Tea at Trianon: In the Jungle

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, April 3, 2013

In the Jungle

How lust perverts language. From Anthony Esolen:

It’s rather like desiring to live in a place never known to man, a half-a-jungle, or a jungle on even-numbered days and a Victorian drawing room on odd-numbered days. It cannot be. And make no mistake, a jungle it is, because lust by its very nature is cruel. The promoters of the sexual revolution thought that good will between the sexes was immutable; we could alter the conditions of their dealings with one another, and they would adjust accordingly, and they might even treat one another more honestly and humanely, once the starched-collar “rules” were dispensed with.

We should have known better. It’s never easy for men and women to admire and love, not just one exceptional member of the other sex, but the other sex generally. The triumph of undirected eros—old brute lust—has made that situation worse, and wrought a new sadness in the world. Men and women now have almost nothing kind to say about the other sex. It’s not that they don’t love one another. They don’t even like one another. The girls, I’m told, see the boys as threats—the creatures who will hurt them, drug them, and have their way with them, cajole them into bed and then dispense with them; and the boys see the girls as manipulative, hot-and-cold, quick to accuse and blame, and, frankly, emotional roller-coasters after the high winds have struck and left the soul a looped and tangled mess. (Read entire post.)

julygirl said...: Eventually a person will come to terms with reality instead of succumbing to the belief of love and life as delivered via TV and Hollywood propaganda.; April 3, 2013 at 9:34:00 PM EDT