Skip to content
Menu
t u n d r a n a u t
  • Home
  • INTERVIEWS
t u n d r a n a u t

w e e k e n d LINKS: Deathless Fame/Something Eerie at the Edge of Vision, Crisis

Posted on November 10, 2023November 10, 2023 by tundranaut

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.”

 

 

astral tundra=

Pages

  • INTERVIEWS

Recent Posts

  • Rest in Peace, Brian Wilson
  • LINKS: Psychedelic Espionage; Context-Bound Agents; and Art as the Axis of Meaningful Identity & Spiritual Transcendence
  • DISASTROUS AMATEURISM
  • LINKS: Vital Hatred; the Open Road; Primal Despotism
  • LINKS: Killing Those Who Would Convict Them of Their Sins; Deep Heuristics; the Values of God

Tags

aesthetics America American angels art beauty books California chaos Christian cinema cities culture death evil fear film friends God government hell history JG Ballard Justin Murphy life light love movies music Nick Cave pandemic people politics power reality religion society strange technology the world Twin Peaks Twitter United States violence war
November 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
27282930  
« Oct   Dec »
tundranaut=

Meta

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
cages of infinity=
©2025 t u n d r a n a u t | Powered by Superb Themes
Go to mobile version