More specifically concerning: Robert Burton
Crambe repetita (3)
20 December 2003, around 8.12.
Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, I.2.ii.1.
Crambe repetita (21)
2 January 2012, around 14.09.
Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ‘Democritus to the Reader’.
afflatus criticus
11 February 2012, around 9.26.
This is as far as we can get on the assumption that the scholar and the man of taste are connected by nothing more than a common interest in literature. If this assumption is true, the high percentage of sheer futility in all criticism should be honestly faced, for the percentage can only increase with […]
middling sort
28 September 2025, around 13.38.
I have been told that several people claim, that I have not understood Spinoza’s theory at all. I have heard this from several quarters, but nobody has been able to tell me what those who make this judgment base it on. Thus, I cannot answer them precisely, or examine if I ought to give in […]
Adversaria (31)
31 October 2025, around 4.16.
‘Ignorance will be the dupe of cunning, and passion the slave of sophistry and declamation.’ —Federalist Papers (No. 58) ‘There are no straight lines, neither in things nor in language. Syntax is the set of necessary detours that are created in each case to reveal the life in things’ —Gilles Deleuze (Essays Critical and Clinical, […]
dizzardry
2 November 2025, around 15.11.
Quis tam avidus librorum helluo, who can read them? As already, we shall have a vast chaos and confusion of books, we are oppressed with them, our eyes ache with reading, our fingers with turning. —Robert Burton (Anatomy of Melancholy, ‘Democritus Junior to the Reader’) Trying to do too much background reading, with only a […]