Our unlikeness from our ancestors calcifies yearly, as the egg-shell hardens in the womb of the bird. The grandeur of Europe is dead, in its place is a cynical establishment that celebrates a culture of the kitsch, the unmanly, the unfeminine, an abstractive, self-reflexive, self-parodic serpent, which will devour the world before it devours itself. Those uninitiated in this new Dionysian cultural cannibalism live in the entrails of the beast, grasping for dollars with which to buy unearned and dishonorable pleasure and power. In the periodic sufferings of the economic cycle, these acolytes are allowed to despair, perhaps commit suicide, shat into the void, thereby revealing themselves to be weak, and therefore unworthy of the secret knowledge, which is that the world is a Joke without a mouth or a face, that in reality (what is reality?) it is Nothing.
Who among us can walk through the halls of Blenheim, follow the silken melodies of Vaughan Williams, feel the intellectual passion of Rodin, pray in the pews of Notre Dame, ascend the steps to the halls of Congress, study the prudence of Madison, or, closer to our own day, read the grave optimism of T.H. White, and grieve at all for what is gone? We have not the power to feel, for we are cut off from attachment by a horrible bank of garbage, moral, theological, aesthetic. We may ascend the heights of our own side, and view what remains of Western culture with a pleasant detachment, but we lack a sense of belonging.
I believe this is extremely dangerous. At this time we lack a traditional high culture. The whim may arise at any time in our cultural leadership to destroy what relics remain of the old. At those times, and until we regain a confident aesthetic based in a Christian faith, we will have no defense other than our grief to protect these things. Architecture and landscape are clearly the most obvious victims, for they require upkeep and they use valuable land, which is always in demand in this world. But the other high arts are just as much in danger, though for a more subtle, more basic cause. Critical knowledge is easily lost. Taste and judgment and appropriate enjoyment of the good, the true, and the beautiful are not developed by accident, but by purposeful education. The aim to develop such appreciation has largely disappeared from the modern university. If it disappears utterly, then Beethoven and de Tocqueville will be just as invisible as a bulldozed St. Paul's.
Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. We must carry on grieving. Teach yourselves, find teachers, to cultivate your taste for Western culture. Steep yourself in it, make the painful sacrifice of emotion necessary to take your place as PART of it. Remember your home with longing and love, so that when they come to destroy it utterly, you may tuck a memory of it away with you. Preserve it in your personal library, share it with your children. Information in books is not enough. You must learn it by heart, and cherish it as your own. Some day the modern world may forget its hatred of the past, and the children of our descendants will be allowed to play in the ruins of the old world. The monastic orders may again become significant. Even then the learning must be preserved. When the renaissance finally comes (and who knows how long that will be?), this knowledge will be valuable, and the grain of wheat that fell to the ground and died will bear much fruit. This is your responsibility to your inheritance, thrown as it has been to the four winds. Gather what you can, add to it if you will from your own soul, and wait for a better day.
Piero di Cosimo -
Perseus Frees Andromeda (1513)
Boothman Bar, one of four great gatehouses of the city of York
