Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German
Plays and Poems FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Oskar Kokoschka was one of the major painters of the first half of the twentieth century. He was born in Pochlarn on the Danube, studied in Vienna, was badly wounded in the First World War, and traveled widely around Europe in the years between the wars. He fled from fascism, first of all in 1934 to Prague and then, when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, to England, where he was naturalized in 1947. In 1954 he moved to Villeneuve in Switzerland. He died in 1980." "Kokoschka also wrote a number of plays, poems, and stories. Best known are the early plays, such as Murderer, Hope of Women, which anticipated Expressionism. His last play is a large-scale historical canvas on the life of the Czech educational reformer Comenius."--BOOK JACKET.
FROM THE CRITICS
Booknews
Although he's known primarily as a painter, Oskar Kokoshka also wrote poetry and plays in the style of Expressionism, ably translated here by Mitchell (a literary translator and writer on Austrian literature). The poems and plays, which focus on the conflict between the sexes, will be useful material for students and scholars of art history and literature for the period. The plays translated here are: , , , , (both versions), and (both versions). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Internet Book Watch
Oskar Kokoschka was best known as a German expressionist painter in the early decades of the 20th Century. But he was also authored of a large body of plays, poems, essays, and autobiographical stories. Ably translated into English by Michael Mitchell, Plays And Poems is a collection of all Kokoschka's plays and poetry, plus one short prose passage, and will give an American readership an excellent introduction to a body of work that elemental, intense, hallmarked by ecstatic language, occasionally grotesque imagery, and the author's ideal of a humanity guided by reason, regardless of German history and his own personal experiences of conflict and oppression. Plays And Poems is a highly recommended addition to academic libraries in general, and 20th Century Germanic literature collections in particular.
Art & Photography
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