Ancient Pain: “[Anthony] Hecht’s influence on the lyrics of Steely Dan may be his most widely appreciated legacy today, given how few Americans read poetry anymore. The influence is obvious. Hecht was a formalist with a wry sense of humor. His poems are disciplined, articulate, and clever, always anchored to a moment, a place, and specific characters. ‘Kid Charlemagne,’ the song that came out of [Donald] Fagen’s own trip to San Francisco, has lines Hecht could have written.”
Augustus and the Salvation of Rome: “It is a hard thing for a teacher to admit, but perhaps the emergence of great leaders sometimes can be explained less by their education, training, and character than by the historical moment itself. The Emersonian belief that it is the great man who makes the times is not without truth, but every so often it is the times who make great men, or rather bring forth greatness from smaller men. If Winston Churchill had died in 1939 at the age of sixty-four his exceptional gifts as a war leader would never have been discovered and he might now be remembered, if at all, as a colorful but failed politician. When Elizabeth I came to the throne of England in 1558, the kingdom had never had a successful female monarch. The graybeards regarded her accession with deep foreboding, England’s enemies with glee. No one knew that an Elizabethan Age of deathless fame lay before them. ”
How Magical Combat Can Win the Next Election: “Crisis arrives when too many failed predictions turn rationalism into a laughingstock, and the whole enterprise grinds to a halt as people abandon it. That’s what happened in ancient China, in the twilight of the Chou dynasty, when its rationalist schools failed to bring good government; it’s what happened in ancient Greece in the twilight of the classical age, when its rationalist philosophy failed to inspire moral virtue. It is happening now, in the twilight of the industrial era, as our rationalist sciences fail to provide the Tomorrowland future we’ve been promised.”
Riddles and Revelation: “Grief may be more needed in a time of brokenness than we may tend to realise.”
Why Civilization is Older Than We Thought: “The forbidden fruit offered to Adam by Melek Taus in the Garden of Eden? Grain.”
Why the Fairies Disappeared: “It struck me that even in the most mundane patch of woodland there’s still always something eerie at the edge of vision. As with the gleam of deer-eyes after dark, in the woods it takes only a minor shift in consciousness for all the godlings to creep back out from behind the trees.”
