Natasha F.

"The Minotaur" by Remedios Varo presents a surreal creature adorned with ethereal garments, standing on a checkered floor, embodying Varo's unique blend of fantasy and scientific intrigue. The figure's alien-like form reflects the artist's fascination with transformation and mysticism, common themes in her imaginative and dreamlike works.

The Minotaur
https://botfrens.com/collections/69/contents/19644

A hand holding a hardcopy of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece in front of a bookcase

Shelving one of the books that started it all in my new office. Officially appointed as an ancient Greek lecturer at the NWU.

I'm grateful to have had the postdoc experience, but what a privilege and a blessing to have something more permanent!

Cate Blanchett to star in new production 'Electra / Persona' | London Theatre This new play is based on Sophocles’ story of *Electra* from Greek mythology and Ingmar Bergman’s celebrated 1966 film *Persona*. Read more on LondonTheatre.co.uk.

Cate Blanchett to star in new production 'Electra / Persona' | London Theatre
www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatre-news...

ψυχή, ἡ: soul, life
ψυχοανακάλυπτος: soul-baring, revealing
ψυχοκλέπτης: soul-thief
ψυχοκτόνος:soul-killing
ψυχοπλανής: soul-wandering
ψυχοπότης: soul drinker (drinking of life, i.e. blood)

ψῦχος, τό: cold
ψυχρία: cold
ψυχοκρασία: growing cold
ψυχολογία: frigid talking
ψυχρόσαρκος: with cold flesh

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer

Aristotle with a Bust of Homer https://www.wikiart.org/en/rembrandt/aristotle-with-a-bust-of-homer-1653-0

La Medusa

Lorenzo Lorenzetti, Anzabarago alabaster, 2025

www.lorenzolorenzetti.com

#art #sculpture

Not nearly as bad as the time I used Odysseus instead of Oedipus not once, but TWICE in a submitted paper!

Chuckled at something that must be a typo. Instead of Orestes politely telling Athena about his family origins, he "politically" tells her.

Once upon a time, when women were birds, there was the simple
understanding that to sing at dawn and to sing at dusk was to heal the world through joy.

Terry Tempest Williams

“When it comes to the question of method … You know the Hegel saying—the owl of Minerva flies at dusk. You can’t have ideas about things ahead of time.” —Fredric Jameson

Your day will be like...

a drooping poppy, its head heavy with its own weight and from the spring rainfall.

Iliad 8.306-8

Volume nr 338! Man I would love to have a copy of the Editio Maior of the Greek Text of Aristotle's Poetics.

Volume nr 338! Man I would love to have a copy of the Editio Maior of the Greek Text of Aristotle's Poetics.

A hardcover copy of Smyth's Greek Grammar

Living in SA means that buying and importing classics-related books and resources is often prohibitively expensive. Every now and again I'm lucky enough to find a gem like this in a second-hand bookshop!

Why Authors Can’t Let Go of Greek Myths The fascination with these stories reflects an existential interest in what in life is inevitable, and what we can control.

Second piece of 2026! For @theatlantic.com, I wrote about Kay Cicellis’s brilliant, brutal short story trilogy, The Way to Colonos, which consists of three modern retellings of Sophoclean tragedies. This one is for all the Greek mythology girlies. ❤️

Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...

The 5 stages of the ‘enshittification’ of academic publishing Academic publishing now shows the same decline that has hit social media and online marketplaces.

theconversation.com/the-5-stages...

Great 'Are you smarter than a fifth grader' question.

This becomes even trickier when you're writing across the centuries, from antiquity to the 21st century.

"My week off from my deadlines helped me see how important my work is to my life as an organizing principle.

A reason to live, not to merely exist, but to experience."

Haven't thought about this before but I'm very curious about the answer. Bookmarked to return to it!

Neotestamentica Vol.59, No. 3 (2025) muse.jhu.edu/issue/56133 @projectmuse.bsky.social Early Christian Studies

Fletcher Fund, 1955

The Trojan Women Setting Fire to Their Fleet https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/435908

Mundus senescit.

New planner for a new year. I've reached the point where the holiday has been too long - the time is ripe to jump into writing and research again!

Kierkegaard:

I usually only track the books I read for fun, which tends to be novels/collections of short stories. Having read this blog post, I'm strongly considering tracking my academic reading this year too!

The New Way of Seeing: In Anya Berger's Archives by Emily Foister December 18, 2025 – "In an untitled fragment from the summer of 1974, after her separation from John, she begins: 'To live alone is, first and foremost, not to be seen. No interested eye observes you....

More gems from the family archive of John and Anya Berger, as discovered and compiled by their daughter Katya. Here, on her uncredited contribution to the concept of ways of seeing.

www.theparisreview.org/blog/2025/12...

How a South African studio turned an ancient story into a modern, animated, record-breaking triumph

From South Africa to the world. Local filmmakers Phil Cunningham and Brent Dawes talk about bringing the Old Testament tale of David to the screen as an animated feature film.

I tend to go with something that has been on my list for a while, and something that is long and meaty enough for a slow read, without being so engrossing that it will keep me up at till the early hours of the morning. I will often test read pages before I decide on which novel to choose!

Underlined sentences from the last page of Swann's Way: helped me to understand how paradoxical it is to seek in reality for the pictures that are stored in one's memory, which must inevitably lose the charm that comes to them from memory itself and from their not being apprehended by the senses. The reality that I had known no longer existed. The places that we have known belong now only to the little world of space on which we map them for our own convenience. None of them was ever more than a thin slice, held between the contiguous impressions that compose our life at that time; remembrance of a particular form is but regret for a particular moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fugitive, alas, as the years.

In defiance of the reading speed and ever-lengthening reading lists required by academia, I pick out a slow read for each year.

This year it was Swann's Way, the first novel of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.

How fitting are the last couple of sentences for this time of the year!