Evening under Lamplight Podcast

I’m Robert-Louis Abrahamson, here to thank you for all your support over the past few years of Evening under Lamplight Podcasts. We have had over 14,000 attendances, which is a pretty good number. Today I want to let you know that the Evening under Lamplight Podcasts are migrating to Substack, an impressive platform that I’ve been following for many years, and now I’m joining it. To continue to receive our podcasts, or to access older ones, you will need to sign in to the Substack URL https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/1205469.rss. Just click the new URL, or paste it into the browser, and you can continue. I have plans for podcasts on other writers, with the aim, as always, of helping to bring to life older literature. I hope you will come along and share these fine writers with me.

Here is a talk I gave at a Stevenson conference in Bordeaux, where I spoke about the Fables. I have recently published a collection of these fables, with my commentaries, available at http://thelamplightpress.com/aesop. 

The story of Pygmalion is a story about artistic creation, and about true love, which in mythic terms means true devotion to the goddess Venus.

The terrible story of Myrrha, her sinful passion and her pitiable attempts to resist temptation.

A cruel punishment inflicted on an innocent (?) young man, with lots of levels to ponder.

A gruesome tale of a greedy man, cursed with unquenchable hunger. 

One story enveloped in another, Echo in Narcissus's story. We take Narcissus far beyond the common use of his name to mean merely self-absorbed. Narcissus becomes an image of something far more wonderful.

The story of a chase, and the young woman's escape - through a death-experience into maturity? Anything's possible in these stories.

The terrible story of Callisto, vulnerable, abused by three deities, elevated to immortality - a troubling story in many ways, but that's all the more reason to attend to it.

Here's the cosmic story of Phaethon, the boy who had to prove his lineage, but went too far, dared too much, creating a global crisis.