NOTA BENE: Many of you will know that Sean Forester, classical painter and lover of 19th century Russian art, literature and music, had to cut short his trip due to a death in the family. Sean did get to escort the group through the Tetryakov Gallery in Moscow and lead […]
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A group of 16 travellers accompanied Sean Forester to Russia to travel back in time to its golden age of art, music, and literature. They are discussing Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and have already enjoyed Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. But when one travels with Sean, […]
Musee des Beaux Arts -W. H. Auden About suffering they were never wrong, The old Masters: how well they understood Its human position: how it takes place While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along; How, when […]
Dear Fellow Rumi-nators, I hope that you have been able to get copies of the two books for our seminar this summer, The Prophet and the Poet: Reciting God. As I have started to prepare for the seminar, my focus has been on the Ma’navi of Rumi, the first book […]
Ashish, you have given us a great and wonder-filled gift: India You have given us India’s sights: • Palaces and mountains, • Lakes and mighty forts, • Tombs and gardens, elephants, Persian wells, and Punjabi suits, • Temples and mustard fields, • Tools to read the heavens and camels, • […]
Dear breakers-out of cocoons, How to confront tough issues compassionately? This is a question that I keep asking as I prepare for our seminar and reflect on my own literary and actual journeys across cultures. Together, we’ll explore two books by two very different women, Egyptian Alifa Rifaat (1930–1996), and […]
Iceland is stark and stunning. It’s everything the travel brochures say it is: beautiful in a way that’s hard to imagine without visiting. When I travelled to Iceland a few years ago, I couldn’t get enough of the glaciers, waterfalls, geysers and gorges, the vast lava fields and the miles […]
Gung Hei Fatt Choi! (or Gong Xi Fa Cai in Mandarin) Happy Lunar New Year, and welcome to the Year of the Horse! I’m celebrating by rereading two fascinating memoirs about twentieth-century China: Anchee Min’s Red Azalea and Jan Wong’s Red China Blues. With the seminar “Living the Red Revolution,” I’m looking […]
This past fall I took my soul for a stroll. When I set out from León, Spain, with Santiago on my mind, I had no notion of just how much that undefinable part of me wanted to walk. Apparently, it had been whispering to me for some time. Apparently, I […]