Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
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Bely, Andrey (Boris Nikolayevich
Bugaev)
(1880–1934) novelist, poet
The only child of Nikolai Vasilevich Bugaev, a
Moscow University mathematician, and Aleksan-
dra Dmitrivna Egorova, a musician, Andrey Bely
was born in Moscow, Russia. Bely’s parents had
different attitudes about the relative importance of
natural sciences and the arts, and he was constantly
caught in their conflict. Aiming to please his father,
Bely successfully pursued a degree in natural sci-
ences at Moscow University and graduated in
1903.
Bely began to write poetry as a university stu-
dent. The main support for his initial efforts came
from Mikhail Solovyov, the Bugaevs’ neighbor and
a younger brother of the famous Russian philoso-
pher Vladimir Solovyov. Solovyov provided finan-
cial support for Bely’s first published collection of
poems, Second Symphony, in 1902 and suggested
the pseudonym Andrey Bely. After the death of his
father in 1903, Bely decided to abandon science
and devote himself to writing.
Between 1903 and 1910, Bely wrote for Vesy, a
major journal of the symbolist movement. In his
articles, Bely desperately attempted to define and
synthesize some kind of philosophy of SYMBOLISM.
Bely wrote more than 200 articles, reviews, and es-
says during this period, as well as another two vol-
umes of Symphonies.
In 1905, Bely left Russia and traveled to Mu-
nich and Paris, where he was befriended by Jean
Jaurès, the famous socialist leader. When he re-
turned to Russia, Bely established a relationship
with Asya Turgeneva, who was to be his lover for
many years, and in 1910, they went abroad to-
gether. They were drawn to Rudolf Steiner’s mys-
tical philosophy, anthroposophy. From 1914 to
1916, when Bely was recalled by the Russian gov-
ernment for military duty, the couple were with
Steiner in Switzerland.
Although Bely firmly established himself as a
poet, he is mostly known for his prose. In Peters-
burg (1913), Bely explores the social and political
turmoil of the Russian Revolution of 1905. The
novel centers on a plot to deliver a bomb to a high
government official. It is a commentary on family,
the role of the individual, and spiritualism.
In the Joycean autobiographical novel Kotik
Latayev (1922), Bely incorporates the story of his
own childhood, exploring emotional conflicts be-
tween parents and the delicate psyche of a child.
Bely’s intricate prose brilliantly captures intensity
of time, translating the sensory experiences into
intriguing and powerful works of fiction.
Bely broke with both Steiner and Turgeneva in
1921 and lived in Moscow from 1923 until his
death, producing three more novels and three vol-
umes of memoirs.
Most critics today agree on the literary genius
and immense impact of Bely’s work. Vladimir
Nabokov (quoted in Malmstad and Maguire’s intro-
duction to their translation of Petersburg) ranked
Petersburg with James Joyce’s Ulysses, Franz
KAFKA’s
The Castle, and Marcel PROUST’s In Search of Lost
Time, as one of the great books of the 20th century.
Other Works by Andrey Bely
Kotik Letayev. Translated by Gerald J. Janacek.
Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1999.
Petersburg. Translated by Robert A. Maguire and John
E. Malmstad. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, 1978.
Works about Andrey Bely
Janecek, Gerald. Andrey Bely: A Critical Review. Lex-
ington: Kentucky University Press, 1978.
Keys, Roger. The Reluctant Modernist: Andrey Belyi
and the Development of Russian Fiction. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1996.
Benn, Gottfried (Kurt Wolff) (1886–1956)
poet, novelist, playwright
Gottfried Benn was born in the German village of
Mansfield. His father was a Lutheran minister and
his mother was a French-speaking native of
Switzerland. Benn attended the Gymnasium at
Frankfurt an der Oder. He studied theology and
philosophy at the University of Marbach and in
1905 was accepted at Kaiser Wilhelm Akademie, a
48 Bely, Andrey
prominent military medical school. He earned his
doctorate in 1912 and married actress Edith Brosin
two years later.
Benn had a private practice in Berlin specializing
in skin diseases and served in the German army’s
medical corps in both world wars. He performed
numerous autopsies in his career and frequently
wrote about morgues in his early poetry. Benn’s sci-
entific background instilled a skepticism and self-
criticism that often appeared in his literary work.
