The Lukacs Reader

One of the greatest Marxist theorists of his generation, author of among other classics History of the Development of Modern Drama (1911), History and Class Consciousness (1923) and The Historical Novel (1937), Georg Lukacs was a prolific writer of remarkably catholic, if moralistic, tastes. In the The Lukacs Reader, his biographer Arpad Kadarkay represents the great range and variety of Lukacs′s output, collecting work from four fields of activity: autobiography, drama and tragedy, art and literature, philosophy and politics – material for the most part not previously published in English. The reader includes, in original translations, and with introductory essays, Lukacs on: Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, Ford, Strindberg, Ibsen, Wilde, Shaw, Gauguin, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Also collected are: the autobiographical ′On the Poverty of Spirit′, material from Lukacs′s diary, and such key articles as: ′Aesthetic Culture′, ′The Ideology of Modernism′, ′Bolshevism as an Ethical Problem′, and ′Class Consciousness′. What emerges is a figure very much at the centre of European thought whose value to modern culture and philosophy differs markedly from that which received opinion generally admits.

Preface. Acknowledgements. Part I: Essays in Autobiography: . 1. Kierkegaard. 2. Diary. 3. On the Poverty of Spirit. 4. My Socratic Mask. Part II: Drama and Tragedy: . 5. Shakespeare and Modern Drama. 6. John Ford. 7. August Strindberg. 8. Henrik Ibsen. 9. Peer Gynt. 10. Oscar Wilde. 11. Bernard Shaw. Part III: Art and Literature: . 12. Aesthetic Culture. 13. Paul Gaughin. 14. The Parting of the Ways. 15. Stavrogin′s Confessions. 16. Integrated Civilisations. 17. The Ideology of Modernism. Part IV: Philosophy and Politics: . 18. Bolshevism as an Ethical Problem. 19. Class Consciousness. 20. Friedrich Nietzsche. 21. Martin Heidegger. Bibliography. Index.

The editor is the author of Georg Lukacs: Life, Thought and Politics (Blackwell Publishers, 1991) and is a Professor in the Department of Politics and Government at the University of Puget Sound.

"This collection of essays emphasizes the romantic. It includes an early essay in which Lukacs compares the strangest of his own love affairs with Kerkegaard′s, as well as essays on Stridberg, Ibsen, Wilde and Shaw." Leslie Armour, Library Journal