Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
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Steiner, her alcoholism, and her 15-year addiction
to aspirin. Steiner finally encouraged her to enter
a hospital for treatment in 1982, but when Duras
returned home, she began to suffer from halluci-
nations and a fear that her house had been invaded
by strangers. Steiner stayed with her until her
death.
Other Works by Marguerite Duras
No More. Translated by Richard Howard. New York:
Seven Stories Press, 1998.
The North China Lover. Translated by Leigh Hafrey.
New York: The New Press, 1992.
The Ravishing of Lol Stein. Translated by Richard
Seaver. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986.
Writing. Translated by Mark Polizzotti. Cambridge,
Mass.: Brookline Books, 1998.
Works about Marguerite Duras
Adler, Laure. Marguerite Duras: A Life. Translated by
Anne-Marie Glasheen. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2000.
Schuster, Marilyn R. Marguerite Duras Revisited.
Boston: Twayne, 1993.
Dürrenmatt, Friedrich (1921–1990)
dramatist, novelist
Friedrich Dürrenmatt was born in Konolfingen,
Switzerland, to Reinhold and Hulda Zimmermann
Dürrenmatt. His father was the pastor of the
Konolfingen church. Dürrenmatt attended sec-
ondary school in Großhochstetten and spent his
spare time painting, a lifelong interest. After his
family moved to Bern in 1935, he attended Freies
Gymnasium, a Christian secondary school, and
then Humboldtianum, a private school. After
graduating in 1941, he studied philosophy, litera-
ture, and natural sciences at the University of
Zurich and the University of Bern. He served for a
year in the Swiss military during World War II and
married actress Lotti Geißler in 1946.
Dürrenmatt’s first drama, Es steht geschrieben
(It Is Written, 1947) succeeded with critics but not
audiences. He attracted more popular success with
his play Romulus der Große (Romulus the Great,
1949). Dürrenmatt wrote three detective novels
and his first work of essays, Theaterprobleme
(1955), in the 1950s. His most popular plays, Der
Besuch der alten Dame (The Visit, 1956, translated
1958) and Die Physiker (The Physicists, 1962), ex-
amine the themes of power, responsibility, and
guilt. Dürrenmatt later served on the board of di-
rectors of the Zurich Schauspielhaus and contin-
ued writing plays until 1988.
Dürrenmatt adapted the satire of Jonathan
Swift (1667–1745) and the dramatic technique of
Bertolt
BRECHT to his works. He is best known for
comic-grotesque satires that explore religious and
philosophical issues. He was a pessimist who, ac-
cording to biographer Roger Crockett,“did not be-
lieve that humanity had a promising future on this
planet, and he created scenario after scenario to
demonstrate this conclusion.” Dürrenmatt’s nu-
merous awards include the Georg Büchner Prize
and the New York Theater Critics’ Prize. Even after
his death in 1990, The Visit and the The Physicists
were among the most performed plays in Ger-
many.
Other Works by Friedrich Dürrenmatt
The Assignment. Translated by Joel Agee. New York:
Random House, 1988.
The Execution of Justice. Translated by John E.Woods.
New York: Random House, 1989.
A Work about Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Crockett, Roger A. Understanding Friedrich Dürren-
matt. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Car-
olina Press, 1998.
128 Dürrenmatt, Friedrich
129
E
Eco, Umberto (1932– ) novelist, literary
critic
Born in Alessandria, Italy, Umberto Eco is the son
of Giralio Eco, an office worker for an iron-bath-
tub manufacturer, and Giovanna (Bisio) Eco. He
grew up amid World War II, dodging bombs in the
countryside as a young teen but also embracing
American literature and popular music.
Eco received a doctorate of philosophy from the
University of Turin in 1954 at age 22. His thesis on
St. Thomas Aquinas and his later work, The Devel-
opment of Medieval Aesthetics (1959), helped stir
his passion for the medieval world. His research
was invaluable when he wrote his signature work,
the novel The Name of the Rose (1980).
After his 1954 graduation, Eco worked in Milan
preparing cultural programs for RAI, a new state
television network. This exposure to television
gave him insights into the world of mass media, a
subject about which he wrote extensively later in
his career. From 1956 to 1964, Eco held a lecturing
post at the University of Turin and from 1964 to
1965 at the University of Milan.
