Added by: badaboom | Karma: 5366.29 | Fiction literature | 24 October 2010
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The Polish Officer: A Novel
With clear, reticent prose and his trademark mastery of historical detail, Furst (Shadow Trade; Night Soldiers) brings vividly to life this WWII-era tale of espionage and bravery, chronicling the work of the Polish underground in Poland, France and the Ukraine. As Warsaw is falling in 1939, Polish Captain Alexander de Milja embarks on a harrowing journey to smuggle the national gold reserves out of the country by rail-the first of many death-defying missions he will undertake for the nascent ZWZ, the Union for Armed Struggle.
Chopin's Polish Ballade: Op. 38 as Narrative of National Martyrdom
Chopin's Second Ballade, Op. 38 is frequently performed, and takes only seven or so minutes to play. Yet the work remains very poorly understood--disagreement prevails on issues from its tonic and two-key structure to its posited relationship with the poems of Adam Mickiewicz. Chopin's Polish Ballade is a reexamination and close analysis of this famous work, revealing the Ballade as a piece with a powerful political story to tell.
The songs to which the English form has been given in the following volume have been taken mostly from Vuk Karadzic's invaluable collection: Srpske Narodne Pjesme (Serbian National Songs). Karadzic, of whom the literary world has heard so much, is the father of modern Serbian literature. He spent many years among the peasantsin collecting the national treasures : ballads, tales, proverbs, anecdotes and other folklore.
