The Fleming Foundation Cultural Commentary

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Feature / Fleming

9 Aug, 2016

Properties of Blood, I.5: Revenge, Conclusion

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In our own time vengeance is the predictable plot-device in pulp fiction thrillers and the apparently endless series of films inspired by comic books.  In one series of ludicrous films, the union of superheroes is even known as “The Avengers.” Americans have not confined their dreams of vengeance to popular entertainment.  The newspapers are filled with cases of vengeance-killings.  The rise in cases (both fictional and real) of vengeance is not limited to men killing men or getting even with their ex’s: Feminists have made heroes out of women who killed (as in the case fictionalized in The Burning Bed)...

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Best Revenge / Brownlow

6 Aug, 2016

Prof. Brownlow on Early Modern English Verse

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C.S.Lewis said that a “metrical mania” came over England in the 16th century, and it’s an idea that certainly explains the very odd taste for metrical versions of the Psalms in ballad meter that popped up then. There’s a late 15th–early 16th-century version of The Hunting of the Cheviot that’s a great deal more relaxed, metrically, than the later 8 + 6 “metrical” versions: 1.  The Perse owt off Northombarlonde an avowe to God made he That he wold hunte in the mowntayns off Chyviat within days thre In the magger of doughte Dogles and all that ever with him...

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Best Revenge / Fleming

6 Aug, 2016

Writing and Reading Verse: A Digression

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I postponed putting up Katherine Dalton’s reply until I had time to make some response.  Although I did finally post her  comment on Part II, it is helpful, I think, to put it here: Ah, poetess.  Makes me feel all be-bluestocking’d and olde quaintee. I have no argument with “since,” but as I read it, the replacement of “it seems” with “since” still leaves four beats in that line—it just makes the line begin with a stressed syllable instead of an unstressed.  SINCE anOTHer FORty-TWO. I had orginally written “It seems another forty Have just arrived today” but I missed the enjambment,...

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Autodidact / Fleming

6 Aug, 2016

Aristotle’s Politics, Book IV

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In Politics IV, he surveys the kinds of constitution other than monarchy, which he treated in III.  His prudent and cautious treatment of democracy and aristocracy are a good antidote to the inflated rhetoric put forward by the proponents of both systems, while his observations on law and custom as the basis of legitimacy should be read aloud to Congress and the President every day.

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Feature / Fleming / From Under The Rubble

4 Aug, 2016

Surprising News

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Everyday the media spring a surprise on the public.  This morning we learn that a knife-wielding Norwegian in London killed an American and wounded several other people.  While British police are not ruling out terrorism, they are saying at this point that mental health issues are involved.  Oh, and by the way, the Norwegian is of “Somali descent.”   What percentage of Somalis are Muslims, you ask.  Just about 99%, but that is irrelevant.  In one sense the cops are right:  Islam would appear to be dangerous to a believer’s mental health. Just a day or two ago, Somalis in Minneapolis-St. Paul...

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All Paid Subscribers / Andrei Navrozov / Wednesday's Child

3 Aug, 2016

Wednesday’s Child: Archival Gloom

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I was digging through some old correspondence files the other day when this letter jumped out at me, a photocopy of one I mailed from Venice some sixteen years ago, on April 2, 2000.  It is on headed paper, with my address at the time, “Palazzo Mocenigo, San Marco 3348, Venezia,” up on top. Occasionally one comes across relics from one’s past which, in the light of subsequent events, seem portentous. This letter is such a relic, and straightaway it occurred to me that I ought to publish it in its entirety, without, however, revealing the addressee.  For this, my...

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FF / Podcasts

3 Aug, 2016

Boethius Book Club, Episode 6: The Glass Key

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February’s book selection is a bit different from previous choices:  The Glass Key, a hardboiled mystery novel by Dashiel Hammett.  Hammet is best known for The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man, both of which were turned into popular films, but the author’s personal favorite was The Glass Key, a very readable novel that takes up themes of friendship and loyalty, deception and betrayal.  It was made into two American films.  An early version starring George Raft and a later and better film with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake.  The great Japanese director, Akira Kurosawa, so liked this movie that...

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FF / Heiner

1 Aug, 2016

The Alpine Heart

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Liechtenstein is the 6th smallest country in the world, larger than San Marino but smaller than the Marshall Islands, and is roughly twice the size of the island of Manhattan.  The Principality is ruled by a stable royal family that is so popular that when in 2002 a referendum was put to the people to increase the executive power of the prince, including giving him the right to dissolve Parliament, it passed by a 64% margin. Snuggled in between Austria and Switzerland, it enjoys a prosperous existence, profiting from a close cooperation with the Swiss, whose money they use via a currency union....

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Feature / Peters

1 Aug, 2016

Im Geiste des Führers: Merkels Endlösung!

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In April of 1945 as the Red Army penetrated deep into the German Reich, as the British Army raced across the German low country and as the American Army plowed through Bavaria and into Austria and the Czech Protectorate, Adolph Hitler-ensconced in his bunker under the ruins of the Reichskanzlei, his French SS Division Charlemagne fighting his last battle-unleashed his scorn, his anger and his wrath, not against the agents of his coming doom-the Red Army, the British Army and the American Army-but against his own people, the Germans, in whose name without their consent he had unleashed war on...