Essays
The Sickness of the Century
Thorvaldsen was surprised to see Byron seat himself before him in some quite peculiar, dramatic pose. He asked him merely to be as he usually was. ‘But this is how I am!’ cried Byron, affronted. And when the bust was finished, it did not please him. ‘It is no good,’ he said; ‘I am far more unhappy than that.’
The Magician Breaks His Staff
This is the most baffling thing about Shakespeare: this withdrawal, this inexplicable conclusion. How can it be that a poet — and a Shakespeare, no less! — should be able to cut himself off so utterly from that which had been the glorious meaning of his life?
Books and Youth: An Elegy
At the time I understood the foreign poets only very imperfectly, but that only heightened their enchantment. Of youth one ought to say with a sigh: ‘O, to read Baudelaire once more as I did at eighteen!’ It meant more than first love.
A new translation appears each month from October 2026.