Category Archives: Culture & Arts

There is now a blog collecting links to the work of the eminently readable modern essayist extraordinaire Dr Anthony Daniels, The Skeptical Doctor, whose nom de plume, or rather nom du clavier, is Theodore Dalrymple. This site should make for a convenient entry point to the various publications in which his essays appear, at leastContinue reading “O frabjous day!”

From the Foreword of Holy Transfiguration Monastery’s The Ascetical Homilies of Saint Isaac the Syrian (p. xxxiii), following a lengthy pair of quotations of Saint Isaac, in which he says, “The man who follows Christ in solitary mourning is greater than he who praises Christ amid the congregations of men” (Hom. 64), the editor writes:Continue reading “Intermonastic rumble!”

Allegory, in some sense, belongs not to medieval man but to man, or even to mind, in general. It is of the very nature of thought and language to represent what is immaterial in picturable terms. What is good or happy has always been high like the heavens and bright like the sun. Evil andContinue reading “Allegory”

Open are the double doors of the horizonUnlocked are its boltsClouds darken the skyThe stars rain downThe constellations staggerThe bones of the hell hounds trembleThe porters are silentWhen they see this kingDawning as a soul Such are the first words (from the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts) spoken by the Scribe in the prelude of theContinue reading “Philip Glass: Akhnaten”

I’ve just been to the new de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park to see the soon-closing exhibit Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh. The exhibit closes here 5 February, moving to The Met in New York (21 March-9 July) and finally the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth (27 August-10 December 2006). RatherContinue reading “Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh”

Our local San Francisco classical station, KDFC, provides an online streaming version of its broadcast which is available worldwide. If you want to hear whatever music is usually playing chez biblicalia, go here. The site itself is also a vasty, pleasanceful resource. Enjoy!