“Herodotus sometimes writes for children and sometimes for philosophers” – Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Herodotus has generated responses, positive and negative, over the years. Here is the opening of “Herodotus” by Lucian of Samosata (translated by H. W. Fowler and F. G. Fowler): I devoutly wish […]
Candaules, King of Lydia, Shews his Wife by Stealth to Gyges, One of his Ministers, as She Goes to Bed by William Etty 1787-1849 Herodotus of Halicarnassus here presents his research so that human events do not fade with time. May the great and wonderful deeds—some brought forth by the Hellenes, others by the barbarians—not […]
(I expect this post to be updated as I find more helpful links—there are more resources on the web for this work than I thought possible.) For someone that loved books, my reading habits have always been very random and I realized I could not remember important details of works I read. Understanding that I […]
The Rocky Mountains, Lander’s Peakby Albert Bierstadt (1863)Picture source Trevor at The Mookse and the Gripes recently reviewed John Williams’ Butcher’s Crossing, prodding me to look for the book in our library system. Fortunately they had one copy available and it is everything he claims. Trevor covers many of the parts I wanted to address […]
Someone put this up at a bus stop near where I work. I hope they know it causes a smile every day: Bus StopSanta Clara, California
Last month I linked to Pushkin’s Scene from Faust translated by Alan Shaw. He was kind enough to send me a link to his YouTube page that has From the 1979 TV film, Malenkie tragedii (Little Tragedies–Mozart and Salieri). dir. Mikhail Shveitser. Salieri: Innokenty Smoktunovsky. Mozart: Valery Zolotukhin. Subtitles adapted from A. Shaw’s translation of […]
Thanks to The Little Professor‘s post At the dawn of time…(I can’t find the link now, although the blog is still active), I went back to check out my first order in 1998 at Amazon. Has it been that long since I read these? Over thirteen years ago I received in the mail Paris in […]
This may be old news for some, but I’ve only started to explore what’s available at YouTube and CSPAN Video. Here is a two parter of Vladimir Nabokov and Lionel Trilling discussing Lolita on the Canadian television show “Close Up”. Part 1 Part 2
Picture source This, Tietjens thought, is England! A man and a maid walk through Kentish grass-fields: the grass ripe for the scythe. The man honourable, clean, upright; the maid virtuous, clean, vigorous: he of good birth; she of birth quite as good; each filled with a too good breakfast that each could yet capably digest. […]
Last Post bugle callPicture source Sadly they whispered awayAs I played the last post on the bugleI heard them sayOh that boy’s no different todayExcept in every single way — from “Last Post on the Bugle” by The Libertines It had been obvious to her for a long time that God would one day step […]
Note: see the update for partial clarification The name of Christopher Tietjens’ son in Parade’s End isa) Tommieb) Michaelc) Mark juniord) All of the above The correct answer is D, all of the above. Or at least I think it is. Through Part One, Chapter Four of The Last Post I have seen all three […]
I browsed through the Ford Madox Ford Society’s last online newsletter and noticed in Newsletter 15 (30 March 2009) that “Max Saunders, Joseph Wiesenfarth, Sara Haslam and Paul Skinner are working on an annotated critical edition of Parade’s End (Carcanet)”. It is a work that definitely would benefit the reader. The Last Post seems to […]
Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare? by James Shapiro Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, $26.00 ISBN: 1416541624I enjoyed James Shapiro’s A Year in the Life of Shakespeare: 1599 and wanted to read his latest book on Shakespeare as soon as I could. I didn’t realize Wikipedia had a long article on the Shakespeare authorship question as […]
I wanted to take a brief look at some quotes from poems by George Herbert (1593 – 1633) in A Man Could Stand Up: He hoped McKechnie, with his mad eyes and his pestilential accent, would like that fellow. That fellow spread seventeenth-century atmosphere across the landscape over which the sun’s rays were beginning to […]
Picture source Months and months before Christopher Tietjens had stood extremely wishing that his head were level with a particular splash of purposeless whitewash. Something behind his mind forced him to the conviction that, if his head–and of course the rest of his trunk and lower limbs–were suspended by a process of levitation to that […]
The Long Now Blog posted the above CG rendering of a concept for the Stockholm Library. Maybe not practical (yet), but starkly beautiful. Follow their links on the design team and how the design was generated.
Interior of the Gambling House at Wiesbaden Published in Harpers Weekly, October 7, 1871The text (translated by C. J. Hogarth) can be found at Project Gutenberg. The Wikipedia page for the book gives more details than what I provide below. The story behind Dostoevsky writing The Gambler has almost overshadowed the novella itself, which is […]
Bird Life in Wington: Practical Parables for Young People by John Calvin Reid, illustrated by Reynold H. WeidenaarFrom the preface: In seeking to stimulate the interest of children and young people in the worship services of the church, through the years I have used a number of ideas for Sermonettes. Just one has succeeded beyond […]
Well, it seems I can’t stay away from Ford right now. I had trouble starting Some Do Not… and No More Parades, having to read the first ten pages of each book several times before settling into the work. Not so with A Man Could Stand Up. So while I return to Parade’s End, I […]
Virginia Stephen (Woolf) in disguise on the far left, William Horace de Vere Cole in tophat on the far rightSomething a little lighter for today… On February 7, 1910, the HMS Dreadnought hosted a hastily arranged tour of four Abyssinian princes, or so they had been told. It turns out to have been an elaborate […]