Category: Fleming

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Articles / Autodidact / Fleming

10 Aug, 2015

Sophocles’ Antigone 3

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Autodidact:  Sophocles’  Antigone III Thomas Fleming The Structure of Tragedy First, a few words about the nature and structure of tragedy.  The origins of Greek tragedy lie in a long-standing tradition of choral lyric poetry.  In primitive tragedy, we can imagine a chorus of 12 male citizens chanting a processional introduction and singing formal odes on the exploits and, usually, death of a hero.  Later the number was increased to 15. At some point a hypokrites or interpreter was added.  Presumably this actor, as we call him, could both interpret the choral lyrics by introducing them and responding to them and...

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Fleming

30 Jul, 2015

Annals of Trebizond, Part II

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The Annals of Trebizond, Part II Thomas Fleming The history of Trebizond is compounded in equal parts of Byzantine exotic history, American soap opera, and the political morality of the English television show, House of Cards.  (Parenthetically, I had a conversation with a TV-watcher so dumb he actually preferred the Kevin Bacon series to Sir Ian Richardson!) Much of the charm of Trapezuntine history lies precisely in how much, comparing great things with small, our own institutionalized culture of pettiness and betrayal. When “Emperor” Alexios I died at the age of 40, the throne passed not to his son but...

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Autodidact / FF / Fleming

25 Jul, 2015

Sophocles’ Antigone II

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Sophocles’ Antigone II Sophocles was a known “conservative” in Athens, by which I mean that he generally supported leaders who advocated a balanced constitution and opposed the campaign to impose radical democracy.  He was born probably before 495, and died at the end of 405 or the beginning of 406. He was fortunate in his family, which was wealthy and respected.  Unlike Aeschylus he probably did not descend from the highest level of the ancient aristocracy.  He was noted for his good looks and affable disposition, a gentleman of the old school. It is not unlikely that, Sophocles like his...

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Fleming / From Under The Rubble

21 Jul, 2015

From Under the Rubble: The Wearin’ of the Cross

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In simpler times when our world was young, we used to sing, “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world/Just as phony as it can be.”  Now we might just as well call it an Obama and Osama world:  It’s still  phony but a lot more dangerous than circus lions. A Palestinian Muslim named–what else?–Muhammad kills five military men.  The cry goes up:  Why did this happen?  What made him do it?  His family– described by people who know them as a “typical American family”–say this is not the son they knew but the victim of depression, and ABC News makes headlines with revelations about his use of drugs. Many...

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Articles / Autodidact / FF / Fleming

19 Jul, 2015

Autodidact: Sophocles’ Antigone

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Autodidact: Sophocles’ Antigone I by Thomas Fleming Sophocles is among the most misunderstood writers of antiquity.  In liberal interpretations, he has been made into a kind of rational and liberal humanist.  In fact, he was a political and religious reactionary.  Religious and skeptical of sophistry, Sophocles was both a profound writer and an Athenian citizen who served his city in war and peace.  His works are a warning against intellectual and political arrogance, and if Pericles (whom he seems not to have liked) had listened, Athens would never have hurled itself into a campaign of imperialism and war that proved...

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Essays / Fleming

19 Jul, 2015

America: Not a Christian Nation by Thomas Fleming

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This piece slipped by the censors at The Spectator in August 2005 America Is Not a Christian Nation by Thomas Fleming President Bush’s remark the other day that the theory of ‘intelligent design’ should be taught alongside the theory of evolution brought howls of derision from his detractors in Europe and the United States. It was, they said, one more piece of evidence that America is populated by fundamentalist zombies who are potentially as dangerous as bin Laden’s boys. Intelligent design, it goes without saying, is a boneheaded piece of pseudo-science, almost as simplistic as the naive materialism that Darwinists...

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FF / Fleming

6 Jul, 2015

The Annals of Trebizond, I by Thomas Fleming

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The Annals of Trebizond  By Thomas Fleming “Trebizond,” I exclaimed,  “Why the very word spells romance.” “That’s funny,” she replied.  “I always thought romance began with an ‘r’.” Preface Once upon a time, long long ago and far away on the coast of the Black Sea, flourished the might Empire of Trebizond.   This statement is true enough for the WikiBritannica entry, but it needs a few minor adjustments.  To be accurate, the 15th century, when Trebizond fell to the Turks, was not so long ago, at least when viewed in the context of the three thousand years our civilization has...

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FF / Fleming / Revisions

4 Jul, 2015

Revisions: Four Faces West

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Revisions:   Four Faces West,  based on Pasó Por Aquí by Eugene Manlove Rhodes Ray Olson and Thomas Fleming I had intended to begin the discussion almost a week ago, but the film arrived late and I wanted to show it to our friend Mark Kennedy, who does not even possess the primitive television set I have for watching films.  Ray Olson A variant of the brilliant western short novel, Paso por aqui, by Eugene Manlove Rhodes, Four Faces West retains the characters’ names and approximate roles but sets up a new set of relationships. Ross McEwan (Joel McCrae) and Jay (in the...

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FF / Fleming

17 May, 2015

The Measure of All Things

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Remember when a “Conservative” was someone opposed to change? “Any change, at any time, for any reason is to be deplored,” as The Duke of Cambridge (Victoria’s uncle) once declared. Back in the 1950’s, the word got restricted to the meaning “anti-communist/capitalists who believed in a strong defense and a free economy, and it was embodied in the unlikely person of Barry Goldwater. By the election of 1980, Conservatives had taken the initiative and were now the bold innovators in economic and foreign policy. Most conservatives were delighted with the change of image—from Tory squire to progressive, from curmudgeon to...