The Aesthetics of Resistance, Volume II: A Novel Volume 2
Peter Weiss
(Author)
Joel Scott
(Translator)
Description
A major literary event, the publication of the second volume of Peter Weiss's three-volume novel The Aesthetics of Resistance makes one of the towering works of twentieth-century German literature available to English-speaking readers for the first time. The crowning achievement of Peter Weiss, the internationally renowned writer best known for his play Marat/Sade, The Aesthetics of Resistance spans the period from the late 1930s to World War II, dramatizing antifascist resistance and the rise and fall of proletarian political parties in Europe. Volume II, initially published in 1978, opens with the unnamed narrator in Paris after having retreated from the front lines of the Spanish Civil War. From there, he moves on to Stockholm, where he works in a factory, becomes involved with the Communist Party, and meets Bertolt Brecht. Featuring the narrator's extended meditations on paintings, sculpture, and literature, the novel teems with characters, almost all of whom are based on historical figures. Throughout, the narrator explores the affinity between political resistance and art--the connection at the heart of Weiss's novel. Weiss suggests that meaning lies in embracing resistance, no matter how intense the oppression, and that we must look to art for new models of political action and social understanding. The Aesthetics of Resistance is one of the truly great works of postwar German literature and an essential resource for understanding twentieth-century German history.
Product Details
Price
$124.14
Publisher
Duke University Press
Publish Date
February 18, 2020
Pages
336
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9781478006145
BISAC Categories:
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliateAbout the Author
Peter Weiss (1916-1982) was a German playwright, novelist, filmmaker, and painter. His works include the plays The New Trial, also published by Duke University Press, and Marat/Sade, and the novels The Shadow of the Body of the Coachman and The Conversation of the Three Walkers. He received West Germany's most important literary award, the Georg Büchner Prize, posthumously in 1982. Joel Scott is a freelance translator, editor, and writer. He is the author of two poetry chapbooks: Bildverbot and Diary Farm.
Reviews
"The Aesthetics of Resistance is centrally important to any kind of assessment of twentieth-century German history."--James Rolleston, editor of "A Companion to the Works of Franz Kafka "
"[The Aesthetics of Resistance, ] which [Peter Weiss] began when he was well over fifty, making a pilgrimage over the arid slopes of cultural and contemporary history in the company of pavor nocturnus, the terror of the night, and laden with a monstrous weight of ideological ballast, is a magnum opus which sees itself . . . not only as the expression of an ephemeral wish for redemption, but as an expression of the will to be on the side of the victims at the end of time."--W. G. Sebald, "On the Natural History of Destruction "
"[The Aesthetics of Resistance, ] which [Peter Weiss] began when he was well over fifty, making a pilgrimage over the arid slopes of cultural and contemporary history in the company of pavor nocturnus, the terror of the night, and laden with a monstrous weight of ideological ballast, is a magnum opus which sees itself . . . not only as the expression of an ephemeral wish for redemption, but as an expression of the will to be on the side of the victims at the end of time."--W. G. Sebald, "On the Natural History of Destruction "