Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Simic, Charles (Vol. 130) - Marci Janas (review date Spring 1991)

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Marci Janas (review date Spring 1991)

SOURCE: “The Secret World of Charles Simic,” in Field, No. 44, Spring, 1991, pp. 67-76.

[In the following review, Janas explores the major mythological and philosophical themes in Simic's The Book of Gods and Devils.]

What I see is the paradox. What shall I call it? The sacred and the profane? I like that point where the levels meet … We know what the Egyptians have said: as above, so below. This is the paradox, and I like to draw them close together. …

—Charles Simic, The Uncertain Certainty

Charles Simic follows phenomenology all the way back to its hermeneutic roots in his marvelous new collection, The Book of Gods and Devils. The Egyptian god alluded to in my epigraph, and identified by Simic in a new book of essays—Wonderful Words, Silent Truth—is Hermes Trismegistos, a.k.a. Thoth. He was really the start of it all for...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Hayden Carruth (review date Summer 1971)
   2. James Atlas (review date February 1975)
   3. Richard Jackson (essay date Winter 1980)
   4. Peter Schmidt (essay date Fall 1982)
   5. Bruce Bennett (review date 12 March 1983)
   6. Charles Simic with Sherod Santos (interview date 1984)
   7. Kenneth Funsten (review date 16 March 1986)
   8. Peter Stitt (review date Spring 1987)
   9. Marci Janas (review date Spring 1991)
   10. Steven Cramer (review date January 1992)
   11. Ileana A. Orlich (essay date Spring 1992)
   12. Edward Hirsch (review date 21 December 1992)
   13. Lisa Zeidner (review date 21 March 1993)
   14. Tam Lin Neville (review date Spring 1993)
   15. Philip Miller (essay date Summer 1993)
   16. Scott Edward Anderson (review date November-December 1993)
   17. Judith Kitchen (review date Winter 1995)
   18. Christopher Merrill (review date 19 March 1995)
   19. Helen Vendler (essay date 1995)
   20. Charles Simic with Molly McQuade (interview date 1995)
   21. David Sofield (review date 13 January 1996)
   22. David Bafer (review date April 1996)
   23. Paul Breslin (review date July 1997)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright