April 2024 Volume LXVIII, Number 4, No. 605
Tepidarium
Born a Champion: Brutal Grace
Anton Mruk: From Auschwitz to the Vatican
Thy Kingdom Come
The Poetry of Contemplation
Illness and Creativity: Virginia Woolf
Contents
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"Her lover left her shipwrecked, heart shucked open like an oyster. Doesn’t every love story end with someone jumping ship, one way or another? She should have walked the plank at the start. For the final scene Ana kneels by her dance partner’s limp body. Ondine’s heartbroken kiss kills the mortal man"July 27, 2024
6 mins
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'I have watched director Alex Ranarivelo's film at least a dozen times and it always brings me to tears. It is one of the finest fighting films ever made. Not only does it look unflinchingly into the worlds of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the early history of mixed martial arts fighting, it is also a bitter-sweet love story, almost a Greek tragedy'May 11, 2024
13 mins
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'I have never met anyone else whose daily experience of horrendous evil lasted for the entire Second World War and played itself out in only two infamous death camps. It served to strengthen his desire to be an instrument of divine mercy and peace. For myself, I want to borrow from W.B. Yeats, and say my glory was I had such a friend'May 5, 2024
6 mins
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'Unsure what I was admitting, sensing a scary but exciting liberation -- a clarifying shift in my vision of myself and the world -- I stared ahead. It was as if some lens in my mind had clicked into focus: what was blurry was now clear'May 4, 2024
10 mins
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The early seventeenth century was English poetry's golden age for the poetry of meditation, a more specialised and concentrated process than contemplation. Meditation seeks unity with the Godhead, and it is this particular genre which has given us some of the greatest poems in the language.May 2, 2024
14 mins
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Upon the death of her father in 1904, a despairing Virginia threw herself from a window too low to do any real harm. Recovering, she insisted Edward VII was lurking and cursing in the shrubbery while birds spoke to her in Greek. Just 22 at the time, madness and maladies would be frequent companions until her suicide in1942April 29, 2024
14 mins
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The 1937 manifesto of the New South Wales Aboriginal Progressive Association, which had sibling organisations in other states: 'We have no desire to go back to primitive conditions of the Stone Age. We ask you to teach our people to live in the Modern Age, as modern citizens' How times have changed!April 28, 2024
23 mins
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On the day Whitlam was re-elected leader after Labor's 1975 election drubbing, Clyde Cameron noted in his diary that Gough 'looked uncomfortable ... chastened and worried'. It was a prescient appraisal. Dark and compromising secrets held in Moscow and Baghdad were soon to spill onto Australia's front pagesApril 26, 2024
14 mins
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It has sometimes been inferred that Albert Jacka’s politics were left-leaning. Whilst he never formally associated himself with a political party, nothing could be further from the truth. As with so many aspects of his later life, including his relationship with John Wren, myth raced far away ahead of factApril 25, 2024
21 mins
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Anzac Day now stands alone on the calendar as a symbolic bastion of national identity, an identity the Left wants expunged not only to create further room for its ever-growing collection of ersatz days of pride and mourning, but also to create a cultural tabula rasa that can be re-engineered according to ideology and fashionApril 24, 2024
19 mins
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Rocking up to the rechargers is when the torture begins for our EV-driving friends. Are the machines working? Is there a line? Can I download the proper app? Are all these other users slowing my charge? And most distressing of all, why won’t the people in that ancient V8 Commodore stop laughing at me?April 22, 2024
8 mins
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The abolition of external exams brought an end to gains in equity and the meritocratic principle that characterised Australian education in the post-war years. The system encouraged students to strive and identified their relative abilities. This should not have been grounds for complaint, yet it was scrapped as an unconscionable burden. The result has been tragicApril 19, 2024
25 mins
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As successive small Australian poetry publishers -- has there ever been any other kind? -- go out of business, new ones spring up to replace them. Four new volumes of Australian verse testify that such optimism, so often and ultimately dashed, can and does produce works of lasting worthApril 18, 2024
9 mins
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It was not so long ago, historically speaking, that this Ohio town was booming. And then, like so many other communities in America's heartland, it was hollowed out as factories closed down and the main street became a strip of urban blight. The answers are many, but far more interesting is that a new community, conservative in nature, is bringing a town back to lifeApril 18, 2024
21 mins
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The ousted Labor leader noted in his 1973 memoirs that the party had passed 'for the time being from the traditional control by the working class … to quasi trade union-cum white-collar-professional control'. Some 50 years on, the accuracy of that observation is beyond dispute. Also clear is that Labor will never again resemble its former self, its aims and purpose ever more abstracted in this era of wokeApril 17, 2024
7 mins
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As a young listener I was awestruck by the symphony’s drama and power, as well as Schubert’s depiction of what seemed to be a violent but stunningly beautiful clash between the ineffable extremes of emotion, between pure light and abject darkness. 'Whenever I attempted to sing of love, it turned to pain,' the composer said of his works' duality, 'and when I tried to sing of pain, it turned to love'April 14, 2024
13 mins
