For readers and thinkers on whom nothing is lost
For readers and thinkers on whom nothing is lost
I recently saw Richard Dawkins on his final public speaking tour. And while I was not able to ask him a question then, one still burns brightly in my mind – concerning memes, and the rise of AI in culture. In lieu of the professor himself, I explore my question here, in hopes of finding a satisfactory answer.
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I must admit, I find myself somewhat uninspired this time of year. In search of a remedy, I turn to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s ‘The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere’, to see if an answer lies within the icy wastes of his South Pole.
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As a fan of the Hunger Games series, I was pleased to find that Suzanne Collins has reached a similar level of quality with ‘The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes’. As an English graduate, I was not expecting to find in the book a relationship to the Romantic poets substantial enough to sink my teeth into. Here, I do exactly that— I consider the true significance of the fraught relationship between Coriolanus Snow and Lucy Gray Baird, a journey that will take us via Rousseau, Hobbes and Wordsworth.
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‘La Belle Dame’ is one of Keats’ most enigmatic of poems, detailing the love and loss of a certain ‘Knight at arms’ the nature of which we are never properly told. But beyond the individual pining of a man over his lost ‘Lady in the Meads’, is there a wider truth that Keats is trying to tell, concerning the direction of literature and the fate of his fellow Romantics as a whole?
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Why is it that so many classic texts are forced upon us in this modern age? And, more importantly, why is it that I won’t stop harping on about them throughout this website? In a rare moment of self-awareness, I try to propose an answer.
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As the world around us seems more frenzied and cacophonous than ever, I take a brief moment to consider the simple comforts that the silence of reading can offer instead.
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