There is a seasickness that is more like a spell than a sickness. It is a yearning, a calling, a burning whereby people seek to break free of the finite and sail out into the boundless by the illimitable analogy that the sea is. That sea has beckoned land dwellers to live out their lives…
In Need of Inspiration? Let’s Visit Some Heroes From Our Past
July 15, 2021
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Abraham LincolnArts & CultureHeroesLife & TraditionLiteratureLouisa May AlcottOliver Wendell HolmesWalt Whitman
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When we think of contemporary heroes, figures we admire for their courage when confronted by physical danger or who defend goodness and justice at great personal sacrifice, we may remember such people as the first responders who charged into the Twin Towers on 9/11 to rescue those trapped inside. Perhaps we’ve read of the exploits…
‘Preserve the Thread of Tradition, My Son’
Sohrab Ahmari’s new book, “The Unbroken Thread,” follows his acclaimed spiritual memoir, “From Fire by Water,” in which the Iranian American journalist had charted the story of his conversion to Catholicism. This book is less personal and more ambitious, laying out an argument that we need to rediscover the traditions that have been swept away…
Truth Tellers: Henri Amiel’s Ardent Invitation to Converse With God
How far can words reach? While celebrities like Victor Hugo, Henry James, George Meredith, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky were firing their volleys of prose at the world, an obscure Swiss professor, Henri Amiel (1821–1881), sat in his quiet room and wrote: “In the important questions of life we are always alone. Our deepest inner thoughts cannot…
What Good Is Poetry? Robert Burns’s Immortal ‘A Red, Red Rose’
So long as there are lovers in the world, there will be poetry. In fact, it might be argued that if lovers do not produce poetry, they are not really in love. And it is absolutely the case that poetry rejoices even in the earnest, ham-fisted poems written by smitten folks who are not gifted…
Gifts From a Master: The Stories of William Sydney Porter
“One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it….
Milton and the Sublime, Part 1: Preparing for ‘Paradise Lost’
Sublimity is a word rather like “mystical” in that it is difficult to define exactly what it is, but most of us have had some experience of it. Indeed, when we do experience it, and if we are not emotionally dead, it leaves an indelible impression, for it is an experience, like love, that once…
Forgotten Heroines: Fictional Females From Long Ago
So I’m shambling around online, looking for some inspiration to write about literary heroines, fictional females who inspire readers, particularly women who practice the virtues and exhibit courage in the face of danger, when a link to “The 10 Best Literary Heroines” popped up. Here, the editors at AbeBooks.com had asked this question of their…
Strangers in a Strange Land: Writers in Exile and Us
Throughout human history, involuntary exile was often a common punishment—a means of getting rid of troublesome citizens. The Italian Casanova was forced into exile after being charged with indecency. Napoleon Bonaparte spent the last years of his life on a tiny island in the Atlantic, Saint Helena, far from France. Many artists and intellectuals who…
Mother Goose Matters
Education is a journey, and, as with any journey, there must be some initial idea or inkling of the destination before there can be any reasonable means to arrive there. The end of education is, of course, the truth, and there exist few truthful awakenings like Mother Goose’s nursery rhymes. As a wondrous introduction to…
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