Counter-Currents
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Contact
  • Webzine
  • About
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise

LEVEL2

Donate Now Mailing list
  • Webzine
  • About
  • Books
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Donate
  • Paywall
  • Crypto
  • RSS
    • Main feed
    • Podcast feed
    • Videos feed
    • Comments feed
  • Advertise
  • Recent posts

    • We Need Your Help

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      Pox Populi

      6

    • Why The Prisoner Still Matters

      Collin Cleary

      3

    • Joseph Sobran on Envy and Anti-White Hatred

      Joseph Sobran

      11

    • Reviewing the Unreviewable

      Margot Metroland

    • The Worst Week Yet: March 12-18, 2023

      Jim Goad

      33

    • Harry Potter & the Prisoner of the Trans Phenomenon

      Morris van de Camp

      17

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 527 Machiavellianism & More

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • Buddha a Führer: Mladý Emil Cioran o Německu

      Guillaume Durocher

    • This Weekend’s Livestream
      Greg Johnson, Pox Populi, & American Krogan on Machiavellianism & More

      Greg Johnson

    • The Machiavellian Method

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • IQ Is a Phenotype

      Spencer J. Quinn

      40

    • Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema

      Anthony Bavaria

      18

    • Curriculum Vitae of Muriel Gantry, Part 5

      Muriel Gantry

      1

    • Race and Ethics in John Ford’s Stagecoach

      Jim Goad

      84

    • Curriculum Vitae of Muriel Gantry, Part 4

      Muriel Gantry

    • My Breakout from the Modern World: The Hungarian Day of Honour Tour 2023, Part 2

      Tizenegy

      4

    • Enoch Powell, poslední tory

      Gregory Hood

    • Dr. Roger Pearson: Doyen of Anglo-American Racial Science

      Peter Rushton

      3

    • Collateral Damage: The United Kingdom’s Lockdown Files

      Mark Gullick

      5

    • Obituary for Prof. Roger Pearson, M.Sc. (Econ.), Ph.D., (London): 1927–2023

      Mark Cotterill

      4

    • The Estonian Election & Nationalist Strategy

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      10

    • Hunter S. Thompson as Psyop

      James J. O'Meara

      8

    • Institutional Racism Explained

      Richard Knight

      8

    • A “Novel” Approach to the Understanding of Evil

      Stephen Paul Foster

      18

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 526 Cyan Quinn Reports from CPAC & More

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • The Worst Week Yet: March 5-11, 2023

      Jim Goad

      23

    • John Wayne’s The Alamo & the Politics of the 1960s

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Thielemann Conducts Bruckner’s Eighth in Berkeley

      Donald Thoresen

      2

    • John Fante’s Ask the Dust

      Anthony Bavaria

      6

    • Remembering Gabriele D’Annunzio
      (March 12, 1863–March 1, 1938)

      Greg Johnson

      4

    • This Weekend’s Livestream
      Cyan Quinn on CPAC, Project Veritas, Jan. 6, & East Palestine

      Greg Johnson

      4

    • Do You Have What It Takes to be a Dissident?

      Spencer J. Quinn

      43

    • Personal Finance Tips for Dissidents

      David Lewis

      20

    • Survival of the Fittest: Interview with Alexander Deptolla of Kampf der Nibelungen

      Ondrej Mann

    • Curriculum Vitae of Muriel Gantry, Part 3

      Muriel Gantry

    • Dr. Roger Pearson on His Life & Work

      Dr. Roger Pearson

      6

    • 40,000 Brown Sardines Packed Into One Prison

      Jim Goad

      71

    • Curriculum Vitae of Muriel Gantry, Part 2

      Muriel Gantry

    • The Banshees of Inisherin

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      3

    • The Quiet Man: John Foxx’s Ultravox!

      Mark Gullick

      12

    • The British Brass Band

      Alex Graham

      6

    • Curriculum Vitae of Muriel Gantry, Part 1

      Muriel Gantry

      2

    • Charles de Gaulle a válka v Alžírsku

      Jean-Marie Le Pen

    • CPAC 2023: The Republican Party is Dying Out

      Cyan Quinn

      27

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 525 On Capitalism, Socialism, & the Ethnostate

      Counter-Currents Radio

      10

    • Remembering the German POW Camp at Bretzenheim

      Clarissa Schnabel

      11

    • Daylight Savings as Maladaptive Faustianism

      James Dunphy

      1

    • The Abolitionists as Virtue-Signalers: Nehemiah Adams & A South-side View of Slavery

      Spencer J. Quinn

      22

    • Biden’s Open Border

      Morris van de Camp

      2

  • Classics Corner

    • The Searchers

      Trevor Lynch

      29

    • Gabriele D’Annunzio

      Jonathan Bowden

      2

    • Remembering A. R. D. “Rex” Fairburn (February 2, 1904–March 25, 1957)

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Denis Kearney & the Struggle for a White America

      Theodore J. O'Keefe

      1

    • Posthuman Prospects:
      Artificial Intelligence, Fifth Generation Warfare, & Archeofuturism

      Christopher Pankhurst

      5

    • Earnest Sevier Cox:
      Advocate for the White Ethnostate

      Morris van de Camp

      15

    • Remembering Jack London
      (January 12, 1876–November 22, 1916)

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Remembering Robinson Jeffers:
      January 10, 1887–January 20, 1962

      John Morgan

      3

    • Remembering Pierre Drieu La Rochelle:
      January 3, 1893–March 15, 1945

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865-January 18, 1936)

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Restoring White Homelands

      Greg Johnson

      34

    • Remembering Hinton Rowan Helper

      Spencer J. Quinn

      11

    • What’s Wrong with Diversity?

