Last week, I wrote about how classical music changed me. In that article, I discussed my time living in London, and how one genre of classical music helped bridge the gap between the head and the heart more than any other: opera.

To most people, opera feels like a living relic. It conjures up comical images of fat women in viking helmets, not a profound connection to eternal beauty. And yet, it is with good reason that the composer Richard Wagner deemed opera a Gesamtkunstwerk, a “total work of art”.

Much like film, opera incorporates music, acting, set design, poetry and more to bring a world to life for the spectator. The only difference is, it does so in front of a live audience, and tells the story through music as opposed to mere dialogue. Indeed, most people are surprised at how much they enjoy opera when they attend their first one — the only problem is, they don’t often know where to start.

That’s why today, I want to share 5 of the most accessible operas, and excerpts of their famous arias and interludes. To be clear, this isn’t a list of the best operas, nor of my favorites.

It’s simply a list of five operas, each by a different composer, that provide a great first step into the world of opera, no matter where you start…

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1) Carmen

Georges Bizet’s Carmen has just about everything you want in a first opera: great costumes, world-famous arias, swaggering bravado, and an intoxicating femme fatale.

You probably already know some of its most famous excerpts: its prelude is played on the Formula 1 victors’ podium, while the “Habanera” and “Toreador” arias are among the best known pieces of operatic music in popular culture.

But beyond the hits, Carmen is also a poignant reflection on seduction, sin, and how lust can degrade a man to the role of supporting actor in the metaphorical movie of his own life. Attentive listeners will pick up on Bizet’s careful use of the children’s choir to contrast against the seedier scenes, especially in the first act. The children’s innocence serves as both refresher from and reminder of the brewing tragedy amongst the adults: a tragedy that will end in jealously, death, and, fortunately for us, an unforgettable score.

2) The Marriage of Figaro

This is the first opera I ever attended, and it’s the near opposite of Carmen. Although it’s a comedic opera about a young couple in love, Mozart’s score gives it a depth reminiscent of Shakespeare’s own romantic comedies, such as Much Ado About Nothing.

The Marriage of Figaro is considered by many (including myself) to be among Mozart’s best works, and with good reason. Mozart keeps you hooked for the entirety of the opera’s nearly three-hour runtime, kicking things off with his famous overture and brilliantly underscoring all the humor and wit of the story performed on-stage.

From Figaro ranting about the man trying to steal his bride, to the pubescent Cherubino discovering his attraction to women, to the heartfelt plea of a neglected countess, Mozart’s music touches on all aspects of the human experience. In addition to being a great opera, The Marriage of Figaro is a perfect encapsulation of all Mozart’s heart, humor, brilliance and depth. For this reason, if for no other, it deserves a listen.

3) La Traviata

Giuseppe Verdi’s La Traviata is one of my personal favorites. Although it’s often written off as being a typical “Italian opera” (read: love, loss, and a broken heroine), I believe the opera is far deeper than most people realize.

Hidden references to Dante and St. Paul, as well as the recurring phrase croce e delizia (“cross and delight”, i.e. the two meanings of “passion”) make La Traviata more than meets the eye. Its prelude foreshadows the tragedy of the plot in reverse, beginning with somber notes and working up to the present frivolity of the protagonist Violetta.

La Traviata also contains one of the most famous arias in all of opera, “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici”, which you are likely to have heard before. Overall, Verdi’s masterpiece (or more accurately, one of his many) makes for a phenomenal intro to opera, and is a must-see for anyone wanting to get into the genre.

4) Cavalleria Rusticana

This is the least popular of the operas on this list, which isn’t to say it’s not popular in operatic circles. Its shorter runtime often leads to it getting double-billed with the opera Pagliacci, and for the beginner, it’s a perfect way to get into opera without making as much of a time commitment.

Cavalleria Rusticana is set in Sicily, a fact which becomes apparent from its opening notes. The opera’s first aira, which comes right on the heels of the overture, is sung not in Italian but Sicilian, and further thrusts you into the heat — literal and metaphorical — of small-town life on the Mediterranean island. Both the overture and the haunting opening aria can be listened to here.

The plot of the opera centers on love, betrayal, and a fateful duel, but not before taking detours into matters of death and resurrection, such as in the Regina Coeli Easter Hymn. The result is nothing less than one of the most moving pieces in the operatic canon. Be sure to crank up your speakers for this one!

5) La Bohème

No list of accessible operas would be complete without Puccini. The “John Williams of opera”, composer Giacomo Puccini brought his operas to life like modern day movies, penning some of the most accessible works in the operatic catalog.

Of those works, La Bohème is arguably the most approachable, especially if you’re familiar with the movie Rent: the latter’s plot was essentially lifted and adapted from Puccini’s opera. Featuring a young man and woman in love in Paris, La Bohème tackles everything from romance, bohemian escapades, and an endearing portrayal of male camaraderie. Part of the plot was in fact inspired by Puccini’s experience mapping out his landlord’s daily route with his friends so that they could avoid meeting him in the city!

La Bohème is best taken in as a whole, otherwise you lose a lot of the context which lends the plot its emotional weight. That said, you can never go wrong with O soave fanciulla.

Were you hoping to see Wagner on the list? If so, don’t worry — he requires an article of his own, and we’ll be sure to get to that soon…

Thank you for reading!

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I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.

-Charles V

I often tell people that nothing has changed my life quite like learning a foreign language. It might sound hyperbolic, but it’s true — in a scarcely foreseeable twist of events, I’ve seen Charles V’s quote reflected in uncanny ways in my own life. I’ve worshipped in Spain, married an Italian, done business with Frenchmen, and learned just enough German to speak to my horse (“willst du den Apfel?”). Admittedly, however, my terrestrial domains are far less expansive than Charles V’s continent-spanning empire ever was.

But despite that small inconvenience, the point still stands: learning a foreign language opened up opportunities for me I never dreamed possible. And I don’t mean just economically speaking — language introduced me to authors, artists, and thinkers I never would have discovered in the English-speaking world.

For anyone who desires to discover exotic worlds and different cultures, learning a language must be a top priority. The only question is, how do you do it?

Today, I’m pulling from my nearly two decades of experience to share what I’ve learned about language learning. To be clear, there aren’t going to be any magic bullets or secret tricks — what I’m sharing are simply concrete principles and practical wisdom to help you stay consistent in your efforts, no matter what language you want to learn…

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Set Expectations

The first thing to do is to set your expectations for what it actually means to learn a language. There are several ways of doing this, but I’d simply break it down into two categories: time, and scope.

Let’s start with scope: when you say you want to be fluent, what kind of “fluent” do you want to be? Most people’s “fluency” is domain specific, and never all-encompassing — just because you can hold casual conversations doesn’t mean you can understand rap lyrics, medical terminology, or the political/cultural charge of certain terms.

Your “fluency” in a language is bound to be domain specific. For example, although my overall vocabulary in French is generally more extensive than that of my Italian, my knowledge of everything baby-related (diapers, cribs, pacifiers, etc.) in Italian is far greater than it is in other languages, including at times even English!

It’s healthy to define the scope of the areas in which you do want to be fluent, such as in casual conversation, medical related terminology, or your specific professional field. In doing so, you’ll allow yourself to come to peace with the areas in which you aren’t fluent, such as when visiting the mechanic, understanding cultural references in song lyrics, or being able to read 19th century novels.

Lastly, a note regarding time: there are tons of videos online with misleading titles such as “I Learned Italian in 7 Days.” Whatever you do, do not take these seriously. No matter how compelling these videos look, there is always something the content creator is hiding, such as which languages they grew up speaking, or how many languages they’ve already learned. And, in almost every case, they are trying to sell you something.

For a more accurate look at how long it’ll take to learn a certain language, the U.S. Department of State Foreign Service Institute (FSI) has classified foreign languages into categories based on the time it takes for native English speakers to reach “Professional Working Proficiency” (equivalent to B2/C1 on the CEFR scale). This is far more realistic and can help you set healthy expectations.

Immerse Yourself

Now, let’s dive into the practical ways of learning a language. First and foremost among them is full immersion, though this is often difficult to achieve. Money is the main impediment, since personal travel, study abroad programs, and intensive language learning retreats typically don’t come cheap.

But let’s say you do get the opportunity to go abroad for a month to learn. Even here, many people fail to take advantage of their opportunity. They think that simply living in a foreign country means you will learn the language. Let me assure you, it does not.

In my experience, a language is learned by forcing yourself to think in it, and every time you revert back to your native language you disrupt this pattern. Admittedly, I was a bit pedantic about this starting out: my first time abroad, for example, I hardly texted any of my English-speaking friends and didn’t listen to music, watch a movie, or read a book unless it was in the target language.

