In his fascinating last book, Edward Said looks at a selection of essays, poems, novels, films, and operas to determine what late style may explain about the evolution of the creative life. He discusses how the approaching death of an artist can make its way “with anachronism and anomaly” into his work, as was the case in the late work of Thomas Mann, Richard Strauss, Jean Genet, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and C. P. Cavafy. Said examines Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, Genet’s Le captif amoureux and Les paravents, Mozart’s Così fan tutte, Visconti’s film of Lampedusa’s The Leopard, Euripides’ The Bacchae and Iphigenia at Aulis, and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, among other works.

He points out that one can also find an “unearthly serenity,” in last works, for example, in Sophocles, Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Matisse, Bach, and Wagner, which, as Said puts it, “crown a lifetime of aesthetic endeavor.” But in On Late Style he concentrates on artistic lateness as “intransigence, difficulty, and unresolved contradiction.” He also writes about Theodor Adorno and about Glenn Gould, who chose to stop performing, thereby creating his own form of lateness. Said makes clear that most of the works discussed are rife with deep conflict and an almost impenetrable complexity. In fact, he feels that lateness is often “a form of exile.” These works frequently stood in direct contrast to what was popular at the time, but they were forerunners of what was to come in each artist’s particular discipline—works of true genius.

Eloquent and impassioned, brilliantly reasoned and revelatory, On Late Style is Edward Said’s own great last work.

萨义德(1935-2003)，当今世界极具影响力的文学与文化批评家之一。出生于耶路撒冷，在英国占领期间就读于埃及开罗的西方学校，接受英式和美式教育，1950年代赴美就学，获哈佛大学博士学位，1963年起任教于哥伦比亚大学，讲授英国文学与比较文学。代表作有：《开始：意图与方法》、《世界·文本·批评家》、《东方学》、《文化与帝国主义》、《知识分子论》、《巴勒斯坦问题》等。萨义德还是有名的乐评家、歌剧学者、钢琴家，并以知识分子的身份积极参与巴勒斯坦的政治运动，为巴勒斯坦在西方世界最雄辩的代言人。