Convivium

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

In scope, detail, and humanity, Thomas Mann’s Buddenbrooks is a classic of modem literature and continues to be a model for family sagas, a genre of literature which follows generations of a family through a period of history. (Think Downton Abbey, The Forsythe Saga, The Thornbirds.) Buddenbrooks was Mann’s first and is his most enduringly [...]

Thou Shalt Not… The Decalogue The Old Testament “thou-shalt-nots” are deeply dyed into the fabric of Western Culture. I may hesitate when it comes to obeying those prohibitions, but I rarely pause to consider just what they command and why. “Thou shalt not murder.” “Thou shalt not steal.” They seem so obvious, almost self-evident. They [...]

Upon first reading Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, the great 19th-century biologist Thomas Henry Huxley—later to be known as “Darwin’s Bulldog”—is reported to have told friends, “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!” Huxley’s quote captures the essence of why I love to read the Origin. What I hear Huxley saying [...]

The ghazal is my favourite poetic form—even though it’s less familiar than the sonnet or the haiku. A sonnet gives us a glimpse of the formalism and beauty of 12th century Italian literature, where that form was invented. Similarly, we study a haiku and discover an enduring Japanese spirit. English-language writers have come to the [...]

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of Swann’s Way, by Marcel Proust. I doubt there’s a better way to celebrate this monumental literary festivity than by engaging in an in-depth discussion of the novel at Classical Pursuits in Toronto. If you happen to be in New York this spring, there’s an exhibit [...]