Benn published five books of poetry between
1910 and 1925. He also wrote a series of works
called the “Rönne novellas,” which earned critical
praise for demonstrating the concept of “absolute
prose.” In this unique style, Benn replaced a de-
scriptive, psychologically oriented narrative with a
blend of associative and visionary elements. In the
1930s, Benn briefly embraced the Nazis before be-
coming disillusioned with their barbarism. His
popularity increased after World War II with the
publication of Statische Gedichte (Static Poems,
1948), a volume of apolitical modernist poems. In
1951, Benn received the Georg Bücher Prize, one of
Germany’s most prestigious literary awards. At the
age of 67, he finally earned enough money from
his writing career to quit his medical practice.
Benn’s influences included Friedrich NIETZSCHE
and his friend Else LASKER-SCHÜLER, the expres-
sionist poet. Benn’s poetry is melancholy and ele-
giac, conveying cultural despair. His writings were
both praised and denounced for challenging estab-
lished German literary traditions. Critics are also
divided on his significance: Edgar Lohner de-
scribed Benn as “one of the foremost modern Eu-
ropean lyric poets,” while Michael Hamburger
concluded that “Benn was too restricted in tone to
be described as a major writer” in Gottfried Benn:
The Unreconstructed Expressionist by J. M. Ritchie.
As an embodiment of the contradictions of literary
modernism, Benn will likely remain a debated
German literary figure.
Another Work by Gottfried Benn
Prose, Essays, Poems. Edited by Volknar Sander. New
York: Continuum, 1987.
A Work about Gottfried Benn
Ritchie, J. M. Gottfried Benn: The Unreconstructed Ex-
pressionist. London: Oswald Wolff, 1972.
Bennett, Louise (Louise Bennett-
Coverley, Miss Lou, Mrs. Eric Coverley)
(1919– ) poet, folklorist
Louise Bennett was born in Kingston, Jamaica, to
Augustus Cornelius Bennett, a bakery owner, and
Kerene Robinson, a dressmaker. English poetry in-
fluenced the writing she did as a schoolgirl; she
wrote poems in standard English until she over-
heard a country woman on a Kingston tramcar
and wrote the first of many poems in Jamaican di-
alect. Bennett published her first collection of
poems, (Jamaica) Dialect Verses (1942), in her early
twenties.
Bennett primarily writes in Jamaican dialect
about Jamaican people’s “now” experiences. One
speaker usually uses literary techniques—such as
allusions to Jamaican folksongs, the Bible, and
English literature—and oral performance tech-
niques—such as rhetorical lists—to address an au-
dience. In a 1968 interview with Dennis Scott,
Bennett said that people thought of her “as a per-
forming artist primarily” but added, “I did start to
write before I started to perform,” and “I felt I
wanted to put on paper some of the wonderful
things that people say in dialect.” Jamaica Labrish
(1966), her most substantial collection of poems,
shows Bennett as performer, poet, and social com-
mentator.
Bennett’s work as a journalist, actress, folk
singer, radio- and television-show host, and drama
and folklore lecturer helped generate a large audi-
ence for her poetry. But her poetry did not start to
receive critical acceptance until the late 1960s.
Many distinguished awards followed, and in
“Proverb as Metaphor in the Poetry of Louise Ben-
nett” (1984), Carolyn Cooper called Bennett “the
quintessential Jamaican example of the sensitive
and competent Caribbean artist consciously incor-
porating features of traditional oral art into writ-
ten literature.”
Bennett, Louise 49
Other Works by Louise Bennett
Anancy and Miss Lou. Kingston: Sangster’s Book
Stores, 1966.
Collected Poems. Kingston: Sangster’s Book Stores,
1982.
Jamaican Humour in Dialect. Kingston: Jamaica Press
Association, 1943.
Laugh with Louise. Kingston: City Printery, 1961.
Miss Lula Sez. Kingston: Gleaner, 1949.
Works about Louise Bennett
Cooper, Carolyn. “Noh Lickle Twang: An Introduc-
tion to the Poetry of Louise Bennett.” World Liter-
ature Written in English vol. 17 (April 1978).
———. Noises in the Blood: Orality, Gender and the
“Vulgar” Body of Jamaican Popular Culture.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995.
Erwin, Lee. “Two Jamaican Women Writers and the
Uses of Creole.” In A. L. McLeod, ed., Common-
wealth and American Women’s Discourse: Essays in
Criticism. New Delhi: Sterling, 1996.
Bernhard, Thomas (1931–1989) play-
wright, novelist
Thomas Bernhard was born in Heerlen, Nether-
lands, to Hertha Bernhard. He moved with his
mother to Austria at age four; Thomas never met
his father, an Austrian carpenter. Hertha’s father,
Johannes Freumbichler, a novelist, was one of
Thomas’s earliest influences. Bernhard grew up in
poverty and did poorly in school, eventually drop-
ping out at age 15. He studied voice at this time
and hoped to start a career in music; however,
pneumonia and tuberculosis nearly killed him a
few years later. His grandfather and mother died
while he struggled to recover from his own health
problems. These experiences with death and illness
created a pessimism that characterized Bernhard’s
literary work.
