Saturday, April 30, 2022
A devil of a book …
… On Exorcizing Demons. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It would be a mistake to think of exorcisms as even singularly Christian, a point made admirably clear in the Penguin anthology, which includes pagan, Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Indigenous accounts of exorcisms. What’s most unsettling is just how similar so many of them are, regardless of how different the cultural contexts. Inevitably, it makes an otherwise upstanding skeptical reader amenable to the suspicion that there might be something here, though what it is isn’t exactly clear.
Something to think on …
For no art and no religion is possible until we make allowances, until we manage to keep quiet the enfant terrible of logic that plays havoc with the other faculties.
— John Crowe Ransom, born on this date in 1888
This sounds awful…
…Battier and Battier | Chronicles. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What troubles me almost as much is the film’s lack of entertainment value. It’s slow and ponderous, with a plot that makes little sense. A criminal named the Penguin seems to run a night club whose habitués indulge in a cocaine-like substance. He’s intent on destroying his competitors and is untroubled by law enforcement, though he and his cohorts do suffer repetitive beatings under the fists of the Batman. What drives our hero’s ferocity? The film doesn’t explain.
Friday, April 29, 2022
Keeping you reading …
… EITHER/OR BY ELIF BATUMAN, (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Sardonic and adroit Either/Or makes for a fantastic read. While Selin does change over the course of her sophomore year, she also remains very much herself. She can be reserved and slightly baffling at times, and yet she’s also capable of making some very insightful or relatable comments. She’s intelligent, somewhat naive, and has a penchant for overthinking and obsessing over minor things. Her deadpan sense of humor and little idiosyncrasies make her character really pop out of the page. I could definitely relate to her many many uncertainties, as well as her fixation with understanding the person who never seemed to reciprocate her feelings.
Something to think on …
To certain people there comes a day when they must say the great Yes or the great No.
— C. P. Cavafy, born on this date in 1863
Thursday, April 28, 2022
Hmm …
… Believe in Science? Bad Big-Data Studies May Shake Your Faith.
A team led by John Ioannidis looked at attempts to replicate 34 highly respected medical studies and found that only 20 were confirmed. The Reproducibility Project attempted to replicate 97 studies published in leading psychology journals and confirmed only 35. The Experimental Economics Replication Project attempted to replicate 18 experimental studies reported in leading economics journals and confirmed only 11.
Can we get rid of this clown?
… Guess What? The Pandemic Is Back On! Thanks, Fauci!
Thanks to Blogger’s updating, I can no longer make comments of my own on my own blog. But I feel obligated to remind Rus that Fauci has been all over the place from the start. I may not be a physician, but I am medically literate, having done a lot of medical editing my time. And I am hardly the only person who has ceased to take Fauci seriously. Remember, this is the guy who signed off on s substantial grant to the Wuhan lab.
A real school …
… Faith, the Real World, and Liberal Arts: Turning College on Its Head at Hildegard.
When American Christian colleges are all reducing themselves to little more than secular colleges with [a] chapel, we need a robust option that highlights the church’s rich intellectual and imaginative tradition, which is why I signed my name to Hildegard College. Named after a polymath who gave her life to the Lord, Hildegard College is a place where faculty and students will embody her legacy.
Something to think on …
The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.
— Harper Lee, born on this date in 1926
Husband and wife …
… The Writer's Almanac for Saturday, April 23, 2022 | Garrison Keillor. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Getting at the heart of reality …
… Poems of Mystical Experience - Tablet Magazine. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
“It is through fully situating myself within language that this world, the true world, a real human world—and beyond human—occurs. Language itself is the mystical experience, if you will.”
Centenary appreciation …
… Amis at 100: a master satirist without honour | Alexander Larman | The Critic Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Oxford academic Julian Thompson, an expert on Amis’s work, once remarked that he was mystified how “that consummate literary professional Kingsley Amis has gone down in history as a drunken, women-hating bigot”. In his centenary year, the man once regarded as the greatest comic novelist since Evelyn Waugh is now seen as little more than a joke himself, a Blimpish caricature of a bon viveur whose major books are little more than reactionary relics of a (thankfully) bygone age, and whose minor works are, at best, blessedly forgotten squibs and, at worst, vile indicators of personal failings that would, in our more enlightened era, have immediately led to Amis’s cancellation.
