St Jerome in His Study, Albrecht Dürer
I first came across this engraving in an exhibition of Dürer engravings in the Chester Beatty Library over a decade ago. In my completely uninformed way, what struck me most was the…
Tag: jorge luis borges
“it is astonishing that each morning we wake up sane – that is, relatively sane -after having passed through that zone of shades, those labyrinths of dreams”
Lately I’ve been rereading psychology books, and have felt singularly defrauded. All of them discuss the mechanisms of dreams or the subjects of dreams, but they do not mention, as…
Jorge Luis Borges on poetry and prose
“It is said that prose is closer to reality than poetry. I think this is wrong. There is an idea that has been attributed to the short story writer Horacio…
A brief thought on Borges, Nabokov and growing up
From when I was about 14, I read a massive amount of Jorge Luis Borges. I was a little older when I began to read Vladimir Nabokov, and I became…
Borges on the will
‘You have spoken of the will,’ I said. ‘In the tales of the Mabinogion, two kings play chess on the summit of a hill, while below them their warriors fight.…
“Sleeping, as we all know, is the most secret of our acts.”
Sleeping, as we all know, is the most secret of our acts. We devote a third of our lives to it, and yet do not understand it. For some, it…
Football writing as travelogue: Jonathan Wilson’s Behind the Curtain: Travels in Eastern European Foorball
As I have previously observed , a lot of my writing was once about sport. Much of this was in the form of book reviews, and the odd film review. In 1998…
“The Invention of Morel” Adolfo Bioy Cesares, Reviewed Nthposition 2003 / SF Site 2011
This review was originally published here at Nthposition.com and some years later, with Val Stevenson of Nthposition’s permission of course, a slightly reworked version was published on SF Site Even pieces I have…
Séamus Sweeney 