Arts & Letters – Spirituality

Back in 1998, Steven Heine wrote a really interesting article about emotions in Japanese religion and literature. The basic premise went something like this: while in general Buddhism seeks to restrain human emotion, seeing it as an impediment to enlightenment, Japanese forms of Buddhism are different in that they have accepted emotion, instead having traditionally sought to refine or transform the emotions into something edifying. The unique way in which...

What does a novelist need? Balzac’s letters suggest the following: a peaceful place to work; a home full of beautiful, expensive objects to create “happiness and a sense of intellectual freedom”; coffee strong enough to maintain the flow of inspiration for two months; debts and publishers’ contracts with draconian penalty clauses to reinforce self-discipline with compulsion; several aliases and hiding places to prevent the creditors’ bailiffs from confiscating the expensive...

Stefano Evangelista Oscar Wilde c.1881 Copyright (c) Mary Evans Picture Library 2010 When Oscar Wilde died in 1900, his literary estate was in a mess. He had been declared bankrupt as a result of the trials, his library had been sold and he had lost the copyright of his published works. His reputation had been badly damaged by the scandalous revelations about his homosexuality and the smear campaign that followed....

A literary cult figure who died decades ago is more relevant than ever. “My name is Veronica Forrest-Thomson,” writes Veronica Forrest-Thomson in one of her final poems, “Cordelia: or ‘A Poem Should not Mean but Be.’” But who is Veronica Forrest-Thomson? For the uninitiated: she’s a literary cult figure, a rising star of British post-World War II poetry and criticism whose career came to an abrupt halt when she died...