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April 13, 2019

Writing the Twentieth Century

Poets, philosophers, and playwrights.

This week marks the deaths and births of some of the most important poets, playwrights, and philosophers of the twentieth century: Primo Levi (d. April 11, 1987), Samuel Beckett (b. April 13, 1906), Seamus Heaney (b. April 13, 1939), and Jean-Paul Sartre (April 15, 1980).

Their works chronicle events such as the Holocaust and Bloody Sunday; tackle dread about life’s absurdity; and sit at the apex in which modernism became post-. Our archive is full of essays about these important figures, but we are also lucky to feature some pieces written by them for Boston Review. We hope you enjoy!

“On that tragic Saturday only his body was smashed.”
Diego Gambetta

A lost story shows the young writer struggling in Joyce's shadow

Roger Boylan

Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential Marxism offers a radical philosophical foundation for today’s revitalized critiques of capitalism.

Ronald Aronson

Seamus Heaney on the power of T.S. Eliot

Seamus Heaney
Poetry
A poem by Primo Levi
Primo Levi

Remembering Beckett twenty years after his death.

Roger Boylan

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Long decried by liberals and conservatives alike, the Martinican psychiatrist remains one of the most piercing critics of colonialism.

Sam Klug

What the concert hall attack means for the Russian leader's future.

Rajan Menon
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The first capturing your gaze into nowhere
the other when you covered your face with your hands
so you were not anonymous, only unseen

Michael Ondaatje

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