Wednesday, April 27, 2022
Encore …
… The Last Poems of Les Murray. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
When Les was interviewed by The Paris Review, he claimed of his writing methods, “I often don’t have many drafts in handwriting,” but the contents of the box disproved this assertion. Instead, the box was proof of just how meticulous a craftsman Les had been, and of how hard he worked to polish every line, even of those poems that read like spontaneous quips
Q&A …
… From Edward Hirsch, an “intensely personal” attempt to define the American experience through poetry. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
Blogging note …
Once again, blogging will have to wait until later. I have to go shopping for some things and I want to get that out of the way early, because I have a lot else to do besides.
Something to think on …
... we never do any thing well, unless we love it for its own sake.
— Mary Wollstonecraft, born on this date in1759
Tuesday, April 26, 2022
A poetic reply …
… To The Reader | Aaron Poochigian | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Living nightmares …
… There are no literalists in foxholes | Washington Examiner. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The first full-scale technological war would invert and empty the noble myths and chivalrous vernaculars; in Lt. Robert Graves’s famous poem, a “grey, grim” Goliath handily cuts open a “calm and brave” David. But before this sensation was registered in the stanzas of the war poets, it was felt by ordinary soldiers, by some lanky person crouched in a rain-battered trench, gripping his rifle as he prepared to “jump the bags,” the phrase infantry used to describe the act of heaving oneself over the sandbags of a trench to begin the march across the Stygian blightscape of no man's land. Fussell believed the overbearing irony of postmodernity was born here, in this moment, because what this soldier was about to experience was worse than anything he could imagine.
Weightiness …
… THINNER ON PAPER. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… when my well-nourished mentor took me to one side with a confidential air, in a deserted brown passageway, I was ready for anything. I thought he might be going to pass judgement (too late) on the appalling suit I had bought for my new job, or to tell me my expenses were too low and I was letting down the side or even maybe to fire me. But no, out of one side of his mouth came the words “You’d be taken more seriously if you put on a few pounds. Gain some weight.” I looked to see if he was joking, but it was clear he was perfectly serious. And given our freedom in those days to take people out for lunch pretty much without question or limit, provided it produced a story, I was able to do as suggested. I became considerably fatter, though without being taken more seriously, then or later. The years roared and tumbled past, as the pounds of lard solidified in all the usual places. I still didn’t fit in, but I also didn’t stand out any more in the gaunt college graduate way I had once done.
Something to think on …
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive - to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
— Marcus Aurelius, born on this date in 121.
Monday, April 25, 2022
One hell of an owner …
The A’s might have hugged and laughed and drank champagne together after winning a trio of World Series titles, but they also fought and cursed each other. And they mostly wanted to play for other teams. But one thing held them together: their collective hatred of the owner.
Something to think on …
Now that cleverness was the fashion most people were clever — even perfect fools; and cleverness after all was often only a bore: all head and no body.
— Walter de la Mare, born on this date in 1873
Sunday, April 24, 2022
Apprently Putin missed this in history class …
… Russian invasion of Finland — The Winter War.
What a putz Vlad has turned out to br.
Blogging note …
It’s Sunday. I must get ready to go to Mass. After that, it's my usual Sunday luncheon date. So I won’t be blogging until later.
His own man …
… Mamet’s Wisdom: A bracing essay collection from the author of 'Wag the Dog'. (Hat tip,
Dave Lull.)
It’s when he turns to politics, in the broadest sense, that Mamet is at his best - and bravest. An unashamed patriot, he refers to America as “our magnificent country” and as “the freest and most prosperous [nation] in history.” Looking back at some of the individuals and organizations whose cockeyed ideas helped shape the contemporary scene, he puts Margaret Sanger and John Dewey in their place and deplores the ACLU as “the most absurd bunch of Jews since the Three Stooges.” He recalls that his initial reaction to the coinage “Department of Homeland Security” was to find it (as I did) not just “loathsome, clunky, and offensive” but “un-American” and, indeed, rather unpleasantly “Teutonic.” Moving on to the present, he’s splendidly dismissive of all the claptrap du jour - from Critical Race Theory and man-made global warming to covid hysteria, gender insanity, and Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Something to think on …
All comes at the proper time to him who knows how to wait.
