Convivium

A number of us returned last week from a trip to three cities in the former East Germany. I had intended to write frequently while travelling, but I had trouble forming coherent impressions. It goes without saying that Germany is a country with a most complicated past, encompassing both the best and the worst of [...]

Yes, Hungary is brimming with music, from the concert halls to the clubs and cafes, to parks and  streets. And is also known for its hearty and mouth-watering gastronomy. But perhaps you are less familiar with the physical beauty of Budapest and surroundings. Friend Daniel Brooks recently took early retirement from an esteemd career as Professor of [...]

Just who is the Arab world listening to? Not only radical sheikhs and militant politicians. The man whose voice has captivated the Arab public is a Cairo dentist by day and a novelist by dawn. Alaa Al Aswany’s novel The Yacoubian Building is a phenomenon—the best-selling novel in the Middle East for two years and [...]

Seamus Heaney has such a strong following that he’s been nicknamed Famous Seamus, and his lectures are so popular that the crowds lining up to hear him are dubbed “Heaneyboppers”. He’s Ireland’s first Nobel Prize winning poet since Yeats. Heany is one of my very favourite poets. I was looking forward to Rosemary Gould’s seminar, [...]

“Out of India”: three writers – Amitav Ghosh, Bharati Mukherjee and K. Satchidanandan — reflect on the country of their childhood and its dynamic changes today.  Eleanor Wachtel spoke with them, onstage, at this year’s Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal. Listen to Eleanor Wachtel’s panel interview, Out of India, broadcast on Writers & [...]

Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds. -Dr. Karl Paulnack, Boston Conservatory [...]

“Stories are the way we organize our response to the world… Listening to others, and having them listen to you, is a way to grow..” So says American journalist and public commentator Bill Moyers. Moyers’ 1996 Mini-Series for PBS, Genesis: A Living Conversation, is a wonderful example of the two pillars of Classical Pursuits – [...]