War Movies and the Human Heart
In a previous contribution to Chronicles' Filmlog, "Three for the Resistance," I discussed movies portraying the plight of small nations—Norway, the Netherlands, and Finland—overwhelmed by ruthless Nazi and Communist force during the World War II era.
The column evoked an extended discussion about war movies in general, including thoughtful comments by combat veterans. The veterans undeniably have a point that the experience of battle in modern warfare cannot be adequately conveyed in any medium. Yet war is one of the decisive factors of human history and and contains elements touching on the universal and eternal in regard to our experience and nature. The subject cannot be avoided by art.
You have doubtless heard the typical namby-pamby American sentiment that "Violence never solves anything." It was repeated by my sixth-grade teacher breaking up a fight on the schoolground. (I was losing, which usually happened since my father had told me never to hit anyone unless they were bigger than me.) In fact, the one and only potentially positive attribute of violence is that it sometimes solves something.
Perhaps the theme of Resistance can be revived again later, but more can be presented usefully here about war cinema. I believe it was Faulkner who said something to the effect that all great stories concern the human heart, and particularly the human heart in conflict with itself. Given that it is impossible really to reproduce the experience of war on film, I would prefer to think in terms of “wartime” movies rather than “war movies” as such. With Faulkner's theme of the human heart in mind, limiting ourselves to World War II, and in the hope of bringing on more reader discussion, here goes.
The WW II films that I have come to admire most are British, for reasons stated in an earlier column. Perhaps my favourite of all is Sink the Bismarck (1960), which skillfully blends strategy, action, and humanity to render a real event seemingly comprehensible. Not surprisingly, the British appear to do best with sea stories: Noel Coward’s wartime propaganda for the British navy, In Which We Serve (1942); and The Sea Shall Not Have Them and The Cruel Sea (both 1953). The American films Command Decision (1948) and The Enemy Below (1957) contain some of the same admirable elements.
The German films Das Boot (1981) and Stalingrad (1993), fit my theme, as does Cross of Iron (1977), an American treatment of the experience of Germans on the Eastern front. Further, I will point to the Russian films Ballad of a Soldier (1959) and My Name is Ivan (1963). For my money, Ballad of a Soldier ought to be on anybody's list of the greatest films of all time. There are several Japanese treatments that could be mentioned, but by far the best is The Human Condition, a three-film series (1958-1961).
Another treatment I would call classic is the thirty-episode British television series Tenko (1981-1984), about British women imprisoned by the Japanese. As far as I know, it has never been produced in an American format DVD. On the same subject, A Town Like Alice (two versions, 1956 and 1981) and Paradise Road (1997).
Finally, let me recommend two gems about American fighting men and the home front, which are perhaps not as well known as others I have mentioned: I'll Be Seeing You (1944) with Ginger Rogers and Joseph Cotten, and The Clock (1945) with Judy Garland and Robert Walker. These two really reach the heart.
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I should have added that the cheap "Good War" nostalgia that has been peddled to the American public in recent years by posturing media celebrities and third-rate historians has nothing worthwhile to tell about either World War II or the human heart.
"war is one of the decisive factors of human history and contains elements touching on the universal and eternal in regard to our experience and nature. The subject cannot be avoided by art."
Clyde Wilson
"all great stories concern the human heart, and particularly the human heart in conflict with itself." Faulkner
"Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start? Is it not precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves?" James, First Bishop Of Jerusalem
When you think about it, there are only two really great, transcendent themes in all art: love, and war. Everything else is fluff and filler. And the idiocy that violence and war never solves anything is just spineless leftism again trying to stand reality on its head with more pie in the sky that flies in the face of human experience. Throughout history, war has solved most social problems, as victory and defeat fundamentally alter the trajectory of nations, empires, and individual men. In this connection, here is a quotation I think worth pondering:
"War is sacred; it is instilled by God; it upholds in men all the great and noble sentiments--honor, self-sacrifice, virtue and courage. It is war alone that saves men from falling into the grossest materialism."
