Glenn Arbery’s “Bearings and Distances” shuttles back and forth between two eras, weaving, careening, towards an inexorable revelation of truth. The plot is rich and complex, and its world is both fertile and elusive in meaning, expanding through time and culture, expressing a deeply Catholic view of the cosmos. Bearings and Distances, by Glenn Arbery [...]
If we would take frequent respite from the transient world of becoming, we should read more books. In reading, we convene mind to mind with our fellow subcreators and walk through a world that calls universals to mind and plants images of them on our subconscious. We live in an era of escape. The political [...]
Each day a little further into the mist she seeps, Each night more tightly she clings to the real. The fog enfolds, ensnares, envelops: Like a besieged city she remains steadfast and forlorn. […]
Citizens of the twenty-first century, learn from us to respect and honor your traditions. You seem so fascinated with novel, untried ideas that you often overlook the wisdom of the past. If we forget that legacy, we cease to be who we are. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great [...]
Each one is a tool of influence. Parable often teaches truth or morals through comparison. Whether translated as the Greek “beside” or the Hebrew “meshalim,” known as a riddle of “mysterious speech,” the parable is always couched in story or the routine of life. Fable implements story in the same way with a variation on [...]
Furor is the rage in the blood that turns justice into revenge and war into slaughter. Furor is the all-consuming lust that privileges private obsession over public service. Furor is the unadulterated avarice that shatters oaths and smashes kingdoms. It is the incarnate enemy of civilization; where it reigns, there can only be dissolution. Author’s [...]
As I sat beside the fire A chill descended upon the room The remnants of a funeral pyre A guide as if from fabled Tyre. A spirit from beyond the pale Standing in the dim lit night Aged and beautiful seemed her fate Her visage a grim and fearful light. […]
Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages had been given the gift, not only to peer into the twenty-first century, but to correspond with us who live in that most confusing and rudderless of centuries. Had it been in their power [...]
There are plenty of men who need to be taught virtue; plenty of pompous men who need to have their egos pricked, plenty of know-it-alls who need to be taken down a couple of notches. The best way to do that is through laughter. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets [...]
Our lives are marked by reversals and recognitions for which we are rarely prepared. That change will come is certain, whether on the stage or in your home. The only question is how you will receive it when it comes. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great poets of ancient Greece, Rome, [...]
The world is often unkind to women, using them as pawns in a masculine game of war and power and possession. But these wrongs will not be righted by inviting women to participate in the same game. They will be righted only when the voice of the feminine is allowed to be heard: in the [...]
On this earth, there is nothing more firm, more noble, more intransigent than the heroic character. I encourage you, children of the twenty-first century, to respect such heroes, even as you fear them and pray that your fate will not be like theirs. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great [...]
Hearing T.S. Eliot's poems read brings us back to the haunting beauty of the words themselves, and hearing the words unlocks Eliot’s powerful imagery, just as he would have wanted. Jeremy Irons' classic rendition empowers this strange transaction, and through the words we are taken beyond the words to the realm of the Word. Those [...]
Some adages are so well-worn by constant use and abuse that they are considered truisms. We begin to assume that they are true without really thinking about them, making truth itself both trite and trivial. One such adage is the belief that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Such a belief makes beauty [...]