Tag Archives: Belles lettres
Borges on the English tradition of versifying in one’s sleep
In Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum [Church History] of the English People, Bede talks about the first Christian poet of England, of whom only a few lines have been preserved. His name was Caedmon and his story is quite strange; we will return to it later when we talk about Coleridge and Stevenson. Here’s the story: […]
Writers: Jorge Luis Borges
Viva Jane Jacobs!
This week we celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Jane Jacobs’s epochal Death and Life of Great American Cities. There is so much about this book that speaks to our time. To begin with, the very neighborhood that Jacobs defended from Robert Moses is struggling to preserve its streets from another giant institution […]
Writers: Jane Jacobs, Jason Epstein