In 1968, when an interviewer asked Jorge Luis Borges what he thought of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, the great explorer of the literary labyrinth responded, "Who is he?" Portugal, alas, is one of the most overlooked outposts of Europe. The North's snobbery towards the South is one of the caus

Clever, Dreamy, Eclectic, Enigmatic, Modernist poetry, Sensual, Subtle

The American Heritage Dictionary defines the word "dandy" as "a man who affects extreme elegance in clothes and manners." Take a gander at the illustration next to the definition, and you could easily see a photograph of entertainment legend Noel Coward. While it's hard to find one word to capture th

Bright, Charming, Clever, Ironic, Musical comedy, Political, Witty

Plato taught that the body is the mere avatar of the soul, its prison, or even its tomb. His student Aristotle, on the other hand, turned the order of things around. He conceived the soul as the emergent truth of the body, the body's most complete and self-fulfilling actualization. Obviously, Ari

Classical, Classical rhetoric, Clever, Contemplative, Eclectic, Masculine, Pioneering

Plato was a divided soul. Torn between reason and passion, he gave birth to a philosophy marked by disconcerting duality. On the one hand, Plato was an artist and a poet: he encased his concepts in mystifying myths and slippery metaphors, worked out arguments in the form of dialogues rather than dry

Classical rhetoric, Clever, Contemplative, Homoerotic, Ironic, Mythic, Pioneering, Spiritual