Danish. The second in a series of encyclopedia-like articles for the newspaper Weekendavisen, this short essay discusses the home that hides within our words. The twenty-two signs that make up the earliest known alphabet all began as drawings of objects commonly found in Middle Eastern households three thousand years ago. I discuss the homey story… Continue reading B is for House
For a special issue of Weekendavisen on the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, I wrote three pieces: a series of short notes on what Dante means to us today; an account of the troubled attempts to revoke his exile from Florence; and an essay on political polarization, where I argue that there is a split… Continue reading Polarized poetry
Danish. In a review of Ole Meyer’s translation, I discuss the Latin poet Propertius. He deployed a masterful command of shiftiness to engineer a political scandal, rejecting the Augustan celebration of soldiery and pious marriages in favor of extramarital affairs. Though making love not war has since ceased to be provocative, Propertius remains as irksome… Continue reading Killing her softly
Danish. In my third entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I tell the strange tale of the Runamo cliff, which was for centuries thought to contain an ancient inscription written in an unknown runic alphabet. In 1841, Finnur Magnússon produced an 800-page report on the Runamo inscription, in which he claimed to have finally deciphered it, offering… Continue reading The runes and the rock
Danish. In a review of the third Danish translation of Sappho to appear in ten months (!), I argue that one of the distinguishing features of Sappho’s poetry is their ability to create what I call moving images, in a nod to the oxymoronic force that this phrase once carried: the poems present pictures that… Continue reading Moving images
Danish. A short essay reflecting on the title of my high school coursebook on literature: At omgås tekster (“How to deal with texts”), which the students quickly transformed into Atomgås tekster (“Atomic goose texts”). The best teachers of literature are those who treat texts as open to unexpected collisions of words that produce new and… Continue reading Atomic geese
Danish. Continuing what seems to be my recurring interest in radical Aristotelian philosophers, this review discusses Claus Bryld’s brilliant treatment of Marsilius of Padua, an unjustly overlooked Medieval political thinker who, Bryld argues persuasively, anticipated the ideas of Thomas Hobbes by some three hundred years, laying the philosophical foundations for the modern secular state. “Manden… Continue reading Another forgotten philosopher
Danish. In the wake of the American gymnast Simone Biles’s decision to withdraw from the gymnastic final at the 2021 Olympics, the short essay argues that sport is defined by a tension between two ideals: it is about renewing the body and caring for one’s health; but also about breaking records and striving for extremes.… Continue reading Health v. records
Danish. In my second entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I discuss the Danish word jo, which all Danes knows how to use, but which almost no one would be able to explain. Like yes and yay in Shakespeare’s English, Danish has different words for replying to a question depending on how it was framed. This is… Continue reading Yay to language
Danish. In a review of a new Danish translation of Orosius’s fifth-century masterpiece, History Against the Pagans, I look at the templates we use to make sense of history: the circle, the pendulum, the ladder, the downward slope. The template that Orosius pioneered with groundbreaking conviction remains the most prevalent today: a smoothly upward-curving line.… Continue reading The upward-curving line
