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 31, 2011 at 3:53 pm
When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly. — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, whose opera The Magic Flute will be examined in Prof. Roye Wates’ lecture tomorrow afternoon for the students […]
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 […]
December 3, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Dear Core, Hola! I am on a mini-break from Paris, in Madrid right now, where I had the treat of spending the day in the Prado. Velázquez and Goya close up are really an experience. I never really “got” the singular appeal of Las meninas or The 2nd of May until I was there, in […]
November 30, 2010 at 4:39 pm
The Times Literary Supplement recently addressed how people are often mislead into thinking Jonathan Swift presents a negative view of human nature in Gulliver’s Travels, a book read in the second year of the Core Humanities: Yet what readers tend also to be told is that the moral system of Houyhnhnms, according to which no […]
