Includes bibliographical references (p. [199]-225) and index
Introduction: On poetry, life, method, and sundry affairs -- Creative fidelities -- From encounter to tryst: Celan and Shakespeare -- Metaphors of subjectivity: Grünbein and the philosophers -- What's in a name? Brodsky and the English muse
Eskin deals with the complex interface between literature and life through the prism of the lives and works of three poets: the German-Jewish poet and Holocaust survivor, Paul Celan; the Leningrad native, U.S. poet laureate, and Nobel Prize winner, Joseph Brodsky; and Germany's premier contemporary poet, Durs Grünbein. Focussing on their poetic dialogues with such interlocutors as Shakespeare, Seneca, and Byron, respectively, the author offers readings of Celan's, Brodsky's, and Grünbein's lives and works, and discloses the ways in which poetry articulates and remains faithful to the manifold 'truths' determining human existence