Rabindranath Tagore’s Literary, Multicultural Upbringing

English literature academic Mary McClelland Lago remarked on the literary, multicultural household in which Rabindranath Tagore was raised in her biography, Rabindranath Tagore: Perspectives in Time: Goethe was read in German and de Maupassant in French, Sakuntala in Sanskrit, and Macbeth in English; poetry was written, upon models supplied by Keats, Shelley, and the Vaishnava […]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Characters

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s central characters are marked by a significance of “spiritual and mental self-division and self-contradiction,” wherein the offender turns out to be an prototype of a curiously modern psychological condition of alienation and self-destruction. American literary critic and essayist Philip Rahv wrote, Dostoevsky is the first novelist to have fully accepted and dramatized the […]

Avoid Snobbery and Misanthropy

Christopher Hitchens writes in Letters to a Young Contrarian: One must avoid snobbery and misanthropy. But one must also be unafraid to criticise those who reach for the lowest common denominator, and who sometimes succeed in finding it. This criticism would be effortless if there were no “people” waiting for just such an appeal. Any […]

The Craving of the Separate Self

Stephen Batchelor writes in Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening: Moods dictate my behavior. If something makes me feel good, I want to have it; if it makes me feel bad, I want to get rid of it; if it leaves me indifferent, I ignore it. I find myself in a perpetual state […]

Learning to Listen

Soto Zen Roshi Gerry Shishin Wick of Great Mountain Zen Center in Berthoud, Colorado, writes in Zen in the Workplace: To hear every sound as the dharma means to just pay attention. Listen to what people are saying when somebody is talking to you. We are usually so busy trying to say something that will […]

American Skier Lindsey Vonn on Competition, Grit, and Failures

Lindsey Vonn, the greatest female skier of all time, converses about sportsmanship in this Esquire interview: Competition is what I find joy in as well. I like pushing myself. I like setting those goals. I like knowing that I’ve executed the plan I have set forth. All those things feel good. I don’t mind the […]

Thought as a Thought and a Word as a Word

American poet, writer, and Soto Zen priest Norman Fischer writes in the Summer 2011 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, In his discussion of right speech the Buddha also demonstrated the subtle and nuanced understanding that words do not have fixed meanings and ought never to be taken at face value. The meaning of a […]

Oscar Wilde’s Achievements

For Oscar Wilde, “Truth in Art is the unity of a thing with itself—the outward rendered expressive of the inward: the soul made incarnate: the body instinct with spirit.” In De Profundis, he provides his own concise precis of his literary achievement: The gods had given me almost everything. I had genius, a distinguished name, […]

What Inspired Murasaki Shikibu

Edward George Seidensticker writes in his introduction to the vintage edition of The Tale of Genji, When romancers of the tenth century attempt characterization, and it is of a rudimental sort, they write fairy stories, and when they write of such matters as court intrigues, the characterization is so flat that it can hardly be […]

Formula for Becoming a Good Novelist

Interviewer Jean Babette Stein (later herself a notable American author and editor) asked the American writer and Nobel Laureate William Faulkner “Is there any possible formula to follow in order to be a good novelist?” he replied, Ninety-nine percent talent … ninety-nine percent discipline … ninety-nine percent work. He must never be satisfied with what […]