A decision was made to listen through the complete cycle of Bach cantatas, in the performances by John Eliot Gardiner, The Monteverdi Choir and The English Baroque Soloists. The choice is not religious, though to the question of religion the answer remains ‘yes and no’, but rather a way to stay longer within the music already owned, to attend more deeply to it.
Florian Zeller’s The Father sustains a remarkable emotional clarity, as Peter Bradshaw noted in his review. It is more than moving: it is unnerving, particularly for those closer to the end of life than the beginning. It recalls a phrase from Hayden Carruth: Words misremembered, ideas frayed like old silk. The economy of that line remains, even as the rest of the poem recedes.
Reading returns again to The Iliad, this time in Caroline Alexander’s 2015 translation, reportedly the first into English by a woman. The prose is readable, even elegant, if lacking in rhythmic propulsion. Still, it offers a valuable counterpoint to Fagles’ version, long preferred. Alexander’s work shares attention with Clare Carlisle’s Spinoza’s Religion, a pious and persuasive reading of Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics, which invites further return.