Publisher's Synopsis
In his fascinating last book, Edward Said looks at a selection of essays, poems, novels, films, and operas to determine what late style may explain about the evolution of the creative life. He discusses how the approaching death of an artist can make its way “with anachronism and anomaly” into his work, as was the case in the late work of Thomas Mann, Richard Strauss, Jean Genet, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and C. P. Cavafy. Said examines Beethoven’sMissa Solemnis,Genet’sLe captif amoureuxandLes paravents,Mozart’sCosÌ fan tutte,Visconti’s film of Lampedusa’sThe Leopard,Euripides’The BacchaeandIphigenia at Aulis,and Thomas Mann’sDeath in Venice,among other works.
He points out that one can also find an “unearthly serenity,” in last works, for example, in Sophocles, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Matisse, Bach, and Wagner, which, as Said puts it, “crown a lifetime of aesthetic endeavor.” But inOn Late Stylehe concentrates on artistic lateness as “intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction.” He also writes about Theodor Adorno and about Glenn Gould, who chose to stop performing, thereby creating his own form of lateness. Said makes clear that most of the works discussed are rife with deep conflict and an almost impenetrable complexity. In fact, he feels that lateness is often “a form of exile.” These works frequently stood in direct contrast to what was popular at the time, but they were forerunners of what was to come in each artist’s particular discipline—works of true genius.
Eloquent and impassioned, brilliantly reasoned and revelatory,On Late Styleis Edward Said’s own great last work.
