There are two moments in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus that I come back to often. The first is an epitaph that Socrates uses to explain bad writing, which he recites (and I will now quote) in full:
A maid of bronze I stand on Midas’ tomb,
So long as waters flow and trees grow tall,
Abiding here on his lamented grave,
I tell the traveller Midas here is laid.1
Socrates says it makes no difference what order these lines come in — essentially the text will always say the same thing. The only role for this bronze figure, inanimate and solid, is to mark the place where a dead body lies. It represents the opposite of what Socrates considers to be good discourse, which should be “constructed like a living creature.”2 This live body is articulated in another moment in Plato’s dialogue when Socrates likens himself to a vessel through which words pour in as if from some external and forgotten source.3 This brief admission feels like a breaking of the fourth wall—a moment when Plato the writer punctures through the scene he has constructed to reveal it for what it is: a construction. After all, the words that poured into Socrates in Phaedrus did not come from Sappho or Anacreon, as he supposed in the text. Rather, they came from none other than Plato himself, the author who speaks through the mouths of the many bodies he created for the purposes of his dialogues.
Continue reading your story on the app
Continue reading your story in the magazine
Falling In Love (Again): India's Weaves Story
India’s love affair with handwoven cloth shows no signs of abating. Open any fashion magazine or newspaper and weaves get ample play. Designers up and down the country extol the virtues of weaves, proudly brandishing their innovative work with weavers to contemporise motifs and palettes. This is laudable but hardly surprising.
Regal Renaissance: The Royal Opera House Re-opens
The Royal Opera House Mumbai is widely touted as ‘Mumbai’s cultural crown jewel’ and India’s only surviving opera house. The original idea for the space was conceived of in 1908. It was inaugurated in 1911 by King George V, and eventually completed in 1916. The design incorporated a blend of European and Indian detailing.
Technologies Of Elegance
As soon as you enter the exhibition space in Bikaner House, the display ahead sort of takes your breath away. It’s a carefully crafted mise-enscène, filled with dangling screens, suspended sequins, overflowing jewellery boxes, glass displays, and more. And yet, in spite of the exquisite setting, and the props that inhabit it, your focus never wavers from the clothes, which form the essence of the exhibition.
Fictioning The Landscape: Robert Smithson And Ruins In Reverse
That zero panorama seemed to contain ruins in reverse, that is – all the new construction that would eventually be built. This is the opposite of the ‘romantic ruin’ because the buildings don’t fall into ruin after they are built but rather rise into ruin before they are built. –Robert Smithson, “A Tour of the Monuments of Passaic, New Jersey”
Kerala Boy
The Kerala boy stands alone, facing the sea or what looks like the sea. Water is never far from his feet. His eyes are dark and his hair is blacker than the best Tellicherry pepper. He is an inch taller than most and a little long in the tooth. He likes the language of protest. He likes the flavour of a season called ‘Left’.
Ghosts Of Ghan-Town
Landing gracefully on a rock, the camel tucked in its wings And wondered if this was perhaps Miryam Springs? This parched and desolate landscape was not what he hoped to find What of the flourishing settlement he had once left behind?
Delicate Animals
The humidity is sabotage and my skin is undone. I’ve always had a preference for dryness. While other women fear wrinkles, I never mind the beginnings of a crease. They seem cleaner, those intersecting lines. But then I’ve never been afraid of getting older, of being an abstraction.
The Smuggler: A Mural By Sadequain
The story goes that Sadequain (1930 – 1987), living in Karachi, was exhausted and in poor health. He was offered a stay at a government rest house at Gadani in 1958, so that he could recover. Gadani is located in the province of Balochistan on the Arabian Sea, a few kilometers west of Karachi. It must have felt quite remote from the city back then. The western coastline of Pakistan has long been infamous for underdevelopment and for unregulated trade activities with West Asia.
Complete Love
It’s 2011, late summer. All over Europe, young people are occupying central public squares to demonstrate for more social justice. In Berlin, their agenda is different. The completists gathered at Alexanderplatz aspire for justice primarily on an intimate level. They believe that only when the redistribution of material wealth includes equal chances of finding sex and love — no matter how elderly, disabled, or ugly you are — communism will become real.
A Writer's Discourse
There are two moments in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus that I come back to often. The first is an epitaph that Socrates uses to explain bad writing, which he recites (and I will now quote) in full:
A Life in Poetry
Our sixteenth annual look at debut poets
Children's literature – Six-Pack
Scott Hobbs Bourne Proposes An Act Of Imagination
Two Meanings of “the Body Keeps the Score”
THE SOUL OF THERAPY KEVIN ANDERSON, PHD
What We Found in Writing
ON THE evening Denver went into lockdown, I was fishing. The South Platte runs right through the city, and if you’re into urban fly-fishing, you can cast for huge carp among the wrecked grocery carts and old tires.
A Village School
Paganism is alive and well here in the Mari El Republic.
A Date With Svetlana Alexievich In Berlin Or, Smuggling Bugs Into Soviet Moscow
A Cuban writer, having lived in Soviet-era Moscow and East Berlin in the 1980s, reflects on real-life bugs and make-believe characters.
Master Of Enchantment
In her latest novel, Alice Hoffman works her magic on World War II
145 Minutes With … Bari Weiss
A book party occasions a gathering of the moderate chic.
Misunderstanding Susan Sontag
Her beauty and celebrity eclipse the real source of her allure—her commitment to cool control.
Broken Spies For A Broken
Mick Herron is the John le Carré of the Brexit era.