Of all the great paintings in Madrid’s Museo Nacional del Prado, the one that possibly attracts the most visitors is Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of earthly delights”. Sean Sheehan It is a large triptych – over 213 cm (seven feet) high and 365 cm (12 feet) wide – but […]
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The urban void: the mystical city
The cityscape contains empty spaces, voids, which are the as-yet undeveloped tracts within the urban setting. But the word ‘void’ possesses a dual meaning. It is also a spiritual word. The void is what mystics experience in the depth of their ecstasies. Steve Latham Similarly, ‘nada’ is used by […]
Labelling identities
By ‘stereotyping’, we refer to labelling a person or culture with particular characteristics, whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’. In education, it is said that the student becomes ‘what the label denotes’. Nigel Pocock The label therefore becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. A student labelled an ‘idiot’ becomes one. There are […]
Anne Bonny, an indecipherable mystery
She was the first woman to be part of that clan that terrorised the seas and she became known for crossing the Caribbean, but, most of all, for fighting under the command of Captain “Calico Jack” Rackham, from 1718 to 1720. Silvio González Bonny has been the inspiration […]
John Donne: staying awake
The title of a new biography of an English poet, “Super-infinite”, points to the multi-faceted life of a 16th-century poet whose life journey unfolded in such unexpected ways as to fully earn the book’s subtitle: “The transformations of John Donne”. Sean Sheehan The love poetry and erotic verse […]