From The Film Stage press release: We’re delighted to exclusively announce that KimStim has acquired all North American rights to the Quay Brothers’ Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. A stop-motion/live-action masterpiece inspired by the works of Jewish-Polish author and artist Bruno Schulz, this personal passion project is their first feature since 2005’s The Piano Tuner of […]
Author: Dwight
The other day I wanted to look up something in Shakespeare in Swahililand by Edward Wilson-Lee but couldn’t find my copy of the book. Searching online, I stumbled across the podcast of Shakespeare Unlimited’s Episode 83: Shakespeare in Swahililand from October 2017, with Edward Wilson-Lee and Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’o as guests. From the episode: Edward […]
The War on the Poor by Éric VuillardTranslation by Mark PolizzottiOther Press, 2020 I have been reading a few books about the Peasants’ War of 1524-25, a somewhat timely endeavor since we’re at the 500 year mark of the war’s culmination. I was going to post on one book I thought extremely well done and […]
At the risk of sounding like I’m shilling for yet another PBS show, I highly recommend Jacqueline du Pré: Genius and Tragedy currently on PBS. Narrator Yo-Yo Ma describes du Pré as the “greatest instrumentalist of the 20th century.” While obviously a debatable opinion, her virtuosity on the cello is not. Some of the descriptions […]
This book tells the story of Cicero and his rise to prominence as a trial lawyer, from his debut in the courts in the late 80s BC to his death nearly four decades later. Cicero’s successful defense of many influential men accused of murder, extortion, and other crimes earned him wealth, favors to call in, […]
Phocion (402–318 BCE) won Athens’s highest public office by direct democratic election an unmatched forty-five times and was officially honored as a “Useful Citizen.” A student at Plato’s Academy, Phocion gained influence and power during a time when Athens faced multiple crises stemming from Macedonia’s emergence as an international power under Philip II and his […]
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light premieres Sunday, March 23, 2025 on PBS. More about the show can be found here. I thought the first season of Wolf Hall, which covered Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, extremely well done. I didn’t read those books until after seeing the show and […]
This book is decidedly not a work of scholarship, stubbornly not. It offers a holistic interpretation of Plato’s Symposium, as is conventional among scholarly books, but departs by presenting it as a series of musings, beginning with the puzzles of the dialogue’s various parts, long perplexing to me, and ascending therefrom in the direction of […]
The sky is our songand we begin with Zeus, for men cannot speakwithout giving Him names. The streets are filled,the sea and its harbors are flooded with Zeus,and in Him we move and have all our being.For we are His children, and He blesses our racewith beneficent signs, and wakes man to his work,directing his […]
This is a study of the study, the personal workspace where we think, read, and write. I argue for the following: Transhistorically, our inner lives are shaped by our interior spaces. Historically, the studiolo was created in the Renaissance. Conceptually, the studiolo is a pharmakon, a cure or poison for the soul. In its highest aspirations, the studiolo, as […]
I’ve been reading Andrew Hui’s The Study: The Inner Life of Renaissance Libraries and the pictures in the book include plates showing Montaigne’s chateau tower and the inscriptions in the tower library. All of which reminded me of Robinson Jeffers’ Tor House in Carmel. I toured it twice when living near it and enjoyed both […]
But the fundamental, intrinsic reason for culture’s ongoing decline, its petering out, is its secularization. For several centuries now, the minds of enlightened humanity have been increasingly captivated by anthropocentrism—more politely called humanism—which in the twentieth century risked morphing almost into totalitarianism. But a hubristic anthropocentrism can provide no answers to many of life’s vital questions, […]
Then began the abominable days of Paradise. Our Parents’ tireless, desperate efforts were devoted entirely to surviving in the midst of a Nature that was ceaselessly, furiously plotting their destruction. And Adam and Eve spent those days—which Semitic texts celebrate as delightful—always trembling, always whimpering always fleeing! The Earth was very much a work in […]
So griefs and various disasters shall grip them, as they mourn their destiny of no return, the requital for my ill-wedded violation. Not even those who jouyfully arrive home at last will light votive flames of sacrifice, paying thanks to Kerdylas, the Larynthian. [Zeus] (lines 1087-1092) The glory of the race of my grandfathers will be […]
I finally got around to reading Mikhail Shishkin’s interview at the Asymptote journal. He goes into some depth on his writing of Maidenhair, his view of Russian politics, and the launch of a new literary prize (Dar) that celebrates Russian-language literature. Much of the first two I’ve covered before, especially in my posts covering an […]
And now for something completely different… The Boise area has surprised me with its vibrant music scene. It might not get many of the ‘big names’ coming through, but I’m enjoying the ones that do make it here. I wanted to make a few notes on my favorite shows of the year. Favorites The Lemon […]
The posthumous image of him has been entangled with the real individual, and no one has really fully tried to disentangle them. But achieving that would provide us with a unique window into both the life of the court and fundamental conceptions of humour, humanity, and deviance in the Reneissance. … Fool: In Search of Henry […]
Dante: Inferno to Paradise is a two-part, four-hour documentary film chronicling the life, work and legacy of the great 14th century Florentine poet, Dante Alighieri, and his epic masterpiece, The Divine Comedy, one of the greatest achievements in the history of Western Literature. The ambition of the film, which combines powerful dramatic reenactments, colorful interviews with […]
Readers to this book are likely aware, more or less, of the basic facts of the genocide of European Jews in the Second World War. Yet the mass killings of non-Jewish Belarusians during the same period have only recently been dragged out of the shadows, thanks to US historian Timothy Snyder’s tour de force of […]
Well, that was a long silence, wasn’t it? I have moved my site over from Blogger. I took the first steps a couple of years ago but didn’t follow up on the maintenance/correction issues necessary until now. I am on the last page reviews of correcting or updating posts. I plan on posting on books […]