Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts into Tears
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An exemplary collection of work from one of the world’s leading scholars of intellectual history
László F. Földényi is a writer who is learned in reference, taste, and judgment, and entertaining in style. Taking a place in the long tradition of public intellectual and cultural criticism, his work resonates with that of Montaigne, Rilke, and Mann in its deep insight into aspects of culture that have been suppressed, yet still remain in the depth of our conscious.
In this new collection of essays, Földényi considers the fallout from the end of religion and how the traditions of the Enlightenment have replaced neither the metaphysical completeness nor the comforting purpose of the previously held mythologies. Combining beautiful writing with empathy, imagination, fascination, and a fierce sense of justice, Földényi covers a wide range of topics that include a meditation on the metaphysical unity of a sculpture group and an analysis of fear as a window into our relationship with time.
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In this eclectic essay collection, art theory professor F ld nyi (Melancholy) takes readers on an elegant but hard-going philosophical tour. His main premise is that, ever since the 18th-century Enlightenment, humans have vainly tried to dispel the "darkness" and "inscrutability" that inevitably coexist with light and reason in the human condition. In the title essay, he finds humanity both outwardly self-satisfied and inwardly anxiety-ridden. In F ld nyi's worldview, the irrationality that Enlightenment thinking seeks to repel always lurks in the shadow. In an analysis of Francisco Goya's "The sleep of reason produces monsters," F ld nyi concludes that though the etching's sleeping figure might wake "to do battle" with the monsters surrounding him, he could just as easily arise from his "troubled dreams" transformed, like Kafka's Gregor Samsa, into a monster himself. Here, as elsewhere, F ld nyi shows a knack for making surprising connections between different works of art. However, though the marvelously evocative title may draw in casual literature fans, they are likely to lose interest after discovering the book is less concerned with the lives of famous writers than with F ld nyi's own ruminations. This rather opaque treatise will be best appreciated by those just as well-steeped in European intellectual history as F ld nyi himself.
