—ENNIUS

In The Red and the Black (1830), Stendhal

One of the many pleasures of reading Stendhal is his liberal use of epigraphs, which offer wry commentary on the chapters they announce. The great translator Burton Raffel warns that Stendhal had a notorious habit of writing the epigraphs himself and ascribing them to elevated or otherwise unlikely sources. We could be skeptical, but why not play along? Hailed as the “Homer of Rome,” Quintus Ennius (239–169 BC) was born in southern Italy, in what is today Calabria, where Greek was then the language of the upper classes. He learned Latin as a soldier in the Second Punic War and was taken to Rome by Cato the Elder. Working as a teacher and translator of Greek, Ennius began writing poetry, eventually producing the epic Annales, which recounted Rome’s history from the fall of Troy to Ennius’s own time. It was the most famous poem in the Roman world until Virgil’s Aeneid supplanted it nearly three hundred years later.

Remember that the life of this world is but a sport and a pastime . . .

—KORAN, LVII 19

In A Sport and a Pastime (1967), James Salter

Somebody said lift that bale.

—RAY CHARLES SINGING “OL’ MAN RIVER”

In Beautiful Losers (1966), Leonard Cohen

Life treads on life, and heart on heart;

We press too close in church and mart

To keep a dream of grave apart.

—MRS. BROWNING

In The Souls of Black Folk (1903), W. E. B. Du Bois

This epigraph opens the chapter “Of the Sons of Masters and Men,” in which Du Bois meditates on the history of colonialism and race relations, concluding that “only by a union of intelligence and sympathy across the color-line . . . shall justice and right triumph.” The quotation comes from “A Vision of the Poet” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), who was outspoken in her opposition to slavery.

Some of it wasn’t very nice, but most of it was beautiful.

—DOROTHY GALE, THE WIZARD OF OZ

In Beautiful People (2005), Simon Doonan

O my soul, do not aspire to immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.

—PINDAR, PYTHIAN III

In The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Albert Camus

Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay

To mold me Man, did I solicit thee

From darkness to promote me?—

—PARADISE LOST (X. 743–45)

In Frankenstein (1818), Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley was just nineteen when Frankenstein was published anonymously. Although the novel sold well, Shelley was too dogged by scandal and debts incurred by her husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, to receive any benefit from it. In fact, most people believed that Percy Shelley was the true author, doubting that a young girl could possess the kind of experience that would produce such a dark imagination. In fact, Shelley was well acquainted with death and the desire to resurrect life. Her mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, feminist and author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women, had died of an infection two weeks after giving birth to her. Mary herself had already suffered the death of one child before writing Frankenstein, and the child she was carrying while writing the novel would survive...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Atria Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1451693249
• ISBN 13: 9781451693249
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 256
• Herausgeber: Ahern Rosemary
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: webstar; casetta@mondadori.it; ; Via Mondadori 1,; Segrate Milano; 20090; Italien