Cynthia L. Haven

Brodsky's poetic career in the West was launched when Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems was published in 1973. Its translator was a scholar and war hero, George L. Kline. This is the story of that friendship and collaboration, from its beginnings in 1960s Leningrad and concluding with the Nobel poet's death in 1996.Kline translated more of Brodsky's poems than any other single person, with the exception of Brodsky himself. The Bryn Mawr philosophy professor and Slavic scholar was a modest and retiring man, but on occasion he could be as forthright and adamant as Brodsky himself. "Akhmatova discovered Brodsky for Russia, but I discovered him for the West," he claimed.Kline's interviews with author Cynthia L. Haven before his death in 2015 include a description of his first encounter with Brodsky, the KGB interrogations triggered by their friendship, Brodsky's emigration, and the camaraderie and conflict over translation. When Kline called Brodsky in London to congratulate him for the Nobel, the grateful poet responded, "And congratulations to you, too, George!

Some academics beguile you with a few interesting ideas while other academics shake your world. Ren Girard belongs in the second camp. He demonstrates the uniqueness and indispensability of Christian revelation to a culture that is skeptical of the Gospel, and does so in a way that is absolutely life-changing. Though he described himself as an ordinary Christian, this account of his conversion, as well as his academic work, supports my claim that in centuries to come Ren Girard may be remembered as one of the great Fathers of the Church.-Bishop Robert Narron, Bishop of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester and founder of Word on Fire Catholic MinistriesCynthia Haven's treatment of the theorist Ren Girard's religious conversion is lively and lucid, but above all, it is judicious. Her careful attention to context and history remind us that Girard's experience has a universal, human dimension that will make his seminal work widely appreciated for generations to come.-Gregory Wolfe, Publisher and Editor of Slant Books and author of Beauty Will Save the World and other books.Ren Girard devoted his career to tracking down the twists and turns of mimetic desire in literature, philosophy, and anthropology. Cynthia Haven's primer makes an invaluable contribution to Girard studies by tracking down the places where Girard discussed how his theories emerged from a personal process of intellectual and spiritual conversion-and its public consequences. What emerges is a compelling picture of Girard as a post-secular thinker who tears down artificial boundaries, such as the ones between the religious and the secular, between the private and public. Haven invites would-be Girard readers to see themselves as participating in a common struggle rather than scapegoating each other. This is a must-read book for a time when mimetic competition, shorn of scapegoating safeguards, rends the fabric of civil society.-Artur Rosman, literary scholar, translator, and blogger at Cosmos the in Lost.

The first book about the Nobel Laureate's transformative but conflicted time in the Golden State."There is much to learn from this book about Milosz and California, yes, but also about poetry and the world."—Ilya KaminskyCzeslaw Milosz, one of the greatest poets and thinkers of the past hundred years, is not generally considered a Californian. But the Nobel laureate spent four decades in Berkeley—more time than any other single place he lived—and he wrote many of his most enduring works there. This is the first book to look at his life through a California lens. Filled with original research and written with the grace and liveliness of a novel, it is both an essential volume for his most devoted readers and a perfect introduction for newcomers.Milosz was a premier witness to the sweep of the twentieth century, from the bombing of Warsaw in World War II to the student protests of the sixties and the early days of the high-tech boom. He maintained an open-minded but skeptical view of American life, a perspective shadowed by the terrors he experienced in Europe. In the light of recent political instability and environmental catastrophe, his poems and ideas carry extra weight, and they are ripe for a new generation of readers to discover them. This immersive portrait demonstrates what Milosz learned from the Golden State, and what Californians can learn from him.

Brodsky's poetic career in the West was launched when Joseph Brodsky: Selected Poems was published in 1973. Its translator was a scholar and war hero, George L. Kline. This is the story of that friendship and collaboration, from its beginnings in 1960s Leningrad and concluding with the Nobel poet's death in 1996.Kline translated more of Brodsky's poems than any other single person, with the exception of Brodsky himself. The Bryn Mawr philosophy professor and Slavic scholar was a modest and retiring man, but on occasion he could be as forthright and adamant as Brodsky himself. "Akhmatova discovered Brodsky for Russia, but I discovered him for the West," he claimed.Kline's interviews with author Cynthia L. Haven before his death in 2015 include a description of his first encounter with Brodsky, the KGB interrogations triggered by their friendship, Brodsky's emigration, and the camaraderie and conflict over translation. When Kline called Brodsky in London to congratulate him for the Nobel, the grateful poet responded, "And congratulations to you, too, George!

René Girard (1923–2015) was one of the leading thinkers of our era—a provocative sage who bypassed prevailing orthodoxies to offer a bold, sweeping vision of human nature, human history, and human destiny. His oeuvre, offering a “mimetic theory” of cultural origins and human behavior, inspired such writers as Milan Kundera and J. M. Coetzee, and earned him a place among the forty “immortals” of the Académie Française. Too often, however, his work is considered only within various academic specializations. This first-ever biographical study takes a wider view. Cynthia L. Haven traces the evolution of Girard’s thought in parallel with his life and times. She recounts his formative years in France and his arrival in a country torn by racial division, and reveals his insights into the collective delusions of our technological world and the changing nature of warfare. Drawing on interviews with Girard and his colleagues, Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard provides an essential introduction to one of the twentieth century’s most controversial and original minds.