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!
On living forever
Listening time: 2 minutes. This long and winding quotation enchanted me to the extent that I wrote it out...
Deep-thrilling chord
Jane Eyre knows Rochester has been emotionally overloaded and hesitates to add any more weight to his burdened heart.
'I...
Reed-fringed spinney
Many years since I heard the word 'spinney'. I remember it as a secret, hidden spot in the local park...
Stunt-hoop tambourines
The timbre and beat of martial music as the Greek states gather behind Agamemnon for an almighty war.
‘Immediately
...
On spherical emotions and the need for adjectives
Never thought of emotions as spherical before, but grasp the need for their many-sided expression. And the fact that emotions...
Life lived as a rose trellis
One of Rilke's translators used this surprising and touching metaphor to describe him. I like the idea of being -...
Tapestry-hung hall
An instant image of a hundred English great halls of Tudor or later provenance, the walls lined with a thousand...
Ever-victorious life
In this vivid story set in war time Russia, a Communist officer is billeted in a humble household to give...
They had dreams too
One of the most elusive aspects of history, and perhaps insurmountably so, concerns what people felt, thought, and dreamed. Yet...
From tapers to tinder
I loved this description of a young boy going to all lengths to be able to read as much as...
Why read literature?
‘Why read literature? Because it enriches life in ways that nothing else quite can. It makes us more human.’
I'm...
Where hope begins
At first glance this posits the last place you would think to look for the beginnings of hope: where there...
The art of story-telling
Henry Miller is himself a wonderful writer, and this comment about a critical element of successful story-telling took me by...
Seneca the Stoic
Erasmus' triologism to describe Seneca as a dyed in the wool Stoic. I prefer the alliteration of 'double-dyed'.
Letters and the lapse of time
A moving comment on the effects of time and separation, and the hiatus of news caused by war. Firstly, the...
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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