Sebald’s sentences
“Max” W.G. Sebald wrote some of the most mesmerising sui generis texts of 20th century literature….
Cantos from a cage
Today I am reposting this reflection on the true heritage of Ezra Pound, Cantos from a…
This grey spirit seeking a sinking star
But more so than the moulted carapace of governing that lies at my feet, I connected to the adventurer of the spirit, weakened by age and misfortune, that Tennyson saw in Ulysses. It was this grey spirit that I turned to this morning for the courage to continue.
Taking time with Szymborska
I have established several practices for the New Year to make it a more mindful, culturally…
My last words on 2020 from Thomas Browne’s Urn Burial
Oblivion. Death. The rites we practise to farewell the dead. What better themes to end 2020?…
Fragments from the Burning Archive: Mikhail Bakhtin
I plunged again into my white box of old handwritten index cards today, and pulled from…
Fragments from the Burning Archive: Anna Akhmatova
In my study is a box of old index cards with fragmentary thoughts, notes on narratives…
culture / history / literature
Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857
Today, I am reposting this response to William Dalrymple’s magnificent The Last Mughal: the Fall of…
Axel’s Castle, a mirror and an encyclopaedia
Today I am reposting this post from April 2, 2018 that reflected on some of the…
An interlude on Solzhenitsyn
Prophets are despised in their own country, and now and then I am tempted deeply by…