To immerse oneself in the modern literature of the past century is to come face-to-face with a deeply tragic view of human experience. Though I do not consider myself to be a conscious adherent to many of the values of the West’s intellectual and spiritual heritage, I do consider myself a beneficiary of the stability...
Author: Daniel Teal
Post
Searching for Life and Light: Dillard and Robinson
In this semester’s “Life and Light” column, I have explored authors who have, in some form, responded to the literary and cultural modernism of roughly the past century. Rather than asking the tradition’s questions — What is God? What is Man? And what has each to do with the other? —the modern finds himself severed...
Post
Searching for Life and Light: T.S. Eliot
“We have loved the stars too deeply to be afraid of the night.” Richard Hundley set these striking lyrics to his 1959 composition, “The Astronomers,” and offers us a profoundly optimistic image for the seeker of light in what seem to be dark times. My series, “Life and Light,” aims to briefly but honestly explore...
Post
Searching for life and light
“This great evil — where’s it come from? How did it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who’s doing this? Who’s killing us? Robbing us of life and light. Mocking us with the sight of what we might have known.” So asks the protagonist, Private Witt, of Terrence Malick’s...