At a guess I’d say this would be in my top dozen all time favourite books. Thank you for making it freely available Project Gutenberg. Biographia Literarialiterary criticismphilosophical literaturePoetryProject GutenbergromanticismSamuel Taylor ColeridgeWordsworth
Died on this day. See Housman’s entry in Poetry Foundation. I came to know Housman through his classical scholarship and only much later got round to reading his poetry. Housman was a scathe merchant of the highest order, sometimes it felt like wrestling with a razor blade. One of my favorite quotes of his could well…
Leopardi is quite possibly my favourite poet, this despite my reading him in English and being aware that quite a bit must be getting lost. Anyway, David Bentley Hart reviews Zibaldone published a few years back pointing out in his review Leopardi’s paradoxical cast of mind as does the always insightful John Gray (second and third quotes) He had a particular…
IF I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is forever England. There shall be In that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware, Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England’s, breathing…
Lord ByronPoetryromanticism
And indeed there will be time To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” Here’s an annotated version and recording of Eliot himself reading this perplexing and disturbing poem. The poem, described as a “drama of literary anguish”, is a dramatic interior monologue of an urban man, stricken with feelings of isolation and an incapability…
Eliot and Swinburne have been part of my consciousness for many years but for different reasons. The former I primarily knew for his Knowledge and Experience in the Philosophy of F. H. Bradley (his Harvard dissertation) and the for latter, my curiosity was piqued through my walking regularly past 11 Putney Hill, Sw15 on my way to…
This super piece from a few years back reprinted here to coincide with the just finished Oakeshott conference. ConservatismElizabeth CoreyLiberalismMichael Oakeshottphilosophy of social sciencePoetryrationalism
I’ve always felt that Housman was one of the sharpest and most insightful intellects of his day and certainly beyond, a caste of mind not terribly dissimilar to that other danger man, Bernard Williams. In critical mode reading them is akin to handling razor blades. Below is Housman as scathing classicist. After that is Richard Dawkins reading some…
Born on this day What keeps earth air breathable? Not oxygen alone. The earth is a freer place to breathe in, every time you love without calculating a return — every time you make your drudgeries and routines still more inefficient by stopping to experience the shock of beauty wherever it unpredictably flickers. All creeds…
manwithoutqualities 