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A
vivid and exploratory poem on the life and ideas of Spinoza…
While reading Leonardo Padura’s novel Heretics Hildebrandt became fascinated
by the tolerance that existed in Havana Cuba, and Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
These two cities became havens and harbours for Sephardic Jews initially
driven out of the Middle East by Romans, then persecuted in Spain and
Portugal by the Inquisitions of the Catholic Church. Hildebrandt uses
a wide variety of people and characters to bring us a greater understanding
of the two remarkable cities. These include Rembrandt, Spinoza, and the
fictional characters detective Mario Conde, Elias and Judy from Heretics.
This long poem is powerful, thought-provoking and engaging. Like his other
long poems, Hildebrandt draws on an array of disciplines and forms, including
history, culture, philosophy, fiction and diverse lyric and narrative
poetics. In these troubled, increasingly intolerant times, Conatus is
an important read.
Spinoza’s humans are at one with nature, can have adequate ideas (no
evil, no outside god). In wayward history he affirmed a joyous mindful
life. Hildebrandt finds his conatus resonant with Indigenous culture.
After a recap of Jewish history, a sidestep to the complex reality of
post revolutionary Cuba, he spins us back to Amsterdam, to Rembrandt’s
just people, people persisting in the shadowy earthen real.
~ Charles Noble, author of What Can I Say? and Mack the Naïf
Historian and poet Walter Hildebrandt was born in Brooks, Alberta and
now lives in Edmonton. He was the Director of University of Calgary Press
and Athabasca University Press. He was awarded the Gustavus Meyers Award
1997, for outstanding work on human rights in North America, for his book
The Spirit and Intent of Treaty 7. His long poem Sightings
was nominated for the McNally-Robinson Book of the Year in Manitoba in
1992. A previous volume of poetry, Where the Land Gets Broken,
received the Stephan G. Stephanson for best poetry book in Alberta in
2005. This is his thirteenth book of poetry.
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