Bernhard studied music and drama in Vienna
and Salzburg as a young adult. He published three
books of poetry in the late 1950s but received little
acclaim until he published his first novel, Frost
(1963). His first drama Ein Fest Für Boris (A Party
for Boris, 1968) premiered on stage in 1970. A
tasteless farce about demented invalids who abuse
each other, the play reflects Bernhard’s vision of
humanity’s wretchedness. In the following two
decades, Bernhard solidified his reputation as a
novelist with works such as Korrektur (Correction,
1975), a novel about a man’s increasing obsession
with the manuscripts written by a brilliant mathe-
matician friend who committed suicide. Bernhard
also gained fame as a playwright for dramas such
as Die Macht der Gewohnheit (The Force of Habit,
1976), a commentary about the empty rituals of
high culture. He won numerous literary awards,
including the Georg Büchner Prize (1970).
Bernhard was obsessed with insanity, death,
and the wretchedness of the human condition. He
sharply criticized the moral failures of Austria’s
history. His works stirred controversy in their at-
tack on the complacency of German theater and
their criticism of modern life. Despite his dark
themes, Bernhard was illuminating in his use of
language and, as literary scholar J. J. Long com-
ments,“a writer of considerable diversity, who was
profoundly concerned with both the problems and
potential of storytelling.”
Other Works by Thomas Bernhard
Gargoyles. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston.
New York: Knopf, 1970.
The Force of Habit: A Comedy. Translated by Neville
and Stephen Plaice. London: Heinemann, 1976.
A Work about Thomas Bernhard
Long,J.J.The Novels of Thomas Bernhard: Form and
Its Function. Rochester, N.Y.: Camden House, 2001.
Bernstein, Ingrid
See KIRSCH, SARAH.
Bhatt, Sujata (1956– ) poet, translator
Sujata Bhatt was born in Ahmedabad, India, and
grew up in Pune in a large household with her
extended family. Her paternal grandfather was a
50 Bernhard, Thomas
poet, and two of her uncles were famous Gujarati
poets. Hearing their stories and listening to their
poetry as a child, Bhatt was inspired to write. As
a child, she was very proud that she could com-
pose poetry in English, which her family could
not do. Her father, a virologist, moved to Amer-
ica in 1968 with the family and wanted Bhatt to
become a scientist, too. In school, she obediently
took classes in science but slowly gained interest
in philosophy, creative writing, and English
literature.
Though Bhatt left India at an early age, her
childhood years in Gujarat are constantly referred
to in almost all her poetry. Written in English, her
poetry unabashedly translates sounds of Gujarati
words in play with English ones, creating a lan-
guage-based tension and highlighting the contra-
dictions inherent in translating concepts or ideas
from one language to another. Works such as
Brunizem (1988), however, display her agility in
synthesizing the East with the West, a tribute to the
positive rewards of a multicultural existence.
In an interview with PN Review, Bhatt said
that she writes poetry to “break [the] historical
silence” surrounding female sexuality, but she
also brings out the sensual aspects of seemingly
ordinary objects. Stinking Rose (1995) is a jour-
ney through the myth and history of garlic—its
medicinal, herbal, and erotic uses in different
cultures through the ages. Her studies in the sci-
ences and her interest in visual arts add dimen-
sion to her imagery in matters of light, form, and
texture. A Color for Solitude (2002) is said to be
inspired by the self-portraits of the German
painter Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907)
during her relationship with poets such as Rainer
Maria
RILKE.
Bhatt was briefly a professor of writing at the
University of British Columbia, Canada, but left
when she moved to Germany. She now works as a
freelance writer and also translates other Gujarati
poetry into English. Her collection Brunizem won
the Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia), and in
1991, she won the Cholmondeley Award for Poetry
(U.K.).
Other Works by Sujata Bhatt
Augatora. Manchester, U.K.: Carcanet Press, 2000.
Monkey Shadows. Manchester, U.K.: Carcanet Press,
1988.
A Work about Sujata Bhatt
Pandey, M. S. “The Trishanku Motif in the Poetry of
Sujata Bhatt and Uma Parameswaran.” The Liter-
ature of the Indian Diaspora: Essays in Criticism.
Edited by A. L. McLeod. New Delhi: Sterling Pub-
lishers Private Ltd., 2000.
