19:14
To prepare; to honour; to write what has never been written. Ready?
The home of odourless critique. A harbour for responsible reading.
19:14 is not a date, not a time, not a number. 19:14 represents an opportunity. Have you ever had a dream that didn’t belong to you, or pictured a portrait that would put any painter to shame? Tapping your feet to a song is just another form of rebellion - no, the music is never enough. 19:14 contains sharp-eyed critique of popular cultural media where the role of a writer is necessary, as well as rewritten fiction and hawkish adaptations, all free of charge. 19:14 is the emerging hub for writers who share the sensibilities present.
To You, in 11 Million Nights
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more appealing it is to see that which has not — how did Palaeolithic people find the energy and passion to paint? These are more than just doodles on the wall; they’re heirlooms of a lineage that can no longer tell its story.
As Camus said, “There are no deserts. There are no more islands. Yet there is a need for them. In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve men better, one has to hold them at distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength?”
In other words, you might just have to trap yourself in the cave in order to see the world.
DUNE and the Struggles of Adaptation
With Villeneuve’s youthful wonder-project finally given flight, critiques and crowds alike are drawn to a world both extremely alien and invariably familiar. But what one may revere about Frank Herbert’s magnum opus may also bring ire to the wandering eye; how does one adapt for the screen what critics, for half a century, called the unadaptable story?
Virginia Woolf on Publishing Young
Enigmatic and polemic as she might be, Woolf’s commanding use of vernacular English, and her deep meditation into womanhood leave so many inspired to put their hand-print on the cave wall. So why was “For God’s sake, publish nothing until you are thirty!’ one of her favourite pieces of advice?
Mary Shelley and the Plight of the Promethean
The role of artist as creator is no better seen than in the tale of Prometheus, who has been invoked by artists the world over - including Mary and Percy Shelley. But what brought myth to a titular role in the world’s first science fiction novel, where Greeks nor Gods did appear? The inexorable Mary Shelley, and her doomed man who swore against providence, might shed some light on the matter of what it means to be Promethean - and perhaps a bit of their divine fire might find its way to us, too.
Prométhée by Jean Delville in the Classical Idealist style.
“She lives the poetry she cannot write.”
— Oscar Wilde
THE QUIET LORD
Power, violence, family. A different world inhabits all of us. It is time you found your voice.
A short story.
Oscar Wilde and the Hierarchy of Art
Oscar Wilde is a man still so keenly reflected and admired; so much so, in fact, the man’s face is more recognisable than his words. For a gift, it would be believed that the uncompromising aesthete saw “[a]ll art is at once surface and symbol ,” and that if a work divided opinion, caused a great stir in different directions, it was something exemplary: Wilde’s work, in his own terms, is a poor tool of judgement on the man. It is about time that we focus on his greatest gift: “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”
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