Counter-Currents
The Cultured Thug
Jonathan Bowden
San Francisco: Counter-Currents, 2023
244 pages
Release Date: December 1, 2023
“Truthfully, in this age those with intellect have no courage and those with some modicum of physical courage have no intellect. If things are to alter during the next fifty years then we must re-embrace Byron’s ideal: the cultured thug.”
—Jonathan Bowden
The Cultured Thug collects eight speeches and four reviews by legendary British New Right intellectual Jonathan Bowden on British sculpture, William Shakespeare, Edward Elgar, H. P. Lovecraft, Robinson Jeffers, George Orwell, the Soviet Gulag, feminism, Aeschylus, George Steiner, Murnau’s Nosferatu, and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. The Cultured Thug is an excellent introduction to both the astonishing breadth and unifying threads of Bowden’s interests. Read it, and you’ll become a bit more cultured and a bit more courageous at the same time.
Contents
Editor’s Preface by Greg Johnson — iii
- Shakespeare — 1
- Edward Elgar — 15
- British Sculpture — 25
- H. P. Lovecraft — 58
- Robinson Jeffers: Misanthrope Extraordinaire — 89
- Nineteen Eighty-Four & Totalitarian Leftism — 111
- The Soviet Gulag — 141
- Lilith Before Eve — 167
- Aeschylus’ Agamemnon: The Multiple Uses of Greek Tragedy — 191
- A Polyp Devours its Feed, Paracelsus Unzipped: An Analysis of F. W. Murnau’s Film Nosferatu — 194
- George Steiner’s The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H. — 204
- Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ — 211
Index — 213
About the Author — 236