It’s intense, but it works, and I know this because I’ve experienced the other approach as well. For example, despite the fact that I live in Italy and am married to an Italian, the foundations of my Italian are much weaker than those of my Spanish or French. Why? Because the whole time I’ve lived in Italy, I’ve worked in English. I’m not complaining, of course, because I love my job — but I can definitely tell that living and working in your target language, to the near exclusion of your native language for a time, definitely reaps benefits.

But shy of going abroad for full immersion, what can you do to learn a foreign language? What are the small, practical steps you can take everyday to help reach a solid level of conversational fluency?

Part of the answer is to stop using Duolingo, and get back to basics. In my experience, way too many people overcomplicate language learning with apps and “optimization” — but the best way to learn is to keep it simple, and focus on just a few core principles…

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The first discussion on the next book will take place in 2 weeks, at the usual time:…

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I didn’t grow up around classical music. That’s not to say I wasn’t exposed to it; just that I never spent much time with it apart from the occasional school recital or symphony in the park. In my adolescence and teenage years, any taste I had for classical music quickly gave way to rock and roll, and Beethoven yielded to the Beatles.

But now, things couldn’t be more different. Classical music makes up the majority of my listening, and — although it might sound hyperbolic — has completely transformed my life for the better. So, what changed?

Today, I want to share the story of how classical music redefined my perspective and altered my course in life, and how it might transform yours as well…

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Learning How to Listen

My first serious foray into classical music came not long after university. My burgeoning interest in the “Great Books” canon quickly bled out into other fields of study, as I came to realize they were all intertwined. Art, music, and literature all existed in dialogue with one another, and I understood that in order to fully grasp the one, you had to engage with the others as well.

Classical music, however, resists casual learning. Although some pieces have mainstream appeal, most works aren’t immediately accessible. What I quickly learned is that it isn’t enough to just listen to classical music — you have to learn to listen to it. Classical demands a higher level of attention and patience, as well as a baseline understanding of different musical forms.

To be clear, this doesn’t mean you have to study musical theory before listening to a piano concerto. Just as you can pick up how a language works by being immersed in it, you can do the same by listening extensively to classical music. But at the same time, having basic knowledge of the grammar certainly speeds you along in your progress!

So it was that I sought out resources — YouTube videos, podcasts, and even a free Yale University course — to help me in my listening. But at this point, my interest in classical music still remained on the level of intellectual curiosity. Like one intrigued by theology before he is convicted by true faith, so I remained at a relatively surface level in my experience with classical.

But the next stage of my journey would change all of that…

Connecting the Head to the Heart

“When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.”

-Dr. Samuel Johnson

When I moved to London, I suddenly found myself with unrivaled access to everything I had studied for so long. There were performances of Shakespeare, classical concerts, and art galleries galore: I was like a child in a candy store.

My financial discipline was not too unlike that of a child, either. I poured the entirety of my paycheck into attending the opera, ballet, and symphony, subsidizing the glamour of the opera house with a diet of canned beans and Tesco meal deals. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times — and certainly the most formative of times as well.

By attending three to four performances a week, I got in the “reps” required to grow. I started picking up on patterns and making connections between seemingly unrelated art forms as well. Opera was especially helpful with the latter, as clever stage directions linked part of Verdi’s Rigoletto to a scene in Shakespeare’s King Lear, or the execution in Puccini’s Tosca with Goya’s The Third of May 1808.

But most importantly, opera helped connect the head to the heart. What had previously been an intellectual curiosity of mine now found fertile ground in the soil of the soul. Through the storytelling of opera, I got to see how music, at its core, is about narrating the drama of our own lives. It doesn’t simply accompany us on our journey, but shows us what that journey is.

One of the best examples of this is found in the prelude of Wagner’s opera Lohengrin. As the timid whispers of strings slowly give way first to hope, then to joy, and finally to exaltation at the descent of the Holy Grail, the thoughtful listener can’t help but recognize these same themes of the great human drama in his own life. This brief musical glimpse into the heavenly realm is then followed by an intense, borderline painful, yearning to return to the glory of the divine, as the Grail ascends back into Heaven.

In other words, the music resembles our own longing for beauty and eternity. It is a longing which the mind can grasp in theory, but only the heart can ever truly know in full.

A Lasting Change

While I still enjoy contemporary music, I don’t enjoy it in quite the same way as I did before. My exposure to classical changed how I listened to music, yes, but it also reshaped my tastes and how I experience art.

Many people, for example, think that classical music makes great background music, when indeed it is the opposite. Contemporary music, with its 4/4 time signature and easy-to-follow rhythms, is great in the background — classical, on the other hand, demands your attention. The highs and lows of its dynamic range pull you in and then blow you back, recurring motifs reveal how ideas can evolve and express themselves in different contexts, and separate movements demand you follow the story from its inciting incident to its climax and denouement.

All of this demands patience, attention, and an openness to see how the work points beyond itself to something more transcendent. Because of this, classical music helped me train the muscles required to engage meaningfully with all art, from painting to architecture, literature, and more. I am confident it can do the same for you.

Thank you for reading!!

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When I was a teenager, I had a conversation with a cousin who was about a decade older than me. I remember asking him if he had any regrets in life.

“No, I don’t regret anything. I’ll never regret anything.”

His reply struck me as strange. To not regret anything — wouldn’t that mean you never made a mistake? Or that you were too ignorant to realize you made one? Or that you never put yourself in situations where you were forced to fail and to grow?

What I later realized was that his response, which sounded strong and self-assured in the moment, actually revealed a deep insecurity. And rightfully so: we all hate to have regrets. Often, it’s far easier to deny you have them than to wrestle with their painful implications. But in life, regrets are inevitable. Learning how to deal with them, therefore, is an indispensable skill.

One of the greatest works of world literature, Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed, addresses this topic head on. It shares, among many other things, the story of a girl who is forced against her will to make a decision she can never turn back from. Her heartbreaking story, recounted by Manzoni with pity and compassion, shows just how much regret can destroy your life.

But at the same time, Manzoni also answers the timeless question, “how do you carry on in light of regret?” and reveals the key to overcoming the greatest tragedies of your life. The wisdom he offers isn’t theoretical, but rather shaped by the painful reality of his own life, in which his wife and seven of his nine children predeceased him.

Today, then, we look at what the greatest Italian novelist can teach you about overcoming the pain of regret — and especially, the regret of self-inflicted mistakes and bad decisions. The answer he provides is simple, not easy. But in the 200 years since the novel’s publication, millions have found consolation in its timeless wisdom…

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Born an Afterthought

In his deep consideration of the human heart, Manzoni ranks with Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, but without the occasional creepiness of the former and the more than occasional preachiness of the latter.

-Dr. Anthony Esolen

The girl at the heart of Manzoni’s lesson on regret is named Gertrude. Although she’s not one of the main characters, Manzoni still dedicates multiple chapters to her, indicating how much weight he places on the lesson to be learned from her story.

Gertrude’s tragedy begins just northeast of Milan, where she was born into one of the wealthiest families in Monza. Her father, intent on passing down everything he owns to his son and heir, views Gertrude as a threat to his ambition. He thus conditions Gertrude from an early age to prepare for life in a convent — a practical solution which allows him to avoid the questions of a dowry and dividing inheritance altogether.

When she is around 12 years old, Gertrude spends some time observing life in the convent, but is forced to leave for a year before officially applying to join. The reason for this is simple: religious life is intense, and the nuns want to make sure she’s not joining on a whim (or being pressured to do so).

Yet upon her return home, Gertrude’s family deprive her of affection, only showing basic familial warmth when she appears to capitulate to their vision for her life. The young girl, desperate for love, yields to her father’s vision. Manzoni describes what she feels like on each occasion she does so:

Terrified by the step she had taken, ashamed of her ineptitude, annoyed at both herself and others, she made a grim count of the occasions left for her to say no, and promised herself, vaguely and feebly, that on one of those occasions she would be stronger and more adept.

Despite these thoughts, her fear of her father’s scowl had not subsided in the least…

-The Betrothed, Chapter 10

At one point, a priest visits Gertrude for a private conversation and asks if she is being coerced into becoming a nun. Yet it’s too little too late, for by this point Gertrude is a broken girl:

The true answer to that question leapt to Gertrude’s mind with a terrifying clarity. To give that answer, she would have to explain what had happened, say who had threatened her, tell the story. The unhappy girl shrank from this idea in fear. She hastened to find another answer and found only one, the one farthest from the truth, which would free her from that torment swiftly and surely.

“I am becoming a nun,” she said, hiding her agitation. “I am becoming a nun of my own free will.”

The Despair of Regret

But lest you think Gertrude is simply incapable of sticking up for herself, Manzoni adds the following context to better explain Gertrude’s thought process. He knows that in order for his lesson to resonate, you have to truly empathize with the predicament in which Gertrude finds herself:

In addition to her revulsion at the idea of revealing her weakness to that austere and righteous man, who seemed to harbor no suspicions of her, the poor girl knew that while he could prevent her from becoming a nun, his authority over her, and his protection, would end here.

