The Savantasse of Montparnasse

Allen Mandelbaum's long-awaited Savantasse of Montparnasse is a work of wonder, wit, and exhilarating originality. Of Mandelbaum's previous long poem, The Maxims, Axioms, Maxioms of Chelm, James Wright ''A beautiful original, learned, comic in a way that only a master of many languages (like Joyce) can be comic, often lyrically lovely, and, finally, hauntingly sad. . . . I found myself startled by the extremely dense richness of its learning, only to discover, strategically placed, lyric poems of surpassing simplicity and beauty. So one might grasp the structure of the book as a rhythmical alternation between these two uses of language. Furthermore, one may read the book as a parody of extreme learning—a very deliberate parody—which is, at the same rime, a wonderful display of learning. But no matter how one approaches the book, one is always haunted by the city of Chelm and its inhabitants . . . in one sense a city literally constructed out of language, in another sense . . . a place created and transformed by the poet's imagination into a very specific, concrete town. . . . A marvelously original work . . . an important event." And now, with The Savantasse of Montparnasse, Mandelbaum has gifted us with another unforgettable volume.