Djuna Barnes

En el París de los años veinte, en un ambiente que fluctúa entre la aristocracia, la bohemia y el mundo del circo, se encarna el enigma esencial de la condición humana en la figura de la joven Robin Vote, fascinada por la atraccion del abismo, y en las tres personas que se disputan su amor: el falso baron judio vienes Felix Volkbein, la leal Nora Flood y la avida Jenny Petherbridge. Testigo de la historia, y confidente de Felix y Nora, el extravagante doctor Matthew O?Connor. El bosque de la noche, obra maestra de Djuna Barnes y una de las grandes novelas de la literatura del pasado siglo, sigue provocando hoy la misma admiracion que genero tras su publicacion. Calificada por TS Eliot como el genio mas grande de su epoca, Barnes trascendio cualquier etiqueta, imbuida del mismo espiritu transgresor que ilumino toda su produccion literaria. Esta nueva edicion, con prologo de Siri Hustvedt, vuelve a poner en valor una novela que la autora norteamericana bellamente define como un canto a la gente que el mundo deshecha: los desheredados, los descarriados, los herejes y los rebeldes.

Al centro della Foresta della notte dorme la Bella Schizofrenica, in un letto dell'Hotel Récamier. T. S. Eliot, accompagnando questo libro alla sua uscita, scrisse che vi trovava "una qualità di orro

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. I have quite changed my mind. I am going to run away and become a boy.In these three stories, written by Djuna Barnes under the pseudonym Lydia Steptoe, three characters find themselves on the brink of a sexual awakening - accompanied by guns, whips, and worldly innuendo.A fourteen-year-old girl plans to become a virago, until her mother intercepts her first tryst by dressing up as her male lover. A boy of the same age is lured into the forest by his fathers mistress. A woman of forty falls in love and longs to kill herself, so unbearable is the return of the youth she thought she wanted. Alice, she tells herself, be a man.Barnes makes gender and desire seem slippery and joyful - and makes the fictional Lydia Steptoe seem like a writer for our time.

'I have quite changed my mind. I am going to run away and become a boy.' In these three stories, written by Djuna Barnes under the pseudonym Lydia Steptoe, three characters find themselves on the brink of a sexual awakening - accompanied by guns, whips, and worldly innuendo. A fourteen-year-old girl plans to become 'a virago', until her mother intercepts her first tryst by dressing up as her male lover. A boy of the same age is lured into the forest by his father's mistress. A woman of forty falls in love and longs to kill herself, so unbearable is the return of the youth she thought she wanted. 'Alice', she tells herself, 'be a man.' Barnes makes gender and desire seem slippery and joyful - and makes the fictional Lydia Steptoe seem like a writer for our time.

Una colección de relatos humanamente desprovistos de psicologismos y convencionalismos. Djuna Barnes es una de las escritoras más legendarias de este siglo, no solamente debido a la altísima calidad de su obra literaria, alabada por T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner y Malcolm Lowry, sino tambien por la extraña combinacion de brillo mundano y larguisimo silencio final que fue su vida. Si Gertrude Stein solo tuvo palabras de admiracion para sus piernas, la posteridad le ha reservado un lugar de honor para sus obras.Humo es una coleccion de relatos humanamente desprovistos de psicologismos y convencionalismos, en los que Djuna Barnes traza un retrato mitico de la ciudad moderna, de la Babilonia apocaliptica.Pequeñas joyas de una gran escritora, no se sabe que destacar mas de estos cuentos, si el prodigio de su estilo, rebosante de imagenes y metaforas tan inesperadas como certeras, su singular sentido del humor o la fuerza narrativa con la que estan contadas estas historias de desheredados y marginales, de hombres y mujeres a caballo entre lo grotesco y lo angelico, entre la experiencia y la inocencia.

