“As poets and as readers we are both the users and the transmitters of this lexicon. Today we need to keep adding not subtracting meaning, remembering not forgetting, to connect ourselves to the chain that ultimately joins all cultures.”
Sophia Nugent-Siegal
Welcome to Lexicon
Wittgenstein famously concluded his Tractatus with the memorable comment: “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent”.
Unlike Ludwig, Sophia, in whose memory this site is maintained, did not accept “remaining silent” as a viable intellectual option—not because she thought ultimate meaning any more expressible than did Wittgenstein, but because she thought the battle was necessary.
Heroic, doomed to failure, absolutely essential.
Love is eternal. . .
Sophia 30.07.1991---17.01.2014 Loving you always. . . And if this was the world’s last night I should not fear to be undone. Love is the songline of the soul, A cascading radiance, linked like synapses in the brain, Rippling in one scintillant universal thought. For this is grief’s impossible truth, the paradox Lived in deepest loss. Love is eternal. Leaf XLVII by R. Nugent (from Leaves: Poems for my Daughter)
Of Love and Light. . .
Of Love and Light. . . Sophie, age 4, with her beloved Auntie Kaye, stepping into the light, Assisi, Italy This Christmas, Sophie’s article about Christian mission has really been resonating in my mind. The article concludes with the following paragraph: “Jesus didn’t lay out a grand plan for a Christian social system. He came to speak to individual men and women to lead them to faith. By busily searching for the mote in the eye of political institutions, one risks failing to see the beam in one’s own. Moreover, the conflation of Christian theology and political thought
Another Spring…
Another Spring. . . Written 2 years ago, the poem below is as true this year as it will be each year of the future you will never see, my darling. But this too is true---that you live in every word of it, Soph. You are in every thought, in every word I write. For one of the things you taught me, beautiful child, is the discipline of choosing light over darkness. . . the necessary discipline of shaping from sorrow a painful beauty. Another spring, and the maple tree Where last night’s stars, those glittering baubles, Tangled pendant in
Quadrant: Sophia’s Poems
Quadrant: Sophia’s Poems Quadrant magazine has published two of Sophia’s poems in their October edition. How wonderful this is! I think Sophie would be very pleased. One of the things that would please her most was that the poems were submitted, and subsequently accepted, with no reference having been made either to her age at the time of writing them or to the fact of her death. The poems were taken from Antiquity, her earliest collection, which was concerned largely with mythological themes. The two poems published were written when she was 13. They are thus the work of a very
A Beautiful Thing. . .
A Beautiful Thing. . . MTC Cronin's Sometimes the Soul, dedicated to Sophia, has been published in a limited edition of only 22 copies---one for each year of Sophia's life. Each signed and numbered copy is printed on archival paper. The booklets are hand-stitched by artist, Fiona Dempster (who also provided the title calligraphy), and have been wrapped in acid-free tissue paper. They are designed to last for hundreds of years. Sophia was an historian as well as a poet concerned with time and mortality. It seems only fitting, in her memory, to make beautiful objects of beautiful ideas that
A Pause in Space-Time: Sometimes the Soul
A Pause in Space-Time The first reading of MTC Cronin’s Sometimes the Soul, dedicated to Sophia, was given to a small invited audience on September 24th. It was a special event—a wonderful poem read to an appreciative audience under a brilliant blue sky with rainbow lorikeets for accompaniment. It was gentle, intimate, and real—a “pause in space-time” that will speak to those who understand why it matters. Sophia was---and is---a joy and a gift. The poems written for her award are intended as a gift to others in her memory. MTC Cronin’s Sometimes the Soul is a beautiful thing. Sophia would
Sometimes the Soul
Poetry Reading Sometimes the Soul by MTC Cronin Cappriccio's Restaurant, Riverside Centre, Maleny Saturday, August 24th, 3.30~4,30 pm
Sophia’s Birthday
On Birth Days July 30th. It is once again Sophia’s birthday. Twenty-eight years ago today, Sophia arrived in the world as she was to live in it: small and delicate in her physical frame, powerful in her presence. Amidst all the danger and drama of the moment, little Sophia remained completely composed at the centre of a whirlwind of confusion. The words the midwife whispered into my ear in the operating theatre have a particular resonance: “You have a beautiful little girl. She’s just calmly looking around at the world with big eyes. You know, I think this one
Remembering John Keats…
Remembering John Keats... Window, Keats' House “Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man…” It’s February 23rd today. On Friday, February 23rd 1821, John Keats died in Rome in the narrow rooms of a little apartment tucked beside the Spanish Steps. Sophia visited it as a small child. It had quite an effect on her. This was the house of a writer, and 4-year-old Sophie—pint-sized lover of words, maker of stories, singer of songs—knew even then that she was going to be a writer. Keats was one of her own, and he remained so.
Sophia
Sophia 30.07.1991—17.01.2014 In the Jewish tradition, those seeking to give comfort to the bereaved ask on their behalf for the memory of the loved one to be a blessing. It is a wise saying. Five years have passed since Sophia died. Five years of sorrow, but five years also of an astonishing grace. I am so grateful for Sophie’s life, for the joy of sharing 22