Helmuth Von Moltke
"When you think about it, there are only two really great, transcendent themes in all art: love, and war." Ron Holt (I thought it deserved repeating)
"the idiocy that violence and war never solves anything is just spineless leftism again trying to stand reality on its head with more pie in the sky that flies in the face of human experience."
Ron,
So there is no mistake, one must choose for which side he will die fighting. Since love is stronger than death, one had better fight for his loves and I don't know if oil, clarity, democracy, and other neo-con favorites etc. are worthy of honest mens love. This may be why every tinpot dictator that needs whipping in the eyes of "Amerika" must be turned into a evil cartoon character that inspires Puritan roots. Or as Tom Fleming once said about a woman in some novel, " She thought she could eventually wipe out dust, once and for all."
I have read reviews of the recent Norwegian movie Max Manus that generally claimed it was better than average. Has anyone seen it?
'Stalingrad' started out good, but dissolves into oddity in the last 45 minutes. Another good German wartime film is Der Untergang, a film that attempts to humanize Hitler and his top leadership. I believe it succeeds in humanizing the Waffen SS, but humanizing Hitler is a monumental task.
Dr Wilson - a couple of examples of the 'Good war' nonsense they've chucked at us since the 1980s: Glory and Pearl Harbor.
Perhaps we should say that the only war worth fighting is in necessary defense of what is loved.
#8 Yes, that is what I was trolling for, I think. Thanks Dr. Wilson.
The Bridge/1959. A story of German teenagers who grow up together are called up in the home guard too defend a small german village in the face of the over whelming American advance.
When gun powder made war cheap, and 'democratic', chivalry and "war" was done as an aesthetic. The separation of powers between serf and knight, professional and 'people's armies' were settled, to the delight and demise of elites and common men everywhere.
Mr. Holt is in good company (Ernst Junger) but even Mr. Junger (an early user of LSD) came around to the limits of the aesthetic approach.
War movies are interesting in so far as studying advertising and propaganda--is it deep and complex or shallow? Can one truly watch a World War Two film without having seen Why We Fight and, more importantly, be familiar with the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds?
Give me war movies then of those in the middle--Jimmy Stewart as Charlie Anderson protecting his family as best he can in Shenandoah--that movie came out in 1965--this desperate attempt, perhaps, to avert the crisis in Vietnam.
And I'll take Dalton Trumbo's post-red scare hiding adaptation of his novel (hey Capra who did the Why We Fight series was watched by the FBI too for possibly lifting Soviet themes and putting them into a holiday classic), Johnny Got His Gun. Beyond the posturing of anti-anti-communism, the madness of the military hospitals is well captured; timeless.
1979's remake of All's Quiet on the Western Front with that chap from the Waltons--the post-modern must consider the casting in judging a film.
And the greatest war movie of our time, Joyeux Noel from 2005.
Two other movies I found very good, though not big-budget or big-name: Paths of Glory, with Kirk Douglas, and Attack, with Jack Palance and Eddie Albert. These films were not concerned with spectacular effects but rather with possessed strong characterizations and could be considered anti-war. The ambiguity adds to the depth.
Just curious what Dr Wilson and the other posters here thought of 'The War' series on PBS. Of course, it wasnt a movie but a documentary.
I personally found it to be a personification of what Dr Wilson was talking about at #1.
Paths of Glory was excellent--Mr. Holt, you might consider the recent French film (2004) A Very Long Engagement as both a visually pleasing film, but also incorporating parts of that movie as it relates to the French Experience in the Great War.
Erroll Flynn, having recently been profiled, of sorts, in the print version of Chronicles, did a great film, The Dawn Patrol, that attempt, of that time period to square the code of chivalry with modern technology and war.
I enjoy watching La Grande Illusion and then contemplating the themes in it, not the least of which are De Boeldieu's dying comments to Rauffenstein that the outcome will contain among other things the end of their usefulness as aristocrats to the society (societies) which will emerge. Another theme is the sense of duty, Boeldieu sacrificing his freedom and ultimately his life so that his subordinates can escape and Rauffenstein doing his duty as a commander despite the obvious affinity between him and De Boeldieu.
