Restless Soul Research Articles

Evgeny Boratynsky and the restless soul of an unbaptized baby

This article examines Evgeny Boratynsky's poem "Nedonosok" (The Abortion), which is considered to be a masterpiece of Russian philosophical lyrics. The poem talks about a spirit wandering between the earth and the paradise in heaven. Unlike other "higher" spirits it cannot reach heaven: such the spirit revived a "nedonosok" who was not unviable. Researchers of Boratynsky's poetry have drawn attention to the fact that this poem reflects impressions from the texts of Dante Alighieri, Johann Goethe, as well as the Plato's philosophy and Old Testament images. The connection of Boratynsky's poem with traditional Slavic beliefs was also outlined. The purpose of this article is to analyze the narrative and image system of the poem, comparing it with the folklore and mythological ideas of Eastern Slavs. An important feature of Slavic mythology was that premature and stillborn children were considered dangerous creatures. They appeared from the "other world" and were "unclean". That’s why it was so important to baptize an infant and give him a Christian name: in this way a child was to be "humanized". Having left our world, unbaptized (premature, stillborn) babies began to dwell in the air. They were similar to "evil spirits", as well as to the souls of harmful people – sorcerers and sinners. Not allowed into heaven and not resting, they suffered themselves and made others suffer. In his poem "Nedonosok" Boratynsky expressed folk beliefs about the "evil," "wrong," unprepared death and its consequences for a baby who left our world unbaptized. These archaic plots and images formed the basis of this poem. They prompted the poet to the religious and philosophical meditations which reflected impressions from the texts of famous authors of the past. В статье рассмотрено стихотворение Е. А. Боратынского «Недоносок», которое считается шедевром русской философской лирики. В стихотворении говорится о некоем духе, блуждающем между землей и райскими небесами. В отличие от иных, «высших» духов, он не может достичь рая: им был оживлен «недоносок», оказавшийся нежизнеспособным. Исследователи поэзии Боратынского обращали внимание на то, что это произведение соотносится с поэмами Данте Алигьери, И. В. Гёте, а также философией Платона и ветхозаветными образами. Была намечена связь стихотворения с традиционными славянскими поверьями. Цель статьи – проанализировать сюжетно-образную систему стихотворения Боратынского «Недоносок», сопоставив ее с распространенными у восточных славян фольклорно-мифологическими представлениями. Важная особенность славянской мифологии состояла в том, что недоношенные и мертворожденные дети считались существами опасными. Они появлялись из «иного мира» и были «нечистыми». Поэтому столь важно было крещение младенца и наделение его христианским именем: так его «очеловечивали». Покинув наш мир, некрещеные младенцы (недоношенные, мертворожденные) начинали обитать в воздухе. Они были схожи с «нечистой силой», а также с душами вредоносных людей – колдунов и грешников. Не допущенные в рай и не упокоившиеся, они страдали сами и заставляли страдать других. В стихотворении «Недоносок» Боратынский поэтически выразил распространенные в народе представления о «злой», «неправильной», не подготовленной смерти и ее последствиях для младенца, покинувшего наш мир некрещеным. Эти архаические сюжеты и образы стали основой произведения. Они побуждали поэта к религиозно-философским размышлениям, в которых отразились впечатления от текстов знаменитых авторов прошлого.

