EMPIRE OF SADNESS
This essay has FOUR parts AND A POSTSCRIPT. Click here for the FIRST part, “UNDER THE INFLUENCE”. Click here for the SECOND part, “HISTORY AND PROPHECY”. CLICK HERE FOR THE THIRD PART, “SUSPICION”. CLICK HERE FOR THE POSTSCRIPT.
ThIS ESSAY IS THE SECOND IN the ENCOUNTERS WITH CHRISTIANITY series. CLICK HERE FOR THE FIRST ESSAY, “ASCETICISM AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL”.
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POSTSCRIPT
My copy of Art of the Byzantine Era has an inscription on the flyleaf, written in 1963 by my father David on the occasion of the award of a college book prize. He studied Chemical Engineering and became a kind and unworldly professor of science, but as a young man his great interest was archeology. He died suddenly many years ago. As I have grown older I think of him more and more. He used to be dishevelled, nothing like the exquisitely dressed figures in the miniature, but as I sometimes perceive him in the strange and silent space of memory, his face is sad like theirs. He died when he was sixty-three. If he had lived he would be eighty-five now. I would have shown him this essay if I could. I would have asked him whether he liked it.
28 May 2025
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