Thanks to Ryan who asked me a question I reread the book that moves me, my mother's castle which tells the true story of young Marcel and his family who will spend time in the countryside (his father was a teacher) where he will befriend a peasant. It takes place at the beginning of the 20th century and its ending always moves me.
"The time passes, and it turns the wheel of life like water turns that of mills. Five years later, I was walking behind a black car, whose wheels were so high that I could see the horses' hooves. I was dressed in black, and little Paul's hand was squeezing mine with all his strength, as we carried our mother away forever. Of this terrible day, I have no other memories, as if my fifteen years had refused to admit the strength of a grief that could kill me.
For years, until he became a grown man, we never had the courage to speak of her. Then, little Paul became very tall. He towered over me by a head, and he wore a golden silk beard around his neck. In the hills of the Etoile, which he never wanted to leave, he herded his flock of goats; in the evening, he made cheese in woven reed sieves, then slept on the gravel of the garrigues, wrapped in his big coat: he was Virgil's last goatherd.
But at thirty years old, he died in a clinic. On the bedside table was his harmonica. My dear Lili did not accompany me to the little cemetery of La Treille, for he had been waiting for me there for years, under a square of immortelles: in 1917, in a dark forest of the North, a bullet had cut short his young life with a shot to the forehead, and he fell in the rain, on clumps of cold plants whose names he did not know... Such is the life of men. Some joys, quickly erased by unforgettable sorrows. There is no need to tell this to children. 🥺
What was the last book you read that moved or touched you?
Well, you asked about books that "touched" or "moved" a person - which suggests a more sentimental or emotional reaction. Honestly, I am probably too much of a nerd for that kind of reading. However, a couple of books have "moved" me intellectually.
The first was George F. Will's "Statecraft as Soulcraft." I had been interested in politics since I was in 7th grade. (No joke.) Yet Will, a Ph. D. who became a newspaper columnist for The Washington Post Writer's Group, introduced me to politics at a deeper level and stirred my interest in political philosophy and the pedigree and history of political ideas.
It was Will who introduced me to the various distinctions between conservatism, liberalism, socialism and such. Not as mere labels - which is how they are used far too often - but as actually developed political philosophies.
That spurred me on to read Edmund Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France." A classic of political philosophy and classical conservatism. From there it was on to a slew of other books - and my current book collection which, when we moved homes, the movers estimated the weight of my book collection at over 2 tons.
Thus, when I write something on this site, you usually end up with an essay hundreds upon hundreds of words long. It was with George F. Will and Edmund Burke that the Frankenstein of this site - that would be me - was created.
Of recent books, I would have to say "The Peacemaker: Ronald Reagan, the Cold War, and the World on the Brink" by William Inboden was one of the best books I have read. Though not a work of political philosophy, it is a superb history and gives the reader an appreciation for the nuances and complexities of the Cold War and how it differs from the current era.
Well worth the time. Other than that, the list of books I have thought worth the time is quite lengthy, but the Will book and Burke top the list.
Oh yes you know I am a sensitive woman, I can be touched by some scenes (but not by romantic love scenes like Christmas movies) besides my mother's castle is not a book about romance lol
I thought of you, because on Friday I finished a book by the English historian Robert Tombs who wrote a book called "THAT SWEET ENEMY; BRITAIN AND FRANCE: THE HISTORY OF A LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP" a book of 1500 pages, it took me a little more than a week to read it because the book was not translated into French, and the first 300 pages, he analyzes what is called the second Hundred Years War, which will begin under Louis XIV, and which will end under Napoleon with the great victory of England and he analyzes the reasons of this success etc. And he sites several times Edmund Burke that he seems to appreciate a lot, I would say that in this way of speaking about Napoleon and France, the historian is certainly a conservative, so with the quotations of Burke and even a page where he describes him, I thought of you
By the way, I hope you did not take offense at my remark about books that are more sentimental or romantic in nature. Honestly, I was not sure when reading your question if you were discussing fiction or non-fiction books, etc. So I qualified my own answer just in case I was missing your point.
