Songs of survival, transformation, and rebirth which describe the malaise of disconnectedness and the authorized power of the state which poisons and unleashes the self-destruction of our civilization in the Second World War, and also of the recreation of civilization through our common humanity; Gunter Grass has forged a national character for postwar Germany, … Continue reading Gunter Grass, on his birthday October 16 2025 revision
Dreams and fantasies of a Surrealist-Magical Realist inclination, with the language play and bizarre devices of Calvino and Perec; Milorad Pavic has given us immortal classics of literature, brilliantly conceived and gorgeously written. His works achieve an apex of narrative beauty, as unique as it is stunning, and also recapitulates and transforms our civilization’s … Continue reading Milorad Pavic, on his birthday October 15 2025 revision
Ambiguities of meaning, experiments of form, fantasies and reimaginations of what it means to be human; our histories, political and cultural contexts, allegories and fables; Italo Calvino changes the structural elements of ourselves and our civilization to renew and reawaken us. Few of our liberators have transgressed and shifted our boundaries as rigorously as … Continue reading Italo Calvino, on his birthday October 15 2025 revision
Comedies of dehumanization and existential dread, satires of power relations and the Sadeian-Freudian dynamics of sex and gender, a Nabokovian obsession with the illusions of self and memory, the tyranny of history and other people, a Camus-like defiance and revolt against authority and the tillting at windmills; Harold Pinter’s Absurdism comes direct from the … Continue reading Harold Pinter, on his birthday October 10 2025 revision
Here is Plato’s Philosopher-King, a playwright whose stage is a nation; Vaclav Havel became a figure of the ideal human being and the unconquered spirit of man. His will to become, to defy tyrannical authority and hold fast to Truth, Justice, and Liberty regardless of the cost, to abandon not himself nor his people … Continue reading Vaclav Havel, on his birthday October 5 2025 revision
At his best a visionary maestro and literary prankster of irrepressible humor and wit, Flann O’Brien could not sustain the heights of his unselfconscious debut, crushed by years of scorn and ridicule. With his will and belief in himself, his capacity of vision was broken. As must be true for countless writers, artists, musicians, … Continue reading Flann O’Brien (Brian Ó Nualláin), on his birthday October 5 2025 revision
“I set about discovering the face of the Infinite beneath the concrete forms which were escorting me, walking the length of the earth’s avenues.” Louis Aragon The dichotomous vision and juxtaposition of images of the Ideal and Real realms in which man is caught and must live have not only trapped us in … Continue reading Louis Aragon, on his birthday Oct 3 2025 revision
Sensuous, gorgeous poetry and puzzles of strange symbols like a private language or obfuscating code, Wallace Stevens combined in his art English Romanticism and French Symbolism like the performance of a highwire act. His poetry is a stunning negotiation of balance between the forces of conservatism- here expressed as the literary tradition of … Continue reading Wallace Stevens, on his birthday October 2 2025 revision
“Let the beauty we love be what we do”; with this quote by Rumi do I reply to any direct questions regarding identification of faith, though depending on who is asking and in what language I may also answer with Keats famous paraphrase of Rumi; ““What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether … Continue reading Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, on his birthday September 30, 2025 revision
Satire, Absurdism, the birth of Humanism, self-referential metafiction half a millennium before its time; with Don Quixote, the civilization of Europe awakens from its long slumber, shakes off the spell of church and feudalism like a giant rousing itself from an evil poison, and begins to question itself again. This is what creates humankind … Continue reading Miguel de Cervantes, on his birthday September 29 2025 revision
Dollhouse Park Conservatory & Imaginarium 