In a series of provocative essays, written over the course of two decades and elegantly assembled under the same roof for the first time, New York-based cultural critic, philosopher, and publisher Michael Eskin – author of, among other books, The Emprise of Poetry: Durs Grünbein, America, Antisemitism, and the Pursuit of Liberty as well as Childhood: An Essay on the Human Condition – probes questions of literary history and cultural criticism, linguistics and literary translation, the ethical and epistemological interface between literature and philosophy, as well as the concrete moral-political force and societal ramifications of words presumably weighed on the scales of professional wordsmithery. Mikhail Bakhtin and Viktor Shklovsky, Alexandre Jollien and Etty Hillesum, L. P. Yakubinsky and Joseph Brodsky, Rainer Maria Rilke and Don Paterson, Durs Grünbein and Virginia Woolf, Theodor Herzl and Marshall B. Rosenberg, Paul Celan and René Descartes, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Kathrin Stengel are among the motley clutch of his challenging, inspiring and exacting interlocutors.
