I am a regular contributor to the Danish newspapers Weekendavisen and Politiken Historie. I write essays about literature, cultural history, and the ancient world.
A black angel, from a manuscript of the Medieval alchemical treatise Aurora Consurgens that I wrote about for Weekendavisen.
If I must die
Danish. In the wake of Refaat Alareer’s killing by the Israeli occupation on December 7, 2023, his last poem, “If I Must Die,” posted on Twitter on November 1, 2023, was translated into dozens of language, to share his message of hope and resilience around the globe. Necessarily, these translations…
Forever Old
Danish. The late Roman poet Maximianus fulminates against the depredations of old age. In this review of the new Danish translation of his poems (or poem?), I compare him to other late Classical writers who blossomed in the Medieval curricula and then faded from memory, and reflect more generally—drawing on…
Silencing grief
Danish. I was asked to review a new Danish translation of Seneca’s De Consolatione ad Helviam matrem. I read Seneca’s attempt to suppress grief with philosophical arguments up against the German police’s violent attempts to suppress vigils for Palestinian civilians killed by Israeli bombardment in the weeks following Oct. 7.…
Attabrute
Danish. Reviewing a collection of Latin quotations used in Asterix, I briefly survey the history of Classical quotations in Western culture and then delve into the strange history of how Et tu, Brute and Alea iacta est changed meaning as they passed from language to language and context to context…
Amorite ABC
Danish. I present two recent discoveries of cuneiform tablets that have shed light on ancient languages. A find at the ancient Hittite capital Hattusa revealed a previously unknown Indo-European language, Kalashmic, and a tablet from southern Iraq gave us the best possible introduction to Amorite, a language that is best-known…
Song and dance
Danish. A new Danish translation of four hymns by the Byzantine hymnist Romanos the Melodist contains a fascinating study of how Romanos drew on literary tropes and structures from Classical Greek theater. I explain Romanos’ engagement with these theatrical effects in the context of the entertainment culture in Byzantium under…
Thinking with tarot
Danish. In a review of a new Danish introduction to tarot card readings, I sketch out the history of this form of divination, tracking its transformation from a card game in Renaissance Italy through the Occultism of eighteenth-century France and up to its most famous illustrator, Pamela Colman Smith. I…
The literary centrifuge
Danish. In my thirteenth entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I suggest (somewhat tongue-in-cheek) that narratives are shaped by two forces: a centripetal forces, which keeps the story together, and a centripetal force, which add variety, texture, side plots, and surprises to the text. The worst examples of genre fiction are entirely…
The great fatigue
Danish. The peer review system is collapsing: editors find it increasingly difficult to secure the reviewers needed to ensure academic quality control. The root of the problem is a tension between the gift economy of mutual obligations on which the academic system is founded and the capitalist logic of resource…
Aristotle v. AI
Danish. There is much to be worried about when it comes to AI, but one scenario I do not find concerning is the “technological singularity,” in which AI becomes self-aware and destroys humankind. To me, this fantasy is more easily explained by a recurrent trope articulated in Aristotle’s Poetics, which…
Time of swords
Danish. In a review of Felix Riede’s study of the interaction between climate change and culture throughout ancient Danish history, I argue that he masterfully balances an understand of climactic impact with the recognition that cultures react differently to the same crisis, according to their social structure and the strategies…
The sense of nonsense
Danish. In my twelfth entry for Weekendavisen‘s lexicon, I trace the origins of the Danish word “volapyk,” meaning nonsense: it comes from a predecessor of Esperanto, Volapük, an attempt to create a perfect global language (the current Danish meaning of the word shows how well that project went). I discuss…
Making the modern world
Danish. The subtitle “and the Making of the Modern World” has become an obsession for publishers of popular history books, being applied to everything from Gengis Khan to dynamite and the year 1946. The compulsive repetition of the subtitle—I list 33 examples shows us two things about the popular notion…
Loathin’ n’ lovin’
Danish. I begin my review of Harald Voetmann’s new translation of Catullus with a close reading of poem no. 16: a rape joke that deconstructs itself to establish the difference between fictional persona and real author, combining a sophisticated literary self-reference with a genuinely shocking vulgarity. That’s Catullus in a…
Medieval merriment
Danish. In a review of Kåre Johannessen’s book about leisure and amusement in the European Middle Ages, I argue that Johannessen’s fascination with play is an example to be emulated. Historians often explain premodern diversions in instrumental terms—as physical training or forms of subtle social control—but this reading of fun…
A clash of Cleo’s
Danish. Weighing in on the controversy surrounding the 2023 Netflix docudrama about Queen Cleopatra, I briefly trace the history of her malleable, adaptable image, arguing that the queen’s legacy became a confluence of contradictions: she gathers in one figure East and West, sex and death, power and decline, excessive masculinity…
Before the Flood
Danish. Are Danish museums prepared for the coming climate catastrophe? In this article, I survey the plans that Danish cultural institutions have made to protect their cultural heritage against extreme weather phenomena and social unrest over the coming decades, drawing a parallel between the situation we face today and the…
Long Ovid?
Danish. In a review of a new Danish publication of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, I connect the all-pervading change that is the subject of the genre-busting “epic” with the profound, violent transformation that Ovid himself lived through, from his birth one year after Caesar’s assassination to his own death in political exile…
The first Danish novel
Danish. In 2023, the first Danish novel, Den beklædte sandhed (The Veiled Truth), celebrates its 300th anniversary. Virtually forgotten today, the novel was written by a woman, Anna Margrethe Lasson, who was an ardent defender of women’s place in literary culture. A roman-à-clef with concealment as both its form and…
A revolution in cuneiform
Danish. The recently launched portal of the Electronic Babylonian Literature projected, led by Enrique Jiménez, is a huge advance in the study of cuneiform cultures. The digital framework has allowed philologists to place fragments so small that humans would be unlikely to ever identify them; and while the fragments themselves…
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