— Vincent de Paul, born on this date in 1581
Hmm …
… The verdict on lockdowns: high costs, minimal benefits | Washington Examiner.
Overall, the three economists conclude, “excluding the geographically unusual cases of Hawaii and Alaska ... there is no apparent relationship between reduced economic activity during the pandemic and our composite mortality measure.” The disease, easily transmissible and often asymptomatic, spread mostly regardless of restrictions, killing many, three-quarters of them over age 65, before vaccination became near-universal — and fewer afterward.
Saturday, April 23, 2022
Something to think on …
Above all things — read. Read the great stylists who cannot be copied rather than the successful writers who must not be copied.
— Ngaio Marsh, born on this date in 1895
Friday, April 22, 2022
As Niels Bohr said …
… predicting is difficult — especially the future: IHTM - Earth Day predictions of 1970. The reason you shouldn't believe Earth Day predictions of 2009..
Playwright and warrior …
…
In addition to sharpening his focus on authority in the military and political spheres, his firsthand observations also gave Aeschylus the opportunity to introduce the tension between realism and idealism in his works. The playwright was not limited to his imagination when describing the realities of war. The conflicts of Aeschylus’s times enabled him to imbue his plays with lyrical descriptions of warriors, battles, and bloodshed, all of which the playwright saw for himself.
Poetry and faith …
… ‘THE TRUTH AND BEAUTY,’ BY ANDREW KLAVAN. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There is much to ponder in this book, and I can’t claim I understand it all. I need to read it again. But the answer to the problem of getting to know the mind of Christ, as Klavan sees it, is seeing how in all nature – not only the natural world around us but our own nature – the truth of Christ is revealed. The Trinity is everywhere, giving us glimpses behind the veil, calling out to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. The life that Jesus lives is promised to us. The Romantics at their best glimpsed this, and some of them embraced it in the end.
He’s right …
… Art Without Tradition is Dead.
I want us to release art from the stranglehold of relevance—from the insistence that works of art, whether classic or contemporary, are validated (or invalidated) by the extent to which they line up with (or fail to line up with) our current social and political concerns. I want to convince a public inclined to look first for relevance that art’s relevance has everything to do with what many regard as its irrelevance.
Allen Ginsberg
I hadn't read Allen Ginsberg since high school, but for whatever reason I picked up a copy of his collected works last week, and have enjoyed revisiting his poetry over the past few days.
I will say up front that some of Ginsberg's work feels dated: there's definitely an appeal to "cosmic reverberations," and to the sort of language made famous by the Beat generation. Ginsberg, of course, was part of that generation, and contributed a considerable amount to their emergent lexicon. The point, though, is that years later, some of Ginsberg's poems collapse under their own ambition, their own quest, as he might write, through "hallucination."
All of that said, there are certain poems in the Penguin collection which have a staying power, and there are lines which I'd not remembered, or which I'd not fully understood. Ginsberg seems to have a better sense of humor than I'd thought: his sense of irony anticipated what came next. In 'America,' he writes: "It occurs to me that I am America / I am talking to myself again." This is powerfully executed: that paranoia of the American condition comes through in Ginsberg's poetry.
Many of the poems included here were written in the middle of the 1950s: this caught my attention. It's a transitional moment in American history, and Ginsberg's poetry wrestles with that uncertainty. The Beats and the revolutionaries had not yet emerged -- or at least not fully. Instead, there's an abyss, an impasse, and it's over it that Ginsberg peers, introducing in the process a novel set of themes: homosexuality, neuroses, and, for perhaps the first time since the war, an awareness of beauty. It was this combination of tropes which affected me most.
At last …
… FILM REVIEW: ‘THE NORTHMAN’ (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… I must say that “IT” has finally happened. By “IT” I mean the arrival of that elusive creature history buffs and reenactors have awaited so long. At long last, there is a good Viking movie. Possibly a great Viking movie.
Something to think on …
Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
— Henry Fielding, born on this date in 1707
Thursday, April 21, 2022
Blogging note …
I have to go out shortly and finally finish this year’s tax business. Blogging will resume later.