In the late 1950s, Eco began to contribute to
such Italian daily newspapers and magazines as
L’Espresso, but it was the publication of his first
novel, The Name of the Rose, that won Eco world-
wide critical acclaim. The novel uses semiotics (the
study of signs, codes, and clues) to tell the story of
a murder mystery set in a medieval monastery. Eco
founded a journal on semiotics in 1971 and has
written several books on the subject. In The Name
of the Rose, he employs semiotic techniques such as
using the 10-part Sefirot or Cabbalic system as an
underlying structure. The novel became popular
with a cross-section of readers from lovers of best-
sellers to scholars and set records for world sales
of an Italian book. In 1986, the novel was made
into a major motion picture starring Sean Con-
nery and also received the Strega and Viareggio
Prizes, as well as the Medici Prize in France. Eco
told Contemporary Authors in 1979, “I think that
the duty of a scholar is not only to do scientific re-
search but also to communicate with people
through various media about most important is-
sues of social life from the point of view of his own
discipline.”
Eco is also well known for Foucault’s Pendulum
(1988), a novel set in Milan, Paris, and Brazil. It
tells the story of a search for a plan of the universe
that involves the medieval religious order the
Knights Templar and their plans for world domi-
nation. The story comes to this conclusion: “There
is no map. There is no plan: the secret, he has come
to see, is that there is no secret; the answer is that
there is no answer.”
Umberto Eco is a significant Italian literary fig-
ure. Much more than a best-selling novelist, Eco
has made his name, say scholars Norma Bouchard
and Veronica Pravadelli, as “a theorist of avant-
gardist aesthetics, a scholar of popular culture, a
leading semiotician and philosopher of language,
[and] a highly respected journalist.”
Another Work by Umberto Eco
The Island of the Day Before. Translated by William
Weaver. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1995.
Works about Umberto Eco
Bondanella, Peter. Umberto Eco and the Open Text:
Semiotics, Fiction, Popular Culture. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Bouchard, Norma, and Veronica Pravadelli, eds. Um-
berto Eco’s Alternative. New York: Peter Lang,
1998.
Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigoryevich
(1891–1967) novelist, short-story writer, poet,
travel writer, essayist
Ilya Grigoryevich Ehrenburg was born in Kiev,
Ukraine, into the family of a middle-class Jewish
brewer. Facing rapidly growing anti-Semitism in
Ukraine, the Ehrenburgs moved to Moscow, Rus-
sia, in 1896. Ehrenburg briefly attending the First
Moscow gymnasium (high school) but was ex-
pelled for participating in revolutionary activities.
In 1908, Ehrenburg decided to leave Russia to
avoid a trial for his political activities that could,
despite his youth, have resulted in a lengthy prison
term. Living in Paris, Ehrenburg participated in
the artistic circles of French society.
Ehrenburg started his prolific career with a
publication of a poetry collection in 1910. During
World War I, he briefly served as a war correspon-
dent. Between 1921 and 1924, he lived in Germany
and Belgium. His first novel, The Extraordinary
Adventures of Julia Jurenito and His Disciples (1921)
was a political satire that ridiculed both the capi-
talist and Communist political systems. In 1928,
Ehrenburg published The Stormy Life and Lazar
Roitschwantz, a novel that depicts wanderings
through Europe of a Jewish tailor who barely es-
capes the anti-Semitism of Russia. Both novels
combined sensitivity for the nuances of the plot
with biting social commentary.
From 1925 to 1945, Ehrenburg lived in Paris,
working for Soviet newspapers and returning to
Russia on occasion. In the 1930s, his writings be-
came markedly less radical as he accepted the offi-
cial doctrines of the Communist Party. In Out of
Chaos (1934), for instance, he ardently defends the
aesthetic goals of SOCIALIST REALISM. In his novel
The Fall of Paris (1941), he criticizes the capitalist
system of France and delineates the social degener-
ation of French society.
Ehrenburg was honored on several occasions
in the Soviet Union. In 1942 and 1948, he was
awarded the Stalin Prize and, in 1952, the Interna-
tional Lenin Peace Prize. He also served as a deputy
of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR from 1950 and
as a vice president of the World Peace Council
until his death in 1967. Ehrenburg spent his last
days campaigning to publish the works of writers
who were suppressed under Stalin’s regime. Ehren-
burg’s fiction, although deeply politicized, reveals a
high level of narrative control and a deep under-
standing of human nature. Despite his positions in
the Soviet regime, Ehrenburg was highly respected
by Western intellectuals and artists.
