{"title":"Victor Brombert","description":"\u003cp\u003eVictor Brombert’s works delve deeply into the human experience, exploring themes of memory, mortality, and the complexities of cultural identity. His writing blends reflective insight with profound literary analysis, offering readers a thoughtful examination of life’s enduring questions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRooted in \u003cem\u003eArts \u0026amp; Culture\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eBiography \u0026amp; Memoir\u003c\/em\u003e, Brombert’s books invite you to engage with history and personal narrative through a richly contemplative lens. Expect evocative prose that challenges and enlightens in equal measure.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-pensive-citadel-by-victor-brombert-9780226828664","title":"The Pensive Citadel","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cb\u003eA reflective volume of essays on literature and literary study from a storied professor.\u003c\/b\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Pensive Citadel\u003c\/i\u003e, Victor Brombert looks back on a lifetime of learning within a university world greatly altered since he entered Yale on the GI bill in the 1940s. Yet for all that has changed, so much of Brombert’s long experience as a reader and teacher is richly familiar: the rewards of rereading, the joy of learning from students, and most of all the insight to be found in engaging works of literature.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe essays gathered here range from meditations on laughter and jealousy to new appreciations of Brombert’s lifelong companions Shakespeare, Montaigne, Voltaire, and Stendhal.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA veteran of D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge who witnessed history’s worst nightmares firsthand, Brombert nevertheless approaches literature with a lightness of spirit, making the case for intellectual mobility and an openness to change. \u003ci\u003eThe Pensive Citadel\u003c\/i\u003e is a celebration of a life lived in literary study, and of what can be learned from attending to the works that form one’s cultural heritage.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46855887388908,"sku":"9780226828664","price":47.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/20514923482268.jpg?v=1759281900"},{"product_id":"musings-on-mortality-by-victor-brombert-9780226323824","title":"Musings on Mortality","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“All art and the love of art,” Victor Brombert writes at the beginning of the deeply personal \u003ci\u003eMusings on Mortality\u003c\/i\u003e, “allow us to negate our nothingness.” As a young man returning from World War II, Brombert came to understand this truth as he immersed himself in literature. Death can be found everywhere in literature, he saw, but literature itself is on the side of life. With delicacy and penetrating insight, Brombert traces the theme of mortality in the work of a group of authors who wrote during the past century and a half, teasing out and comparing their views of death as they emerged from vastly different cultural contexts.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eLeo Tolstoy, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, Albert Camus, Giorgio Bassani, J. M. Coetzee, and Primo Levi—these are the writers whose works Brombert plumbs, illuminating their views on the meaning of life and the human condition. But there is more to their work, he shows, than a pervasive interest in mortality: they wrote not only of physical death but also of the threat of moral and spiritual death—and as the twentieth century progressed, they increasingly reflected on the traumatic events of their times and the growing sense of a collective historical tragedy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHe probes the individual struggle with death, for example, through Tolstoy’s Ivan Ilych and Mann’s Aschenbach, while he explores the destruction of whole civilizations in Bassani, Camus, and Primo Levi. For Kafka and Woolf, writing seems to hold the promise of salvation, though that promise is seen as ambiguous and even deceptive, while Coetzee, writing about violence and apartheid South Africa, is deeply concerned with a sense of disgrace. Throughout the book, Brombert roots these writers’ reflections in philosophical meditations on mortality. Ultimately, he reveals that by understanding how these authors wrote about mortality, we can grasp the full scope of their literary achievement and vision.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDrawing deeply from the well of Brombert’s own experience, \u003ci\u003eMusings on Mortality\u003c\/i\u003e is more than mere literary criticism: it is a moving and elegant book for all to learn and live by.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47471262204140,"sku":"9780226323824","price":33.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780226323824-musings-on-mortality.jpg?v=1775236399"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/victor-brombert.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}