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Redefining the Mainstream

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Edward Alsworth Ross:
      American Metapolitical Hero

      Morris van de Camp

      8

    • The Talented Mr. Ripley & Purple Noon

      Trevor Lynch

      19

    • Christmas & the Yuletide:
      Light in the Darkness

      William de Vere

      3

    • Thanksgiving Special 
      White Men Meet Indians:
      Jamestown & the Clash of Civilizations

      Thomas Jackson

    • Colin Wilson’s The Outsider

      Sir Oswald Mosley

      4

    • Dostoyevsky on the Jews

      William Pierce

      4

    • Jefferson &/or Mussolini, Part 1

      Ezra Pound

      5

    • I Listened to Chapo Trap House So You Don’t Have To

      Doug Huntington

      98

    • The Homeric Gods

      Mark Dyal

      13

    • Toward a Baltic-Black Sea Union:
      “Intermarium” as a Viable Model for White Revival

      Émile Durand

      55

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 3

      John Morgan

      30

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 2

      John Morgan

      6

    • Columbus Day Special
      The Autochthony Argument

      Greg Johnson

      9

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 1

      John Morgan

      8

    • The Jewish Question for Normies

      Alan Smithee

      13

    • Human Biodiversity for Normies

      Alan Smithee

      10

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • Red Flags in Ukraine

      Morris van de Camp

      14

    • How to Prepare for an Emergency

      Beau Albrecht

    • Henry Mayhew’s London Labour & the London Poor

      Mark Gullick

      1

    • The American Regime

      Thomas Steuben

      3

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 12: Liberty — Equality — Fraternity: On the Meaning of a Republican Slogan

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Eggs Benedict Option

      Howe Abbott-Hiss

    • Religion & Eugenics

      Paul Popenoe

      2

    • Ian Kershaw’s Personality & Power

      Margot Metroland

      3

    • Correspondence between Gaston-Armand Amaudruz & Julius Evola

      Gaston-Armand Amaudruz & Julius Evola

      1

    • David Duke & Louisiana’s 1991 Gubernatorial Election

      Morris van de Camp

      4

    • A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 7 More of the Most Common Jobs for Psychopaths

      James Dunphy

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 521 Daily Zoomer & Spencer J. Quinn Discuss The No College Club

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • Traditional French Songs from Le Poème Harmonique

      Alex Graham

      1

    • The Whale

      Steven Clark

      4

    • The Wave: Fascism Reenacted in a High School

      Beau Albrecht

      6

    • What Went Wrong with America’s Universities?

      Stephen Paul Foster

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 520 Inside Serbia with Marko of Zentropa

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 4: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 3: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 2: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 1: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • The Secret of My Success

      Steven Clark

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 519 An Update on South America on The Writers’ Bloc

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 10, Part 2: The Ambiguity of “Communitarianism”

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 10, Part 1: The Ambiguity of “Communitarianism”

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Eternal Fedora

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      16

    • The Kennedy Assassination & Misreading Data

      Morris van de Camp

      18

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 518 Blair Cottrell & Josh Neal on The Myth of Mental Illness

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The Bene Gesserit Books: Frank Herbert’s Heretics of Dune & Chapterhouse: Dune

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Tár: Reflections on the Artist vs. the Hive

      Steven Clark

  • Recent comments

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      I skipped your review because I didn’t want to spoil the film before I saw it.  I will check it...

    • DarkPlato

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      Thanks, I like your movie lists.  Ryan’s Daughter perhaps?  It’s got a great song.  ...

    • Buttercup

      Harry Potter & the Prisoner of the Trans Phenomenon

      "Your rights end where my feelings begin" is the sine qua non of fascism.

    • S. Clark

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      I'm a little bemused here. I wrote a review of this film a few months ago, and it was kind of...

    • Enoch Powell

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      If you're interested in the history of Ireland, The Wind that Shakes the Barley is well worth your...

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      These days I consider myself lucky if even two films are released that I’m interested in seeing, and...

    • Margot Metroland

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      I don't believe anyone in 1923 was really named Padraic or Siobhan. They might have assumed names...

    • Hans Kloss

      We Need Your Help

      Folk their censorship. Freedom of speech for all nationalists!

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      We Need Your Help

      Greg, may I suggest also listing your mailing address for those who may still rely on snail mail?

    • Muhammad Aryan

      Joseph Sobran on Envy and Anti-White Hatred

      The reduction of Occidental dwellings to places of trade and commerce where the most sacred activity...

    • Francis XB

      Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 527 Machiavellianism & More

      George Orwell points out in 1984 that what counts is the morale of the ruling elites (*). The elites...

    • Lord Shang

      Harry Potter & the Prisoner of the Trans Phenomenon

      I skimmed this article because I have never read Harry Potter, nor will I (do adults willing do this...

    • Lord Shang

      Joseph Sobran on Envy and Anti-White Hatred

      A perfect little post. So true, and it applies to more than just the "teenage commodities": looks,...

    • OMC

      Harry Potter & the Prisoner of the Trans Phenomenon

      Also, physical fitness is good for everyone.   If the purpose of playing sports is to get fit,...

    • Backstreet Goys

      Joseph Sobran on Envy and Anti-White Hatred

      Never let anybody forget that these people would rather risk their lives to live amongst white...

    • Beau Albrecht

      Harry Potter & the Prisoner of the Trans Phenomenon

      It's like this.  Personal idiosyncrasies are one matter, not such a big deal.  However, surgical...

    • Mrs. Noticer

      The Worst Week Yet: March 12-18, 2023

      Amiri's Baraka's Jewish ex-wife Hettie Cohen wrote a tell-all book called "How I Became Hettie Jones...

    • DarkPlato

      Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 527 Machiavellianism & More

      That was a good show.  Burnhams book is one of my favorite political treatises.I have a...

    • Richard Chance

      The Worst Week Yet: March 12-18, 2023

      Yeah, all those interracial gangs were a huge trope in the 70s and 80s.  They were ubiquitous in...

    • James Kirkpatrick

      Joseph Sobran on Envy and Anti-White Hatred

      You really think that his description here of Western civilization, whites, and non-whites is...

  • Book Authors

    • Alain de Benoist
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Beau Albrecht
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Charles Krafft
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Collin Cleary
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Fenek Solère
    • Francis Parker Yockey
    • Greg Johnson
    • Gregory Hood
    • H. L. Mencken
    • Irmin Vinson
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Jef Costello
    • Jim Goad
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Julius Evola
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Michael Polignano
    • Multiple authors
    • Savitri Devi
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Tito Perdue
    • Trevor Lynch
  • Webzine Authors

    Editor-in-Chief

    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.