A Work about Ilya Ehrenburg
Goldberg, Anatol. Ilya Ehrenburg, Revolutionary, Nov-
elist, Poet, War Correspondent, Propagandist: The
Extraordinary Epic of a Russian Survivor. New
York: Viking Press, 1984.
Eich, Günter (Erich Günter) (1907–1972)
dramatist, poet
Günter Eich was born in Lebus an der Oder to
Otto and Helen Heine Eich. Otto, an accountant,
moved the family to Berlin in 1918. Eich finished
his secondary education in Leipzig in 1925. He
studied Chinese, law, and economics at universi-
130 Ehrenburg, Ilya Grigoryevich
ties in Leipzig, Berlin, and Paris. Eich published
his first poems in an anthology in 1927 and his
first volume of poems in 1930. In the 1930s, he
worked as a freelance writer and was a pioneer in
the writing of German radio plays. In 1940, he
married Else Anna Burk, a singer who died a few
years later. Eich served in the German air force
during World War II. The Americans captured
him in 1945 and released him the following year.
Starting in 1947, Eich regularly attended the an-
nual meetings of the German literary association,
GRUPPE
47
. He married the poet Ilse AICHINGER in
1953.
While in a POW camp, Eich wrote “Inventur,” a
poem that is considered the epitome of the
Kahlschlag (Clean Sweep) movement. Popular in
the 1950s, Kahlschlag symbolized the break with
past ideologies. German writers embracing this
movement sought to address material facts, such as
hunger and disease, while cutting corrupt ideals,
ideas, and language out of their writing.
Eich’s lyric poetry was inspired by Chinese
poets such as Li Bai. Favoring the audible over the
visual, he attained his greatest notoriety for his
radio plays. Eich’s best-known play is Träume
(Dreams, 1953). It contains some of his best po-
etry and addresses his favorite themes: dreams,
death, and the divide between reality and unreal-
ity. According to the literary scholar Egbert
Krispyn, Eich displayed an “uncompromising cre-
ative honesty” in his work, which won several
awards, including the Munich Grant Prize for Lit-
erature and the Friedrich Schiller Memorial Prize
of Mannheim.
Another Work by Günter Eich
Pigeons and Moles: Selected Writings of Günter Eich.
Translated by Michael Hamburger. Columbia,
S.C.: Camden House, 1990.
Works about Günter Eich
Cuomo, Glenn R. Career at the Cost of Compromise:
Günter Eich’s Life and Work in the Years 1933–1945.
Atlanta: Rodopi, 1989.
Krispyn, Egbert. Günter Eich. Boston: Twayne, 1971.
El Saadawi, Nawal
See SADAWI, NAWAL.
Éluard, Paul (Eugène-Emile-Paul Grindel)
(1895–1952) poet
Paul Éluard was born Paul Grindel in Saint-Denis
on the outskirts of Paris. When he was 18, he was
confined to a sanatorium in Switzerland to recover
from a bout of tuberculosis. During this time, he
discovered his love for poetry and published his
first collection of poems.
Éluard was deeply affected by the tragedy of
World War I. He became a pacifist militant and
wrote Poèmes pour la paix (1918), which details
both the need for conflict and the desire to tem-
per it with peace. He also met Tristan TZARA,
André BRETON, and Louis ARAGON, who encour-
aged him in 1920 to become an active participant
in the DADA movement. He later joined the sur-
realists, becoming one of its major influences.
But, simultaneously, he remained true to his own
visions of literary integrity, questioning the va-
lidity of certain ideas such as automatic writing,
a belief that the spiritual realm could convey it-
self through the writing implement, without the
judgment of the writer.
Alongside his opposition to violence and war,
Éluard’s personal life, in particular his marriage to
Maria Benz, became one of the focal points of his
writing. She was the inspiration for the passionate
celebration of love in his collections Capitale de la
douleur (1926), L’Amour, la poésie (1929), and La
Vérité immédiate (1932). These works are notable
in that they mark a departure from his focus on
passive militarism.
Éluard was barred from the Communist Party
as a result of a conflict with Aragon. He joined the
Resistance, continuing his creative work with col-
lections such as La victoire de Guernica (1938) and
Poésie et vérité (1942). The latter collection con-
tains his most often studied poem “Liberté.”
Shortly after the liberation and the traumatic
death of his wife in 1946, Éluard began to focus
his writing on the hope that one day humanity
Éluard, Paul 131
would leave behind its murderous tendencies. He
became an impassioned humanist, as evidenced in
his works. He died in Charenton-le-Pont.
