Scraps
- 248 pages
- 9 hours of reading
The second volume of Michel Leiris's hugely influential four-volume autobiographical essay, available to English-language readers in a brilliant and sensitive translation by Lydia Davis
Michel Leiris Books
April 20, 1901 – September 30, 1990
Michel Leiris was a writer whose work emerged from the surrealist movement, exploring the depths of human experience with an ethnographer's keen eye. His contributions to surrealist publications and his early novel demonstrated a commitment to avant-garde expression and introspection. Later, he collaborated with other significant literary figures, continuing to probe the boundaries of literature and self-discovery. His writing invites readers into a complex exploration of consciousness and the human condition.
Scratches
- 272 pages
- 10 hours of reading
A dazzling translation by Lydia Davis of the first volume of Michel Leiris's masterwork, perhaps the most important French autobiographical enterprise of the twentieth century
The fourth and final volume of Michel Leiris’s renowned autobiography, now available in English for the first time, translated by Richard Sieburth
In this novel of extremes, whose author's distaste for 'things as they are' includes the whole idea of 'novels', Michel Leiris pursues his heroine, Aurora, through a visionary landscape shot through with catastrophe and disaster. His lucid and baroque language, with its incredible descriptions and ever more extravagant metaphors, is only just able to maintain the pursuit. Leiris participated in the most important French literary and cultural groups of his time. He was closely associated with the Surrealists, later with Georges Bataille and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Fibrils
- 256 pages
- 9 hours of reading
A major publishing event: the third volume of Michel Leiris's renowned autobiography, now available in English for the first time in a brilliant translation by Lydia Davis
Short fragments and essays that explore how a seemingly irrelevant aesthetic detail may cause the eruption of sublimity within the mundane.
Picasso and the Human Comedy: a Suite of 180 Drawings by Picasso
- 228 pages
- 8 hours of reading
Recognized for its cultural significance, this work contributes to the foundational knowledge of civilization. Scholars have chosen it for its importance, highlighting its role in shaping understanding and perspectives within various fields.
Manhood
- 184 pages
- 7 hours of reading
"Not only one of the frankest of autobiographies, but also a brilliantly written book, Leiris' Manhood mingles memories, philosophic reflections, sexual revelation, meditations on bullfighting, and the life-long progress of self-discovery."—Washington Post Book World "Leiris writes to appall, and thereby to receive from his readers the gift of a strong emotion—the emotion needed to defend himself against the indignation and disgust he expects to arouse in his readers."—Susan Sontag, New York Review of Books
Im Spiegel der Tauromachie gleitet Leiris Beschreibung der Corrida, des Stierkampfes in der Arena, zwanglos in eine Schilderung nahezu heiliger Zeremonien über, in die Beschwörung der mit Verderbnis sich paarenden Schönheit, in einen Versuch über den Tod und die Liebe.
Michel Leiris, Pionier unorthodoxer Sozial- und Humanwissenschaften, hebt die Interdisziplinarität hervor. Der Herausgeber präsentiert eine Auswahl, die Leiris' Ansatz zur Ethnologie als umfassende Wissenschaft vom Menschen zeigt, in der persönliche Erfahrungen des Forschers eine zentrale Rolle spielen.