Something to think on …
I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking about the mountains.
— John Muir, born on this date in 1838
Wednesday, April 20, 2022
I just learned of this …
… Sweden riots over Quran burning: What is happening? | Explainer News | Al Jazeera.
I cannot approve of burning anyone’s sacred book
The art of the lyric …
… All the rest is talk by John Steele Gordon | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… it is not an accident that while the names of Broadway lyricists are often as well known as those of the composers (when they are not the same person, as they not infrequently are), opera librettists languish in obscurity. Do you know who wrote the words to La Bohème or Madama Butterfly? Neither do I.
Playing around …
… Sex for Art’s Sake. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The novel meanders along as she experiments with sensualism. As Selin bounces from one experience (boys, books, countries, etc.) to the next, Either/Or never gets tied down to any one story line
Something to think on …
We did not happen to be--we were chosen by God to exist.
— Mother Angelica, born on this dare in 1923
Tuesday, April 19, 2022
Trusty sidekicks …
… A VETERINARIAN’S PERSPECTIVE ON WRITING ANIMALS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… animals live in a completely different sensory environment than we do. They see things we cannot see. They hear things we cannot hear. They smell things we cannot smell. And they sense things we cannot sense. These may not always be important things, but they’re there, nonetheless. Humans arrogantly assume that the reality they perceive is the true and complete version of reality. How can this house not be empty? And this night not be silent? And this air not be odorless? But of course, all of this is just mediated through our senses and is necessarily limited, or we would become overwhelmed by the input. Evolution equipped us with what we needed, no more and no less. Different animals have had different evolutionary needs, and thus their senses are equipped differently, and their experience of the world is different, sometimes very different.
Something to think on …
Language is not a handmaiden to perception; it is perception; it gives shape to what would otherwise be inert and dead.
— Stanley Fish, born on this date in 1938
Hardly surprising …
… Identity politics is killing Hollywood, and the academic presses. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Judaism to Meyers is a series of bien-pensant beliefs that achieve their true and real form in works of middle-brow entertainment. The movie theater becomes a temple while an actual temple is no more than the most antiquated of theaters: one without a projection booth.
Monday, April 18, 2022
Hmm …
… Dorsey Rips Twitter Board for ‘Dysfunction’ After Musk Accuses It of Failing to Represent Shareholders.
The Twitter board, Dorsey then replied, has “consistently been the dysfunction of the company.”
I take back the negative thing I have sometimes said about Jack Dorsey. I think I understand matters better now.
Something to think on …
Since philosophy is a dialogue, there is no reason to suppose that the last one to give his opinion is the one who is right.
— Don Colacho
Sunday, April 17, 2022
He Is Risen …
Emmaus
And it came to pass, whilst he was at table with them, he took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him: and he vanished out of their sight.
He appeared to us that day to disappear
The moment that he broke the bread,
A moment still encompassing our lives,
Drawing to itself, like a magnet at once
Minute and infinitely strong, our present,
Past and future, so that the choking dust
Along the road, the splinters on the benches
At the inn, the glare and scorching of the sun
That afternoon have shaped and shaded
Every moment ever since. He disappeared
Into the moment, into the bread, into us,
Nourishing time with its absence.
Just so you know …
… Jesus's Resurrection Is Probably The Best-Documented Historical Event.
Particularly noteworthy is that there were no accounts of witnesses who came forth and disputed these appearances or called it a “hoax.” Not a single one. Nor do we find any historical record of any witness accounts that were contradictory.
Something to think on …
If you write to impress it will always be bad, but if you write to express it will be good
— Thornton Wilder, born on this date in 1897
Saturday, April 16, 2022
Interesting …
… Transitions have 'gone too far': trans psychologist.
Erica Anderson, 71 — who is transgender herself — told the Los Angeles Times that she is horrified that even 13-year-old kids are now getting hormone treatment without even meeting with psychologists.
Maybe …
… He who ne’er learns his ABC, forever will a blockhead be.
Some of the dumbest people I’ve met were quite literate.
What the hell is wrong with Teen Vogue …
… Teen Vogue Tries to Educate Readers About Passover, but Forgets Something Major | CAMERA..
