Many of Shakespeare’s comedies present a similar theme. Each begins in a sort of chaos and ends in marriage, which restores the proper order. In contrast, his tragedies have societies that are plagued with chaos and are never reordered with the correct priorities. By investigating some of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies, we will discuss what…
Tag: Poetry
The Sublime as Spiritual Warfare (lecture by Daniel Leach)
On Sunday December 28 at 2pm Eastern Time, I am proud to announce that my friend, essayist and poet Daniel Leach will deliver a special holiday Rising Tide Foundation lecture on the title of ‘The Sublime as Spiritual Warfare’ followed by an interactive Q and A period. Daniel Leach is the author of two books…
Towards a Culture of Genius – Part II
By David Gosselin The following essay is part two of a series. Click here for part one. Having examined Schiller’s notion of Genius in the last article, it became clear that the wisdom of the “masters” described in his poem was not the kind of knowledge born out of the natural insight and creative intuition…
Towards a Culture of Genius
By David Gosselin In the following poem, Friedrich Schiller turns his thought-poetry towards the question of Genius. The question of what constitutes Genius remains even more elusive in our modern age than it was at the time of Schiller’s writing in the 18th century. In his time, the classical wisdom of previous ages had already…
From the Beautiful to the Sublime: On Schiller’s “The Guides of Life”
By David Gosselin Two kinds of genius may escort you throughout life.True Goodness falls on him who lets them lead as one.Beauty enlivens and makes brief the winding road;Duty and fate grow lighter with her by your side—She leads with gracefulness and laughter to the edge.And there, mortality waits by eternal seas.There, you’ll discover the Sublime—daring and…
Comets Colliding: Schubert & Brahms Set Schiller and Heine
By David Gosselin These are two of the finest examples of German Lieder I’ve encountered. Perhaps no art form has succeeded in uniting poetry and music more effectively than the 19th century tradition of German classical art songs. A careful study of this form of creative expression and dialogue between the greatest poets and musical…
Edgar Allan Poe and the Search for the Supernal
By David Gosselin That little time with lyre and rhymeTo while away—forbidden things!My heart would feel to be a crimeUnless it trembled with the strings. -“Romance,” Edgar Allan Poe Is it possible that much of the world remains captive to a false Poe mythology? Whether in respect to his fiction, prose, or poetry the typical…
Poetry, Art and Civilization Today: Reflections on Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry”
By David Gosselin July 8, 2023, marked the 201st anniversary of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley’s tragic drowning in the Bay of Lerici, Italy, at the age of 31. However, before he died Shelley left the world with one of the most impassioned and timeless defences of poetry ever composed. At a time in which Western…
Geoffrey Chaucer and Cultural Confidence
By Gerald Therrien Have you ever thought about where the English language, that we speak today, came from? In school, we were told that there was some indigenous Celtic language, and when the Romans invaded, the Celtic got mixed in with the Latin. And when the Romans left, the Angles and Saxons invaded, and some…
C.S. Lewis’ “Weight of Glory”: Longing in the Poets, Composers & Theologians
By David Gosselin C.S. Lewis famously discussed the role of an eternal “longing” found in each mortal human being. Lewis referred to this longing using a specific German word, “Sehnsucht.” For Lewis, the longing for a something in the distance and an awareness of its unattainability within this world lay at the heart of man’s…