Still Alive: An Autobiographical Essay

<p>Still Alive recounts the perilous odyssey of a renowned man of letters through the endless political crises of Eastern Europe in the mid-twentieth-century. Jan Kott - Polish essayist and theater critic, author of the landmark work Shakespeare Our Contemporary, winner of literary awards on two continents - tells of his association with the Surrealist circles in Paris before the Second World War, his adventures as a partisan in the Polish underground, his postwar involvement in the Polish Communist Party, his disillusionment with communism, and, finally, his emigration to America. His story reveals not only the dramatic turns of an individual life but also the fate of a whole generation of Eastern European intellectuals.<br>At once witty, suspenseful, and profound, Kott's memoir begins with a boccie game played in 1939 with Trotsky's future murderer and ends with a deeply moving description of his fifth heart attack in 1991 that illuminates the book's main concern: how to make sense of one's own existence. Kott does not pose this as a philosophic problem, but as a natural response to the extreme situations he was forced to master and survive. This is the remarkable testimony of a man whose life brought him many opportunities to face the consequences of radical choice and in whom the consciousness of those essential encounters continues to resonate.<br>Published in Polish in 1990 and acclaimed by critics throughout Europe, the book is now available in English for the first time. Kott has added much new material to this edition, including the final chapter.</p>

Biographies & Memoirs

Kott, Professor Jan

Historical

Yale University Press

The Eating of the Gods Lib/E: An Interpretation of Greek Tragedy

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Skyboat Media

The Eating of the Gods: An Interpretation of Greek Tragedy

[Translated by Boleslaw Taborski and Edward J. Czerwinski] [Directed by Claire Bloom] [Read by Stefan Rudnicki] A provocative study of the Greek tragedy In The Eating of the Gods the distinguished Polish critic Jan Kott reexamines Greek tragedy from the modern perspective. As in his earlier acclaimed Shakespeare Our Contemporary, Kott provides startling insights and intuitive leaps which link our world to that of the ancient Greeks. The title refers to the Bacchae of Euripides, that tragedy of lust, revenge, murder, and ''the joy of eating raw flesh'' which Kott finds paradigmatic in its violence and bloodshed. Whether reflecting on Prometheus or drawing a modern parallel in Beckett's Happy Days (''the final version of the Prometheus myth''), Kott's vision is brilliant, his method innovative, and his sensibility consistently new. Since this book first appeared, Kott's connection between ancient and modern have become even more compelling in their immediacy.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kott, Professor Jan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kott, Professor Jan