Every Tradition Claims This Ground

Every Tradition Claims This Ground

Jerusalem, December 1496I have now stood at the sites that three major religions claim as the most sacred ground on earth. The Temple Mount. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Al-Aqsa Mosque. In a radius of perhaps five hundred meters, the most contested geography...
Hamlet Understood Something the Century Was Not Ready For

Hamlet Understood Something the Century Was Not Ready For

London, February 1602The Globe Theatre. Shakespeare’s new play has been running since last year and the company performed it again today for what must be the hundredth time if the queues are any indication. I have seen it three times. I keep returning because...
A Mind Still Building What It Came to Build

A Mind Still Building What It Came to Build

Weimar, autumn 1799I was introduced to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe at a gathering at the Duchess Anna Amalia’s court. He is fifty years old and the most celebrated writer in the German language and the weight of that does not appear to have flattened him the way...
He Wrote Down Our Conversation and Got It Wrong

He Wrote Down Our Conversation and Got It Wrong

Venice, spring 1785Giacomo Casanova is in his sixties now and has been recounting his life in what he calls his memoirs with a commitment to theatrical self-presentation that I find both admirable and exhausting. He has included a version of a conversation we had last...
The Last Morning I Saw Him

The Last Morning I Saw Him

Milan, September 1516I traveled with Leonardo as far as Milan before turning back. He is going to France at the invitation of the French King, to a chateau at Amboise where he will be given a title and a stipend and comfortable rooms and a studio, and he will live out...