Read the whole thing. Appalling.
Amis and language …
… Anecdotal Evidence: 'The Concept of Finding the Right Word'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“Various changes, not all of them educational, have seen to it that most of the men and women who use words in public don’t care any more which words they are, apart from a feeble hankering after the seemingly stylish. The concept of finding the right word, which used to be a strong influence on that of finding a good word, is being lost. How such people keep awake while they write is beyond me.”
Something to think on …
It is natural and harmless in English to use a preposition to end a sentence with.
— Kingsley Amis, born on this date in 1922
Friday, April 15, 2022
A great scholar and a cool guy …
… Once upon a time in America : Historian and biographer David McCullough honored at Bates College in 2006 (and elsewhere in 2022).
Yes, I once gad a very pleasant lunch with David McCullough. One of my unforgettable experiences.
In memoriam …
Septimus knew what he was doing, quietly replacing the dominant image with a different one, a more “monastic” interpretation. A subversive wit was one of the weapons in his own armoury, if a man of such a stable temperament could be said to have weapons at all. He was no respecter of persons, especially if he suspected them of cant or riding roughshod over the interests of others. He enjoyed doing commissions for churches especially because they were public and sacred spaces where his sculpture could take its place without drawing attention to itself only as an admired object.
McLuhan the Catholic …
… Mass Media as a Form of Mass: The Millions Interviews Nick Ripatrazone - The Millions. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In his new book Digital Communion: Marshall McLuhan’s Spiritual Vision for a Digital Age (Fortress Press, 2022), Nick Ripatrazone puts McLuhan the media theorist, the glib performer, the Renaissance scholar, and the devout Roman Catholic on full display. And he makes compelling claims for revitalizing McLuhan’s ideas and his methods today, as we navigate the digital worlds McLuhan predicted. In Ripatrazone’s view, it is McLuhan’s Roman Catholic faith that has been underexplored and remains necessary for appraising his work and applying it within both sacred and secular environments today.
This guy must have been the stupidist kid in religion class …
… Father pens shocking, disturbing essay in Slate about teaching his 12-year-old son how to masturbate - TheBlaze.
In my day you jerked off, went to confession, and cane back the following week. You sure in hell didn’t feel the need for therapy.
Hmm …
… Wittgenstein on Christianity - by William F. Vallicella. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I grant that in religion orthopraxy trumps orthodoxy. But correct practice presupposes correct belief. Belief in turns refers us beyond the immanence of practices, rites, rituals, formulas and the like; to believe that such-and-such is to believe that such-and-such is true. The very intentionality or object-directedness of belief ‘resurrects’ the question of the correctness of what is believed, and thus the question of objective truth.
I quite agree.
Blogging note …
Once again, I have errands to run this morning. So I will be heading out shortly and will resume blogging this afternoon.
Something to think on …
Oh, whoever has been himself alone can never find another’s loneliness strange.
— Robert Walser, born on this date in 1878
Thursday, April 14, 2022
Cause for concern …
… Flyover State of Mind: A Requiem for America’s Heartland.
There’s not a clear alternative to this cultural encroachment. After all, flyover states may be skeptical about an influx of Californians, but what should “refugees” do when they can’t afford the cost of living? Is it worth avoiding technology to support traditional industries like agriculture if, as the Cato Institute argues, its subsidization causes “all sorts of economic, environmental, and political problems”?
My colleagues at The Inquirer used to tell me I was the only person they knew who vacationed in the Midwest, usually Wisconsin. Well, farm country can be beautiful. Drive near Soldiers Grove when the apple orchards are in blossom. And farmers are pretty smart. Those I got to know did not approve of the federal agriculture subsidies, pointing out that it was targeted for the big industrial farms, not family farms.
The passion for cats …
… You can’t shake your white cat because your white cat is you. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I have hundreds of books in my house, and I know if I dug around for awhile I’d find a few others about cats. Just the other day I was tidying the tall to-be-read pile on my office floor and found The Cat Inside, a slender book of short pieces by William Burroughs. I’d bought this book a few years ago, along with a copy for my mother and one for my sister, with the idea that we could read it and have a little book club discussion about it, which for whatever reason didn’t happen. The only time we successfully did this was with the trash-memoir Mommie Dearest, and I might have been the only one who read much of the book, but we laughed a lot.