Anyhow, I recommend both the Will book and Burke's extensive writings. Oh, and if you read a book of over 1000 pages in length in a language not your own, all I can say is - IMPRESSIVE!!!
Not many folks can do that - and in the computer age in which we live, not many read at all. Cheers! to you!!
well I don't get any credit, when you are passionate about something you do it with more ease. I have to say that my parents didn't help me to get interested in digital, say they allowed me to have a phone at only 15 years old, I was really pissed off about it at the time.
Thanks to you I read Mr. Will, which I also liked, even if I didn't like his review on Napoleon lol. I haven't read Mr. Burke yet, when I do I'll come back to you.
Real brief on King Louis XIV - I'm a fan. To be sure, his style, method and philosophy of government would not work well in the current age. However, he was an extraordinary figure who brought France to the height of his power - and did so while respecting the traditions and institutions of society. (Unlike a certain Corsican brigand who we leave nameless. You know who I mean.)
When I have more time I can discuss in more detail. However, in my mind, Napoleon was second place in greatness to King Louis.
No problem, I'll wait until you have more time, but I agree with you, it was Louis XIV who brought France to its peak, but Napoleon built himself and the structures were already destroyed when he learned the power
And the Palace of Versailles is really a masterpiece for me. I imagine myself very well in the salons of the 17th century 🤣
You don't have to answer this, or answer only when you have some time to waste
You disappoint me @nightdrot, how can you be a fan of Louis XIV, he persecuted the Protestants, he bloodied Europe, the massacre of the Palatinate, the bombardment of the republic of Geneva, he also bombarded territories of the Ottoman empire, and even blocked the Dardanelles to force the Ottoman empire to give him a port, while the Ottoman empire was supposed to be his ally.
Fortunately, the United Kingdom and Holland were able to restore the continental balance.
@Matthias345 Don't get me wrong, I didn't say he was a nice person. He has to be put in his times and understood in that context.
Another example, think of Churchill referring to the "blackamoors," a derogatory term that was used to define Africans back in the day. Churchill saved Western civilization, but by contemporary standards his terminology and views on empire and such would be viewed as retrograde.
We must take care when judging historical figures to understand them in the era in which they were born and operated. I admire Louis because, unlike Napoleon, he was a defender, in general, of the traditional institutions of his culture - virtues and sins being inextricably bound together - and sought, in general, a stable social order.
As history has well demonstrated, a stable social order will conduce to a slow but steady evolution and improvement. Not perfectly or consistently, but generally over time.
Those who have called forth a revolutionary order invariably, in unintentionally, call forth chaos and thence tyranny. See also Marx and Lenin. See also Mussolini. See also Hitler.
Human beings are imperfect and imperfectible. Beyond that, while my sympathies are Anglophile, Louis was committed to, in a world of realpolitik, the advancement of his nation's interests. To be sure, that was NOT consistent with British national interests - which sought a balance on the continent in order to facilitate the safety of Britain and thus the empire.
However, Louis cannot be faulted, as a leader of France, for pursuing French national interests.
P. S. One last thing, the following quotes best define the international arena, like it or not. Best always to recall them:
From Lord Palmerston: "We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow."
From Theodore Roosevelt: "World peace comes not from human kindness or moral restraint, but from balanced power; equilibriums of force restraining the selfish aims of nation-states."
From John Quincy Adams: "It is the inevitable tendency of a direct interference in foreign wars, even wars for freedom, to change the very foundations of our own government from liberty to power... Erroneous moral principle is the most fruitful of all the sources of human calamity and vice. The leaders of nations... are generally but accomplished sophists, trained to make the worse appear the better reason."
&
"Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
Victor Davis Hanson (paraphrasing Thucydides): "Power, not justice... is always the final arbiter of state relations; self-interest, not morality, is what guides and must guide the behavior of states. Appeals to mercy or hope for reprieve are misguided, not rooted in logic or a realistic understanding of human behavior."