    Featured Writers

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • Jim Goad
    • Mark Gullick, Ph.D.
    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.
    • Spencer Quinn

    Frequent Writers

    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton, Ph.D.
    • Collin Cleary, Ph.D.
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
    • Stephen Paul Foster, Ph.D.
    • Alex Graham
    • Richard Houck
    • Margot Metroland
    • John Morgan
    • Trevor Lynch
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Kathryn S.
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Michael Walker

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Julius Evola
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Ernst Jünger
    • Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Dominique Venner
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey

    Other Authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Michael Bell
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Giles Corey
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Richardo Duchesne, Ph.D.
    • Emile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Tom Goodroch
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas Jeelvy
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • G A Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Millennial Woes
    • Michael O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Quntilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Herve Ryssen
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solere
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunic
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
  • Private Events
  • T&C
  • Contact
Sponsored Links
Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Paul Waggener Asatru Folk Assembly IHR Breakey Imperium Press American Renaissance The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Print May 19, 2020 2 comments

Owen Barfield’s History in English Words

Fenek Solère

3,323 words

Owen Barfield
History in English Words
New York: Doubleday & Company, 1926

In the common words we use every day, souls of past races, the thoughts and feelings of individual men stand around us, not dead, but frozen into their attitudes like the courtiers in the garden of the Sleeping Beauty.

— Owen Barfield

These are sentiments with which I can wholeheartedly concur. As I meander the ancient trackways and forests of my native land, imbibing the spirit of the British countryside, the genius terrae britannicae, of rich red earth so beloved by nature poets like Henry Vaughan and Edward Thomas, I can observe how a speckled thrush skips atop a hedgerow and hares prance on the sunny side of a chalk embankment glistening with morning dew. In Britain, you can weave your way between prehistoric ley-lines between standing stones perched precariously on grassy mounds and burial chambers made long before the Romans came. My understanding of how John Masefield perceived the landscape of his forefathers grows every day; whenever I go for a stroll, I quietly recite the lines:

And felt the hillsides thronged by souls unseen,
Who knew the interest in me, and were keen
That man alive should understand man dead

This sensibility is one that Owen Barfield (1898-1997), the all-too-often overlooked member of the famous Inklings, and himself a prodigious philosopher, author, poet, and critic, would have no doubt applauded. Barfield underwent an epiphany at a very young age akin to Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness, and being a Christian anti-reductionist, he firmly believed language unlocked the key to many mysteries. His own reputation as someone who greatly influenced T.S. Eliot is somewhat overwhelmed by the giant literary celebrity of Tolkien and Lewis and to a lesser extent Charles Williams, the author of supernatural sepulchral tales. This is somewhat unfair, because Lewis himself credits Barfield in the preface to his Allegory of Love (1936): “To Owen Barfield, wisest and best of my unofficial teachers.”

A well-earned accolade, given Lewis and Barfield conducted a “Great War” of words over their differing opinions on the evolution of consciousness and Barfield’s unshakeable admiration for the esotericist Rudolf Steiner between 1923 and 1931. This debate would erupt during the pre-Inkling peripatetic countryside rambles of the highly conservative group gathered around Lewis as they walked the woods and fields of Oxfordshire, often from pub to pub, as recalled by another future Inkling, Nevill Coghill, a translator of Chaucer and later Merton Professor of English Literature:

We used to foregather in our rooms or go off for country walks together in endless but excited talk about what we had been reading the week before. . . we walked almost as fast as we talked — disputing and quoting, as we looked for dark dingles and the tree-topped hills of Matthew Arnold. . . Lewis, with the gusto of a Chesterton or a Belloc, would suddenly roar out a passage of poetry he had newly discovered and memorized. . . we had, of course, thunderous disagreements and agreements.

Barfield responded in kind to Lewis’s previously-mentioned dedication in his book Poetic Diction, supplemented by the aphorism “opposition is true friendship.” Diction sets out to explain how poetic language embodied ancient perceptions of the world, stressing that “the individual imagination is the medium of all knowledge from perception upward” and gestating the notion of “original participation,” defining this term in Saving the Appearances:

There stands behind the phenomena, and on the other side of them from me, as represented which is of the same nature as me. . . as the same nature as the perceiving self, in as much as it is not mechanical or accidental, but psychic and voluntary.

Barfield is quoted much later as saying that “Lewis had taught [him] how to think, but [he] had taught Lewis what to think.” Given both Lewis’s and Tolkien’s debt to Barfield’s concept of poetic language, this is less a boast than a statement of fact. Indeed, there is much to be gleaned from the ruminations Barfield undertakes in works like Unancestral Voice (1965); History, Guilt, and Habit (1979); Romanticism Comes of Age (1944); The Rediscovery of Meaning (1977), Worlds Apart (1963) and History in English Words (1926), where he attempts to re-assemble the history of Western Civilization by meticulously exploring the changing connotations of various words over time:

In our language alone, not to speak of its many companions, the past history of humanity is spread out in an imperishable map, just as the history of the mineral earth lies embedded in the layers of its outer crust. . . Language has preserved for us the inner, living history of our soul. It reveals the evolution of consciousness.

Barfield actively explores a particular thread of English language philosophy which is so much more than the tradition of tired old linguistic analysis and that of symbolic logic which is normally associated with English philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. Barfield argued in an essay entitled “Ruin,” published in the London Mercury in 1922, that as per Maupassant’s les mots ont une âme (words have a soul), consciousness is not the same now as it was in past ages, where human beings interacted and “participated” more directly with nature.

You can buy Fenek Solère’s novel Rising here

His complex but always erudite offerings on the nature of language are more often than not associated with his love of poetry, literature, and drama rather than formulaic mathematics. This is exemplified by his affinity for Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Keats:

What impressed me particularly was the power with which not so much whole poems as particular combinations of words worked on my mind. It seemed like there was some magic in it; and a magic which not only gave me pleasure but also reacted on and expanded the meanings of the individual words concerned.

His thoughts seem to echo Dilthey and Heidegger, but take a more arcane route somewhat reminiscent of Norman O. Brown’s psychoanalytic theory of mysticism.

The Inkling scholar often resorted, like his fellows, to fiction and drama as well as poetry to communicate his ideas. The central thesis of History in English Words is essentially an attempt to come to a formulation of the central problem of hermeneutics. Barfield contends that the only true way to comprehend literature from the past is not through our current interpretation of our world via the medium of our present “lexiconography,” but by interpreting how the world was viewed at the time the work was originally conceived. He attempted to achieve this feat through diligent scholarly etymology and sympathetic imagination.

Colin Duriez, in his book The Oxford Inklings (2015), asserts that “Barfield tended, throughout his life, to stay focused on a number of outstanding insights into the nature of language, particularly poetic language, and upon the historic context of human language.”

