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.
Tag Archives: Suffering
Is There a Price for Doing Evil?
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Mask of Evil", Bertolt Brecht, Evil, Nazis, Rachel Kranz, racism Comments closed
Opened up by a Fire of Roses
I am writing today about an image that gripped me as a child and that has proved a comfort to me since losing my oldest son ten years ago. I encountered it in The Princess and Curdie, a Victorian children’s fantasy novel by George MacDonald. I use it differently than the author does but […]
The Light that Came from Lucille Clifton
I have just heard about the death of poet Lucille Clifton and I still can’t wrap by head around the news. Even as I write this sentence, the opening paragraph of a story by James Baldwin (whom Lucille knew well) comes to me: I read about it in the paper, in the subway, on my […]
Earth, Love, Birches, and Ice Storms
I promised this post on Robert Frost’s “Birches” in the event that we have an ice storm. I don’t know yet whether we will have one, but we had frozen rain for much of the night, and as I write this (Wednesday morning) we are being attacked by a blizzard. So if I don’t arrange […]
Responding to Unspeakable Horror
No work of literature can begin to address the trauma that Haitians are currently experiencing in the wake of their devastating earthquake. But then, literature can never do justice to human tragedy. In the face of such inexpressible suffering, the poet gropes around in the dark, occasionally making utterances that some, in their agony, find […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Auto Wreck", Candide, Haiti earthquake, Karl Shapiro, Voltaire Comments closed
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, Leo Tolstoy, Name of the Rose, Pain, Paradise Lost, Rachel Kranz, 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, Leo Tolstoy, Midsummer Night's Dream, Sons and Lovers Comments closed
Perpetual Migraines and Julian of Norwich
This is the first of a series of posts I will be writing on literature and pain. There are a couple of reasons why I write about this now. First, in last night’s salon in honor of my cancer-stricken friend Alan Paskow, we discussed the introduction to Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Book of Showings, Four Quartets, Julian of Norwich, Religion, T. S. Eliot Comments closed
