The Good News of Translation, 3.17.2017
Opera excepted, I never asked myself, in those early years of reading literature in translation, what I was missing. It was as if I felt it were my job, as a passionate reader, to see…
Tag: Leo Tolstoy
Be Here Now
In one of Tolstoy’s parables, a peasant is plowing a field. The narrator asks the old man what he would do if he knew that Death was coming to take him away within the hour….
On Ivan Ilyich
ahamkara [aham, “I”; kara, “maker”] Self-will, the ego mask, the principle in people which makes them feel separate from others. — Diana Morrison, A Glossary of Sanskrit from The Spiritual Tradition of India The Death of Ivan…
A Short Digression While Discussing a Tolstoy Story (Why I Love Siobhán)
At McGurks I asked Siobhán, “Did I ever tell you about the ‘Meanwhiles?’” “I don’t think so.” “Back in the days and nights When The Book of Mev wasn’t The Book of Mev (I was…
Toward a Curriculum for an Institute for the Cultivation of Slowness
For Lindsay Morning Aspiration: Upon first waking up in the morning, recite this gatha from Thich Nhat Hanh: “Waking up this morning, I smile: Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to…
Try Giving Yourself Away
Rings and jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself. –Ralph Waldo Emerson In the late 1940s David Dunn wrote an article The reader response was overwhelming…