Image: Joseph Gordon in Alexei Ratmansky’s Solitude. Photo credit: Erin Baiano.

We see an embodiment of mourning: a man teetering on the edge of the void...The usual reaction to Solitude is a moment of stunned silence. Ratmansky has touched something very raw here. —Marina Harss reviews Alexei Ratmansky's Solitude @nycballet https://t.co/6xambMM5ts

https://t.co/1nq0q6bL89

Katabasis felt to me like just a parody of academic life by someone deeply ambivalent about graduate school…the prose flowed and academia can indeed be a fascinating hellscape, but it’s not a book I’ll revisit. —Susan Balée reviews Katabasis by R. F. Kuang from Harper Voyager

Image: Hélène Vincent and Garlan Erlos in WHEN FALL IS COMING. Courtesy of Music Box Films. https://t.co/3Ad7mCTNag

François Ozon expertly contrasts the soft beauty of the characters’ surroundings with the harsh reality of their inner lives, creating an aura of menace no matter how banal the on-screen activities might be...An old-fashioned, well-made drama. —Brooke Allen on When Fall Is Coming

2/2 He’s next to ancestors who traveled down in 1601 and never left. His own six words are chiseled on the moss-furred rock: “Live full lives. Leave some record.” Done and done. https://t.co/090Z15A5kd

From “At the Spaniard Inn” by David Livewell, about poet Desmond O’Grady: 1/2 He’s in the churchyard now, the plot he picked, Rincurran Cottage and his writing window still staring back—but from the other side.

3/3 He’s not a modern character at all, but something older, bigger, closer to the exalted kingdom of myth. Petronius establishes a new idea of character from which Fitzgerald departs when he paints his compelling image of Jay Gatsby. https://t.co/aSAJ4ardXQ

2/3 which build on and elaborate the kind of rounded, multi-dimensional, psychologically developed character Petronius initiated with Trimalchio. But Jay Gatsby? He’s not like that.

From “Trimalchio in West Egg at 100: Gatsby and Modern Character” by Robert Archambeau: 1/3 There is some irony in how Trimalchio became the model for Jay Gatsby...Fitzgerald writes in the wake of literary realism and naturalism...

4/4 In his universe, “fool” is both an insult and a joyful description that binds humanity together in mutual folly. Image: Kurt Rhoads and Nance Williamson in Hudson Valley Shakespeare’s The Matchmaker. Photo by Gabe Palacio. https://t.co/XfqYasaLOX

3/4 Beneath the play’s comic velocity lies a rueful awareness of the erosions that time and the lack of money make on human dignity. And at the same time, Wilder is always hyperaware of the strange dignity, indeed the transcendence, that lies within human foolishness.

2/4 Since then, revivals of The Matchmaker have only rarely surfaced. But when they do, they remind audiences of Wilder’s singular knack for pairing wit with metaphysical undertones.

Erick Neher on Hudson Valley Shakespeare’s performance of “The Matchmaker” by Thornton Wilder: 1/4 The play’s afterlife proved richer still as it became the foundation for Jerry Herman’s 1964 musical Hello, Dolly!, a cultural juggernaut that eclipsed Wilder’s original.

6/6 Read the rest, free to nonsubscribers:

5/6 That scene...is tender, charming, and moving. Many readers find themselves wishing that it was the final scene in the poem; it is hard to shake the feeling that it rounds off the poem in a perfect way, that it represents the end-point of Odysseus’ nostos (homecoming).

4/6 manages anything as succinct and lovely as Mendelsohn’s line. Robert Fitzgerald perhaps comes closest (“and he wept at last, / his dear wife, clear and faithful, in his arms”), though “clear” seems a surprising choice.

3/6 Neither Albert Cook (“He wept, holding his pleasing wife, who had a sense of devotion”) nor Emily Wilson (“He held his love, / his faithful wife, and wept”) nor even Richmond Lattimore (“He wept as he held his lovely wife, whose thoughts were virtuous”)

2/6 After her speech...there is a line which Mendelsohn translates beautifully: “He wept as he held his wife, heart of his heart, whose thoughts were so true.” Chapman is jejune by comparison: He wept for joy, t’ enjoy a wife so fit For his grave mind, that knew his depth of wit