Super-Infinite - Katherine Rundell

Super-Infinite

Katherine Rundell

出版社

Faber & Faber

出版时间

2022-04-13

ISBN

9780571345915

评分

★★★★★
书籍介绍

John Donne lived myriad lives.

Sometime religious outsider and social disaster, sometime celebrity preacher and establishment darling, John Donne was incapable of being just one thing. He was a scholar of law, a sea adventurer, an MP, a priest, the Dean of St Paul's Cathedral - and perhaps the greatest love poet in the history of the English language. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism, was imprisoned for marrying a high-born girl without her father's consent, struggled to feed a family of ten children and was often ill and in pain. He was a man who suffered from black surges of sadness, yet expressed in his verse electric joy and love.

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From a standout scholar, a biography of John Donne: the poet of love, sex, and death. In Super-Infinite, Katherine Rundell embarks on a fleet-footed 'act of evangelism', showing us the many sides of Donne's extraordinary life, his obsessions, his blazing words, and his tempestuous Elizabethan times - unveiling Donne as the most remarkable mind and as a lesson in living.

Katherine Rundell is a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Her bestselling books for children have been translated into more than thirty languages and have won multiple awards. Rundell is also the author of a book for adults, Why You Should Read Children's Books, Even Though You Are So Old and Wise, and writes occasionally for the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Sup...

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目录
Introduction 1
The Prodigious Child 20
The Hungry Scholar 31
The Exquisitely Clothed Theoriser on Fashion 55
Brother to a Dead Man 61

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用户评论
2022.12.08. 抵达伦敦第一天在西区的Folyes入手,断断续续看了俩礼拜,最后一大半终于在回港的航班上集中看完了。年度好书!今年的“非虚构写作奥斯卡”BG Prize 获奖作品,也正因如此我才买下这本我【完全不了解亦没什么兴趣去了解】的传记书。但它的好看程度简直太出乎我意料了:这本书讲述了生于16世纪70年代的剑桥,成长于玛丽女王、詹姆士一世和查尔斯一世统治下的英格兰,职业/身份从律师到作家、从诗人到传教士、最终成为富到流油的各大教堂(包括伦敦圣保罗)的牧师,生了12个孩子,活过当年英国平均寿命(59岁)的John Donne的传奇一生,写的【精彩极了】。作者用极为接地气的笔触,毫不掉书袋的遣词造句,但又妙笔生花、趣味横生的语言,写出了一副16/17世纪英格兰生活样貌状态的全景图。
三星半,有些俏皮话用力过猛,流于轻佻(受够了当代人写书非得加些料来博眼球的作风。感觉就是围绕着Donne的一生转圈圈,但是真要说能否让人对他的诗作有更深的理解,似乎不见得。对作品的讨论过于描述性(神奇的是,全书作为名词的conceit一次都不曾出现),更像是以诗证生平,重点在生平不在诗。反复把邓恩称作最好的英语爱情诗人,只读这本书却看不出他如何当得起这个名头。既然都已经说到开普勒和托勒密,为什么不多说说Donne诗作中的宇宙观…每个章节都只是一个简短的切片,供读者一窥某个时期扮演某个角色的邓恩,但看不到什么一以贯之的东西;而这种情况下用Super-infinite来统摄这些面向,未免有些偷懒(这个形容不如送给托马斯·布朗。读完沃尔顿写的邓恩传,可以想见其为人,这本则只有一堆纷繁的印象…
非常规的传记作品,整体更像一篇essay。读完后我感觉并不会去读John Donne的诗。
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