A commonplace book: an old-fashioned literary diary for recording interesting items from reading you've done. I use mine to record snippets from reading, conversation and life in general. (The early 2003 entries are from a period some years ago -- before the blog age -- when I tried an online commonplace book as a straight web page.)
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
…the lessons to be learned from Thucydides are no different from the ones that the tragic playwrights teach: that the arrogant self can become the abject Other; that failure to bend, to negotiate, inevitably results in terrible fracture; that, because we are only human, our knowledge is merely knowingness, our vision partial rather than whole, and we must tread carefully in the world.
Daniel Mendelsohn, “Theatres of War,” The New Yorker, January 12, 2004
Daniel Mendelsohn, “Theatres of War,” The New Yorker, January 12, 2004
Friday, March 05, 2004
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