Regaining time
The other evening, I pulled from the shelf the sixth and last volume of Marcel Proust’s…
Poem: the tethered mind
The tethered mind The mind prowls, tethered to its past. An unknown unknown rises from An…
culture / history / literature
Cultural collapse: Delhi 1857
“This whole city has become a desert.” Ghalib 1861 William Dalrymple’s The Last Mughal: the Fall…
The reenchantment of the world
This morning I feel stuck for words. A heat wave has exhausted me, and the end…
A task: from Milosz to me
A short post. The miracle of literature: how words crafted for another voice, at another time,…
More reflections on 2017: persistence, terror and Das Schloss
Persistence Twelve months ago I was approaching Christmas and the end of a liberating period of…
Reflections on 2017
The year is drawing to a close, and while it is yet weeks from New Year,…
On revenge
“All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event – in the…
Forgetting Foucault
Over recent weeks I have chanced upon a few biographical articles on Michel Foucault. One was…
Self-portrait in a time of hunger
“The storm of progress now threatens to burn the remaining archives of human memory. In an…