2,951 words
That which is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil.
Friedrich Nietzsche
I think I love you. So what am I so afraid of?
The Partridge Family.
Love and cinema go together, but there is something strange about silver-screen romance. (more…)
John William Waterhouse, Psyche Opening The Golden Box, 1903
John William Waterhouse, Psyche Opening The Golden Box, 1903
2,497 words
Part 6 of 7 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, Part 5 here, Part 7 here)
The final part of the Alcibiades I deals with the self and self-knowledge. Most ancient commentators held that this discussion is the core of the dialogue.
From Self-Cultivation to Self-Knowledge
Socrates has finally gotten Alcibiades to admit that he needs to pursue self-cultivation. But what is self-cultivation? We must answer that question lest we mistakenly cultivate something other than ourselves. (more…)
John Singleton Copley, “The Copley Family,” 1776
John Singleton Copley, “The Copley Family,” 1776
2,340 words
Part 2 here
Christopher Lasch famously described the family as a “haven in a heartless world.”[1] How is the world heartless, and how is the family a haven? For Lasch, the heartlessness of the world has everything to do with the increasing liberalization and economization of life. (more…)
Junior
Junior
1,537 words
My dog Junior is a 35-pound Boston Terrier/Boxer mix with the most consistently sweet disposition of any animal I’ve ever owned. He’s a great little guy, and except for his occasional bouts of gassiness, I can’t think of a bad thing to say about him. Yesterday morning while taking him for a walk through my slowly decaying lakeside Georgia community, I was suddenly forced to risk my life in an attempt to save his.
I wouldn’t do such a thing for many people besides my wife and son. (more…)
1,377 words
As my unbelieving and horrified eyes pored over one unacceptable greeting-card image after another, I kept screaming inside — which is why you couldn’t hear me, but trust me, I could hear myself screaming as clear as a bell, so loudly in fact that at one point I felt compelled to scream at myself to stop screaming — and what I kept screaming was, “WHY ALL THE HATE?” (more…)
Painting by Charles-Philippe Larivière of the Battle of Montgisard in 1177 (ca. 1842)
Painting by Charles-Philippe Larivière of the Battle of Montgisard in 1177 (ca. 1842)
3,554 words
If there ever was a civilization that deserves the name of Renaissance, this was the civilization of the Middle Ages. In its objectivity, its virile spirit, its hierarchical structure, its proud antihumanistic simplicity so often permeated by the sense of the sacred, the Middle Ages represented a return to the origins. — Julius Evola[1] (more…)
Winston & Julia, 1984
Winston & Julia, 1984
2,699 words
Love is best. — last line of Robert Browning’s “Love among the Ruins”
He loved Big Brother. — last line of George Orwell’s 1984 (more…)
1,394 words
Christian Petzold’s Undine, set in contemporary Berlin, begins with Undine Wibeau (Paula Beer) having coffee with Johannes, her boyfriend. It’s not going well. She has deep, penetrating eyes and red hair that looks ready to blaze. She says to him: “You said you loved me. Forever. If you leave me, I’ll have to kill you. You know that.”
We’ve all had girlfriends like that, haven’t we? (more…)
4,893 words
You can watch The Big Parade in its entirety here.
Released in 1925, The Big Parade would go on to become the 2nd largest-grossing film of the entire silent film era. Only Birth of a Nation made more money. The Big Parade was so popular that it played in some theaters continuously for a year and at the Astor Theater in New York for two years. (more…)
William Powell Frith (1819-1909), A May Day Celebration (private collection)
William Powell Frith (1819-1909), A May Day Celebration (private collection)
6,740 words
Throughout Europe and the United States, the chill mornings and blossoming trees of spring are giving way to summer’s warmth and abundance. As the midway point between spring and summer, the month of May has historically been a season of great importance to the peoples of Europe, a joyful time of sowing, revelry, feasting, and courtship. (more…)
Edmund Dulac, “The Buried Moon” from The Red Cross Fairy Book, 1916.
Edmund Dulac, “The Buried Moon” from The Red Cross Fairy Book, 1916.
4,430 words
He had me at: “It was still the South, he knew it for a certainty when they passed an aged negro in overalls hobbling down along the highway toward no conceivable destination. The land was cursed. God, he loved it.” [1] Tito Perdue, author of the two novels here reviewed, The Smut Book and Cynosura, is a proud Southerner who has enjoyed skewering the sacred cows of these, our cursed times since he became a writer in the early 1980s. (more…)
