Jun 2, 2023·edited Jun 2, 2023Liked by Johann Kurtz
Theoden's transformation from LOTR is one of the greatest things I have read in fiction. Great discussion on it here. Reminded me of this great podcast episode on the white-pilling of Theoden:
The only people for whom LOTR is cringe have never been given the proper encouragement, found the opportunity, or felt the call to nobility of purpose and high moral courage that these stories manifest. It's a cynical and spiritless age that finds such work "cringe".
Johann, this was yet another beautiful thought-work. Your ending also hinted at something I have been considering lately--the erosion of both trust and vision in our day--and potential countermeasures. Have we gone so blind that we no longer perceive the myriad gardens and blessings that surround us anymore, in the form of good, but flawed, men and women? A single inspired human is capable of such amazing good works and yet, in the dim light of these times, we are prone to only see their faults. We are certainly seeing the darkening of days, and yet, as you point out, it is hope that distinguishes the faithful. Jesus spit in the dirt and rubbed it in the blind man’s eyes in order to heal him. Perhaps we are all feeling the sting of saliva and grit right now--and after some darkness, clear vision and eternity. This is hope and from it...Northern courage. Wonderful article. Thank you again.
I think you're right. From a sermon of Saint Augustine:
"Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times... But what is this evil world? For the heavens and the earth, and the waters, and the things that are therein, the fish, and birds, and trees, are not evil. All these are good: but it is evil men who make this evil world. Yet as we cannot be without evil men, let us, as I have said, while we live pour out our groans before the Lord our God, and endure the evils, that we may attain to the things that are good."
Spengler’s deep grasp of the art of the West is often staggering. But his Nietzschean psychologizing--however true and penetrating--always fails to grasp the substance of the artworks that he analyzes. For example, he is capable of describing Raphael’s Sistine Madonna with excruciating attention to detail and set that work in exactly its proper place in the sweep of Western culture. And yet, he has not a touch of reverence. No idea at all of piety. No notion that the Madonna might actually be prayed to. No notion of prayer at all in fact. So deep, yet also so blind in certain limited respects.
Also, thanks for making LOTR less cringe with this post. The films really soured me on Tolkien.
I know, it is quite strange. He is a 'pure' intellectual - the closest he comes to naked reverence is in describing Faustian Man and his world-vision, as opposed to the objects of Faustian Man's reverence. As always, Spengler attempts to place himself outside and above the subjects of his analysis - but it is indeed a lonely and cold space to occupy.
I sit now in Toledo, Spain. I just toured not only a great Cathedral, but mosques that have been reconquered by brave men and consecrated in the name of Christ. Indeed the entire continent was cast into shadow by invaders, yet Godly men repelled them and won the entire Kingdom of Spain for Christ.
Mosques and Synagogues were consecrated as churches after the expulsion of those people, and while progressive tourists murmur about how "inappropriate" this is and lament that Toledo isn't more "multicultural", the city remains firmly and unapologetically Catholic. This is reinforced by the fact that Templar imagery abounds in the city. You have all kinds of trinket shops selling figurines of Templar knights and replicas of their weaponry. One of the historic churches had many signs talking about the divinity of Christ, the sin of abortion, and Jesus' message to the world. This kind of thing might seem gauche to tourists, but filled my heart with joy to know that the churches are not mere historical attractions but active missions of God.
I feel closer to God here than even in places like Rome. At least some of the Spaniards still really know how to take Catholicism seriously and I love this country for it
Great to read a different take on Spengler! I was rereading some passages of Decline of the West last night and it struck me as a work which was created within the prison of the human ego and one which rests upon assumption of the need to bring order from chaos. (As if fighting against chaos would bring about anything but defeat). Spengler seems unable to build upon any premise outside of his own false concept of humans and nature as separate entities (and often entities at odds with eachother). I am not speaking for man vs machine i.e. Man and Technics or HOW man utilizes the tools he percieves around him. But perhaps by seeing humans as a part of nature, an extension of nature instead of an enemy to it, he would have been able to make room for the potential for humans to better understand how they fit into/are part of the divinity and life which moves through all things. Humbly, I believe it is partially through this understanding that the potential for transcendence of the human ego is possible.
