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alms for oblivion
http://almsforoblivion.blogspot.com
There are some things I want to think about--modernity and its discontents for starters, which includes just about everything . . .
Recent Posts
de Maistre & The Magic Mountain (continued)
Here are some lines from The Petersburg Dialogues (1821) that will give you some sense of the quality, and clarity, of de Maistre's mind (if you accept his assumptions, you have to accept his conclusions):Do you realize, gentlemen, the source of this...
Joseph de Maistre and The Magic Mountain
Trying to be clear about the meaning of the word 'modernity', or at any rate what I myself thought it meant, I set down the following remarks in the Introduction to my book on Shakespeare, Shakespearean Questions (2007): "A realist, like Machiavelli,...
The Conventional, The Real and The Genuine
A convention is a thing agreed upon—perhaps by the relevant authorities, at a convention; or, perhaps by The People, tacitly. The U.S. constitution was hammered out in 1787 at a meeting or convention—a coming together— held in Philadelphia. The...
Chekhov and The Inner Life
Chekhov said in one of his letters, "there's no making out anything in this world" and a little later in one of his stories—About Love (1898)—has one of his characters elaborate on that idea: "So far only one incontestable truth has been stated a...
Chekhov And The Two Cultures
Chekhov is unique: a great writer who understands, not abstractly but from the inside, that both art and science are forms of inquiry: radically different forms of inquiry, equally valid but virtually incompatible ways of knowing. I know of no other ...
T. S. Eliot and The Pure Poetry of Despair: Ash Wednesday (1930)
Ash Wednesday is supposed to be about Eliot's recovery of faith—he had joined the Anglican Church in 1927—but that's not how it sounds. Here's how it begins:Because I do not hope to turn againBecause I do not hopeBecause I do not hope to turnDesi...

