Dimensions
132 x 197 x 11mm
A towering figure of the Renaissance, Luis de Góngora pioneered poetic forms so radically different from the dominant aesthetic of his time that he was derided as 'the Prince of Darkness.' The Solitudes, his magnum opus, is an intoxicatingly lush novel-inverse that follows the wanderings of a shipwrecked man who has been spurned by his lover. Wrenched from civilization—and its attendant madness—the desolate hero is transported into a natural world that is at once menacing and sublime.
In this stunning edition, Edith Grossman, our most celebrated translator from Spanish, captures the breathtaking beauty of a work that represents one of the high points of poetic achievement in any language.
'Reading Góngora is like traveling by hot-air balloon-you'll get somewhere eventually, but all the pleasure is in the elevation (and occasional vertigo) . . . Grossman's version is remarkably lucid, and her lines often achieve a mesmerizing shimmer . . . It's hard to imagine a better effort to capture [this] poem.' The New York Times Book Review
