Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches
Of the following essays, ‘Zenith’ and ‘Black-and-White’ originally appeared in _The Freeman_, ‘Sophistication’ and ‘The French’ in _The Nineteenth Century and After_. My thanks are due to the editors of both publications for permission to reprint those essays here.
Of the following essays, ‘Zenith’ and ‘Black-and-White’ originally appeared in _The Freeman_, ‘Sophistication’ and ‘The French’ in _The Nineteenth Century and After_. My thanks...
2. Part 2This greyness follows Americans throughout their life and is due, I think, to our over-complication of and concentration upon the surface facts of existence. No matter what one...
3. Part 3Not that they all had Packards or Cadillacs. Many of the younger men were still struggling near the bottom of the business ascent; a great many were less than well-to-do; a few...
4. Part 4But there are two very noble traits in men, or in the best of them: a fundamental love of truth and a refusal to accept defeat. So presently such men began to shake off despair...
5. Part 5Emptiness, indeed, yawns beneath the literature of sophistication. There is no probing of truth below the glitter. There cannot be, since the glitter is achieved through a super...
6. Part 6It is banal to say that men never grow up, but one should not be afraid to make a banal remark if it also happens to be true, and this, alas, is true without qualification. Men...
7. Part 7In the last sentence you may discover an indication that, for my part, I distinguish between the value of ephemeral legends and that of legends which endure. So, in truth, I do....
8. Part 8Despite the fact that my own intimate Italian friends and close acquaintances are perforce members of the middle and upper classes, it is of that vast third class, the ‘popolo,’...
9. Part 9There are two of the plays that I have neither seen nor read, but, among all the others, _L’uomo, la bestia e la virtù_ stands by itself. It is true that here you get, and with...
10. Part 10They are narrow. Once having made up their minds they never change them. Alone among the nations to-day, they will not admit that the Treaty of Versailles was other than righteo...
11. Part 11There must be some reason beyond the mere sound of a word for the popular horror of pornography; and, in fact, as soon as one begins to dig down, one discovers all sorts of reas...
12. Part 12Thus considered, what becomes of this majority opinion? It is revealed as, at bottom, itself only a very small minority opinion. And such a minority! An idea to be apprehended v...