For Joseph Conrad, the struggle between good and evil in the human soul was a permanent reality, a reality one might prefer to avoid, or try to sublimate, but one that nobody who has lived long can absolutely deny. Joseph Conrad: His Moral Vision, by George A. Panichas (165 pages, Mercer University Press, 2005) In [...]
Irving Babbitt was in no way a dogmatic, ossified traditionalist. He was a creative traditionalist: He encouraged renewed expressions of imaginative vision, and he was open to the possibility of a deepening and an expansion of humane knowledge. The Critical Legacy of Irving Babbitt by George A. Panichas (235 pages, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1999) I [...]
There is a divine order of being of which we must be a part. To reject this order and our part therein is to choose madness and make any decent life impossible. As a literary critic, George Panichas shed great light on the relationship between this recognition of the order of being and our ability [...]
Irving Babbitt wrestled with those fundamental life questions that relate to the fate of man in the modern world. What he chose to say about this world of increasing material organization continues to make Babbitt’s work and thought disturbing and unpalatable… Irving Babbitt (1865-1933) never wavered in what he viewed as being his commanding office [...]
Idolatry is a dimension of the value that is now placed on sports in America, and is expressed in unbridled adoration of physical feats, and in bowing down to the things of the world… “A technologically supported secularism would make men as gods whose mere desires transform material reality to suit their needs.” So writes [...]
Excellence, which can be defined as the state of excelling and of surpassing merit, is now increasingly one of the lost words of the English language. And increasingly the special qualities that this word denotes are banned in a nation which imposes diversity and political correctitude. Today, it is dangerously incriminating for one to cite [...]
Its contemplation of evil makes “Mrs. Dalloway” a modern classic that speaks in a universal language and has universal meaning… The British writer, C.E. Montague (1867–1929) poignantly describes this debasing process in an acclaimed book that appeared in 1922, Disenchantment. To read Montague’s text regarding his own personal experiences in the war and how “handsome [...]
“Mrs. Dalloway” has as one of its primary reference points the life and fate of a psychologically maimed soldier who has returned from the Western Front… The British writer, C.E. Montague (1867–1929) poignantly describes this debasing process in an acclaimed book that appeared in 1922, Disenchantment. To read Montague’s text regarding his own personal experiences [...]
To read “Mrs. Dalloway” is to re-experience the full violence of war inflicted on body and soul and mind and to comprehend the ravages of cruel history… The British writer, C.E. Montague (1867–1929) poignantly describes this debasing process in an acclaimed book that appeared in 1922, Disenchantment. To read Montague’s text regarding his own personal [...]
Man, it is often said, cannot jump over his own shadow. The poet—and by “poet” I mean a writer of imaginative works in verse or prose—leaps over the universe… Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum. I We not only read a novel, we enter into its created world. We [...]
Man, it is often said, cannot jump over his own shadow. The poet—and by “poet” I mean a writer of imaginative works in verse or prose—leaps over the universe… Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper et in saecula saeculorum. I We not only read a novel, we enter into its created world. We [...]
Edmund Burke: A Genius Reconsidered by Russell Kirk (ISI Books, 2009, 2nd edition). Russell Kirk’s book on Edmund Burke, first published in 1967, now revised and handsomely re-issued, testifies not only to the “enduring Burke,” but also to the enduring Kirk. As a British statesman and political philosopher of “inspired wisdom,” Burke (1729-1797) continues to address our time [...]
Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to explore the true meaning of conservatism and how we should restore it. —W. Winston Elliott III, Publisher “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll get knocked down by anything.” —Anonymous It is now more than half a century since the publication of [...]
Can a man of moral sensitivity function in a corrupt and derelict world? This is a major question that Joseph Conrad probes in Victory (1915) and that his main character, Axel Heyst, presumably a Swedish baron, depicts through a demanding process of self-examination and self-discovery. Conrad, to be sure, conveys in this novel the fundamental [...]