First Friday Links – March 2019

Charles Halton asks why no one has heard of Enheduanna, the world's first known poet. (Maybe it's because academics insist on politicizing her.) "Enheduanna was born more than 4,200 years ago and became the high priestess of a temple in what we now call southern Iraq. She wrote poems, edited hymnals, and may have taught other women at the temple how to write. Archaeologists discovered her in the 1920s and her works were published in English beginning in the 1960s. Yet, rarely if ever does she appear in history textbooks."

What can the contemporary Catholic writer glean from the so-called Benedict Option? "As a continuum open to study and criticism, literature did not emerge full-grown from the head of Zeus. In fact, it did not emerge until the Renaissance, which produced Shakespeare, whom Mr. Dreher regrets not having read in college. It may be that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Or it may be that Mr. Dreher’s trick of selecting the fruits of history while condemning the forces of history is a dishonest method."

Is Chesterton on his way to sainthood? "However, while the famed author might not fit the bill of pious saints of the past who prayed their way into heaven in monasteries and convents, he exhibited heroic humility, Ahlquist said. In his view, Chesterton was 'a great genius who really had the ability to annihilate his opponents if he wanted to, but he always treated them with charity.’"

George Orwell's critical essay on British Cookery has finally been published after being rejected 70 years ago by the British Council. "Generalising further, one may say that the characteristic British diet is a simple, rather heavy, perhaps slightly barbarous diet, drawing much of its virtue from the excellence of the local materials, and with its main emphasis on sugar and animal fats. It is the diet of a wet northern country where butter is plentiful and vegetable oils are scarce, where hot drinks are acceptable at most hours of the day, and where all the spices and some of the stronger-tasting herbs are exotic products."

Finally, Roger Scruton considers the problems of Beauty in a World of Ugliness in a talk sponsored by the Hildebrand Project. Skip forward to the panel questions for his thoughts on Lady Gaga's "Poker Face."