The memory of General Charles de Gaulle has largely faded away, like a fleeting dream, from the soul of the French nation. Nonetheless, his example serves as a testament to those men and women in uniform of the endless grace that flows from the Catholic faith, and which is required to continue the eternal struggle [...]
In his latest book, Joseph Epstein takes on the elusive topic of charm, which consists of being pleasing to others and making the world seem a better place. Charm radiates light, order, and good humor; it is cool and calm, not hot and excited. Perhaps, like beauty, charm is one of the blessedly “useless” things [...]
No book shows how little we care to find out the truth, how little we know ourselves, how even less we know others, how rumor, prejudice, and illusion, rule our world as Alessandro Manzoni’s "The Betrothed." Set in Lombardy in the 17th century, it covers the whole horror of a plague in whose deadly grip [...]
Why do so many Americans doubt the coronavirus? I think there are both admirable and repugnant traits within the American character that help to explain the phenomenon. I don’t believe I am wrong in my observation that many of my fellow conservatives come across as “coronavirus doubters.” Someone has coined a clumsy phrase, “Coronavirus Truthers,” [...]
The stakes of our current drama are high. They require our full attention and clear-sightedness. They call for heroic actions. And in short, they demand greatness of soul. Will the real human nature please stand up? We need it now more than ever. “Is man no more than this,” King Lear famously asks as he [...]
If J.R.R. Tolkien was a Titan, Christopher was Atlas, with the weight of a cosmology on his back. On January 16, in France, and at the age of 95, Christopher John Reuel Tolkien quietly passed away. The headlines of many obituaries and tributes refer to him as the son of J.R.R. Tolkien, which indeed he [...]
T.S. Eliot’s correspondence with Emily Hale was recently opened, having been kept in Princeton archives until fifty years after Miss Hale’s death. Also opened was Eliot’s response to the archives. It seemed that the poet’s ghost had returned for one last lover’s quarrel with the ghost of his first love, over a century after they [...]
In “The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders,” Daniel Defoe relates the life story of an English adventuress and her exploits, portraying Moll’s life in such authentic detail that the readers can easily see themselves in her position. However, while reading, we must keep in mind a question: Is Moll’s story a spiritual [...]
Many scholars, heroes, and even martyrs among great Christian figures have either been forgotten or “sanitized” to meet modern standards. Others, like G.K. Chesterton, have simply become “deplorable”—i.e., utterly unacceptable to contemporary sensibilities. Is Mr. Ahlquist correct in deeming Chesterton a saint whom we might pray to rather than for? I leave that question up to [...]
I’m certain it was late March 1975. Or perhaps early April. My certainties are increasingly uncertain with each passing year. Whether late March or early April, I saw her for the first time at a nearby table in the university cafeteria. She was so lovely and animated that I could no longer hear the discussion [...]
Russia’s nineteenth-century literary luminaries all found themselves wrestling with a particularly Romantic archetype: the Superfluous Man. Bored, confused, dissolute, yet noble and aristocratic, the Superfluous Man experiences tragedy in his reckless pursuit of passion. And I can’t help but wonder whether there is any hope for these characters—both the Russians in the novels, and the [...]
Charles Williams joined the Inklings immediately after Oxford University Press moved its offices from London to Oxford because of the war with Germany. Though C.S. Lewis found Williams’ work compelling, even life-changing, the other members expressed doubts. “I had a pleasant evening on Thursday with Williams, Tolkien, and Wrenn, during which Wrenn expressed ALMOST seriously [...]
Lord David Cecil not only contributed more to the Inklings overall than did some of its other members, he was also the first of the Inklings to achieve fame, though few remember him now. Though most scholars have focused on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams as the key Inklings, the other [...]
The mature man is the one who not only honors vows and oaths, but who, when he breaks them, confesses his crime, feels shame for his failure, and seeks to make right what he has violated. Shrugging off one’s moral failings, acting as if they don’t matter, is not a sign of maturity but an [...]