Peter LeviReseñas

I just don't know how I feel about Levi's tome, a vastly under-reviewed but clearly vital piece of Shakespearean scholarship.

In painstaking detail, Levi sorts through countless aspects of Shakespeare's life, sources, lifestyle, theatrical notions, as well as the legends and rumours surrounding the Bard. Moreso than some of the great Shakespearean biographers of our day - such as James Shapiro - Levi is sometimes tempted more by hearsay and tradition. On the other hand, he believes very much that a lot of the story of Shakespeare can be told or inferred from what was happening in the era. On this ground, he is brilliant. Sorting through so much information, Levi pulls together convincing discussions of everything from Shakespeare's family background to his final years, drawing a lot of inferences, but also connecting all of the extant elements of the Bard's life into one cohesive whole. This is clearly a labour of love, and it shows.

There are some flaws, however. Number one being that the book was clearly either self-published or by a smaller company, as it hasn't been proofread all that well. Levi was a poetry professor, and one gets the verbal style of an orator who needs an editor. Combine this with his off-handed references to political or religious history which are oblique enough that they could only be fully grasped by people of his age, class, and religious background, and there's a feeling that Levi's intended audience is a small one. (This is most notable in the early chapters on English history, where he will sometimes draw comparisons to points of the aristocracy or religion that have no baseline reference for a 25-year-old Australian like myself!) Beyond this, the sheer ambition of Levi's scope is sometimes overwhelming. This is part-biography, part-hypothesis, part-history, part-literary analysis, and (as many commentators have pointed out) part-epic poem. Sometimes, the book fills full-to-bursting with dense information. It doesn't help that - as I mentioned - sometimes I felt like an outsider, even though I consider myself a bit of an armchair Shakespeare scholar.

In short, this book is not for beginners. Unlike some of the better 'popular non-fiction' titles on the Bard, Levi's work is for people who consider themselves reasonably adept in Shakespeare's accepted history, in a solid number of his works, and preferably in a bit of English history of the time. Once you have brushed up on that, the complexities of Levi are worth a visit.

As for the religious element, well it's there. Levi talks in the introduction about his own religious affiliations, and they add to the occasional confusing moments of commentary - confusing, that is, to someone not of his time and place. Still, when he begins disclosing his fascinating amount of knowledge about Shakespeare's era, his experience shines through. And Levi himself clearly has the mentality of a poet, as his literary analyses are - even if you don't always agree - truly absorbing.

I firmly believe that failing ambitiously is better than succeeding with mediocrity. In Levi's case, he hasn't failed - he's just over-egged the pudding somewhat. This is a multi-faceted book: slow reading but worthy, poetic, sometimes fantastical but sometimes deeply pragmatic. One of the great trends of modern Shakespearean scholarship is to accept that there is much we will never know about William Shakespeare (as there is much we can never know of any genius, let alone one who lived in an era where few personal records remain), but we can make some reasonable assumptions. There were parts of Shakespeare's mind that would have been inaccessible even to those closest to him. There were parts of his life which are lost due to carelessness, a lack of foresight, and simply the verisimilitudes of the era. But beyond that, Shakespeare was a man, a jobbing writer, and a product of his time. In that regard, we can look to the world around him, to the idiosyncrasies of the specific theatre companies he wrote for, and the monarchs, commoners, and systems he was part of. We may not find all the answers there but, if we can believe Levi and his cohort, we can at least hazard a guess.

Alla ricerca di vestigia greche in Afghanistan e, secondo Maurizio Tosi, così come scrive nel suo ricordo di Peter Levi, mai trovate.

"La domanda cui più mi premeva rispondere, ridotta al nocciolo, era quali forme avesse assunto l'occupazione macedone dell'Afghanistan e che cosa fosse accaduto di quei remoti regni ellenistici."

(pagina 14)

A proposito del Tosi, si poteva evitare di inserire il suo ricordo: nulla aggiunge al pregio del libro. L'ideale sarebbe stato l'aver approfondito le motivazioni del viaggio da un punto di vista esterno all'autore, ma non è l'intento del ricordo.

Un libro da leggere anche solo per avere un'idea di un paese prima degli invasori (i sovietici) e prima degli invasati (i Talebani).

A proposito di Bruce Chatwin: incastrato nel titolo solo come specchietto?:
la cosa parrebbe affermativa, dato che nel libro non ha opinioni personali o, almeno, non riportate da Levi.

Babur il Conquistatore era un imperatore indiano che preferiva le regioni dell'Afghanistan, ed infatti ivi è seppellito e ivi troviamo l'iscrizione da cui il titolo del libro:

"...questo giardino luminoso del re angelo prediletto da dio, le cui spoglie riposano nel giardino del paradiso, ,,,Babur il Conquistatore..."

(pagina 45)

"Imparammo ad amare Faizabad, e capimmo perché sia il tenente Wood sia Marco Polo vi avessero soggiornato volentieri. Ci piacevano le botteghe e i buffoni di paese, le greggi immense e i pastorelli smilzi, ci piaceva la sensazione di essere al termine di una lunga strada, come nell'ultimo villaggio alla fine di una ferrovia. Senza dubbio gli elementi principali di tanta piacevolezza erano il fiume gelido e le montagne, il silenzio e l'assenza totale di notizie che imponeva una percezione del tempo diversa, nonché la semplicità e la leggerezza dell'architettura."

(pagina 175)

"I monaci nella caverna illuminata
Amano solo ciò che non può amare, e si salveranno."