Beautiful essay. I have always loved Theoden and Prof Tolkien. One of my personal interests in the scene is that this very ancient philosophy of northern courage matches the anti-modernist literary style in which the scene of his transformation is written. I've mainly used it as an example of how an inner life can be suggested in literature without the use of any stereotypical modernist and post-modernist literary techniques, but it's just such a powerful rebuttal to both despair and post-modern ennui, perhaps the most powerful one I have encountered by any writer. That being said, there is something very haunting about Tolkien's suicidal characters, probably because he was a Catholic war veteran. Suicide was a mortal sin to him but he treats characters like the Steward Denethor and a number of others like Turin with a kind of dignity that seems to come from an innate understanding of their POV, even as he rejects it.
Fantastic comment. I think the warmth and beauty of the Shire could only have been created by someone that had an intense encounter with its conceptual opposite (modern industrialized war).
Another very enjoyable piece. A couple thoughts: reminds me of something I've read before, in an unusually intelligent and thoughtful blog that was sadly deleted. There Denethor was identified with reactionary race-blind conservative types like Peter Hitchens and Roger Scruton.
And secondly, I really need to finally get around to reading Spengler.
You seem to be leading to the conclusion that the solution to racial despair is religious faith. But unfortunately anything that directs our attention and energies away from the present struggle is a false faith, and anything that promises salvation only after death, happiness only in a future world after the destruction of this world, is a hollow consolation. I'm afraid I take more of the Marxian view of this matter.
Even if one believes in Christianity, which I, like most people on the dissident right, like most people in the West, don't, (even if I freely acknowledge it has many beauties and benefits, perhaps equal to its flaws), that is not necessarily a cause for hope, if one is a racialist first and last. What is it exactly, you, as a Christian, hope for?
Christianity is a universalist anti-racist religion. It always has been and there's no way around it. The Christian heaven is an international airport paradise, not Valhalla, and there will be no nations or races there, just as the Bible strongly implies there will be no sexes (there certainly will be no sex; men and women will become desexed, deracinated beings like the angels. That's not a paradise I want any part of. I'm not interested in going anywhere I won't retain my identity as a White man. Oblivion is preferable.
And will there be an England in the New Earth? An America, a Germany, a Sweden? Are we not fighting above all for our own lands and folk? So what comfort can we get from a creed in which there is neither 'male nor female, Jew nor Greek'?
So if one is looking for salvation in this world, at our own hands, rather than the pallid consolation of the life to come (which may or may not come and there's no empirical way of proving either the existence of the non-existence of the supernatural) and individual, not collective, salvation at the hands of an alien Semitic deity, how can one not conclude that both Denethor and Spengler were right?
I can just see no realistic way from where we are now to where we want to be, need to be for our survival, i.e. the ethnostate. I see no signs of system collapse or that longed-for race war, only continued, gradual, interminable deterioration. If White people haven't woken up now, they won't wake up ever. Or if they ever do, by then it will be far, far too late.
Northern Courage it seems to me is exactly what is needed in this time. Our pagan ancestors, for all their barbarism, were wiser men than their Christian sons. Though they had no hope of victory, the fought nonetheless. First, because it was their duty; second, so that the memory of their heroism might live on after them, and so gain for them the only kind of immortality of which any man can be assured. One thinks of the example of the Red Indians of North America. Though they were our enemy, they were an honoured enemy. Though they were in the end utterly defeated and dispossessed, they continued to be respected, even revered, even in a strange way, loved, in our art and cinema and literature, because of the ferocity and courage (which was frequently brutality and cruelty) with which they fought. They did not just lie down and die. They did not go gently into the night.
Or, to sum it up in a small verse I wrote a while ago:
This was a beautiful meditation on hope and the fragility and meaning of life. I’d never heard of Spengler before. Was Tolkien a contemporary of his, or at least aware of his writings and influence? It would seem so.
We need men like Theoden when the storm clouds gather, true warriors for grim times. They are still there. Perhaps, like him, without their even knowing it yet. They awaken as Theoden did, when the time is right.
I’ve always loved how Tolkien’s epic tale ends with Sam, back in The Shire. This scene of domestic bliss, life’s simple joys, is ultimately what Theoden and the other heroes of the tale fought for, not just for their own people, but for others as well. Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin didn’t go into things with full (or even any) understanding of what it was all about. For them it was love for one another and their home that propelled them into the fight of their age.
I take hope from Tolkien’s epic tale. That in the end, the little inconsequential people will be the tipping point that ushers in the doom of evil. Keep hope alive!
Spengler was about a decade older than Tolkien and published The Decline of the West while Tolkien was still in the army. Although I would assume that Tolkien had read Spengler - who was a major intellectual of his time and also wrote extensively about Northern European history - as far as I know Tolkien never cited him or replied to him directly. I think the despair that Tolkien was primarily responding to was that born of his experience in the First World War - a war which had a profound influence on Spengler as well.