Once he was gone, she would be alone with [her father], and no matter what she came to suffer in that house, the good priest would know nothing of it; or, if he did, with even the best intentions, he could do little more than feel pity for her, the peaceful, moderate pity generally accorded as a courtesy to anyone who has given a reason or excuse for the wrongs they suffer.

So it is that Gertrude proceeds to finally enter the convent at 13 years old, forever trapped in a world she never wanted to be a part of. But as the years past, she suffers and broods over the life she could have lived, eaten alive by regret:

Endless regret for her lost freedom, hatred of her present state, and an all-consuming yearning for desires that would never be requited: this is how she occupied her mind. She brooded over her bitter past, recollected all the circumstances that had brought her there, and a thousand times undid in her mind, to no avail, what she had done through her actions.

She accused herself of ineptitude, and others of tyranny and treachery. And she wasted away. She both idolized and lamented her beauty, deplored a youth that was destined to fade away in a slow agony, and envied, at times, any woman, of status, or any morals, who could freely enjoy these gifts in the world.

As a nun, Gertrude is cruel towards her sisters. She frequently takes out her frustrations on anyone who gets in her way, and never misses an opportunity to make fun of others. She is hostile even to those who are kind to her, for “in their piety and good cheer she saw a criticism of her restless and eccentric behavior.” Ultimately, she even goes as far to murder another nun, a deed which haunts her forever. In short, regret completely destroyed Gertrude’s life, making it impossible for to live with others, and herself.

Yet this is the moment when Manzoni springs his trap on the reader. For although he’s just spent chapters detailing how unjustly Gertrude was treated, he finally arrives at an astonishing conclusion: that things didn’t have to end this way for Gertrude.

Without minimizing the incredible injustice Gertrude suffered, or the overwhelming ruefulness which now drives her to despair, Manzoni reveals the key to moving forward and overcoming regret.

How do you carry on after a decision there’s no turning back from? Manzoni details it all in one of the most sublime passages in all of literature…

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Look at any list of “Great Books” and you’ll find all the usual suspects: Homer, Tolstoy, Cervantes, Dickens, Dumas, and more. Greek, Roman, French, Russian, and English literature receive the most attention, but one group of authors gets unfairly overlooked: the Italians.

Everyone knows Dante, of course, but after him, most would struggle to name even just three Italian authors. This was not always the case, however. As we have written about previously, some of the greatest English writers took their cues from Italian literature, such as John Milton lifting lines for his Paradise Lost right off the pages of Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered.

There are historic reasons1 why Italian literature didn’t make it into the Great Books “canon” in the same way French or Russian literature did, but it’s certainly not for lack of quality. Having lived in Italy for the past four years now, I’ve been privileged to discover some of the best of what Italian literature has to offer, and believe it an incredible shame that these works aren’t better known.

That’s why today, I want to share 5 works of Italian literature that absolutely deserve to be included in the Great Books canon.

Forget your Dante, Petrarch, and Machiavelli — the works on this list might not be well known in the English-speaking world, but they are no less impactful than those of Dickens and Dostoevsky…

Remember to join our book club group if you haven’t already! We are working through the Great Books of the Western canon, slowly, together.

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1) The Betrothed (I promessi sposi)

Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed is the national novel of Italy, and has even been endorsed by multiple popes. Most recently, Pope Francis referred to it as “a masterpiece on engagement” and recommended it to all engaged couples in his audience.

Though a lengthier read, Manzoni’s sense of humor keeps the prose fresh and entertaining, and his reflection of the nature of the Christian faith is one that provides material for extended reflection. There are bad priests, saintly aristocrats, evil nuns, and repentant thugs: in other words, everything you could ask for in a work about the honest, real-world experience of faith.

Most importantly, however, The Betrothed is a masterly reflection on the role of Providence in guiding and orchestrating human affairs. Manzoni, an adult convert to Catholicism, explores the varied expressions of la Provvidenza: though seemingly inactive and inconsequential, it is nonetheless present even in one’s most desperate moments, moving silently behind the scenes. Learning to trust in the provision of this Provvidenza is one of the central themes undertaken in The Betrothed, and with good reason — for it is, in Manzoni’s own words, the key to “arriv[ing] joyfully at a joyful end”.

2) The Little World of the Past (Piccolo mondo antico)

British literary critic Martin Seymour-Smith described Antonio Fogazzaro’s 1895 novel as “rightly considered one of the leading novels of the latter half of the nineteenth century: it is strong in characterization, brilliant in its use of dialogue, and, above all, delightful in its humour.”

It might surprise readers to learn that the main plot of a novel described as “delightful in its humour” is about a couple broken by the death of their child. Tragic though the plot is, the book is revelatory in its explorations of love, loss, resentment, faith, and forgiveness. Fogazzaro’s vivid depictions of each character’s interior life highlight the complexities of real-world conflict and grief, showing how different people approach and process tragedy.

Yet despite its dark premise, Piccolo mondo antico is ultimately about how its two lovers find their way back to each other. The role of religious belief is explored throughout, but never in heavy-handed fashion. Fogazzaro intentionally avoids a triumphalistic approach to faith, preferring instead to depict the small, everyday actions that allow pride to give way to grace, and broken hearts to be made whole again.

3) Pleasure (Il piacere)

Every Italian has heard the name Gabriele D’Annunzio, though few foreigners could ever tell you who he was.

Decadent author par excellence, D’Annunzio rose to fame as a best-selling novelist, and was considered by many of his contemporaries to be the greatest Italian poet since Dante. He fought in WWI, and after Italy failed to receive the land it was promised by the Allies, he personally led a brigade into the Adriatic port city of Fiume, which he took over and ruled for the next 15 months. He was simultaneously a Nietzschean vitalist, a romantic dandy, and one of the most influential characters in Italian interwar politics.

Because of difficulties with translation, D’Annunzio’s poetry has largely remained confined to the Italian-speaking world, though his novels are slightly more accessible. Chief among them is Il piacere, a story about a hedonistic aesthete and one of the defining works of the Decadent movement. Its prose is arguably even more impressive than its plot, as even the most basic descriptions are crafted with a sense of rhythmic beauty:

All those objects, amid which he had so many times loved and enjoyed and suffered, had for him acquired something of his own sensibility. Not only were they witnesses to his loves, his pleasures, his sorrows, but they were participants. In his memory, each form, each color…was a note in a chord of beauty.

-Gabriele D’Annunzio, Il piacere

4) Jerusalem Delivered (Gerusalemme liberata)

Jerusalem Delivered is a poetic retelling of the First Crusade in 1099. Blending factual historical events with mythological and fantastical elements, it follows Godfrey of Bouillon and the Christian army as they seek to capture the Holy City and deliver it from Muslim rule.

Along the way, a tapestry of characters make for thrilling side-quests and a heightening of the drama. There’s the fiery and errant knight Rinaldo, the seductive sorceress Armida, and the Muslim warrior Clorinda (whose eventual conversion, baptism, and death all take place near simultaneously, making for one of the most heart-wrenching episodes in the poem). Thematically, Jerusalem Delivered explores the conflict between duty and passion, as well as the interplay of divine providence and human free will.

Combining the grandeur of Homeric epics with a distinctly Christian worldview, Tasso’s ability to weave together action and romance in his patented form of literary chiaroscuro earned him the nickname “the Caravaggio of poetry”, and made his work a touchstone for poets across Europe. It is with good reason, therefore, that Milton lists him alongside Homer and Virgil as one of the primary models for his Paradise Lost.

5) Orlando Furioso

Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso is easily the strangest and most fantastical of the entries on this list. First published in 1516 and expanded in later editions, it is one of the three great poems of Italian literature, alongside the Divine Comedy and Jerusalem Delivered.

The poem continues the story of Orlando (the Italian name for “Roland”), a great knight of Charlemagne’s court who goes mad with unrequited love for the beautiful Angelica. The “madness” of his love takes him on a series of bizarre and often humorous adventures, getting him mixed up in the affairs of knights, sorcerers, seamonsters, and enchanted castles — to name just a few of his escapades.

The poem is dazzling in its scope, and the shockingly imaginative power of its author is on full display throughout. For example, one knight even borrows the prophet Elijah’s flaming chariot to take a trip up to the moon! If the idea of a medieval epic brimming with magic, madness, and a healthy dose of humour appeals to you, then Orlando Furioso is sure to delight.

Honorable Mentions

Of course, there are far too many works that could be included on this list, and to limit it to five is to do injustice to the 1,000+ year tradition of Italian literature.

