Tag Archives: Yeats

Dance With Me (In The Interpretation Of Lines From Yeats)

When reading something, guessing about an author’s exact state of mind is sometimes tricky, but it’s still fun to play. Take for instance William Butler Yeats’s poem, “Among School Children.” The Yale literary critic Paul de Man once noted that … Continue reading

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Chris Hedges and the Ground Zero Mosque

Earlier in the summer, one of my favorite writers, Chris Hedges, offered an incisive and scathing critique of Anti-Enlightenment Christian nationalism in America. And, in light of the ground zero mosque controversy, it seems all the more timely: Tens of … Continue reading

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Is Gravity Entropy?

The New York Times yesterday had a curious science article suggesting that maybe one way that entropy manifests is as gravity; or, to put it another way, gravity may not be a fundamental force in the universe, but just another way … Continue reading

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“Everything great done in this world is done by passionate people”: Rick Warren Likens the Contemporary Jesus Movement to Leninism, Maoism, and the Hitler Youth Movements

In the video clip above, hearing Rick Warren appeal to mass totalitarian movements as MODELS for passionate mass organizing, I couldn’t help but think of W.B. Yeats’s poem, “The Second Coming,” specifically this line: The best lack all conviction, while … Continue reading

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Determined or Free?: Gilgamesh, Gilgamesh’s Mother, Amadeus’s Salieri, and Sartre’s Orestes

In two places in Part 2 of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Shamash, the Sun God, and father of the Mesopotamian pantheon of gods, is described as one who puts desires in the hearts of men and women. Here is Gilgamesh, … Continue reading

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Euripides’s “Bakkhai”: Is Dionysus Jesus?

Euripides’s “Bakkhai” is an extraordinary play, and functions on many fascinating levels. At one level it can be read as an indictment of rationalism, and a warning to the audience against atheism. Toward the beginning of the play, for example, … Continue reading

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