Barfield’s regimen is one you can fully appreciate if you attempt to fully immerse yourself in the intricacies of Barfield’s own poetry and creative writing, which greatly infused both Tolkien’s Middle Earth and Lewis’s Narnia, and was to a large extent an admixture of a fervent medievalist mind and a committed Christian apologist. It’s a seductive sedative that one might be tempted to swallow in order to fight against the spiritually-voided modern world; proffering, as it does, images laced with references to medievalist spiritual writing, post-medieval quasi-nostalgic fantasy, and the fairy tales of his fellow Inklings. An alternative, almost escapist universe, with a much clearer picture, even if a little naïve, of good and evil and moral clarity, which is missing from the Modernist canon:

Music hath its charms’, said the Dwarf. —
Harmony, you know harmony — Form versus Chaos —
Light v. Darkness — and the Dominant Seventh.
It’s all one.

— From Barfield’s The Silver Trumpet (1925).

The Silver Trumpet is an otherworldly fairy tale, drawing heavily on Hans-Christian Andersen, with a wicked princess plotting her good sister’s death, turning people into toads, driving a kingdom to rack and ruin, only to be challenged by a pure-hearted prince, a good-natured dwarf, and a benevolent witch. In some ways, it opened the door for Lewis and Tolkien, both of whom considered it “a direct hit,” despite the fact that the critics of the time were somewhat underwhelmed. The Tolkien scholar Verlyn Flieger outlines the extent of Barfield’s influence on the creator of Middle Earth in her book Splintered Light: Logos and Language in Tolkien’s World (1983). The respected Barfield scholar Simon Blaxland de Lange notes that the central image of the silver trumpet itself sounding out at key moments throughout the tale symbolizes the characters’ moving to a more noble mode of understanding, something he articulates as representing Barfield’s own belief in the “felt changes of consciousness” that could only be wrought in the imagery of the best poetry.

When I grow up to be a man and wear
Whate’er I please,
Black-cloth and serge and Harris tweed,
I shall have none of these;
For shaggy men wear Harris-tweed

— “Air Castles,” published 1917 in the satirical magazine Punch.

Indeed, according to Barfield, being sensitive to language makes the world come alive. He addresses this theme in the image of the “the kiss which brings the sleeping courtiers to life.” This metaphor is so much more than a mere decorative poetic reference, but a description of how one gradually realizes what lies behind the etymological framework and enters into the true “intellectual history” of the West.

Barfield commences his thesis in History in English Words with Greek mythology and identifies changes in the meanings of words to illustrate the evolution of philosophy and religion from the Classical Hellenic worldview to the Middle Ages. Progressing from that epoch through the Scientific Revolution and contemporary culture, Barfield provides credible evidence to convey that something significant within the realm of human consciousness is being diluted — or even lost — as we gain greater mastery over the material environment:

Now my normal everyday experience, as a human being, of the world around me, depends entirely upon what I bring to the sense-datum from within; and the absorption of this metaphor into my imagination has enabled me to bring more than I could before. It has created something in me, a faculty or a part of a faculty, enabling me to observe what I could not observe. This ability to recognize significant resemblances and analogies, considered as in action, I shall call knowledge; considered as a state, and apart from the effort by which it is imparted and acquired, I shall call it wisdom.

The rather simple example of how language fuses to incorporate new ideas or conceptions of the world is encapsulated in the derivation of the word electricity. Barfield explains that it comes from the Greek word “elektron,” meaning “amber,” and is associated with “elektor” which means “gleaming” or the “beaming sun.”

A perfect entry point to Barfield’s thinking is where he outlines his hypothesis that there is something far more fundamental happening than the basic meaning of words changing over time. Rather, it is the ideas, theories, and feelings that the words are intending to convey that are changing and mutating as human consciousness expands and alters its outlook upon the world. “Meanings,” he stresses, “must be seen as the history of meanings.”

Barfield’s point is illustrated from a quote recorded in Philip and Carol Zaleski’s excellent book The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (2015):

For the Romans themselves, the old goddesses called the Fata, or Fates, turned quickly into an abstracted notion of destiny. But contact with the dreamy Celts breathed new life into their nostrils, and “Fata” in Late Latin became spiritual once more. The sharp sounds were softened and abraded until they slipped imperceptibly into the Old French “Fay” and so fa-ery and fairy. Demon is the result of a similar metamorphosis.

Building further on his hypothesis, Barfield quotes Michael Faraday’s Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (1833): “I was anxious to obtain some idea of the conducting power of ice and solid salts by electricity of high tension.” Barfield then notes that within a century, such a reference had turned into a metaphor that George Bernard Shaw used to describe the emotional stress between two people in his play Candida (1898).

For Barfield, it is not merely ideas and theories and feelings which have changed, “but the very method of forming ideas and of combining them, the very channels, apparently eternal, by which one thought or feeling is connected with another.” Here, the stammering scholar from Whetstone, with his thoughts on the “evolution of consciousness” and the relationship between science and religion in works like Saving the Appearances and its sequel Worlds Apart, begins to walk the same path as the German philosopher Martin Heidegger and his musings on “temporality” and “historicity.” He even uses similar metaphors about geological sedimentation to explain his theory. Barfield’s musings soon stretch into reflections upon the difficulties inherent in discarding modern preconceptions about history and time, and inner and outer reality as perceived by oneself.

So it is perhaps not by chance that a student of English poetry with a love of Coleridge should comment that he felt “an affinity with German language,” and that for him, “the German language can express philosophical ideas and thought more easily and accurately sometimes than the English.”

Barfield, who went on to become a popular lecturer on the American college circuit, particularly at Wheaton College, SUNY, Drew University in New Jersey, and Brandeis, after serving an indenture-like period as a lawyer to the family law firm, described himself as “a gentleman of leisure” in the six or seven years following graduation, which he spent reading and writing:

You can buy Greg Johnson’s From Plato to Postmodernism here

I also did quite a lot of reading and studying and at that time I renewed such acquaintance as I had from school with the Greek and Latin languages, in which I’d got very rusty. I also learned Italian in order to read Dante and, during that period, I read the late Platonic Dialogues, which are not so much about ethics but more about the nature of perception, as well as Aristotle’s psychology, De Anima — with great excitement.

It was also around the time he began to compose his History in English Words that Barfield discovered Rudolph Steiner’s theories of thought and perception and felt they personified exactly what he had been looking for. Barfield had no doubt that Steiner was the “new Aristotle” and “il maestro di color che sanno — master of those who know,” taken from Dante’s encomium to Aristotle — Inferno IV:131. Inspired by a lecture he attended in 1924 given by Steiner, Barfield soon began contributing essays to the Journal of Anthroposophy, as well as The New Statesman, The London Mercury, and the periodical Truth, and sought to study methods of comprehending the spiritual world through sensory experience.

