In discussions of strategic geography still today, we often hear mention made of the word “node,” but we may not adequately know what that important concept means, nor what the concrete reality further and variously implies. Nor why the concept … Continue reading
Author Archives: Dr. Robert Hickson
Counterrevolution as an Affirmation: Amid the Allure of False Dialectics
In a recent composition on Dostoievsky himself and on his memorable main fictional character from The Idiot, Prince Myshkin—both of whom (Myshkin and Dostoievsky) inimitably saw “the soul of goodness in things evil”—we also considered “a counterrevolution that is also … Continue reading
Dostoievsky’s Prince Myshkin, “The Idiot”
After reading together with my wife last night our Austrian friend Friedrich Romig’s carefully crafted and profound review of a 2013 book in German by Botho Strauss, we even started to consider, in light of Dostoievsky’s presentation of Prince Myshkin, … Continue reading
From Joie de Vivre to Gaudium de Veritate
After recently reading a good contemporary satire by the ostensible (and irrepressible) “Father René Tiepolino,” entitled “Two Plus Two Makes Three: An After-Mass Debate in a Mixed-Use Sacristy,”1 I immediately thought of Hilaire Belloc’s own 1932 Cautionary Verse, entitled “The … Continue reading
An Unexpected Request for Alms in a Southern Harbor: Hilaire Belloc Under Sail in Palma of Majorca
While recently on the ocean-seacoast island of my boyhood home, I decided to read again amidst the inspiring cool sea breezes my own fragile first edition of Hilaire Belloc’s 1908 collection of essays, entitled On Nothing and Kindred Subjects, which … Continue reading
Saint John and Belloc: Patmos and the Holy Land
Shortly after the 1939 commencement of World War II and the largely unexpected, rapid fall of France in 1940, Hilaire Belloc received another shock, an announcement which much more deeply pierced, and indeed almost broke, his heart: the loss of … Continue reading
Two Chivalrous Defenders of Saint Joan of Arc: Georges Bernanos and Hilaire Belloc
Five years before the beginning of World War I, Joan of Arc was Beatified by Pope Saint Pius X. (It was on 18 April 1909 in Paris.) A little more than a decade later, and after the devastating 1914-1918 War, … Continue reading
Through Belloc’s Eyes: Saint Patrick’s Person and Presence
Slightly more than a century ago, four years before World War I began, and six years before the Easter Rising in Dublin, Hilaire Belloc published an essay on Saint Patrick of Ireland in one of his collections of varied essays, … Continue reading
The Consequences of Character
In my ongoing efforts to understand certain policies of Pope Pius XI — especially his ecumenical Ostpolitik towards Bolshevik-Soviet Russia (1922-1933) and his correlative (and concurrent) conciliatory policy towards Leftist France (especially during the years 1925-1927) — I came across … Continue reading
Remembering Fr. Bradley
In the 1980s, during an evening meal at our home, after the eight children had gone to bed, Father Bradley festively and inimitably narrated with tears of mirth how three Jesuit priests of quite different character once found a house … Continue reading
“The Betrothed”, Alessandro Manzoni and Pope Pius XI
After recently discovering some previously-unknown-to-me, trustworthy reports about the generous diplomatic and priestly sacramental presence of the future Pope Pius XI (Monsignor Achille Ratti) in Poland towards the end of World War I and during the gravely consequential Battle of … Continue reading
More on the Battle of Warsaw / General Fuller’s Insights
While recently reading some of G.K. Chesterton’s written reflections in 19271 shortly after his return from his invited April-May visit to Poland, and then also some of his more abiding insights about the plight and character of Poland almost a … Continue reading
Hope of the Half-Defeated
Especially after witnessing my German wife’s unlooked-for response very late the other night while (and moreso after) I read aloud to her for the first time G.K. Chesterton’s short essay, “Two Words from Poland,”1 I am now even more confident … Continue reading
Clearing the Mind of Cant
G.K. Chesterton’s concluding words in his earnest 1936 essay “About Voltaire” were forcefully compact and sudden and yet, at first, a little too compressed for my immediate understanding, even though I had read those words more than once before: namely, … Continue reading
Evil Friendships in History
Not long before his widely lamented death on 14 June 1936, G.K. Chesterton had published a fresh collection of his essays, entitled As I Was Saying, an anthology expressing some of his well-pondered judgments after his fourteen fertile and grateful … Continue reading