Tea at Trianon: The High Cost of Re-Enchantment

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

Friday, February 2, 2024

The High Cost of Re-Enchantment

From Charles Coulombe at The European Conservative:

Despite the best efforts of society and those in charge to depress us, January still retains a great deal of magic—which is only fitting, given that the Twelve Days last until the Epiphany, and Tolkien’s birthday sits in the middle of them on January 3. Indeed, traditionally the season lasts until Candlemas Eve on February 1. Moreover, there are quite a few feasts of varying types to be celebrated during this time. In late January, Scotsmen around the world celebrate Burns Night, honouring their national bard. Following a more or less set format, this observance features bagpipes, toasts, candles, and, of course, whiskey, to say nothing of haggis, the ‘chieftain of the pudding race.’ Across France, and in select places in Belgium, Italy, and elsewhere, there shall be Requiem Masses for Louis XVI around the anniversary of his murder on January 21. Aachen and Frankfurt give themselves up to celebrating—liturgically and otherwise—the great Emperor, Charlemagne, around his feast day on January 28, and two days later, Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland sees the anniversary of his murder marked in various parts of the Anglosphere. Not least of these is his statue at Trafalgar Square, close to where he was murdered at Whitehall. In all of these observances, an ancient magic seems to live again.
Since the 1960s at least, pundits have written about the ‘disenchantment’ of modern life, by which they mean its reduction to dull, machine-like ‘modernity.’ Back then, books like Theodore Roszak’s The Making of a Counter-Culture and Charles Reich’s The Greening of America spoke of the youth movements of that time as efforts in breaking a soulless technocracy, and returning the country or the planet to some fancied state of bliss. This was the era when Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings became popular. Although bemused by much of what the young of that era did, the Professor also pointed out “the behavior of modern youth, part of which is inspired by admirable motives such as anti-regimentation, and anti-drabness, a sort of lurking romantic longing for ‘cavaliers’, and is not necessarily allied to the drugs or the cults of faineance and filth.” Alongside such stirrings came such organisations as Cambridge’s Christmas Revels, the Renaissance Faires, and the Society for Creative Anachronism. But enjoyable as such activities may be for the participants, they don’t do much for the rest of us and—as with the Christmas season—they pass by eventually.

Moreover, recognition of this issue far predates the 1960s. Max Weber was the first to become very excited about the concept. Much of Carl Jung’s work is animated by a desire to ‘resacralise’ reality through the use of symbols. Guenon and the Perennialists go on and on about the same thing. But, to be sure, the issue predates all of them. It might well be said to date back to the Romantic revolt against the ideals of the Enlightenment, which resulted in the horrors of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. That having been said, as the 19th century wore on with the growth of Scientism and Social Darwinism, there were any number of imaginative responses, ranging from the Occult Revival to the birth of fantasy literature. Obviously, none of these reactions had worked by the dawn of the 21st century. (Read more.)