In fact, Poetic Diction, originating from work undertaken for his British Literature thesis and finally published in 1928, was his attempt to put this understanding into his own very down-to-earth style, though he acknowledges and credits Steiner’s influence in the preface to the book and quotes him profusely on the nature of myth. This subject, along with his insights into the etymology of words and language, bound him intimately — despite differences of opinion over Steiner — to Lewis, who Barfield encouraged to complete his long narrative poem Dymer. This was a recognizable step towards the famed Christian apologist’s renunciation of atheism and Tolkien, who was, of course, an Anglo-Saxon philologist.

In a piece entitled “The Inklings Remembered,” Barfield — who we must remember given his London-based profession, was a fairly irregular attendee of the group’s meetings — wrote:

. . .my reminiscences, though vivid enough, are scarce and scattered. I never, to my great regret, heard Tolkien read any of the nascent Lord of the Rings, but I do recall his reading a poem, in stanza form, with a refrain in which he made us all join. The poem itself has faded, except that the mode was a kind of jovial pastiche Anglo-Saxon. In my recollection, these readings by Inklings authors from their own works were, at least in terms of the time allotted to them, subsidiary to the main business (if what happened can be so described) of the evening. Surprisingly, perhaps not so surprisingly, the reading I do remember well was that of a verse play of my own, Medea (in which she turns out to be a werewolf). On this occasion — I do not know if it was so in any other — Lewis had arranged for it to be a proper “reading,” with each part allocated to a different reader. The two things that have stuck in my memory are, first, that the reception was favourable but not ecstatic and, secondly, that, when it was over, at least three of those present casually remarked that they had written plays about Medea themselves in the past. Finally, as the conversation drifted farther and farther away from my play, I mildly inquired if there was anybody present who had not written a play about Medea! There was also an Inklings meeting at which, on request, I delivered the best account I could of anthroposophy — without, I think, making much impression.

But it is perhaps what Barfield says about the “the fanciful poetry of ‘escape’” that is more significant, not only because he spent most of the 1940s and 50s working in a humdrum legal office with only a verse drama Orpheus to his name, but also because — like his fellow Inklings — he did not see it as a distraction from more important moral and social issues, but a refutation of the modernist blueprint for society being unrolled before their very eyes. Duriez suggests in his introduction to The Oxford Inklings that there was a “strategy in their concerns that could point to a different kind of contemporary world, rooted in old virtues and values. Could there conceivably be a modern society that was marked by continuity rather than discontinuity with the past?”

And if that was possible, could the study and understanding of the development of language, and indeed, the evolution of human consciousness, as Barfield interpreted it, form a bridge between the two? The Inklings certainly thought so, and saw it as intrinsically linked to their Christianity, a quasi-religious and romantic oppositional force to what Lewis, in his inaugural lecture as Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature on the 29th November 1954, described as the “Machine-Age” — a term borrowed from Tolkien that he deployed in defense of what he outlined as “Old Western” or “Old European” values. The Inklings took these traditions to be rooted in the language, customs, and soil of Northern Europe.

The ever-mercurial musketeer, Owen Barfield, with a pen rather than a swashbuckling D’Artagnan-like rapier in hand, would have wholeheartedly concurred.

My abiding image of Barfield, a thoroughly good Wadham man, is of him nonchalantly cycling in his moleskin waistcoat and dangling silver pocket watch chain, along Addison’s Walk and out past Magdalen’s Tower, en route to the “Bird and Baby” in St. Giles to sip beer on a Tuesday morning and discuss theology, literature, and philosophy with his fellow Inklings. Barfield captured the scene resoundingly:

The leaves, grown rusty overhead,
Dropped on the road and made it red.
The air that coldly wrapped me round,
Stained by the glowing of the ground,
Had bathed the world in the cosy gloom
Of a great, red-carpeted, firelit room;
It filled my lungs, as I rode along,
Till they overflowed in a flood of song,
And joy grew truculent in my throat,
Uttering a pompous trombone-note;
For this elegant modern soul of mine
Was warm with old Autumn’s rich red wine.

— From “An Autumn Bicycle-Ride,” a typescript from the Barfield Papers at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (1919).

If you want to support our work, please send us a donation by going to our Entropy page and selecting “send paid chat.” Entropy allows you to donate any amount from $3 and up. All comments will be read and discussed in the next episode of Counter-Currents Radio, which airs every Friday.

Related

  • Why The Prisoner Still Matters

  • Reviewing the Unreviewable

  • Buddha a Führer: Mladý Emil Cioran o Německu

  • The Machiavellian Method

  • Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema

  • John Fante’s Ask the Dust

  • Remembering Gabriele D’Annunzio
    (March 12, 1863–March 1, 1938)

  • The British Brass Band

Tags

book reviewsC. S. LewisFenek SolèreJ. R. R. TolkienliteratureMartin HeideggermysticismphilosophypoetryreligionSymbolism

Previous

« Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 274
Ask Counter-Currents Livestream, May 17, 2020

Next

» Remembering Julius Evola:
May 19, 1898–June 11, 1974

2 comments

  1. Archie Bunker says:
    May 20, 2020 at 10:50 am

    Lovely. Thank you for this.

    1. Fenek Solere says:
      May 20, 2020 at 3:26 pm

      Dear Archie,
      You are very welcome!
      Best
      FS

Comments are closed.

If you have Paywall access,
simply login first to see your comment auto-approved.

Note on comments privacy & moderation

Your email is never published nor shared.

Comments are moderated. If you don't see your comment, please be patient. If approved, it will appear here soon. Do not post your comment a second time.

