Impressions of a Multicultural Dubai
[Editor’s note – Ann has been sending dispatches on her experiences in Dubai, and I am compiling these into blog posts and putting them on Facebook and Twitter. We’d love to hear your thoughts on her trip. – Melanie Blake] I thought Toronto was a diverse city. But it is […]
GUEST POST — Getting Into the Spirit of the Story with the Mahabharata
Dear friends, The Mahabharata comes in many sizes and languages. The author of the version we will use at Toronto Pursuits, William Buck, worked from a 5,800-page Sanskrit version. His goal was not to translate it, but rather to retell it: “I thought how nice to tell the story so […]
GUEST POST — Seeking the Centre with Nella Cotrupi
Hello, I am really looking forward to our conversations about these important books and hope you are also getting fired up for the exchange. Chinua Achebe’s novel begins with a quote from Yeats that I will repeat here as it brings us immediately to what I suspect may turn out […]
CLASSICAL TRIVIA! Literary Villains
As literature PhD candidate Adam Burgess notes, “One of the best parts about reading classic literature is discovering, and often falling in love with, great characters. Talented writers have the ability to craft characters in such a way as to make us, the readers, imagine we could know these people […]
GUEST POST — Exploring the Sounds of a Shared Style with Tom Jones
Dear Friends, My impulse in creating this seminar was to share with others the type of experience I had when first reading the poetry of Du Fu, an experience that stayed with me through my career as a composer and conductor. One of the greatest ways to be exposed to […]
GUEST POST — Beauty in All Things by Sean Forester
Dear Friends, In the Edo period (1603-1867), Japanese culture achieved a rare level of refinement. This summer in Toronto we will explore how beauty infused nearly every aspect of life, and everything people saw, touched, smelled, and tasted: Zen gardens, tea ceremony, flower arrangement, poetry, calligraphy, woodblock prints, and dress […]
GUEST POST — Céleste Zurbrigg recounts her trip to incredible India
Céleste Zurbrigg from Edmonton, Alberta, was a participant on the Classical Pursuits India trip. She has been keeping travel diaries for a long time, and this post she shares some entries from the trip through Delhi, Agra, Jaipur, Narlai and Varanasi. January 13, Arrived in Delhi Twenty-four hours after my […]