The Dark Blue
Gillian Rose in her final and posthumously published book Paradiso writes :
“To be a philosopher you need only three things. First, infinite intellectual eros: endless curiosity about everything. Second, the ability to pay attention: to be rapt by what is in front of you without seizing it yourself, the care of concentration – in the way you might look closely, without touching, at the green lacewing fly, overwintering silents on the kitchen wall Third, acceptance of pathlessness, only the clarification of their statement. Eros, attention, acceptance.”
Eros, attention, and acceptance are the core tenants of The Dark Blue.
The Dark Blue takes its name from short lived Pre-Raphaelite journal that printed monthly between 1871 to 1873. The original The Dark Blue’s pages were ‘chimerical’, publishing writing by Swinburne, drawings by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and serialised the lesbian vampire novel Carmilla by Cheridan La Fanu. Our new iteration of The Dark Blue will not carry the same eccentric style as its namesake – but we hope to still embody its chimerical nature, in either of its definitions: of a mythical animal formed from parts of various animals or hoped for but illusory.
The name The Dark Blue and the original journal was stumbled upon in the opening pages of William H Gass’s On Being Blue:
“and reprinted pieces that has previously vanished in the pages of The Dark Blue, a vague Pre-Raphaelite monthly with a title as frustratingly incomplete as a broken musical phrase.”
And so, the phrase The Dark Blue echoed quietly for a year.
There are few sites for criticism that is not in some way topical. The Dark Blue seeks to fill this lack, to be a publication where the critic may be anachronistic – late or early. It is one’s love of the world that compels your criticality. This distinction is important for us – a personal criticality should be born of an intense love of the world not a disavowal of it. Criticality a form of mercy, a vulnerability and proximity to the world.
From, The Dark Blue