Where Next for the World’s First Author?
March 24, 2023
Sophus Helle— Enheduana is the first known author in the history of world literature. She was a royal princess and high priestess who lived in the 23rd century BCE in… READ MORE
March 24, 2023
Sophus Helle— Enheduana is the first known author in the history of world literature. She was a royal princess and high priestess who lived in the 23rd century BCE in… READ MORE
March 20, 2023
Geoffrey S. Smith— In March of 2019 I received a text from my colleague Brent Landau, asking whether I’d be interested in sitting in on his graduate seminar down the… READ MORE
March 15, 2023
Manan Kapoor— Sometime in the 1990s, Agha Shahid Ali wrote a poem about the Bosnian War and sent it to James Merrill, who responded: “There is nothing that you can… READ MORE
March 14, 2023
David Bentley Hart— When I first set out to translate the New Testament, my aim was to return as faithfully as possible to the original Greek, and to its ambiguities…. READ MORE
March 10, 2023
Bart D. Ehrman— Few literary genres facilitate deeper reflection on the profundities of life than tours of the realms of the dead. It is no accident that they lie at… READ MORE
February 14, 2023
Karl Kraus— EPILOGUE The Final Night Battlefield. Craters. Smoke clouds. Starless night. The horizon is a wall of flames. Corpses. Dying soldiers. Men and women in gas masks appear. A… READ MORE
February 7, 2023
Richard Sieburth— The title of this never-to-be-finished book, My Heart Laid Bare, was also drawn from one of Poeʼs “Marginalia,” in which the author of the “Tell-Tale Heart” had thrown… READ MORE
January 27, 2023
Patrick Modiano— In the street, he unfolded the sheet she’d handed him. Written on it was: Kim, 288-15-28. Strange first name. But it had something pert and cheerful… READ MORE
January 23, 2023
Mindy Aloff— I first saw the “street dancer” known as Storyboard P in a solo called “Dream Chaser,” in 2013, at Harlem’s Apollo Theater, in a performance during the U.S…. READ MORE
January 20, 2023
Bernard-Henri Lévy— Reporting . . . The first thought this word always brings to mind is universel reportage and the disdain in which France’s most exacting… READ MORE