Dr. Wilson @ 10
Your words:
"Perhaps we should say that the only war worth fighting is in necessary defense of what is loved."
When that which is loved is kith and kin, home and hearth, blood and earth, then the fighting to defend them is worthy, even in defeat; however, there is that false love of which St. Augustine speaks, namely "superbia." Men obviously fight wars for or, perhaps better expressed, because of it as well.
Mr. Bryan @10: I watched die Brücke with some German friends of mine. The mother of my friend said that the Nazi's and the army had, in the film at least, abandoned the war that they had started and the war into which they had thrown the boys as the last fodder, but the boys themselves were defending their town, and they were patriots for it.
I watch little television, almost none; yet, I now know that on the coming fall and winter evenings, with my fireplace in the background, I am going to be watching these "wartime" movies.
Dr. Wilson, thanks for the insight and the recommended movies.
"Attack" (1956) is a favorite of mine. The Buddy Ebsen character, the platoon sergeant, reminds me of one of my uncles who fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
I don't watch PBS and did not see the "War" series. Wasn't it just another Ken Burns travesty? The FBI was quite right to keep an eye on "Why We Fight," the wartime propaganda series. The series should have been entitled "Why We Leftists are Making You Americans Fight and What We Are Going to Do to You after You Win." "Joyeux Noel" and "A Very Long Engagement are indeed very fine." As I remember, "Attack!" was one of the numerous war films in which Hollywood took the opportunity to present Southerners as hateful characters---either buffoons, cowards, or tyrants. This was a major theme which postwar expandeed into every type of movie.
If you watch "Attack" again, you will note that Buddy Ebsen's platoon sergeant is portrayed as a Southern man of honor, which is enphasized in a big scene. "Attack" is one of several 1950s films which did not give a recruiting poster view of the U.S. Army. Others were "Between Heaven and Hell" (1956), "From Here To Eternity" (1953), and Samuel Fuller's films.
#11 Mr. Bowen-- I know I'm not staying within the parameters, but Shenandoah was a horrible movie from a factual historical persepective, and it has suttle PC comparisons of the post Gettysburg Southern war effort to post Normady Nazi war effort. There were no Charlie Anderson's in the valley, but there plenty of his type in Indiana and Ohio. I apologize for the rant, but it is horrid movie. Also if anyone recommends the Bridge Over the River Kwai they should be booted from this sight.
In general, the ideological makeup of Hollywoodites prevents them from making outstanding war movies. An exception was Paths of Glory. Set in Europe (and filmed there), dealing with a foreign army and a retrospectively unpopular war allowed the pointy heads to drop their "good war" cheerleading. The ostensible enemy (the Germans) are unseen - the salient enemies are the troops' own cynical commanders. As I matured and recognized that our "leaders" are our worst enemies I came to appreciate the movie more fully. It is a subversive film in the good sense and was recognized as such by the US military (which prevented showings at base theaters).
Wilson @ 17
I dont remember the meme of the evil southerner before the 1989 film Glory. That was the earliest civil war movie (that I recall) that presented our boys as nothing but racist hillbillys.
And yes, 'War' was a Burns travesty. What made it even worse was how he was able to turn the great story of WWII into a egalitarian minority parade.
I thought that "Black Hawk Down" was halfway decent, as recent films go, or at least in comparison to such farces as "In the Valley of Elah" or "Jarhead." The soldiers were shown to be valorous, heroic, and skilfull, while the commanders were portrayed as political animals with their noses constantly twitching trying to figure out which way the winds are blowing. Which for the most part is what the officer corps has degenerated into after years of leftist indoctrination, media and academy-bashing, and political correctness. That was an element of realism I'm glad Ridley Scott included.