Between Two Worlds: the Image of a Dybbuk on the Modern Opera Stage

The article is devoted to the theme of the artistic embodiment of the Hebrew legend of the dybbuk on the modern opera stage. The legends about the restless soul of a sinner, “stuck” between two worlds — the world of the living and the world of the dead — are reflected in the works of famous Jewish writers of the turn of the 19th—20th centuries. They received their first vivid refraction in drama in the play “Between Two Worlds (Dybbuk)” (1915) by the outstanding folklorist and ethnographer Semyon Akimovich Ansky. The story of the dybbuk, heard by Anton during folklore expeditions in Volhynia and Podolia, is reinterpreted by the playwright, “overgrown” with complex literary and philosophical connotations. The dramatic play is literally saturated with music: songs, dances, prayers and Hasidic melodies, one of which — “Mipney ma” in the genre of nigun — becomes the leitmotif of the work. The masterpiece of Ansky, reflecting the specifics of the everyday, cultural and religious life of the Hasidic community of the early twentieth century, gave rise to an extensive body of musical and theatrical works — more than ten over the last century (operas by L. Rocca, D. Tamkin, ballet by L. Bernstein, etc.). The article discusses the multimedia chamber opera “Dybbuk. Between Two Worlds” (2007) by the Israeli-American composer Ofer Ben-Amots through the prism of a dialogue with the original source. Previously, Ben-Amots’s musical work had not been studied in Russian art criticism, which predetermined the novelty of the chosen topic. The musician interprets the main ideas of Ansky’s dramatic play in his own way, presenting the image of the dybbuk as an allegory of the “borderline” existence between two worlds, turns to the traditional musical culture of Judaism (conducts the nigun “Mipney Ma” as the leitmotif of the opera, brings to the fore the timbres of the violin and clarinet, uses special techniques of sound production on these instruments associated with music playing in Klezmer chapels, stylizes the folklore of Jewish towns).

Music: An Instrument of Identity and Social Stability for the Youths in the 21st Century

As one of the most ancient arts known to man, great thinkers like Plato and Aristotle highly spoke of Music as a powerful tool for taming the restless souls and appealing to emotions, especially the youths in the 21st Century. Understanding this intrinsic power of Music is necessary to turn art into an effective tool for various human expressions. This expression is linked to the overall makeup of a person or a group of persons. It defines them as individuals bound by a common aspiration, tradition, history, ancestry and future. This expression is also the truth of the principle of identity expressed as a law of thought but lived as a principle of existence. This is the position that this paper seeks to express: that Music can become a tool for identity and art that preserves social stability for the youths in the 21st Century, especially in Nigeria. Data for this work was obtained through observation and the library, and conclusions were made based on the findings. Findings from the work showed that Music serves as an instrument for identity and social stability for the youths in Nigeria in the 21st Century.

