From the Back Cover Dating from 1910 and subtitled ""An attempt to Define Somewhat the Charm of the Pre-Renaissance Literature of Latin Europe"," The Spirit of Romance is one of the key books in Ezra Pound's revaluation of literary tradition. Read more About the Author New Directions has been the primary publisher of Ezra Pound in the U.S. since the founding of the press when James Laughlin published New Directions in Prose and Poetry 1936. That year Pound was fifty-one. In Laughlin’s first letter to Pound, he wrote: “Expect, please, no fireworks. I am bourgeois-born (Pittsburgh); have never missed a meal. . . . But full of ‘noble caring’ for something as inconceivable as the future of decent letters in the US.” Little did Pound know that into the twenty-first century the fireworks would keep exploding as readers continue to find his books relevant and meaningful.Award-winning translator, scholar, and essayist Richard Sieburth has translated books by Henri Michaux, Friedrich Hölderlin, Louise Labé, Gérard de Nerval, and Nostradamus.  Read more
R**N
Accurate rating of the condition of the copy.
Excellent copy.
B**.
Underappreciated early Pound
Humorous, to my mind, that my prior review of Pound's Cantos, which I do not much care for, inspired a touch of vitriol from some impassioned fans of his work. So, perhaps to atone for that, I will say how much I enjoy this earlier work of his, where he gets to display his encyclopedic knowledge of Western European culture in an appropriate vehicle. While this book is essentially out of date now, having been written in the 20s, its general conclusions regarding the birth of the modern lyric in Europe are always fascinating and insightful. His wit is present and pertinent, and his later gross arrogance and stubborn refusal to organize his thinking nowhere to be found. So, I highly recommend this book, and while a knowledge of the Cantos is required to be fully literate, this work is far better and actually far more important and relevant to modern letters. The writer of this book is a man I would have liked to have known, while I would not say the same regarding the writer of the Cantos. Another possibly indefensible critical paradigm, I suppose, but there you have it in any case.
