Janet Cameron

  Here is a portrait of Georg Hegel by Jakob Schlesinger in 1831. Image by FreeArt1. This was a man with a lot of fine ideas - but these didn't extend to respect for the female gender... Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) developed and brought together new and exciting ideas that flowed through the Romantic period. In Sophie’s World , Jostein Gaardner describes this outstanding, systematic thinker as a “legitimate child of Romanticism.”  However, Georg Hegel was not everybody’s favourite person – far from it.  Read more...

Mercury Crowning Philosophy, Mother of the Arts.  Mmmm... It's a great feeling to lose yourself in beauty.  Philosophers have pondered this incredible Aha feeling since they first started pondering in their ancient armchairs.  http://decodedpast.com/immanuel-kant-aesthetic-experience-love-beauty-distanced-self/

 August 2012, Author Midnightblueowl, Wikipedia Commons   In honour of Nelson Mandela: INVICTUS, written by William Ernest Henley who lived from 1849 to 1903. Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell church of circumstance I have not winced n or cried aloud Under the bludgeoning of chance My head is bloody but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate. How charged with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.  

Photo Copyright Janet Cameron This is one of my earliest poems. It's entirely autobiographical, I lived it, utterly and completely. It's not in the least sophisticated by today's standards but... well, I'm not going to apologise for it. It never won an award but the Open University chose it for their anthology.  Adrian was, and is, still, a real person. He is now a very crusty old guy who writes angry letters to politicians and companies who make, what he regards as, excessive profits.  All the letters end, "Yours in disgust."  But, heavens, he was wonderful then. ORGY WITH DAMSONS AND WASPS   Adrian, up the damson tree, doodling damsons down on me. One in the mouth and one in the sack and I’m a damson-o-maniac. The sack is full.   Oh, pity, poor tum… The bellyache season has just begun. ‘You know what’ll happen.   Shouldn’t we stop it?’ ‘I know, I know.   But won’t it be worth it?' Adrian ambles the bridle way, a ...

Sculpture by Philip Jackson, Image Copyright Janet Cameron 'It's not my fault I don't have time to write,' said a fellow-writer. 'I'm too available. My sister phoned at 8.30 this morning to say she was in trouble. Her entire life is the pits. I wished she'd left it till this evening, as I'd promised myself an uninterrupted morning at my computer. But I listen. What else can I do?' Does this sound familiar? It's the downside of being a freelance writer. You may feel bad about being unavailable, but that person probably has a sister, husband or friend who is in a 'proper job' and they wouldn't dream of turning up at their places of work with their problems. You, however, are flexible, and in most people's minds, flexible means not urgent - maybe not even very important. You may be on a high, fully aware that if you don’t commit your creativity to a permanent medium this minute your synaptic connections will go AWOL. O...

Orpheus, the greatest poet of classical antiquity. Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot   (1796–1875)  Wikimedia Commons Would you like to know what Tolstoy said about Shakespeare? It was this:  "The undisputed fame enjoyed by Shakespeare as a writer. .. is, like every other lie, a great evil. "  A bit strong don't you think?  And how about this tirade by George Bernard Shaw about Shakespeare:  "With the single exception of Homer, there is no eminent writer, not even Sir Walter Scott, whom I can despise entirely as I despise Shakespeare when I measure my mind against his. The intensity of my impatience with him occasionally reaches such a pitch that it would positively be a relief to me to dig him up and throw stones at him, knowing as I do how incapable he and his worshippers are of understanding any less obvious form of dignity." And the sublime Keats really got it in the neck. Unbelievable! Lord Byron said (and I hate him for it, the pompous, ...