{"product_id":"blaze-in-a-desert-victor-serge-9781629633824","title":"Blaze in a Desert: Selected Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eVictor Serge (1890-1947) played many parts, as he recounted in his indelible \u003cem\u003eMemoirs of a Revolutionary\u003c\/em\u003e. The son of anti-czarist exiles in Brussels, Serge was a young anarchist in Paris; a syndicalist rebel in Barcelona; a Bolshevik in Petrograd; a Comintern agent in Central Europe; a comrade of Trotsky's; a friend of writers like Andrei Bely, Boris Pilnyak, and André Breton; a prisoner of Stalin; a dissident Marxist in exile in Mexico...\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eLike Serge's extraordinary novels, \u003cem\u003eA Blaze in a Desert: Selected Poems\u003c\/em\u003e bears witness to decades of revolutionary upheavals in Europe and the advent of totalitarian rule; many of the poems were written during the \"immense shipwreck\" of Stalin's ascendancy. In poems datelined Petrograd, Orenburg, Paris, Marseille, the Caribbean, and Mexico, Serge composed elegies for the fallen--as well as prospective elegies for the living who, like him, endured prison, exile, and bitter disappointment in the revolutions of the first half of the twentieth century: \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNight falls, the boat pulls in, \u003cbr\u003e stop singing. \u003cbr\u003e Exile relights its captive lamps\u003cbr\u003e on the shore of time.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThroughout \u003cem\u003eA Blaze in a Desert\u003c\/em\u003e, Serge draws on the heritage of late- and post-Symbolist writers like Verhaeren, Rictus, Apollinaire, Blok, and Bely--themselves authors of messages of a more general resistance by the human spirit--to express the anguish of the failure of the Russian Revolution and to search out glimmers of hope in the ruins of the Second World War.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Blaze in a Desert\u003c\/em\u003e comprises Victor Serge's sole published book of poetry, \u003cem\u003eResistance\u003c\/em\u003e (1938), his unpublished manuscript \u003cem\u003eMessages\u003c\/em\u003e (1946), and his last poem, \"Hands\" (1947).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Victor Serge\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 1629633828\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9781629633824\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e PM Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 05\/01\/2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 192\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.35lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 7.90h x 5.00w x 0.60d","brand":"Victor Serge","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":43939416637695,"sku":"9781629633824","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/products\/img_b03df1a8-59ae-4d14-8c5a-3c6b7587a505.jpg?v=1681441365","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/blaze-in-a-desert-victor-serge-9781629633824","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}