What Does ‘The Communist Manifesto’ Have to Offer 150 Years After Its Publication? What Does ‘The Communist Manifesto’ Have to Offer 150 Years After Its Publication?
At the dawn of the twentieth century, there were workers who were ready to die with The Communist Manifesto. At the dawn of the twenty-first, there may be even more who are ready t...
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Marshall Berman
Can Men and Women Be Friends? Can Men and Women Be Friends?
Feminism has opened up far more space than could have been imagined in the 1920s.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Floyd Dell and Michelle Goldberg
The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing The Mind Is an Enchanting Thing
December 18, 1943 is an enchanted thing like the glaze on a katydid-wing subdivided by sun till the nettings are legion. Like Gieseking playing Scarlatti; like the apteryx-awl as a beak, or the kiwi’s rain-shawl of haired feathers, the mind feeling its way as though blind, walks along with its eyes on the ground. It has memory’s ear that can hear without having to hear. Like the gyroscope’s fall, truly unequivocal because trued by regnant certainty, it is a power of strong enchantment. It is like the dove- neck animated by sun; it is memory’s eye; it’s conscientious inconsistency. It tears off the veil, tears the temptation, the mist the heart wears, from its eyes—if the heart has a face; it takes apart dejection. It’s fire in the dove-neck’s iridescence; in the inconsistencies of Scarlatti. Unconfusion submits its confusion to proof; it’s not a Herod’s oath that cannot change. This article is part of The Nation’s 150th Anniversary Special Issue. Download a free PDF of the issue, with articles by James Baldwin, Barbara Ehrenreich, Toni Morrison, Howard Zinn and many more, here. Marianne Moore (1887–1972) wrote eleven essays and seven poems for The Nation between 1936 and 1952. Moore’s biographer, Linda Leavell, indicates that she stopped contributing out of solidarity with her friend, ousted literary editor Margaret Marshall, but also because she disliked The Nation’s criticism of Eisenhower’s “honest, auspicious, genuinely devoted speeches.”
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Marianne Moore
Walt Whitman Is An Insult To Art, Says 22-Year Old Henry James Walt Whitman Is An Insult To Art, Says 22-Year Old Henry James
Drum-Taps is the effort of an essentially prosaic mind to lift itself, by a prolonged muscular strain, into poetry.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Henry James
If We Repossessed Empty Homes, Homelessness Would Be Over If We Repossessed Empty Homes, Homelessness Would Be Over
It will need a robust Mayor and city government to take the law into their own hands; but the people would support them.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / William MacDonald and Bill de Blasio
The Dream Life of Desire The Dream Life of Desire
Drawing a line between poetry and the political has never been simple.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Ange Mlinko
American Imperialism: This Is When It All Began American Imperialism: This Is When It All Began
Accustomed to trampling democracy at home, jingoists cannot be expected to see its virtues abroad.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Horace White and Elinor Langer
Are Women Morally Superior to Men? Are Women Morally Superior to Men?
Woman as sharer and carer, woman as earth mother, woman as guardian of small rituals—these images are as old as time.
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Katha Pollitt
How Saving the Environment Could Fix the Economy How Saving the Environment Could Fix the Economy
Why not revive New Deal policies but apply them in a green and global fashion?
Mar 23, 2015 / Books & the Arts / Mark Hertsgaard
What Is This New Philosophy They Call ‘Existentialism’? What Is This New Philosophy They Call ‘Existentialism’?
It would be a cheap error to mistake this new trend in philosophy and literature for just another fashion of the day.
Mar 23, 2015 / Feature / Hannah Arendt