Category: Reviews
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Doctor Zhivago Unveiled
Lara has to be the love of his life, with no other. Hence, he catches one final glimpse of her. We may hope that Lara is his Beatrice, the revelation of Sophia, assuming that his life and poetry had made him wise.
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Brief Encounter
Laura is a dissatisfied housewife who realizes that an essential element is missing. Laura, it must be noted, is the name of the mysterious woman who was the subject of so many of Petrarch’s sonnets. Hence, she must not be understood as a contemporary woman eager for sexual experiences, although she is never quite sure…
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Happy Wife, Unhappy Life
Stuff happens and then she lives happily ever after.
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Naima
Naked in bed together the next morning, she asks, “Now what?” He suggests, “we get a dog, get married, have children, buy a house.” And “then what?” she asks again. “Life as usual,”
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Orpheus and Eurydice: The Happy Ending
Contra all the psycho-babble online, Plato understands “true love” as the willingness to die for one’s love. Orpheus was therefore a coward because he could only sing about it.
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Laura: Men Desire Her and Women Envy Her
Laura was that rare combination of intelligence, beauty, and brashness that made “men desire her and women envy her.” She draws attention that will lift her out of her office job into the world of the rich and powerful.
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The Empty Man
In the twilight states between sleep and awakening, disturbing images of an abyss enter my consciousness. It may be a building or a natural structure. I look down, straight down, and experience the same vertigo as if it were there physically in front of me. It is not the fear of falling that is the…
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The Animus and Mrs Muir
The young widow Lucy Muir moves to the English seashore only to discover that the cottage she rented is haunted by the ghost of Captain Daniel Gregg, a rough and tough seafaring man. Undaunted, she develops a relationship with him. His crude and direct manners contrast with her prissy upbringing.
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Kerouac and the Faustian West
The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. Nobody, except the saint. ~ Charles Péguy Love, Work, and Suffer ~ Motto of the Kerouac family (Rivista Araldica) Am actually not “beat” but strange solitary crazy Catholic mystic ~ Jack Kerouak, Lonesome Traveler Since…
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Heroes and Vibhutis
The thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the…