Even without the content of the general historical frame, William Wordsworth’s sonnet, “London 1802,” is moving to every generation that reads it, and it is natural to compare our current political situation with the one described in the poem. All of us, of course, remember the dire circumstances of England in 1802. No? Then [...]
The origins of human things are flawed, no question, and inequalities remain. But should we not try to honor the principles of Washington or Jefferson and distinguish them from the prejudices of the day that they shared? The curriculum at Wyoming Catholic College has much wisdom to offer in the current crisis, much that [...]
John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is an intense, passionate poem, and erotic poem. From the visual imagery to the descriptive language Milton uses to portray his lively scenes, there is no escaping the reality of the life force that moves his poem. Why, however, did Milton choose to write such a poem, and to whom [...]
Instead of putting John Milton in the context of his own time, scholar David Hawkes proposes to put him in the context of ours, believing that the great poet and political writer’s life and work offer solutions to our own predicament. John Milton: A Hero of Our Time, by David Hawkes (356 pages, Counterpoint, [...]
I keep having the sense that something is going on that runs right counter to the overt text of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. There seems to be a separate, opposed meaning. Should it be called a hidden agenda, a subtext? Milton’s Paradise Lost is a poem of such panoramic grandeur and such human acuteness [...]
The transcendent ‘overcoming’ or reconciliation of the Fall of Man—that symbol of the cause of the disorder that we would wish re-ordered, of the return to the garden—is what great poetry graciously asks of us. “An intermediate nature... prevents the universe falling into two separate halves.” —Plato, Symposium (203b). Almost from the beginning of when human [...]
The hedonism of reading good books makes its mark on the meaning of a life, infusing it with a richness that can be had at no dearer a price than that of a library card—which is to say, it can be had for free by anyone who is not so foolish as to fail [...]
Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as [...]
Is memory deceptively transformative? Is the original imagination an organ for lying fictions, for deception, or a conduit for revelatory illumination? And so, more generally, how do we explain those images that are apparently not imitations, don’t have an origin in verifiable originals, be they stored in human memory or laid up with the [...]
Now the bright morning Star, Day’s harbinger, Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her The Flow’ry May, who from her green lap throws The yellow Cowslip, and the pale Primrose. […]
As important as it is to use language well, it is more important to use it to move people with the truth… For two full days, with all regular classes canceled, the seniors at Wyoming Catholic College this week presented their senior orations to faculty, fellow students, board members, and guests of the College. [...]
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. [...]
The concepts of the Apollonian and Dionysian are famously invoked by Nietzsche in the context of Greek drama, but not in such a way that we can transfer them directly to poetry and prose. Let it suffice to say that Apollo is typically represented as restrained, orderly, and logical; Dionysus is erratic, spontaneous, and emotive. [...]
Milton’s Paradise Lost is a poem of such panoramic grandeur and such human acuteness as may wean one—and has even weaned me—from a lifelong exclusive Homerophilia. Partly its attraction is that it is insinuatingly suspect. I keep having the sense that something is going on that runs right counter to the overt text. There [...]