Stravinsky on Original Instruments
Montenegro kicked off the Balkan Wars,
and la bande à Bonnot were rounded up at last:
high time to bring some violence to the ballet.
Across the Atlantic, the Armory Show
stirred up Greenwich Village,
and some clown invented the crossword.
There were nudes descending staircases,
and quantum-theory’s crazy stomp.
We feigned the primitive, like Piltdown Man.
Three hundred years of Romanovs
could not pass unanswered,
the nose-dive of a stalled regime.
There was trouble in the blood,
and no course clear, Europe
—like RMS Titanic—in the dark.
David Lumsden
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