Take a lucky dip in this refreshing pool of posts, randomly selected like literary Russian roulette (but more fun and much safer). Or filter by category to take a deeper dive into specific themes. Enjoy!
Perlerorneq
May you be ever spared this suffocating, madness-inducing winter depression. Lopez describes the misery or insanity it can bring on,...
A singing map
I loved this idea, using a song to guide you in lieu of a map. From one of Rory Stewart's...
Free to go
Please, if you read and enjoy this vivid metaphor, do me the favour of using it at least once so...
Silver-handled flyswatter
Just what you've always wanted, I'm sure. This caught my attention, the existence of silver-handled flyswatters, particularly as it was...
City-ravaging Odysseus
The dark side of Odysseus, the luminous hero. Capable of such delicacy, sincerity, loyalty, he is also often merciless and...
May you never be reft
'To reave' is an archaic verb meaning to carry out raids for plunder, or to rob somebody by force, with the past...
Poems for my family 004 – Durrell
Listening time: under 5 minutes.
Durrell has long been a favourite writer and poet. When I first read his Alexandria...
Sing what you cannot say
In January 1942, a score of Verdi's Requiem was smuggled into Theresienstadt concentration camp and performed by prisoners, conducted by Rafael...
Letters unopened
We use the term ‘back of the envelope’ to capture the notion of jotting down an idea or plan on...
Dredger-bucket mouth
You can see this gaping maw hoovering up all in its path.
'Its dredger-bucket mouth agape for the...
Immortality by reading
This wonderful quotation was published in El Pais in the days following Umberto Eco’s passing. Wishing you 5,000 years of reading-endowed...
Upright and unflinching
A touching and imaginative fictional description of the complexity of Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603). Orlando is a young boy of...
Bright-bubbled barrier
I liked the alliteration of this triologism, and the recurrence of bubbles in the water-washed world of otters. Bubbles...
Cream-coloured ponies
These ponies trot up to Orlando's front door within days of the many court cases arrayed against her over a...
Appreciation is a better mode for the understanding of achievement than are all the analytical kinds of accounting for the emergence of exceptional individuals. Appreciation may judge, but always with gratitude, and frequently with awe and wonder.
By ‘appreciation’ I mean something more than ‘adequate esteem’. Need also enters into it, in the particular sense of turning to the genius of others in order to redress a lack in oneself, or finding in genius a stimulus to one’s own powers, whatever these may emerge as being.
Source: Harold Bloom, Genius (London: Fourth Estate, 2002), p. 5
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