“Editorial in Spring”
This season is too full In day; this winter cannot Bear it but stifle in its Heat. No Spring from Spring […]
The Land, War, and Knowing Oneself: Willa Cather’s “One of Ours”
After publishing her pioneer trilogy and numerous short stories, Willa Cather turned her writer’s craft to the effects of World War I with One of Ours (1922). A Pulitzer winner, it is often touted as a moving story of war, glory, and martyrdom. Critics responded that it was clichéd, recycling a sappy tale of glory [...]
Now Residing in the Blessed Realm: Christopher Tolkien
After his father’s death, Christopher Tolkien became the literary heir of all things Middle-earth. He quit his prestigious academic professorship at Oxford and dedicated himself fully to his father’s legacy. We are a better people and a better civilization as a result. On Wednesday, January 15, 2020, the holy host of the Valar (all 14 [...]
Shakespeare on Love and War
What hath Shakespeare to do with the politics of regime change? Given the long and unsuccessful history of what we call regime change, from the installment of the Shah over Persia, to the Bay of Pigs, to Libya, one questions the sanity of anyone who routinely calls for “regime change.” Yet long before our modern [...]
“The Second Day”
What does it mean, he made a dome, a wall To separate the waters below from those Above? What are these waters above it all, This cosmic ocean beyond the heavens? He chose Mystery to describe to us the canvas Of the night and day. And just what is the sky? […]
Milton’s Erotic Cosmos
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 was [...]
Glenn Arbery’s Southern Gothic
Glenn Arbery, in “Bearings and Distances,” uses bizarre humor, well-drawn characters, a wider landscape, and unexpected twists to expand the reach of Southern Gothic to critique more widespread contagions of modernity: the superficiality of academia, the hypocrisy of conventional religion, the sour legacy of slavery, the suffocating spiral of promiscuity, and the terror of a [...]
Vale, Christopher Tolkien: Middle-Earth Is Indebted to You
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 [...]
Who Was T.S. Eliot’s True Love?
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 [...]
“Christos”
To the rocks And to the open trees, The wandering insects about their work, The circling birds and covering grasses, To the mountains tuned in their summit, And the flowers searching among new scents … […]
Oh, Death, Where is Thy….
Death is a truly strange thing. It has touched each of us, to be sure, by visiting loved ones. Yet, sometimes, it seems just unbelievably relentless. Death has already taken so many greats in the first half of January 2020—Neil Peart on January 7; Sir Roger Scruton on January 12; and Christopher Tolkien on January [...]
A Constellation Near and Wide: Thornton Wilder and Sigrid Undset
Though their orbits may differ radically Christian authors are concentric. No one, for example, would confuse Flannery O’Conner with Marilynne Robinson, nor Graham Greene with either one of them. At first their differences (apart from—because of?—the denominational) can be unsettling. But later, when we’ve dwelt upon those differences, a sort of complementarity comes into focus. [...]
“Day One”
What is this Light spoken into being, The one which separates Day from Night? […]
The Fickle Moll Flanders
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 [...]