Authors’ Response: Liberal Education and the Restless Soul

Authors’ Response: Liberal Education and the Restless Soul

A Testament of Devotion and Thomas Kelly, Augustinian Quaker by Guy Aiken

Reviewed by: A Testament of Devotion and Thomas Kelly, Augustinian Quaker by Guy Aiken David Hanson A Testament of Devotion and Thomas Kelly, Augustinian Quaker. By Guy Aiken. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2021. 79 pp. References. Paper, E-Book (PDF) $84.00 Guy Aiken's A Testament of Devotion and Thomas Kelly, Augustinian Quaker brings a fresh perspective on the theology, history, and ethics of Thomas Kelly (1893–1941) and the formation of A Testament of Devotion (1941). The in-depth look at the parallel lives of Kelly and Augustine allows novice and seasoned followers of Quaker Studies a launchpad for [End Page 63] exploring the thought of Thomas Kelly. The book is a part of a broader effort by Quaker historians and theologians to flesh out impactful twentieth-century Quaker thinkers. It sits alongside Goatwalking: A Quaker Pastoral Theology (Brill, 2021), where Zachary Moon goes into a deep dive into the life and person of Jim Corbett. Aiken shines a spotlight on Kelly that he rightfully deserves. Few Friends in the 20th century spiritually impacted Quaker thought as much as Thomas Kelly through A Testament of Devotion. Whereas his contemporary Elton Trueblood and mentor Rufus Jones built of the structure and theology of American Quakerism, Thomas Kelly's singular impactful work imparted the movement with soul. Though evangelical, liberal, and conservative Quakers laud Kelly's work, scholars have largely neglected the person of Thomas Kelly. Aiken successfully fills this void by expanding and introducing a new way to view the well-known Quaker philosopher and his work. Aiken divides his work into three major parts: theology, history, and ethics, and what makes each part great is Aiken's ability to bring new insights and sources into every part of the work. For the theological part, Aiken introduces the reader to an Augustinian understanding of Thomas Kelly's thought and the critical liberal and evangelical influences in Kelly's life. Quaker Studies scholars will likely be drawn to Aiken's contention with Leigh Eric Schmidt's portrayal of Kelly in Restless Souls (HarperCollins, 2003), where Aiken states his intention to redeem the besmirched Kelly (8). Kelly's life is retold through Aiken's Augustinian lens. Kelly and St. Augustine's lives are paralleled to show how the two had complicated lives that culminated in creating great devotional works. The historical part of the work shows Aiken's ability to enhance readers' understanding of the world inhabited by Kelly. Quaker Studies scholars will be especially interested where Aiken digs into the archives using Kelly's correspondence with the AFSC and Quaker contemporaries to flesh out the man behind the A Testament to Devotion. Finally, the ethical part strengthens Kelly's call to the world. Aiken rescues A Testament of Devotion from the bin of spiritual self-help books and re-establishes it as a foundational work for personal impact upon the world. They accomplish this with the inclusion of Tal Brewer's treatise, A Retrieval of Ethics (2009), to confirm Kelly's view on the devotional life as dialectical "soul-making" rather than propositional "world-making" (3-4). Aiken finishes with directions for further research and personal touch as to the state of society in 2020. A Testament of Devotion and Thomas Kelly, Augustinian Quaker is an [End Page 64] essential book because it makes Thomas Kelly accessible for Friends who have read A Testament of Devotion and want to learn more. Aiken is a scholar through and through; however, the book is readable to laypeople who may have only read Kelly's primary work and have not delved deep into Quaker Studies. Aiken also successfully focuses on the area of history his readers will likely care about the most, namely the historical context surrounding the birth of his primary text. By building the man in dialogue with the book, Aiken has created the rare scholarship that can be enjoyed by academics looking for a Kelly research launchpad or by laypeople to discuss within their religious gatherings. The book hits the right spots by not getting bogged down in theology, history, or ethics. Instead, Aiken gives us a compelling perspective on the life of Thomas Kelly and the formation of A...

Aviva vs. the Dybbuk by Mari Lowe

Reviewed by: Aviva vs. the Dybbuk by Mari Lowe April Spisak Lowe, Mari Aviva vs. the Dybbuk. Levine Querido, 2022 [176p] Trade ed. ISBN 9781646141258 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 9781646141524 $17.99 Reviewed from digital galleys R Gr. 6-8 Aviva has an antagonistic relationship with the mischievous dybbuk (a restless soul who seeks resolution of some sort) in the mikvah her mother takes care of, but at the same time the creature has almost been her only friend, or at least near constant companion, since her father died. For years, she and her mother have been in a holding pattern of grief, refusing charitable offers and friendly overtures from their close-knit Jewish community, but a required school project turns out to be the necessary catalyst to help both of them move forward with their lives. Antisemitic acts run through the novel, and one particularly cruel incident is so traumatic that Aviva's reliability as our narrator is called into question as the story progresses—it's a powerful and surprising heel turn, crafted in a way to raise questions but not turn the reader against Aviva. The experience of grief as a suffocating fog is described with grace and thoughtfulness, and the ways in which each person copes are given equal validity (Aviva has deep sympathy for her mom's inability to leave their home). Novels focusing on contemporary Orthodox Jewish communities are rare; other than a glossary, Lowe trusts the reader to piece together the cultural and religious elements that are the most important elements in Aviva's life. Copyright © 2021 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Lisovskaya (Syktyvkar, Russia). Linguistic means of expressing comic in the works by Victor Savin