Campé dans le Paris des années 1920 et 1930, ce roman est la transposition de lhistoire damour tumultueuse entre la sculptrice américaine Thelma Wood et lauteur, figure féminine majeure de la littérature moderniste.Robin Vote, jeune Americaine a lallure androgyne, somnambule hantee par une legere folie, fascine son entourage. Le baron Felix Volkbein, un juif autrichien erudit quelle epouse et a qui elle donne un fils, Guido, enfant retarde quelle abandonne en quittant le foyer. Nora Flood, raffinee, douce et ardente, dont elle seprend puis quelle delaisse au profit de la richissime et vulgaire Jenny Pethridge. Et le docteur Matthieu OConnor, un desempare hypersensible, recueille les confidences de chacun.Dans un style hautement poetique, Djuna Barnes met en evidence la part sombre de letre, le mal auquel les personnages sont asservis.Djuna Barnes (1892-1982), nee dans lEtat de New York, illustratrice, journaliste, dramaturge et romanciere, frequente le cercle des expatries de la rive gauche du Paris des annees 1920, avant de sinstaller en 1931, en Grande-Bretagne, ou elle ecrit Le Bois de la nuit (1936). De retour aux Etats-Unis en 1939, elle vivra les jours difficiles dune " inconnue celebre"."Un ecrivain doue dun etonnant pouvoir dexpression, une noire fecondite du discours, un jaillissement dimages et dallusions, alarmant et irresistible comme la mer en furie." Graham Greene"Lune des trois grandes uvres en prose qui aient jamais ete ecrites par une femme." Dylan ThomasTraduit de langlais (Etats-Unis) par Pierre LeyrisPreface de T. S. Eliot

Nightwood tells the stories of the love-lives of a group of Americans and Europeans in Paris in the 1920s - an exotic, night-time underworld, eccentric, seedy and beautiful. One of the earliest novels to explicitly portray homosexuality, the influence of Djuna Barnes' novel has been, and continues to be, exceptional. Nightwood is not only a classic of modernist literature, but was also acknowledged by T. S. Eliot as one of the great novels of the twentieth century.

Lose yourself in the tortured love lives of expats in 1920s Paris in this iconic cult classic.Nightwood is itself. It is its own created world, exotic and strange, and reading it is like drinking wine with a pearl dissolving in the glass ... From now on, a part of you is pearl-lined.Jeanette WintersonLike a dark lesbian genius rolling in a giant heap of damp, dead leaves. What a great, shaking, grieving party this book is - the best.Eileen MylesI read with the aching intensity of a person possessed ... The story of passion and grief, of exile and loneliness, spoke directly to me, a young woman who [never] felt she quite belonged ... A hymn to the dispossessed, the misbegotten and those who love too much. Siri Hustvedt Nightwood tells the stories of the love-lives of a group of American expats and Europeans in Paris in the 1920s - an exotic, night-time underworld, eccentric, seedy and beautiful. A modernist masterpiece, and one of the earliest novels to explicitly portray homosexuality, the influence of Djuna Barness novel remains exceptional.A bold, exceptionally well-written modernist prose poem ... The closest thing to James Joyce.Andre AcimanThe great achievement of a style, the beauty of phrasing, the brilliance of wit and characterisation, and a quality of horror and doom very nearly related to that of Elizabethan tragedy. T.S. EliotOne of the greatest books of the twentieth century. William S. BurroughsA writer of wild and original gifts . To her name there is always to be attached the splendor of Nightwood, a lasting achievement of her great gifts and eccentricities - her passionate prose and, in this case, a genuineness of human passions.Elizabeth Hardwick

Djuna Barnes'' novel documents the lives of Americans and Europeans in Paris in the decadent roaring twenties.

Campé dans le Paris des années 1920 et 1930, ce roman est la transposition de lhistoire damour tumultueuse entre la sculptrice américaine Thelma Wood et lauteur, figure féminine majeure de la littérature moderniste.Robin Vote, jeune Americaine a lallure androgyne, somnambule hantee par une legere folie, fascine son entourage. Le baron Felix Volkbein, un juif autrichien erudit quelle epouse et a qui elle donne un fils, Guido, enfant retarde quelle abandonne en quittant le foyer. Nora Flood, raffinee, douce et ardente, dont elle seprend puis quelle delaisse au profit de la richissime et vulgaire Jenny Pethridge. Et le docteur Matthieu OConnor, un desempare hypersensible, recueille les confidences de chacun.Dans un style hautement poetique, Djuna Barnes met en evidence la part sombre de letre, le mal auquel les personnages sont asservis.Djuna Barnes (1892-1982), nee dans lEtat de New York, illustratrice, journaliste, dramaturge et romanciere, frequente le cercle des expatries de la rive gauche du Paris des annees 1920, avant de sinstaller en 1931, en Grande-Bretagne, ou elle ecrit Le Bois de la nuit (1936). De retour aux Etats-Unis en 1939, elle vivra les jours difficiles dune " inconnue celebre"."Un ecrivain doue dun etonnant pouvoir dexpression, une noire fecondite du discours, un jaillissement dimages et dallusions, alarmant et irresistible comme la mer en furie." Graham Greene"Lune des trois grandes uvres en prose qui aient jamais ete ecrites par une femme." Dylan ThomasTraduit de langlais (Etats-Unis) par Pierre LeyrisPreface de T. S. Eliot