Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda
From “God’s Gamble: The Gravitational Power of Crucified Love” by Gil Bailie, here is a passage on “the cul-de-sac of autonomous individualism.” I have been reading a lot of and…
From “Choruses from the Rock”, T S Eliot: In our rhythm of earthly life we tire of light. We are glad when the day ends, when the play ends; and…
From “Lieber’s Lament”, Chapter 6, The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H., George Steiner: As it is written in the learned Nathaniel of Mainz: there shall come upon the earth…
Via the Wikipedia page devoted to Miguel de Unamono, I came across this wonderfully evocative Spanish idiom: Thinking about the immortality of the crab (Spanish: Pensar en la inmortalidad del cangrejo) is…
When I became aware of “serious” literature in the late 80s/early 90s, Brian Moore was quite a substantial figure – repeatedly nominated for the Booker Prize, his books made into…
From Gil Bailie‘s “God’s Gamble: The Gravitational Power of Crucified Love”: “In any case, they were hardly prepared for a colloquy with the Lamb of God, the one poised to…
It’ been a while since I blogged about the literature of sleep which was formerly a recurrent theme here. So here is the opening of a Haruki Murakami story call…
In the current TLS there is an excellent review by David Rundle of two recent books on handwriting. Anyone who knows me, or more specifically had had to read my…
Séamus Sweeney 