Other Works by Paul Éluard
Last Love Poems of Paul Éluard. Translated by Marilyn
Kallet. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1980.
Selected Poems. Translated by Gilbert Bowen. New
York: River Run Press, 1987.
A Work about Paul Éluard
Nugent, Robert. Paul Éluard. Boston: Twayne Pub-
lishers, 1974.
Elytis, Odysseus (Odysseus Alepoudelis)
(1911–1996) poet
Odysseus Elytis was born in Iraklion on the island
of Crete. The son of a wealthy manufacturer, he
shunned the privileged life and devoted himself
entirely to seeking truth in his works.
Elytis’s first poetry dates back to 1929 and cele-
brates his childhood visits to the Aegean Sea. He
established his reputation as a poet in the 1930s, a
decade haunted by the threat of war, by focusing
on the intrinsic beauty of humanity and nature.
In Orientations (1940), Elytis’s first and largest col-
lection, he combines elements of the surrealist
movement with free association and pagan nature
worship. During World War II, Elytis served on the
front lines in Albania, fighting against Italian and
German forces. This struggle particularly affected
him, as did the subsequent horrors of the Nazi oc-
cupation of Greece. It was the barbaric nature of
war that led him to continue writing poetry that
glorified the beauty of his homeland and sought to
maintain its integrity against the threat of human
destruction. His long poem Heroic and Elegaic
Song of the Lost Second Lieutenant of Albania
(1945) gave voice to Elytis’s experiences and feel-
ings. The novel celebrates life and the invisible
forces that bind humankind to the natural world
while, simultaneously, confronting the very basic
conflict of good versus evil.
Elytis is most remembered, however, for Axion
Esti (1959), a three-part celebration of Greek folk-
lore and history. Translated as Worth It Be, this epic
poem draws on elements of the Byzantine mass in
conjunction with the history of Greece and the
biblical creation story. It was later set to music by
Theodorakis, who also composed the film score for
Zorba the Greek. Theodorakis described the poem
as a “Bible for the Greek people,” which, in a sense,
it was, as it later became an anthem for Greek
youth.
Elytis spent much of his life in seclusion, focus-
ing only on his poetry. He considered himself to be
neither a patriotic poet nor a nature poet. He felt
that his duty as a poet was to transform the im-
ages offered him by nature to a level where they
could exist as reminders to all humanity of the
possibility of perfection and beauty in this world.
In 1979, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in litera-
ture and became a cultural ambassador for the
Greek people. He began to travel to give lectures;
however, three years later, he confessed to being so
busy traveling that he had no time to write. Re-
turning to semiseclusion, he resumed writing,
publishing his final collection West of Sorrow
(1995).
Elytis was so important to the Greek people that
radio and television programs were interrupted to
announce his death in 1996. Elytis’s own definition
of death perhaps explains his significance as a
writer: “Death is where words no longer have the
power to generate, right from the start, the things
that they name.” For Elytis, poetry was not simply
an art; it was also a social responsibility.
Other Works by Odysseus Elytis
The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis. Translated by
Jeffrey Carson and Nikos Sarris. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Odysseus Elytis: Analogies of Light. Edited by Ivar
Ivask. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press,
1981.
What I Love: Selected Poems of Odysseas Elytis. Trans-
lated by Olga Broumas. Port Townsend, Wash.:
Copper Canyon Press, 1986.
132 Elytis, Odysseus
Emecheta, Buchi (1944– ) novelist
Buchi Emecheta was born of Ibuza parents in
Nigeria. Orphaned at an early age, she spent her
childhood in a missionary school. In 1960, at age
16, she married Sylvester Onwordi, to whom she
had been engaged since she was 11. In 1962, the
couple moved to London; the marriage lasted six
years and produced five children.
Many of Emecheta’s earliest novels draw on her
experiences in Africa and England. Emecheta’s
early writing style is based on oral tradition. She
speaks from her own experiences and vividly de-
scribes the people and places encountered by her
characters on their journey to self-awareness. Her
first novel, In the Ditch (1972), tells the story of her
life as a struggling immigrant and single mother in
London through the character of Adah, a young
woman who leaves her husband to find out who
she is. In a strange land, she is seen as an outsider.
With children in tow, Adah negotiates the welfare
system, the job market, and what it means to be
deemed a social “problem.”
