#horace walpole

[moonandserpent]

Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham, 2024. © Moon and Serpent

[sharkchunks]

Waves at the Shore of Otranto, 2025 by Ari Bach

[sinfonia-relativa]

Horace Walpole

[philosophors]

“The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel.”

— Horace Walpole

[lillyli-74]

The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those who feel.

~Horace Walpole

[livesunique]

Strawberry Hill House,

London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, Twickenham, United Kingdom

[noconcessions]

[bookinfested]

16 Sept. 24 - Currently Reading

[guy60660]

Horace Walpole | Strawberry Hill House | Financial Times

[white-fang-22]

"Este mundo es una comedia para quienes piensan, y una tragedia para quienes sienten"

-----Horace Walpole

[queerasfact]

Happy birthday Horace Walpole!

Horace was born on 24 September 1717. Here he is, the probably gay, asexual inventor of gothic fiction, enjoying a relaxed afternoon in the library with his dog. To share some key facts about Horace on this important day:

He authored the seminal gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, and also coined the incredibly gothic word 'gloomth'

He once wrote to a possible lover “My satisfaction arises from your passion not from my own…” and was described by friends as “untost by [sexual] passions”.

He wrote poetry about a fairy named Patapan, after his dog.

Learn more

[moonandserpent]

Strawberry Hill House, Twickenham, 2024. © Moon and Serpent

[beluosus]

[gothicseverance]

Gothic fiction-making has always been divided within itself, just as Walpole says in his 1765 Preface by announcing the “Gothic Story” as a “blend of the two kinds of romance, the ancient and the modern,” and this forcing-together of conflicting forms was then and remains symptomatic of deeply traumatic social, ideological and broadly psychological conflicts among different ways of seeing the world and the self.

—History, Trauma and the Gothic

[my-deer-friend]

Every time I read “…and was friends with Horace Walpole” in someone’s biography, I think to myself – ahhh, another one who knew that fruity little fella.

[thebardostate]

The Philosophy of Coincidence

When coincidences happen to others, we tend to shrug them off; but when they happen to us, that's a different story. Several forms of coincidence have been identified.

Serendipity (Horace Walpole) is a form of coincidence that is based on an active search for something (out of need or curiosity), a chance occurrence, an informed observation, and a valued outcome. So serendipity isn't finding something without looking for it: you were searching for something, during which you found something else by happy accident. Serendipity is not passive, it occurs while taking action.  

Seriality (Paul Kammerer) is a recurring pattern of similar or identical events or things in space or time, such as the number 6 in the picture below. It was the basis for the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Cause and Effect."

Synchronicity (C.G. Jung) is a meaningful coincidence in that it furthers self-realization, personal and spiritual growth, and/or a deeper experience of human connectedness. Statistics doesn't know what to do with personal meaning, so it just ignores it; but a freakishly improbable coincidence paired with a psychologically important event is what makes a synchronicity. Its psychic import can't be understood solely as a matter of statistics without losing information due to reductionism. When a synchronicity strikes, the feeling is that the cosmos is sending you an unmistakable message with the psychic force of a thunderbolt.

Simulpathity (Bernard Beitman) occurs when one person spontaneously and simultaneously experiences the distress of another without conscious awareness of their distress and usually from some distance away. The phenomena is most pronounced between twins, but it is also reported between other closely bonded persons. A review of 160 cases found about 33% involved a parent or child, 28% friends and acquaintances, 14% husband and wife, and 15% siblings. As an example of the phenomena, the inventor of the EEG, Hans Berger, was motivated to study electrical brain waves in part because of a simulpathity experience he shared with his sister. Berger was almost run over by a horse pulling a cannon, and when he got home, he received a concerned telegram from his father sent at the request of his sister (who lived miles away), inquiring about Berger's health. His family had never previously sent him a telegram. "It was a case of spontaneous telepathy in which at a time of mortal danger, and as I contemplated certain death, I transmitted my thoughts, while my sister, who was particularly close to me, acted as the receiver" (J. Berger, 1940, p. 6).

Coincidences like these are another line of empirical evidence that materialism cannot easily account for. I once experienced a synchronicity event in which I asked the cosmos to send me a sign to confirm whether a major epiphany that I had just experienced was real. I then sat down to play a game of Risk on my computer, and won 26 battles in a row. I didn't even lose any armies until the very end, when I freaked out and experienced a moment of disbelief and self-doubt that this was actually happening, at which point I lost two armies - but I still won every single attack in the game. I find it especially interesting that the moment of self-doubt appears to have weakened the phenomenon I was observing. There were no witnesses, but no matter - the cosmos sent me an unmistakable message.