The real neo-Nazis …
…
… the clearest, most obvious form of antisemitism that tries to obscure itself behind antizionism is when one can substitute the word "Zionist" for the word "Jew," and one is left with an obvious, longstanding antisemitic trope.
From experiences I have had lately, antisemitism is increasingly popular with certain people.
A poet goes shopping …
… Wallace Stevens and the magic of stuff. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tomorrow I am going to New York to do a number of errands and otherwise nothing at all. Perhaps I shall have my hair cut. I know almost no one there any more, so that I am like a ghost in a cemetery reading epitaphs. I am going to visit a bookbinder, a dealer in autographs, Brook’s about pajamas, try to find a copy of Revue de Paris for December because of an article about Alain that it contains, visit a baker, a fruit dealer and, as it may be, a barber. An ordinary day like that does more for me than an extraordinary day: the bread of life is better than any souffle
Something to think on …
The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
— Arnold J. Toynbee, born on this date in 1889
Wednesday, April 13, 2022
Very informative …
… Why Did Thomas Aquinas Leave his Summa Theologiae Unfinished? - Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical.
Jonathan Malesic [witing in Commonweal] finds the traditional explanation "suspiciously pious." (My inclination is to say that his rejection of the traditional explanation is suspiciously post-modern.)
Why do these dumps continue to call themselves Catholic …
… Bishop Disinvited From Catholic University Commencement | Newsmax.com.
The answer, of course, is so they can sucker parents into paying their outrageous tuition.
A vintage appraisal …
… A touch of class by Terry Teachout | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Where did the young Kingsley Amis learn to turn class differences into a source of biting comedy? For years, the American paperback edition of Lucky Jim carried on its cover the following blurb from Arthur Mizener: “No one has been so funny in this vein since Evelyn Waugh was at his best.” While Amis has consistently acknowledged the influence of Waugh, he has also been careful not to overemphasize it. “I’m flattered,” he said in 1985, “but the analogy is misleading. Waugh wrote very elegant comedy. His people spoke beautifully. Compared with his works, mine look like grim documentaries.”
Dave also sends along this: Amis (Pronounced “Ames”) Centenary.
Something to think on …
Against the charitable gesture there is no defence.
— Samuel Beckett, born on this date in 1906
Tuesday, April 12, 2022
Interesting indeed …
… EXCLUSIVE: 32,000 travellers from mainland China arrived on hundreds of flights over four weeks in early 2020 - Rebel News.
… 32,415 arrivals from mainland China landed in Canadian airports over 28 days.
Heroism and holiness …
… Edmund Campion: A more than academic English martyr | Catholic Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Waugh’s is not a scholarly or academic biography. It is rather, as the novelist Graham Green remarked, “a model of what a short biography should be”. In the Preface to the first edition, the author explains that he has deliberately chosen to avoid excessive notes as well, offering references only where “the actual words of a document are quoted, or where the point is likely to be controversial.” The second appendix provides what was at that time a list of the most readily available sources on which Waugh relied for his research.
Being and metaphor …
Poetry as Theology: Reflections on Ephrem the Syrian and Richard Wilbur (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It is in seeing poems like “Hamlen Brook” as events and things in their own right that we may also discern their theological and theophanic potentials. This is key to an understanding of ‘sacred’ art or poetry in general: our creative works may be considered sacred, not simply for what they say, but for how they say it: indeed for what they are as instantiations of a transfigured world.6
Naturally, the NYT disapproves …
… Conservative college offers ‘classical’ charters.
“Classical education guides us into freedom by making us self-reliant and responsible, capable of governing ourselves and taking part in the self-government of our communities.”
Some private schools also used the curriculum.
Something to think on …
One rainy Sunday when I was in the third grade, I picked up a book to look at the pictures and discovered that even though I did not want to, I was reading. I have been a reader ever since.