#22. I agree about "Black Hawk Down." Perhaps the best war movies are made about real events that have been written about by good reporters and historians. The characters in "Black Hawk Down" actually resemble real Americans (even though many of the actors are Brits or Commonwealth men. They walk and talk like actual Americans might. I note that this is because Ridley Scott is a Brit. Any American director would have inserted a whole bunch of black Rangers into an event where there were none. In fact, Hollywood has convinced a large part of the American public that most of the combat in Vietnam and the various Gulf expeditions was done by black men. And if you judge by Hollywood, the present war is being fought to rap music. I don't know if this is true or not, but it might help explain why the U.S. is losing.
Clyde Wilson,
I can at least speak about Vietnam because I fought there. It's true there were black soldiers; in my company, Bravo, there were about fifteen, that, out of one hundred and twenty paratroopers. They were fine soldiers and fine people,highly patriotic and dedicated, all volunteers, and excellent comrades. One of them was a very close friend whom I shall never forget: Spec 4 Joel Southern, from Queens, New York, killed in an ambush at Dak To. But there were nowhere near the numbers portrayed on the screen as hapless draftees. That is simply Hollywood's way of proving that Nam was some sort of social war, (think Jeremiah Wright in a director's chair) with the nefarious LBJ govt conspiring to murder black men. The LBJ/Nixon regimes were nefarious all right, but not in that way or for that reason. I strongly suspect the percentages of blacks are roughly the same today in Afghanistan and Iraq although I have no way of proving it.
@23, 24
Today, most of the young troopers in the 101st Airborne are white, overwhelmingly southern, and victims of an unspoken economic draft.
Ron is correct that the percentages of black soldiers remains about the same, at least in my outfit.
Ron, it is quite something to encounter a Dak To veteran here. Did you know Hackworth or was he too many echelons above? He was a soldier's commander, by reputation, a Tennessee boy and an outspoken critic of the War in its latter stages.
I hope that someday the burden of the fighting will be lifted from the backs of poor white southerners.
V/R
AWLC
(name withheld as the Army considers Chronicles an extremist website)
re#22
Mr. Holt, what made "In the Valley of Elah" a farce, in your estimation?
AWLC @ 25,
I did not know Dave Hackworth but I knew of him and had heard of him as a Korean War vet with a big rep. He once toured our sector (1969). He came through Firebase Tammy in the Central Highlands (73rd Airborne Brigade,82nd)along with a congressman, some generals and CBS reporters and cameras,and rushed in and out. The hills were crawling with Charlie and I guess they were afraid to take a chance on the brass getting zapped. I would have liked to talk to him. Later on, I enjoyed reading his reportage from Desert Storm. Best of luck to you and Godspeed, brother.
Concerning the theme of violence, a number of years ago my younger daughter wrote an essay for high school English class on J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Hobbit" in which she pointed out that the forces of good had to resort to violence to defeat the forces of evil. Surprisingly, considering the anti-volence propaganda put out by our public schools, she received an "A" for her work.
Concerning war movies, I remember watching many as a kid in the '50s and recall that the theme of many was that of one or more sympathetic characters being killed by the enemy, German or Japanese, with the friends of those killed seeking and getting revenge on the enemy. I was extremely grateful and satisfied when the enemy soldiers were killed. Pretty effective propaganda.
AWLC @25; Where does the Army publish its list of extremist websites? The Army, like most of the Government bureaucracy, is a victim of SPLC, CAIR, and other propaganda.
I think I detect a pattern here.
"Three Came Home"
What does everyone think of these two, which I feel haven't yet been topped: "A Walk in the Sun" and "A Bridge Too Far."
I don't know if the movie would qualify, Mr Roberts.
When "Black Hawk Down" came out, some film critics indeed complained that the Rangers were "all white." I recall watching the critic for, I believe, Good Morning America mention this. He said (reluctantly) that he had checked and found that the Ranger unit was exclusively white.
As far as recent war movies go, I highly recommend Stop Loss, and No End In Sight. Furthermore, I would watch any movie regardless of its low budget, that shows US and NATO troops wasting time in Afghanistan keeping the dope pipeline open so that the West (and indeed Afghanistan) can continue into mindless degeneracy, while enriching mafiosi, and other assorted government employees and contractors.