  • Recent posts

    • We Need Your Help

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      Pox Populi

      6

    • Why The Prisoner Still Matters

      Collin Cleary

      3

    • Joseph Sobran on Envy and Anti-White Hatred

      Joseph Sobran

      11

    • Reviewing the Unreviewable

      Margot Metroland

    • The Worst Week Yet: March 12-18, 2023

      Jim Goad

      33

    • Harry Potter & the Prisoner of the Trans Phenomenon

      Morris van de Camp

      17

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 527 Machiavellianism & More

      Counter-Currents Radio

      2

    • Buddha a Führer: Mladý Emil Cioran o Německu

      Guillaume Durocher

    • This Weekend’s Livestream
      Greg Johnson, Pox Populi, & American Krogan on Machiavellianism & More

      Greg Johnson

    • The Machiavellian Method

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • IQ Is a Phenotype

      Spencer J. Quinn

      40

    • Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema

      Anthony Bavaria

      18

    • Curriculum Vitae of Muriel Gantry, Part 5

      Muriel Gantry

      1

    • Race and Ethics in John Ford’s Stagecoach

      Jim Goad

      84

    • Curriculum Vitae of Muriel Gantry, Part 4

      Muriel Gantry

    • My Breakout from the Modern World: The Hungarian Day of Honour Tour 2023, Part 2

      Tizenegy

      4

    • Enoch Powell, poslední tory

      Gregory Hood

    • Dr. Roger Pearson: Doyen of Anglo-American Racial Science

      Peter Rushton

      3

    • Collateral Damage: The United Kingdom’s Lockdown Files

      Mark Gullick

      5

    • Obituary for Prof. Roger Pearson, M.Sc. (Econ.), Ph.D., (London): 1927–2023

      Mark Cotterill

      4

    • The Estonian Election & Nationalist Strategy

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      10

    • Hunter S. Thompson as Psyop

      James J. O'Meara

      8

    • Institutional Racism Explained

      Richard Knight

      8

    • A “Novel” Approach to the Understanding of Evil

      Stephen Paul Foster

      18

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 526 Cyan Quinn Reports from CPAC & More

      Counter-Currents Radio

      3

    • The Worst Week Yet: March 5-11, 2023

      Jim Goad

      23

    • John Wayne’s The Alamo & the Politics of the 1960s

      Morris van de Camp

      1

    • Thielemann Conducts Bruckner’s Eighth in Berkeley

      Donald Thoresen

      2

    • John Fante’s Ask the Dust

      Anthony Bavaria

      6

    • Remembering Gabriele D’Annunzio
      (March 12, 1863–March 1, 1938)

      Greg Johnson

      4

    • This Weekend’s Livestream
      Cyan Quinn on CPAC, Project Veritas, Jan. 6, & East Palestine

      Greg Johnson

      4

    • Do You Have What It Takes to be a Dissident?

      Spencer J. Quinn

      43

    • Personal Finance Tips for Dissidents

      David Lewis

      20

    • Survival of the Fittest: Interview with Alexander Deptolla of Kampf der Nibelungen

      Ondrej Mann

    • Curriculum Vitae of Muriel Gantry, Part 3

      Muriel Gantry

    • Dr. Roger Pearson on His Life & Work

      Dr. Roger Pearson

      6

    • 40,000 Brown Sardines Packed Into One Prison

      Jim Goad

      71

    • Curriculum Vitae of Muriel Gantry, Part 2

      Muriel Gantry

    • The Banshees of Inisherin

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      3

    • The Quiet Man: John Foxx’s Ultravox!

      Mark Gullick

      12

    • The British Brass Band

      Alex Graham

      6

    • Curriculum Vitae of Muriel Gantry, Part 1

      Muriel Gantry

      2

    • Charles de Gaulle a válka v Alžírsku

      Jean-Marie Le Pen

    • CPAC 2023: The Republican Party is Dying Out

      Cyan Quinn

      27

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 525 On Capitalism, Socialism, & the Ethnostate

      Counter-Currents Radio

      10

    • Remembering the German POW Camp at Bretzenheim

      Clarissa Schnabel

      11

    • Daylight Savings as Maladaptive Faustianism

      James Dunphy

      1

    • The Abolitionists as Virtue-Signalers: Nehemiah Adams & A South-side View of Slavery

      Spencer J. Quinn

      22

    • Biden’s Open Border

      Morris van de Camp

      2

  • Classics Corner

    • The Searchers

      Trevor Lynch

      29

    • Gabriele D’Annunzio

      Jonathan Bowden

      2

    • Remembering A. R. D. “Rex” Fairburn (February 2, 1904–March 25, 1957)

      Greg Johnson

      1

    • Denis Kearney & the Struggle for a White America

      Theodore J. O'Keefe

      1

    • Posthuman Prospects:
      Artificial Intelligence, Fifth Generation Warfare, & Archeofuturism

      Christopher Pankhurst

      5

    • Earnest Sevier Cox:
      Advocate for the White Ethnostate

      Morris van de Camp

      15

    • Remembering Jack London
      (January 12, 1876–November 22, 1916)

      Greg Johnson

      2

    • Remembering Robinson Jeffers:
      January 10, 1887–January 20, 1962

      John Morgan

      3

    • Remembering Pierre Drieu La Rochelle:
      January 3, 1893–March 15, 1945

      Greg Johnson

    • Remembering Rudyard Kipling (December 30, 1865-January 18, 1936)

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Restoring White Homelands

      Greg Johnson

      34

    • Remembering Hinton Rowan Helper

      Spencer J. Quinn

      11

    • What’s Wrong with Diversity?

      Greg Johnson

      10

    • Redefining the Mainstream

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Edward Alsworth Ross:
      American Metapolitical Hero

      Morris van de Camp

      8

    • The Talented Mr. Ripley & Purple Noon

      Trevor Lynch

      19

    • Christmas & the Yuletide:
      Light in the Darkness

      William de Vere

      3

    • Thanksgiving Special 
      White Men Meet Indians:
      Jamestown & the Clash of Civilizations

      Thomas Jackson

    • Colin Wilson’s The Outsider

      Sir Oswald Mosley

      4

    • Dostoyevsky on the Jews

      William Pierce

      4

    • Jefferson &/or Mussolini, Part 1

      Ezra Pound

      5

    • I Listened to Chapo Trap House So You Don’t Have To

      Doug Huntington

      98

    • The Homeric Gods

      Mark Dyal

      13

    • Toward a Baltic-Black Sea Union:
      “Intermarium” as a Viable Model for White Revival

      Émile Durand

      55

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 3

      John Morgan

      30

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 2

      John Morgan

      6

    • Columbus Day Special
      The Autochthony Argument

      Greg Johnson

      9

    • The Politics of Nuclear War, Part 1

      John Morgan

      8

    • The Jewish Question for Normies

      Alan Smithee

      13

    • Human Biodiversity for Normies

      Alan Smithee

      10

  • Paroled from the Paywall

    • Red Flags in Ukraine

      Morris van de Camp

      14

    • How to Prepare for an Emergency

      Beau Albrecht

    • Henry Mayhew’s London Labour & the London Poor

      Mark Gullick

      1

    • The American Regime

      Thomas Steuben

      3

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 12: Liberty — Equality — Fraternity: On the Meaning of a Republican Slogan