In Emecheta’s second novel, Second Class Cit-
izen (1974), she continues to chronicle Adah’s
life, but this time she steps back to see how she
arrived in “the ditch.” This story concentrates on
the inequalities within her culture that manifest
themselves as discrimination against women.
Adah encounters strict tribal customs that deny
education to women. As she bends under the
workload of supporting her family and caring
for her children, she witnesses the privileges of
her student husband. “Second Class Citizen” re-
veals how gender roles are maintained through
culture.
Emecheta’s autobiography, Head Above Water
(1986), tells of her struggle to confront the poor
social conditions of blacks in London while simul-
taneously emerging as a writer.
Emecheta has come under fire from some crit-
ics for her refusal to support the pastoral ideas of
Africa and Europe. Her raw views often expose the
dark side of tribal relations, colonialism, and
male/female relations.
She was raised at a time in Nigeria when tradi-
tional structures were being challenged by a society
that was shifting from rural to urban living. It was
also a time when immigration to colonial centers,
such as London, presented another test of main-
taining or adapting one’s identity. Emecheta’s nov-
els reflect both the chaos and the opportunities of
this unrest and uprooting. Emecheta does not
write about an idyllic Africa of the past but instead
about contemporary Africa with painstaking accu-
racy.
She centers the majority of her stories on gen-
der relations and the conflicts between modernity
and tradition. These topics often serve as
metaphors for the relationship between Africa and
the Diaspora (the scattering of people of African
descent through slavery) and for the relationship
between colonizer and the colonized; for example,
in The Family (1989), she chronicles the life of an
impoverished Jamaican girl who negotiates famil-
ial abuse, which is one of slavery’s legacies.
Emecheta’s brave approach to writing about the
unspoken has set her apart from other African
writers. She has won several literary prizes includ-
ing her selection in 1983 as one of the Best Young
British Writers Award. Emecheta is a strong post-
colonial writer who witnesses with a feminist lens;
as a result, she has diversified traditional Western
feminism by adding a voice that speaks to the spe-
cific issues of women from developing countries.
Other Works by Buchi Emecheta
The Bride Price. New York: George Braziller, 1980.
In the Ditch. Westport, Conn.: Heinemann, 1994.
The Joys of Motherhood. New York: George Braziller,
1980.
The New Tribe. Westport, Conn.: Heinemann, 2001.
Second Class Citizen. New York: George Braziller,
1983.
The Slave Girl. New York: George Braziller, 1980.
Works about Buchi Emecheta
Fishburn, Katherine. Reading Buchi Emecheta: Cross-
Cultural Conversations. Westport, Conn.: Green-
wood Publishing Group, 1995.
Emecheta, Buchi 133
Uraizee, Joya F. This Is No Place for a Woman: Nadine
Gordimer, Nayantara Sahgal, Buchi Emecheta, and
the Politics of Gender. Lawrenceville, N.J.: Africa
World Press, 2000.
Enchi Fumiko (Fumi Ueda) (1905–1986)
playwright, novelist
Enchi Fumiko was born in Tokyo to Ueda Kazutoshi
and Tsuruko. Kazutoshi was a well-known linguis-
tics professor who helped put together a major
Japanese-language dictionary in 1902. As a young
child, Enchi was reclusive and sickly, spending more
time in her father’s extensive library than at play
with other children. Enchi attended Japan Women’s
University but did not earn a degree. In 1930, she
married the journalist Enchi Yoshimatsu and had a
child, Motoko, two years later. In 1935, she joined a
group of novelists known as Nichireki to learn more
about writing. In the 1930s and 1940s, she suffered
from breast cancer, uterine cancer, and tuberculosis.
At the end of World War II, Enchi’s home in Tokyo
was destroyed during an air raid.
When Enchi was at university, she developed
plays for a Tokyo theater founded by a leader in the
modern drama-theater (shingeki) movement,
Kaoru Osanai (1881–1928). However, by the mid-
1930s, she could not find publishers for her plays,
so she switched to writing novels. At first, the lit-
erary world was receptive to her work; however, for
most of the 1940s, she had difficulty finding pub-
lishers. Her first major success was The Starving
Years (1953), about a woman trapped in marriage
to a womanizing, chauvinistic man. The novel,
however, that won her international acclaim was
Masks (1958), based on the story of Lady Rokujo¯
from The Tale of Genji.
