Kenneth Rexroth - Revisitar os Clássicos

A collection of short, brilliant essays originally published between 1965 and 1969 in the American literary magazine Saturday Review, Revisitar os Clássicos (1969) brings together sixty works that are, for the author, “basic documents in the history of the imagination”.

From East to West, from the cradle of civilizations to recent times, Kenneth Rexroth's unique reading goes through the Iliad, the Odyssey or The Epic of Gilgamesh, as well as classical Japanese poetry, Don Quixote or Montaigne's essays, without forgetting the contributions of Flaubert, Rimbaud, Twain or Chekhov. In simple, uncompromising language - uncovering unexpected links between Fielding and Confucius, Tristram Shandy and Buddhism, Shakespeare's plays and Finnish epics - this guided tour of written testimonies to the “nobility and vulgarity of the human heart” reinvents the definition of classic and inspires us to be better readers.