Las Meninas, by Diego Velázquez, 1656. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain.

Las Meninas (detail), by Diego Velázquez, 1656. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain.

Arts & Letters

Volume III, Number 2 | spring 2010

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Preamble

Lady in a Veil

By Lewis H. Lapham

Despite being told that art is somehow sacred, it’s better to take a naive delight in the thing itself.

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The Sacred Word

By Sabiha Al Khemir

By beautifying the word of God, the medium and the message became interconnected.

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Map

Telling Tales

The evolutions of four stories.

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1843 | London

Outline and Shadow

“Do you know anything about that wonderful invention of the day, called the daguerreotype?”More

c. 1845 | France

Gustave Flaubert Conducts a Workshop

Playwriting for dummies.More

1939 | New York City

David Selznick Gives a Damn

“Gone with the Wind” must not be censored.More

Charts & Graphs

Sing to Me, O Muse

The inspirations for various works.

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American author and journalist Jamie James.

Austro-German poet Rainer Maria Rilke.

English poet and satirist Alexander Pope.

Depiction of Chinese philosopher Mozi.

photograph of David Foster Wallace speaking at a podium

If a king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.

—Mencius, c. 330 BC

Photograph of German literary critic Walter Benjamin.

Missing contributor image silhouette

Walter Benjamin & Andy Warhol

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Lapham’sDaily

Roundtable

Lapham’s Quarterly Is on Hiatus

By Lapham’s Quarterly

But the American Agora Foundation is already planning for the future. More

The Colosseum, attributed to Robert Eaton, c. 1855.

DÉjÀ Vu

Monumental Mistakes

2023:

Fitness instructor carves his girlfriend’s name into the Colosseum.

c. 1850:

Thompson of Sunderland makes his mark on Pompey’s pillar.

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Terracotta funerary plaque, Greek, Attic, c. 520 BC.

The World in Time

Robert D. Kaplan

Lewis H. Lapham speaks with the author of The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power. More

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