January-February 2024 Volume Lxviii, Number 1-2, No. 603
Seamus Heaney and His Australian George Herbert
Joy, sorrow
and the viola
da gamba
Meet the Kafkas
The Tory Origins of the Industrial Revolution
Cappadocia and Turkey’s Christian Past
Simone de Beauvoir and the Meaning of Life
Contents
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I wrote Peter Steele’s obituary for the Sydney Morning Herald in 2012, and reprinted it in Portraits: Popes, Family, and Friends. The obituary ended with a brief reference to his friendship with Heaney. At the time I had no idea of its rich significance for those two warm, witty and learned poetsFebruary 15, 2024
7 mins
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Gerard Depardieu had just reconciled with son Guillaume when they appeared together in this beautiful labour-of-love of a film about sorrow, loss and the melancholy of an artist summoning the presence of a beloved lost family member through the solace of work. How was Depardieu to know that soon this would also be his own fate?February 11, 2024
15 mins
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"I sit in my room in the headquarters of the noise of the whole apartment ... My father bursts through the door to my room and passes through, his robe trailing ... the ashes are being scraped out of the stove in the next room … there is shouting one word after the other through the foyer. Father is gone; now the subtler, more diffuse, more hopeless noise begins, led by the voices of two canaries"February 9, 2024
15 mins
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The Tory model to avoid a low-wage economy that prevailed during the Regency years reflected a uniquely British school of conservative pragmatism, one that greatly facilitated innovations in science and their industrial application. Railways, gas lighting, the ambitions and achievements of Brunel, McAdam and the others who harnessed science to commerce, they were the first kicks of embryonic modernityFebruary 5, 2024
23 mins
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Joyful scenes cement Cappadocia as a place of escapism, romance and wonder, a place for tourists to ride hot-air balloons and marvel and the natural beauty. Indeed, a contemporary traveller might even assume Cappadocia has always been like this and nothing more. Such is the deceptive power of the presentFebruary 4, 2024
12 mins
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Simone de Beauvoir hovered on the edge of greatness as a young philosopher capable of penetrating the ultimate questions of existence. But then she shrank from the challenge, sinking instead into a preoccupation with the melodramatic and often sordid concerns of herself, lovers, friends and peersFebruary 3, 2024
30 mins
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The Enduring Crown Commonwealth is a welcome and thoughtful addition to the debate on the future of all four lands that constitute the diplomatic acronym. It is, however, just the start of a debate. Particularly since Brexit, the question of deeper trade relations and freer movement of peoples has been on the negotiating tableFebruary 1, 2024
19 mins
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"On our opening night at La Mama, whilst getting ready 15 minutes before opening, I was suddenly invited to a smoking-ceremony about to get under way onstage. I refused, muttering something like, 'I don’t want to be part of that oogah-boogah.' I am a blasphemer, no doubt, having read too many Phantom comics as a kid"January 29, 2024
13 mins
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For those who grew up in an earlier time, who remember the apocryphal Catholic nun who was perhaps a little tyrannical with the ruler, or watched the hypocrisy of religious leaders with an eyebrow raised, the departure of religion from the stage might not have seemed such a bad thing. The question that ought to have been asked was about what would replace itJanuary 28, 2024
21 mins
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'Lithium-ion batteries are the critical pillar in a fossil fuel-free economy,' says the UN. The New York Fire Department sees them in a different light -- that of sudden and lethal home-consuming infernos. 'So far this year, ' Gotham's hook-and-ladder men report, '18 people have been killed by fires caused by lithium-ion batteries'. What, one wonders, are the carbon emissions of a smouldering corpse?January 27, 2024
8 mins
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Above and beyond quitting the Labor Party, the Tasmanian senator was a very rare species indeed: a politician almost entirely devoid of ego, more than happy to 'stoop to conquer', and never feeling the need to exaggerate his own importance. A parliament with more of his kind would add lustre and honour to our public life. Let’s hope Keith Harvey's readable volume encourages more like himJanuary 25, 2024
7 mins
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The free world has only recently regained India from the brink of Soviet-aligned post-colonial socialism, and although the country is safe from Chinese influence, it is as vulnerable to the subversive ideologies of Western wokeism as any other open society. Given the mega-rich's affection for Harvard, maybe more soJanuary 23, 2024
23 mins
