"The deepest core of life is poetry and symbol." - Dane Rudhyar
Tag Archives: literature
Hamnet and Tutankhamun
Shakespeare’s life is a great mystery but we do know that he had a son, Hamnet, who died at the age 11, possibly from the plague. Four years after his son’s death, Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, maybe his greatest masterpiece. In … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged afterlife, ancient Egypt, archetypes, art, burial, death, fiction, grave, Hamnet, Howard Carter, literature, Maggie O'Farrell, mask, Osiris, Shakespeare, symbolism, symbols, tomb, truth, Tutankhamun, Tutankhamun's mask
4 Comments
Little Women 2019: A Short Review
Louisa May Alcott, author of Little Women, experienced both enchantment and wretched poverty in her early years. Her father was an intellectual and member of the Transcendentalist movement, which meant that little Louisa met Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo … Continue reading
“Blessed is he who leaves” – “Flights” by Olga Tokarczuk
This year’s Man Booker international prize went to a Polish author, Olga Tokarczuk for Flights. It is an absorbing tale, or rather a collection of tales, devoted to the nomad in everyone of us. More than that, a large part … Continue reading
Posted in Novel review, Uncategorized
Tagged Bieguni, body, book review, Flights, International Man Booker Prize, literature, nomads, Olga Tokarczuk, relics, symbolism, symbols, wanderers
11 Comments
Fernando Pessoa – Weaver of the Soul
“Weavers of despair, let us weave only shrouds – white shrouds for the dreams we never dreamed, black shrouds for the days when we die, grey shrouds for the gestures we only dreamed of, imperial purple shrouds for our futile … Continue reading
Posted in Fernando Pessoa, Uncategorized
Tagged Book of Disquietude, confession, diary, Fernando Pessoa, heteronyms, literature, poetry, Soul
18 Comments
The Swelling Sound of Beauty Arriving: The Writing of Elena Ferrante
Two girls grow up in an impoverished neighbourhood in Naples. To merely describe them as friends would be an understatement, for they share a ferocious bond. It all started while they were playing with their dolls alongside each other: “We … Continue reading
Posted in Elena Ferrante, Uncategorized
Tagged book review, Elena Ferrante, literature, My Brilliant Friend
5 Comments
Like the Rainbow on the Waterfall: the Mystical Aura of Consumption
While the fourteenth century was ravaged by the Black Death, the nineteenth century belonged to tuberculosis, or the White Death, a disease much more insidious and widespread. John Keats died of it at the age of twenty-six, and so did … Continue reading
Posted in Tuberculosis
Tagged art, consumption, Davos, death, disease, Edgar AllanPoe, Hans Castorp, illness, John Keats, life, literature, Magic Mountain, myth, Romanticism, sanatorium, symbolism, TB, Thomas Mann, Tuberculosis, White Death
6 Comments
Shakespeare and Goethe on Love: from Despair to Hope
“She had a wildness in her eyes and into it I plunged.” Goethe, “Sorrows of Young Werther” In January 1778 Christel von Lassberg drowned herself in the river Ilm, the reason most probably being unrequited love. A copy of Goethe’s … Continue reading
Posted in love, Uncategorized
Tagged bear, freezing, Goethe, hibernation, literature, love, passion, rebirth, regeneration, Romanticism, Shakespeare, spring, suffering, symbolism, symbols, trauma, Werther, Werther effect, winter, Winter's Tale
10 Comments
Stamped on the Underside of My Memory
“Every aurate woman I have loved in my life, and I use the word loved in its widest sense, has left her impression on me, as the old gods of creation are said to have left their thumbprints on the … Continue reading
Posted in Quotations, Uncategorized
Tagged Ancient Light, John Banville, literature, memory, quotes, the unconscious
9 Comments
“The Starry Night” by Anne Sexton
“The town does not exist except where one black-haired tree slips up like a drowned woman into the hot sky. The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars. Oh starry starry night! This is how I want to … Continue reading
