Tag: Literary Essays
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Greater than the sum of her parts: The journey of a medical student
Japjee Parmar Amritsar, Punjab, India “I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I…
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Blake’s autonomous newborn: Neonatal mortality in “Infant Joy” and “Infant Sorrow”
Zoya Gurm Detroit, Michigan, United States Virgin and Child. Artwork by William Blake, 1825. Yale Center for British Art Paul Mellon Collection. Public domain. William Blake (1757–1827) was an artist, poet, and progenitor of the Romantic era. Romanticism represents the artistic and intellectual movement responding to the Enlightenment, industrialization, and political revolutions of the…
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Ondine’s curse: You sleep, you die
Trisha KesavanTamil Nadu, India In the 16th century, philosopher Paracelsus wrote about undines as nymphs that gained souls by marrying humans.1 According to German mythology, Ondine or Undine was a water nymph (de la Motte Fouque’s version) who married a knight, Huldbrand, and gained a soul, but would be doomed to die if he showed…
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The new pandemic
Maite Losarcos Navarra, Spain Photo by Bruno Feitosa on Pexels. It is just another day. The traffic light is red as pedestrians cross the street before you, always in a hurry. At last, the light turns green, but just as you prepare to start the car, the world goes white. People shout, cars honk,…
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“No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money-changer”: Who said it first?
Robert Schell Brooklyn, New York Biblical inspiration: Christ Driving the Money-Changers from the Temple (or The Purification of the Temple). El Greco, c. 1600, Frick Collection. Via Wikimedia. Public domain. In these days of rampant biomedical commercialization, the Bible-inspired admonition “No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money-changer”…
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Baudelaire’s spleen
Nicolas Roberto RoblesBadajoz, Spain Je suis comme le roi d’un pays pluvieux,Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très-vieux,Qui, de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes,S’ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d’autres bêtes.Rien ne peut l’égayer, ni gibier, ni faucon,Ni son peuple mourant en face du balcon. I am like the king of a rainy country, richbut…
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The Joys of Motherhood: The classic Nigerian novel
Oyenike Ilaka Albany, New York Cover of The Joys of Motherhood, published in London, UK, by Allison & Busby in 1979.2 The Joys of Motherhood is a Nigerian novel written by Buchi Emecheta in 1979. Emecheta was a Nigerian woman from the Igbo tribe. Born in 1944, she spent her childhood in Lagos. At…
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Wandering lonely as a cloud
Dean Gianakos Lynchburg, Virginia, US Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash. I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o’er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host, of golden daffodils; Beside the lake, beneath the trees, Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. Continuous as the…
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The ordeal of Evelyn Waugh
Stephen McWilliamsDublin, Ireland In Evelyn Waugh’s second-last novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold (1957), the eponymous character experiences some singular and troubling symptoms. Mr. Pinfold is a successful writer, not unlike Waugh himself, who embarks on a sea voyage in an effort to cure the chronic insomnia and fatigue he suffers from consuming too much…
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Dr. Mikhail Bulgakov and morphine
Howard FischerUppsala, Sweden “During the years of war and revolution it was hard to find a hospital without morphine-addicted patients.”1– Vladimir Gorovoy-Shaltan, physician specialist in addiction medicine Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov (1891–1940) was a Russian physician, novelist, and playwright. He earned his medical degree from the University of Kiev (now Kyiv) in 1916. In 1919 he…