Bing Xin (Ping Hsin; Xie Wanying; Hsieh
Wan-ying)
(1900–1999) short-story writer,
poet
Bing Xin, the daughter of a naval officer, was born
on October 5 in Fuzhou, the capital of China’s Fu-
jian province. She was raised in Chefoo in Shan-
dong province and moved to Beijing in 1914 where
she attended a Congregational missionary school.
She then attended Yanjing University in Beijing. In
1919, during the May Fourth Movement against
foreign imperialism, Bing Xin changed her major
from medicine to literature, believing that writing
fiction would have a positive social impact on Chi-
nese society.
In 1923, she published Superman, a collection
of short stories, and two poetry collections, The
Stars and Waters of Spring. After these works re-
ceived critical acclaim, Bing Xin traveled to Mass-
achusetts, where she attended Wellesley College
and began to write columns for children that were
collected in Letters to My Little Readers (1926),
which was published in China and was immensely
popular. She received her master’s degree in 1926
and returned to Yanjing to teach literature. In 1929,
she married Wu Wenzao, a sociologist, with whom
she had three children. The family moved at the
onset of the Sino-Japanese War to Kunming in
1937 and then to Chongqing in 1941.
Bing Xin’s short stories are widely known for
their sentimental depictions of motherly love and
family life. Some modernist critics have written
that her work is old-fashioned and too traditional.
Bing Xin 51
Nonetheless, most of her stories, such as “Loneli-
ness” (1922), are well observed and address the
dilemmas of life and love faced by younger Chi-
nese women. In other stories, such as “Our Mis-
tress’ Parlor” (1933), a sarcastic indictment of a
shallow Shanghaiese woman, Bing Xin depicts dif-
ferent types of women.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Bing Xin focused on
writing children’s literature and translating the In-
dian poet Rabindranath TAGORE. Like all artists, she
was sent to Hubei for manual labor reeducation
during the Cultural Revolution but was reinstated
to the party in 1980. She continued to write articles
and stories and to serve the party in a number of
official positions until her death. Although she was
often criticized for being overly traditional, her
acutely observed stories of young womanhood
earned her a reputation as one of China’s foremost
women writers.
Other Works by Bing Xin
“Autobiographical Notes” and selected poems. In
Special Section on Bing Xin, Renditions 16, no. 32
(Fall 1989).
Bingxin Shi Quan Pian = Bing Xin’s Complete Poems.
Hangzhou: Zhejiang Wen Yi Chu Ban She, 1994.
A Work about Bing Xin
Cayley, John. “Birds and Stars: Tagore’s Influence on
Bing Xin’s Early Poetry.” Renditions 16, no. 32 (Fall
1989).
Bitton, Erez (Erez Biton) (1942– ) poet
Erez Bitton was born in Algeria. As a child, playing
in an abandoned orchard, he discovered an old
grenade. The explosion blinded him and cost him
partial use of an arm. Ironically, it was this child-
hood accident that brought him to an institution
for the blind where he received an education not
previously available to him.
Bitton’s poetry often deals with people who are
classified as “other” by a dominant culture, as can
be seen in the poem “Summary of a Conversation.”
As a Mizrahi, a Jew who emigrated to Israel from
other parts of the Middle East, Bitton had first-
hand knowledge of what it meant to be “other.”
While the critical establishment views his work
as an authentic expression of Middle Eastern
Jewry, his poetry defies categorization. He is one of
the first poets to weave Middle Eastern themes that
explore the question of what actually constitutes
an authentic or genuine expression of Middle East-
ern Jewry. Bitton even challenges the very notions
of such categorization. In “Summary of a Conver-
sation,” Bitton asserts that the resolution to the
dilemma faced by those classified as “other” is
found within the self.
Bitton lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, where he edits
Aperion, a literary journal dedicated to Mediter-
ranean and Middle Eastern culture. He also per-
forms dramatic recitals of his work to musical
accompaniment as an expression the condition of
the Mizrahi experience.
A Work about Erez Bitton
Alcalay, Ammiel. Keys to the Garden, New Israeli Writ-
ing. New York: City Light Books, 1996.
Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne (1832–1910)
writer, editor
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was born in Kvikne, Nor-
way, to Peder Bjørnson, a Lutheran minister, and
Elise Nordraak, a daughter of an affluent mer-
chant. Bjørnson was at first educated by his father
and at various country schools. In 1849, to pre-
pare for the university entrance exams, he moved
to Oslo where he was planning to study religion,
following in his father’s footsteps. Bjørnson en-
tered the university in 1852 but soon abandoned
his study for the bustling cultural life of Oslo.