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Is it not odd that gender clinics appear unaware of the High Court's ruling that medical practitioners must inform recipients of puberty blockers' many deleterious side effects. Given the growing number of de-transitioners and the ongoing denial of cross-sex hormones' harm to developing brains, a lawyers' bonanza is inevitableJanuary 22, 2024
27 mins
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"At morning appel the SS, continually losing count and their tempers, obviously did not see anything odd about counting prisoners who could not possibly escape. The head-count ritual was maintained in all camps -- labour, concentration and even extermination -- where the population was rapidly disappearing. Just another part of the German obsession with order!"January 21, 2024
27 mins
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Times are getting harder for conservatives and classical liberals, who face challenges not only from the traditional social democratic Left but also from the new revolutionaries of wokeness. That hard going, it must said, can be laid at the feet of the centre-right itself, which too often fails to represent voters in the centre and on the rightJanuary 19, 2024
9 mins
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While yesteryear’s anti-Semitism was based in large measure in demented paranoia, today’s left-wing anti-Zionism and hostility to Israel are founded in an even larger measure of double standards and hypocrisy. Leftists hostile to Israel wholly ignore the undemocratic nature of most of the Arab countries and other Third World states, bizarrely attacking the Middle East’s only democracyJanuary 18, 2024
13 mins
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Each update of the syllabus brings a greater focus on the evils of the West and the unparalleled achievements of 'indigenous scientists'. Schools bring in trainers to do workshops on indigenous mathematics, gender ideology, anti-racism and dozens of other pseudo-academic fads. Afraid of being labelled racist, transphobic or whatever, woke left conformity tightens its grip on teaching by the dayJanuary 16, 2024
15 mins
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What is a retired AFL player to do with himself? For complainiac Adam Goodes, who celebrated his Australian of the Year Award by grumbling about the country that honoured him, it is advising Woolworths to scrap Australia Day merchandise and putting his name to a Disneyfied storybook that twists fact and history in the cause of alerting small children to generations of white wickednessJanuary 15, 2024
13 mins
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"I cannot help but feel an immense sorrow for someone of Sitsky’s years. Here is a man who tasted what could have been a golden age of culture in this country; that age never properly took shape, and since the 1990s it has declined into non-existence, vanishing from both sight and memory"January 14, 2024
11 mins
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Sitsky is very comfortable with performers altering his literal score to obey the spirit, if not strictly the letter, of what he puts on the page. Indeed, he has expressed frustration when performers complain that his writing is awkward or not idiomatic. 'You are always free to change it!' is his frequent responseJanuary 14, 2024
14 mins
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For a positive, forward-looking, quintessentially American view of life, trust your young ones to Tay Tay. Smart, athletic, sentimental without being moody, sassy without being bratty, and most of all successful in business -- she is the ideal American woman, which in this day and age makes her the ideal AmericanJanuary 13, 2024
8 mins
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As a Jew, Arendt might have been expected to evince unalloyed sympathy for the Jewish cause. But writing as a philosopher she was too analytical to be swayed by emotion -- so much so, I would argue, she failed to pay sufficient attention to the suffering of the victimsJanuary 9, 2024
24 mins
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As anyone with a close enough knowledge of Aboriginal life in the outback knows -- as do Jacinta Price and her parents, Bess and Dave Price -- 'the gap', which is a short form for the misery and suffering of the 20 per cent of Aborigines who live remotely, is largely a result of traditional practices ill fitted to modern AustraliaJanuary 7, 2024
6 mins
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After the first couple of days, I had to dismiss the romantic notion I could live a peaceful, contemplative life. Indeed, the pleasant quietude and routine revealed my own distractions more intensely, as if I were looking at a wound through a microscope. Monastic life, I concluded, is not a fairytale world where introverts like myself can go to live happily ever afterJanuary 7, 2024
12 mins
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On an American campus, privileged young women stood behind banners saying 'Whatever it takes' and the popular slogan 'Palestine shall be free from the river to the sea'. The kind of 'freedom' a movement such as Hamas would impose did not apparently trouble or even occur to themJanuary 6, 2024
8 mins
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The fact that nearly every country now wants to forget the pandemic as a kind of collective bad dream, rather than rigorously analyse it lest we make the same mistakes again, shows how governance has generally become worse as it’s become bigger and ever more intrusive.January 5, 2024
12 mins
