“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. […]
Do You Know What an Odyssey Is?
An odyssey is an adventurous and searching journey, or an intellectual or spiritual quest. It is the proper name for the life of learning. One can shape one’s own odyssey into a journey that lacks neither enchantment nor definition. My title is a question: “Do you know what an odyssey is?” I am asking each [...]
The First Question and The Iliad
To the extent that I am a human person, Homer’s Iliad speaks to me, but my particular circumstances are my own. As a result, a great question will help all people, including me, and so might be applicable to my peculiar place in space and time without being exhausted by it. In one week I’m teaching [...]
Does Love Always Lead to Suffering?
Much of suffering is an impenetrable mystery. But to a limited degree, we are able to understand suffering if we can come to understand what love is. Pope John Paul II, in Salvifici Doloris, writes, “Sacred Scripture is a great book about suffering.”[1] He then quotes the Old Testament to illustrate the spectrum of human suffering: the [...]
Generations of Leaves
Everything in nature changes—but love strives for the immortal. What keeps the form of a college supple and stable must be love for something essentially unchanging and yet eternally young, the “beauty so ancient and so new.” Listening to this year’s seniors present their orations last week at Wyoming Catholic College, I found myself subject [...]
“On First Looking into an Abridged Homer”
For Exander, on his second birthday In this egalitarian age of trans(en)gendered equivalencies work-product art exists, no more or less, as a fungible proxy for any other unit of work-product art; none are good, so there can be none better; to be deemed best but sleight-of-hand prestige: counterfeit currency for consumption. This present is nothing [...]
Wounded Beauty
Why should the sins of the guilty cause suffering to the guiltless? If God could prevent such suffering of the innocent victims of sin but refrains from doing so, isn’t he also to blame? Isn’t he in some way an accessory to the sin? In other words, how can a good God permit bad things [...]
Reflections on Christ and the Classics
In a certain way, Christ is both priest and offering, a self-sacrifice transcending both concepts. This is something the classical world found disquieting. The extent to which the pagan classical world and Christianity are able to tell a common story has had an uneven history. In late antiquity, the Church Fathers were reluctant disciples of [...]
“The Last Jedi” and the End of Heroism
The Last Jedi seems intent on burning down the archetypes of the heroic past. When the hero fails to be a hero, and furthermore denies his own status as a hero, what is the rationality behind such postmodern disenchantment? Moviegoers have loudly lamented the Luke Skywalker they encountered in Rian Johnson’s newest episode of the [...]
Looking for Camillus: Why We Need Great Men
What happens to the Romans in the absence of their greatest man, Camillus? Crushing losses, near-obliteration. Not to honor what is best and highest—in fact, to insult it, to belittle it, to attribute base motives to it: What can follow except an arrogant forgetfulness that preludes disaster? Titus Livius (or Livy), the Roman historian whose [...]
Restoring Poetic Vision in a Myopic Age
In a distorted world, the Christian poet is ultimately like the blind man whose vision Christ restored to see truth through grace, and those who read the poet’s words will find their vision restored as well. Editor’s Note: This essay was originally given as a part of a lecture series for the Cambridge School of [...]
Enchantment, Realism, and the Imagination
Longing for the enchanted world underlies the poetic imagination, but it’s the light of common day that we inhabit, thus we should value realism in the imaginative realm… One of the themes of frequent discussion at Wyoming Catholic College is Charles Taylor’s idea of disenchantment—the disappearance in modern times of an “enchanted” relation to the [...]
Poetic Knowledge of the City
What we need today to re-create the beautiful city, an icon through which to see the glorious City of God, is a new “Iliad,” a new story that will manifest “what the many do together,” for what the many do together “rarely lacks a certain nobility, or beauty.” In his Metamorphoses of the City, Catholic [...]
A Liberal Education
Liberal arts, taught correctly, are essential in a liberal democratic republic. A liberal arts education can prepare citizens for life in a republic that cherishes its liberty. This June, I spent a week reading and listening to many conversations about Homer’s Iliad at St. John’s College, Annapolis. The rules of a Summer Classics Seminar are simple, explained [...]