The Humanities Index

New Media, Spring 2012

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 07:13:50 -0500

New Media, Spring 2012

Keeping a Student Portfolio

Sat, 31 Dec 2011 04:46:52 -0500

Keeping a Student Portfolio

The Lessons of Titus

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:34:31 -0400

The Lessons of Titus

The Epic Hero

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:34:31 -0400

The Epic Hero

Norman Mailer

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:05:55 -0400

Norman Mailer

Photo

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 08:46:05 -0400

“Lucifer” by Franz von Stuck

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:45:21 -0400

“Lucifer” by Franz von Stuck

“Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth....

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 09:14:01 -0400

“Christina’s World” by Andrew Wyeth. I’ve always loved this painting.

Silentium Speak not, lie hidden, and concealthe way you dream,...

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:37:00 -0400

Silentium

Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal
the way you dream, the things you feel.
Deep in your spirit let them rise
akin to stars in crystal skies
that set before the night is blurred:
delight in them and speak no word.
How can a heart expression find?
How should another know your mind?
Will he discern what quickens you?
A thought once uttered is untrue.
Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:
drink at the source and speak no word.
Live in your inner self alone
within your soul a world has grown,
the magic of veiled thoughts that might
be blinded by the outer light,
drowned in the noise of day, unheard…
take in their song and speak no word.

—Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev [Painting: “The SIlence” by Johann Heinrich Füssli]

Toni Morrison / Robert McCurdy, 2006 / Oil on canvas / National...

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:29:00 -0400

Toni Morrison / Robert McCurdy, 2006 / Oil on canvas / National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; on loan from Ian and Annette Cumming

A Dream Within a Dream Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in...

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:22:00 -0400

A Dream Within a Dream

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand—
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep—while I weep!
Oh God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

—Edgar Allan Poe [Image by Chris DuFour]

The Conqueror Worm Lo! ’tis gala night Within the lonesome...

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 17:16:45 -0400

The Conqueror Worm

Lo! ’tis gala night
   Within the lonesome latter years!
An angel throng, bewinged, bedight
   In veils, and drowned in tears,
Sit in a theatre, to see
   A play of hopes and fears,
While the orchestra breathes fitfully
   The music of the spheres.

Mimes, in the form of God on high,
   Mutter and mumble low,
And hither and tither fly—
   Mere puppets they, who come and go
At bidding of vast formless things
   That shift the scenery to and fro,
Flapping from out their Condor wings
   Invisible Woe!

That motley drama—oh, be sure
   It shall not be forgot!
With its Phantom chased for evermore,
   By a crowd that seize it not,
Through a circle that ever returnth in
   To the self-same spot,
And much in Madness, and more in Sin,
   And Horror the soul of the plot.

But see, amid the mimic rout
   A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
   The scenic solitude!
It writhes!—it writhes!—with mortal pangs
   The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
   In human gore imbued.

Out—out are the lights—out all!
   And, over each quivering form,
A curtain, a funeral pall,
   Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the angels, all pallid and wan,
   Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy “Man,”
   And its hero the Conqueror Worm.

—Edgar Allan Poe

"If religion is supposed to be a repository of a certain kind of truth, fundamentalism seems to me to..."

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 16:57:00 -0400

“If religion is supposed to be a repository of a certain kind of truth, fundamentalism seems to me to be a denial of the truth. It is about the creation of falsehoods and goes after the worst sides of people. I’m alarmed by what’s happening wherever fundamentalists rise — such as the rise of the American religious right. It is at least as dangerous as anything happening in the Third World — with more weapons, probably. I don’t think Americans can afford any longer to see this as something happening to other people. It’s important to understand that fundamentalism does not even pretend to be a religious movement. It is a political movement. It’s about power. So watch out.”

- Salman Rushdie

“Ulysses and the Sirens” by Herbert James Draper

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:55:39 -0400

“Ulysses and the Sirens” by Herbert James Draper

"A tragedy is a story of human actions producing exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man..."

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 11:49:28 -0400

“A tragedy is a story of human actions producing exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man of high estate.”

- A.C. Bradley, “The Substance of Shakespearean Tragedy” (1904) from HumX.

The Guardian The sun setting. The lawns on fire.The lost day,...

Mon, 31 May 2010 17:41:46 -0400

The Guardian

The sun setting. The lawns on fire.
The lost day, the lost light.
Why do I love what fades?

You who left, who were leaving,
what dark rooms do you inhabit?
Guardian of my death,

preserve my absence. I am alive.

—Mark Strand

Tomorrow Your best friend is gone,your other friend, too.Now the...

Mon, 31 May 2010 17:38:00 -0400

Tomorrow

Your best friend is gone,
your other friend, too.
Now the dream that used to turn in your sleep,
sails into the year’s coldest night.

What did you say?
Or was it something you did?
It makes no difference — the house of breath collapsing
around your voice, your voice burning, are nothing to worry about.

Tomorrow your friends will come back;
your moist open mouth will bloom in the glass of storefronts.
Yes. Yes. Tomorrow they will come back and you
will invent an ending that comes out right.

—Mark Strand [Photo by Gerald R. Lucas]

Sonnet 109 O, never say that I was false of heart,Though absence...

Mon, 31 May 2010 17:33:00 -0400

Sonnet 109

O, never say that I was false of heart,
Though absence seemed my flame to qualify.
As easy might I from my self depart
As from my soul which in thy breast doth lie.
That is my home of love; if I have ranged,
Like him that travels I return again,
Just to the time, not with the time exchanged,
So that myself bring water for my stain.
Never believe though in my nature reigned
All frailties that besiege all kinds of blood,
That it could so preposterously be stained
To leave for nothing all thy sum of good;
For nothing this wide universe I call
Save thou, my rose, in it thou art my all.

—Sir Walter Scott

Coming Home When we’re driving in the dark,on the long roadto...

Mon, 31 May 2010 17:30:00 -0400

Coming Home

When we’re driving in the dark,
on the long road
to Provincetown, which lies empty
for miles, when we’re weary,
when the buildings
and the scrub pines lose
their familiar look,
I imagine us rising
from the speeding car,
I imagine us seeing
everything from another place — the top
of one of the pale dunes
or the deep and nameless
fields of the sea —
and what we see is the world
that cannot cherish us
but which we cherish,
and what we see is our life
moving like that,
along the dark edges
of everything — the headlights
like lanterns
sweeping the blackness —
believing in a thousand
fragile and unprovable things,
looking out for sorrow,
slowing down for happiness,
making all the right turns
right down to the thumping
barriers to the sea,
the swirling waves,
the narrow straights, the houses,
the past, the future,
the doorway that belongs
to you and me.

—Mary Oliver [Photo by Gerald R. Lucas]

The Good Morrow I wonder by my troth, what thou, and IDid, till...

Mon, 31 May 2010 07:40:35 -0400

The Good Morrow

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we lov’d? Were we not wean’d till then?
But suck’d on countrey pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the seaven sleepers den?
T’was so; But this, all pleasures fancies bee.
If ever any beauty I did see,

Which I desir’d, and got, ‘twas but a dreame of thee.
And now good morrow to our waking soules,
Which watch not one another out of feare;
For love, all love of other sights controules,
And makes one little roome, an every where.
Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone,
Let Maps to other, worlds on worlds have showne,
Let us possesse one world; each hath one, and is one.

My face in thine eye, thine in mine appeares,
And true plaine hearts doe in the faces rest,
Where can we finde two better hemispheares
Without sharpe North, without declining West?
What ever dyes, was not mixed equally;
If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

—John Donne [Portrait by Isaac Oliver]