Anton is a writer and historian based in New York City. He's written for Aeon, Noema, The Guardian, Palladium Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and other publications. He also publishes novum on Substack, which has thousands of subscribers.
Website: https://antoncebalo.com
by Anton Cebalo Kitsch has become so broad a category as to be often meaningless. Kitschy art and products of the past can easily be repackaged as trendy these days, and sincerity is blurred entirely. I had always considered kitschiness to be an aesthetic quality, a mass-produced knockoff of something genuine. Milan Kundera’s 1984 novel The…
by Anton Cebalo It goes without saying that one can talk oneself into problems. Your own stories become pathological like a slow drip eroding your senses. And you may find yourself circling a narrative so many times over that language starts to fail. What’s left then is just feeling. Exhaustion with it all gives way…
by Anton Cebalo Daniil Kharms was a strange man. Born in 1905 in St. Petersburg, he was the son of Ivan Yuvachev, who was persecuted for his involvement with the revolutionary group People’s Will (Наро́дная во́ля). He adopted the surname “Kharms” while still in school as a fusion of the English words “charm” and “harm.”…
by Anton Cebalo In the past few months, I have been reading about the personalities present in Young Bosnia for a forthcoming essay. The group was not formalized by any means, made up of decentralized cells of 3-5 people, and a scattered array of political influences. But in Gavrilo Princip—its most famous member and who…
by Anton Cebalo In the first century AD, a passionate didactic poem was written in Latin and later bundled with Virgil’s work. However, the style is so drastically different from his that the author’s real name is likely permanently lost. Aetna is a poem that revolves around explaining how Mount Etna (“Aetna” in Latin) on…
by Anton Cebalo The film The Matrix famously froze its simulation in the year 1999. It was chosen as the alleged peak of human civilization. What unknowns might the new millennium bring? Many were understandably anxious. It was a psychologically-heavy turning point. But celebrations abounded. ABC News ran a special program that covered the new millennium festivities…
by Anton Cebalo Bibiheybat is a settlement on the outskirts of Baku, Azerbaijan. Located along the Caspian Sea, the region became the crown jewel of Imperial Russia for its resources. Modern oil production as we know it today began in this tiny town. In 1846, the Russians began drilling here. It was the first time…
by Anton Cebalo Writer Joseph Roth noted that the period after World War I thrived on “the ability to forget quickly and emphatically.” This was just as true for people. People who had great, popular dreams about the future before the war were thrown into obscurity afterward. One such person was author and lawyer Paul Otlet.…
by Anton Cebalo In the past decade, the writer Simone Weil has grown in popularity and continues to provoke conversation some 80 years after her death. She was a writer mainly preoccupied with what she called “the needs of the soul.” One of these needs, almost prophetic in its relevance today, is the capacity for attention…
by Anton Cebalo In the decade before World War I, the newspaper dominated life like it never would again. The radio was not yet fit for mass use, and neither was film or recording. It was then common for major cities to have a dozen or so morning papers competing for attention. Deceit, exaggeration, and…