Sunday, January 26, 2014

Sunday morning roundup …

… Courtesy of Dave Lull:



… The Poetry Daily Critique: "Academe Quits Me" by D.G. Myers.



Dave drew my attention to the comment by David X. Novak, with its reference to "the pithy quote by Frank Wilson about whom I know nothing." It's somehow especially gratifying to see the remark making its own way on its own terms without being attached to my identity. The great Anonymous would surely agree.

… But would they really be cities? —  Happier Cities, Happier Lives?

Obviously, the governing factions in any city determine to a large extent the kind of place it is. But, Baron Haussmann's glorious work notwithstanding, the really great cities — Elizabethan London or Victorian London, New York City in the '50s — always have a prominent dimension of improvisation and decay.  Nowadays, grunginess seems just another  bourgeois affectation.

…  The mystery of the gaze: On Having Faces.
It is through our eyes that our souls are said to be open to others. Not a few sentimental songs speak of looking lovingly into the eyes of the beloved. Yet, Walker Percy wondered, in Lost in the Cosmos: “Why is it that we cannot gaze into the eyes of another for more than a few seconds without looking away?” I have often thought some connection existed between this observation and the oft-mentioned hope in Scripture of seeing God “face-to-face.” Surely no “few second” rule exists here!
I think that Till We Have Faces is Lewis's masterpiece.



No comments:

Post a Comment