“I Write to Please my Self,” Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of New
castle, declared in her “Orations of Divers Sorts” (1662). A shy, solitary woman with a passion for poetry and scientific inquiry—what did she see when she peered inside “Natures Cabinet, the Braine”? She saw “Fans of Opinion,” “Gloves of Remembrance, Veiles of Forgetfulnesse,” “Pendants of Understanding” to adorn the ears of the wisest women. She saw “Black Patches of Ignorance, to stick on/The Face of Fooles.” Brightest of all were the “Ribbons of Fancies.” By “fancy,” she meant the wild, inventive faculty of the mind which allowed her to see forgetfulness as a veil or
the brain as a cabinet in the first place. From her cabinet tumbled some of
the strangest prose and verse of the seventeenth century, beginning, in 1653, with her “Poems, and Fancies”:
When Nature first this World she did create, She cal’d a Counsell how the same might make; Motion was first, who had a subtle wit, And then came Life, and Forme, and Mat
ter fit.
Do not be fooled by these sweet couplets. They were the prelude to an enormously ambitious philosophy of nature’s diffuse, uneasy vitality. Across almost three hundred poems, Cavendish speculated about how atoms joined
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YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
