Whatever his exact reasons for adopting a more Stoical approach to life, Cicero unwittingly (but perhaps gracefully?) prepared Rome for Christianity in ways that other pagans and paganisms could never have allowed or done. That generation of Stoics, including Virgil and Seneca, expected, amazingly enough, the human incarnation of the God of gods. It is little wonder, then, that so many of the early Church fathers—such as Jerome, Augustine, and Ambrose—considered Cicero to be a pagan Christian, more related to Christ and his teachings than not. Most certainly, his martyrdom on December 7, 43 BC, did not hurt his cause among Christians, either.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/06/cicero-republic-on-duties-bradley-birzer.html
All posts by bradbirzer
Critical Moments: Tolkien’s Mythology, 1914-1937
As some of you might now, I’m in the middle of completing a book manuscript on the history of the Inklings for ISI Books. Here’s my partial list of critical moments in the creation of Tolkien’s larger mythology, from its earliest hints to the publication of The Hobbit.
“Bidding of the Minstrel” (poem) Winter 1914[1]
“Tinfang Warble” (Poem) 1914[2]
On Francis Thompson (paper) 1914[3]
“Earendil” (poem) September 1914[4]
“Kalevala; or Land of Heroes” (paper) November 22, 1914[5]
“The Story of Kullervo,” (story) late 1914
“Qenya Lexicon” (dictionary) 1915[6]
On the Kalevala (paper) February 1915[7]
“Man in the Moon” (poem) March 1915[8]
“Sea Chant of an Elder Day” (poem) March 1915[9]
“Cottage of Lost Play” (Poem) April 27-28, 1915[10]
“Shores of Faery” (poem) July 1915[11]
“The Happy Mariners” (poem) July 1915[12]
“A Song of Aryador” (poem) September 12, 1915
“Kortirion Among the Trees” (Poem) November 21-28, 1915[13]
“Over Old Hills and Far Away” (Poem) December 1915-February 1916[14]
“Habbanan Beneath the Stars” (Poem) December 1915 or June 1916[15]
Prelude, Inward, Sorrowful (poems) March 16-18, 1916[16]
“The Fall of Gondolin” (story) 1916-1917[17]
“Tale of Tinuviel” (story) 1917[18]
“Cottage of Lost Play” (story) February 12, 1917[19]
The Music of the Ainur (story) Between November 1918 and Spring 1920[20]
“Turin Turambar & the Dragon” (story) 1919[21]
“The Fall of Gondolin” (story aloud) Spring 1920[22]
“Lay of the Children of H” (poem) 1920-1925[23]
“The City of the Gods” (poem) 1923[24]
Question if Beren a man or elf 1925-1926[25]
“Lay of Leithian (poem) 1925-September 1931[26]
“The Silmarillion” (story) 1926[27]
“Silmarillion/Sketch” (story) 1926[28]
“Intro to Elder Edda” (paper) November 17, 1926[29]
“Mythopoeia” (poem) September 1931-November 1935[30]
The Hobbit (novel) Late 1928-1936[31]
“The Quenta” (story) 1930[32]
“Earliest Annals of Valinor” 1930[33]
“Annals of Beleriand” 1930[34]
Second version of Silmarillion 1930-1937[35]
“New Lay of Volunga” (poem) early 1930s[36]
“New Lay of Gudrún” (poem) early 1930s[37]
“A Secret Vice” (paper) 1931[38]
“Fall of Arthur” (poem) 1931-1934[39]
“Beowulf: Monsters and Critics” (paper) November 25, 1936[40]
“The Lost Road” (story) 1936-37[41]
“The Fall of Númenor” (story) 1936-37[42]
Draft of Silmarillion to Allen/Unwin November 1937[43]
“On Fairy Stories” (paper) March 8, 1939[44]
Sources
[1] CJRT, HOME 2, 269.
[2] CJRT, HOME 1, 107.
[3]Garth, Tolkien at Exeter, 30.
[4] CJRT, HOME 2, 267; Garth has it on November 27, 1914; see Garth, Tolkien at Exeter, 41.
[5] Flieger, ed., The Story of Kullervo, 63, 91.
[6] Parma Eldalamberon 12 (1998).
[7] Garth, Tolkien at Exeter, 42.
[8] CJRT, HOME 1, 202.
[9] Garth, Tolkien at Exeter, 42.
[10] CJRT, HOME 1, 27.
[11] CJRT, HOME 2, 271.
[12] CJRT, HOME 2, 273.
[13] CJRT, HOME 1, 25.
[14] CJRT, HOME 1, 108.