If you enjoyed the books mentioned here, I would encourage you to check out the work of the authors mentioned below. I have suggested one main work to start with for each one:

• Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard (Il gattopardo)

• Eugenio Corti, The Red Horse (Il cavallo rosso)

• Giovanni Verga, The House by the Medlar Tree (I malavoglia)

• Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (Il nome della rosa)

• Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili)

• Giacomo Leopardi, Small Moral Works (Operette morali)

• Grazia Deledda, Reeds in the Wind (Canne al vento)

Have you read any of the works on this list?

Let me know what else you would add…

Evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in.

-J.R.R. Tolkien to his son Christopher

The author of The Lord of the Rings was no stranger to suffering. A veteran of the First World War, he had witnessed the slaughter of the Somme and the devastation of mechanized warfare. Nearly three decades later, he was forced to relive the horror from a distance as his son Christopher served as Royal Air Force pilot in World War II.

To encourage his son in the midst of what he deemed the “stupid waste of war,” Tolkien wrote him letters covering everything from theology to Middle-earth, the Blessed Sacrament, and songs about Oliphaunts. But for all the encouragement he offered, Tolkien never glossed over the brutal realities of the world at the time:

I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment…

If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens!

Yet beneath Tolkien’s grim realism lay a deep conviction in divine providence: a belief that even in history’s darkest hours, evil’s triumphs were fleeting. He reminded his son that “evil labours… in vain,” for God could bring forth “unexpected good” from even the worst of times.

Today, we look at one of Tolkien’s wartime letters to his son explore what it reveals about his view of good and evil, as well as his understanding of fatherhood. And, most importantly, what it can teach you about fighting for good in the face of darkness…

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Onslaughts & Oliphaunts

From its opening line, Tolkien’s letter to his son is marked by tenderness:

My dearest: I have decided to send you another air letter, not an airgraph, in the hope that I may so cheer you up a little more..... I do miss you so, and I do find all this mighty hard to bear on my own account and on yours.

The author’s concern for his son is palpable from the outset, but so is his desire to encourage him. He doesn’t do this, however, by glossing over the tough realities of war. He instead addresses it directly, writing to Christopher honestly about the tragedy of the situation:

The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it. And always was (despite the poets), and always will be (despite the propagandists) – not of course that it has not is and will be necessary to face it in an evil world…

I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days – quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens!

Tolkien makes it clear he believes war to be both a “material and spiritual waste,” but also that it is “necessary to face in an evil world” — a nuanced view unfortunately lost on many today. Yet for all the anguish he expresses over the misery inflicted by war, Tolkien stops short of falling into despair.

We will see exactly why he has reason for hope in the sections that follow. But for now, let’s look at how he attempts to raise Christopher’s spirits. He begins by focusing on something else entirely, and turning to a passion he and his son shared:

On Thursday I gave 2 lectures and had some troublesome business in town and was too tired to attend the Lewis seance. I hope to see him tomorrow, and read some more of 'the Ring'. It is growing and sprouting again (I did a whole day at it yesterday to the neglect of many matters) and opening out in unexpected ways.

So far in the new chapters Frodo and Sam have traversed Sam Gebir, climbed down the cliff, encountered and temporarily tamed Gollum. They have with his guidance crossed the Dead Marshes and the slag-heaps of Mordor, lain in hiding outside the main gates and found them impassable, and set out for a more secret entrance near Minas Morghul (formerly M. Ithil). It will turn out to be the deadly Kirith Ungol and Gollum will play false. But at moment they are in Ithilien (which is proving a lovely land); there has been a lot of bother about stewed rabbit; and they have been captured by Gondorians, and witnessed them ambushing a Swerting army (dark men of South) marching to Mordor's aid.

A large elephant of prehistoric size, a war-elephant of the Swertings, is loose, and Sam has gratified a life-long wish to see an Oliphaunt, an animal about which there was a hobbit nursery-rhyme (though it was commonly supposed to be mythical). In the chapter next to be done they will get to Kirith Ungol and Frodo will be caught. Here is the rhyme cited by Sam:

Grey as a mouse,/Big as a house,/Nose like a snake,/I make the earth quake,/As I tramp through the grass ;/Trees crack as I pass./With horns in my mouth/I walk in the South/Flapping big ears./Beyond count of years/I've stumped round and round,/Never lie on the ground,/Not even to die./Oliphaunt am I,/Biggest of All,/huge, old, and tall./If ever you'd met me,/You wouldn't forget me./If you never do,/You won't think I'm trues/But old Oliphaunt am I,/and I never lie.

I hope that has something of the 'nursery rhyme' flavour. On the whole Sam is behaving well, and living up to repute…

By the time Tolkien wrote this letter in 1944, he was deep into drafting The Lord of the Rings. Since Christopher had grown up watching his father’s literary world take shape (and enjoyed every moment of it), these progress reports provided a welcome distraction, and a way for father and son to connect. As bombs thundered over England, Tolkien calmly and joyfully described Ithilien’s beauty, Gollum’s treachery, and Sam’s delight at seeing an Oliphaunt.

The effect this had on his son was striking: even in a world torn apart by violence, he was still able to cultivate a vision of courage, hope, and beauty. While Tolkien was undoubtedly concerned with his son’s physical safety, he never lost sight of the importance of joy and imagination in overcoming life’s trials.

Tolkien’s belief in the solace and strength offered by storytelling manifested itself not only in his art, but in his closest relationships with his family. This becomes particularly evident in what he tells his son next.

“The Vast Sum of Human Courage”

With Tolkien being Tolkien, the letter he wrote to his son contained far more than just updates on Sam and Frodo’s journey. Much like St. Louis IX’s letter to his son the prince, Tolkien’s correspondence with Christopher carried a moral weight beyond family news and literary progress reports.

Writing about the reason man never ceases to wage war even after witnessing its horrors, Tolkien writes:

But so short is human memory and so evanescent are its generations that in only about 30 years there will be few or no people with that direct experience which alone goes really to the heart. The burnt hand teaches most about fire.

Much of Tolkien’s genius lay in his ability to imbue observation with moral significance, and a perfect example of this is the phrase “the burnt hand teaches most about fire.” Even while observing, Tolkien was teaching, and helping his son to understand the workings of both politics and human nature.

But, of course, Tolkien didn’t just teach indirectly. In the passage that follows, he offers practical advice to Christopher on how to face the worst of life’s trials:

And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human courage and endurance is stupendous, isn't it?) and all our religious faith to face the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills) still we may pray and hope. I do.

He then immediately transitions to a beautifully personal note, to underscore the importance of fighting adversity with “all our natural human courage and guts”:

And you were so special a gift to me, in a time of sorrow and mental suffering, and your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me, as it were in spoken words, that I am consoled ever by the certainty that there is no end to this.

Tolkien’s “certainty that there is no end to this” reflects his belief in the immortality of the soul and the eternal communion of saints. For him, family bonds and love are not obliterated by death, but fulfilled in Heaven. It is this fact which necessitates a courageous life of faith in the present, because, as Tolkien points out, it is in this life that you chart your course for eternity:

Probable under God that we shall meet again, 'in hale [health] and in unity', before very long, dearest, and certain that we have some special bond to last beyond this life – subject of course always to the mystery of free will, by which either of us could throw away 'salvation'. In which case God would arrange matters differently!

It is a simultaneously loving and sober reminder that virtue must be chosen, even amidst suffering. Tolkien knew the temptations of war — cynicism, despair, and moral compromise, to name a few — and sought to guide his son through them with wisdom anchored in faith.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the next section, where he explains why evil can only ever prepare the soil “for unexpected good to sprout.”

In the midst of tragedy, it is a hard truth to believe — but it is absolutely necessary if you desire to have the strength to keep fighting when the world seems at its darkest…

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Mark your calendars…

The next discussion will take place in 2 weeks, at the usual time: Wednesday, April 22, at noon Eastern Time.

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Everyone knows that language shapes your thinking. French, German, and English speakers all have fundamentally different views of reality, because their respective languages shape their minds in unique ways.

It’s an idea that makes for a compelling theory — but it’s almost entirely wrong.

That said, different languages do have unique ways of expressing ideas, and some of them can be quite eye-opening. Do they allow you to perceive reality on a far deeper level than your monolingual friends? Not really. Do they make for insightful glimpses into how other people and cultures express themselves? Sure!

Today, we look at some of the more curious elements of other languages, and how they might shed light on your own…

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Subject to Your Liking

One of the first things students of Spanish, French, or Italian learn is how to say they like something. But, to their surprise, none of it has to do with them liking anything at all!

Speakers of romance languages don’t express themselves in terms of what they like or dislike, but in terms of what is or isn’t pleasing to them. The Spanish me gusta, for example, simply means “it is pleasing to me”. In Italian, non mi piacciono gli spaghetti literally means “the spaghettis (in Italian, they’re plural) aren’t pleasing to me”.

