Category: literature

• The Writer

  Jul 1

  ♦ The writer, his biography: he died; lived and died. The writer writes to live on. Writing to live on, her life is a kind of survival. Sur-vival: a living… more ›

• Notes on the Fortieth Anniversary of Mishima’s Suicide

  Nov 25

  It’s difficult not to feel somewhat overwhelmed with ambivalence regarding Mishima: a gifted writer and a sensitive thinker as well as a fascist and an imperialist trapped by nostalgia for… more ›

• A Memory (Once More)

  Jul 16

  Erinnerung Und du wartest, erwartest das Eine, das dein Leben unendlich vermehrt; das Mächtige, Ungemeine, das Erwachen der Steine, Tiefen, dir zugekehrt. Es dämmern im Bücherständer die Bände in Gold… more ›

• At Once: A Second Word in Passing

  Jul 2

  In eins Dreizehnter Feber.  Im Herzmund erwachtes Schibboleth.  Mit dir, Peuple de Paris.  No pasarán. 5     Schäfchen zur Linken:  er, Abadias, der Greis aus Huesca, kam mit den Hunden über… more ›

• Password … Said in Passing

  Jun 25

  Schibboleth Mitsamt meinen Steinen, den großgeweinten hinter den Gittern, schleiften sie mich 5     in die Mitte des Marktes, dorthin, wo die Fahne sich aufrollt, der ich keinerlei Eid schwor. Flöte,… more ›

• Byzantium/Old Istanbul (A Translation)

  Jul 24

  Byzantium The unpurged images of day recede;The Emperor’s drunken soldiery are abed;Night resonance recedes, night walkers’ songAfter great cathedral gong;A starlit or a moonlit dome disdainsAll that man is,All mere… more ›

• Utopian Time & Space: De/(Con)structions of Babel (Part III of III)

  Jun 23

  Even More seems aware of these shifting borders as he attempts an analogous, albeit rhetorical, configuration throughout his text. First we have More as author, here to relate the tale… more ›

• Utopian Time & Space: De/(Con)structions of Babel (Part II of III)

  Jun 21

  At the exact opposite end of history from Eden, we have the notion of the New Jerusalem, a utopian space carved out somewhere between a new heaven and a new… more ›

• Utopian Time & Space: De/(Con)structions of Babel (Part I of III)

  Jun 19

  Cultural notions of perfection in social organization find their origins in Thomas More’s Utopia, a text that inscribes on our collective cultural consciousness the very concept of utopia itself. More’s… more ›

• Gathering the Gauntlet

  Mar 24

  Having successfully completed the three written comprehensive exams without either dying or melting down, I now only face the two-hour oral defense scheduled for 2:00 PM tomorrow. I think that… more ›