The Broken Center: A Definition of the Crisis of Values in Modern Literature

Reflecting on Suffering… …with the Poet Osip Mandelshtam

“…ent the imaginative faculties of men with respect to the ultimate mysteries of existence-when, in other words, the basic presuppositions of a culture have become just yawning question marks... " (2) In classicist cultures, language was held together and formed by a common set of beliefs, ideals, and assumptions that created a space for shared thought and discourse. We, however, live in a fractured and fragmented post-classicist world.…”