To enjoy a tale of Eternity in the context of time, you have to let go of your attachment to narrative. Much of the heavily advertised new movie The Tree of Life struck me as a fun romp through a new age of computer graphics, something like the abstract expressionism of Fantasia on steroids.
Paul Dukas' music for this story from Fantasia was based on Goethe's 1797 poem Der Zauberlehrling. This is NOT abstract expressionism.
I’m trying a new litmus test for deciding whether to take up and read, as God suggested to Saint Augustine, and given that God does not speak to me with any real precision beyond the occasional eructation: I examine the first and last sentence of a volume, be it fiction or nonfiction. If I find a piquant snappiness, an intrigue, a rhythm I could learn to live with, then I give the book a longer look. Continue Reading →
I woke in the middle of the night wondering whether Robert Browning could have been thinking of the 16th-century composer Carlo Gesualdo (1566?-1613) when he penned his famous and much-anthologized dramatic monologue “My Last Duchess”. Continue Reading →
The young master pounds on the bathroom door. “Pappa, is Santa Claus real?”
I panic. “Give me a minute.” Continue Reading →
In his final speech (1889), Jeff Davis told his audience of Southern college students,
Let me beseech you to lay aside all rancor, all bitter sectional feeling, and to take your places in the ranks of those who will bring about a consummation devoutly to be wished–a reunited country.
I find this strange and telling. Continue Reading →