Bryan/#19
Indeed, outside parameters. If the topic were historical value of film, I doubt we'd find each other on this web site. It's like debating the historical accuracy of Braveheart when the consideration should be how the movie got made at all, and even acclaimed. Indeed, I suspect many a Southerner had been conditioned 'too proud' to 'get' where Charlie Anderson was coming from--and headed off to the rice patties, whole the home from voted for either Wallace/Bomber Le May or Nixon in '68--when the answer was 'no dog in this fight.'
I stated my aesthetics in judging a war film (as separate from the other thread, movies of national resistance); I can think of a couple interesting themes: Man/Civilization vs Technology and Man/Civilization vs State, that I find as legit art, the rest is propaganda that still can and should be judged as it is, on the merits of the cause--war films often bordering on the the thin line of porno and Newspeak, or legit art. Again from the other thread, part of appreciating Clint Eastwood's 'The Outlaw Josey Wales' is understanding who wrote the book--there are other considerations outside of historical merit.
____
Mr. Holt;
The trilogy of war films my just-missed Vietnam Marine Pa thought were worth watching with his son in my youth: Gallipoli, the updated All's Quiet...and A Bridge Too Far. As he is personally very, well,'mainstream' with all the issues and wars of his day, art still transcends.
@34 C Bowen ..."and headed off to the rice patties..."
Rice patties are savory luncheon fare my wife makes from leftover rice mixed with egg and canned salmon. The agricultural landscape where fighting took place in Viet Nam was a rice paddy.
How the decision to list Chronicles as "extremist" was reached.
Scene: Army Office Of Readiness And Morale, the Pentagon, Washington, D.C.
General Getsum: All right, what's wrong with this one?
Colonel Chairass: They say we're mercenaries, sir.
General Getsum: Yeah, right. And I've got a villa on the Riviera.
Colonel Chairass: They say we killed lots of civilians.
Getsum: Let 'em stop making IEDs and we'll stop killing 'em! Ungrateful bastards... What else?
Chairass: Let's see, there's ... 'should have concentrated on Al Qaida in Afghanistan and stayed out of Iraq...'
Getsum: Uh huh.
Chairass: ...'bankrupting the nation...'
Getsum: Yadda yadda.
Chairass: ...'acting like imperialists...'
Getsum: (Yawns) That it?
Chairass: They say it's uncivilized, unnatural and immoral to use women in combat.
Getsum: BAN 'EM!
If "the war on terror" is an acceptable subject no film has more to offer that Pontecorvo's Battle of Algiers (1965). It was banned in France for about 30 years, I believe. It is the brutal and largely true story of how a battle was won and a war was lost.
John Ford's Fort Apache (1948) is the story of how a defeat brought about by pig-headed arrogance is manufactured into an heroic myth.
#34 Bowen- You are corect most proud Southerners would not understand the pacificist message not defending your home or your neighbors home. Must be an enlightened New England concept.
The enlightened concept is asking why boys keep going over seas on the thinnest pretexts to defend their neighbor's homes, a concept so self-obvious, it must be directed at those doing the sending (mostly women), not those who are going as traditional warriors, running to the sound of the guns.
re-#38
"proud Southerners would not understand the pacificist message not defending your home or your neighbors home. Must be an enlightened New England concept."
Pacifism isn't a New England concept by any means. Agressive war is very much a yankee idea and has been for centuries. Southerners haven't been involved in defending our homes since Lee surrendered at Appamattox. Enlisting in the military of the empire can't be considered defending anything other than corporate and political interests of an elite whose own sons are exempt from conscription.
I submit that "The Caine Mutiny" can teach us as much about duty and leadership as any movie ever made. I once served under a Capt. Queeg; I would have been a much better officer had I understood the message of the movie before I was commissioned.
Breaker Morant is not only a brilliant courtroom drama, but also an excellent war movie, since most wars nowadays have more in common with the Boer War than the jingoistic WWII sort. Also, Go Tell The Spartans in which the Vietnam debacle was in the military advisor stage. The advisors seemed to be victims and misfits treated shabbily by brain-dead generals working for politicians. The book it's based on is called Incident At Muc Wa. And for Cold War silliness nothing tops Kubrick's amazing Dr. Strangelove, which is based on a so-so book called Red Alert. The Great Escape also gets a special mention.
