Wallace Stevens is a poet of comedy, and comedy relieves the distress of tragic history. Comedy reconciles the restless, Romantic imagination with the present and the real. When the world falls apart, one must cultivate one's garden, but also tell some comic stories over dinner. It is comedy, not alone but inseparable, that moves the infinite conversation on.
What I am reading
A revelation from Rumi
This morning I read some poems from Hafez (c 1315-1390) that celebrated love and wine and striving of a mysticism. Notwithstanding the art, the sentiments left me cold, and so I recovered from an earlier post this different sentiment of Rumi that speaks more to my sense of the spirit of the times: "Sometimes the … Continue reading A revelation from Rumi
Ezra Pound, the unavowable fury of thy true heritage in fragments
The story of Ezra Pound's mind cannot be told in plain and simple affirmations. Three twisted trees grow from this mind in all accounts: poetry, unavowable politics, and madness. They stand tangled and tragic in a strange, haunted copse that very few today will see as an holy trinity. The iconoclasts of today's fanatical cancel … Continue reading Ezra Pound, the unavowable fury of thy true heritage in fragments
On living not by lies
2020 has taught us through bitter experience that our societies are not vaccinated against totalitarianism, and certainly not the mutant strain of "soft totalitarianism" described in Rod Dreher's Live Not by Lies: a Manual for Christian Dissidents (2020). The last year has seen lockdowns, curfews and bans on the most fundamental human relationships (attendance at … Continue reading On living not by lies
My reading archive (March to July 2020)
Over at my blog's My reading archive page, I have updated my notes on my main readings over the March to July period. I feel there were other books read and completed in this time, but I have forgotten for now. There is a very heavy political history/philosophy feel to the readings, as I try … Continue reading My reading archive (March to July 2020)
The condescension of posterity
Frank Furedi has proposed an intriguing idea that the spectre haunting radical identity politics, the Rainbow Guards of our raging Cultural Revolution, is a difficulty with borders. The boundaries between nations, genders, the public/private, and key characteritics of populations are being torn down, and being replaced by a convenient chaos of fluidity and the new … Continue reading The condescension of posterity
Emmanuel Todd’s Lineages of Modernity
"Never have human groups of such a size been so rich, so old, so educated, so devoid of collective beliefs."Emmanuel Todd, Lineages of Modernity, p 21 I picked up from the local library Emmanuel Todd's Lineages of Modernity: a history of humanity from the Stone Age to Homo Americanus. It is a sweeping reconception of … Continue reading Emmanuel Todd’s Lineages of Modernity
A revelation from Rumi
Sitting in a shopping centre cafe, I am reading A Year with Rumi. I am waiting for a back massage, sipping a coffee and listening to Sam Harris and Johann Hari speaking about addiction, depression and the loss of connection and control in our society. I woke this morning with the thought that I wanted … Continue reading A revelation from Rumi
Reflections on 2018… a year of history
Looking over my posts for the year I am struck by the recurrence of history in my material. I have read more history than literature this year - although of course I would believe that history is one branch of literature. A quick recap of my year's reading, before some reflections on what all this … Continue reading Reflections on 2018… a year of history
What I am reading… Gerard Manley Hopkins
Here, listen to the uncanny insight... 75 The times are nightfall, look, their light grows less; The times are winter, watch, a world undone: They waste, they wither worse; they as they run Or bring more or more blazon man's distress. And I not help. Nor word now of success: All is from wreck, here, … Continue reading What I am reading… Gerard Manley Hopkins
What I am reading … the Opium war and chai
I am reading Stephen Platt, Imperial Twilight: the Opium War and the end of China's last golden age (Knopf 2018), in which he describes the initial attempt by British traders and soldiers to establish a trading post at Canton via a partly successful military adventure in 1637. The tactical success amounted to little initially since … Continue reading What I am reading … the Opium war and chai
What I am reading… Weber’s iron cage and prophecy of cultural demise
Two passages from Max Weber's The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism: "The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when asceticism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of … Continue reading What I am reading… Weber’s iron cage and prophecy of cultural demise
The Burning Archive 