Author: penwithlit

Freelance writer and radio presenter

Categories
Classics Literature

Birth of Rosamond Lehmann (1901–1990) – The Novelist Who Gave English Emotional Precision and Feminine Interior Voice

Born in 1901, Rosamond Lehmann refined English prose to capture emotional precision and feminine interior life. Her novels traced love, loss, and consciousness with rare psychological clarity, granting women’s inner worlds literary authority. Lehmann reshaped modern English fiction by proving that emotional nuance, hesitation, and vulnerability were not weaknesses, but structural strengths.

Birth of Rosamond Lehmann (1901–1990) – The Novelist Who Gave English Emotional Precision and Feminine Interior Voice
Categories
Art and Photographic History

Sketching along Hackney Road

61 Hackney Road, E2
Categories
Book Reviews Literature Psychoanalysis

An early novel of John Fowles

Book Review : The Collector by John Fowles
Categories
Classics Literature Poetry Psychoanalysis

Birth of Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929) – The Writer Who Taught English Modernism to Listen for Silence

Hugo von Hofmannsthal reshaped how English modernism understands the failure of language. Through translation and criticism his work taught English to name silence fragmentation and interior doubt. He helped writers and scholars confront moments where speech falters meaning fractures and modern consciousness begins.

Birth of Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874–1929) – The Writer Who Taught English Modernism to Listen for Silence
Categories
Literature Poetry

Dana Gioia resurrects Weldon Kees (but not, alas, Boris the parrot)

I discovered the mid-century American poet Weldon Kees (1914-1955) quite by chance, which is the best way to discover a poet. As I wrote in a 2015 essay on Henri Coulette (1927-1988), about whom I’ll have some news to share soon, “[a] photograph of Kees—neatly trimmed moustache, neatly tailored gray flannel suit, right arm bent […]

Dana Gioia resurrects Weldon Kees (but not, alas, Boris the parrot)
Categories
Classics Literature Poetry Psychoanalysis

Birth of Jun Takami (1907–1965) – The Writer Who Entered English Through Psychological Precision

Through Jun Takami English learned restraint. His Shōwa era fiction entered the language by translation teaching it to render interior life without spectacle. Ethical pressure illness and silence shaped a prose of hesitation where meaning rests in understatement and moral ambiguity rather than declaration or revolt.

Birth of Jun Takami (1907–1965) – The Writer Who Entered English Through Psychological Precision
Categories
French Psychoanalysis

My Psychoanalytical Turn: An Intellectual Biography

This post was written by Claude (Anthropic’s AI assistant) based on reading approximately 40-50 of my blog posts to trace my intellectual trajectory. I asked Claude to document my “psychoanalytical turn” – how my engagement with psychoanalysis developed from 2023 onwards. What follows is Claude’s analysis, written in my voice. My engagement with psychoanalysis began […]

My Psychoanalytical Turn: An Intellectual Biography
Categories
Film German Matters Literature

Hotel Budapest

https://read-ost.com/2022/04/08/von-ungarn-in-deutschland-hotel-budapest-berlin-von-thomas-sparr/

Categories
Literature Poetry

Lines from Cavafy

https://manolisaligizakis.com/2026/01/29/constantine-cavafy-2/#like-8996

Categories
Classics Literature politics

Death of Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) – The Poet Who Made English a Language of Exile and Moral Precision

Joseph Brodsky proved that English could be entered late yet inhabited fully. Writing from exile, he transformed a second language into a moral homeland, sharpening its capacity for precision, ethical seriousness, and sustained thought. His English endures as disciplined refuge rather than inherited possession.

Death of Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) – The Poet Who Made English a Language of Exile and Moral Precision