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Friday Notebook 06.24.2011
More from Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, a very quotable novel, as it turns out: Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another’s fear. * We know things better through love than through knowledge. [A translation from the Latin of Thomas Aquinas: Amor est magis cognitivus quam cognitio.] * “In Paris do they always have the true answers?” “Never,” William said, “but they are very sure of their errors.” * Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.Read More
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A Sickness of the Mind
Not long after reading this blog-pastiche of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead as performed by the Marx Brothers (give up all hope ye who enter the comment stream), I ran across the following passage in Barbara Reynolds’s wonderful book Dante: The Poet, the Political Thinker, the Man. Reynolds notes that Dante, in the Convivio, identifies a “sickness of the mind” that she characterizes as “a boastfulness that leads people to believe that they know everything and to affirm as certain things that are not.” She quotes Aquinas: [T]here are many who by their natural dispositions are so presumptuous as to believe…Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
