Dr. Marjorie Perloff, a Palisadian and scholar in residence at USC, will be discussing her book “The Vienna Paradox,” a memoir of her childhood in Vienna and her family’s escape to the U.S. after the rise of Nazism, on Saturday, December 10 at 10:30 a.m. at the Palisades Branch Library, 861 Alma Real. The enduring paradox concerns the two Viennas of the 1930s. One was a place of great beauty, art and sophistication, decorated with the old imperial grandeur of the Hapsburgs. The other was a fetid city, of bedbug-ridden shelters that bred a virulent type of violence and desperation that served as a laboratory for hateful ideas of a young Adolf Hitler. Social, cultural and political issues arose as a result of this paradox, many of which can still be seen today. Perloff was born into the Jewish haute bourgeoisie of that imperial city. Her world was one of strong intellectual and artistic traditions with Goethe as the literary hero and Kant as philosophical patron saint; of intelligent, educated parents; of musical gatherings and elegant parties; of celebrations of Christmas and Easter, rather than Hanukkah and Passover. A day after the Anschluss, on March 12, 1938, when Hitler marched unopposed to cheers into an Austria bedecked with flags of the Third Reich, six-year-old Perloff, her older brother, her parents and a few other close relatives left Vienna for Rome. Once in America, her family settled in a small house in Riverdale, New York, far removed from the grand apartment in Vienna. Perloff’s personal life reflects her desire to become as American as possible, even changing her name to Marjorie from her given name Gabriele, graduating from Columbia, marrying a medical student, raising a family, and pursuing a teaching and writing career. In “The Vienna Paradox,” she concentrates on a view of academics, art and literature, rather than on the details of her own life. Her enthusiasm, her refusal to take herself seriously, her wit and good humor and wide-ranging knowledge of art, literature, politics and human nature, make “The Vienna Paradox” enjoyable. After a long academic career spent at the University of Maryland, USC and Stanford, Perloff is currently a scholar in residence at USC. In her critical work, she has focused on poetics, with books on Yeats, Robert Lowell, Frank O’Hara and another half-dozen titles dedicated to avant garde poetry. Everyone is invited to the event in the Library meeting room. The program is sponsored by the Pacific Palisades Library Association, which will be serving morning refreshments. Contact: 459-2754.
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