Introduction. In Finno-Ugric Studies, as well as in Komi linguistics, the language of the founders of Komi literature, its features and artistic means of expression, its role in text formation are not well understood. Viktor Alekseevich Savin was not only the first Soviet Komi poet, playwright, composer and critic, but also one of the foundeers of the modern literary language. His works showed the great potential of his native language, laid down the tradition of creative writing, and became a role model for young poets and prose writers. The article analyzes the linguistic means of expressing the comic in his most popular works. Materials and methods. The object of the study was a series of works by Savin, his poems, essays, and several plays, which are traditionally referred to as anti-religious in literary criticism. The authors used traditional methods of semantic analysis of vocabulary, component, and contextual analysis. Results and Discussion. Not everything written by Savin is equally relevant and close to a modern reader, but many items of his poems, his dramas, and short stories are loved by readers and are still in demand. These are the anti-religious comedies “Rayin” (“In Paradise”), “Inastov lov” (“A Restless Soul”), “Wa Shyr” (“Water Rat”), and the poem “Arkirey” (“Bishop”). However, already in the post-perestroika years these works were not staged any longer at any of the state theaters of the Komi Republic. Conclusion. Satirical poems, comedies, short stories, and essays by Savin have been checked by the time, and remained in the Komi literature’s golden fund, loved by readers and spectators. In connection with the 130th anniversary of the birth of Victor Savin, it is necessary to raise the question of reprinting his works and staging his plays.

Social Reform and Remedy Rendered in the Select Novels of Indira Goswami

Dr. Indira Goswami (Mamoni Raisom Goswami) is one of the leading writers of the India today. She has won the Jnanpith Award for the year 2000, which is the highest literary award of India today. She belongs to the family of Sattra adhikars (Head of Vaisnava monastery) of South Kamrup in Assam. Her father, Late Uma Kanta Goswami, was an economist, who worked as the Director of Public Instruction of the Government of Assam. Indira did her schooling in Guwahati and Shillong. She has written eighteen novels, and several hundreds of short stories. Her novels and short stories have been translated into many Indian and Foreign languages. She tries to write from her direct experiences of her life. She only moulds her experiences with her imagination. Her language is like a velvet dress by which she endeavors to cover the restless soul in its journey through existence. But however hard, she might try, the fabric of this dress seldom takes on the texture of velvet or fine Muslim, and it comes out rather tattered. Sometimes they feel that it is a futile effort to arrest the soul with language and capture it in cold print. It is better, perhaps to feel it only in numb science. But, then, those very experiences impel a person to unload them from the psyche by creative effort which gives a sort of relief. And, the tattered fabric has a beauty which puts to shame the finest of velvets.

Constitutional Identity as a Constructed Reality and a Restless Soul

The notion of constitutional identity is a recent and enigmatic notion in constitutional law and theory. This Article demonstrates that constitutional identity—understood as a certain constitution-related self-identity of a nation or people—can be constructed from the text of a constitution, its interpretation and its application. However, constitutional identity is nothing more and nothing less than a constructed reality that can be regarded as a constitutional state's restless soul. It exists only as a constructed, simplified, imagined reality that will most likely also be contested and subject to change. Constitutional identity and the reliance on it in particular by national courts should therefore not be regarded as something sacred and absolute that can be compared to an imagined stable heart. Instead, constitutional identity should be treated with caution.

