ZiR | ZETEO | Page 23

The Dreyfus Affair in a great political thriller

December 5, 2014 by William Eaton

[print_link][email_link] One hundred and twenty years ago, in December 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus was found guilty of selling French military secrets to the Germans. He was sentenced to life in exile on Devil’s Island, off the coast of French Guiana. Politicians and journalists used the fact that Dreyfus was a Jew to whip up a massive wave of anti-Semitic feeling among the population. Nevertheless, a campaign to prove Dreyfus’s innocence was organized by his brother Mathieu and the journalist Bernard […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: French, literature, politics

Lonely Places

December 4, 2014 by William Eaton

In Falling Off the Map, renowned travel author Pico Iyer says “Lonely Places are the places that don’t fit in; the places that have no seat at our international dinner tables; the places that fall between the cracks of our tidy acronyms (EEC and OPEC, OAS and NATO).” Published in 1993, Iyer’s essays capture “moods [of countries he visits] that would not change with history’s tide.” A few examples: North Korea, for all its anonymity — its air of Everyplace — […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR • Tags: travel

Poetry in Film

December 2, 2014 by William Eaton

A good friend recently sent me an article from Flavor Wire titled “10 Famous Poems that Appeared in Film.” The selection is actually surprising. William Blake is prominent on the list. There is mention of Jim Jarmusch’s cult 1955 Western “Dead Man,” which is supposedly based on the visionary poems of William Blake. And, there is mention of the now-classic film “Blade Runner,” also inspired by the poetry of William Blake. Excerpts from the English poet’s book “America, a Prophecy” recur throughout the […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: culture, film, lit, poetry, writing

Parents look back and children do too

December 1, 2014 by Alexia Raynal

Last morning, as I skimmed through my favorite books, I bumped into Marjorie Orellana’s Translating Childhoods: Immigrant Youth, Language, and Culture. I had not picked up the book since last year, but it was easy to remember why I like it so much. While speaking mostly about children’s work as translators for their monolingual parents, Orellana also dedicates a brief section to Immigrant Childhoods. She begins this section by explaining: Immigrant families differ from those who have resided in the United States for generations on dimensions […]

Categories: Alexia Raynal, ZiR • Tags: books, childhood, children, families, immigration, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, Translating Childhoods

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I am the government of your country

November 30, 2014 by William Eaton

George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara, which premiered in London in 1905, is shining once again in an excellent production at New York’s Pearl Theatre. The dominant personality, of a play that offers half a dozen or more strong characters, is Andrew Undershaft, an enormously successful weapons manufacturer—for anyone and everyone, without prejudice, throughout the world. As Undershaft himself puts it: To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or principles: […]

Categories: William Eaton, ZiR • Tags: capitalism, George Bernard Shaw, government, Major Barbara, theater, war

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For Sale, but Not for Purchase: The Terms of Sex in Sweden

November 29, 2014 by William Eaton

[email_link] [print_link] The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men but rather their conqueror, an outlaw who controls the sexual channel between nature and culture. CAMILLE PAGLIA, Vamps and Tramps We say that slavery has vanished from European civilization, but this is not true. Slavery still exists, but now it applies only to women and its name is prostitution. VICTOR HUGO, Les Misérables The question I am interested in exploring today, came neither […]

Categories: Caterina Gironda, ZiR • Tags: sex, women

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De Profundis — Wilde’s cry from the depths of prison

November 28, 2014 by William Eaton

[print_link][email_link] In May 1895, at the height of his literary career, the Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde was arrested and charged with ‘acts of gross indecency with other male persons’. Convicted at the Old Bailey, he became a bankrupt outcast overnight, and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment with hard labor. Before he was released from Reading prison, Wilde wrote a long letter to his former lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, which was later published as De Profundis. In it, […]

Categories: Catherine Vigier, ZiR • Tags: homosexuality, literature, love, poetry, politics

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The Unum in the American Pluribus

November 27, 2014 by William Eaton

What is the unum in the American pluribus? What is the “out of many, one,” those cultural values, attitudes, customs, historical heritage and other distinctions answering the question, “What holds us together?” In The Longest Road: Overland in Search of America from Key West to the Arctic Ocean, Philip Caputo asks this question of people he meets. Caputo begins “his long journey” in 2010 with wife, and two English Setters, truck and Airstream trailer at Key West, ending it months later […]

Categories: Tucker Cox, ZiR • Tags: travel

You’re It

November 25, 2014 by Ana Maria Caballero

Since this is the last Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I wanted to share a poem with a spiritual dimension. But, as the piece I selected is particularly Californian in its brand of spirituality, it is playful, mystical and non-denominational. Indeed, it might even be considered hippie-ish. It is an easy poem to keep in one’s head while one travels with the crowds or dines with the relatives. The poem was written by poet and filmmaker James Broughton, pictured to the right, […]

Categories: Ana Maria Caballero, ZiR • Tags: books, poetry, religion, spirituality, writing

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ZETEO

Zeteo (ζητέω): to challenge, question, dispute, explore the forgotten and ignored

Category Archives: ZiR

The Dreyfus Affair in a great political thriller

Lonely Places

Poetry in Film

Parents look back and children do too

I am the government of your country

For Sale, but Not for Purchase: The Terms of Sex in Sweden

De Profundis — Wilde’s cry from the depths of prison

The Unum in the American Pluribus

You’re It