When compared with English, this inversion of the subject and object can be rather sweet, such as when French use tu me manques (literally: you are lacking from me) to say “I miss you”. At other times, it can be a bit harsh: having to say no me gustas (“you’re not pleasing to me”) for a breakup in Spanish doesn’t give you much room to use the classic fallback of “it’s not you, it’s me”.

Funcompoundwords

Oscar Wilde once quipped that “life is too short to learn German”, and when students of the language come across words like Rindfleisch­etikettierungs­überwachungs­aufgaben­übertragungs­gesetz (“Law on the delegation of duties for the supervision of beef labeling”), they often can’t help but agree.

German is famous for its compound words, but it doesn’t actually operate all too differently from English. While the German word for headlights, Scheinwerfer (literally “light throwers”), might sound funny to English ears, we use compound terms like windshield or windshield wipers just as regularly. The only difference is, English usually keeps the spaces.

That said, German does have a knack for coming up with terms that convey a rich, visual image with a single word. Schadenfreude, the joy one takes in another’s suffering, is a popular example, but not nearly as vivid as Kummerspeck. Literally meaning “sorrow fat”, this word indicates the weight one puts on after going through a breakup, the loss of a loved one, etc.

As you might have have noticed, despite neither of these terms existing in English, it is far from impossible to translate them or grasp what they’re getting at — which is part of the reason why “linguistic determinism” isn’t as weighty a theory as it’s made out to be.

What Is up With Thee?

While many years have passed since English lost the distinction between the formal and informal forms of “you”, these pronouns have remained cornerstones of most European languages. Tu / Lei in Italian, tu / vous in French, and du / Sie in German are among the most popular examples.

Although these formal “you” pronouns are used slightly differently in each language, they all serve a similar function of indicating social distance and/or respect. They also serve as a reminder of what the English “thou” once was, even if most people get it wrong.

Contrary to popular belief, “thou” wasn’t simply a formal variant of “you”. By Shakespeare’s time, it was used to indicate a sort of emotional charge in a relationship, whether positive or negative. You could yell “thou” at a criminal, or use it while praying to God. In simplified terms, “thou” was more intimate, whereas “you” (like the French vous) was more formal and distant — not unlike the different “you” pronouns still around in many languages today.

These are just a few examples of how other languages express themselves differently from English. What did we miss?

Reminder that our first discussion on Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is taking place TOMORROW, April 8, at noon Eastern Time.

You can join us via Zoom if you want to participate directly — here’s the link:

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I saw this phrase circulating online recently:

Humans are designed to create.

This is why you get depressed when all you do is consume.

This perfectly succinct point can be derived from many great writers on the creative imagination and our innate desire to “sub-create”: J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, George MacDonald, etc.

G.K. Chesterton was another of those writers. He recognized that the ability to create ideas and worlds inside your own head is a domain with infinitely far-reaching potential, and, importantly, a fortress against nefarious outside forces. “The most essential educational product is Imagination,” he wrote.

Chesterton wrote about how to cultivate the imagination in various stages of life — this article discusses those stages, why the imagination matters, and why flexing it in adulthood is most critical of all.

But first, be careful to note that imagination is not escapism. For Chesterton, it is something far more powerful indeed. A healthy imagination works to renew an ancient consciousness with which you interpret the real world: “imaginative does not mean imaginary.”

In our time, safeguarding one’s imagination is an increasingly vital skill. It is your internal defense against the external forces that seek to hijack your mental faculties…

This is a teaser of our paid subscriber essays. If you’d like to support our work, please consider a subscription — it helps us enormously. You’ll get:

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Early Childhood: Ancient Wonder

A child of seven is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door and saw a dragon. But a child of three is excited by being told that Tommy opened a door.

Chesterton notes that very young children do not need elaborate fairy tales to ignite their imaginations. To them, “mere life is interesting enough.” An older child is interested in romantic tales, whereas an infant likes realistic ones, because they already perceive them as romantic.

Nursery stories, therefore, are straightforward and only exist in order to gently prompt the powerful imagination that all children have at birth. They only “echo an almost pre-natal leap of interest and amazement.”

This, Chesterton intuits, is our ancient instinct for astonishment or wonder. We have an innate predisposition to experience the world we inhabit with awe and joy. As life continues, a working imagination is what helps adults return to this forgotten state…

Late Childhood: Heroes & Dragons

About the age of five or six is when we begin to enjoy things like fairy stories as a way of stimulating the imaginative process. These operate at the next level up from nursery stories.

The key consideration with fairy stories is that they help train the moral imagination. Play and fantasy, which augment the world with great beasts and greater heroes, equip the child with a sense of adventure and heroism that will later prepare him for life’s real battles.

A rich imagination matters not because the child can escape into a secondary world, but because the secondary world alters his perception of the primary world, imbuing it with a sense of challenge and meaning.

The fairy tale provides you with a kind of vision required to confront evil, because it awakens an internal sense of justice and, crucially, agency. It helps you see the world as a great story in which you are called to play your own, heroic part (this perspective will be useful later on). Indeed, by now you are already fully aware of dragons and the need for heroic action, and any attempt to try to shelter you from this won’t work. Chesterton writes:

Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.

So, reading fairy tales helps to form an internal moral language — a kind of consciousness that sees the world as something to be explored from inside your own mind. Life is a great story, and you can face it as either a hero or a coward.

Adolescence: Internal Dragons & Passivity

As you exit childhood for adolescence, you begin more and more to encounter internal dragons of doubt and temptation. You are hyper-self-conscious, at risk of becoming a passive creature only capable of responding to what others do and say.

A rich internal life is what protects you from passivity. Chesterton says that we are all called to be active creators and not consumers. An active imagination — stimulated by making things, writing things, playing instruments — makes you less vulnerable to manipulation by peers, the media, or trending ideologies. Why? Chesterton writes:

The man who can make up stories about the next-door neighbour will be less dependent on the next day’s newspaper.

Crucially, the imaginative mind is less dependent on external stimuli or validation. It delights in doing things for itself. Chesterton once wrote that cultural decline is marked by people paying for others to dance for them, rather than a whole room of individuals doing the dancing themselves, together.

Life was better when we all did the dancing ourselves, and so it is with thinking. The imaginative adolescent reclaims his agency at the stage of life where it is most at risk, and this shields him from the despair of living life passively.

We’ve talked so far in broad terms, but how does one actually protect and cultivate one’s imagination, particularly in the next stage of life: adulthood?

Well, recall that the infant enters the world with an imagination strong enough to see joy in the most mundane of objects — basic reality is already presented to him as romantic. In adulthood, the goal is to get back to this view.

To get there, says Chesterton, a radical re-framing of your perspective is necessary…

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One of the truly perennial questions in the history of ethics concerns the morality of lying.

Is lying ever morally acceptable?

What about white lies?

What about when it saves someone’s life?

Today, we look at the surprising answer that German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand offers to this question, and why lying — or telling the truth — has a far greater impact on your life than you realize…

BOOK CLUB UPDATE: we have just voted to read Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” for April!

The first discussion will be on Wednesday, April 8, at noon ET. For those reading along, you might find this article to be a helpful introduction (note: contains spoilers).

If you’ve been thinking of joining us and participating in the book club, now is a great time to do it! This is turning into a wonderful community of regular participants — thanks to all of you for making the sessions so valuable of late.

Reminder: we are an entirely reader-supported publication. As a paid member, you’ll be supporting our independent writing, plus you’ll get:

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Why Lie?

When discussing lying, most people distinguish between two kinds of lies: white lies, like telling your friend that their ugly hat actually looks really good on them, and serious lies, like telling your friend that his brother crashed his car even though it was actually you.

Many think that white lies are not only okay, but even necessary, like when you lie to protect your friend’s feelings. But few people think that telling a serious lie is morally acceptable.

Unless, that is, they have a good reason for doing so. Consider the classic example everyone turns to: you are a German during World War II, and you have a Jewish family hiding in your basement. Suddenly, a knock on the door reveals an SS officer on your doorstep, and he asks if you have any Jews in your house. Fortunately, you were good friends with the officer before the war, so he will believe you if you say “no.” What should you do?

Most people would say you should lie to the officer to save the lives of the people in your basement. But Hildebrand had a slightly different take...

Hildebrand on the Value of Reality

Hildebrand was an ardent defender of what he called true values. These are things that are valuable not because of our preferences or how useful they are for us, but by their inherent goodness.

For Hildebrand, there is a proper response to these values, and when we fail to make that response, it is us who are wrong. So if somebody looks at the Grand Canyon and thinks that it is “just a hole in the ground,” it is they who are wrong. Their opinion is missing something real about the Grand Canyon.

Hildebrand points out that these values are all around us. The value of reality, which is also the value of truth, is one such value. Reality is not something that we control — rather, it controls us. It is composed of what actually exists. For all of these reasons, Hildebrand argues that reality has a real value to it, meaning that you have an obligation to respond properly to it. When a person lies, Hildebrand would argue, he or she fails to give the proper response to reality, and thus fails to properly respond to that value.

