Lecture, “Remarque’s Spark of Life: Writing the Concentration Camp,” previews exhibition on October 13 “A Time to Live: The Life and Writings of Erich Maria Remarque, A Centennial Celebration,” an exhibition which draws on the extensive collection of Remarque’s papers and on Remarque’s library held in New York University’s Fales Library, will be on display from Tuesday, October 13 through Friday, December 18 in the Tracey/Barry Gallery, NYU’s Fales Library, third floor of the NYU Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South. Gallery hours are Monday-Thursday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For further information the public may call (212) 998-2596.
The exhibition commemorates the centennial of Remarque’s birth as well as the donation of the Erich Maria Remarque and Paulette Goddard Papers and Library given to NYU by Ms. Goddard in 1990. The papers contain more than 62,000 pages of diaries, manuscripts, letters, photographs, documents and personal effects; and the library comprises ore than 3,000 volumes, including copies of all Remarque’s books and an extensive collection of translations. The exhibition is curated by Thomas Thornton, a private scholar and expert in modern German literature who was formerly executive editor of Fromm International Publishing. A catalogue, written by Mr. Thornton, accompanies the exhibition.
On Monday, October 13, at 6:30 p.m. Fred Harris, chair of the department of modern languages and literature at Fordham University, will present the first in a series of Erich Maria Remarque Centennial Lectures. He will discuss “Erich Maria Remarque’s Spark of Life: Writing the Concentration Camp” in the Fales Library, 3rd floor of the NYU Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South. A reception and preview of the exhibition, “A Time to Live,” will follow. The event is free and open to the public.
According to Marvin Taylor, Fales Librarian, Erich Maria Remarque is in many ways the quintessential twentieth-century man. “Caught between the intense nineteenth-century nationalism of his youth and the dissolution and despair brought on by World War I, Remarque embodies the psychological and essential dilemmas of his generation,” Mr. Taylor said. “Though Remarque is remembered in the United States primarily as the author of All Quiet on the Western Front, his life and work intersects nearly every important moment of this century.” His literary career placed him at the center of the publishing world for decades and led him into the world of cinema. His numerous lovers included Marlene Dietrich and Natasha Paley Wilson; his friends included Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo; and he married actress Paulette Goddard.
The NYU Fales Library holds a collection of over 160,000 volumes of British and American literature, and other special collections, from 1700 to the present. Its research collections are comprised of first editions, presentation copies, scholarly editions and manuscripts.