The Verve was a modern British pop band with a tinge of psychedelia and more than a bit of melancholy. They were, as their biggest commercial hit so aptly puts it, a "bittersweet symphony." Their music does emit a certain energetic quality supported by strong, echoing guitars. But it's wrapped in a r

Brit-pop, Depressive, Pathos, Pop, Tragic

Graham Swift seems to have little in common with his literary contemporaries. While most writers these days spatter their novels with pop culture references and play with distortions of time and narrative, Swift sets his books in a nineteenth-century context and tells good old-fashioned stories. He

Contemplative, Death, Dramatic, Paranoid, Tragic

Faced with an unforgiving lump of marble, the 80-year-old Michelangelo sent more splinters soaring (and at three times the speed) than three robust stone cutters could produce. Mad with loneliness (his lover, Vittoria Colonna, closest friend, Luigi del Riccio, and lifetime servant, Urbino, were all d

Anxiety, Dramatic, Ecstatic, Intense, Renaissance art, Tragic, Visceral

In Sophocles' world, the gods have receded. They've already determined (more or less) the fate of human beings and are content to watch from a comfortable distance. Of course, it's unclear exactly what their motives are; it all seems basically arbitrary and cruel. Indeed, the morality of the gods is

Classical, Classical greek, Excessive, Pathos, Sublime, Tense, Tragic, Violent