To Believe... In publishing each new work for Sophia’s Notebook, a corresponding poem (or poems) is selected from Sophia’s own body of work as an accompaniment. Why? Because, as the award in her name highlights, Sophia—that born historian—believed that culture (in particular, art and literature) represents an ongoing conversation across time. As T. S. Eliot stated in his seminal essay on literary tradition, the significance of any poet must be interpreted in terms of the
Reaching into Silence “Words,” says T.S. Eliot in Four Quartets, “after speech, reach/ Into the silence.” No matter how imperfect, how incomplete or broken are the tools we use to get there (as Eliot states: “Words strain/ Crack and sometimes break, under the burden”), the dance between time and stillness is where we find ourselves. Words reach into the silence, into the stillness. Searching, failing, searching again. Yes, Sophia understood this. It was central to
Love is most nearly itself When here and now cease to matter. TS Eliot, East Coker, Four Quartets
Treasures from the Vault Now that Telstra has accorded this half of your editorial team a reliable Internet connection, joys hitherto denied have become temptingly available. The Internet is a treasure trove for anyone at all interested in history. One can, for example, read some of the world’s oldest, rarest, and most beautiful books—the pages real almost to touch, each leaf turned as if by magic hand (here are some pages from the Lindisfarne Gospels,