Raymond Barfield

The Philosophy of Literature

Arts & Literature

““To read a book by Donald Verene is to experience an entire education writ small. In this wonderful book he again demonstrates the principle that eloquence is the skill to put the whole that is wisdom into words. Through masterful readings of four texts, he shows four ways in which philosophy and literature relate to each other, illuminating ethics, metaphysics, politics, and phenomenology. He writes as a poet-turned-philosopher and shows us through his own approach to the texts what it means for reading to be an act of transcendence. As a great teacher, and an inimitable guide to the speculative and poetic imagination, Verene resists the genius of mediocrity, and through his own example he encourages a return to philosophy as a linguistic art.”

To an Unknown Goddess

Arts & Literature

“I found myself laughing out loud two pages after I was moved to tears. I cannot do justice to the muscular but gentle intelligence that suffuses these poems, not to pummel but to embrace. By the end of this astonishing book, he has answered his own question: yes, light does cast a shadow when struck by brighter beams, but the shadow, too, is light. . . . But here is the thing: the sometimes disconsolate counterpoint of passion and thought he uses, often erupting in the bawdy music of carnival, left me stunned when I closed the book and discovered his music showing up in my memory as a hymn.”