— Beverly Cleary, born on this date in 1916
In case you wondered …
… Does a Literary Titan Need a Titanic Biography? - Intercollegiate Studies Institute. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Lee makes use of the drama in Stoppard’s life in telling her story. She has also been given access to his personal letters, and she demonstrates a novelist’s skill in depicting the complexities of her many characters. This includes not just Stoppard but his three wives, three siblings, four children, and many others. Lee is also a sensitive critic, and she has a deft touch in noting when Stoppard’s work has fallen flat, as with his convoluted spy drama “Hapgood.”
Monday, April 11, 2022
Simply brilliant …
… The Philosopher and the Christian, (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
So is the Christian the true philosopher? Only in the sense that philosophy points beyond itself to something that is no longer philosophy but that completes philosophy while cancelling it. I am tempted to reach for an Hegelian trope while turning it on its head: if Christianity is true, then philosophy is aufgehoben, sublated, in it. If Christianity is true, then the Christian arrives at the truth that the philosopher at best aims at but cannot arrive at by his method and way of life, the life of autonomous understanding. To achieve what he aims at, the philosopher would have to be "as a little child" and accept in obedient love the gift of Revelation. But it is precisely that which he cannot do if he is to remain a philosopher in the strict sense, one who lives the life of autonomous understanding.
Sorry, kids …
… Students cry because Catholic chaplain opposes pride flag, follows ‘theological beliefs’.
If you don’t want Catholic doctrine be decisive at a Catholic university, one has to wonder why you are attending a Catholic university. I am of course a graduate of a Catholic university.
Something to think on …
Words sing. They hurt. They teach. They sanctify. They were man's first, immeasurable feat of magic. They liberated us from ignorance and our barbarous past.
— Leo Rosten, born on this date in 1908
Sunday, April 10, 2022
Something to think on …
Matter is spirit moving slowly enough to be seen.
— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who died on this date in 1956
California livin’ …
… Secretary of the invisible thing | Washington Examiner.
More daring and more rewarding than a straightforward biography of the self-exiled Polish poet, A California Lifechannels the tensions between Miłosz and his adoptive home and lets that friction energize the project. In other words, this is less about a poet and his life and more about how a brilliant artist and thinker steeped in Old World culture learned to exist in the amnesiac fog of California.
See also: Episode 218: The Captive Mind by Czeslaw Milosz.
Saturday, April 09, 2022
A noteworthy debut …
… My Hollywood by Boris Dralyuk Review by David Mason - The Los Angeles Review The Los Angeles Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
For the Ukrainian-American poet, editor, and translator Boris Dralyuk, Hollywood is “a grand old dame reduced to dishabille, / her glory far too faded to restore.” Dralyuk sees the city from the perspective of immigrants and refugees, as the seat of exile and hope, connected by mythology and money to each of its surrounding communities. His individual poems may at first appear slight in their ambition, but they accumulate a vision and recover a history too few remember. With a verbal facility reminiscent at its best of Byron or Pushkin, Dralyuk writes often in received forms like the Onegin sonnet. He rhymes cleverly: “Pasadena” with “misdemeanors,” “demolished” with “polished,” “aloes” with “gallows.” His subjects are faded landmarks, artists one doesn’t expect to find in LA like Thomas Mann, Aldous Huxley, Arnold Schoenberg, or film stars of a bygone age. He writes with enthusiasm about diminished lives, and the result in this first collection of poems, My Hollywood, is a book of elegant realism, a worthy addition to the poetry of “Los Angeles.”
See also: BORIS DRALYUK.
Blogging note …
I have to go out shortly to do some shopping. I won’t be blogging again until this afternoon.
Something to think on …
The biggest mistake you can make in your life is to be always afraid of making a mistake.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who died on this date in 1945
Friday, April 08, 2022
Hmm …
… Declassified Pentagon documents discuss UFOs causing "unaccounted-for pregnancies" | Salon.com.
The Pentagon documents state that people who observed unidentified flying objects frequently displayed a cluster of similar physical symptoms: Injuries consistent with exposure to electromagnetic radiation (such as burns), heart ailments, and sleep disturbances. A report speculates that these could be caused by "energy related propulsion systems" and warns that the underlying technology could pose a "threat to United States interests." Additionally, in cases that would not seem out of place in an "X-Files" episode, there were accounts of "apparent abduction" and "unaccounted for pregnancy."