READINGS OF THE WORK BY PHILIP HARVEY

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/04/children-galway-mass-graves-ireland-catholic-church As usual around June, I take down Ulysses for some more good-humoured updates on what happens on Bloomsday. This year my reading coincides with news of the latest church scandal from Ireland, the gruesome revelations about the remains of nearly 800 children found in a disused sewage tank in Tuam, County Galway. The children died between 1925 and 1961 while under the care of the Bon Secours nuns. Other graves are also being uncovered. One is forced to make connections of meaning between what James Joyce is saying in Ulysses and the stories coming out about Magdalen laundries, child sexual abuse, and now these mass graves. The iron power of the Catholic Church in Ireland is object of his continuous satire in Ulysses, a power that only became entrenched after the Civil War. At times the satire goes on too long, Joyce seems unable to restrain himself from questioning the Chu...

George Barker George Barker writes at length On sperm and roses and death. What I am really trying to say is George Barker writes at length On sperm and roses and death. Once or twice he offers the world To his four-year-old daughter in verse Or addresses a well-suited art critic In whimsical words that stand unsanded And heavy-handed, but most times George Barker writes at length On sperm and roses and death. His wives and mistresses And fifteen children are, I imagine, His most insightful critics As he writes at length about loneliness And the appreciable pains of hell.

  Here are my contributions to a seminar on Dante’s Divina Commedia conducted with Dr William Johnston on Thursday the 27 th of March 2014 at the Institute for Spiritual Studies, St Peter’s Church, Eastern Hill, Melbourne. Will’s papers and other material from the seminar are available on the parish website. I. HOW POETS TODAY REWORK DANTE Peter Steele, of blessed memory, Melbourne poet and Jesuit, cites the American Ralph Waldo Emerson: the Commedia is “autobiography in colossal cipher”. By which he means, Dante’s life is written large through the code of his poem. Steele embellishes on that idea by adding that the Commedia “might also be called metaphor in colossal suspense.” Which I take to mean, Dante’s poem keeps us hanging on even as it goes on talking about ultimate questions. In literary terms generally today, this is a central issue because while some writers strive to find through their words ways of describing and explaining everything knowable in human ter...

This is one of two short papers given by Philip Harvey at the first Spiritual Reading Group session for 2014 on Tuesday the 18 th of February in the Carmelite Library in Middle Park. He also gave a paper on that occasion, which can be found on the Library blog, entitled ‘A Rationale for Purgatory’ . Nadezhda Mandelstam recalls in one of her books how her husband, the Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, would say that when reading poetry we can spend a great deal of time discussing what it means, but the first and main question about a poem is not what does it mean, but why was it written. That is the place to start. Here are eleven reasons that I offer quietly to help us think about this poem: Why did Dante write The Divine Comedy? You may have other reasons and these are invited. We will spend most of our time today looking at meanings, but also at why. I wrote these out as they occurred to me, so there is no priority order. 1.      He wrote the poem because ...

Pasternak Time: “Sorry, I missed what you were saying” Sorry, I missed what you were saying. I was thinking of someone from another lifetime, Her stride across the courtyards of youth, Her tempting laugh and forgotten lines, Her sharp readings and fatal portraits, Her lasting illusions, and erstwhile friends. These dreamy thoughts came from something you said. Sorry to have drifted off. Something about a play by Chekhov, That would be it. We are conscious the way the mind moves off In directions of its own, like in Pasternak. Her mother felt the film was not the book. Felt? “A complete misrepresentation.” The book makes you see up front How a woman can follow a man Through life, even when she is long gone. Or will walk around the corner Of another city, just by coincidence. She went off in search of diamonds. Maybe she found a few, Interstate, overseas, under a rock. The life of the theatre, The theatre of life, interchangeable, O...

Pasternak Time: "Quasi people, with more haste than voice"   Quasi people, with more haste than voice, Face book opinions ephemeral as crosswords; Friends more by accident than choice. Stasi people brandish orders of boss words; Watch hallways; their digits rip-off files. Incognito always, they engineer lost words. Power people, in private frantic, in public smiles, Know who they banish are stars they fought. Half a people respect them, the rest revile. Non-people, sorted or bought or fraught, caught On the wrong side of the street, the wrong year; Grew up wanting something, last left with naught. Anti-people paraded in news reports, raise fear By their every mention, have nowhere to hide; Live abroad, by the sword. Their fate is clear. Real people, with normalcy on their side, Stay silent wrong times; asked something, rave. We live and let live with their small prides. Near people, here, we will go with to the grave; Think dear about ...