Obama, take note: Vachel Lindsay in 1915 counseled against going to war even after the sinking of the Lusitania.
Tag Archives: Leo Tolstoy
Speak Now for Peace
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Two Poems written on the Singing of the Lusitania", American intervention, chemical weapons, Jane Addams, Syria, Vachel Lindsay, war Comments closed
Tolstoyan Therapy for Mental Illness
Guest poster Lucy Fuggle explains how Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” helped her cope with her PTSD.
Petraeus: Karenina, Oedipus, or Antony?
The David Petraeus affair–is it 19th century melodrama or high tragedy?
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Anna Karenina, Antony and Cleopatra, David Petraeus, Macbeth, Notre Dame de Paris, Othello, Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare Comments closed
Tolstoy, the Novelist vs. the Activist
One thing I appreciate about the New York Times is that many of its columnists routinely mention literature. Maureen Dowd probably does so the most (note this passing reference to T. S. Eliot’s Wasteland), and I once wrote a column on Roger Cohen’s use of The Great Gatsby in a piece on President Obama. (Cohen wrote […]
Tolstoy and Celebrity Culture
Film Friday Before there was celebrity culture there was celebrity culture. That’s what we learn from The Last Station, the fascinating recent film about the last days of Leo Tolstoy. The year is 1910. Tolstoy (Christopher Plummer) is seen as a national treasure and there is a struggle underway over who owns his work. His […]
Trusting that Good Can Come from Ill
Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus What have I learned about literature and pain this past week? First, that writers have taken up the topic, just as they take up every aspect of human existence. They imagine what it is like to feel pain and, through poetic images and fictional stories, convey that experience to readers. By entering […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Alfred Lord Tennyson, Christopher Marlowe, death of a child, Death of Ivan Ilych, Doctor Faustus, Heart of Darkness, In Memoriam, John Milton, Joseph Conrad, Name of the Rose, Pain, Paradise Lost, Rachel Kranz, Suffering, Umberto Eco Comments closed
Can We Imagine Another’s Pain?
In Friday’s post I mentioned how we read and discussed the first few pages of Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World in our most recent salon, held to support colleague Alan Paskow as he battles with cancer. Scarry claims that language is inadequate when it comes to physical pain so […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Body in Pain, Book of Showings, cancer, D. H. Lawrence, Death of Ivan Ilych, Elaine Scarry, Julian of Norwich, Midsummer Night's Dream, Sons and Lovers, Suffering Comments closed