Enchi is known for combining elements from
classical Japanese works from the Heian
(794–1185) and Edo (1600–1867) periods into
modern settings. Many of her stories center on
women navigating patriarchal Japan. She has won
numerous literary awards, including the Tanizaki
Prize in 1969, the Japanese Literature Grand Prize
in 1972, and the Order of Culture in 1985.
Other Works by Enchi Fumiko
A Tale of False Fortunes. Translated by Roger K.
Thomas. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
2000.
The Waiting Years. Translated by John Bester. Tokyo:
Kodansha International, 1971.
A Work about Enchi Fumiko
Vernon, Victoria V. Daughters of the Moon: Wish,
Will and Social Constraint in Fiction by Modern
Japanese Women. Berkeley: Institute of East
Asian Studies, University of California Press,
1988.
Enzensberger, Hans Magnus (1929– )
poet, novelist, essayist
Hans Magnus Enzensberger was born in Kauf-
beuren, Germany, to middle-class parents and
grew up in Nuremberg. As a teenager during
World War II, Enzensberger served in the
Volksstürm (Home Guard). After the war, he
worked as an interpreter for the occupying British
and American armies, tended bar, and traded on
the black market. Enzensberger studied philoso-
phy, literature, and languages at several universi-
ties, including the Sorbonne in Paris. After
completing his dissertation, he spent two years in
radio work and traveled extensively.
Enzensberger’s first book of poetry, Verteidi-
gung der Wölfe (Defense of the Wolves, 1957),
sharply criticized West Germany’s government and
culture, establishing his reputation as one of Ger-
many’s most controversial poets. His important in-
fluences include Bertolt
BRECHT. He was a member
of the literary association GRUPPE
47
and won the
Georg Büchner Prize in 1963. In 1965, Enzens-
berger founded Kursbuch (Coursebook), a progres-
sive magazine that provided a forum for political
and literary debates. He used his essays, poems,
and novels to voice his social criticisms and to call
for revolutionary change. Literary scholar Peter
Demetz describes Enzensberger, in Postwar Ger-
man Literature (1970), as “a highly gifted intellec-
tual” who “wants his reader to think.”
134 Enchi Fumiko
Other Works by Hans Magnus
Enzensberger
Politics and Crime. New York: Seabury Press, 1974.
The Sinking of the Titanic: A Poem. Translated by the
author. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1980.
A Work about Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Fischer, Gerhard, ed. Debating Enzensberger: Great
Migration and Civil War. Tübingen, Germany:
Stauffenburg, 1996.
Esenin, Sergey
See YESENIN, SERGEY.
Espinet, Ramabai (1948– ) poet,
researcher, professor, activist, social
commentator
Born in Trinidad, Ramabai Espinet grew up in a
largely creolized, Christian-Indian community in
San Fernando. She started reading the works of the
English romantics, along with those of Alfred,
Lord Tennyson and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
at an early age. By her late teens, when she moved
to Toronto, Espinet had read most of William But-
ler Yeats’s and Derek WA LC OT T ’s works. These poets,
as well as the calypso music from her childhood,
have significantly influenced her writing.
Poets Barbara Jones and Gabriela
MISTRAL,who
both wrote about women’s issues, shaped Espinet’s
perception of women’s poetics, and Espinet subse-
quently became active in the women’s movement in
the Caribbean and Canada. In 1990, she published
Creation Fire, a Caribbean poetry anthology con-
taining a wide range of female Caribbean poets’
works in English, French, Dutch, and Spanish.
Themes of identity, gender, and spirituality run
through Espinet’s own imagistic poetry, which has
been published in CAFRA News, Trinidad and To-
bago Review, Woman Speak, Fireweed, and Toronto
South Asian Review. Nuclear Seasons, published in
1991, contains her collected poems. In an inter-
view with Kwame Dawes in Talk Yuh Talk: Inter-
views with Anglophone Caribbean Poets, (2001)
Espinet said,“In Nuclear Seasons the narrative line,
for the most part, comes second to the metaphor.
But I find myself writing a series of poems more
directly now.”
Apart from poetry, Espinet has published chil-
dren’s fiction: The Princess of Spadina: a Tale of
Toronto (1992) and Ninja’s Carnival (1993). Her es-
says and short fiction have appeared in journals and
anthologies. The Swinging Bridge (2003), Espinet’s
first novel, examines an Indo-Caribbean woman’s
experiences in Trinidad and Canada.
