The Culturist
@the_culturist_
"Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire."
An independent culture publication โ read / support us here ๐
1.3K Following 1.6M Followers
It's incredibly encouraging that one of the fastest growing accounts on X is a book club.
They're about to start The Brothers Karamazov, a life-changing read โ now is a great time to join!
Imagine if every state were as based as Texas and required students to read the foundational works of Western civilization.
I repeat, you do NOT need self-help books. You need to get lost in immortal works of fiction.
You need to read 'The Brothers Karamazov' and slowly realize that each brother lives inside your own heart.
You need to witness how each of them wrestles with passion and hatred and guilt.
You need to wrestle with faith and doubt, love and resentment, freedom and duty. Then you must come to terms with the tension of these within you โ with your own contradictions and shortcomings.
Great fiction will expand your capacity to see the world in its full complexity. You'll see that truth is often found not in the extremes, but in the tension between the extremes.
The questions that truly matter will not be solved by "self-help" or productivity hacks. These questions can never be finally "solved" by your own force of will or rational understanding.
Great fiction will help you battle for your soul.
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We have voted to read The Brothers Karamazov next in the book club!
Join our reading group if you want to study some of the greatest books ever written with us โ in dialogue with each other.
First discussion is on Augu 4, covering Books 1โ4.
It's going to be an incredible journey... ๐
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"The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man."
Join @athenaeumbc as they lead the world's largest reading of The Brothers Karamazov โ one of my favourite books of all time โ alongside thousands of men and women seeking to understand the Western Canon.
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"The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
โ Ludwig Wittgenstein
Reminder that the world's (second) oldest Christian country is not in the Middle East or Europe. It's Ethiopia.
There are monolithic churches there that were not "built," but carved directly into the rock.
In 1187, Jerusalem was captured by Muslims led by Saladin, making pilgrimages to the Holy Land impossible. The Ethiopian Church was cut off from the rest of Christendom.
So, King Lalibela built a "new Jerusalem" in Ethiopia, instructed in a vision to build a heavenly kingdom. He carved 11 rock churches straight down into the volcanic rock. Interiors were hollowed out in a series of decorative vaults and columns.
The cruciform Church of St. George (below) is the best known. It is 30 meters tall, and some 4,000 cubic meters of rock were excavated to make it.
Following ancient tradition that the Ark of the Covenant still resides in Ethiopia, a replica of it is kept within the church...
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This 800 year old church in Ethiopia was carved downwards from solid rock.
According to Ethiopian tradition, it was completed in twenty-four years โwith the assistance of angels.โ
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The Odyssey (written by Homer!!) will change your life.
But a poor translation will hide Homerโs wisdom and waste your time.
The Odyssey stands at the beginning of Western civilization, because it comments on the perennial condition of manโproviding lessons on piety, justice, fidelity, free will, providence, and more.
But what translation is best?
Here are the pros and cons of five popular translations of Homerโs Odyssey.
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This is one of the most important accounts on X.
Well worth a follow. Everyone should join a book club โ this group is excellent.
If schools and universities refuse to teach the great books of the West, we must do it ourselves.
We started an independent group to study the greatest texts of the Western canon, together.
...and we are now 900 members strong! ๐
We're about to start our 14th book: we've just voted to read "The Brothers Karamazov" next.
If this is something you'd like to be a part of, join our reading group.
You can simply read along with us and tune into the broadcasts, or join our smaller "inner circle" and be part of the discussions directly.
Every session seems even better than the last at the moment. Thank you all for taking this so seriously, it's a pleasure to study alongside all of you.
Become a paid member if you'd like to support โ it makes a huge difference to the time and resources we can dedicate to this.
You'll get:
- Live book club discussions (biweekly)
- Access to our incredible community chat
- Essays to guide you through the Great Books
- All past recordings, essays, and podcasts
- Ability to vote on what we read next
Welcome!
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Imagine being able to make stone translucent.
Giovanni Strazza possessed that extraordinarily rare skill. His bust of the Virgin Mary, executed in flawless Carrara marble, is one of the most impressive feats by any sculptor.
Strazza's "wet drapery" technique continued the legacy of previous Italian sculptors like Giuseppe Sanmartino, who produced mind-bending veils from marble a century earlier โ the famous "Veiled Christ" is a canonical example.
The tradition also dates back to much earlier sculptors known for carving intricate folds, in particular Renaissance artists like Michelangelo and ancient masters from Greece's Hellenistic period.
But in the mid-19th century, Strazza took the technique to its extreme. The subtle layered effect he achieved allows the viewer to easily discern Mary's facial features from the delicate veil, and at the same time creates the illusion of total weightlessness.
How he created something so soft and fluid from solid stone, using only basic hand tools, is a mystery.
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Given that reading is in free-fall, this is perhaps the most important account on all of X right now.
Definitely worth a follow.
A 23 year old sculpted this.
What's your excuse?
