Exile To Paradise

This is the strange story of how, following the failure of the revolutionary Paris Commune in 1871, some 4,500 Communards were exiled to the South Pacific colony of New Caledonia. The surprising parallels and interactions between the "political savages" and the "natural savages," the Melanesian Kanak, in their confrontation with the forces of French civilization, form the subject of this book.

A brilliant look at the writers, artists, scientists, movie directors, and scholars—ranging from Bertolt Brecht to Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt, Thomas Mann, and Fritz Lang—who fled Hitler's Germany and how they changed the very fabric of American culture. In a new postscript, Heilbut draws attention to the recent changes in reputation and image that have shaped the reception of the German exiles. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1983 with a paperback in 1997.

From the moment Adam and Eve were expelled from Paradise, exile has been a part of the human experience. The circumstances in which individuals or entire peoples are compelled to leave their homeland are as various as they are numerous, and in this book John Simpson has brought together examples of exile from all over the world, and from all periods of history. The emphasis is on personal experience, with writers from Ovid to Solzhenitsyn describing their exile, their emotions, their struggle and their despair. For those who have chosen a life in exile, the response is more mixed: ambivalence about the country they have left and the country they have chosen suffuses the writing of intellectuals seeking freedom of speech, as of ex-pats living in India or Australia. Those persecuted for their faith or their politics rub shoulders with those fleeing from war, or from debt, or even from the weather. Castaways and spies, premiers and princes describe their departure, their reception and sometimes their return, in an anthology that is by turns inspiring, moving, and deeply thought-provoking. With sources ranging from police records, newspaper articles, interviews, letters and memoirs, as well as verse and fiction, and settings as remote as Iran and Russia, China and Palestine, The Oxford Book of Exile provides a fascinating insight into an experience that touches so many, and captures the imagination of us all.

This chronicle of exile is filled not with proclamations or denunciations, but instead with voices of nostalgic reflection, of evocations and secret wishes, visions of return and the anticipation of a fate discerned in the noise of battle as well as in the joy of solidarity.

This lively and intellectually vigorous conspectus of studies approaches the subject of exile from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. The contributions to this volume give due attention to the twentieth century migratory phenomena, theorised by Edward Said, Julia Kristeva and Salman Rushdie. They also show that the discourse and experience of exile is not the stuff of modernity alone. The volume illustrates that the waning of the Middle Ages, Reformation and Restoration politics, and the importation of Egyptian mummies into a nineteenth-century England hungry for imperial exotica reveal displacement, dislocation, otherness and the uncanniness of observing strangers-on-display to have long been part of European cultural currency. The essays range across a variety of disciplines: literary studies, modern languages, history of science, philosophy and museum studies.

This full and definitive treatment of the whole body of Milton's poetry, written by one of the country's most eminent Milton scholars, was originally published under the title Poet of Exile: A Study of Milton's Poetry. With a new title and an introduction developing the theme of exile, it is now issued in paperback for the first time. "The most important single study of Milton that has appeared in years.... For a long time to come, it will be the book from which Milton's oeuvre is reviewed and from which Milton criticism seeks renewal." -Joseph Wittreich, Modern Language Quarterly "Martz's pleasure in reading Milton is evident and he conveys that pleasure in his pages.... All of us will want to ponder and can expect to profit from a commentary on the text carried on with the educated understanding, tact, skill, and perceptiveness that are everywhere present in this book." -B. Rajan, Modern Philology "A work that is both rich and rewarding.... The background that Martz brings to his subject illuminates Milton's poetry in fresh and exciting ways." -Michael Lieb, Cithara "The strength of Martz's criticism arises from his style as well as his learning and good sense. Observations are made in a manner which both clears the mind and arouses the imagination. Commonplace facts, acknowledged but ignored, suddenly take on fresh significance, while the results of scholarly research are introduced with easy grace and relevance. No one writing of Milton today has a sharper eye for the illuminating detail." -Hugh Maccallum, University of Toronto Quarterly "Martz's sensitive, percipient comments on the interplay of styles in Milton's poems provide some overarching unity to these diverse essays." -Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Journal of English and Germanic Philology "The best major study of Milton's whole poetic career in almost half a century." -Arnold Stein

The history of American universities is punctuated by shifts in the terms on which the mission of higher education is defined and debated. A dramatic moment with lasting effects came with the introduction of German-speaking exile intellectuals in the Hitler era. In Germany, the academic culture of the early twentieth century was torn by the struggle between Wissenschaft and Bildung, two symbolic German terms, whose lack of precise English equivalents is a sign of the different configuration in America. The studies in this book examine the achievements of numerous influential émigré intellectuals against the background of their mediation between the two cultural traditions in science and liberal studies. In showing the richness of reciprocal influences, the book challenges claims about the disruptive influence of exile culture on the American mind.