----- Original Message -----
From: "Brian Hawkins" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, October 23, 2009 1:05 AM
Subject: Re: "Cities and Years"
Thanks for this Frederick, I enjoyed it.
Forgive what may be an ignorant question, but is the speaker of the poem an
historical figure I should recognise?
Brian
Glad you liked it! He's a composite figure. Aleksander Wat (biography of
whom by Thomas Venclova is a SUPERB book I recently finished) goes into
him --- but so do Milosz, Gombrowicz, Tudor Arghezi, Cioran --- In the 20th
C it was a habit of Eastern European exiles to try France for ten years
before they came to the US (comparatively few to UK) -- France seldom worked
the way they'd hoped.
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