He began his literary career as a theater and lit-
erary critic for several daily newspapers in Oslo. He
later became an editor of the daily Norsk Folkeblad.
In 1857, Bjørnson took over the management of
the Norske Theater in Bergen from Henrik
IBSEN.
He returned to Oslo in 1859 and continued to
work for newspapers. Bjørnson’s liberal editorials,
however, finally led to his resignation. In collabo-
52 Bitton, Erez
ration with Henrik Ibsen, Bjørnson organized the
Norwegian Society for Theater, Music, and Lan-
guage to promote more liberal notions about
drama and theater in general.
Bjørnson began writing fiction in the late
1850s, and published several short stories. His
short stories were often set in an idyllic, rural en-
vironment and idealized the lives of simple peas-
ants. The conflict in the stories is often created
when something new or unexpected disrupts the
existing order. In “The Railway and the Church-
yard”(1858), Knut Aakre, a chairman of the parish
and a member of an old and influential family,
protects the interests of the village. His neighbor,
Lars Hogstad, decides to build a savings bank,
which initially brings prosperity to the village. Lars
soon realizes that a railroad is necessary to preserve
the savings bank. This railroad must go through
the old churchyard, and Knut firmly opposes the
idea. When the railroad is finally built, a disaster
happens: Lars’s house is set on fire by sparks from
the train. Knut is the first one to help his neigh-
bor. The opposition between the old and the new is
the source of tension in the story, but the reader
finally sees the synthesis of the two opposing
points.
Bjørnson also created a number of historical
dramas that were quite popular; however, the po-
litical and social issues introduced in these works,
along with his staunch atheism, produced charges
of high treason. Bjørnson then went abroad,
spending several years in Italy, the United States,
and Finland. He also completed several novels
that centered on social themes such as education,
inheritance, dogmatism, and the state of peas-
antry in Norway. Bjørnson also opposed industri-
alization and joined Emile
ZOLA in protest against
the bigotry involved in the Dreyfus affair in
France.
Despite declining health which left him para-
lyzed on one side, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson contin-
ued working until his death in Paris in 1910. His
work contributed to the formation of modern
drama in Norway; his social and political articles
eventually prompted change and caused an
upheaval in artistic circles; his short stories and
novels promoted understanding of the traditional
Norwegian culture. Bjørnson’s stories and novels
are still popular in Norway and are considered to
be among the classics of Scandinavian literature.
Other Works by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Captain Mansana, and Other Stories. Translated by
Rasmus B. Anderson. North Stratford, N.H.: Ayer
Co. Publishing, 1980.
Heigen, Einar, ed. Land of the Free: Bjørnstjerne Bjørn-
son’s America Letters, 1880–1881. Translated by
Eva Lund Haugen. Northfield, Minn.: Norwegian
American Historical Association, 2001.
The Bridal March, and Other Stories. Translated by
Rasmus B. Anderson. North Stratford, N.H.: Ayer
Co. Publishing, 1969.
Three Plays. New York: Howard Fertig, 1989.
A Work about Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Cohen, Georg. Henrik Ibsen: A Critical Study. With a
42-Page Essay on Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. New York:
Classic Books, 1964.
Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente (1867–1928)
novelist
Born in Valencia, Spain, Blasco Ibáñez first began
writing about life in that Mediterranean seaport.
His is the “regional” novel, and his works depict life
in his “patria chica,” or place of birth. Blasco
Ibáñez writes in the naturalist style: He believes
that our behavior is controlled by instinct,
emotion, and environment and that we have no
free will. His best novel, La barraca (1898), takes
place in the lovely farmlike regions of Valencia. It
presents the animosity held by the half-Moorish
peasants toward a stranger in their land.
Around 1902, after writing several novels situ-
ated in Valencia, Blasco Ibáñez attempted to de-
scribe other areas of Spain, but these works lack
the power of his earlier works. His writing became
more propaganda than literary expression as he at-
tacked the church, the government, and the mili-
tary. He carries the reader across Spain, visiting the
Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente 53
religious capital, Toledo; Bilbao, an industrial city,
and Andalusia in southern Spain, where he de-
scribes the hardships suffered by the peasants. His
novel, Sangre y arena (Blood and Sand, 1906) has
been called the most complete portrayal of bull-
fighting ever presented in fiction. Far from an ide-
alistic account, it is a description of all the blood
and gore of the fight and depicts the spectators as
monsters.
