The New Criterion
(Mobile Version)

December 2000 Volume 19, Number 4  

Notes & Comments

The cultural revolution comes to the ballot box


Features

Plutarch & the issue of character
by Roger Kimball

Longfellow & the fate of modern poetry
by John Derbyshire

Long walk to nowhere: Nelson Mandela
by Sarah Ruden

A sideshow of one: Umberto Saba
by Eric Ormsby
A consideration of the poet and his work upon the publication of a new translation.


Poems

Introduction to Gerard de Nerval‘s “Chimeras”
by Daniel Mark Epstein
Translation and introduction by Daniel Mark Epstein

Les Chimeres by Gerard de Nerval
by Daniel Mark Epstein
Translated by Daniel Mark Epstein


Theater

The know nothings
by Mark Steyn
On The Full Monty, by Terrence McNally & David Yazbeck & The Dinner Party, by Neil Simon.


Art

Lee Krasner in Brooklyn
by Karen Wilkin
On “Lee Krasner,” at the Brooklyn Museam of Art.

Gallery chronicle
by Daniel Kunitz
On “Jean Arp: Line and Form,” at Mitchell-Innes & Nash; “Richard Pousette-Dart: Painting to Paper Black to White,” at Knoedler & Company; “Henri Michaux: Works on Paper,” at the Michael Werner Gallery; “Henri Michaux: Watercolors and Gouaches,” at the Zabriskie Gallery & “Untitled Passages by Henri Michaux,” at The Drawing Center.


Music

Onstage politics
by Patrick J. Smith
On Dead Man Walking, by Jake Heggie, at the San Francisco Opera.


The Media

Complicity, objectivity & stupidity
by James Bowman
Media coverage of the presidential election.


Verse Chronicle

Author! author!
by William Logan
On Your Name Here, by John Ashbery; Talking Dirty to the Gods, by Yusef Komunyakaa; The Throne of Labdacus & Supernatural Love: Poems 1976-1992 by Gjertrud Schnackenberg; The Weather in Japan, by Michael Longley & Speech! Speech!, by Geoffrey Hill.


Books

The blaming of Leonard Woolf
by Brooke Allen
A review of Who's Afraid of Leonard Woolf, by Irene Coates.

Larger than proof
by Martin Gardner
A review of Gödel: A Life of Logic, by John L. Casti & Werner DePauli.

Shorter notice
by David Pryce-Jones
David Pryce-Jones on Troublemaker: The Life and History of A. J. P. Taylor, by Kathleen Burk.

Shorter notice
by David Barber
David Barber on Basil Bunting on Poetry, by Peter Makin.


Notebook

The Padilla affair in retrospect
by Stephen Schwartz
Upon the death of the exiled Cuban poet.