Limits of Art 2: From Villon to Gibbon

The description for this book, Limits of Art, Volume 2: Villon to Gibbon, will be forthcoming.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691017654
• ISBN13: 9780691017655
• Release Date: June 1970
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 987 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 1.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

A Book for the Ages

A selection of the best of the world's literature from Homer to Finnegan's Wake, but what a selection! An odd criterion was adopted for the selection: each item of poetry or prose had to have been pronounced perfect or the greatest of its kind by some responsible critic. Thus we have this 2600-year-old fragment from Sappho "The moon has set and the Pleiades; it is the middle of the night and time passes, time passes, and I lie alone." And Aldous Huxley comments: "Not even the best of the Chinese could have said more in so small a compass." The book includes the original languages, ancient Greek, Latin, Old and Middle English, Old French and German, Italian, Icelandic et al, followed by English translations and the remarks of the critic responsible for its inclusion among works that reach towards the "limits of art." I have the original beautifully-crafted edition which I was lucky to get a few years back for about $70 at Princeton University Press but, alas, copies are now hard to find. Separate volumes of poetry, prose and criticism were more recently issued and these also are now scarce. This is a book that will still be prized centuries hence, a wonderful gift to be passed on to your grandchildren and to their grandchildren