Beauty as we know it... [A tribute to The Magus by John Fowles]

I realised that I was living in a world where the beauty of the written word was lost. Images were redefining the world I lived in. Literature is being pushed to the periphery. I longed for the genius of creativity as evident in literary works. I had lost my bearings in a convoluted world of heightened anxieties and information overload.

Perhaps the splendour of letters will keep us sane in a world full of conflict and uncertainty. And we need more than just time for that, we need passion as well. David Denby* wrote about how he found himself in an immense system of representation and simulacra, yet, "I possesed information without knowledge, opinions without principles, instincts without beliefs".

Perhaps, like T.S. Elliot's poem "the Hollow Men", we are all the hollow men of the modern era - ourheadpieces stuffed with straw. We are best represented in his famous lines, "shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion.

*Author of Great Books: My adventure with Homer, Rousseau, Woolf, and Other Indestructible Writers of the Western World

Bliss.. I'll take you there