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Eggs Benedict Option

      Howe Abbott-Hiss

    • Religion & Eugenics

      Paul Popenoe

      2

    • Ian Kershaw’s Personality & Power

      Margot Metroland

      3

    • Correspondence between Gaston-Armand Amaudruz & Julius Evola

      Gaston-Armand Amaudruz & Julius Evola

      1

    • David Duke & Louisiana’s 1991 Gubernatorial Election

      Morris van de Camp

      4

    • A Woman’s Guide to Identifying Psychopaths, Part 7 More of the Most Common Jobs for Psychopaths

      James Dunphy

      1

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 521 Daily Zoomer & Spencer J. Quinn Discuss The No College Club

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • Traditional French Songs from Le Poème Harmonique

      Alex Graham

      1

    • The Whale

      Steven Clark

      4

    • The Wave: Fascism Reenacted in a High School

      Beau Albrecht

      6

    • What Went Wrong with America’s Universities?

      Stephen Paul Foster

      3

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 520 Inside Serbia with Marko of Zentropa

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 4: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 3: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 2: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 11, Part 1: “Multitudes” Against the People

      Alain de Benoist

      1

    • The Secret of My Success

      Steven Clark

      2

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 519 An Update on South America on The Writers’ Bloc

      Counter-Currents Radio

      1

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 10, Part 2: The Ambiguity of “Communitarianism”

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Populist Moment, Chapter 10, Part 1: The Ambiguity of “Communitarianism”

      Alain de Benoist

    • The Eternal Fedora

      Nicholas R. Jeelvy

      16

    • The Kennedy Assassination & Misreading Data

      Morris van de Camp

      18

    • Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 518 Blair Cottrell & Josh Neal on The Myth of Mental Illness

      Counter-Currents Radio

    • The Bene Gesserit Books: Frank Herbert’s Heretics of Dune & Chapterhouse: Dune

      Greg Johnson

      3

    • Tár: Reflections on the Artist vs. the Hive

      Steven Clark

  • Recent comments

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      I skipped your review because I didn’t want to spoil the film before I saw it.  I will check it...

    • DarkPlato

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      Thanks, I like your movie lists.  Ryan’s Daughter perhaps?  It’s got a great song.  ...

    • Buttercup

      Harry Potter & the Prisoner of the Trans Phenomenon

      "Your rights end where my feelings begin" is the sine qua non of fascism.

    • S. Clark

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      I'm a little bemused here. I wrote a review of this film a few months ago, and it was kind of...

    • Enoch Powell

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      If you're interested in the history of Ireland, The Wind that Shakes the Barley is well worth your...

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      These days I consider myself lucky if even two films are released that I’m interested in seeing, and...

    • Margot Metroland

      Of Donkeys and Men: A Review of The Banshees of Inisherin

      I don't believe anyone in 1923 was really named Padraic or Siobhan. They might have assumed names...

    • Hans Kloss

      We Need Your Help

      Folk their censorship. Freedom of speech for all nationalists!

    • Fire Walk With Lee

      We Need Your Help

      Greg, may I suggest also listing your mailing address for those who may still rely on snail mail?

    • Muhammad Aryan

      Joseph Sobran on Envy and Anti-White Hatred

      The reduction of Occidental dwellings to places of trade and commerce where the most sacred activity...

    • Francis XB

      Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 527 Machiavellianism & More

      George Orwell points out in 1984 that what counts is the morale of the ruling elites (*). The elites...

    • Lord Shang

      Harry Potter & the Prisoner of the Trans Phenomenon

      I skimmed this article because I have never read Harry Potter, nor will I (do adults willing do this...

    • Lord Shang

      Joseph Sobran on Envy and Anti-White Hatred

      A perfect little post. So true, and it applies to more than just the "teenage commodities": looks,...

    • OMC

      Harry Potter & the Prisoner of the Trans Phenomenon

      Also, physical fitness is good for everyone.   If the purpose of playing sports is to get fit,...

    • Backstreet Goys

      Joseph Sobran on Envy and Anti-White Hatred

      Never let anybody forget that these people would rather risk their lives to live amongst white...

    • Beau Albrecht

      Harry Potter & the Prisoner of the Trans Phenomenon

      It's like this.  Personal idiosyncrasies are one matter, not such a big deal.  However, surgical...

    • Mrs. Noticer

      The Worst Week Yet: March 12-18, 2023

      Amiri's Baraka's Jewish ex-wife Hettie Cohen wrote a tell-all book called "How I Became Hettie Jones...

    • DarkPlato

      Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 527 Machiavellianism & More

      That was a good show.  Burnhams book is one of my favorite political treatises.I have a...

    • Richard Chance

      The Worst Week Yet: March 12-18, 2023

      Yeah, all those interracial gangs were a huge trope in the 70s and 80s.  They were ubiquitous in...

    • James Kirkpatrick

      Joseph Sobran on Envy and Anti-White Hatred

      You really think that his description here of Western civilization, whites, and non-whites is...

  • Book Authors

    • Alain de Benoist
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Beau Albrecht
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Charles Krafft
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Collin Cleary
    • F. Roger Devlin
    • Fenek Solère
    • Francis Parker Yockey
    • Greg Johnson
    • Gregory Hood
    • H. L. Mencken
    • Irmin Vinson
    • J. A. Nicholl
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Jef Costello
    • Jim Goad
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Julius Evola
    • Kerry Bolton
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Michael Polignano
    • Multiple authors
    • Savitri Devi
    • Spencer J. Quinn
    • Tito Perdue
    • Trevor Lynch
  • Webzine Authors

    Editor-in-Chief

    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.

