Never thought I’d find myself reading this, but, curiosity got the better of me. It’s one of history’s tidier ironies that a man once wrote a novel about an incompetent government facing a deadly plague - only for his son to later preside over one. The Virus (originally The Marburg Virus, 1982) is Stanley Johnson’s … Continue reading The Virus: A Parable of Power and Pathogens
Tag: death
Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude: The Soul Beneath the Storm
Some days heaven seems undecided about whether to weep or pray. Chopin caught one of them. His Prelude in D-flat major, Op. 28 No. 15 - the so-called Raindrop Prelude - drips like eternity through a cracked roof, each note a soft reminder that beauty isn’t the absence of suffering, but its echo. The piece … Continue reading Chopin’s Raindrop Prelude: The Soul Beneath the Storm
The Forest That Feels: On Doré’s Inferno and the Suicide of the Soul
Gustave Doré, Inferno, Canto XIII: The Forest of Suicides, 1866.Wood engraving for Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy (public domain image). When I first looked at Doré’s Forest of Suicides, I thought of winter trees after a storm - those half-living skeletons that creak when the wind passes through, as if remembering they were once alive. … Continue reading The Forest That Feels: On Doré’s Inferno and the Suicide of the Soul
They All Love Jack: The Gospel According to the Gutters
I’ve long suspected that the Ripper mystery isn’t so much about one man’s madness as it’s about a whole empire’s mask slipping. You can smell the hypocrisy before you even open Bruce Robinson’s They All Love Jack. It’s the stench of gaslight and gin, of sanctimonious gentlemen who polished their Masonic jewels while the poor … Continue reading They All Love Jack: The Gospel According to the Gutters
L’amour de Pierrot – A Reflection on Dalí’s Love and Death
L’amour de Pierrot - Salvador Dalí (Spanish, 1904–1989). Public domain image, early 20th century. Some paintings laugh softly into the grave. L’amour de Pierrot, painted by the young Salvador Dalí before his moustache had fully declared war on convention, is such a piece. At first glance, it’s all sweetness and sentiment: two lovers - Pierrot … Continue reading L’amour de Pierrot – A Reflection on Dalí’s Love and Death
Wording 