M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 27/08/2026‘For Books are not absolutely dead things, but doe contain a potencie of life in them to be as active as that soule was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.’ 0204
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 14/08/2026‘Eating too much cabbage may be a form of gluttony, but it doesn’t carry much moral opprobrium or significance beyond that’ —Paul Freedman (‘Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination’, p. 159) 061
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 04/08/2026The sunlight on the trees is red gold, and the hills are veiled in smoke. There is a flash of motion and a spotted towhee settles on a nearby branch, its speckles dulled as though already covered in ash. The fire is on the other side of the mountain, but the fragility of things seems much closer. 0121
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 22/06/2026All we like sheep. www.eudaemonist.com/22vi2026/eudaemonist.coman eudæmonist : high placesSenes hieme velut oves aprica petant, aestate velut aves amoena rivosque revisant. Frequenter inter virentes versentur plantas et suaviter redolentes, hae namque viventes spirantesque conspirant ad sp... 040
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 02/06/2026‘The grey early morning, when body and soul are only narrowly held together by a cup of coffee, is anyhow no time for conversation, anywhere, in any circumstance’ —Ethel Mannin, ‘An American Journey’ 050
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 28/05/2026I am enjoying Ficino’s advice for the prevention of melancholy through the proper care of the knowledge worker: ‘Otio maeret stomachus, exercitatione gaudet, nisi dum cibo sit plenus. Sumpto cibo statim modice deambulandum, mox vero sedendum’ (‘Three Books on Life’, I.11). 140
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 15/05/2026‘…and still / The book-club, guarded from your modern trick / Of shaking dangerous questions from the crease, / Preserved her intellectual.’ —E.B. Browning, ‘Aurora Leigh’ 051
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 13/05/2026What five movies would you tell people to watch to get to know who you are and how you feel and think in the world? Modern Times Yojimbo The Thin Man Stalker Howl’s Moving Castle 280
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 26/04/2026Thinking back over the books I’ve finished reading so far this year, and Auden’s ‘The Dyer’s Hand’ and Burton’s ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’ stand out as the best, but Natalie Bauer-Lechner’s ‘Recollections of Gustav Mahler’ is definitely the funniest (well, ‘most amusing’). 080
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 16/04/2026Do you need more mediocre verse from the late nineteenth century in your life? Yes, of course you do. Special guest criticism by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Jack Kerouac. www.eudaemonist.com/biblion/marz...eudaemonist.comMarzials: PoemsSpecimens of poetry by Theo Marzials, hanger-on at the British Museum, composer, and general oddity. 172
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 30/03/2026‘There are types of character which are like a prism, whose various and brilliant colours are but broken reflections of a single ray of concentrated light’ —R.H. Tawney (‘Religion and the Rise of Capitalism’, p. 156) 051
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 28/03/2026‘Become the imitable thing’ —William James, ‘The Gospel of Relaxation’ 010
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 26/03/2026Spell check wants to change ‘bibliometrische’ to ‘bibliomantische’. 030
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 03/03/2026‘Most of us continue living unnecessarily near our surface’ —William James, ‘On Vital Reserves’ 061
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 18/02/2026‘Nor hope to be my self less miserable By what I seek, but others to make such As I, though thereby worse to me redound: For onely in destroying I find ease To my relentless thoughts’ —Milton, ‘Paradise Lost’, IX.126–130 251
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 29/11/2025‘So there’s an end to that—it’s commonplace: light goes with life, and in the winter of your years the dark comes early…’ —Tom Stoppard, ‘Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead’ 050
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 09/11/2025‘Somehow his memory irritates me! He possessed the truth and answered to the heavenly calling, and yet always without joy and almost always without grace. His puerility, as you say, was heartrending.’ —Edmund Gosse, unimpressed with Andrew Lang in a letter to Henry James 040
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 06/11/2025‘Opposite to exercise is idleness (the badge of gentry) or want of exercise, the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, stepmother of discipline, the chief author of all mischief….’ —Robert Burton (‘Anatomy of Melancholy’) 070