Star New York Chef Cooks Up Veggies With Neuroscience

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Annual MeetingFull AccessStar New York Chef Cooks Up Veggies With NeuroscienceAaron LevinAaron LevinSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:14 Mar 2017https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2017.3a15AbstractHere’s food for thought: Chef David Bouley will talk about the connection between “living foods” and staying healthy.You are what you eat, goes the old clichȳ. Or maybe, from a psychiatrist’s point of view, you are what eats you.www.davidbouley.comIn any case, one presentation at the APA Annual Meeting in San Diego will take an insider’s look at the intersection of food and the mind. Star New York Chef David Bouley has been exploring that nexus for years, an experience he will share with psychiatrists in San Diego.In recent years, Bouley has teamed with physicians of various specialties for his “Chef and the Doctor” series of “collaborative health-focused lectures and multicourse dinners.”So, it’s no stretch that his talk on Monday, May 22, at 8 a.m. will focus on “living foods” that contribute to the health of the nervous system. Bouley keeps those foods right at hand. In Bouley Botanical, one of the several restaurant spaces he runs in New York, he has constructed a window wall arrayed with more than 400 species of living, edible plants that he can harvest and incorporate individually into a guest’s dinner on the spot.The cross-disciplinary interest should be no surprise. Bouley has been a restless soul throughout his career.After training in France and Switzerland, the Connecticut-born Bouley worked his way up in the 1980s to be the chef at Montrachet, the three-star restaurant in TriBeCa. He went out on his own in 1987, opening the first version of Bouley, which won high praise before closing in 1996. Bouley next opened a bakery and then another restaurant that specialized in Eastern European cuisine.Today he operates a reincarnated Bouley at Duane and Hudson streets in TriBeCa, the Japanese-inspired Brushtroke, and Bouley Botanical, home to all those edible greens awaiting their imminent demise on someone’s plate.Bouley is not content to coast on his decades of success, however. He is going on a sabbatical, in his words, closing Bouley this spring and then lighting out for the territory. After 30 years as a chef, he said, he wants to take classes in nutrition and travel to Asia, South America, and Europe to expand his knowledge of the nexus between food and health. Sometime late in 2018 or early 2019, he plans to open a new restaurant, one that will seat 20 or 25 guests rather than the 120 in the current iteration of Bouley. The two sides of his personality will again be on display.“The new Bouley will tailor guests’ menus to their specific needs and will be designed to optimize the healing power of food,” he wrote on his website. “It will not be a ‘health clinic,’ but rather a restaurant of high standards, romantic and sensual in every detail.”Attendees at the APA meeting in San Diego might just get an advance hint of what that dining experience will look like. ■“Living Foods That Together Strengthen and Build Support for the Peripheral Nervous System, Consequently Building Health of Both the Central and Peripheral Nervous Systems” will be held Monday, May 22, at 8 a.m. in the San Diego Convention Center. ISSUES NewArchived

The ghost of Taavetti Lukkarinen and the haunting legacy of a 1916 hanging site

ABSTRACTOn the fringe of the city centre of Oulu, Finland, stands a peculiar memorial commemorating the last death sentence by hanging in Finland. Here people remembered the ill-fate of Taavetti Lukkarinen, a young man in his early 30s, who was hanged for high treason by Russian officers in 1916. In 2014, archaeological excavation at the hanging tree memorial revealed an interesting group of finds consisting of a deliberately fractured proximal end of a calf tibia with two shards of clear glass and an iron wire inserted into its marrow channel, in addition to a rubber shoe heel pad. These finds can be interpreted as a deposit hidden in the base of the memorial to tie the presumably restless soul to the monument. Examples of this kind of magical thinking with connections to, for example, concealed shoes, are known from different parts of the world. The memorial of Taavetti Lukkarinen may therefore be regarded as an example of a place where both individual people and the society tried to deal with a dark and shameful part of their past.

