Matthew Arnold wrote in 1869 of his book Culture and Anarchy that:
The whole scope of [this book] is to recommend culture as the great help out of our present difficulties; culture being a pursuit of our total perfection by means of getting to know, on all the matters which most concern us, the best which has been thought and said in the world, and, through this knowledge, turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits, which we now follow staunchly but mechanically …
I have a question. Which writers, thinkers, philosphers over the last 100 years would you consider as having produced 'the best which has been thought and said in the world'?
I must admit that I have some difficultiy thinking of even one: perhaps, in English, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling (I am thinking here of Kim), Evelyn Waugh, and G.K.Chesterton; in French, Georges Bernanos.
Who would you nominate?
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3 comments:
Bernanos, most certainly. "Monsieur Ouine" (one English translation of which was called “The Open Mind”), written in the 1940s, depicted post-modernism and the dictatorship of relativism, and their disastrous consequences, well before either term had been coined.
Chesterton, certainly, obviously, too
Solzhenitsyn, probably.
I had forgotten Solzhenitsyn, shame on me.
Do you have a blog? If so, please post a link.
Thanks, and God bless.
In literature, my nomination goes to Dostoyevsky. My favourite is Notes from Underground, especially the monologue in the first part of the book. Like getting kicked in the face first time I read it.
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