Roger and Me
Walking into the Reform Club in London’s ritzy Pall Mall, the aspirations of a 26-year-old American student had come true. Recently graduated from Yale but deciding against…
The Music of Poetry: Brad Leithauser’s “Rhyme’s Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry”
Brad Leithauser. Rhyme’s Rooms: The Architecture of Poetry. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2022. “If, generations hence, literary historians take any interest in what went on…
An Italian Fresco in the U.S. Capitol: Brumidi’s “The Apotheosis of Washington”
That the U.S. possesses its own rich history in art and boasts a series of internationally acclaimed painters is no surprise. Indeed, a walk through the Art…
Does Individualism Promote Ugliness?
Beauty is communal. We know what beautiful architecture looks like. Tourists travel from all over the world to see the buildings of Italy, the Baptistry in Florence,…
The Wagnerian Imagination: A Review of Paul Heise’s “The Wound That Will Never Heal”
Paul Heise. The Wound That Will Never Heal: An Allegorical Interpretation of Richard Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung. Washington DC: Academica Press, 2021. Richard Wagner…
Plato and the Poets
“Beauty is a manifestation of Nature’s secret laws, which would otherwise remain forever hidden.” — J. W. von Goethe[1] Socrates notoriously advocated for the expulsion of the…
Rediscovering the Humanities on Open With Erich Prince
VoegelinView editor Paul Krause joined Erich Prince, the editor of Merion West, on his podcast Open With Erich Prince to discuss VoegelinView, Eric Voegelin, the artistic and…
The Beauty of the Devil in Art? Noah Charney’s “The Devil in the Gallery”
Noah Charney. The Devil in the Gallery: How Scandal, Shock, and Rivalry Shaped the Art World. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. “Rivalry, scandal, and shock…
Saving Russia’s Treasures from Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine shouldn’t cause us to lose sight of another battle: the gifts of Russia are not exclusive to that country and a dark…
The Transcendent Beauty of Icons
We live in an era in which words are routinely diluted of their meaning. One feels the need, especially around Christmas, to go back to the root…
Smiles from Reason Flow
So wrote Milton, describing the love between Adam and Eve, and its expression in their faces. The smile, for Milton, was proof that we are made in…
The True, the Good and the Beautiful
Let me say a few things about art and truth first of all. The Enlightenment — by which I mean that mass of thinking and idea-mongering that…
Symbols in Painting
“The second fabling-talk [parlare], which corresponds to the Age of Heroes, the Egyptians indicated to have been fabled [parlato] through symbols; to which are to be retraced…
Classical Modernity
Sometimes one hears the critique that classical music is no longer compatible with modernity. What “modernity” is supposed to mean always remains in darkness, as if the…
The Myth of Progress in the Arts
In the last century, very often the concept of “progress” was projected upon the arts as a measurement of quality: “good art” was “progressive art.” If an…