Persephone unbound

"A celebrated poet in France during her lifetime, Anna de Noailles (1876-1933) gradually lost critical attention after her death. This book, the first on the poet to appear in English, reexamines her extensive poetry and prose, alongside manuscripts and private documents, in relation to the works of French and European artists and thinkers from among her predecessors as well as her contemporaries. The author shows how this woman of foreign origins envisioned and constructed an original poetic world by actively engaging with her literary and intellectual heritage - as represented by Lamartine, Hugo, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Proust, Schopenhauer, and Rilke, among others - while discovering vital sources of inspiration in her Greek ancestry and in Nietzsche's groundbreaking philosophy. Not only did Noailles create a distinctive voice in the world of French letters but her influence reached writers of both genders in France, in other European countries, and across the Atlantic. Best understood in terms of a Dionysian aesthetics, her work is sensual, erotic, and playful, but also reflective, violent on occasion, and always marked by a tragic under-current that becomes magnified with time. Beyond the prominent place she held in the world of French letters, Noailles' lifelong commitment to artistic creation invites a reconsideration of her work."--BOOK JACKET.