Convivium

“For a man that goes on a pilgrimage does best of all if he starts out with the heart of a wanderer, eager for the world as it is, forgetful of maps or descriptions, but hungry for real colours and men and the seeming of things.” -Hilaire Belloc As it is with people you love, [...]

We read. We saw. We heard. We tasted. Reading Chicago. READ While our some of Chicago’s most imaginative literary witnesses revealed its cultural contrasts, I was even more struck by a distinctive composite portrait of an astonishing city, characterized by muscular momentum, unpretentious pride and, sometimes, seamy realness. “City of the Big Shoulders … …proud [...]

Trip the light fantastic   Meaning To dance, especially in an imaginative or ‘fantastic’ manner. Origin This apparently obscure expression originates from the works of John Milton. In the masque Comus, 1637, he used the lines: Come, knit hands, and beat the ground, In a light fantastic round. By ‘trip’, Milton didn’t mean ‘catch one’s [...]

Ann has asked me to write a bit about why I will be taking part in La Belle Epoque trip to Paris this September, given that I have been to Paris more times than I can count and that I took part in an earlier Classical Pursuits trip there in 2004. I guess it comes [...]

There are many, many books that seek to communicate the complex philosophical ideas of great thinkers by presenting them in language that the authors feel is easier to understand than the original works. Some of these books are very successful in doing so – the original works are sometimes written in language that requires a [...]

Henry James took novels seriously. He believed that a good novel gave us unique access to depths of experience, and enabled us to explore how individuals work out their destinies in specific times and places. This seriousness of purpose has irritated more than one reader of James’ work. Most famously, H.G. Wells said that reading [...]

“Like a pair of binoculars with no right or wrong end, the camera makes exotic things near, intimate, and familiar things small, abstract, strange, much farther away.” –Susan Sontag In Susan Sontag’s essay collection On Photography, every sentence is a zinger, and almost every idea a game-changer. Written in a take-no-prisoners manner (one imagines Sontag [...]

Just back from the capitol of the Confederate States of America, where we all deepened our understanding of this defining event. We had an extraordinary time approaching this ever-fascinating and perplexing war that still occasionally erupts in skirmishes. Rosemary Gould was our fantastic discussion leader. What striking cultural contrasts we experienced – as well as [...]

Here are Five of the Many Reasons Why You Should Take My Seminar on Lucretius and the Rediscovery of his Masterpiece, On the Nature of Things, as described in Greenblatt’s The SWERVE  -  How the World Became Modern: 1. Stephen Greenblatt is a very talented writer/storyteller and a courageous scholar who takes interesting risks. You [...]

You sorta hadta be there to get all the references, but y’all can see what a fine poet Jimmye Hillman is (no matter what his daughter says). I TAKE RICHMOND* Not as a British frigate’s cargo: freedom’s heirs Stuck at James River’s falls in royal pause, Not as some conquering Yankee brigade unawares Of Virginia [...]