Carl Schmitt (1888–1985) was a conservative German legal, constitutional, and political theorist. Schmitt is often considered to be one of the most important critics of liberalism, parliamentary democracy, and liberal cosmopolitanism. But the value and significance of Schmitt’s work is subject to controversy, mainly due to his intellectual support for and active involvement with National […]
Author: Dwight
Last week, TCM aired the 1963 TV documentary Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment directed by Robert Drew. From the linked DrewAssociates link: When Governor George Wallace literally stands in the schoolhouse door to block the admittance of two African-American students to the all-white University of Alabama in June 1963, President Kennedy is forced to decide […]
Kafka, Čapek, Kundera and Havel, these are all world renowned names, but what about all the others? How well are Czech authors actually known abroad? Can you find a bookshop in Berlin, Madrid, Moscow, Paris or New York that aside from classics such as The Good Soldier Švejk also sell the works of contemporary Czech […]
(Pictures from hlo.hu) László F. Földényi was author of the month for February at Hungarian Literature Online, and they have closed out the month with a bang. Today they provided one of Földényi’s essays, “Goya’s Dog,” at their site. The translation is by Ottilie Mulzet, the same translator for the collection of essays Dostoyevsky Reads […]
Last night I attended a lecture by Maria Pia Paganelli, president of the International Adam Smith Society. The talk was part of the Adam Smith Lecture Series at Boise State University. Some of the previous years’ lectures are described at their site as well as links to recordings of them. It looks like quite the […]
There’s also a great entry in one of Hawthorne’s journals about when Hawthorne became the ambassador to England. He invited Melville to come visit him and they walked on the moors. Apparently Hawthorne wrote something like: “Out rambling on the moors all morning with Melville this morning. God again.” That’s an eloquent two word summary […]
Sorry for the extended silence, but it’s been an eventual couple of months during the sale and move. The move-in is more or less complete, tons of unpacking still needs to be done (including all my books), and we’ll actually all be together here before the end of the month. For someone whose life ambition […]
Things are going to be busier than normal until year-end. We’re packing up our house over the next week, then camping out in our home for a couple of weeks before the sale closes. Working on finishing up the semester for the boys is taking more work than getting them enrolled in their new schools, […]
One of my favorite magazines/journals has been Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, published by Contra Mundum Press. Unfortunately there hasn’t been an issue in four years (see update) but there should be a new issue available later this month. The CMP folks were nice enough to send me the table of contents for the […]
We’ve all heard the quote attributed to Cicero. I’ve still got the Amazon refrigerator magnet with the quote. But is it really a body without a soul? Especially when books and souls meant something completely different to Cicero than they do to us today. Without a doubt, I can say the house feels emptier without […]