From the Archives: The Self and its Sources Part 2

The problem of the Enlightenment’s romanticizing the Greco-Roman tradition.

From the Archives: Crucial Choice Part 19 - Babette's Feast

To try to convey a tradition without having been changed by an experience of it is to betray it. Treason and tradition both come from the same root word.

From the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 194

They returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the Temple blessing God.
Leaving behind the old sacred system but only under the impulse of a religious prompting.

There’s no way out.
you were born to waste your life,
You were born to this middle class life
As others before you were born to walk in procession
To the temple
Singing

Louis Simpson

NOTE: This is the final excerpt from the Poetry of Truth series. Beginning in January we will start a new series of excerpts from a presentation Gil Bailie made in 1993 entitled "Crucial Choice" focusing on stories by Isak Dinesen, "Babette's Feast", and Flannery O'Connor, "The Displaced Person".

from the Archives: Poetry of Truth Part 44

Transfiguration pt 3...Peter's incomprehension and the appeal to tradition.