Mahler and Freud Meet in Leiden – Of the Pilgrimage of Life

The Lost Arias of Henk van Strijk, Leiden, Netherlands

The subject of Mahler and Freud Meet in Leiden, a book of poetry, is the contract life imposes on a human being as the fundamental condition of its existence. It is explored as the unstated, never negotiated covenant between existence and life; that is, the conditional situation that existence provides to those that live within it, and […]

The Displaced Anxiety of Discontent – Dmitri Shostakovich – String Quartet 1

The Moscow Show Trial of the Twenty-One occurred in March, 1938. It was one of the culminating events of Stalin’s Great Purge of 1936 through 1938. All of the defendants were prominent, and were accused as Trotskyites guilty of murder, assassination, and treason. Particularly prominent amongst them was Nikolai Bukharin, former ally of Lenin and Stalin […]