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Book Review

Shadowtime

TLS "Book of the Year" Selected by Marjorie Perloff, December 2, 2005

Reviewed by Marjorie Perloff

[Walter] Benjamin is the "subject" of Charles Bernstein's Shadowtime (Green Integer), the libretto for Brian Ferneyhough's opera performed in London, and New York earlier this year. The complex interplay between the opera's words and its music is not always successful, but the libretto should be read as a remarkable poem in its own right — a superb "writing through" of Benjamin's own prose that shows an uncanny ability to grasp his critical ideas and stratagems, even as it turns them inside out. The result is a poignant — but also quite disillusioned and ironic — portrait of Benjamin, a victim, not only of his dark time but also of his own blindness. The new poetics ... is about to take on the aesthetic and ethos of the now finished twentieth century. It's an exhilarating moment to witness.