The living soul will demand life, the living soul won’t listen to mechanics, the living soul is suspicious, the living soul is retrograde!
—Dostoevsky’s Razumikhin in Crime and Punishment
The living soul wants toast and coffee, warm
beside a window with a square of grass
outside, a smudge of sun, a lifting swarm
of midges, light like fingers on the glass.
The living soul wants living waves of sound,
voices carried by the air the way you bear
a heavy quilt in from the line, squares drowned
in soaked up warmth. The voices reach you there,
propped in your comfy chair beside the frame
of light, a book forgotten on your lap.
For just a moment you have peace, sans fame,
sans wealth: the soul content with living hap.
—Ben Myers
Dear Reader,
Can I be direct with you?
War abroad. Socialists on the rise. AI upending human life. Endless uproar online. The modern attention economy doesn’t want readers — it wants users enslaved to the tyranny of the present.
First Things is the antidote: literary excellence, timeless truths, and a fixed point of reference in a culture that has lost its bearings.
But we can’t do it without readers like you.
Our goal: Raise $150,000 by November 1 to sustain First Things in the year ahead.
Your gift anchors readers in the permanent things.
Make your Fall Campaign gift now using the button below.
If you have any questions or would like more information, please contact Giovanni Del Piero, Director of the Editor’s Circle, at gdelpiero@firstthings.com or 212-627-1985.
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