June 2015
Delmore Schwartz is the writer without whom…
![Delmore Schwartz is the writer without whom…](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/18214257/Delmore_Schwartz-400x90.jpg)
Delmore Schwartz is to Jewish-American writing what Richard Wright is to African-American writing. He is the writer without whom.
Read MoreCheese is the very soul of song…
![Cheese is the very soul of song…](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/18214313/cheese1-400x90.jpg)
My forthcoming work in five volumes, The Neglect of Cheese in European Literature, is a work of such unprecedented and laborious detail that it is doubtful whether I shall live to finish it.
Read MoreJustin E.H. Smith has tremendous admiration for Soviet foreign-language pedagogy…
![Justin E.H. Smith has tremendous admiration for Soviet foreign-language pedagogy…](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/18214323/justin3-400x90.jpg)
by Justin E. H. Smith I’ve just completed the first lesson of L. N. Kharitonov’s Self-Teaching Manual of the Yakut Language (Third Edition, Moscow, 1987). What satisfaction! At this early stage the vocabulary is very similar to Turkish, though to be precise the true relation is the reverse: modern...
Read More“it’s a’ as it is”
![“it’s a’ as it is”](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/18214333/bfi-00n-1gx-400x90.jpg)
For most of its short generic life, the novel has depended on marriage and childbirth as signs of sexual relationship, and has had a difficulty representing sexual life beyond marriage and childbirth without the assistance of figurative language.
Read MoreIron Laughs
![Iron Laughs](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/18214350/poster2-400x90.jpg)
I did survive communism and even laughed. But I've stopped laughing many times since. First of all, of course, because in the former Yugoslavia, the collapse of the old system brought wars.
Read MoreAlbert Rolls: Contagious Magic
![Albert Rolls: Contagious Magic](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/18214406/Edwin_Landseer_-_Scene_from_A_Midsummer_Nights_Dream._Titania_and_Bottom_-_Google_Art_Project-400x90.jpg)
What I did, wanted to do, was to read Renaissance texts, those of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, as if they were integrated into a cosmos that was held together with the laws of contagious and sympathetic magic.
Read MoreA Dream Boat
![A Dream Boat](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/18214357/Unexpected-Consort1-400x90.jpg)
It was in the way he lifted her, first very low, almost causing an inverted curtsy and then up and up beyond all encrusted visage.
Read MoreVincent W.J. van Gerven Oei: LGBT Struggles in Albania
![Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei: LGBT Struggles in Albania](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/18214422/veliajmamaqi1-400x90.jpg)
This morning I woke up to a rather surprising headline: "first gay marriage in Tirana." The article referred to the marriage ceremony recently held in the residency of the UK Ambassador in Tirana, between Donald Holder and Michael Kane.
Read MoreFeroz Rather in Srinagar
![Feroz Rather in Srinagar](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/18214437/feroz1-400x90.jpg)
Though the war was still going on, it was not a terribly sad time in my life; at least, I had the consolation of the possibility of dying at home.
Read MoreFoucault’s Politics of Truth by Stuart Elden
![Foucault’s Politics of Truth by Stuart Elden](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/18214522/1024px-Sebastiaan_Vrancx_studio_-_A_landscape_with_travellers_ambushed_outside_a_small_town-400x90.jpg)
The key figures are Cardinal Richelieu and Chancellor Séguier, and Foucault thinks it is important that he can discern the “first great deployment of the ‘arms’ of the State independent of the person of the King”.
Read MoreTammy Ho Lai-Ming: One Little Room
![Tammy Ho Lai-Ming: One Little Room](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/05/18214558/578040_10150944049520086_723619154_n1-400x90.jpg)
A room with graffitied walls. Inside this room the dogs bark. A room cluttered with porcelain figurines. A room decorated with binary numbers.
Read MoreWhere Headlong Stars Have Gone
![Where Headlong Stars Have Gone](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/06/18214544/Georgian_dance_6-400x90.jpg)
The last couple of years have finally allowed us to say this safely about Georgia – a nation, which, prior to the time of Shakespeare, possessed a literary inheritance almost comparable to that of England.
Read More‘She said the earthquake parted them’
![‘She said the earthquake parted them’](https://berfrois.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/2015/05/18214552/1927_Earthquake_OliveMount-400x90.jpg)
My grandmother’s house still stands. When she was born in the 1920s, the streets had no name. She said the earthquake parted them.
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
Read MoreThe tea should be strong. For a pot holding a quart, if you are going to fill it nearly to the brim, six heaped teaspoons would be about right...
Read MoreThe thing about new blooms is that they tend to bleed— / Those petals birthed / hugging close / that come warmer weather are tricked into jumping away...
Read MoreI spent a good part of my childhood at home staring outside my bedroom window, following the trail of planes approaching the nearby Paris airport in the sky from my banlieue. I envied the passengers...
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