Meritocratic mires: The first sentence of senior editor Liam Eifert’s new essay should be enticement enough: “In high school, I daydreamed about dying as I crossed the finish line.” For non-runners, that death drive has a corollary in every desire to prove ourselves by making sheer suffering—the “grind” in the “trenches”—into a metric of seriousness. Is there a more honest, less destructive way to direct our life’s work? Starting from Nietzsche’s ascetic ideal, the essay runs through Cesare Pavese (suicidal novelist), Leni Reifenstahl (fascist filmmaker), Simone Weil (Christian mystic), and Steve Prefontaine (Olympic athlete), before arriving at Sontag’s Camp sensibility in Against Interpretation. To that question, Eifert answers yes, and delineates a program for nothing less than transcendence itself.
Emily Sun, senior editor
Seen and unseen: In many ways, Sandro is just as confounding as any 18-year-old boy. He is sexually repressed and horny. He is religiously pious, but never devout enough for his father. He cannot decide whether he longs for a woman to show him affection or a mother. Yet Sandro’s coming of age, depicted in the 2024 Georgian film Panopticon, is simultaneously wrapped up in the political drama of his country. As he navigates his sense of belonging on the brink of adulthood, he is plagued by Georgia’s continued search for political identity in the absence of the unifying ideology once provided by state-sponsored socialism.
The country originally attempted to fill this void, upon regaining its independence in 1991, by turning to the Orthodox Church to provide a structural basis for social order. Sandro is raised in an observant house—he turns a framed image of Jesus face down before watching pornographic videos on a USB that he stole from his friend. The film critiques the Church’s subtle forms of surveillance and suppression, which have replaced the more visible suppression of Soviet-era atheism. Panopticon, directed by George Sikharulidze, is Georgia’s submission for Best International Feature Film in the 98th Academy Awards.
Elena Eisenstadt, contributing editor
The voyage: Human curiosity, per Baudelaire, is a pitiful thing. It “torments and rolls us, / As a cruel Angel whipping the sun.” In our quest for the Ideal we set ourselves on fire, brains aflame, like tiny suns. At UChicago, everyone strives. You have already reached success once—you must shine again. Second year puts that into perspective: at times it is suffocating, knowing how many let-go people are still there. Friends with different schedules, people with whom you have nothing to say, the would-be-cool, if they weren’t so unhappy. How much is still unknown to me here?
The sea of passers-by no longer seems infinite: “berçant notre infini sur le fini des mers,” lulling our infinite on the finite of the seas. Anything is circular if you go far enough. Since I’m surrounded by Symbolist poetry I propose folding this neurotic radiation toward newness within, fractal-like. Perhaps there, reflected by enough magnitudes, your being will become light. But in the meantime, we prefer to lull our infinite with diversions. If, like Baudelaire, you tend “to the depths of the Unknown to find something new,” you might find novelty in Verso’s 2025 dual-language edition of this landmark collection.
Jacqueline Oury, contributing editor