But I will agree Paths Of Glory is riveting, and I ejoyed In Which We Serve as very effective propaganda. The worst are Plattoon, and the Warner Brothers cartoons flogging war bonds.
“When you think about it, there are only two really great, transcendent themes in all art: love, and war.” Ron Holt (I thought it deserved repeating)
I thought I'd repeat it because I think it's inadequate, especially when one makes the statement comprehensive by saying "all art".
What about beauty?
As someone involved in the arts professionally all my life, specifically in music, I'd say that beauty in and of itself is not only an essential transcendent element in great art, but the least tainted with the immanent and the least agenda driven.
I'm not saying something as shallow as some early 20th century Europeans, advocating l'art pour l'art--the beautiful in art is always allied with the true and the good. I agree with Christian Morgenstern who criticized this sensibility by writing, "L'art pour l'art, that is to say, we've only strength to play."
But I think saying art only serves the supercilious on the one hand or the conflict driven human condition (love and war) on the other is to present a false dichotomy.
Art in its highest expression, I believe, is the handmaiden of the Divine.
L'art pour l'art degrades art to the shallow, the diversionary and merely entertaining. (Is there anything more boring than entertainment?) But I think we degrade the whole meaning of art and stand in danger of reducing it to a kind of Hindemithian "Gebrauchs Kunst" if we conveniently ignore the issue of beauty as a "Ding an sich".
Beauty is not allied with the diversion of entertainment which most use to escape reality. Rather, beauty is that element in art that most purely and perfectly draws us to, if only momentarily, transcend the limitations that bind and blind us fallen creatures, driving us to conflict with one another, Rather, it elevates and opens us to the Presence of the Divine, the apex of Reality.
I often think of this at Mass. What a different experience mass can be due to the music. If the music is banal, as at one parish I attend occasionally, my soul has to struggle to open to the truth and goodness Present there. If the music is profoundly beautiful I feel assisted in entering into the mass. Words, ideas or images fall short of the power of beauty in the music to do this.
Better no music at Mass than the cheap, the superficial and the banal often heard--no matter how well it might be performed!
To ignore beauty as an essential element of art is, in my opinion, not to simply ignore an element of art, but to ignore the very heart and highest purpose of art and reduce it to a mere tool of propaganda. We all know what kind of art that produces---anti-art, soulless and heartless.Is there anything worse than art wrought to "send a message"?
I know we can always extract the beautiful as an ideal or concept from the alloyed effects of human intercourse and conflict--especially if we look long and hard enough at a given event, but only in art do we find beauty in its purest state. We can see that beauty in many astounding landscapes of the great painters, but most intensely and most purely in music. In considering movies and literature let's not forget music along with beauty when we speak of "all art".
My two cents (worth about .08 cents of what it was before the Fed).
Just a thought about war and glory: in 1936, George Bernanos said through his character Olivier de Tréville-Sommerange that the last real soldier was killed on 30 May 1431: Ste Jeanne d'Arc.
The argument about beauty is an important and oft-forgotten one. It is not enough to say something: one must say it articulately. The overwhelming majority of modern art forgets this concept.
The overwhelming majority of modern art thrives on obscurity---that's how it seeks to make those "not among the cognoscenti" feel small and stupid.
That, Monsieur, is the point of all post-modernism, "inflate week ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity," observed Bill Watterson. Once in a while such an artist latches on to a good idea, but even there it becomes manifest he has forgotten how to express reality.
Tom,
"I’d say that beauty in and of itself is not only an essential transcendent element in great art, but the least tainted with the immanent and the least agenda driven."
