The moment of existence

In this rich volume of cultural commentary, Robert Craft's flashing intellect illuminates, communicates, and assesses the thought and genius of half a decade of ferment in the arts. Whether expressing his own precepts or offering his take on the cultural contributions of others, Craft is at his best in these thirty-two essays and reviews that bring to his reader glimpses, insights, first-hand historical contexts, critiques, and studied appreciations from the worlds of painting, music, dance, and literature. Craft's apparently universal scope provides him with comfortable command, whether the subject is W. H. Auden's and T. S. Eliot's politics, body language in Renaissance painting, the little known (to American audiences) Danish writer Jens Peter Jacobsen and Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard, Martha Graham's boudoir, or authoritative considerations of the music of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. These critiques constitute the kind of reading that challenges and informs while it moves to laughter and to the deepest emotions. Rounding off this banquet is a small dessert in the form of an interview with Craft, drawing from him his contrast of our own fin de siecle with that of the last century.