Artful

Начало книги

This book began life as four lectures given for the Weidenfeld Visiting Professorship in European Comparative Literature at St. Anne’s College, Oxford, in January and February 2012. The lectures are published here pretty much as they were delivered.

I owe a great debt of thanks to everyone at St. Anne’s for making this book happen at all, and for looking after me there with such care, cleverness, and grace. Huge thanks for their kindness to Tim Gardam, Sally Shuttleworth, Matthew Reynolds, and Lord Weidenfeld.

‘The wind doth blow today, my love,

And a few small drops of rain;

I never had but one true-love,

In cold grave she was lain.

‘I’ll do as much for my true-love

As any young man may;

I’ll sit and mourn all at her grave

For a twelvemonth and a day.’

The twelvemonth and a day being up, I was still at a loss. If anything I was more at a loss.

So I went and stood in our study and looked at your desk, where the unfinished stuff, what you’d been working on last, was still neatly piled. I looked at your books, I took one of your books off a shelf at random—my study, my desk, my books, now.

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