Reflection on Sophocles and Flannery O’Connor

Sophocles was born just outside of Athens in 496 BC to a well-to-do family and lived to be 90 years old. He wrote more than one hundred plays, of which only seven in complete form have survived: Ajax, Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Oedipus Rex, Electra, Philoctetes, and Oedipus at Colonus. He was a contemporary of another great playwright, Euripides, and wrote most of his plays after those of Aeschylus.

Read More

On The New Curator

A London publisher, Laurence King, observed: “How many times have you heard the term ‘curate’ in the past few years? But what exactly does it mean? Curating has been a key concept both in and outside the art world in the past few years, with the role of a curator having changed and expanded with each new exhibition or biennale.”

Read More

Tout de Suite

A handwritten letter on crisp sheets of heavy stock paper is an uncommon and cherished possession in this day and age, a tangible sentiment, a time capsule. It is a substantial artifact to be kept near at hand: in a nightstand drawer, folded in a book, stored in a collection, held in a box with other pieces of a treasure trove, hidden in plain sight in one’s personal “Room of Requirement,” or under a floorboard. It is only to be brought out once in a while, to recall a poignant memory or valuable confirmation. Letters we write and receive change our story; they penetrate our surface existence and reveal our identity, what we love and what we scorn.

Read More

The Immortality of Wilfred Owen

Few literary commentators would dispute that Wilfred Owen was one of the greatest war poets of the last hundred years. He wrote from personal experience as a British soldier in World War I. Surprisingly, these poems were written in just over a year, and of those he fought with, few knew he had such a gift.

Read More

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway’s book A Moveable Feast was published posthumously in 1964. It is composed of poignant sketches looking back on Hemingway’s time in France with his first wife and their baby Jack, known as Bumby. It is set after World War I, when Hemingway was an unknown, struggling American writer living in poverty above a sawmill, writing in the cafes and roaming the streets of Paris. 

Read More

South African Safari

Karen Blixen wrote: “There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you have drunk half a bottle of champagne -- bubbling over with the heartfelt gratitude for being alive.” My travels to the eastern province of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa this summer affirmed Baroness Blixen’s assessment. An African safari contains a special gift; it can brush away the cobwebs and heal the broken-hearted. One can believe that all is well with the world and that “this is where I ought to be.”

Read More