➡️ Part 1➡️ Part 2 When Oscar Wilde enlarged the story for the novel-length version, he responded to his critics by further toning down its “immoral” elements, obscuring the homoeroticism of the plot and expanding the personal background of the characters. The amended version, extended from 13 to 20 chapters, was published in a single… Read More The Picture of Dorian Gray: Preface/3
“The darling buds of May” mentioned in one of Shakespeare’s sonnet refer to the blooming flowers that begin to grow after winter has ended. SONNET 18 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer’s lease hath all too short a… Read More The Darling Buds of May
On 19 April 1588. Paolo Caliari known as Paolo Veronese from his hometown, Verona, where he was born sixty years earlier, died in Venice. He had caught a pulmonary infection at a religious procession near his country house at Sant’Angelo.Veronese was a great Italian Renaissance painter, famous for his extremely large historical paintings of mythology… Read More Painters, Poets and Madmen
Three quotes by James Cabell: “A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book “means” thereafter, perforce, — both grammatically and actually, — whatever meaning this or that reader gets… Read More Cabell on Literature
Susanne Langer (20 December 1895-1985) was an American philosopher of art, one of the first female academic philosophers in the USA, popular in the past but now often forgotten She is best known for her 1942 book “Philosophy in a New Key”, where she put forth an idea that she developed in her following studies… Read More Symbols
This canvas was painted by Samuel Butler in 1874 and its title is: “Mr Heatherley’s Holiday: An Incident in Studio Life”. The work was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1874, and now hangs in the Tate Gallery in London. It is his largest and most impressive oil painting, an ‘important’ work, as Butler referred… Read More Samuel Butler – Painter
English novelist and critic Samuel Butler was born in 1835 in Langar Rectory, in Nottinghamshire, England, into a long line of clerics, preordained to a career in church, to which he too, by his father’s wish and expectation was predestined. His relations with his father, Rev. Thomas Butler were difficult and antagonistic.He later wrote of… Read More Eclectic Samuel Butler
Samuel Butler was a British satirist, novelist and critic, born on 4 December 1835. Here are some of his quotes on life: “Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.” “Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.” “Life is like music, it… Read More Samuel Butler on Life
Jacques Barzun ( born on 30 November 1907) was a French-American historian, teacher and a philosopher of education Three quotes on teaching: Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition. The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a… Read More Teaching
🎶“Ah, but I was so much older then / I’m younger than that now” (1)🎶 Today Bob Dylan, singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, turns eighty “I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.” (2)“Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest… Read More Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan 🎉
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