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Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature)

An Offering for the Winter Solstice with Abby Walthausen

Entitled Opinions (about Life and Literature)

Robert Harrison

Society & Culture, Philosophy

4.8589 Ratings

🗓️ 24 December 2025

⏱️ 38 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode we re-broadcast a show that aired on Abby Walthausen’s podcast “A Lovely Wallpaper” in which she engages Robert Harrison on the meaning of the winter solstice and the generative power of darkness.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is KZSU, Stanford.

0:03.6

You're listening to Entitled Opinions on Life and Literature with Robert Harrison.

0:08.2

I'm Alexandra Moore, the show's producer, and today we're merrily rebroadcasting an episode of

0:13.5

Abby Walthausen's Mirandis Poetry Podcast, The Lovely Wallpaper, where Robert was invited to speak

0:19.6

about the winter solstice. Please be sure to check out a lovely wallpaper, where Robert was invited to speak about the winter solstice.

0:21.8

Please be sure to check out a lovely wallpaper on Apple Podcasts, which offers guided

0:26.2

memorizations of a new poem each program. In our version, you'll hear Robert recite

0:31.5

a nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day over a guitar piece he composed and recorded as an accompaniment for the poem.

0:38.9

So without further ado, we'll turn things over to Abby.

0:45.4

Welcome to A Lovely Wallpaper, a podcast exploring an underappreciated way of appreciating poetry

0:52.7

by committing it to memory.

0:56.5

To know a poem by heart means having a worry stone, a provocation, a comfort, a quick exit,

1:04.5

always close at hand. Lose yourself in a poem, gain a world with its mastery.

1:11.9

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

1:17.6

So many things she filled with the intent to be lost that a loss is no disaster.

1:25.6

In this episode, we will work with the helpful voice of Robert Harrison, who is a professor

1:30.9

of Italian and French literature at Stanford University, author of such books as

1:36.9

Juvenessence, a cultural history of our age, and Gardens, an essay on the Human Cond condition, to name just a couple,

1:47.7

and host of the long-running KZSU radio program,

1:52.2

Entitled Opinions About Life and Literature.

1:56.8

He will be presenting a nocturnal upon St. Lucy's Day by John Dunn.

2:03.1

If you haven't listened to Entitled Opinions yet, you must.

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