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Rochdale’s town hall is considered one of the paragons of Victorian municipal architecture, emblematic of an age when an increasingly prosperous Britain took immense pride in its local communities. Today the town is known for child poverty, 'Asian' grooming gangs the police ignored, and an MP whose return to the Commons owes much to unassimilated Muslim enclavesApril 13, 2024
15 mins
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Attempts to quantify teaching in scientific terms, to make it circle around datapoints, effect-sizes and graphs that fly about this way and that, are guaranteed to kill the thing as surely as a stake to an undead heart. Much of what makes a good teacher is innate. All our vanities about how to improve teaching forget that, at day’s end, if the teacher hath not love, she hath nothingApril 10, 2024
22 mins
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No system of criminal justice will ensure that there are never again such people as whoever decapitated the victim found in Sheldon Johnson’s flat. Individual propensity to do evil is always distributed in a normal curve, and the most that any system can do is move the whole curve either in the direction of good or evil. But that is already muchApril 9, 2024
8 mins
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The six tumultuous years of Labour have bequeathed the new Prime Minister a country in which all aspects of the economy, public life and society are in disrepair. Fixing all this -- from education to housing, the public service and government-endorsed Maori separatism -- is a Herculean task. The good news is that the noxious legacies of Jacinda Ardern's misrule are being scuttled without apology or delayApril 8, 2024
8 mins
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If Anna Funder wishes to attack George Orwell, as she does for page after page in Wifedom, that is, of course, her right. The sad truth, though, is that her efforts to present Eileen Blair as the genius behind Animal Farm are ludicrous. This book is the work of a fact-mangling crank, unworthy of a major publisher's imprintApril 6, 2024
27 mins
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The new national cultural policy, Revive: A Place for Every Story, a Story for Every Place, seems to prioritise Australian arts infrastructure -- existing, large-scale national institutions and, of course, bureaucracies -- at the expense of independent artists and, even more so, of art itselfApril 4, 2024
16 mins
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Partisan reporters -- is there any other sort these days? -- seek to persuade readers of various general truths rather than merely report what comes their way. Ireland's landslide rejection in early March of two woke referendums illustrates the gulf between what voters are told they should believe and what they actually doApril 2, 2024
9 mins
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The Muslim leadership in Australia does not acknowledge one simple and incontrovertible fact, that Israel is central to Jews and Judaism, historically and today. Israel is not a dispensable ingredient in what it means to be Jewish, despite the marginal Jews who can always be found penning diatribes against it, especially for Al JazeeraMarch 31, 2024
13 mins
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Vitis Vinifera The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably […]March 29, 2024
1 mins
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To a Young Poet Be the first path coming into […]
March 28, 2024
1 mins
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The Tower Moment We can tell where the weak points […]
March 28, 2024
1 mins
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The Ruins of Killalpaninna Here, the stretch of a season […]
March 28, 2024
2 mins
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Playground Graphics The Young Ones have taken over the playground. […]
March 28, 2024
2 mins
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The Conception of a God The Annunciation with Saint […]
March 28, 2024
2 mins
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I Love to See the Old Blokes I love to […]
March 28, 2024
1 mins
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On Reading Les Murray Died Four Years Ago With a […]
March 28, 2024
2 mins
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September Another September has come with its songs of silence. […]
March 28, 2024
1 mins
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A Meeting in Australia There were 99+ on the screen, […]
March 28, 2024
2 mins
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Dublin Swans “Wholly serene and sure, with regal composure, [the […]
March 28, 2024
2 mins
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The Story of the Squirrel (After Billy Collins) I remember […]
March 28, 2024
2 mins
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Greece Feel the haze of heat and water as you […]
March 28, 2024
1 mins
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If Walls Could Talk Tangmere built 1892 If walls could […]
March 28, 2024
2 mins
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oxymoronic Call out the dogs of war— unnerve the enemy. […]
March 28, 2024
1 mins
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A Day in St Woolworth’s is Better than a Thousand […]
March 28, 2024
2 mins
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Name and Number My name is Caterina; I’m a […]
March 28, 2024
2 mins
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Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took […]
March 28, 2024
7 mins
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Programming requirements differ, whether a concert appears as part of a periodic series of mixed events, a thematic festival—such as the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s presentation of the Beethoven symphonic cycle this November—or as a once-off gig, often paying homage to a particular composer, performer or style. And rare are the concert programmers who can resist the lure of anniversaries, whether they commemorate the births or deaths of famous artist personages or landmark works in Western music’s history, such as The Rite of Spring.March 27, 2024
11 mins
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The recent media coverage of anti-Semitism prompts a look at […]
March 27, 2024
10 mins
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By a strange alignment of the electoral stars, more than […]
March 27, 2024
8 mins
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Madam: Well, again, a quiet and unassuming article, “Meet the […]
March 27, 2024
3 mins