(pagina 275)

A delightful and charming biography of one of the greatest British poets. The author's background in poetry shines through in his appreciation for the life and work of Milton.

Peter Levy's book takes us on a quiet walk through monastery land, telling us how monasteries first arose, and pointing at its various features. It has about 40 brief piercing, desultory essays written in a poet's prose, and packed with inconsequential information. It is beautiful.

paperback

Horace was not just a poet but also quite involved in the culture and political life of Rome. This book examines that life, his loves, and his place in the Augustan era of the Empire.½

9/10th of the way through this book, I learned that Tennyson was a virulent n-word racist.

That colors his legacy, no?

While the book would benefit from a culling of at least one fourth of the irrelevant, repetitive, and boring details,
Peter Levi offers many insightful and critical personal judgements.

The time sequence also is often choppy.

uneven and personal book on monks and monasteries

I am sorry to say that, for me, this is too literary; it seems too concerned with proving its own cleverness and to view the possibility that the reader will exit these pages none the wise, with an arrogant nod towards the ignorance of the plebiscite. This book is rather like wading in treacle. Every time that one starts to progress into the life of Milton, the learned Mr Levi curtails the advance with words of his own fine wisdom.

I find that most outstanding authors, like Milton himself, write in a manner that leaves the reader feeling that he already knew the truths being aired and that the scrivener's skill is in the clear laying out thereof. Mr Levi, perhaps justifiably, leaves me feeling ignorant and that his great understanding is beyond me. I must, therefore, either crawl away and admit my lowly status, or attack in turn and, I am far too self assured to bend the knee to such a monologue. I shall simply find myself another author who makes Milton the central character and brings the poet to life for me.½

Um dos melhores livros que eu podia ter quando era uma criança interessada por arte e história. Pena que eu não tinha a coleção completa.
É um livro de referência pra mim até hoje, e uma boa leitura.

La Storia. La Grecia e il mondo ellenistico.

A fascinating book about Afghanistan in 1969, prior to the Soviet occupation, before the Taliban, and the American war. I especially liked Peter Levi’s descriptions of Nuristan and the North-East of the country.
Afghanistan since time immemorial has been a crossroads of many cultures. “….Through it have passed merchants with indigo and Chinese silk, Alexander the Great, nomads from the Steppes, colonies of Buddhist monks, great Moghul conquerors, and the ill-fated armies of the Britsh Raj.”

“I viaggi non arricchiscono la mente, la creano”. Bruce Chatwin. Libro scoperto alla mostra “i tesori nascosti dell’Afghanistan” e comprato colpita dal bellissimo titolo. E’ la storia di un'amicizia eccezionale e di un viaggio in un Afghanistan che non esiste più.

Stupenda la prefazione di Tiziano Terzani.

La spedizione sulle orme di Alessandro Magno in Oriente compiuta da Peter Levi e Bruce Chatwin nel 1969.
Un libro avvincente, ricchissimo di informazioni storiche, di testimonianze antropologiche, di descrizioni paesaggistiche rese ancora più struggenti dal pensiero delle ferite inferte a questo paese da lunghe guerre e distruzioni.

Wonderful report of a man’s love affair with Greece, “Greece has twisted itself in my skeleton like a climbing flower”(p. 203).

In an evocative way Levi (priest, poet, scholar) describes his journeys through and stays in the country from 1963 till 1978 - and in some ways for those who visited Greece this book is a real vacation. You see the light again, feel the heat, are refreshed by the sea, smell the scents, hear the sounds.

Levi also reports of his labour on Pausanias, he is the translator of Pausanias Guide to Greece for which he visited all the sites himself.
And he tells of his friendships with Seferis, Gatsos, Katsimbalis and others poets. How they all lived and some died during the terrible years of the regime of the Colonels.

In Athens “the cemetery became one of my favorite lurking places. The heroes of the war of independence lie here, in a wilderness of other monuments, and the first Greek aviator, and by now a number of my friends. The neoclassic marbles run riot, they reflower as rococo, they burst out into sunblasts of baroque. My favorite tomb is that of Makryiannis, the peasant general of 1821 whose memoirs, written with a purity and a force that has no parallel in Europe since the sixteenth century, are the foundation documents of whatever is best in Greece. They were recovered as wrapping paper from a butcher’s shop, and it was George Seferis who first pointed to their profundity and their value. During the 1939 war they circulated in typescript; the Germans put a price on the head of rebellious Makryiannis. Under the Colonels, people left red carnations at his monument. His face on the bronze plaque is consumed with rage and suffering; he has the face of a starved prophet. In his old age he wrote a long and bitter series of reproach to God. He was imprisoned, tortured, virtually starved to death, under the early monarchy. I am constantly moved to tears by his writings” (p. 138)½

3382. Tennyson, by Peter Levi (read Dec 21, 2000) Back on May 11, 1981 I read Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart, by Robert Bernard Martin, which I found to be a superlative bio, and if you want to read only one bio of Tennyson that is the one to read. But this book does have its moments, e.g., his comments on Locksley Hall Sixty Years After: "I do not recollect any indictment of the Victorian age that is more terrible....The dangerous pages are few...it is stronger than anything by Dickens, or Thackeray, or Engels" and Levi then quotes lines 217-220 and 249-257 from the poem. I do not think I'd've enjoyed being with Tennyson, but some of his work is sheerly immortal.½

This is a profound and important collection of poems by Russia's best poet of the post-War period.