Category Archives: Literature

Arts, Literature, Philosophy

The Stoic: Control & Choice

CLARITY

“The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control, and which have to do with the choices I actually control. Where then do I look for good and evil? Not to uncontrollable externals, but within myself to the choices that are my own.” – Epictetus, Discourses, 2.5.4–5

The Pen

A metonymic adage, coined by English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1839.

THE single most important practice in Stoic philosophy is differentiating between what we can change and what we can’t. What we have influence over and what we do not. A flight is delayed because of weather – no amount of yelling at an airline representative will end a storm. No amount of wishing will make you taller or shorter or born in a different country. No matter how hard you try, you can’t make someone like you. And on top of that, time spent hurling yourself at those immovable objects is time not spent on the things we can change.

The recovery community practices something called the Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Addicts cannot change the abuse suffered in childhood. They cannot undo the choices they have made or the hurt they have caused. But they can change the future – through the power they have in the present moment. As Epictetus said, they can control the choices they make right now.

The same is true for us today. If we can focus on making clear what parts of our day are within our control and what parts are not, we will not only be happier, we will have a distinct advantage over other people who fail to realise they are fighting an unwinnable battle.

– The Stoic is a new series on site which aims to interpret powerful quotations and historical anecdotes through personal commentary.

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Arts, Books, Literature

(Summaries) Books Fiction: Recommended

LITERARY FICTION

. Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce. Published by Picador for £12.99

Dear Mrs Bird

IT IS 1940 and London is gearing up for conflict.

Hoping to become a war correspondent, the delightful Emmeline finds herself instead working as an assistant to the agony aunt on a woman’s magazine.

Many readers are writing in, desperate for advice on dealing with grief, the struggle to look good, overbearing relatives and the thorny question of ‘how far to go’.

Yet Emmeline’s twinset-clad bully of a boss, Mrs Bird, refuses to answer letters that contain ‘Unpleasantness’.

Aghast at this near-cruelty and short-sightedness, Emmeline takes matters into her own hands, with surprising results.

What a lovely, cheering novel this is. Skewering snobbery and prudishness with the lightest of touches, it also portrays the difficulties of the home front. Poignant and realistic.

One small criticism: a need for more letters.

. Colonel Belchamp’s Battlefield Tour by Adrian Crisp. Published by Matador for £7.99

Belchamp

THE death of his young son has left consultant physician James Butland barely able to function. But, in the spring of 1964, he takes a tour to the French battlefields of 1940, where he once fought with the Queen Victoria Rifles.

Memories return: of his schooldays, his struggle to get a place at Oxford and his call-up into a war where he finds himself engaged in the doomed defence of Calais against the Nazis.

Wounded and concussed, he stumbles into a doctor’s surgery and is tended to by medical student Agnes – a meeting that profoundly affects his life both then and when they meet years later.

James’s war experiences have inflicted damage, which the doctor in him assesses clearly. No conventional gung-ho hero, he is a man who has struggled with depression and self-doubt.

His portrayal is honest and raw in this impressive debut by Crisp, who is himself a distinguished medical consultant and fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.

. Panic Room by Robert Goddard. Published by Bantam Press for £18.99

Panic Room

EDUCATED at Cambridge, Robert Goddard spent ten frustrating years as a local government officer, before writing Past Caring in 1986, which became an instant bestseller.

Panic Room is Goddard’s 27th outing and it is as compelling as any he has written.

Set in Cornwall, where he now lives, it centres on a supremely modern house set high above a cove.

It is theoretically the property of the wife of a disgraced pharmaceuticals tycoon, who wants to sell it, although it’s inhabited by a mysterious young woman named Blake.

But there is a twist. The house has a panic room, carefully hidden and complete with a steel lining – apparently closed from within. Could someone be hiding in it?

Splendidly serpentine and immaculately plotted, this is British thriller writing at its very best.

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Arts, Literature, Poetry

Anthology: William Blake (1757-1827)

from Auguries of Innocence

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour.

                                                William Blake

 

Born in 1757, William Blake was an English poet and artist. His poetry became part of the prominent Romantic Movement along with other great poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge.

Romantic poetry is typically characterised by lyrical, descriptive language and central ideas which embody Nature and Art. We can clearly sense this in the extract given. Its themes often examine, too, the principles of Freedom and Equality.

Blake’s poetry often rebelled against injustice, rigid class systems and the hypocrisy inherent in organised religion at the time. Some of this feeds through and into later stanza in Auguries of Innocence.

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