Darkness Visible: Newton, part 2
Isaac Newton was deservedly knighted for his great accomplishments, but it is a mistake to minimize either his occult interests or his bad character.
The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary
Wednesday’s Child: Sweetness and Light
Of the nearly six hundred weekly posts I have published here since this site was launched, I note that not one delved into what is called natural history.
Podcast: Before Chronicles
Former managing editor Katherine Dalton Boyer interviews her former boss on the days before Rockford, in this the first part of a series.
Darkness Visible: Part I Sir Isaac Newton, Preface
This is the first section of the first part of a series of articles on the central significance of occultism . Like many of the fathers of modern science and Enlightenment–René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Elias Ashmole, and Robert Boyle–Isaac Newton was a devoted alchemist and occultist.
Podcast: Soak the Rich and Suck the People Dry
Fleming and Easton enjoy a sharp exchange on the greedy Plutocrats who own–and fund–the American government.
Ezra Pound on the Aesthetes
Ezra Pound’s Hugh Selwyn Mauberley Ode is one of the masterpieces of 20th century English/American verse. Everything in the poem is difficult and elusive. The subtitle in French shows it is a kind of funeral homage to Pound himself, who features in the poem partly as Mauberley, a gentle disciple of the 1890’s who has to confront the realities of the literature business in London.
Wednesday’s Child: Follow the Money
Gentle reader, please bear with me. I want to make one simple point, but making it requires a longish introduction.
Poetry “The Blessed Damozel”
This decidedly Medievalizing poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti s probably the best-known example of Pre-Raphaelite poetry. The P-R Brotherhood was a group of painters who challenged the Royal Academy by insisting on natural light, painting from nature, and meticulous care. They quite rightly deplored the excessive sentimentality and melodrama that had dominated painting since the early days of the Italian Manerists.
Podcast: Why Language Matters
Language in the Republic of Letters and gibberish in the Empire of Propaganda
Victorian Verse Satire
I’ve been reading in anthologies of Victorian verse in preparation for the summer symposium. I’d like to share a couple of poems I particularly like, both satires, progenitors of satiric currents that flow throughout twentieth-century commentary, high and low, to our own times. Both I found in Victorian Verse (1969), edited by George Macbeth.
Ray Olson
