《Axel's Castle》

…He inherited the thorough and fair work of his father, a lawyer, and was known for his deep reading and macroscopic understanding. Even when he cited Freud and Marx, he always went beyond a specific ideology to get to the essence of the subject. This is why his book, Axel's Castle (1931), which criticized Symbolism, was a pioneering interpretation of Symbolism and, by extension, of the literature of the 1920s. His literary chronicles, consisting mainly of book reviews, consisted of three volumes: Classics and Literature of Goods (1950), The Shore of Light (1952), and The Bit Between My Teeth (1965); long critical essays such as To the Finland Station (1940), which dramatically depicted the origins and history of socialism; Patriotic Blood (1962), a collection of testimonies by public observers who had searched through a vast amount of secret records from the Civil War period; literary essays such as The Wound and the Bow (1941) and A Window to Russia (1972); and other novels, plays, travelogues, and autobiographical prose, all of which boast a mature style worthy of "the last man of letters."

*Some of the terminology that refers to "Axel's Castle" is listed below.

Source | Heibonsha World Encyclopedia 2nd Edition | Information

…法律家の父の周到公平な仕事ぶりを受けつぎ，読みの深さと巨視的な把握を身上として，フロイトやマルクスを援用してもつねに特定の思想を超えて対象の本質に迫る。象徴主義批判の書《アクセルの城》(1931)が逆に象徴主義，ひいては20年代文学の先駆的味解の書たりえたゆえんである。書評を主軸とする《古典と商品文学》(1950)，《光の岸辺》(1952)，《わが歯間の馬銜（はみ）》(1965)の3巻の文学的年代記，社会主義の起源と歴史を劇的に構成した《フィンランド駅へ》(1940)や南北戦争時代の膨大な秘録を渉猟した警世の証言集《愛国の流血》(1962)などの長編評論，《傷と弓》(1941)，《ロシアへの窓》(1972)などの文学論集，そのほか小説，戯曲，旅行記，自伝的散文など，いずれも〈最後の文人〉にふさわしい文体の成熟を誇っている。…

※「《アクセルの城》」について言及している用語解説の一部を掲載しています。

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