Robert Zaretsky

1 week ago | aeon.co | Robert Zaretsky

On 22 January 1817, Henri Beyle’s heart was beating fast. Not because he had braved the robber-infested road from Bologna, but because he was now approaching the city of Florence. Glimpsing ‘like some darkling mass’ the monumental dome, conceived by Filippo Brunelleschi, sitting atop the Santa Maria del Fiore, this first sight of the Tuscan city dazzled him. ‘Behold the home of Dante, of Michelangelo, of Leonardo da Vinci,’ the 30-something Frenchman thought to himself.

1 week ago | qoshe.com | Robert Zaretsky

On 22 January 1817, Henri Beyle’s heart was beating fast. Not because he had braved the robber-infested road from Bologna, but because he was now approaching the city of Florence. Glimpsing ‘like some darkling mass’ the monumental dome, conceived by Filippo Brunelleschi, sitting atop the Santa Maria del Fiore, this first sight of the Tuscan city dazzled him. ‘Behold the home of Dante, of Michelangelo, of Leonardo da Vinci,’ the 30-something Frenchman thought to himself.

2 weeks ago | forward.com | Robert Zaretsky

A specter is haunting America, but it is not - with apologies to Karl Marx - the specter of communism. It is, instead, the specter of Hegelianism, the philosophy of the very philosopher Marx had turned on his head to create his own ideological specter. On closer inspection, however, the Hegelian specter is not what it seems.

2 weeks ago | forward.com | Robert Zaretsky

One tends to exhibit his bare and tattooed torso and sweeps back his hair with pomade. The other tends to keep his torso wrapped in white shirts and his hair short and tousled. One is clean-shaven with jutted jaw; the other is bearded with a jutted midriff. But these differences are only skin deep. Below the epidermis, there lie striking similarities. Both men have a fatal attraction to guns (usually pointed at others, when not pointed at their own feet) as they do for macho posturing.

3 weeks ago | forward.com | Robert Zaretsky

On the morning of Oct. 15, 1894, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a staff member of the French Army's High Command, was at home with his wife and two young children when he was unexpectedly and summarily requested to report to the Ministry of War. Upon arriving, the unsuspecting Dreyfus was accused of treason. The evidence? The notorious bordereau, a wrinkled leaf of paper revealing French military plans, found in a trash basket at the German embassy in Paris.