Jakobson--co-founder of both the Moscow and Prague Linguistic Circles early in the century; friend of Mayakovsky, Khlebnikov, Pasternak; brilliant teacher in the U.S.--was one of the century's great intellectuals. His collected work stands published for scholars, but here are the essays--on Pasternak, on Blake, on Baudelaire's Le Chat, on aphasia and metaphor, on Hopkins, on statuary in Pushkin--that are legends of scientific criticism...Indispensable for anyone interested in the meanings and powers of language.
   --Kirkus Reviews

Roman Jakobson has given us a marvelous gift: he has given linguistics to artists. It is he who has opened up the live and sensitive juncture between one of the most exact of the sciences of man and the creative world. He represents, both for his theoretical thought and for his actual accomplishments, the meeting of scientific thought and the creative spirit.
   --Roland Barthes

Roman Jakobson has made a dramatic and enduring contribution to twentieth-century poetics and semiotics. This collection is as strategic as it is comprehensive. To my knowledge, not a single essential item has been omitted. In deference to the richness and scope of Jakobson's achievement, a wide net has been cast.
   --Victor Erlich

Roman Jakobson (1896-1982) was at the time of his death Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The late Krystyna Pomorska, Roman Jacobson's widow, was Professor of Slavic, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Stephen Rudy is Professor of Slavic, New York University.

Read More by Roman Jakobson:

• On Language