[15] CJRT, HOME 1, 91.
[16] CJRT, HOME 2, 295.
[17] CJRT, HOME 2, 146; and CJRT, The Children of Húrin, 9.
[18] CJRT, HOME 2, 3.
[19] Edith writes out story for JRRT, HOME 1, 13.
[20] CJRT, HOME 1, 45
[21] CJRT, The Children of Húrin, 9.
[22] To the Exeter College Essay Club, in CJRT, HOME 2, 199.
[23] CJRT, HOME 3, 1.
[24] CJRT, HOME 1, 136
[25] CJRT, HOME 2, 52.
[26] CJRT, HOME 3, 1.
[27] CJRT, HOME 2, 300.
[28] CJRT, HOME 4, 11.
[29] CJRT, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, 16.
[30] CJRT, Tree and Leaf, 7.
[31] “The Hobbit,” in Scull and Hammond, JRRT Companion and Guide, Reader’s Guide 1, 509-522.
[32] CJRT, HOME 4, 76.
[33] CJRT, HOME 4, 1.
[34] CJRT, HOME 4, 1.
[35] CJRT, HOME 5, 107.
[36] CJRT, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, 5.
[37] CJRT, The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, 5.
[38] Given for Johnson Society, Pembroke College. See Fimi and Higgins, eds, A Secret Vice, xii.
[39] CJRT, Fall of Arthur, 10-11.
[40] CJRT, The Monsters and the Critics, 1; and Drout, ed., Beowulf and the Critics.
[41] CJRT, HOME 5, 8-9.
[42] CJRT, HOME 5, 7-9.
[43] CJRT, HOME 5, 107
[44] CJRT, The Monsters and the Critics, 3.
ICv2: Brands Live. Brands Die.
Daily coverage of the pop culture products industry, including toys (action figures, models and statues), anime (anime, manga, and Japanese imports), games (collectible card and roleplaying games or ccgs and rpgs), comics (comics and graphic novels), and movie and TV (licensed) merchandise. We feature business news, and in-depth analysis for retailers, publishers, manufacturers, distributors. Trade properties we cover include Star Wars, Star Trek, X-Men, Gundam Wing, Dragonball Z, Pokemon, Akira, Lone Wolf and Cub, Magic the Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, Mage Knight, Superman, Spider-man, JLA, Batman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, J.R.R. Tolkien, Sailor Moon, Sandman, Harry Potter. Genres we cover include fantasy, science fiction, horror.
— Read on icv2.com/articles/columns/view/43504/brands-live-brands-die
reMarkable vs Apple Pencil first impressions | Macworld
Adam surprises Leif with the reMarkable tablet and asks him to do a quick writing test versus the Apple Pencil to see what he thinks of the ‘paper like’ experience.
— Read on www.macworld.com/video/96307/remarkable-vs-apple-pencil-first-impressions
The Influence of Irving Babbitt’s Humanism ~ The Imaginative Conservative
Most diabolically, it had become—quite truly—a false religion. Founded by the former Baptist and Unitarian minister, Charles Francis Potter’s humanism went public at the very beginning of the fall of 1929 when he delivered a homily to 244 New Yorkers, having turned away well over 400 to meet the fire code. “Just as Protestantism was an offshoot of Roman Catholicism, and Liberalism, as represented by Unitarianism and Universalism, was born of Protestantism, so also Humanism has come forth from Unitarianism.”[1] Blatantly taking the name of his new faith from Babbitt and More (whom he thought would be allies in his new religion) he asked his congregants to give up their primitive “deity obsession.”[2] Only from man, Potter claimed, could one find true dignity. “Out of the heart of man have arisen all his noble impulses and aspirations.”[3] Babbitt and More, horrified, condemned the new movement, and the scare almost certainly moved More toward Anglican orthodoxy. Potter, however, with the aid of the effete John Dewey and bizarre Harry Elmer Barnes, founded the American Humanist Association and issued the Humanist Manifesto in 1933. To be sure, the word “humanism” has never recovered.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/06/irving-babbitt-influence-humanism-bradley-birzer.html
Book Review: ‘Mr. Straight Arrow’ Illuminates Writings of John Hersey | National Review
Ironically, one of Hersey’s talents lay in his ability to focus on people. In The Algiers Motel Incident, he focused on the victims of police brutality. In The Wall, he told the story of resisters in the Warsaw ghetto. In Hiroshima, Hersey wrote about six people, what they were doing when the atomic bomb fell, and how they were affected by the destruction it sowed.
