Through a glass darkly

More than most writers, the circumstances of Malcolm Lowry’s death are peculiarly relevant to a consideration of his work, since excess of every kind was both his method and his subject.Was it advanced alcoholism that eventually killed him? His great, tragic novel Under the Volcano, recounts the last day in the life of a drunkard, [...]

Sören Kierkegaard and Existentialism

By Gerhard Rempel
The Danish philosopher Sören Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was hardly known outside of his native land at the time of his lonely death in a Copenhagen hospital. It was after his death that he came to exert a profound influence on philosophy, literature and theology first in Germany, then France and finally in North and [...]

Bolshoi dance like it’s 1899

Visiting the Bolshoi last weekend, to see the company’s new production of Le Corsaire before it comes to London’s Coliseum in July, I was impressed by how stubbornly tradition survives. It’s been decades since the Bolshoi has ranked as a convincing showcase for the 19th-century classics, as a process of systematic – even destructive – [...]

Anton Chekhov: Fragments of Recollections

by: Maxim Gorky
Once he invited me to the village Koutchouk-Koy where he had a tiny strip of land and a white, two-storied house. There while showing me his “estate”, he began to speak with animation: “If I had plenty of money, I should build a sanatorium here for invalid village teachers. You know, I would [...]

Storyteller – Vargas Llosa

–”This is a story that often repeated itself,” Mario Vargas Llosa says. “If a father was a businessman, he was a man who had to be complicit with the dictatorship. It was the only way to prosper, right? And what happens is that the son discovers it, the son is young, restless, idealistic, believes in [...]

Dark Angel (Rainer Werner Fassbinder )

By Gary Morris

Few filmmakers lived their private lives more publicly than Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945-1982), and few have had those lives so relentlessly linked to their artistic output. Starting at age 21, this self-created enfant terrible made over 40 films in 15 years along with numerous plays and TV dramas, but he still managed to [...]