Showing results by narrator "Denis Daly" in All Categories

Unlike their biblical precursors, Kahlil Gibran's parables espouse the importance of personal spiritual insight rather than moral rectitude. In Gibran's view, sin and virtue, mercy and justice, and sanity and madness are all sides of the one coin - one cannot exist without its opposite.

This universalist spiritual treatise is the best known work by the Lebanese-born poet and artist Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931). The central figure of the narrative is a fictional prophet, Al Mustafa, who is about to set off on a journey back to his homeland. His departure is delayed when he encounters a group of people who urgently seek his advice on a wide range of topics ranging from the mundane to the highest flights of spiritual introspection.

This collection of verse was first published in 1920. It contains 12 poems published in an earlier collection, Prufrock and Other Observations, in 1917, together with 12 later poems, four of which are in French. Both collections were dedicated to Jean Verdenal (1889-1915).

First published in 1857, The Flowers of Evil (Les Fleurs du Mal) is a poetry collection by Charles Baudelaire. In 1909, Cyril Scott published a translation of 54 of the poems, which is the subject of this recording.

This play forms part of a tetralogy which focuses on one of Wedekind's obsessive themes: the destructive interplay between primal sexual urges and social convention. Each play revolves around a powerful young female character, who has the power to control and captivate men, but who in turn is destroyed by the exercise of that power. In this play, the dominant female is Fräulein Elfriede von Malchus, an idealistic crusader who visits a brothel operated by the cynical impresario Casti-Piani in order to rescue a young woman who has fallen into his clutches.

This grimly picturesque novel by Arthur Morrison was first published in 1897. The central character is Dicky Perrott, an urchin living in the Jago, an extremely squalid district of London's East End. The Jago is based on the Old Nichol slum, which lay at the back of Shoreditch High Street, and which has since been demolished. The novel describes Dicky's futile attempts to escape from the soul-destroying environment of the Jago, with the support of the Reverend Henry Sturt, who was based on the historical East End crusader, Arthur Osborne Jay, to whom the book is dedicated.

The best and most engaging portraits of the Romans as living people are to be found in the works like those of the four poets featured in this recording. In Howard Felperin’s lively translations, these pieces become verbal postcards of the era, revealing in exquisite detail the passion and the grief, the joy and the pain experienced by the people of Rome as they deal with the inevitable fascination of love as it permeates their daily lives.

The Raven Edition of the works of Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) presents his complete literary output in five volumes. In addition to 11 prose pieces, volume five contains all of Poe’s verse and also his only play, the unfinished drama, "Politian". Poe’s poetic output consists of 54 pieces, most of them short, but it also includes four longer pieces, The Bells, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and perhaps Poe’s most iconic poem, The Raven.

The Works of Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849), The Raven Edition, presents his complete literary output in five volumes. Although best known for his works of macabre fiction, Poe also had a deep interest in scientific discovery and speculative philosophy. This volume contains stories about wild and wonderful experiments and other objects of public curiosity, and essays about language and thought.

Making his way to a tryst with his "dark lady" near the royal palace the young playwright William Shakespeare encounters a mysterious woman in a cloak. Mistaking her for his lady friend, he accosts her in a familiar fashion, only to discover, to his dismay, that she is in fact the queen. He overcomes his initial discomfort, and takes advantage of the situation to make a petition for royal support to establish a national theatre.

A Book for Kids, first published in 1921, may be regarded as the Australian equivalent of Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. The collection contains 55 short poems on a wide variety of subjects, and two stories, "The Little Red House" and "The Boy Who Rode into the Sunset".

In De Profundis, Oscar Wilde, in a lengthy letter to his former lover, reflects on suffering, forgiveness, and redemption. As a confessional text, it ranks with the Confessions of Saint Augustine as an examination of the nature of penitence, its origin and transformative effect. T. W. H. Crosland (1865-1924), a social commentator, was extremely moralistic. Among his targets was Oscar Wilde, whose contrition, as expressed in De Profundis, he believed to be an elaborate and convenient sham.

Among New Thought authors, Henry Thomas Hamblin particularly emphasized in his writings the power and necessity of dynamic and judicious thought. Since his death in 1958, his work has been continued by The Hamblin Trust, whose mission is described as "enriching people's lives through Right Thinking".

Háfiz (1315-1390) was a lyric poet, a major figure in classical Persian literature. The compendious anthology of his poetry simply titled the Divan contains several hundred odes, from which this small selection was made by the translator. In the introduction Bicknell writes: ...we must look upon Háfiz as one of the few poets in the world who utters an unbroken strain of joy and contentment. His poverty was to him a constant fountain of satisfaction, and he frankly took the natural joys of life as they came....

Between 1895 and 1897 Oscar Wilde served a prison sentence for offences "of gross indecency". Most of this time was spent at Reading Gaol, where Wilde encountered another prisoner, Harles Thomas Wooldridge, sentenced to death for the murder of his wife. Wooldrige was hanged at the gaol on 7th July, 1896. Wilde wrote the poem in France in 1897 after his release from prison. The poem is a long reflection on the inequity and ineffectiveness of statutory punishment and the redeeming power of the Christian message of forgiveness.

It is said that there is no-one more zealous in a cause than an adult convert. A notable example of this was Joseph McCabe, whose conversion was not to a religion, but from religious faith to secularism. Ordained as a Franciscan priest in 1890, and later recognized by the Catholic Church as an able scholar and teacher, by 1897 McCabe had completely lost his faith and had left the priesthood. He became a very active secularist, delivering thousands of public lectures and publishing over two hundred books on a wide range of religious, historical and scientific topics.

This anthology, first published in 1919, is very much a record of its time. Many of the poems deal with the cataclysmic trauma of World War One and the emergence of a new world order after the fading of the Edwardian era. Among the authors of the 151 poems can be found the names of Rupert Brooke and Ivor Gurney, best known as war poets, as well as James Joyce and the mystic philosopher Evelyn Underhill.

Stephen Leacock was a prolific and brilliant writer, whose tongue-in-cheek writings have been amusing Canadian fans for decades. He first published Winsome Winnie in 1920 as part of a compendium of short stories entitled Winsome Winnie and Other New Nonsense Novels. It relates the trials and tribulations of the recently orphaned and penniless Winnifred Clair.

This treatise on politics was the fruit of Machiavelli's many years of experience as a diplomat and historian and circulated in 1513 but not published until 1532. It was dedicated to Lorenzo de Medici, a member of the ruling dynasty of Florence. In Machiavelli's view the ideal ruler is an effective executive rather than a moral paragon. If one desires power, one must take all the appropriate steps to acquire and maintain it.

John Pollen (1855-1923) was an official in the Indian Civil Service. A keen linguist, he learned Russian, Esperanto, and Persian and in 1915 published an English translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. His collection contains 158 quatrains and includes a set of seven prefatory quatrains by Andrew Lang and a foreword by the Aga Khan.