In 1910, in trouble for his unpopular political
opinions and his radical journal, El Pueblo, Blasco
Ibáñez went to South America, where he hoped to
devote a novel to each country. After he wrote Los
argonautas (1914) about Argentina, the outbreak
of World War I caused him to return to Europe. He
fought for the Allies, earning the French Légion
d’Honneur. His later novels deal with the war, for
example, Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis (The
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 1916).
Some critics say Blasco Ibáñez has received
more recognition than he deserves. His popularity
is partly due to his forceful style. His novels are
not delicate. It is the powerful descriptions of his
hometown,Valencia, in his earlier novels that most
attract his readers.
A Work about Blasco Ibáñez
Day, A. Grove, and Edgar C. Knowlton, Jr. Vicente
Blasco Ibáñez. Boston: Twayne, 1972.
Blixen, Baroness Karen Christence
See DINESEN, ISAK.
Böll, Heinrich (1917–1985) novelist, short-
story writer
Heinrich Theodor Böll was born in Cologne to Vic-
tor and Marie Hermanns Böll. His father was a car-
penter, and his mother was from a farming and
brewing family. Böll attended a Catholic elementary
school and later graduated from the Kaiser Wil-
helm-Gymnasium in Cologne. He studied German
and philology for a semester at the University of
Cologne before the German army drafted him in
1939. Böll was wounded four times, fighting in
World War II. He married Annemarie Cech in 1942.
The postwar years were lean for Böll and his
family. He worked in a carpentry shop and as a tem-
porary employee for the city of Cologne. It was not
long, however, before he published several short sto-
ries. One of these works received the prize from the
German authors’ association
GRUPPE
47
. The success
of Böll’s novel on generational reckoning, Billard
um halb zehn (Billiards at Half-Past Nine, 1959),
helped Gruppe 47 become a stronger voice in Ger-
man literature. His novel criticizing the government
and the church, Ansichten eines Clowns, (The Clown,
1965), marked the start of a new German literary
phase in which blunt political reasoning took prece-
dence over formal artistic expression.
Böll’s writing career lasted four decades and
produced a host of popular and critically acclaimed
novels. In a poll taken in the 1970s, West Germans
selected him as the fourth-most-influential person
in their country. He received the Nobel Prize in lit-
erature in 1972, in part for his novel Gruppenbild
mit Dame (Group Portrait with Lady, 1971), about
an “author” researching the war experiences of a
woman whom he gradually comes to love.
Several themes emerge from Böll’s writings. He
portrays war as senseless and absurd, refuting the
notion of heroism. Böll’s opposition of postwar
materialism is another common theme. He often
challenged authority and criticized the abuses of
the Catholic Church. Böll strongly promoted
human rights and was considered by many to be
the conscience of West Germany. In the words of
literary scholar Heinrich Vormweg,“Heinrich Böll
created a literary oeuvre which reflects the true
history of the Federal Republic as no other has
done.”
Other Works by Heinrich Böll
Adam, Where Art Thou? Translated by Mervyn Savill.
New York: Criterion Books, 1955.
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum. Translated by
Leila Vennewitz. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975.
The Train Was on Time. Translated by Richard Graves.
New York: Criterion Books, 1956.
54 Blixen, Baroness Karen Christence
Works about Heinrich Böll
Heinrich Böll, on His Death: Selected Obituaries and
the Last Interview. Bonn: Inter Nationes, 1985.
Schwarz, Wilhelm. Heinrich Böll: Teller of Tales. New
York: Ungar, 1968.
Bonnefoy, Yves (1923– ) poet, critic
Yves Bonnefoy was born in Tours, France, on June
24 to a working-class family. His father was a rail-
road worker, and his mother was a teacher. He re-
ceived his degree in mathematics and philosophy
from the University of Descartes in Tours and then
studied mathematics, history, and philosophy at
both the University of Poitiers and the Sorbonne.
In 1953, Bonnefoy published his first collection,
Of the Movement and the Immobility of Douve
(1953; translated 1968). These poems were chiefly
concerned with human beings’ struggle to estab-
lish a firm connection among themselves and with
the world. Six other collections of poetry followed,
including Ce qui fut sans lumière (What Was With-
out Light, 1987); Début et fin de la neige (Beginning
and End of Snow, 1991); and La vie errante (The
Wandering Life, 1993) about Helen of Troy, the
image of beauty threatened by violence.
In addition to poetry, Bonnefoy has written nu-
merous historical and critical texts, such as The Art
and the Place of Poetry (1989), and is concerned
with the connection between poetry and the vi-
sual arts.
