Next to Aristotle’s Topics, The Histories may be the most vaguely titled book ever written. I suppose you can get away with that when you’re the Father of History, as Herodotus is called, and as the author of the first narrative history it’s not like there was much room for confusion at the time. Besides, while Herodotus makes the Greco-Persian Wars his ostensible subject, he’s so far-ranging that the broad title describes the work well enough.
Whenever I think of English poetry, the first style to come to mind is something like the Cavalier poets. For me, their work is the good stuff; no multi-page bouts of navel-gazing in free verse here. Nope, this is good old-fashioned metrical writing with regular rhyme schemes, and what does a good Cavalier write about? Put simply, the good life - the love of beautiful women, a comfortable home in the country, close friends, duty, and at times, the loss of those things.
Though I’d heard that Titus Andronicus is one of William Shakespeare’s most violent works, I wasn’t really expecting the story of Procne and Philomela via the Elizabethan Tarantino. Nothing can really shock a modern audience, regardless of how intense a story is by Elizabethan standards, but the revenge, rape, and sadistic violence was enough to make a couple scenes a bit difficult to watch even for me. It’s the type of work where, when characters consider whether they should kill an infant, it seems completely plausible that they might actually do it.
Last year, I asked my twitter followers for good books on the War Between the States, and I was promptly informed that I would (not just “might”) enjoy Memoirs of a Service Afloat During the War Between the States, written by Raphael Semmes, captain of the CSS Sumter and, later, the Alabama. Once I got my hands on a copy, I could tell right away it would be a good one because opposite the title page the publisher, Alacrity Press, had a note saying, “This book is a product of its time. Some of the terms and views expressed by the author may reflect common values and usage of his day that are contrary to modern values. They should be viewed in that context.” A trigger warning like that is something I take as a strong endorsement.
A while back, over at Throne and Altar, Bonald pointed out that leaving the Enlightenment framework is only the beginning of thought. Once one rejects Liberalism root, tree, and branch, and embraces the Right, the rubric for judging historical figures and events is totally different, and it’s no longer clear without further investigation who the “good guys” in a given conflict were. Progressives occasionally mock the “gotta hear both sides” attitude, but once one is on the Right it becomes necessary, even in situations where the “correct” side always seemed obvious before.
So, in the midst of all the excitement over the imminent Thousand Year Trumpenreich, I thought now would be a good time to read Donald Trump’s popular 1987 book The Art of the Deal. I don’t typically read books written by famous living people, partly because I prefer things that have passed the test of time, and partly because they’re often ghostwritten anyway. Now, Trump did have a coauthor, Tony Schwarz. In these situations, having a coauthor on a memoir often means that the coauthor did most of the actual work while the celebrity uses his name to sell copies. I’ll assume that this is still substantially Trump’s work just because he seems to take a hands-on approach to anything affecting his business, but it’s probably wise to keep this in mind. Also worth pointing out is that in any memoir the author is going to be selective about what he chooses to say about himself. Klemens von Metternich, for example, wasn’t self-revealing at all in his memoirs. Trump doesn’t give one a sense of hiding anything, and this is primarily a business book, not a confession, but again it’s best to be aware that any author will, consciously or sub-consciously, portray himself in the best light.
So, at last we come to Henry VI Part III, or The True Tragedy of Richard Duke of York and the Good King Henry the Sixth, even though Richard’s brother Edward seems like a more central character than Richard, and historians would contest how much of it is true, but whatever; far be it from me to question the Bard or Oxford’s editors, and The Historically Dubious Tragedy… isn’t as catchy a title, anyway.
This is another book that I wasn’t aware of until I stumbled on it in a used bookstore. I was surprised that memoirs by Klemens von Metternich wouldn’t be more talked-about since he’s such a respected figure among the Right, and I went into the book with high expectations, thinking it would be something like a more focused version of Henry Kissinger’s Diplomacy.
Now, the book is titled The Autobiography: 1773-1815, but it’s not really an autobiography, since Metternich says very little about his personal life, especially once he begins his diplomatic career. It’s not a history, either, as he says explicitly a few times. I called it a memoir above because it’s mostly a collection of anecdotes, conversations, and commentary on events Metternich was involved in. It’s a bit odd stylistically, but perhaps that’s to be expected; Metternich didn’t publish this himself, and doesn’t seem to have intended for all of it to be published. Rather, it’s a collection of three works edited together by his son, Prince Richard Metternich. Two of them blend together seamlessly, but the third, On the History of the Alliances, does stick out noticeably, and is a more traditional historical narrative of the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1813-15, though still focusing on the events Metternich personally took part in and avoiding well-known explanations of the battles and broader history.
So, this past week I got a request to review a video game. It’s a bit outside the “bibliophile’s journal” theme I’ve been doing, but since I have posted about a few games before I thought it would be a nice change of pace. Also, this guy suggested that I’d look like some kind of nerd if I only write about books all the time, and I certainly wouldn’t want that. Anyone interested solely in Serious Business can come back next week, when I’ll have a post on Klemens von Metternich, followed by more from William Shakespeare.
I’ve noticed that native English-speakers often assume that anything worth reading has either been written in English or, at least, has been translated into English. However, the more one branches out intellectually the more one finds that this is by no means the case. Take, for example, St. Robert Bellarmine’s De Controversiis, which is available only in parts in English. Fortunately, translator Ryan Grant over at Mediatrix Press has been working on a project to translate as much of Bellarmine’s work as possible, beginning with the first part of De Controversiis, called De Romano Pontifice (or On the Roman Pontiff). I’ve just finished the first two books, which Mediatrix Press collects into one volume; the remaining three books will be out in another volume later this year.