After dividing her time between Canada and
the Caribbean since the 1970s, Espinet now lives
in Toronto, where she teaches English and
Caribbean studies. She weaves one of her unique
projects, “the invention or the renewal of lost
myths, especially Caribbean feminist myth,”
through her varied but connected academic, liter-
ary, and activist pursuits.
Other Works by Ramabai Espinet
“Indian Cuisine.” The Massachusetts Review 35, no.
3–4 (Fall 1994): 563.
“The Invisible Woman in West Indian Fiction.” World
Literature Written in English. 29, no. 2 (Autumn
1989): 116–26.
Works about Ramabai Espinet
Birbalsingh, Frank. Indo-Caribbean Resistance.
Toronto: TSAR, 1993.
Mehta, Brinda J. “Indo-Trinidadian Fiction: Female
Identity and Creative Cooking.” Alif: A Journal of
Comparative Poetics 19 (1999): 151–84.
Puri, Shalini. “Race, Rape, and Representation: Indo-
Caribbean Women and Cultural Nationalism.”
Cultural Critique (Spring 1997): 119–63.
Espronceda y Delgado, José de (José
Ignacio Javier Oriol Encarnación de
Espronceda)
(1808–1842) poet
Born in western Spain, Espronceda was the son of
a soldier. He had three brothers, all of whom died
shortly after birth. During the first several years of
his life, Espronceda and his family were constantly
Espronceda y Delgado, José de 135
on the move due to the Napoleonic Wars. Espron-
ceda witnessed many of the atrocities of war; his
poems are moving, painful, bitter, and tender, re-
flecting his life experience.
At age 15, Espronceda formed and became pres-
ident of Los Numantinos, a secret patriotic organi-
zation. Shortly thereafter, he was arrested and
sentenced to prison. The intervention of his father,
then a colonel, resulted in his release just weeks later.
In 1826, he traveled to the Portuguese capital
of Lisbon, then a center for Spanish liberals.
Espronceda tried to enlist in the National Guard
but was exiled instead because one of his
published poems proved to be too liberal.
During this exile, he wrote his only novel, Sancho
Saldaña o el castellano de Cuéllar (Sancho Saldaña
or the Spaniard of Cuéllar, 1834). He returned to
Madrid, where he founded several liberal/demo-
cratic newspapers and wrote one of the most pop-
ular Spanish poems of all time,“The Pirate’s Song”
(1835), which celebrates its antisocial narrator’s
love of liberty. Other poems of the 1930s that raise
questions of social justice include “Under Sentence
of Death,”“The Executioner,” and “The Beggar.” In
1840, he published “To Jarifa in an Orgy,” a sympa-
thetic address to a prostitute by a disillusioned ide-
alist. After traveling as a delegate to the Spanish
embassy, Espronceda took ill and died at age 34.
His two major works were written in his last
two years. The Student from Salamanca is a narra-
tive poem about a Don Juan-like character. The
Godforsaken World, which includes the celebrated
“Canto a Teresa,” addressed to Teresa Mancha, Es-
pronceda’s mistress of 10 years, remained unfin-
ished at his death. José de Espronceda’s poetry is
the epitome of Spanish
ROMANTICISM. It is lyrical,
patriotic, and youthful. It portrays doubt, sorrow,
pleasure, death, pessimism, and disillusion.
Another Work by José de Espronceda y
Delgado
The Student of Salamanca/El estudiante de Salamanca.
Translated by C. K. Davies, with introduction and
notes by Richard A. Cardwell. Warminster, U.K.:
Aris & Phillips, 1998.
Works about José de Espronceda y Delgado
Ilie, Paul.“Espronceda and the Romantic Grotesque.”
Studies in Romanticism II (1972): 94–112.
Landeira, Ricardo. José de Espronceda. Boulder: Uni-
versity of Colorado, 1984.
Pallady, Stephen. Irony in the Poetry of José de Es-
pronceda. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press,
1991.
existentialism
Existentialism is a philosophical, artistic, and liter-
ary movement that emphasizes individual exis-
tence and freedom of choice. Although difficult to
define precisely because it encompassed a wide
array of diverse elements, certain themes are con-
sistent in works by writers associated with the
movement, most particularly the theme of indi-
vidual existence. Although existentialism is linked
explicitly to the 19th and 20th centuries, elements
of existentialism can also be found in Socrates’
works and in the Bible.
