In a 30-minute documentary produced in collaboration with the Arvo Pärt Centre, the composer discusses the significance of his personal diaries to the formation and development of his music.
Ignatius Loyola: A Saint Reads the Saints
31 July marks the feast day of Saint Ignatius Loyola (b.1491), the founder of the Society of Jesus (more commonly known as the Jesuits). In a breviary, I was interested to read a passage from the Acts of Saint Ignatius taken down by Luis Gonzalez, which describes the reading habits of the young saint:
(more…)Primo Levi: The Weak and the Powerful
— Primo Levi, If This Is a Man“A country is considered the more civilised the more the wisdom and efficiency of its laws hinder a weak man from becoming too weak and a powerful one too powerful.”
John Lewis, 1940—2020
“I believe in nonviolence as a way of life, as a way of living.”
—
John Lewis
Civil rights leader and American politician
1940—2020
The Life of Saint Pambo
Reading Butler’s Lives of the Saints, I come across a passage on St Pambo, an Egyptian monk (c.390) thought to be a disciple of St Antony. I was struck by the following passage:
“His life was typical of the desert monks: hard manual labour, long fasts and physical penance, and sustained periods of prayer. Pambo was especially noted for his silence and a reluctance to speak any more than was necessary, seeing in control of the tongue a basic first step towards a deeper spirituality; he is said to have meditated on this verse from the Psalms for six months: ‘I will watch how I behave, and not let my tongue lead me into sin’ (Ps. 39:1). On the other hand, he had a broader outlook than many of his colleagues in the desert and did not believe their way of life was necessarily the best; he settled an argument between to monks as to which was more perfect, becoming a monk or staying in the world and doing works of mercy, by saying: ‘Before God both are perfect. There are other roads to perfection besides being a monk.'” (18 July, Butler’s Lives of the Saints)
Halldór Laxness: The freedom to look up at the sky
— Halldór Laxness, World Light (trans. Magnus Magnusson).“You can take everything from me except the freedom to look up at the sky occasionally.”
Thoreau: “A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature”
“A lake is the landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.”
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Lydia Davis on Reading Contemporary Literature
— Lydia Davis, Essays One“What should the diet of your reading be? Read the best writers from all different periods; keep your reading of contemporaries in proportion—you do not want a steady diet of contemporary literature. You already belong to your time.”
