Book Recommendation

I higly recommend a short little book by German Tomist Josef Pieper entitled Only the Lover Sings: Art and Contemplation. You may have heard of Pieper's most famous text: Leisure, the Basis of Culture. He was a post WWII German philosopher who taught in Germany and wrote a great deal on Aquinas and Plato. But he also wrote many other wonderful little books, and I do mean little. Only the Lover Sings is only 76 pages. You could knock it out in a day and it'll only cost you eight bucks.

You can find it at www.ignatius.com
The reference number is OLS-P

In succinct Pieperian style, here is his preface to Only the Lover Sings:

"These meditations define a great arc, spanning the distance from Augustine's marvelously formulated insight that 'only he who loves can sing' all the way to the anguished cry of Holderlin's ode entitled 'Wherefore Poets in a Time of Distress?' The intent here is to make one thing clear: that music, the fine arts, poetry - anything that festively raises up human existence and thereby constitutes its true riches - all derive their life from a hidden root, and this root is a contemplation which is turned toward God and the world so as to affirm them."