Tag Archives: literature

Fernando Pessoa – Weaver of the Soul

Posted on December 10, 2017 by Symbol Reader

“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 →

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The Swelling Sound of Beauty Arriving: The Writing of Elena Ferrante

Posted on April 27, 2017 by Symbol Reader

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 →

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Like the Rainbow on the Waterfall: the Mystical Aura of Consumption

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Symbol Reader

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 →

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Shakespeare and Goethe on Love: from Despair to Hope

Posted on February 14, 2016 by Symbol Reader

“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 →

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Stamped on the Underside of My Memory

Posted on December 26, 2015 by Symbol Reader

“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 →

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“The Starry Night” by Anne Sexton

Posted on July 5, 2015 by Symbol Reader

“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 →

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Salammbô

Posted on April 30, 2015 by Symbol Reader

I.“Her hair, which was powdered with violet sand, and combined into the form of a tower, after the fashion of the Chanaanite maidens, added to her height. Tresses of pearls were fastened to her temples, and fell to the corners … Continue reading →

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Reflections on Don Quixote: The Universe of Fiction

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Symbol Reader

“Idle Reader: Without my swearing to it, you can believe that I would like this book, the child of my understanding, to be the most beautiful, the most brilliant, and the most discreet that anyone could imagine. … I wanted … Continue reading →

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The Birch and Biopoesis

Posted on March 9, 2015 by Symbol Reader

After his wife’s death, a broken man lives in an isolated forest with his little daughter:  “Nothing had been able to call him out of the fog that had enveloped him ever since his wife’s death; he saw everything through … Continue reading →

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Foggy Breath of Life

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Symbol Reader

“THE BREATHING” by Denise Levertov An absolute patience. Trees stand up to their knees in fog. The fog slowly flows uphill. White cobwebs, the grass leaning where deer have looked for apples. The woods from brook to where the top … Continue reading →

Posted in Poetry | Tagged , , , | 19 Comments