Tea at Trianon: How Fiction Can Help You Face Adversity

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, June 20, 2025

How Fiction Can Help You Face Adversity

From Jocelyn Soriano:

Instead of always listening to frightening news around you, you can focus your attention elsewhere. Instead of dwelling on various scenarios that only keep you awake at night, you can fix your attention on another world.

While there can be a criticism of the “escapist” attitude this seems to address, we can always go back to J.R.R. Tolkien’s opinion on the role of fantasy in our lives. While it may seem to lean towards “escape”, Tolkien reminded us that there are two kinds of escape.

There is an escape from something we shouldn’t run away from, like escaping from our responsibilities and obligations. But there is also an escape from something that is harmful to us. Is it a bad thing then to escape from worrying that only keeps us paralyzed in times of danger?
“Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?… If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”― J.R.R. Tolkien
(Read more.)