The Power of Reality

Since reality has a value, Hildebrand believes it makes a claim upon you. Here is one way of thinking about it: no matter how badly you wish it were so, you will probably never be as good at basketball as LeBron James. You can either rage against that reality by pretending that you actually are LeBron James’ equal on the court, or you can allow that reality to form your thoughts, actions, and behavior.

Hildebrand argues that the latter option is precisely what the person who lies does not do:

“He [a liar] assumes a lordly position over being, [sic] he deals with it as he pleases and treats it as if it were a chimera, a plaything of his arbitrary pleasure. He denies recognition and response to the value that inheres in being as such, to the dignity that being possesses by its opposition to nothingness. The untruthful person does not fulfill the fundamental obligation to recognize everything that exists in its reality, not to interpret black as white, and not to deny a fact.” (Hildebrand, The Art of Living, 27)

To lie, then, is to treat reality as a thing you can twist to your own ends. And this reveals not just a lack of charity towards others and a misunderstanding of the purpose of language, but also a fundamental refusal to allow reality to form you.

But why should you allow reality to form you? Because, Hildebrand would argue, you did not create it yourself. When you fail to allow reality to form you, it hurts your ability to see other values, too. You slowly grow blind to moral values, aesthetic values, intellectual values, and more.

But What About the Nazis?

Hildebrand, of course, is aware that there are certain instances where the truth should not be told, or at least it seems that the truth in its fullest sense is not obligated. The Nazi example is one such instance. Another would be wrapping a small gift in a deceptively large box to disguise its true size. Are you really required to tell the truth in both cases?

Here, Hildebrand distinguishes between telling a lie and simply not telling the truth, and even doing something you know will be misinterpreted. The former is immoral, because it tries to twist reality to its own ends. But the latter, refusing to tell the truth or telling the truth in a confusing way, is not necessarily doing that. And in fact, there are some things we are bound to keep hidden:

“Now, there are cases in which deception as such is permitted, nay, is commanded. For example, if a criminal is following us, it is permissible for us to deceive him, in one way or the other, about our dwelling-place. It is commanded when we could severely harm another person either physically or morally by communicating the truth. In the latter case, it is no lack of charity to deceive; on the contrary, it is a loving kindliness. Thus we are permitted to deceive other persons in certain given cases; in others, we are obliged to do so. But we may do this only by means of our interpretation of a given situation; not by means of a direct lie.” (Hildebrand, The Art of Living, 33)

So, is it ever moral to lie?

For Hildebrand, the short answer is no.

But whereas some people think that this answer binds them to tell the truth even when it causes great harm, Hildebrand would say that his principle actually calls them to higher virtue: he thinks that, in many cases, you should be willing to sacrifice your own wellbeing for the sake of truth.

And when the truth is not to be revealed, you must find a way to keep the secret while respecting the demand that reality makes upon us. That way, we become more able to recognize true value, wherever it lies.

Lots of people are talking about “enchantment” recently: how we lost it, the consequences of losing it, how we might re-enchant our world again.

But precisely what enchantment means is hard to pin down. To many, it is the idea that the world we inhabit is not fully explainable by us. That our world is inherently meaningful, and so too our participation in it.

Put another way, it is not simply that the nearby forest may play host to mysterious forces or creatures, but that your own journey through the trees is participating in some greater story that you cannot fully know.

For J.R.R. Tolkien, enchantment could be identified as something more specific: something approximating the feeling of un-possessive love or wonder.

I’ve personally found learning to cultivate this perspective to be incredibly useful. Tolkien reveals how…

This is a teaser of our paid subscriber essays. If you’d like to support our work, please consider a subscription — it helps us enormously. You’ll get:

• New, full-length articles 2x per week

• The entire archive of content (200+ articles, essays, and podcasts)

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We are about to start reading Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises together in our book club. The first discussion is Wednesday, April 8, at noon ET — join us!

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Delight Vs. Control

One of my favorite things about Tolkien’s writing is how he takes time out of the plot to describe single trees in great detail. He gives them the dignity of their own names, personalities, genealogies. Why?

It is well known that Tolkien abhorred the desecration of nature by industrial society. He saw it as his role to speak up for trees, which in our world are voiceless: “In all my works I take the part of trees against all their enemies.”

More fundamentally, Tolkien underscored the importance of tending to things without regard for how you could use them. A living tree, just the way nature intended, is more beautiful than anything we could use it for or carve from it.

Modernity (or synonymously, the dis-enchanted state) sees nature as a set of extractable and farmable resources, which can be fully understood through rational inquiry. Modern man sets out to master nature (including his own human nature), and to transcend his physical circumstances. The enchanted man experiences the inherent wonder of things and wishes only to live among them, with a kind of un-possessive love for them.

The Lord of the Rings explores the tension between those who seek to control the world (Sauron, Lord of the One Ring) and those who seek only harmony with it (the Hobbits or Tom Bombadil, who treats the Ring with frivolity). Relinquishing one’s desire for control is your first step back toward enchantment, because control is enchantment’s polar opposite.

Learning to love things without fully understanding them is related to this. Things impress wonder upon us (a sunset, an intricate facade, a gnarled tree) because there is a dimension to them that we cannot explain. Not knowing precisely how something (or someone) works, or why it makes us feel a certain way, helps us to see the inherent value in it.

Tolkien advises us to be comfortable with the idea that we cannot understand all things, and to seek harmony with the way they are instead. But does he give any clues as to how to actually recover this state of wonder?

Faërie Vs. Magic

The first clue to achieving re-enchantment is in how Tolkien distinguishes enchantment (or “Faërie” in his nomenclature) from magic.

Sauron’s One Ring is a vulgar thing of magic, because magic seeks power by making an alteration in the primary world (it is no coincidence that the words “magic” and “machine” have the same ancient root ‘magh-’ meaning “to be able, to have power”). Sauron’s magic ring is a machine of total control.

Enchantment, by contrast, is “artistic in desire and purpose,” says Tolkien. It seeks to create anew rather than to change what is there. The high art of Tolkien’s Elves is an analogue for enchantment.

For instance, the Elven cloaks of Lothlórien, gifted as camouflaging garments to Frodo and company, were created in harmonious alignment with nature. When Pippin asks if these are “magic cloaks,” the confused Elves respond:

“Leaf and branch, water and stone: they have the hue and beauty of all these things under the twilight of Lurien that we love; for we put the thought of all that we love into all that we make.”

Elvish craft works alongside, not against, the power of the land. The Elves embody the kind of enchantment that Tolkien was after because their creations are rooted in a desire to create out of love and reverence for the land. They enhance one’s participation with original creation, and never seek to transgress its inherent nature. When we say “enchantment,” what we mean is a closer and more meaningful relationship with the world around us, and this is what characterizes the Elves.

So, practically speaking, what does our road to recovery look like?

It’s easy to talk about wonder and “un-possessive love” of things. But if you already know how a tree works — its biological form and process by which it grows — how do you see it as a thing of wonder again? What can we do as people of modern times?

Fortunately, Tolkien answered this question in an essay…

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Why do the same numbers keep showing up time and again?

Previously, we’ve written about how numbers show up in everything from music to architecture, and even to the art of how you dress. Each of these fields can be better understood by observing the mathematical proportions and ratios that define them, but that’s not all. Sometimes, the numbers alone speak for themselves.

Today, we look at the meaning behind three numbers charged with symbolic value: 3, 7, and 12. These recurring numbers are baked into the fabric of reality, and have come to take on supernatural meaning. But what exactly are they saying?

Let’s dive in and find out…

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Three

The number three is the smallest number that forms a pattern. It has a beginning, middle, and end, and thus communicates a sense of intelligible and complete order.

The philosophical archetype of the number three leans into this idea of completion, as all arguments and ideas have a thesis, antithesis, and resolution. In Christianity, it shows up in the nature of the Trinity — the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit — but also in the essence of spiritual death and resurrection.

Peter’s threefold denial of Christ, for example, signifies a “complete” rejection. For that reason, when Jesus reappears to the apostles (after rising on the third day) and reinstates Peter, he does so by asking him if he loves him three times:

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

-John 21:15-17

Once can be a mistake, twice an accident, but three times signifies intentionality and completion. That completion is then echoed in the spiritual patterns of fall and restoration — but three isn’t the only number that reflects this…

Seven

The significance of the number seven is believed to originate with the lunar cycle, as each visible phase of the moon (new moon, first quarter, full moon, last quarter) is roughly seven days long. For this reason, it tends to be linked to notions of cycles, time, and — as with the number 3 — completion.

Most notably, the story of creation in Genesis sees God fashioning creation in six days and resting on the seventh once his work is completed. But in other books of the Bible, seven plays an even more important role: the seven churches of Asia Minor, the seven seals, and the seven trumpets of Revelation are among the most notable.

