Winter Despair

The Diagnostician Of Despair

Robert Zaretsky | American Scholar | 19th December 2024

Rousseau was many contradictory things — among them a playwright who hated the theatre and a writer who regretted writing — but he should be valued above all else for his understanding that civilisation is both the best and worst creation of humankind. The structures that we erect to better society and ourselves also contribute to the "ontological drift" that causes alienation (1,200 words)

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Nomido

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A Garden In Winter

Deborah Vass | Still Sketching | 5th December 2024

Essay about a painting, “Winter Garden” by Evelyn Dunbar. It is a rare example of a painter capturing a garden out of season, "at rest in the fading light of a December afternoon". There, too, is the "quality of light that only exists in the days leading to the Winter Solstice... before dusk slips into dark, when the gardener retreats inside after a hard day’s digging, to warm against the chill" (1,500 words)

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