February 25, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Woody Allen gives a comical and tongue-in-cheek summary, complete with excerpt, of Nietzsche’s alleged lost book on dieting to The New Yorker: No philosopher came close to solving the problem of guilt and weight until Descartes divided mind and body in two, so that the body could gorge itself while the mind thought, Who cares, [...]
February 23, 2011 at 1:04 pm
I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on [...]
February 22, 2011 at 12:18 pm
Wisdom and Spirit of the universe! Thou Soul, that art the Eternity of thought! And giv’st to forms and images a breath And everlasting motion! not in vain, By day or star-light, thus from my first dawn Of childhood didst thou intertwine for me The passions that build up our human soul; Not with the [...]
February 18, 2011 at 1:55 pm
Is there, for honest poverty, That hangs his head, and a’ that? The coward-slave, we pass him by, We dare be poor for a’ that! For a’ that, and a’ that, Our toils obscure, and a’ that; The rank is but the guinea-stamp, The man ‘s the gowd for a’ that! What tho’ on hamely [...]
February 17, 2011 at 12:39 pm
O Earth O Earth return! Arise from out the dewy grass; Night is worn, And the mourn Rises from the slumberous mass. – from “Introduction” to Songs of Experience by William Blake, whose poetry among others’ will be considered by Prof. Christopher Ricks in a lecture next Tuesday for the students of CC202
February 11, 2011 at 2:24 pm
I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born. – Henry David Thoreau, from “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” in Walden, which book students will be reading this spring in CC202: From the Enlightenment to Modernity.
February 10, 2011 at 2:21 pm
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. – Henry David Thoreau, from the Conclusion to Walden, which book students will be reading this [...]
February 8, 2011 at 12:20 pm
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone. – Henry David Thoreau, in “Where I Lived and What I Lived For” from Walden, which book students will be reading this spring in CC202: From the Enlightenment to Modernity.
February 3, 2011 at 1:15 pm
Anne Whiting (Core ’11, CAS 13) observes that the homework in CC202 involves, sometimes, trawling videos on YouTube. Behold: The Three Boys – The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflote) by Mozart A clip from Ingmar Bergman’s 1976 film version of Mozart’s opera. NB: This version will be screened next week, on Monday and Tuesday February 7th [...]
January 25, 2011 at 4:24 pm
But errs not Nature from this gracious end, From burning suns when livid deaths descend, When earthquakes swallow, or when tempests sweep Towns to one grave, whole nations to the deep? “No,” ’tis replied, “the first Almighty Cause Acts not by partial but by gen’ral laws; Th’exceptions few; some change since all began And what [...]