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 23/10/2025‘Of seasons of the year, the autumn is most melancholy’ —Robert Burton, ‘Anatomy of Melancholy’, 1.1.3.2 071
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 14/10/2025Ulrich von Hutten’s poem ‘Nemo’ (nemo, nam, nemo omnibus horis sapit, etc.) is briefly quoted in ‘Democritus Junior to the Reader’, and it reminded me of: ‘Well, one time when things was looking bright I started to whittling on a stick one night Who said, “Hey! That's dynamite!”? Nobody.’ 130
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 04/10/2025‘Some prank up their bodies, and have their minds full of execrable vices. Some trot about to bear false witness, and say anything for money; and though judges know of it, yet for a bribe they wink at it, and suffer false contracts to prevail against equity.’ —Burton, ‘Democritus Jr. to the Reader’ 151
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 04/10/2025‘The natural dreariness of the place is not a little increased by the melancholy croakings of innumerable penguins with which the Shore is lined. Nature seems to have designed this Spot solely for the use of Sea Lions, Seals, penguins and Sea Fowls.’ —James Burney, Journals, 25.xii.1776 030
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 17/09/2025‘As readers, most of us, to some degree, are like those urchins who pencil mustaches on the faces of girls in advertisements’ —Auden, ‘Reading’, in ‘The Dyer’s Hand’ 040
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 13/09/2025‘There’s really no point in writing normal novels’ —Yoko Tawada, ‘Exophony’ (trans. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda), p. 81 040
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 10/09/2025‘Why novels have to follow the logic of department stores is beyond me’ —Yoko Tawada, ‘Exophony’ (trans. Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, p. 54) 050
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 07/09/2025If you are looking for creepy stories about ghosts, uncanny children, and other oddities, I cannot recommend M.R. James’s translation of ‘The Apocryphal New Testament: Being the Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses with Other Narratives and Fragments’ enough. Snarky notes a bonus. 051
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 06/09/2025‘To grow bigger every moment in your own conceit, and the world to lessen: to deify yourself at the expense of your species; to judge the world—this is the acme and supreme point of your mystery—these the true PLEASURES of SULKINESS.’ —Charles Lamb, ‘Popular Fallacies’ no. XVI 072
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 01/09/2025August was a somewhat slow reading month. Standouts include James C. Scott, ‘The Art of Not Being Governed’; Marguerite Yourcenar, ‘The Dark Brain of Piranesi and Other Essays’; and finally finishing Tolkien’s diplomatic edition of ‘Ancrene Wisse’. www.eudaemonist.com/biblio/2025-...eudaemonist.com2025 040
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 29/08/2025‘How often have I wished for the attic of my boredom when the complications of life made me lose the very germ of all freedom!’ —Gaston Bachelard, ‘The Poetics of Space’, trans. Maria Jolas 020
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 28/08/2025Evening books. ‘Magic Mountain’ is not as clever as I recall it being. ‘A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind’ is the best text about cleanings toilets I’ve encountered save for ‘Perfect Days’. Lamb is cute. Bachelard is not setting things on fire. ‘The Candidate’ is unsettling. Zambreno is fine. 190
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 16/08/2025There is a Shame of Nobleness— Confronting Sudden Pelf— A finer Shame of Ecstasy— Convicted of Itself— 171
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 14/08/2025In other information retrieval news, punch cards are also very good bookmarks. 171
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 04/08/2025A good set of morning books at the moment: autonomy at the peripheries, Marxist Romantics, regional cults (with bonus spicy academic drama), wrenchfule wicchecreftes, and, you know, commodities. 030
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 01/08/2025One can get a fair amount of reading done by reducing one’s daily allotment of doomscrolling. www.eudaemonist.com/biblio/2025-...eudaemonist.com2025 070
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 26/07/2025Any time I find a line of poetry I like, I think: ‘That’s good; “mobled queen” is good.’ 040
M.F. Corwin @eudaemonist.bsky.social · 24/07/2025‘I have never made an acquaintance since, that lasted; or a friendship, that answered; with any that had not some tincture of the absurd in their characters. I venerate an honest obliquity of understanding.’ —Charles Lamb, ‘All Fools’ Day’ 061