Bonnefoy has taught at several universities,
both in France and abroad, and has been involved
in the translation from English to French of 10
Shakespearean plays as well as an edition of the po-
etry of Yeats. He is also the editor of Mythologies
(1991), a two-volume scholarly work: One volume
explores and reproduces African, American, and
Ancient European myths and the histories of reli-
gious traditions; the second volume explores the
same themes from Greek and Egyptian traditions,
as written by French authors. Bonnefoy has re-
ceived several awards for his poetry, including the
Montaigne prize in 1978 and Grand National Prize
for Poetry in 1993.
Other Works by Yves Bonnefoy
In the Shadow’s Light. Translated by John Naughton.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Naughton, John, and Anthony Rudolf, eds. New and
Selected Poems. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995.
Yesterday’s Wilderness Kingdom. Translated by An-
thony Rudolf. London: MPT Books, 2000.
A Work about Yves Bonnefoy
Naughton, John. The Poetics of Yves Bonnefoy.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Borges, Jorge Luis (1899–1986) poet,
short-story writer, essayist
Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Borges was the
son of Jorge Guillermo Borges and Leonor
Acevedo de Borges. The Borgeses were a promi-
nent Argentinean family descended from Juan de
Garay, the founder of Buenos Aires.
Borges’s father, a lawyer and professor of psy-
chology, had Borges tutored at home until the
age of 10 by a British governess. The family also
had a large library with many works in English,
and Borges read, at a very early age authors such
as Stevenson, Wells, Kipling, and Poe. These writ-
ers influenced him dramatically, tempering his
bookishness with a love of adventure stories and
fantasy. His first publication was a translation
into Spanish of Oscar Wilde’s fairy tale The
Happy Prince, which Borges wrote when he was
nine.
At the beginning of World War I, Borges’s fam-
ily moved to Switzerland, where he attended high
school and became fluent in French, German, and
Latin in addition to English and his native Spanish.
After graduating from high school, Borges traveled
to Spain where he thrust himself into the avant-
garde literary discussions in the cafés and be-
friended a Spanish poet, Cansinos-Assens, a minor
but extremely learned poet. Borges’s experience
during these years sparked his interest in literary
experimentation and solidified his desire to be-
come a writer.
Borges, Jorge Luis 55
Borges returned to Argentina in his mid-20s,
and during the next 20 years, he steadily published
volumes of poetry, essays, and short stories. His
“fictions,” as he called them, exhibit his extraordi-
nary literary originality. At their best, his stories are
a kind of philosophic science fiction. They have a
broad popular appeal and have also received the
highest literary respect. Borges was one of the first
authors in the 20th century to take popular gen-
res, like the science-fiction tale or the hardboiled
detective story, and use them to investigate meta-
physical ideas that were traditionally explored only
in poetry, philosophy, and “serious” prose fiction.
This can be seen in the story from Fictions (1962),
“The Garden of Forking Paths”—a detective story
that is also an intricate exploration of the limits of
language.
Many of Borges’s stories have little or no plot.
They explore instead the different possibilities of
an idea. For example, in “The Library of Babel,”
also from Fictions, the narrator explains to the
reader how the Library in which he lives works.
The Library is infinite and there is no way out. On
the shelves are books filled with random letters.
Most of the books are filled with nonsense. How-
ever, because there is an infinite number of books,
sometimes by chance the letters form words or
even whole books that make sense. In fact, simply
by the laws of mathematics, every possible book in
the world must exist in the Library. The trouble is
trying to find the important books among the mil-
lions of meaningless ones. Borges, who himself
spent many years working as a librarian, thus pres-
ents his audience with a symbolic tale about the
human condition, his message being that if we had
enough time, it would be possible to know every-
thing about the world and ourselves, but time is
exactly what is limited.
Death and the Compass, another tale from Fic-
tions, is the best example of the “other kind” of
Borges short story. It is, in essence, a mystery with
an intricate and perfectly constructed plot. How-
ever, the hero, Lonnrot, is a kind of anti-Sherlock
Holmes, a master of logical deduction. In Borges’s
world, Lonnrot uses this very quality, as he is led
to his doom, to solve his own murder. The story
can be read as a parable concerning the dangers to
the human soul in our highly rational and scien-
tific culture.
In his later life, Borges received many honorary
degrees from such universities as Oxford and
Harvard, where he also taught. He was the first
Latin-American prose writer to become an inter-
nationally recognized literary figure. He has had a
strong influence on many of the greatest Latin
American authors of the 20th century, for example
Gabriel GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ, Carlos FUENTES, and Julio
CORTAZAR, who follow Borges in the art of irony
and prose filled with verbal invention and intel-
lectual game playing, rather than the psychological
and social drama of REALISM.