Still Life in Townsend

Still Life in Townsend Melanie K. Hutsell (bio) 1 Stevie Gibson never did like the picture, but she never did take it down. A dead pheasant still fully feathered, a bowl of oranges, a green glass goblet of wine, and an hourglass were arranged upon a pale tablecloth of folds and wrinkles, all against a shadowed background. She saw that picture every [End Page 44] day that she sat behind the computer at her father’s heavy oak desk and typed figures for Gibson’s Motor Lodge into the Excel spreadsheets. The dark painting had not given her nightmares as a girl but still had pressed against her restless soul whenever she wandered into her father’s office. Now the picture was like the wall or the telephone, no different from the hook where she hung her coat or sweater half the year. It came with the job. Luman Gibson still owned every nail in the building, though he lived twenty miles away in an old folks’ home in Maryville and did not remember her face or her name. She would not mind to change things around, maybe, but that cost money and took time she did not have. And the things were not hers to change. 2 The motorcycle couple wore red bandanas on their heads and American flags on their T-shirts and jackets. Stevie manned the front desk of the family business in Townsend, Tennessee. She shared the no-excuses way the motorcycle couple wore their clothes. At thirty-nine, she appeared not much different from the girl who had first been kissed in Tuckaleechee Caverns, who carried big, wide, deep-living dreams when she left Townsend at eighteen. She still wore unforgiving jeans and daredevil necklines. But crow’s feet now printed themselves on her face, and grey strands threaded through her spiked blonde hair. Stevie took the key from the hand of the bearded, booted fellow, as she had from thousands of other hands, and told the man and the woman to enjoy their trip. Several weeks ago, the Wears Valley forest fires all over the national news might have seemed to menace the couple’s bike trip down from Michigan. But those fires had burned on the Sevier County side, closer to Pigeon Forge and fought by firefighters from three counties. [End Page 45] The forest fires were out now. Outside and where she could not see, trees had turned to ashes, and the mountain slopes stood charred. Behind the front desk, Stevie watched the motorcycle man and woman push the glass door and walk on through. They were able to do that, to step into the sunshine and push on up the road. 3 Stevie Gibson had never not known this house on the hillside. She had known it before its dishwasher, before the bathroom downstairs. Luman placed window units in four rooms when Stevie was in high school. Before that, they turned lights off, opened windows, and sat outside on the porch. Her father had made the clothesline for her mother, sawing wood and pouring concrete so clothes could dry crisp and sweet, keeping the house cooler. A row of white pines at the edge of the yard was not there once. As a girl, Stevie dug holes for the roots though she did not dream to linger in Townsend with them. In the last of the summer heat, tourists meandered biking paths on either side of the highway below the house. Around them towered mighty folds of the Smoky Mountains, draped in foliage lush and miraculous with sunshine. Nearly all who came to Townsend believed that they looked upon an ancient wilderness. But over a hundred years before, Stevie knew now, the mountains had been logged until they stood naked as the moon. All those great trees now rooted on the slopes and stretching for the sky—the trees that, growing up, she had thought as permanent as the earth—were nothing but new growth, a moment in the life of a mountain. [End Page 46] 4 Plenty of pictures in the Gibson photo album featured Stevie and her best friend, Misty. In Kodak snapshots, the two girls theatrically posed on...

The Growing Inability to Dream

The Growing Inability to Dream Nicholas Samaras (bio) How can I meet the world in all this obscuring mist, the wisps of history that shred themselves down to this moment and my lying down in this moment? What of the long day’s events do I carry to bed with me and what may filter through my resting or restless soul? My own father taught me our dreams come only from our subconscious and the more at peace with ourselves we become, the less we’ll dream. Years I’ve remembered this. Years I have grown into a history of sleep, the day settling in night. At rest, I see only my father’s calm face— where I tick the nights and years in a growing contentment and inability to recall any dream—which is a dream, which is meeting the world and lying down with it all right. [End Page 108] Nicholas Samaras Nicholas Samaras is from Patmos, Greece (the “Island of the Apocalypse”), and at the time of the Greek Junta was brought in exile to be raised in Woburn, Massachusetts. He has lived in Greece, England, Wales, Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, Jerusalem, and thirteen states in America, and he writes from a place of permanent exile. His newest collection is American Psalm, World Psalm (Ashland Poetry P). Currently, he is completing a new manuscript of poetry and a memoir of his childhood years living underground. Copyright © 2014 University of Nebraska Press

The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in the Twentieth Century. By Matthew S. Hedstrom. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. x + 278 pp. $55.00 cloth.