As Treglown shows, Hersey was a “war poet as much as a journalist.” Although he did not write poems per se, reading Hersey, one sees how he transferred his musical ability and feel for rhythm to the sound of words.
COMMENTS
Hersey’s understanding of the power of imagery shines through his opus — especially in Hiroshima. Treglown says the book showcases Hersey’s “startling intimacy with the people he writes about” and his innate sensitivity for language. Even the title of the first section, “A Noiseless Flash,” suggests Hersey’s appreciation for the image.
— Read on www.nationalreview.com/2019/06/book-review-mr-straight-arrow-biography-john-hersey/
Review: Google Chrome has become surveillance software. It’s time to switch. – Silicon Valley
Lately I’ve been investigating the secret life of my data, running experiments to see what technology really is up to under the cover of privacy policies that nobody reads. It turns out, having the world’s biggest advertising company make the most-popular web browser was about as smart as letting kids run a candy shop.
It made me decide to ditch Chrome for a new version of nonprofit Mozilla’s Firefox, which has default privacy protections. Switching involved less inconvenience than you might imagine.
My tests of Chrome versus Firefox unearthed a personal data caper of absurd proportions. In a week of web surfing on my desktop, I discovered 11,189 requests for tracker “cookies” that Chrome would have ushered right onto my computer, but were automatically blocked by Firefox. These little files are the hooks that data firms, including Google itself, use to follow what websites you visit so they can build profiles of your interests, income and personality.
— Read on www.siliconvalley.com/2019/06/21/google-chrome-has-become-surveillance-software-its-time-to-switch/
Contrasting Views of Evil: ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’
Douthat hints at a larger point for which Tolkien has been criticized: an alleged oversimplification of evil. In LOTR, no ambiguity or drama exists in the determination of who is good and bad in Middle-earth; we never learn exactly why Sauron is evil, nor exactly what he did to earn the status of chief antagonist. The intrinsic nature of Sauron’s evil may even strike modern sensibilities as mildly unjust or at least arbitrary. Fantasy writer Michael Moorcock mused that as readers “we are not sure . . . if Sauron and Co. are quite as evil as we’re told.” This is because, as another author, Fritz Leiber, put it, Tolkien “does not explore and even seems uninterested in exploring the mentality and consciousness and inner life of his chief villains.”
Bradley Birzer observes in his wonderful book, Sanctifying Myth, that Tolkien refrained from probing the depths of his evil characters by design—since the reality and, indeed, the banality of evil does not require elaborate fictionalization:
The monsters of fiction and nightmares are merely manifestations of the true, original evil—the perversion and mocking of God’s creation. In its essence, evil is and always will be merely derivative and perverse.
Rather than contriving Sauron’s particular evil actions, Tolkien portrays evil as a force, one that is “outright ominous, for it seems to be everywhere, pervading the entire landscape of Middle-earth, surrounding the Fellowship of the Ring on all sides.”
— Read on www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/contrasting-views-evil-game-thrones-lord-rings/
A heritage of liberty | The Dayton Jewish Observer
Sadly, many of today’s increasingly secular Western societies have begun to embrace elements of totalitarianism as well. As they lose touch with their biblical roots, these nations are also surrendering a foundational value of Western civilization: liberty.
Well-versed in the Bible, America’s founders certainly understood the notion of liberty. Recognizing the connection between Exodus and Sinai, they saw liberty as the individual exercise of free will and freedom from coercion, but constrained by virtue, explains history professor Bradley Birzer.
In a memorable analogy, John Adams captured the same sentiment, “Liberty can no more exist without virtue and independence than the body can live and move without a soul.”
— Read on daytonjewishobserver.org/2019/06/a-heritage-of-liberty/
“The Hanging God”: Poet as a Bridge of Great Magnificence ~ The Imaginative Conservative
Of our living poets—to my mind—no greater one exists than James Matthew Wilson. A prominent and energetic professor of the humanities at an Augustinian university by day, Wilson edits and writes poetry with equal prominence and energy by night. Not only does he write excellent (make that brilliant) verse, but he also encourages the art of others.
His latest book of poetry, The Hanging God, brings together more than thirty of his poems, all of which were originally published elsewhere but none of which appeared in precisely the form they do in this collection. In other words, context matters, and Wilson understands this more than most. Not surprisingly, given Wilson’s vast interests, the topics of the poem range from pure love to diabolical Nietzsche. Some of the poems take place then, and many now. Some never. Some take place here, and others elsewhere. Some nowhere.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2019/06/hanging-god-james-matthew-wilson-bradley-birzer.html
Spirit of Cecilia 
You must be logged in to post a comment.