The literary form of the novel became one of
the most prominent modes of expression for the
movement in the 19th century. Russian novelist
Fyodor Dostoyevsky was considered the most
prominent existentialist literary figure as exempli-
fied in his novel, Notes from the Underground
(1864), which focuses on the alienated antihero
who must fight against the optimism inherent in
rationalist humanism. Logic is eventually shown to
be self-destructive. Only Christian love, which
cannot be understood through reason and logic,
can save humanity. This and other existentialist
works found a base in strong Christian theology, as
can be seen in the works of German Protestant
theologians Paul Tillich and Rudolf Karl Bult-
mann, French Roman Catholic theologian Gabriel
Marcel, the Russian Orthodox philosopher Niko-
lay Aleksandrovich Berdyayev, and the German
Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (existential the-
ists). However, the movement itself encompassed
equally strong proponents of atheism, agnosti-
cism, and paganism (existential atheists), all shar-
ing the common theme of individual choice.
136 existentialism
Examined historically, existentialism was first
anticipated by the 17th-century French philoso-
pher Blaise Pascal, who rejected the rigorous ra-
tionalism of his contemporary René Descartes.
Pascal contends, in his Pensées (1670), that any at-
tempt to explain systematically and rationally con-
cepts as broad as God and humanity must be
rooted in arrogance. Like the existentialists, he
viewed human existence as a series of paradoxes,
the ultimate of which was the human self, a com-
bination of mind and body that inherently con-
tradicts itself.
The 19th-century Danish philosopher, Søren
Kierkegaard, was the first writer to refer to himself
actually as an existentialist. Regarded as the
founder of modern existentialism, he insisted in
his works that the highest good for the individual
is to find his or her own true path in life. Writing in
response to and in negation of G. W. F. Hegel, who
claimed to have discovered a way to understand
and explain humanity and history rationally and
absolutely, Kierkegaard focused on the ambiguity
and absurdity of life. He also stressed the impor-
tance of committing completely to the choices that
are made, often forsaking established societal
norms, in the ultimate quest for personal validity.
He advocated faith and the Christian way of life as
the only means of avoiding despair. Kierkegaard
also examined the concept of fear or dread as cru-
cial to greater understanding.
Other existentialist writers and artists went on
to echo Kierkegaard’s ideas, focusing on the
belief that the individual must be allowed to pursue
his or her own path, free from the constraints of
imposed moral standards. Existentialists argue that
there is no objective or rational basis for moral de-
cisions. The German existential philosopher
Friedrich NIETZSCHE, for example, theorized that
individual choice has a basis in subjectivity
and that it is the individual’s responsibility to
choose the actions that constitute a moral
decision. Nietzsche criticized traditional moral
assumptions, citing free will as existing in direct op-
position to moral conformity. Unlike Kierkegaard,
whose ideas led to radically individualistic Chris-
tianity, Nietzsche rejected Judeo-Christian ideals,
proclaiming the “death of God” and espousing the
pagan ideal.
French existentialism grew and flourished inde-
pendently from German existentialism. Jean Wahl
(1888–1974) is considered to be the founder of the
French existentialist movement, which was later
expanded and brought to greater attention under
Jean Paul SARTRE. Sartre adopted the term existen-
tialism for his own philosophy and became the
leader of the movement in France. It was through
his works that, after World War II, existentialism
began to gain recognition and followers on an in-
ternational scale. Sartre’s philosophy is atheistic
and decidedly pessimistic. He asserts that, al-
though human beings desire a rational basis for
their existence, no such foundation exists. There-
fore, human life seems contingent and futile. His
negativity notwithstanding, he also insisted that
existentialism is tied directly to humanism with its
emphasis on freedom, choice, and responsibility.
Other French writers were profoundly influenced
by Sartre and Nietzsche. The works of André
MAL-
RAUX
and Albert CAMUS are generally associated
with existentialist ideas because of their focus on
the absurdity of life and the apparent indifference
of the universe to human suffering. The French
THEATRE OF THE ABSURD also reflects existentialist
ideals, as seen in the plays of Samuel
BECKETT and
Eugène IONESCO.
Works about Existentialism
Giles, James, ed. French Existentialism: Consciousness,
Ethics and Relations with Others. Atlanta, Ga.:
Rodopi, 1999.
Gordon, Haim, ed. The Dictionary of Existentialism.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999.
Guignon, Charles, and Derk Pereboom, eds. Existen-
tialism: Basic Writings. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett
Publishing Company, 2001.
MacDonald, Paul S., ed. The Existentialist Reader: An
Anthology of Key Texts. New York: Routledge,
2001.
existentialism 137