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A Quadrant short story: 'Madeleine died and we had the funeral. Only ten were allowed so it had to be filmed. They had an outbreak at Orlando’s home so he wasn’t allowed at his mother’s funeral. I would have asked Nathan to do the incense and the reading but he would have refused on principle'January 4, 2024
20 mins
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Traditional circus is dirty and alchemical, the ring a window on the underworld, and its characters are printed straight from the archetypewriter. It’s living history, a form of cultural nourishment that modern troupes such as Canada's twee and government-funded Cirque du Soleil don't attempt and can't hope to emulate
January 4, 2024
9 mins
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I was with Barry at the Rooty Hill RSL club for the very first appearance of the not-yet-knighted Les Patterson, the character he told me he most enjoyed playing because, as a long-time sober person, he could channel all of his many negativities into that dreadful drunkard. When Barry died in April last year, neither he nor I had touched a drink for 53 yearsJanuary 3, 2024
8 mins
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Every highbrow hack, as Evelyn Waugh described Cyril Connolly, is apt to experience an embarrassment of riches when it comes to recommending books for the beach and other seasonal retreats from workaday life. Surveying the bookcase and its shelf of recent titles, this year is very much of a kindJanuary 2, 2024
32 mins
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Canberra in those far-off days was regarded as a joke by the rest of Australia. The essence of this ridicule was the notion of a 'Bush Capital' making even less impression on the visitor than such neighbouring country towns as Goulburn. compared to the great coastal cities, whence most of Canberra’s population was embarrassingly unimpressive
January 2, 2024
18 mins
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To the Tune of “Haibun” I am flying over the […]December 29, 2023
2 mins
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Marxism for shopworkers bloody value range! he says as I […]
December 29, 2023
2 mins
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Sunny Beach Time Surfers ride a southern break towards the […]
December 29, 2023
1 mins
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Dusk, Blueys Beach The re-born crescent moon winks at the […]
December 29, 2023
1 mins
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A Young Couple’s Dream We took a massive mortgage cos […]
December 29, 2023
1 mins
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Matryoshka Babushka conceals the crystalised foetus of her unborn twin, […]
December 29, 2023
2 mins
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Without Consent Hiding in shadow, huddled near the Saint, at […]
December 29, 2023
2 mins
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Cancer Bed As my train passed my brother’s station in […]
December 29, 2023
3 mins
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Bricks and Owls There across the street is a man […]
December 29, 2023
1 mins
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Top of the World Heart torn asunder, life sentence down […]
December 29, 2023
2 mins
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a fox posted in every hare and hound they all […]
December 29, 2023
2 mins
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Curiosity lands on Mars It lands on its feet like […]
December 29, 2023
2 mins
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The Joke Israelis butchered by Hamas on October 7, 2023 […]
December 29, 2023
3 mins
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Dark Emu Diner Koala Farm does not butcher the methaneous […]
December 29, 2023
2 mins
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Land Rites Through the pursuit of beauty we shape the […]
December 29, 2023
1 mins
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In these last few years, there has been yet another shift in Sitsky’s approach to piano composition. These recent piano pieces—a set of preludes and three collections of “late piano pieces”—are strikingly different from their epically proportioned predecessors. If the phase of piano composition bookended by The Way of the Seeker and Apocryphon of Initiation could be characterised as one of expansion and monumentalism, then the current phase is just the opposite: marked by distillation and crystallisation.December 28, 2023
17 mins
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Sitsky’s “compleat” purpose is to demonstrate what the significance of Busoni could be now, well into the twenty-first century. These volumes trace an ever-broadening curve, starting with Sitsky, the pianist and composer, writing fairly technically about Busoni, the composer for piano; then going on to a wider aesthetic embrace of Busoni’s underlying philosophy, across all musical genres; and finally evidencing Sitsky’s skills as textual scholar and interpreter in offering completions to key works left unfinished by the departing Busoni.December 28, 2023
12 mins
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Over the last two months, we have witnessed brutality, carnage […]
December 28, 2023
8 mins
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The Moralisers’ Quest for Status Sir: I thank Christopher Jolliffe […]
December 28, 2023
4 mins