I like your assessment of Lord of the Rings very much.
Jun 3, 2023·edited Jun 3, 2023Liked by Johann Kurtz
Thank you for the informative reply. I appreciate it.
It’s easy for me to wax rhapsodic about Tolkien. I have read The Hobbit and The LOTR series repeatedly over the years, ever since Jr. High. It’s had a profound influence on my love of literature. And ever since the madness of current things has descended upon our cultures and the world in general, I’m often reminded of passages from his works that perfectly encapsulate both the good and the bad in our own battle for our age. His work is proving to be timeless.
It ought to be noted though that the guerilla warfare model used by the East in our lifetime has been extremely successful. Victory is regarded quite sensibly as more important than grand gestures of honor.
Beautiful. Catholic morality is the highest, most sophisticated and spiritually fulfilling that I have seen amongst the world's religions (I esp admire the Jesuit tradition). I was not born Catholic nor am I one now. But I grew up guided by the spiritual teachings of Tolkien, though I wouldn't have said it that way at the time. As an adult I met a wise Catholic who taught me who Tolkien was and how his books are a roadmap to the deepest Catholic moral and mystical insights. Then I found Chesterton and other Catholics (a lot of them converts) who deeply influenced me: from Graham Greene to Alec Guinness to Evelyn Waugh. Wisdom at it's deepest and most profound.
Theoden's transformation from LOTR is one of the greatest things I have read in fiction. Great discussion on it here. Reminded me of this great podcast episode on the white-pilling of Theoden:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/3jU8gjGU00Gw7WMNyd1mYa?si=F_pYju6DTUy26RFgrGKppA
Downloading now - thanks for the recommendation!
Insightful and thought-provoking. Thank you.
To those who think LOTR is cringe, I recommend this recording of Theoden's call to battle, read by the writer himself. https://archive.org/details/RTFM-Harp-940225/
Thank you!
The only people for whom LOTR is cringe have never been given the proper encouragement, found the opportunity, or felt the call to nobility of purpose and high moral courage that these stories manifest. It's a cynical and spiritless age that finds such work "cringe".
Agreed.
Absolutely excellent essay. The concept of northern courage was one I learned from Tolkien and it has kept me resolute through the long defeat.
Johann, this was yet another beautiful thought-work. Your ending also hinted at something I have been considering lately--the erosion of both trust and vision in our day--and potential countermeasures. Have we gone so blind that we no longer perceive the myriad gardens and blessings that surround us anymore, in the form of good, but flawed, men and women? A single inspired human is capable of such amazing good works and yet, in the dim light of these times, we are prone to only see their faults. We are certainly seeing the darkening of days, and yet, as you point out, it is hope that distinguishes the faithful. Jesus spit in the dirt and rubbed it in the blind man’s eyes in order to heal him. Perhaps we are all feeling the sting of saliva and grit right now--and after some darkness, clear vision and eternity. This is hope and from it...Northern courage. Wonderful article. Thank you again.
I think you're right. From a sermon of Saint Augustine:
"Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times... But what is this evil world? For the heavens and the earth, and the waters, and the things that are therein, the fish, and birds, and trees, are not evil. All these are good: but it is evil men who make this evil world. Yet as we cannot be without evil men, let us, as I have said, while we live pour out our groans before the Lord our God, and endure the evils, that we may attain to the things that are good."
Wow. That was so eloquent and inspiring. Thank you for sharing this.
Spengler’s deep grasp of the art of the West is often staggering. But his Nietzschean psychologizing--however true and penetrating--always fails to grasp the substance of the artworks that he analyzes. For example, he is capable of describing Raphael’s Sistine Madonna with excruciating attention to detail and set that work in exactly its proper place in the sweep of Western culture. And yet, he has not a touch of reverence. No idea at all of piety. No notion that the Madonna might actually be prayed to. No notion of prayer at all in fact. So deep, yet also so blind in certain limited respects.
Also, thanks for making LOTR less cringe with this post. The films really soured me on Tolkien.
I know, it is quite strange. He is a 'pure' intellectual - the closest he comes to naked reverence is in describing Faustian Man and his world-vision, as opposed to the objects of Faustian Man's reverence. As always, Spengler attempts to place himself outside and above the subjects of his analysis - but it is indeed a lonely and cold space to occupy.
