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 ‘books’ 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 [...]
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 [...]
approach to meaning restores the experience/ in a different form
Posted in John Donne, T.S. Eliot, anyone, art, books, cosmos, dialogue, fate, history, indirect discourse, language, letters, library, love?, necessity, the grave, time, translation on April 18, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
John Donne:
All mankind is of one author, and is one volume. When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
for my novel class
Posted in Dostoevsky, Goethe, Indian Summer, Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, Kant, Werther, books, crannies, dialogue, eccentric, exceptions, fate, idiosyncrasy, language, latin, letters, logic, love?, mania, necessity, nooks, novel, speed, spring, stars, summer, sun, the grave, time, wind, wisdom, wit on March 3, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Jean Paul Richter’s Maria Wuz: Inversions of Time, Nooks, Exceptions to the Rule, Interpolations and a Room for Man Cut out of, or Built into, the Universe
Proceeding according to no a priori principle, but seeking rather to treat of Jean Paul’s “Life of Maria Wuz, Merry Dominie of Auenthal” without wronging its delightfully angled discourse [...]
Vivant Dr. Sampo, Dr. Mumbach, Miss Bonifield, Mr. Shea, Miss Enos, and the others! — Semper Sint in Flore
Posted in Indian Summer, Janus, annihilation, anyone, art, athens, autumn, beginnings, bells, books, crannies, cry, defeat, dialogue, eccentric, exceptions, fate, flowers, greek, history, hubris, idiosyncrasy, language, letters, love?, mania, melos, mosaic, necessity, nemesis, nooks, polis, rain, rule, spring, stars, summer, the fall, the impossible, time, tragedy, wind, winter, wisdom, wit on February 24, 2009 | 1 Comment »
What Is Catholic About a College Degree
Peter V. Sampo
President, Thomas More College
Let us assume the college has a Catholic liturgy, teaches Orthodox Catholic theology, and is under the auspices of a religious order, a diocese, or is, at least, canonically recognized by a diocese. Further, let us assume loyalty to the Magisterium. As necessary as [...]
