I’m Robert-Louis Abrahamson, here to thank you for all your support over the past few years of Evening under Lamplight Podcasts. We have had over 14,000 attendances, which is a pretty good number. Today I want to let you know that the Evening under Lamplight Podcasts are migrating to Substack, an impressive platform that I’ve been following for many years, and now I’m joining it.
To continue to receive our podcasts, or to access older ones, you will need to sign in to the Substack URL https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/1205469.rss. Just click the new URL, or paste it into the browser, and you can continue.
I have plans for podcasts on other writers, with the aim, as always, of helping to bring to life older literature. I hope you will come along and share these fine writers with me.
Here is a talk I gave at a Stevenson conference in Bordeaux, where I spoke about the Fables. I have recently published a collection of these fables, with my commentaries, available at http://thelamplightpress.com/aesop.
The story of Pygmalion is a story about artistic creation, and about true love, which in mythic terms means true devotion to the goddess Venus.
The terrible story of Myrrha, her sinful passion and her pitiable attempts to resist temptation.
A cruel punishment inflicted on an innocent (?) young man, with lots of levels to ponder.
A gruesome tale of a greedy man, cursed with unquenchable hunger.
One story enveloped in another, Echo in Narcissus's story. We take Narcissus far beyond the common use of his name to mean merely self-absorbed. Narcissus becomes an image of something far more wonderful.
The story of a chase, and the young woman's escape - through a death-experience into maturity? Anything's possible in these stories.
The terrible story of Callisto, vulnerable, abused by three deities, elevated to immortality - a troubling story in many ways, but that's all the more reason to attend to it.
Here's the cosmic story of Phaethon, the boy who had to prove his lineage, but went too far, dared too much, creating a global crisis.
The first great love story, with tender moments and an ending that is - well, let's not label it. It's followed by a parallel story, more brutal and painful, which pivots us into the next major story.
Jupiter wipes out all the people in this evil world - except two wonderful, loving people, who then perform the promised miracle.
We begin a journey through Ovid's great compilation of myths, with his version of the Creation story, and then the first of many evil characters who will be appearing, Lycaon, King of Arcadia - but not for long.
We conclude our discussion of Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience", with Thoreau's reflections on his imprisonment and our own responses to the essay. And we end with some touching moments from Thoreau's last days.
How did Thoreau disconnect himself from a government that promoted unjust laws? He broke the law and went to prison - but not for very long. We hear his accounts of this experience, both inside the prison and afterwards, back in the community.
"Unjust laws exist," Thoreau says. How do we define an unjust law, and then what do we do about it?
We begin a discussion of Henry David Thoreau's seminal essay "Civil Disobedience" with an introduction to the man and the historical context he was living and writing in.
After an interval, we finish Series 3 with the twenty-second and final fable from the collection of Robert Louis Stevenson. "The Clockmaker" is the odd story of a civilisation of microbic creatures that parallels ours in many ways, and gives us a new, and comic perspective on our human limitations.
The third and concluding part of the talk to the Beshara Institute on Diversity in Unity in Dante's Divine Comedy.
We continue with examples of Diversity in Unity in the Inferno and the Purgatorio.