Tag Archives: Soul

Secret Garden, Hidden Soul

The secret garden in Burnett’s novel works as a metaphor for the soul.

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Putin Quoting Tolstoy? Puleeze!

Putin claimed to quote Tolstoy but didn’t in his meeting with Biden. What he says is reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor’s Misfit, however.

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“Invictus,” a Flawed Poem Easily Abused

Thursday In two recent guest posts (here and here), Radnor High School English teacher Carl Rosin describes his students wrestling with two well-known poems that were cited by the Christchurch mass murderer in his justification. One issue is how much leeway a reader has in interpreting a poem. In his students’ responses, Carl mentions some […]

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Robert Durst’s Iago-Like Soliloquy

How to interpret suspected murderer Robert Durst’s enigmatic words on “The Jinx”? Shakespeare’s villains point the way.

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Angel Infancy

Henry Vaughan’s “The Retreat” believes that children have a special connection with eternity.

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Read Blake, Stand Up to Your Boss

Businessman David Whyte turns to poetry to hold on to his soul in the corporate world.

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Hell, an Inner Emptiness that Can’t Be Filled

“I think Hell is a fable,” Doctor Faustus tells Mephastophilis at one point in Marlowe’s 1593 tragedy. While many Elizabethans would have disagreed—the play terrified them precisely because they believed in a literal hell—we’re more sympathetic with the notion now. To most of us, fire and brimstone and devils with pitchforks are the stuff of […]

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Soul-Selling for Dummies

    How do I sell my soul? Let me count the ways. I wrote in Sunday’s entry how the ego and the soul are pitted against each other in an unending battle. Just think how much better off we’d all be if humans listened to their higher selves and ego took a back seat. […]

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The Hell of Ego, the Heaven of Love

Spiritual Sunday A reader’s response to Friday’s post on the Faustus story has me thinking more about Marlowe’s marvelous play. Marlowe informs us that we don’t need to die to go to hell. If we refuse to listen to the voice of our soul, we can find hell right here on earth. If there were […]

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