Tag Archives: Suffering

Aristotle Wrong about Tragic Heroes

By Robin Bates | Published: February 6, 2013

Revealing his prejudices, Aristotle tries to limit those whose suffering can be labeled tragic.

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Why Literary Suffering Made Plato Nervous

By Robin Bates | Published: February 5, 2013

Plato worried that Greek tragedy causes us to act irrationally.

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A Paradise within Thee, Happier Far

By Robin Bates | Published: November 20, 2011

By the end of “Paradise Lost,” John Milton has discovered a powerful response to suffering.

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Let Me Not Love Thee If I Love Thee Not

By Robin Bates | Published: May 22, 2011

In threatening God that he will find another master, George Herbert sounds like a five-year-old threatening to run away from his mother. Deep down, he is acknowledging that he has no choice but to love God.

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God’s Non-Explanation for Suffering

By Robin Bates | Published: May 15, 2011

As I think of the deaths and the destroyed communities that natural disasters have recently caused, from the Japanese tsunami to the Alabama tornadoes to the Mississippi flooding, the Book of Job comes to mind. After all, it is a story that addresses that most fundamental of questions, why do bad things happen to innocent people?

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Misery Loves Poetry

By Robin Bates | Published: March 29, 2011

Yesterday a New York Times blog addressed an issue I have been wrestling with as well: whether literature is up to the string of disasters we are encountering. Sam Tanenhaus asserts that “one of the enduring paradoxes of great apocalyptic writing is that it consoles even as it alarms.” To my mind, Tanenhaus’s most interesting point is about why poetry seems to be better at responding to catastrophe than narrative prose.

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When Events Defy Human Understanding

By Robin Bates | Published: March 21, 2011

As I wrote last year when the earthquake hit Haiti, all human language, even literature, comes up short when faced with disaster and death. Literature is language by humans about humans, and destruction on this scale seems to laugh narrative and image to scorn. Nevertheless, being human, we try to bring even apocalyptic disasters into a […]

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Out of Near Death, a Vision of Love

By Robin Bates | Published: August 22, 2010

Spiritual Sunday Thanks to all of you who wrote this past week following the twin blows of my uncle’s death and news of the severity of Alan’s latest cancer diagnosis. The discussion in response to Thursday’s post about which goes deeper, self or love, brought to the periphery of my mind a catechism in which […]

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Is There a Price for Doing Evil?

By Robin Bates | Published: July 22, 2010

In a dinner conversation with academic colleagues and novelist Rachel Kranz, we grappled with the question of whether those who commit atrocities pay a price for doing so. I came to the conclusion that it is a question that novelists and poets are sometimes better at answering than academics.

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