Reviews for Life under a stone

The average rating for Life under a stone based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-11-25 00:00:00 Jan Sagett OSSIAN by Chateaubriand (1768-1848) In 1793 To save his head from the guillotine, Chateaubriand fled to London. He was young, and his fame as an author had yet to be acquired. He tried to make a meager living from translations. Ossians Poetry was fashionable, and Chateaubriand was one of its great admirers. In France, this literature was unknown by then, and our young aristocrat was eager to elaborate the first translation into the French language. His gift and education for an exquisite style of the French language had been obvious as from his first attempts at writing. This is what the reader will find in these three poems, Dargo, Duthona, and Gaul. Ossians poems in beautiful French. Forests, lakes, peacefully wandering deer, a hero's loneliness, sadness, tears, Evella his true love is only a shadow now. Warriors, spears and shields, the ocean, tall ships, white sails, dark clouds, tempest, battles, Bards with harp and memories sing of heroic and sad events. These are essentially the admirable issues of poems that remind of "Icelandic Sagas." and also in many ways of Grecian Tragedies. Highly recommended readings for lovers of sad and dreamy poetry.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-03-17 00:00:00 Frederick Conrad I did my master's thesis on James Macpherson, who is the author of the Ossian prose-poems, supposedly the work of an ancient Gaelic bard. Macpherson claimed to have translated them, but that was a hoax. Interestingly, though, the language of the poetry (the principal nouns, verbs, and adjectives) prefigure the language of Romantic poetry by 50 years (the subject of my thesis).