‘I confess I do not believe in time.’ Vladimir Nabokov On a hostel rooftop in Morocco, I met a Russian man who had not been home since the war broke out. I was there to catch the last of the sun and read my book in peace so when he first introduced himself I made … Read more
History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. James Joyce, in ‘Nestor’, from Ulysses (1922) If there is any substitute for love, it is memory. To memorize, then, is to restore intimacy.’ Joseph Brodsky, in ‘Nadezhda Mandelstam (1899-1980) An Obituary’, from Less Than One: Selected Essays (1986) One of the … Read more
Often overshadowed by his elder, Nobel laureate, brother W.B., Jack Butler Yeats occupies an exalted position among Irish painters. ‘Jack B. Yeats: Painting & Memory’ is a new exhibition in the National Gallery commemorating the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the painter’s birth, and exploring a stylistic evolution that draws on both Irish and … Read more