I’ve tried, now and then, to read Aristotle for pleasure. I would get the odd, frustrated feeling that there really ought to have been something pleasurable going on, but that some magical thread essential to the activity of reading was consistently eluding me. Well, I’m trying to read the Nicomachean Ethics again. And this time [...]
Archive for the ‘beginnings’ Category
the echoing wisdom of the teacher’s teacher’s teacher
Posted in Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, beginnings, books, good, greek on October 29, 2009 | 1 Comment »
The Speed of Verse, II
Posted in Charles Williams, Dante, God, Herbert, John Crowe Ransom, Pound, Vergil, Yeats, art, beginnings, birds, books, crannies, dialogue, dreaming, eccentric, history, idiosyncrasy, labor, language, latin, love?, rule, speed, stars, sun, the body, time, translation, verse on October 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
So, why is speed needed to say poetry? It is the sound of sense waking up the latent agility of the tongue: “speak the speech, I pray you, as I pronounced it to you, trippingly on the tongue.” It is attention to sharper contrasts, to multiplying facets, to a superabundant collation of angular things all [...]
Equality
Posted in Equality, God, beginnings, dialogue, love? on August 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Friendship creates a kind of equality between persons. Other kinds of friendship may create other and debased kinds of equality, but the noble friendship that is directed toward what is good in itself, what is good for another and oneself, creates a noble equality–an equality that is not a leveling, but a lifting up, a [...]
Another Reflection on Lucretius
Posted in Lucretius, anyone, beginnings, books, cosmos, dialogue, fate, language, latin, letters, necessity, rain, rule, spring, the grave, the impossible, translation, water on April 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Poetry of Lucretius’ Invitation to Accept “Mater Rebus Certa”
In lines 188-198 of the first book of De Rerum Natura, Lucretius describes the implications of there being a “semine certo”, a definite seed for every kind of thing, that each thing has “sua … materia.” His particular concerns in this passage are: that the developement [...]
try and understand me …
Posted in H.W. Fowler, anyone, beginnings, books, conjunctions, dialogue, eccentric, indirect discourse, language, latin, letters, wit on April 9, 2009 | 2 Comments »
I want to praise a book—A Dictionary of Modern English Usage by H.W. Fowler—but I cannot at this moment find the right words to do justice to the object of my admiration.
Instead, I’ll give an example of what I admire (which incidentally confirms and elucidates one of my long and vehemently held beliefs):
try. The idiom [...]
My Aim
Posted in God, Socrates, anyone, beginnings, books, conjunctions, cosmos, dialogue, greek, history, language, logic, love? on April 3, 2009 | 1 Comment »
In his beautiful reflection on the Catholic Intellectual Tradition given at Regensburg Pope Benedict affirms the “profound harmony between what is Greek in the best sense of the word and the Biblical understanding of faith in God.” He points to this “profound harmony” at work in the beginning of John’s Gospel. “In the beginning [...]
The Voice of the Athenian: the city begins where the city ends, part ii
Posted in Socrates, anyone, athens, beginnings, defeat, dialogue, eccentric, exceptions, fate, greek, history, love?, melos, polis, the impossible, tragedy on March 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I wanted to give my post below as an example of the scenario I was trying (and failing) to articulate last fall. In this scenario, the failure of a speaker’s effort – an effort that up to this point seems determine the meaning of a conversation relative to a certain goal of longed-for persuasion or [...]
another angle on cosmos
Posted in Equality, Geometry, God, Socrates, Sophistry, anyone, athens, beginnings, cosmos, dialogue, eccentric, greek, hubris, idiosyncrasy, love?, necessity, polis, wisdom on March 12, 2009 | 3 Comments »
At the tail end of prosecuting his interlocutor Callicles, who has scorned his offer of friendship, balked at his refutations, and threatened him with murder, Socrates withdraws for a moment from the struggle of argument, having won something like the moment of calm perception that an exhausted warrior receives beside the ongoing fray, seeing the [...]
Announcing the April 6 Raffle!
Posted in anyone, art, beginnings, birthdays, books, eccentric, history, raffle, spring, the grackle, time on March 8, 2009 | 29 Comments »
Why? So that the world will not forget the day I was born! And, so that the world will know the semi-fictional renaissance that is the Grub Street Grackle!
First off: its free! Second off: everyone, yes everyone, is invited to participate. . . whether I know you, you know me, you read my blog, you [...]
lilies lying on water
Posted in anyone, beginnings, flowers on March 6, 2009 | 5 Comments »
I think I’ve heard or read (was it a Wilbur poem?) about paper folded flowers which when dropped in a dish of water unfold into blossoms. I can’t seem to find anything about this online . . . does anyone have any help?
