Ernest Dowson — a remark

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“This is a profound saying. Theism, Pantheism, Christianity, Positivism — they lie so close together that it is like splitting hairs to consider them apart. The vital issue is between optimism and pessimism.”

Showing the young Dowson framing belief chiefly through the opposition between hopeful and pessimistic views of existence · Marginalia on Olive Schreiner's The Story of an African Farm, c. 1889

About Ernest Dowson

Ernest Dowson

2 August 1867–23 February 1900

In the fading light of Victorian England, when the certainties of empire began to crack and a fin-de-siècle weariness settled over the literary world, Ernest Christopher Dowson emerged as one of the most hauntingly beautiful voices of his generation. His brief, tragic life—spanning a mere thirty-two years from 1867 to…

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