    Featured Writers

    • Beau Albrecht
    • Morris V. de Camp
    • Jim Goad
    • Mark Gullick, Ph.D.
    • Greg Johnson, Ph.D.
    • Spencer Quinn

    Frequent Writers

    • Aquilonius
    • Anthony Bavaria
    • Alain de Benoist
    • Kerry Bolton, Ph.D.
    • Collin Cleary, Ph.D.
    • Jef Costello
    • F. Roger Devlin, Ph.D.
    • Stephen Paul Foster, Ph.D.
    • Alex Graham
    • Richard Houck
    • Margot Metroland
    • John Morgan
    • Trevor Lynch
    • James J. O’Meara
    • Kathryn S.
    • Thomas Steuben
    • Michael Walker

    Classic Authors

    • Maurice Bardèche
    • Jonathan Bowden
    • Julius Evola
    • Guillaume Faye
    • Ernst Jünger
    • Kevin MacDonald, Ph.D.
    • D. H. Lawrence
    • Charles Lindbergh
    • Jack London
    • H. P. Lovecraft
    • Anthony M. Ludovici
    • Sir Oswald Mosley
    • National Vanguard
    • Friedrich Nietzsche
    • Revilo Oliver
    • William Pierce
    • Ezra Pound
    • Saint-Loup
    • Savitri Devi
    • Carl Schmitt
    • Miguel Serrano
    • Oswald Spengler
    • P. R. Stephensen
    • Jean Thiriart
    • John Tyndall
    • Dominique Venner
    • Leo Yankevich
    • Francis Parker Yockey

    Other Authors

    • Howe Abbott-Hiss
    • Michael Bell
    • Buttercup Dew
    • Giles Corey
    • Bain Dewitt
    • Jack Donovan
    • Richardo Duchesne, Ph.D.
    • Emile Durand
    • Guillaume Durocher
    • Mark Dyal
    • Fullmoon Ancestry
    • Tom Goodroch
    • Andrew Hamilton
    • Robert Hampton
    • Huntley Haverstock
    • Derek Hawthorne
    • Gregory Hood
    • Juleigh Howard-Hobson
    • Alexander Jacob
    • Nicholas Jeelvy
    • Ruuben Kaalep
    • Tobias Langdon
    • Julian Langness
    • Travis LeBlanc
    • Patrick Le Brun
    • G A Malvicini
    • John Michael McCloughlin
    • Millennial Woes
    • Michael O’Meara
    • Christopher Pankhurst
    • Michael Polignano
    • J. J. Przybylski
    • Quntilian
    • Edouard Rix
    • C. B. Robertson
    • C. F. Robinson
    • Herve Ryssen
    • Alan Smithee
    • Fenek Solere
    • Ann Sterzinger
    • Robert Steuckers
    • Tomislav Sunic
    • Donald Thoresen
    • Marian Van Court
    • Irmin Vinson
    • Aylmer Wedgwood
    • Scott Weisswald
  • Departments

    • Book Reviews
    • Movie Reviews
    • TV Reviews
    • Music Reviews
    • Art Criticism
    • Graphic Novels & Comics
    • Video Game Reviews
    • Fiction
    • Poems
    • Interviews
    • Videos
    • English Translations
    • Other Languages
      • Arabic
      • Bulgarian
      • Croatian
      • Czech
      • Danish
      • Dutch
      • Estonian
      • Finnish
      • French
      • German
      • Greek
      • Hungarian
      • Italian
      • Lithuanian
      • Norwegian
      • Polish
      • Portuguese
      • Romanian
      • Russian
      • Slovak
      • Spanish
      • Swedish
      • Ukrainian
    • Commemorations
    • Why We Write
  • Archives
  • Top 100 Commenters
Sponsored Links
Above Time Coffee Antelope Hill Publishing Paul Waggener Asatru Folk Assembly IHR Breakey Imperium Press American Renaissance The Patrick Ryan Show Jim Goad The Occidental Observer
Donate Now Mailing list
Books for sale
  • El Manifiesto Nacionalista Blanco
  • An Artist of the Right
  • Ernst Jünger
  • Reuben
  • The Partisan
  • Trevor Lynch’s Classics of Right-Wing Cinema
  • The Enemy of Europe
  • Imperium
  • Reactionary Modernism
  • Manifesto del Nazionalismo Bianco
  • O Manifesto Nacionalista Branco
  • Vade Mecum
  • Whiteness: The Original Sin
  • Space Vixen Trek Episode 17: Tomorrow the Stars
  • The Year America Died
  • Passing the Buck
  • Mysticism After Modernism
  • Gold in the Furnace
  • Defiance
  • Forever & Ever
  • Wagner’s Ring & the Germanic Tradition
  • Resistance
  • Materials for All Future Historians
  • Love Song of the Australopiths
  • White Identity Politics
  • Here’s the Thing
  • Trevor Lynch: Part Four of the Trilogy
  • Graduate School with Heidegger
  • It’s Okay to Be White
  • The World in Flames
  • The White Nationalist Manifesto
  • From Plato to Postmodernism
  • The Gizmo
  • Return of the Son of Trevor Lynch’s CENSORED Guide to the Movies
  • Toward a New Nationalism
  • The Smut Book
  • The Alternative Right
  • My Nationalist Pony
  • Dark Right: Batman Viewed From the Right
  • The Philatelist
  • Confessions of an Anti-Feminist
  • East and West
  • Though We Be Dead, Yet Our Day Will Come
  • White Like You
  • Numinous Machines
  • Venus and Her Thugs
  • Cynosura
  • North American New Right, vol. 2
  • You Asked For It
  • More Artists of the Right
  • Extremists: Studies in Metapolitics
  • The Homo & the Negro
  • Rising
  • The Importance of James Bond
  • In Defense of Prejudice
  • Confessions of a Reluctant Hater (2nd ed.)
  • The Hypocrisies of Heaven
  • Waking Up from the American Dream
  • Green Nazis in Space!
  • Truth, Justice, and a Nice White Country
  • Heidegger in Chicago
  • End of an Era: Mad Men & the Ordeal of Civility
  • Sexual Utopia in Power
  • What is a Rune? & Other Essays
  • Son of Trevor Lynch’s White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • The Lightning & the Sun
  • The Eldritch Evola
  • Western Civilization Bites Back
  • New Right vs. Old Right
  • Journey Late at Night: Poems and Translations
  • The Non-Hindu Indians & Indian Unity
  • I do not belong to the Baader-Meinhof Group
  • Pulp Fascism
  • The Lost Philosopher
  • Trevor Lynch’s A White Nationalist Guide to the Movies
  • And Time Rolls On
  • Artists of the Right: Resisting Decadence
  • North American New Right, Vol. 1
  • Some Thoughts on Hitler
  • Tikkun Olam and Other Poems
  • Summoning the Gods
  • Taking Our Own Side
  • Reuben
  • The Node
  • The New Austerities
  • Morning Crafts
  • The Passing of a Profit & Other Forgotten Stories
Copyright © 2023 Counter-Currents Publishing, Ltd.

Paywall Access





Please enter your email address. You will receive mail with link to set new password.

Edit your comment