Yes, beauty is the splendor of truth. Theologians tell us that the essnce of the beatific vision is knowledge and not love. But as every dialogue of Plato suggests,love is who leads us to this end. Beauty is not easy to define but the classic definition of it containing variety in unity and order is not bad. Justice and mercy, love and war, heaven and earth, are familiar themes in art and their re-presentation is vital to any sense of beauty. The conception of art as the beautiful is fine with me when it is understood to mean something more than aesthetics or a science of the senses that is more related to photography than the immitation of life. I have noticed you are cantankerous and argumentative almost a contrarian. If you were not so familiar with music I doubt that I would even respond but I had a friend who was very much like you --- always wanting to understand but in a rather detached and aloof way that always seemed argumentative and provactive. He became a Carthusian monk where the intellectual life is ordered to the very essence of things and is so much happier there than he would be in the polite and shallow society of contemporary discussion.It is for this reason I always admire your rather abrupt and rude manners --- Not having met you, I assume you are like him and eager to know. Of course you might just be a simple prig wherein any response is a waste of time.
Robert wrote: I have noticed you are cantankerous and argumentative almost a contrarian.
Thank you for your response. I must say I'm taken aback by your personal comments. I wasn't expecting that. I was really interested in a critique of my little discourse on beauty.
I try to concentrate upon objects not subjects. But for the record I guess I am something of a curmudgeon. Personally, I consider myself like G.K. Chesterton, in that I'm a controversialist, but without Chesterton's genius (I think that goes without saying) or manners. I guess tempermentally I'm more like Belloc, my hero, and I have a way of making good friends and not so friendly enemies. I don't consider that altogether bad, since I don't think I've ever met anyone worth knowing that hasn't made enemies and detractors.
You are right; I just hate the banal---boring, but I like the absurd.
In exchange I provoke in order to evoke something from others beyond the pablum of polite interchange---I want to hear something they believe to be true and are passionately committed to, to be convincingly confirmed or corrected, and to benefit from the good others see--but I have to be convinced it is a true good.
You might say I keep trying to fill in the gaps, but my making provocative statements rather than by asking questions.
You further wrote:
"The conception of art as the beautiful is fine with me when it is understood to mean something more than aesthetics or a science of the senses that is more related to photography than the immitation of life."
Precisely, that is why I said that the beautiful in art should elevate us, point to and put us in touch with and help open us to the Divine. Transcendent experience, not sensual titilation, not just mere refinement of technique and skill, is what passes for beauty in my world; enlightenment, not entertainment. I think we agree here more than disagree.
Am I eager to know, or do I just like to raise Hell? I can only look at the evidence in my own life; I have evolved from an atheist to a fundamentalist protestant to a mainline protestant to a Roman Catholic; from a narrowly focused musician to some one of broad philosophical, theological, political and historical interests, from some one living an atomistic life to a committed Southern Partisan, from some one totally ignoring social/political issues to someone actively advocating secession and the re-establishment of liberty on these shores. Much of this thanks to St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Richard Weaver, G.K. and Old Thunder, and Dr. Wilson--among others.
I guess the left would consider me lost, but I see these developments as progress.
But, to speak that phrase we so long to hear from Obama, "Enough about me."
"Beauty is not easy to define but the classic definition of it containing variety in unity and order is not bad."
I like that. True, beauty isn't easy to define. But as elusive as it is to define it's largely instantly recognizable; you know it with certitude when you see or hear it. It's sort of like St. Augustine's comments on time: he says he knows what it is until he has to say what it is.
I'm down with that.
But this is far afield from Dr. Wilson's original points of concern.
tom
"Much of this thanks to St. Thomas Aquinas, Aristotle, Richard Weaver, G.K. and Old Thunder, and Dr. Wilson–among others."
That is mighty fine company you keep. McCainiacs were once so enamored with Alan Greenspan that they said if he ever died they would have him stuffed, propped up and seated life-like in order to chair the federal reserve board meetings. That is ideology gone wild. What you have described with the above authors is a Christian culture -- A pagan, a saint, two catholics, two protestants all who became citizens of Rome in one way or another. What a human shame that very thing is all in pieces now, ignored by the hellish minds of technocrats enamored with everything but the permanent things you have spent a lifetime pursuing. May God Bless you --- and them too!