Customer Reviews

FIRES

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"I hope this book will never be read." So begins Yourcenar's Fires...a richly dense collection of famous myths and legends stunningly revitalized through the voices and eyes of the heroines. Intertwining the stories are excerpts from Yournenar's own journal taken from the time during which she had written the stories. Achingly familiar to anyone recovering from a broken heart, Yourcenar marries the heartache of this century's woman to women throughout the ages.

Love is a punishment, says Yourcenar, and in some intellectual and emotive way this book is one. I've read all of her books, and this is her most felt, chirurgically precise, passionate and torn aproach to what love is and represents in all the roles we - human beings - play at one time or another in our lives. All the possible deceptions, miscommunications and broken hearts are hold in these pages, through the reconstruction and modernization of some greek myths such as Antigone, Achilles and Patroclus, Sapho, and Maria Magdalena (ok, she was not greek!). Along with "Memoires of Adrian" and "Zenon", this is a must-have from Yourcenar.

"Fires" is a collection of hybrid love stories. Most are taken from real or mythological ancient Greece. Ms. Yourcenar does a spectacular job giving these old stories a modern flavor without losing their original context. I also recommend "A Blue Tale & Other Stories" by her{The University of Chicago Press}.

Go where the love is. Although in some remote cases it can be a struggle (i.e. Romeo & Juliet; Hamlet), love deserves to be accessible, humane, and democratic. Be not afraid to Love/Live.

this is a rare book in english. I am always shocked to see how hard it is to find it and how no librarian knows Marguerite Yourcenar which is so big in Europe.. so I was glad to find two copies here, one of which i bought used from a third party.
good quality, very cheap price.
I highly recommend this book, though you'll need to be indulgent with its decadent romantic philosophy of love. it's just like fire.

This book, also if is not so take in consideration in the critical analysis of M.Yourcenar, is the more next at my opinion, to the sensibility of this extraordinary writer. The tranfiguration of the reality in the world of the grecian mytology (except the episod of Maria Magdalena) is a very suffer parable of the human condition. This is a little book that sould follow you for the life. (From the same author and in the same way: "Anna, soror; with, An obscure man; and, A lovely morning" by Published by Harvill