13 December (1909): James Joyce to Nora Barnacle Joyce
In the letter below, James Joyce writes to his wife Nora about his private unmet needs…
In the letter below, James Joyce writes to his wife Nora about his private unmet needs…
The girl walked slowly into the park. She had a heavy sack on her back. When she reached the man’s gravestone, she swung the pack from her shoulder…
For more than two thousand years, from ancient Greece to nineteenth century Europe, the theory of humorism dominated Western medical thought. Four different writers give their take on the humors.
In this letter from 1939, Hermann Hesse writes to his friend Max Herrmann-Neisse, expressing his concern for friends living in Poland and Prague, and explaining his personal detachment from world events, afforded to him by his old age. To Max … Continued
Beginning in early 1962, Thornton Wilder lived for some twenty months in the small town of Douglas, Arizona. He told his nephew that he hoped to find in Douglas a “solitude without loneliness“—a place where, away from the pressures of … Continued
A letter to Kierkegaard from a fan and admirer, along with Kierkegaard’s response.
Below, William Empson writes to Francis Doherty, a scholar specializing in the work of Samuel Beckett. Empson finds fault with Doherty’s book-length treatment of his subject, denouncing the Beckett’s “Artful-Dodger glee” and unwarranted “despair,” which he attributes to Irish Catholicism … Continued
Dumitru Tsepeneag began his literary career in the dissident milieu of mid 1960s Bucharest, before being forced into exile in Paris in the mid 1970s. After the 1989 Romanian Revolution, Tsepeneag returned to his native country—and he remains today one of the most important and accomplished living Romanian authors.
The radio animals travel in lavender clouds. They are always chattering, they are always cold…
C. S. Lewis and Arthur Greeves first met as young boys, residents on the same Belfast street. From their childhood meeting until Lewis’s death in 1963, Greeves would prove the author’s single closest friend. Below, Lewis offers some friendly criticism … Continued