Blest bridegroom, this day of matrimony, Just as you wished it, has come true: The bride is whom you wished for… You Move gracefully; your eyes are honey; Charm was showered on your radiant face – Yes, Aphrodite granted you outstanding praise The ambrosial mixture Ready in the mixing bowl, Hermes went round with aContinue reading “RKS Greek Literature: Blest Bridegroom (Sappho)”
Category Archives: literature
RKS Greek Literature: Can’t Stand Being the Old One (Sappho)
As you are dear to me, go claim a younger Bed as your due. I can’t stand being the old one any longer, Living with you. Sappho (630 BCE-570BCE), “Come Close”
RKS British Literature: Dandyism and Eccentricity (John Fowles)
But all dandyism and eccentricity is more or less unnatural in a world dominated by the desperate struggle for economic survival. John Fowles, “The Magus”, 1977.
RKS British Literature: Hitler Did Not Betray Himself (John Fowles)
‘The human race is unimportant. It is the self that must not be betrayed.’ ‘I suppose I could say that Hitler didn’t betray his self.’ He turned. ‘You are right. He did not. That was the tragedy. Not that one man had the courage to be evil. But that millions had not the courage toContinue reading “RKS British Literature: Hitler Did Not Betray Himself (John Fowles)”
RKS British Literature: A Mad Lust Not to be Killed (John Fowles)
Desolation. Rubble, fragments of plastered wall, broken rafters, the yellow splashes of lyddite everywhere, The drizzle that had started again gleaming on the stones. On the skin of corpses. Many Germans had been caught in the houses. In ten minutes I saw a summary of the whole butcher’s shop of war. The blood, the gapingContinue reading “RKS British Literature: A Mad Lust Not to be Killed (John Fowles)”
RKS British Literature: A Third-Class Degree and a First-Class Illusion (John Fowles)
I acquired expensive habits and affected manners. I got a third-class degree and a first-class illusion: that I was a poet. But nothing could have been less poetic than my seeing-through-all boredom with life in general and with making a living in general. I was too green to know that all cynicism masks a failureContinue reading “RKS British Literature: A Third-Class Degree and a First-Class Illusion (John Fowles)”
RKS British Literature: Men Who Are Not Quite Up to Their Job (John Fowles)
Like all men not really up to their job, he was a stickler for externals and petty quotidian things; and in lieu of an intellect he had accumulated an armoury of capitalized key-words like Discipline and Tradition and Responsibility. If I ever dared – I seldom did – to argue with him he would produceContinue reading “RKS British Literature: Men Who Are Not Quite Up to Their Job (John Fowles)”
RKS British Literature: The Brigadier and His Dutiful Wife (John Fowles)
I had long before made the discovery that I lacked the parents and ancestors I needed. My father was, through being the right age at the right time rather than through any great professional talent, a brigadier; and my mother was the very model of a would-be major-general’s wife. That is, she never argued withContinue reading “RKS British Literature: The Brigadier and His Dutiful Wife (John Fowles)”
RKS TURKISH LITERATURE: Insult Islam: You Die (Orhan Pamuk)
There was, for example, the poet Nurettin, who admired all things European but took little interest in politics until the day a radical Islamist news paper unearthed something he’d written years earlier-an essay on art and religion-and distorted it to charge that he’d insulted our faith”; afraid of looking frightened, Nurettin dusted off his oldContinue reading “RKS TURKISH LITERATURE: Insult Islam: You Die (Orhan Pamuk)”
RKS American Literature: Wait for the End of Segregation? (Martin Luther King Jr.)
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jet-like speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those whoContinue reading “RKS American Literature: Wait for the End of Segregation? (Martin Luther King Jr.)”
