A key lesson of Sophocles’ “Antigone” is that fanaticism results when public actors fail to practice the one virtue capable of moderating the excesses of human nature: political prudence. In an insightful essay (“Idolatry in Lockdown,” Law and Liberty, January 28, 2021), Spencer Klavan reflects on the contemporary significance of the conflict at the heart [...]
Greek myths have had an unbroken authority over the imagination of the West, and among them the Antigone legend is paramount in both shaping and expressing the moral constitution of Western humanity. Antigones, by George Steiner (Clarendon Press, 1984; Oxford Paperback, 1986; 328 pages) Anyone who has reread the Antigone about as often as is [...]
Antigone was verbally attacked by Creon for her choice, for her womanhood, and for her independent actions. Being able to withstand a barrage of abuse made Antigone’s resilience clear. My life is in no way a parallel of Antigone’s, yet thousands of years later, the virtues that rise within us by God’s grace and by [...]
On this earth, there is nothing more firm, more noble, more intransigent than the heroic character. I encourage you, children of the twenty-first century, to respect such heroes, even as you fear them and pray that your fate will not be like theirs. Author’s Introduction: Imagine if Homer, Virgil, Dante, Chaucer, and the other great [...]
After tainting Oedipus, Sigmund Freud goes even further in his defaming of virtuous characters in literature, dragging the noble Hamlet through the same ignoble mire of his smutty, sex-obsessed imagination… The ignorant pronounce it Frood, to cavil or applaud. The well-informed pronounce it Froyd, But I pronounce it Fraud. —G.K. Chesterton (“On Professor Freud”) Poor old Oedipus. [...]
Making art is a mode of revealing the world in new ways… For the past two weeks, I’ve been writing about the opportunity to make a new Catholic culture, not from scratch and not from attempts to appropriate whatever happens to be popular at the moment, but from the immense resources available in the tradition [...]
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 [...]
A Reflection on Three Questions Concerning the Re-telling of Sacred Stories and of Myths (An Academically Disreputable Inquiry) Questions: Are there canonical sources—gold-standards—for myths, and how would we recognize them? Should our re-visioning of sacred persons and mythical people stay true to the standard version? Should there be myth-dilations? […]
Antigones, by George Steiner (Clarendon Press, 1984; Oxford Paperback, 1986) Anyone who has reread the Antigone about as often as is profitable for the time being might consider turning to this book. The curious plural of its title is glossed on the cover of the paperback: “How the Antigone legend has endured in Western literature and thought.” While [...]
Louis Awerbuck saw himself as the keeper of a tradition, a heritage of warriors in ages past, and civilization’s protectors today. And yet I seem to know this simple truth: If the bestowing of the famous armor Had rested with Achilles while he lived, To give them as a war-prize to the bravest, No rival [...]
Sophocles: The Theban Plays, translated by David R. Slavitt This is the most stripped-down version of the three Theban plays of Sophocles that I have read. As I write, I am surrounded by more than 15 translations retrieved from my shelves and the college library. David Slavitt’s book is by far the shortest and the [...]