The Heart and Soul of Ibsenism
George Bernard Shaw wrote in The Quintessence of Ibsenism, The drama was born of old from the union of two desires: the desire to have a dance and the desire to hear story. The dance became a rant; the story became a situation. When Ibsen began to make plays, the art of the dramatist had […]
Meeting the Performance Challenge
In The Performance Challenge, Jerry Gilley, Nathaniel W. Boughton, and Ann Maycunich write, One of the best ways to improve performance is to utilize a performance alignment process—one that links client needs and expectations to job design (organization) and to the performance improvement process (managers and employees) in such a way as to enhance competitiveness, […]
Greek Lyrical Poet Sappho and Her Influence
From David M. Robinson’s Sappho and Her Influence, Very seldom does [Sappho] evoke the vision of a great and pure poetess with marvelous expressions of beauty, grace, and power at her command, who not only haunts the dawn of Grecian Lyric poetry but lives in scattered and broken lights that glint from vases and papyri […]
Complacent and Conceited and Censorious
Christopher Hitchens writes in Letters to a Young Contrarian, Every day, the New York Times carries a motto in a box on its front page. “All the News That’s Fit to Print,” it says. It’s been saying it for decades, day in and day out. I imagine most readers of the canonical sheet have long […]
Grief and the Heart’s Storm Clouds
Bestselling Buddhist author Jack Kornfield in The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace, It takes courage to grieve, to honor the pain we carry. We can grieve in tears or in meditative silence, in prayer or in song. In touching the pain of recent and long-held griefs, we come face to face with our genuine […]
How James Joyce Radicalized Literature
Richard Ellmann writes in “James Joyce In and Out of Art,” from Four Dubliners: Joyce radicalized literature, so that it would never recover. He reconstructed narrative, both external and internal; he changed our conception of daytime consciousness and of nighttime unconsciousness. He made us reconsider language as the product and the prompter of unconscious imaginings. […]
Peace and Freedom Begin with Ourselves
Thich Nhat Hanh in The Path of Emancipation: Talks From a 21-Day Mindfulness Retreat, There is affliction and suffering within us. Our suffering represents both our individual suffering and the suffering of our ancestors, parents, and society. Every time we practice mindful breathing and take good care of our bodies and feelings, we relieve our […]
Intimate, Ecological, Empathic Relationship with the World
Guy Claxton, The Wayward Mind: An Intimate History of The Unconscious: We have come a long way from the disembodied soul: the immaculate fleck of divinity that is in us but not of this world. Instead of having recourse to a transcendental realm, a parallel universe in which everything is True and Good, we seem […]
Moving Toward What Matters Most
Matthieu Ricard writes in Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill, Renunciation, at least as Buddhists use the term, is a much-misunderstood concept. It is not about giving up what is good and beautiful. How foolish that would be! Rather it is about disentangling oneself from the unsatisfactory and moving with determination toward […]
The Roman Lyrical Poet Catullus and His Influence
Catullus‘ love poems influenced not only Latin love poets such as Horace and Ovid, but also English Renaissance poets such as Robert Herrick. Karl Pomeroy Harrington writes in Catullus and His Influence (1923): It was Catullus who taught Europe and America how to sing tender songs of love, to phrase bitter words of hate; who […]