One of the most sinuous stylists and searching minds of the twentieth century.Washington Postamp10Forty essays on history art and literature to lift your mind and spirit. Guy Davenport provides links between music and sculpture modernist poets and classic philosophers the past and presentamp8212and pretty much everything in between. Not only had Davenport seemingly read and often translated from the original languages everything ever written he also had the ability expressed with unalloyed enthusiasm to draw connections between how cultural synapses make define and reflect our civilization.Davenport serves as the readers guide through history and literature pointing out the values and avenues of thought that have shaped our ideas and our thinking. In these forty essays we find fresh thinking on Greek culture Whitman Spinoza Wittgenstein Melville Tolkien Ezra Pound Wallace Stevens Charles Olson Marianne Moore Eudora Welty Louis Zukovsky and many others. Each essay is a tour of the history of ideas and imagination written with wit and startling erudition.amp10amp10This Nonpareil edition includes a new introduction by John Jeremiah Sullivan.