Seven also frequently takes on a notion of fullness and entirety. This is seen in the seven deadly sins, the seven virtues (4 cardinal + 3 theological), and in the seven sacraments that cover the entire arc of human life.

Jesus’s reply to Peter in Matthew 18 is often interpreted along this notion of entirety, with “seventy-seven” seen not as a literal number, but as a totalizing response to Peter’s practical inquiry:

Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?”

Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.”

-Matthew 18:21-22

Twelve

Twelve is the last of the three main symbolic numbers, and it often comes to represent communities and systems. Part of this has to do with the way it can be organized and broken up: you can easily divide it into halves, thirds, fourths, sixths, etc.

Even Napoleon, whose policies helped enshrine the use of the meter across Europe, was personally fond of the foot for this reason, saying:

Twelve has always been preferred to ten as a divisor.... The new system is all based on the meter and conveys no idea to my mind. I can understand the twelfth part of an inch, but not the thousandth part of a meter.

Like the number seven, part of the emphasis on twelve arises from the fact there are roughly twelve lunar cycles in a year (partially why we have 12 months). In the Bible, it shows up in the twelve tribes of Israel, Jesus’s twelve apostles, and the twelve gates in Revelation. Jews themselves divided the day (the time from sunrise to sunset) into twelve “hours,” i.e., twelve blocks of relative time units that shifted with the change of seasons.

All of this gives to the number twelve a particular importance in defining both communities and the broader structure of the world. Like the numbers three and seven, its significance stems from being a pattern embedded in the nature of reality, which then is infused with supernatural and spiritual meaning.

This does not mean, however, that the numbers 3, 7, and 12 are simply natural phenomena and nothing else. For in the words of Saint Thomas Aquinas, gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit — “grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it”.

The natural world contains glimpses of a deeper reality, one which is revealed to us in something as simple as the phases of the moon.

Thank you for reading!

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Our second (and final) discussion on Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich is taking place tomorrow — Wednesday, March 25, at noon Eastern Time.

You can join us via Zoom if you want to participate directly. Here’s the link:

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Alienation is one of our society’s most pressing issues. Scores of men and women alike, despite being immersed in “social” media, feel cut off from others and unable to connect. As a result, they often turn to the very things which further their alienation, spending increasing amounts of time on their phones, watching Netflix, or preferring to stay by themselves rather than risk the dangers of a bad social outing.

But for as “modern” as this crisis may seem, it’s nothing new. Nearly 200 years ago, the Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky penned his short story White Nights, in which he outlines the dangers of alienation.

His surprising revelation? It all starts with the imagination.

Today, we explore Dostoevsky’s warning about the dangers of dreaming, or simply getting stuck in your own head. We’ll look at what he describes as the “dark side” of imagination, and how he suggests you nurture yours so that it leads you to the good and beautiful, instead of spinning into despair…

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A Damsel in Distress

White Nights begins in the city of Saint Petersburg, where the unnamed male narrator saves a young woman from being harassed by a man along a canal. The girl, Nastenka, expresses her gratitude to the narrator by allowing him to walk her home.

As they walk along the streets of Saint Petersburg, the narrator expresses his shock at getting to experience such a moment, for he is isolated and lonely and never gets to talk to girls. Nastenka says that she, too, is lonely, and agrees to meet the narrator again, granted that talking does not lead to romance.

Over the following three meetings, the two characters share their life stories with each other. The narrator describes himself as a dreamer while detailing his loneliness and longing for companionship. Nastenka, for her part, recounts that the man who promised to marry her hasn’t written to her for a year, but that she continues to love him and holds out hope for his reappearance.

At every encounter, Nastenka reiterates that her relationship with the narrator must remain platonic, yet the narrator falls ever more in love with her. Finally, on the fourth and final evening, he confesses his love and Nastenka, despairing over the absence of her own beloved, breaks down and says that perhaps she could one day come to love the narrator. But then, as the pair descend upon the streets of Saint Petersburg once more, her man arrives, and Nastenka “tore herself out of my arm and rushed to meet him”.

The narrator is left alone, his hopes of romance crushed before his very eyes…

The Dangers of Dreaming

Though the above summary may paint Nastenka in a rather unflattering light, Dostoevsky makes it clear that she is not the real cause of the narrator’s sufferings. Rather, it is his own imagination that leads him to alienation, and ultimately to despair.

At first glance, it is a strange critique to come from a man like Dostoevsky, a man whose artistic imagination fueled the creation of novels like Crime & Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov. But perhaps that makes it all the more worth considering, for the man who used his imagination the most understood both its benefits and pitfalls.

As the narrator of White Nights recounts his tale, he frequently refers to himself in third person as the “hero”. We learn that the reality of his life is dreary, and thus he spends his time dreaming, casting himself as the protagonist of make-believe adventures. When he first meets Nastenka, for example, he alludes to the fact that he has been in love on numerous occasions. When she asks with whom, he openly admits:

Why, with no one, with an ideal, with the one I dream of in my sleep. I make up regular romances in my dreams.

As the story proceeds, it becomes increasingly clear that the narrator’s imagined futures are the primary cause of his disappointment and alienation. Rather than inspiring him to something greater, they simply set up false expectations. His imaginings are so vivid they blind him from seeing the truth of reality, even when it is made plain before him.

For this reason, the narrator simply cannot bring himself to take Nastenka at her word when she insists that they cannot be more than friends. Because he has so frequently conceived of himself as the hero, he has constructed a narrative in which he always “wins” in the end. All he thinks he has to do is bide his time and be patient, and Nastenka’s weakened resolve on their fourth evening together seems to confirm his belief.

But then, when reality finally hits, it hits with such a force that it renders recovery near impossible. The narrator can hardly continue on with life, and all he has in place of hope are tears.

White Nights, then, is primarily a cautionary tale about the dangers of dreaming and getting stuck inside your own head. But if you look closely, you can also spot Dostoevsky’s proposed fix.

How do you nurture your imagination so it leads you to truth and beauty, and not despair? Dostoevsky provides the answer…

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This is a guest essay from our friends at Cosmos Institute, who write regularly on philosophy, AI, and what it means to live well in the technological future.

Mary Shelley learned to read by tracing the letters of her mother’s name on a gravestone. Behind London’s St. Pancras Old Church, the young girl would run her fingers over the markings: “Mary Wollstonecraft,” the writer, philosopher, and women’s suffrage campaigner who died giving birth to her. Raised by her father William Godwin, Shelley’s childhood was marked by radical ideas at the dinner table, the tensions of a complicated family life, and a taste for the eerie that she harbored from her earliest years.

In 1816, at just eighteen, she accompanied the poet Percy Shelley to a Lake Geneva villa where Lord Byron, the celebrity poet who had just fled England in disgrace, had gathered a small circle of friends. Volcanic ash from Mount Tambora had blocked out the sun, so they resolved to stay indoors to write ghost stories. Carrying with her a fascination with experiments showing dead creatures twitching in response to electric charge, Mary wondered what it might be like to be switched on rather than born.

Her story, Frankenstein, took this idea to its logical conclusion. If the scientific showmanship of the day could produce a being through technical wizardry, then the fruits of this creation would exist as a child without childhood. For someone who never met her own mother, a book about life without formation seemed like a fitting project.

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Frankenstein; or, The Reluctant Parent

Frankenstein is often read as a tale of hubris, a story about man’s reach exceeding his grasp. That interpretation is true enough. But Frankenstein is less about the audacity of creating life than about the catastrophe of abandoning it. Shelley imagines a creator, Victor Frankenstein, who refuses to become a parent as much as she imagines a man who wants to play God.

Victor Frankenstein scavenges body parts from graveyards, stitches them into a single form, and uses lightning to force life into dead flesh. The creature stirs. Its “dull yellow eye” opens, watery and unnatural, barely distinguishable from the pale socket that holds it. In that instant, the beauty Victor imagined gives way to something grotesque and terrifying. He flees his laboratory, abandoning what he has brought into the world.

The creature awakens raw and unformed, as all beings do. But he receives no care, no guidance, and no language from his creator. He must learn everything alone. He flees into the countryside and eventually finds refuge near a cottage. Unable to reveal himself, he begins to watch the family who lives there from the shadows.

His education comes entirely from observation. He hears the family read Milton, figures out how to speak, and begins to understand human language and sentiment. Yet it is an education wholly detached from participation. He is exposed to Paradise Lost, one of the most morally complex works in English literature, without any framework for understanding it. He identifies with Satan, the rejected creation who rebels against his maker, because his own experience gives him no other lens through which to read. He studies humans like a natural historian observing specimens, never entering the experiment proper.

When he finally reveals himself to the family, the creature discovers that seeing humanity from the outside is not the same as being seen as human. He is chased away. Rejected and alone, he turns to violence, murdering those closest to Victor: his younger brother, his best friend, his bride. The creature has learned moral language but cannot turn it into moral being. He becomes, instead, an articulate monster.