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)The Rise of Liberal Religion: Book Culture and American Spirituality in Twentieth Century . By Matthew S. Hedstrom . New York : Oxford University Press , 2013. x + 278 pp. $55.00 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesMatthew Hedstrom contributes to a growing body of recent work on American religious liberalism with his analysis of American Protestant book culture from 1920s through end of World War II. Focusing upon a range of literary campaigns conducted by liberal Protestant book clubs, and joined during World War II by joint publishing campaigns with Catholics and Jews, Hedstrom shows how an emerging book culture crafted a distinctive form of American popular religion that was geared toward a white, middle-class cultural center (what author refers to as middlebrow culture). He shows how desire of liberal Protestant leaders to forge a concerted campaign to promote religious literacy through books opened readers to a wider embrace of religious pluralism by middle of twentieth century. Increasingly this pluralism was defined not in terms of theological doctrines and beliefs. Rather the most critical of these new religious developments for twentieth-century religious liberalism were a renewed and transformed emphasis on mystical practice and experience, healing ministry known as mind cure, and rise of modern psychology (15). Ultimately, this religious quest through books opened new vistas of spirituality in latter half of twentieth century.An assistant professor of American Studies at University of Virginia, Hedstrom builds upon a spate of recent scholarship arguing that liberal Protestants were far more influential in shaping religious and cultural worldviews than often given credit. Building upon arguments from Leigh Eric Schmidt's Restless Souls (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005), Hedstrom follows religious liberalism's impact beyond parameters of churches and denominations. Beginning with an examination of religious book clubs in 1920s, he discusses how these liberal Protestant endeavors lived in tension between a wish to preserve an older Protestant culture of privilege and a desire to capitalize upon a growing consumer demand for reading. Influenced by insights on religious experience articulated in early twentieth century by figures such as Rufus Jones and William James, emerging movement of book publishers promoted religious literacy while increasingly exposing Americans to intellectual currents that moved beyond exclusive domain of American Protestantism. While these initial efforts in 1920s and 1930s were often rooted in a hope to promote a vision of America as a Protestant Christian nation, increasingly these book clubs exposed readers to a wide range of religious traditions. This pattern is especially evident in author's discussion of Eugene Exman. The longtime religion editor at Harper & Brothers (including serving as Harry Emerson Fosdick's editor), Exman's expanding interest in Eastern religion helped foster a spate of works that both promoted core values of liberal Protestantism while also fostering a growing interfaith consciousness.By time of World War II, these earlier Protestant reading clubs joined forces with Catholic and Jewish publishing interests to promote reading in both American military and on home front. These wartime ecumenical-interfaith campaigns helped forge a distinctive vision of American religion (what would become commonly known in 1950s as the Judeo-Christian heritage). …

Ghoulish Song by William Alexander (review)

Reviewed by: Ghoulish Song by William Alexander Kate Quealy-Gainer Alexander, William . Ghoulish Song. McElderry, 2013. [ 176p]. Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4424-2729-7 $16.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4424-2731-0 $9.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 4-6. Music and performance have magical qualities in the river city of Zombay, and when Kaile accepts a gift of a bone flute from a goblin, the tune the instrument plays separates the young girl from her shadow. Kaile's family, convinced that her missing shadow indicates Kaile has lost her soul, bars her from their house and insists she is dead. In order to reclaim her life, Kaile must track down the restless soul to whom the bone originally belonged, a quest that brings her to the musicmakers who hold the city together with their tunes just before the river's flooding threatens all of Zombay. Alexander returns to the world that won him the National Book Award with Goblin Secrets (BCCB 4/12), but Kaile's story has a more whimsical, fairy-tale feel than the steampunk-infused earlier volume, focusing on Zombay's magic and legends as opposed to automatons. His storytelling remains compelling, and Kaile makes a likable heroine, at times admirably noble and at other times understandably frustrated and defiant. Her adventures are just scary enough to keep readers on edge without giving anyone nightmares, and the climactic battle scene is triumphant with a touch of melancholy as Kaile puts to rest the souls of victims of past river floods. Those readers who were intrigued by Zombay in the first installment will be pleased to find that the city seems to have secrets enough for many more books. [End Page 367] Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Secrets of Moltmann’s Tacit Tradition: Via Covenant Theology to Promise Theology

AbstractThis article takes a genetic approach examining Moltmann’s early post-Reformation studies in Moyse Amyraut, Petrus Ramus, Jacob Brocard and Johann Coccejus as the secrets to the tacit tradition of his theology of hope. I contend that the gold he struck in these studies is a historical impulse and legitimization of his own turn to the horizon of the empirical and the historical. However, with respect to the dross, Moltmann critically notes that with the post-Reformation covenant theologians the word of God got entangled in a ‘system’ of hope because of their symbolic-prophetic approach to Scripture. In place of their symbolic-prophetic exegesis he substitutes a promise-exegesis as a way of pointing to God’s relationship to this world and to the human beings in it. He thus replaces the theme of a restless history, and a restless soul, with the restless promise of which God is the author, the originator and the fulfiller. In this way Moltmann found a way beyond post-reformation covenant theology and Barth’s dialectical theology, culminating in his Theology of Hope.

