Archive
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Articles
A Pakaluk of Lies
It is tempting to see a pattern here. Two attacks on my recent book That All Shall Be Saved have already been published by First Things, both exhibiting certain...
The Lost Modernist
David Jones: Engraver, Soldier, Painter, Poetby thomas dilworthcounterpoint, 432 pages, $39.50 The Sleeping Lord and Other Fragmentsby david jonesfaber & faber, 112 pages, £15.99 Epoch and Artistby david jonesfaber...
Shock of the Real
Journey to the Land of the Real: A Translation of Equipéeby victor segalentranslated by natasha lehreratlas, 136 pages, $17.20 The death of Victor Segalen (January 14, 1878–May 21, 1919) was...
Angelic Monster
There are many angles from which to view Léon Bloy (1846–1917), but only a very few that present him in a particularly flattering light—at least, as regards his personality....
Empson in the East
The Face of the Buddhaby william empsonedited by rupert arrowsmithoxford, 208 pages, $49.95 William Empson (1906–1984) was not, as he is frequently said to have been, an “important critic,”...
From a Vanished Library
The library in question is not the Great Library of Alexandria, but it is every bit as much a thing of the past, existing now as scarcely a memory—almost...
Getting to Larisa
Plotinus: Myth, Metaphor, and Philosophical Practiceby stephen r. l. clarkuniversity of chicago, 336 pages, $55 Probably nothing makes the philosophical texts of antiquity more remote from us in sensibility,...
Mammon Ascendant
So, there I was, pondering, with an old familiar feeling of perplexity (about which more anon), certain reactions to my reaction to various reactions to the pope’s last encyclical,...
The Scholar and the Nymph
As he stood alone in the immense library of his college a week after Michaelmas term, mourning the arrival of his sixty-fifth birthday and contemplating the mild, pristinely white...
Roland on the Secret Soul
I was, it seemed, standing in my garden, gazing through shifting silvery curtains of mist at the muted yellow of a flowering forsythia. Somehow I knew it was only...
The Dream-Child’s Progress
“He’s dreaming now,” said Tweedledee: “and what do you think he’s dreaming about?” Alice said, “Nobody can guess that.” “Why, about you!” Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. “And...
Fie Upon Phi
A venerable rule of predication is that certain words—or, at least, certain homonymous terms—admit of univocal, equivocal, and analogical acceptations. That is to say, there are times when a...
A Dialogue Upon the Island
On the strand, Ariel and Caliban: the former seated atop a milk-white boulder with knees drawn up beneath his chin and wings folded behind him, the air about him...

Habetis Papam
Far be it from me—not being a Roman Catholic—to tell Catholics what they should think of their pontiff. But, just as a brief amicus curiae (so to speak), I...
Roland on Dreams
It was, I believe, the third time that the small, hard, moist rubber ball struck my forehead and dropped to my pillow that I awakened fully (or dreamed I...