This is a failure of formation. The creature never receives what Adam Smith understood to be essential for moral development: the chance to participate in the lives of others, to be seen and corrected, to practice sympathy through actual relationships rather than distant observation.

For Smith, moral sense begins in the particular — in “feeling with” the person in front of us. Sympathizing with those closest to us becomes a practice ground for judgment, and from this foundation we gradually extend our moral concern outward.

But this process requires participation. The flow of contextual information we receive from face-to-face interaction teaches us to read genuine emotion and respond appropriately. We learn through rupture and repair: we hurt someone, see the damage, and learn to mend it. Character develops through being implicated in the lives of others, through the consequences of our actions on people we care about. Moral life begins in the nursery and only later aspires to the public square.

The creature has none of this. He gathers impressions without ever being implicated in them. He accumulates knowledge of sympathy’s language but none of its practice. Intelligence without formation produces monstrosity.

The creature’s predicament is the predicament of childhood itself. He must act in the world before he possesses the internal authority to determine how. Every child occupies this condition. The crime is refusing to stand beside them.

The Sovereign Child

Victor abandoned his creature outright. A subtler version of the same failure now operates under the sign of love. A fantasy persists in contemporary parenting, one that holds children are naturally autonomous agents who simply need space to discover themselves. In this view, the task of a parent is to honor a will already present in a young person, to clear obstacles so they might tune their own moral compass without interference. Education becomes a matter of freedom rather than cultivation. Put a child before the widest possible range of ideas, the thinking goes, and they will naturally figure out the kind of person they want to become.

The central wager is that character springs fully formed once obstacles are removed. But removing external authority does not create internal authority. It only leaves children subject to whatever force fills the void.

What is childhood? It is a normative predicament in which a person must act on reasons of their own but lacks the settled authority to determine what those reasons should be. Unlike adults, who possess a settled perspective they can refine through guidance, children must borrow authority from their elders while their own constitution forms.

Young people differ from adults in kind. Adults refine an existing will; children are still forming one. This plasticity creates the space in which character can form, but it also means instability. The child’s will can be shaped by any persistent force.

This makes the essential role of a parent clear: to act as a surrogate conscience until internal unity can take shape, to model good judgment and gently correct missteps before they harden into habits. This authority is not tyranny. It is provisional, exercised on behalf of a will that does not yet exist but must be brought into being. To love a child is to stand beside them as they learn to stand on their own.

Children denied adult guidance become subject to other forms of compulsion. Peers, impulses, and algorithms rush in to fill the vacuum, and unlike the authority of a loving parent, these forces are indifferent to whether the child develops the capacity for self-direction.

Consider the parent who, believing in unmediated exploration, lets a child navigate YouTube alone to follow their interests wherever they lead. The platform appears to offer limitless freedom, a vast library of content catering to every possible curiosity. But YouTube does not serve content at random. It recommends videos to retain attention as long as possible. That which looks like freedom of exploration optimizes for engagement rather than development.

The fantasy of the sovereign child assumes that unmediated exposure cultivates genuine interest. But interest requires competence, and competence requires patient formation. Children who sample endlessly without developing mastery drift from one stimulation to the next, never discovering what sustained engagement feels like.

For adults with a stable center of judgment, algorithmic recommendation provides a test of will that some pass and others do not. For children still forming the deliberative perspective that constitutes a will, the gravity of these systems is far harder to escape. They lack the settled perspective needed to recognize when engagement has become compulsion.

Like the creature absorbing Paradise Lost without a framework for understanding it, children encounter sophisticated moral and social content through systems that cannot see them or be changed by them. They witness stories of injustice, power, rebellion, and belonging. But without moral apprenticeship, they identify with whatever best captures and retains their attention. The creature learned to see himself as Satan when he peered into the family’s house. Today, our children develop similar misidentifications daily because their sense of self is shaped by simulation rather than by reflective experience. There is a world of difference between a child learning with caring adults who help them navigate algorithmic environments and a child left alone before a screen.

Victor knew he was fleeing. He felt the horror and ran. The modern version of his failure is harder to recognize because it looks like provision. And it operates at industrial scale. Every parent who hands a child a screen and walks away is making Victor’s choice in miniature. We create without raising.

Thank you for reading!

This essay was recently published by our friends at Cosmos Institute, who write regularly on philosophy, AI, and what it means to live well in the technological future.

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You only have one life, so how will you live it?

This is the question Leo Tolstoy asks of readers in his famous novella The Death of Ivan Ilyich. But what does a short story about death have to do with life?

According to Tolstoy, everything.

While most people think the secret to dying well is having lived a good life, The Death of Ivan Ilyich seems to suggest the opposite — that actually, the key to living a good life is knowing how to die a good death. Unfortunately, however, our culture doesn’t prepare us for death, partially because it does its best to make you forget it even exists.

But by looking back to Tolstoy, you can begin to rediscover the key to living a life of flourishing. That’s why today, we explore both the warning and wisdom of the Russian novelist’s greatest short story, so that you can live your life to the fullest and make sure it doesn’t go to waste…

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The Problem

In The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy shines a light on many of the ills of high society. From performative politesse to the shallowness of a life lived to impress others, Tolstoy dissects the hypocrisy of the late 19th-century Russian bourgeoisie.

Yet the main problem he identifies isn’t confined to a time, place, or social class. Rather, he takes aim at something universal that impacts people everywhere: the fear of death.

This fear, Tolstoy shows, isn’t really fear in the typical sense. While it does eventually become that for many as they age, it typically starts as something far more banal: a disconnect between theory and application. Everyone knows they will die — it is the only certainty in life — yet no one acts like it.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich shows what this disconnect looks like in practice, and what results because of it. In the first chapter, as guests attend Ivan’s wake, they are discomforted when forced to look the dead man in the face. Tolstoy paints the scene as such:

The expression on [the dead Ivan Ilyich’s] face said that what was necessary had been accomplished, and accomplished rightly. Besides this, there was in that expression a reproach and a warning to the living. This warning seemed to Peter Ivanovich out of place, or at least not applicable to him. He felt a certain discomfort and so he hurriedly crossed himself once more and turned and went out of the door — too hurriedly and too regardless of propriety, as he himself was aware.

When confronted with the reality of death, the default reaction of many is to evade, ignore, and push the thought out of their minds. They simply can’t bring themselves to accept what mortality means for them. A poignant example of this latter point comes later in the novella, when Ivan Ilyich recalls what he was taught in school:

The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter’s Logic: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius — man in the abstract — was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.

He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and a papa … and with all the joys, griefs, and delights of childhood, boyhood, and youth. What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? … Had Caius kissed his mother’s hand like that? … Had he rioted like that at school when the pastry was bad? Had Caius been in love like that? …

“Caius really was mortal, and it was right for him to die; but for me, little Vanya, Ivan Ilych, with all my thoughts and emotions, it’s altogether a different matter. It cannot be that I ought to die. That would be too terrible.”

Such was his feeling.

According to Tolstoy, this denial of death is arguably the main issue that underlies the vast majority of our modern problems. But what does he say about how to fix it?

The Solution

In order to live life to the fullest, the first thing you have to do is come to terms with your mortality. But this means much more than mere intellectual recognition of death. The real task, Tolstoy suggests, is to have the reality of death soak into your life in such a way that it permeates your entire being — for only then can you truly begin to live.

Prolonged reflection plays a major role in this. Just like reading a classic novel, it’s not enough to skim through it once to find out what happens. Knowing the plot is like knowing in theory that you’ll die, but the real richness of literature lies elsewhere. It is in the themes that permeate a work, in the rhythm, rhyme, cadence, and meter that structure it, and in the painstakingly-wrought prose that conceals the author’s toils behind an air of effortless grace.

You can not fully comprehend a classic after just one reading; you must instead revisit it often, allowing it to sit with you for years and for decades. Likewise, you must do the same with the fact of your mortality.

There’s a reason why the stoics continually emphasize the importance of reflecting on your death. Memento mori (“remember you must die”) isn’t just a fun phrase to tattoo on your wrist, it’s a thought to spend serious time with every single day.

In the good, in the bad, in the highs and in the lows, you must remember that you will die. Only then, the stoics say, will the reality of your death begin to permeate your being and influence your actions. Only then will you begin to live.

But what does Tolstoy think this “beginning to live” actually looks like? How can you know that you’re not simply following the crowd and trudging towards death, but actively making the most of all you’ve been given?

What Tolstoy suggests in The Death of Ivan Ilyich is that to live life to the fullest, you must first let go of what you’ve been led to believe is the “proper” way to live.

This idea has been repeated by philosophers throughout history, in recent times by the likes of Soren Kierkegaard and René Girard, and it holds the key to living authentically…

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