Other Works by Jorge Luis Borges
Coleman, Alexander, ed. Selected Poems. New York:
Penguin, 2000.
Collected Fictions. Translated by Andrew Hurley. New
York: Penguin, 1999.
Dreamtigers. Translated by Mildred Boyer and
Harold Moreland. Austin: University of Texas
Press, 1985.
Irby, James, and Donald Yeats, eds. Labyrinths: Se-
lected Stories and Other Writings. New York: Nor-
ton, 1988.
Works about Jorge Luis Borges
Barnstone, Willis, ed. Borges at Eighty: Conversa-
tions. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1982.
Bell-Villada, Gene H. Borges and His Fiction. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1999.
Brasch, Charles (1909–1973) poet, critic,
translator
Charles Brasch was born in Otago, New Zealand,
the only son of Jewish parents. His father was an
established businessman, but from an early age
Brasch, to his father’s disappointment, aspired to
be a poet and writer. Unlike some of his peers,
Brasch had little confidence in his innate lyrical
56 Brasch, Charles
gift, and he spent most of his life learning and per-
fecting the technical aspects of writing poetry. He
studied history at Oxford University and worked
in the Foreign Office in London before returning
to New Zealand permanently in 1945.
In 1947 the journal Landfall began publication,
with Brasch as its founding editor. For 20 years,
Brasch nurtured the talent of young New Zealand
writers through his intense editorial scrutiny as
well as through contributions from his personal
wealth. In addition, each issue of the journal con-
tained an editorial essay by Brasch. Landfall is still
an important part of New Zealand literary life.
The poems in his first published collection, The
Land and the People, and Other Poems (1939), be-
tray his preference for accuracy of sense over
rhythm; metrically they are a little awkward.
Brasch’s later poetry finally achieves an impeccable
balance between expression in terms of words and
cadence. This, however, is the result of a lifetime
of hard work.
Brasch’s poems deal prominently with his life
and travels. Nature and its interaction with human
beings constitute an important theme in Brasch’s
poetry. In the title sequence “The Land and the
People,” Brasch recounts the past through the
reenactment in four poems of the first arrival of
people on the islands of New Zealand. The initial
arrival is compared to the “original sin,” a destruc-
tion of nature’s paradise. In another poem, “Letter
from Thurlby Domain,” Brasch sees the ruins of a
house as a payment of a debt by human beings to
the natural environment they had tried to alter.
Four more collections appeared during his life-
time, including The Estate and Other Poems (1957),
whose lengthy title poem was written in memory
of a friend who died in an accident, and Ambu-
lando (1964), in which he began to focus more on
his own experience rather than on philosophical
subjects and the issue of national identity. As he
states in “Cry Mercy”:
Getting older, I grow more personal,
Like more, dislike more
And more intensely than ever . . .
His final collection, Home Ground (1974) was
published after his death, as was an unfinished au-
tobiography, Indirections: A Memoir (1980).
Brasch’s extensive and valuable collection of books
and paintings was bequeathed to the Hocken Li-
brary in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Other Works by Charles Brasch
Roddick, Alan, ed. Collected Poems: Charles Brasch.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
Watson, J. L., ed. The Universal Dance: A Selection
from the Critical Prose Writings of Charles Brasch.
Otago, New Zealand: University of Otago Press,
1991.
Works about Charles Brasch
Bertram, James. Charles Brasch. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1976.
Daalder, Joost. “‘Disputed Ground’ in the Poetry
of Charles Brasch.” Landfall 26 (September
1972).
De Beer, Mary, et al. “Charles Brasch 1909–73: Trib-
utes and Memories from his Friends.” Islands 2
(Spring 1973).
Braschi, Giannina (1954– ) poet, novelist,
professor
Giannina Braschi was born in San Juan, Puerto
Rico, and lived in Madrid, Rome, Paris, and
London before settling in New York in the late
1970s. Braschi earned a Ph.D. from the State
University of New York. In 1994, her selected
works in Spanish were published in English as
Empire of Dreams, a collection that explores gen-
der and linguistic boundaries. Yo-Yo Boing!
(1998), a work written in Spanish and English,
juxtaposes themes of identity, ethnicity, and glob-
alization with artistic innovations. A Publisher’s
Weekly reviewer wrote, “Braschi’s melange of
prose and poetry, English and Spanish, is ad-
mirable for its energy, its experimental format.”
Yo-Yo Boing! was nominated for the Pulitzer
Prize and the American Library Association’s
Notable Book Award.
Braschi, Giannina 57