Reading “Job”
There were ample precedents in Dostoevsky’s work for his thematic focus on the problem of theodicy raised by Ivan—the problem of the existence of evil and suffering in a world presumably created by a God…
Month: December 2024
Today’s One-Liner (#82)
The rules of the Kingdom of God are not at all utopian: if you want to put an end to mimetic rivalry, give way completely to your rival. –Rene Girard, Maxim #158, in All Desire…
Today’s One-Liner (#81)
“He did a multitude of good deeds as secretly as bad ones are usually done.” Said about Jean Valjean, in Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, translated by Charles E. Wilbour
Today’s One-Liner (#80)
All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses. –Wisława Szymborską, Nobel Lecture
Today’s One-Liner (#79)
My music is the production of my genius and my misery. –Franz Schubert, 1797-1828 Quoted in Phil G. Goulding, Classical Music
Today’s One-Liner (#78)
“Ah done lived Grandma’s way, now Ah means tuh live mine.” –Janie, in Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
Maniacal Obstinacy
I often wonder whether I have in me a single gene or drop off blood inherited from my biblical ancestors, or even from the ghettos of the old Spanish and German cities. Who knows, perhaps…
Today’s One-Liner (#77)
Where there is hatred, let me sow love. –St. Francis of Assisi
Today’s One-Liner (#76)
“She has a rare quality of taking full responsibility in the moment for everything she does and says.” –Grigory Dashevsky, quoted in Maria Stepanova’s introduction to Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, Everyman’s Library, 2023
Dear Annie and Lindsay
I was earlier going through a 2016-17 Moleskine commonplace book I kept, and came across the following passages I transcribed from Harold Bloom’s book, How to Read and Why. I hope you may enjoy at…