“O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!”: Melancholy and Utopia in Romantic Climatology

Let the fish philosophise the ice away from the Rivers in winter time and they shall be at continual play in the tepid delight of summer. Look at the Poles and at the sands of Africa, Whirlpools and volcanoes-Let men exterminate them and I will say that they may arrive at earthly Happiness.- John Keats, Letter to George and Georgiana Keats, 21 April 1819Near the culmination of Queen Mab (1813), Percy Bysshe Shelley's cosmic fantasia of conjectural history and philosophical optimism, the poet offers a paean to a future Earth renovated and redeemed by a fortuitous combination of climate change and rational progress:O happy Earth! reality of Heaven!To which those restless souls that ceaselesslyThrong through the human universe, aspire;Thou consummation of all mortal hope!Thou glorious prize of blindly-working will!Whose rays, diffused throughout all space and time,Verge to one point and blend for ever there:Of purest spirits thou pure dwelling-place!Where care and sorrow, impotence and crime,Languor, disease, and ignorance dare not come:O happy Earth, reality of Heaven! (9.1-11)1Shelley's utopian imagines both human society and the natural world as purged of illness and vice, a state of heaven on Earth manifested not simply by the liberation from tyranny and superstition-those bugbears of Enlightenment- but by the melting of the polar ice caps and the greening of the deserts consequent upon a shift of Earth's rotational axis to a perpendicular with its ecliptic. Shelley derives this astronomical of progressive precession from earlier cosmologies that attributed shifts in Earth's rotation to causes ranging from geological eruptions and solar rays to human sin and the biblical flood. These cosmologies attracted Shelley both for their mechanisms of analogical causation and for their predictions of comprehensive reform. 2 Today's readers may or may not sympathize with the political and aesthetic motivations that caused a usually skeptical poet to adopt such farreaching theories. But Shelley's association of climate change with earthly happiness offers us a tragically misguided that should raise questions about Romantic affiliations with modern environmental imperatives. Shelley's fascination with a world remade reveals an imaginative hubris that, for all of his evocations of sublime abjection as a catalyst to virtuous action, may prove more an extension than a repudiation of technological domination and self-destructive exploitation.Jonathan Bate has called for new models of literary criticism to respond to the environmental crises now facing the planet, a Global Warming Criticism that would affirm the art of poetry as a vital link between human cultures and the natural ecosystems in which they have thrived. In so doing, criticism might valorize and assist an ecopoetics that helps to create as well as to reveal the dwelling-place of the human spirit and that regards poetic language as a special kind of expression which may effect an imaginative reunification of mind and nature, though it also has a melancholy awareness of the illusoriness of its own utopian vision (Bate 245). This melancholy awareness provides a critical check, in Bate's view, lest our modern reassertion of cultural organicism slide into familiar patterns of nationalist aggression and racialized totalitarianism. While recognizing these concerns, Bate maintains that Romanticism as an aesthetic ideology and a poetic practice helps to sustain our ethical obligations to each other and to the environment. Following Rousseau, he acknowledges humanity's irrevocable severance from a primordial state of nature and, following Schiller, emphasizes Romantic poetry's sentimental gestures as instantiating a formal and thematic awareness of this disruption. Timothy Morton has recently valorized melancholy in similar terms as the proper ethical response to environmental catastrophe, emphasizing not acquiescent despair, but a situation of grief within an ecological context. …

Noted: Horror stories confront journalists

Phil Thornton specialises in documenting the lives of opressed ordinary people. Eight years ago he was attached to the University of the South Pacific programme during the George Speight 'coup' doing human rights stories that few other journalists were touching. 
 In Restless Souls, Thornton provides colourful, evocative and tragic insights into the Karen people's struggle for freedom and the right to exist. He is based in part in the border town of Mae Sot—a bizarre community featuring aid peddlers, drug dealers, mercenaries, prostitutes, gem smugglers and freelance journalists.

Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality

Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality

Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality

Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality