I have been spending my spring sabbatical in China. As I am a sinologist, specializing in traditional Chinese poetry, there is nothing surprising in that, except that I have not been here since 1981, when I led a tour group for less than three weeks. Most of my work has been that of the classicist,...
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Truth in Memory
In 2003, Carlos Eire, the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University, published a memoir of his Cuban boyhood, Waiting for Snow in Havana. In a review of this book that appeared in The American Conservative, I suggested comparison with The Last Grove, the Spanish poet Rafael Alberti’s autobiography, or...
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The Quest for Certitude
I must thank you sincerely for your extremely thoughtful gift of Saturday by British novelist Ian McEwan. I have read the book with great interest and enjoyment. What is more, it has sent me back to “Dover Beach,” which it uses so creatively, and to Matthew Arnold in general, with a new perspective. You can...
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The Body’s Vest
Casting the body’s vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide. —Andrew Marvell (1621-78), “The Garden” Browsing through the poetry section at Borders, I came upon a sole copy of a new book of poems by Fred Chappell, Shadow Box. I have been an admirer of Chappell’s fiction for years, especially his novel I...
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History and Nature
Thanks for your response. I enjoyed it immensely, and I believe you will understand that this is debate as it should be, not the invective that often substitutes for intellectual vibrancy these sad days. One of the pitfalls of this point in history is that everything ends up reduced to discussions of “slavery.” One single...
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Victims of Pleasure
I had long since given up on contemporary American fiction, although the Neoformalist movement has reinvigorated my interest in some of today’s American poets. The last American novelist I really admired was Walker Percy. And even he never gave us what I had vaguely been looking for: a dramatization of the lives destroyed—or nearly so—by the...
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When West Meets East
When Virginia Governor George Allen recently attempted to return the curriculum of his state’s public school system to a solid grounding in Western and American history, his plan, greeted with howls of indignation from the National Educational Association and their minions in the state legislature, was soundly defeated. “It would set us back to the...
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Fine China
“In this age of decadence people love antiques and willingly submit to deception.” —Cheng Hsieh, 18th-century Chinese poet and painter Anyone who fondly supposes that the Chinese Communists are the “good” Communists should read this exciting, powerful book by the Belgian sinologist Pierre Ryekmans, writing under his nom de plume, Simon Leys. As far back...
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Faith and Empathy
“Well, I do believe some things, of course . . . and therefore, of course, I don’t believe other things.” —G.K. Chesterton, The Incredulity of Father Brown The progressive turning away from belief in God that characterized Western intellectuals during the 19th century continues, alas, in the 20th. This intellectual shift has often been attributed...