I sit now in Toledo, Spain. I just toured not only a great Cathedral, but mosques that have been reconquered by brave men and consecrated in the name of Christ. Indeed the entire continent was cast into shadow by invaders, yet Godly men repelled them and won the entire Kingdom of Spain for Christ.
This city is holy. I feel it in my bones.
Deus vult
Indeed.
Mosques and Synagogues were consecrated as churches after the expulsion of those people, and while progressive tourists murmur about how "inappropriate" this is and lament that Toledo isn't more "multicultural", the city remains firmly and unapologetically Catholic. This is reinforced by the fact that Templar imagery abounds in the city. You have all kinds of trinket shops selling figurines of Templar knights and replicas of their weaponry. One of the historic churches had many signs talking about the divinity of Christ, the sin of abortion, and Jesus' message to the world. This kind of thing might seem gauche to tourists, but filled my heart with joy to know that the churches are not mere historical attractions but active missions of God.
I feel closer to God here than even in places like Rome. At least some of the Spaniards still really know how to take Catholicism seriously and I love this country for it
Amen. Attending Marian processions in Spain are amongst my favorite religious memories.
Great to read a different take on Spengler! I was rereading some passages of Decline of the West last night and it struck me as a work which was created within the prison of the human ego and one which rests upon assumption of the need to bring order from chaos. (As if fighting against chaos would bring about anything but defeat). Spengler seems unable to build upon any premise outside of his own false concept of humans and nature as separate entities (and often entities at odds with eachother). I am not speaking for man vs machine i.e. Man and Technics or HOW man utilizes the tools he percieves around him. But perhaps by seeing humans as a part of nature, an extension of nature instead of an enemy to it, he would have been able to make room for the potential for humans to better understand how they fit into/are part of the divinity and life which moves through all things. Humbly, I believe it is partially through this understanding that the potential for transcendence of the human ego is possible.
Beautifully put. Wonderful comment.
You might say not only his lack of hope, but also his pride in own farsightedness was just as bad.
Beautiful essay. I have always loved Theoden and Prof Tolkien. One of my personal interests in the scene is that this very ancient philosophy of northern courage matches the anti-modernist literary style in which the scene of his transformation is written. I've mainly used it as an example of how an inner life can be suggested in literature without the use of any stereotypical modernist and post-modernist literary techniques, but it's just such a powerful rebuttal to both despair and post-modern ennui, perhaps the most powerful one I have encountered by any writer. That being said, there is something very haunting about Tolkien's suicidal characters, probably because he was a Catholic war veteran. Suicide was a mortal sin to him but he treats characters like the Steward Denethor and a number of others like Turin with a kind of dignity that seems to come from an innate understanding of their POV, even as he rejects it.
Fantastic comment. I think the warmth and beauty of the Shire could only have been created by someone that had an intense encounter with its conceptual opposite (modern industrialized war).
Another very enjoyable piece. A couple thoughts: reminds me of something I've read before, in an unusually intelligent and thoughtful blog that was sadly deleted. There Denethor was identified with reactionary race-blind conservative types like Peter Hitchens and Roger Scruton.
And secondly, I really need to finally get around to reading Spengler.
You seem to be leading to the conclusion that the solution to racial despair is religious faith. But unfortunately anything that directs our attention and energies away from the present struggle is a false faith, and anything that promises salvation only after death, happiness only in a future world after the destruction of this world, is a hollow consolation. I'm afraid I take more of the Marxian view of this matter.
Even if one believes in Christianity, which I, like most people on the dissident right, like most people in the West, don't, (even if I freely acknowledge it has many beauties and benefits, perhaps equal to its flaws), that is not necessarily a cause for hope, if one is a racialist first and last. What is it exactly, you, as a Christian, hope for?
Christianity is a universalist anti-racist religion. It always has been and there's no way around it. The Christian heaven is an international airport paradise, not Valhalla, and there will be no nations or races there, just as the Bible strongly implies there will be no sexes (there certainly will be no sex; men and women will become desexed, deracinated beings like the angels. That's not a paradise I want any part of. I'm not interested in going anywhere I won't retain my identity as a White man. Oblivion is preferable.
And will there be an England in the New Earth? An America, a Germany, a Sweden? Are we not fighting above all for our own lands and folk? So what comfort can we get from a creed in which there is neither 'male nor female, Jew nor Greek'?
So if one is looking for salvation in this world, at our own hands, rather than the pallid consolation of the life to come (which may or may not come and there's no empirical way of proving either the existence of the non-existence of the supernatural) and individual, not collective, salvation at the hands of an alien Semitic deity, how can one not conclude that both Denethor and Spengler were right?
