Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
The Poetry in the Art
Gate of Lilacs: A Verse Commentary on Proust
by Clive James
Picador, 2016, 75 pages, $29.99
At first glance Gate of Lilacs might seem a self-indulgence. Fifty pages of blank verse by a sick man about a notoriously long magnum opus by another, more-lengthily, sick man may seem a bit daunting. Our “Boy from Kogarah” (aka Clive James, the polymath) and Marcel Proust (“that droopy, wheezing dweeb”, according to Clive) are an unlikely pair. For most readers, however, whether or not they are familiar with Proust’s multi-volume masterpiece À la recherche du temps perdu, James’s Gate of Lilacs will be a consistently interesting and often moving experience.
James claims to have learned French by reading the whole of Proust in the Livre de Poche original with the aid of a dictionary over some fifteen years. He has also read the English translations, particularly the early, and famous, Scott Moncrieff version.
As he read he also made notes in the end-papers and it is from…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
Aug 16 2024
2 mins
