Author: Kathryn S.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema, The Roses of Elagabalus, 1888

5, 207 words

Part 3

(Read Part 1 here. Part 2 here.)

Rebecca (1938)

Christie’s concluding lines about “possessed,” “depressed,” and “homicidal” “love” would sum up the themes of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca as well. The main event in her novel was not the final, cathartic destruction of Manderley House. (more…)

2,016 words

Part 2 (Read Part 1 here)

Tiberius vs. Agrippina (AD 27-33)

There were few imperial tables more treacherous than a Roman emperor’s. The less one ate at those gatherings, the better – except if one’s name was Agrippina, granddaughter of Emperor Augustus. (more…)

Giovanni Martinelli, Death Comes to the Banquet, ca. 1635

3,400 words

Part 1

I’m sure many readers are familiar with the French comic, Astérix le Gaulois. Ever since a fun day in high-school French, I have followed the adventures of its eponymous character and its tongue-in-cheek depiction of the Gauls and their Roman antagonists during what was a serious and brutal episode in ancient European history. (more…)

George Romney, The Ghost of Darius Appearing to Atossa (1778-79)

2,609 words

Part 2 of 4 (Part 1 here)

The Play

Written nearly ten years after its subject events, Aeschylus’ drama The Persians was revolutionary, since its Athenian author^[1] told the story from the enemy’s point of view; still, the sensibility was Greek. (more…)

Konstantinos Volanakis, Naval Battle of Salamis (1882)

3,611 words

Part 1 of 4 (Part 2 here)

Six victorious generals, including the son of Athens’ greatest statesman, Pericles, made their way to the dais of ancient Athens’ public Assembly over 2,400 years ago. (more…)

Stairs in the woods, unknown location

3,706 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

“They Came Back Not Quite the Same”: Forest Stairs to Nowhere

A few years ago an anonymous Reddit user who claimed to be a United States Forest Ranger (henceforth Mr. Reddit) began to post stories about rescuing travelers in the parks of North America. As European men and women, we revel in tales of enchanted forests, Mirkwoods, and lonely dark paths through canopies taller than giants and trunks older than memory. They sing to our blood! The following are interesting twists to this genre. (more…)

Unknown artist and date

3,498 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

I’ve recently become bogged down in several areas — working, writing, etc. — and only my continued inspiration from Napoleon the Great and the Counter-Currents community has kept up my spirits. No self-pity or fishing for sympathy here; these moods happen to us all, and in due course pass into other, better seasons of life. As I was lying awake thinking about things that crowd the brain during the least crowded hours of the night, my mind’s eye summoned an imaginary staircase. (more…)

Johann (Jan) Toorop, Stefan George, 1896; George took great pride in the fact that his profile favored that of Dante’s.

4,669 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

Stefan George’s Dead Poets Society

The chapters about Stefan George (1868-1933) and those of his inner circle are the most interesting and even-handed of the book. Unlike Nietzsche, George was not primarily a philosopher, but a poet. His verse, however, was deeply influenced by French symbolism, as well as Nietzsche’s muscular ideas that emphasized will, vigor, and a profound dislike of both bourgeois conservatism and egalitarian progressivism. Höfele claims that “the native idiom” of George’s poetry doesn’t translate well. (more…)

4,825 words

Part 1 of 2 (Part 2 here)

Andreas Höfele
No Hamlets: German Shakespeare from Nietzsche to Carl Schmitt
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2016

The hardest book reviews to write are those that deal with material that I have enjoyed, but cannot recommend. This is the case for Andreas Höfele’s No Hamlets: German Shakespeare from Nietzsche to Carl Schmitt. Höfele teaches English literature at Munich University, and he has written other books and articles on Elizabethan and Victorian stagecraft, as well as six novels. (more…)

Persian relief of soldiers similar to those lost in the 525 BC march from Thebes.

2,931 words

Part 3 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

III. Deserts Take Few Prisoners

 “. . . we saw the break-up of the enemy . . . [they escaped] into what they thought was empty land beyond. However, in the empty land was Auda^[1]; and in that night of his last battle the old man killed and lulled, plundered and captured, till dawn showed him the end. (more…)

3,438 words

Part 2 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)

II. Deserts Create Monsters and Messiahs

“The Bedouin could not look for God within him: he was too sure that he was within God. He could not conceive anything which was or was not God, Who alone was great . . . He was the most familiar of their words.” — Thomas Edward [T. E.] Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom (more…)

Chile’s Atacama Desert: one of the driest places on Earth.

5,203 words

Part 1 of 3 (Part 2 here)

Deserts are the strangest places on Earth.

I spent my undergraduate years at an isolated college town that sat on the fringes of a vast, interior desert. To the northwest, the great Rocky Mountains began their ascent; directly west lay No Man’s Land, but the Sun’s; to the south, the flats gradually lifted into ancient atolls, red gorges, and rock. As a native woodland creature, this dryland seemed to me like another planet. (more…)

Kay Nielsen, Scheherazade before the Sultan, ca. 1920

4,469 words

Part 3 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

VI. Famous Last Words: Oriental Crimes and Punishments

I’ve warned against too much Orientalism, but at this point the Arabian Nights are as much Western as they are Eastern classics. Furthermore, like all tricky tellers-of-tales and spinners of yarns, I reserve the right to contradict myself on occasion. The untangling of knots I’ll leave to the scientists, philosophers, and Alexanders, if they can. (more…)