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Taras Bulba

From the January 2004 Print Edition

Where Taras Bulba should be ranked among the works of Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852)—or, for that matter, among the monuments of European literature—is by no means settled. Ernest Hemingway called it “one of the ten greatest books of all time,” while Vladimir Nabokov, who adored the . . . . Continue Reading »

A Most Partial Historian

From the December 2003 Print Edition

Religion and Public Doctrine in Modern England Volume III: Accommodations. By Maurice Cowling. Cambridge University Press. 766 pp. $100. Maurice Cowling (b. 1926) has never gained wide celebrity in Britain and is all but unknown beyond its shores, even though he is arguably among the twentieth . . . . Continue Reading »

Christ and Nothing

From the October 2003 Print Edition

As modern men and women—to the degree that we are modern—we believe in nothing. This is not to say, I hasten to add, that we do not believe in anything; I mean, rather, that we hold an unshakable, if often unconscious, faith in the nothing, or in nothingness as such. It is this in which . . . . Continue Reading »

Beyond Reductionism

From the November 1998 Print Edition

Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection By Louis Dupré. Eerdmans. 147 pages, $20 The nine essays that constitute this volume are all concerned, in some fashion or another, with questions of religious experience: its form, its nature, its susceptibility (or resistance) to philosophical scrutiny, . . . . Continue Reading »