I can just see no realistic way from where we are now to where we want to be, need to be for our survival, i.e. the ethnostate. I see no signs of system collapse or that longed-for race war, only continued, gradual, interminable deterioration. If White people haven't woken up now, they won't wake up ever. Or if they ever do, by then it will be far, far too late.
Northern Courage it seems to me is exactly what is needed in this time. Our pagan ancestors, for all their barbarism, were wiser men than their Christian sons. Though they had no hope of victory, the fought nonetheless. First, because it was their duty; second, so that the memory of their heroism might live on after them, and so gain for them the only kind of immortality of which any man can be assured. One thinks of the example of the Red Indians of North America. Though they were our enemy, they were an honoured enemy. Though they were in the end utterly defeated and dispossessed, they continued to be respected, even revered, even in a strange way, loved, in our art and cinema and literature, because of the ferocity and courage (which was frequently brutality and cruelty) with which they fought. They did not just lie down and die. They did not go gently into the night.
Or, to sum it up in a small verse I wrote a while ago:
Look not for a distant sign;
Not to the heavens for your hope,
Nor to a future age for your deliverance.
My message is this:
Thou art the man
And the time is now.
Commenting to acknowledge your post - thank you for your thoughts.
It's a hefty topic, so I'll think about how & where to best reply. Maybe in the next 'best of comments' post.
No worries, no pressure to respond, your piece just stimulated a lot of thoughts which I felt the need to express :)
> Christianity is a universalist anti-racist religion. It always has been and there's no way around it.
I don't think this is historically or biblically accurate.
Historically Christians from any sample time period from 150 years ago to 2000 years ago were far more racist than the dissident right is today.
Biblically God destroyed the tower of babel and scattered the nations. He did not want one homogenous people.
This was a beautiful meditation on hope and the fragility and meaning of life. I’d never heard of Spengler before. Was Tolkien a contemporary of his, or at least aware of his writings and influence? It would seem so.
We need men like Theoden when the storm clouds gather, true warriors for grim times. They are still there. Perhaps, like him, without their even knowing it yet. They awaken as Theoden did, when the time is right.
I’ve always loved how Tolkien’s epic tale ends with Sam, back in The Shire. This scene of domestic bliss, life’s simple joys, is ultimately what Theoden and the other heroes of the tale fought for, not just for their own people, but for others as well. Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin didn’t go into things with full (or even any) understanding of what it was all about. For them it was love for one another and their home that propelled them into the fight of their age.
I take hope from Tolkien’s epic tale. That in the end, the little inconsequential people will be the tipping point that ushers in the doom of evil. Keep hope alive!
Spengler was about a decade older than Tolkien and published The Decline of the West while Tolkien was still in the army. Although I would assume that Tolkien had read Spengler - who was a major intellectual of his time and also wrote extensively about Northern European history - as far as I know Tolkien never cited him or replied to him directly. I think the despair that Tolkien was primarily responding to was that born of his experience in the First World War - a war which had a profound influence on Spengler as well.
I like your assessment of Lord of the Rings very much.
Thank you for the informative reply. I appreciate it.
It’s easy for me to wax rhapsodic about Tolkien. I have read The Hobbit and The LOTR series repeatedly over the years, ever since Jr. High. It’s had a profound influence on my love of literature. And ever since the madness of current things has descended upon our cultures and the world in general, I’m often reminded of passages from his works that perfectly encapsulate both the good and the bad in our own battle for our age. His work is proving to be timeless.
It ought to be noted though that the guerilla warfare model used by the East in our lifetime has been extremely successful. Victory is regarded quite sensibly as more important than grand gestures of honor.
Kansas summed it all up well many years ago. Denethor would have loved that song! 😂
https://youtu.be/tH2w6Oxx0kQ
Beautiful. Catholic morality is the highest, most sophisticated and spiritually fulfilling that I have seen amongst the world's religions (I esp admire the Jesuit tradition). I was not born Catholic nor am I one now. But I grew up guided by the spiritual teachings of Tolkien, though I wouldn't have said it that way at the time. As an adult I met a wise Catholic who taught me who Tolkien was and how his books are a roadmap to the deepest Catholic moral and mystical insights. Then I found Chesterton and other Catholics (a lot of them converts) who deeply influenced me: from Graham Greene to Alec Guinness to Evelyn Waugh. Wisdom at it's deepest and most profound.