Category Archives: Literature

Auden as a critic

Posted on October 30, 2017 by acb

My mother’s ill, but recovering, so I read to her. In the bookshelf is a WW2 selection from fifteen English poets which one of my parents must have had at Oxford. The range is from Chaucer to Matthew Arnold, and … Continue reading →

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uncosy catastrophes

Posted on September 22, 2017 by acb

Ever since I finally got round to reading The Death of Grass I have been snacking on the novels of John Christopher (Sam Youd) a British writer of appalling fecundity who was active from the fifties to the Eighties at … Continue reading →

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Tove Jansson’s Autumn Song

Posted on May 28, 2016 by acb

This is a rotten although pretty literal translation of Höstvisa (Autumn Song), a poem by Tove Jansson which I found through a line in PO Enquist’s Liknelseboken. I have lost all of the rhyme and most of the swing of … Continue reading →

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More hume quotes.

Posted on March 25, 2011 by acb

Comment superfluous When a philosopher has once laid  hold of a favourite principle Bookstaver acquired he and his websites were used by the child and body of the countries, with some worldwide prescribing the drugs they were being influence for, … Continue reading →

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Will a grand and honest decade be any better?

Posted on January 1, 2010 by acb

Around quarter to midnight I wanted to quote Auden and I couldn’t remember the word. It was “clever”: “As the clever hopes expire/of a low dishonest decade.” Our hosts of the evening didn’t have much poetry written after about 1900 … Continue reading →

Posted in Literature | 3 Comments

good riddance to 1819

Posted on December 31, 2009 by acb

I’m not entirely sure when Hazlitt’s Table Talk was written, but I was reading it over Christmas, at my sister’s house, and discovered, to my horror and astonishment, the best description you could imagine of recreational comment pages. It comes … Continue reading →

Posted in Blather, Journalism, Literature, Net stories | 1 Comment

Plugging Marek

Posted on November 20, 2009 by acb

I had to call Marek Kohn the other day, because I was thinking about the Chief Rabbi’s eugenics, and this led me to reread A reason for everything. It really is good. The discussion of Bill Hamilton in particular is … Continue reading →

Posted in God, Literature, Science without worms | 1 Comment

Gained in translation: Tomas Tranströmer

Posted on September 26, 2009 by acb

Tomas Tranströmer is generally considered Sweden’s best living poet. He presents horrible difficulties in translation. He writes an exceptionally pure, cold Swedish without frills. It’s very hard to specify why it’s not prose but you would have to be deaf … Continue reading →

Posted in Literature, Sweden | 13 Comments

On the difficulty of translating Tove Jansson

Posted on August 19, 2009 by acb

This is part of what may become a sort of series; notes on the difficulties presented by some of the books I am reading. In particular, they are examples of the discomfort I feel when I know what something means … Continue reading →

Posted in Literature, Sweden | 4 Comments

What I should be doing

Posted on August 16, 2009 by acb

is investigating a story that Louise sent me about the International Society of Arctic Char fanatics, and their struggles against some horrible development in Scotland. Better yet, I could be fishing for char (röding) because despite living for years in … Continue reading →

Posted in Blather, Literature, Sweden, Trouty things | 3 Comments