Finally, Camillo di Cavour: (His response when asked by a reporter what he would do for the Italian liberals who helped him unite Italy.) "Astonish them with my ingratitude."
These are not all virtuous, objectively speaking, but one must respect the insights they represent.
@nightdrot As a French philosopher wrote there is no difference between Louis XIV, Napoleon and even Hitler. She wrote in 1940
"For four centuries the West has suffered three serious threats of universal domination; the first came from Spain, under Charles V and Philip II, the second from France, under Louis XIV, the third from France again, under the Directory and Napoleon. All three threats were averted after an appalling sacrifice of human life, and in all three cases England played the leading role. "
"Napoleon did not inspire the world with less terror and horror than Hitler, nor less justly. Whoever travels, for example, in the Tyrol, finds at every step inscriptions recalling the cruelties committed by the French soldiers against a poor, hard-working and happy people insofar as they are free. Do we forget what France did to Holland, to Switzerland, to Spain? It is claimed that Napoleon propagated, with arms in hand, the ideas of liberty and equality of the French Revolution; but what he propagated mainly was the idea of the centralized State, the State as the sole source of authority and the exclusive object of devotion; the State thus conceived, invented, so to speak, by Richelieu, led to a higher point of perfection by Louis XIV, to a still higher point by the Revolution, and then by Napoleon, has today found its supreme form in Germany. It now horrifies us, and this horror is just; let us not forget, however, that it came from us. "
"If we go back further in time, there is an analogy between Hitler and Louis XIV, not certainly as to their person, but as to their role. Louis XIV was a legitimate king, but he did not have the spirit of one; the miseries of his childhood, surrounded by the terrors of the Fronde, had given him in part the state of mind of modern dictators who, starting from nothing, humiliated in their youth, believed that they could only command their people by putting them down. The regime established by him deserved already, for the first time in Europe since Rome, the modern name of totalitarian "
"The foreign policy proceeded from the same spirit of ruthless pride, from the same art of humiliating, from the same bad faith as Hitler's policy. The first action of Louis XIV was to force Spain, with whom he had just allied himself by marriage, to publicly humiliate herself before him under threat of war. He humiliated the Pope in the same way; he forced the Doge of Genoa to come and ask for his forgiveness; he took Strasbourg exactly as Hitler took Prague, in the midst of peace, amidst the tears of the inhabitants who were powerless to resist, in defiance of a recently concluded treaty which had set theoretically definitive borders. The atrocious devastation of the Palatinate did not have the excuse of the necessities of war either. The unmotivated aggression against Holland almost destroyed a free and proud people.
@Matthias345 No argument. Louis VIX was seeking the advancement of French national interests. However, the writer is blurring some crucial distinctions.
The primary one being that the totalitarian ideologies sought to replace the established institutions of their societies - and the societies they sought to conquer - not with just a different government. Rather a different cultural and social order.
The legitimacy that the author seeks to dismiss is a critical distinction. National Socialism, Fascism, the doctrines of the French Revolution - these sought the reordering of society and denied the legitimacy of the established institutions that Louis VIX , as a Bourbon king and hereditary monarch, effectively supported.
Make no mistake, I don't think the world would have been a happy place under Louis' rule. My point rather is that I admire his skills as a practitioner of realpolitik and that he, in effect, represented a variation of the traditional Western order. Grant not one I would have liked to be governed under, but unlike the totalitarians - as distinct from the authoritarians of which Louis was one - he did not seek to remake man in his image.
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. The main character narrates the story, so you follow her throughout the story. The story is about a young woman who is brutally raped and murdered after being kidnapped in the 1970s. The young woman watches down on her parents from purgatory, and sees how her death affects her family.
It's based on a true story, which it originally happened in Norristown, Pennsylvania. I can't remember if the town was mentioned in the book. The story is moving.
Peter Zeihan 'The End Of The World Is Just The Begining'. When I finished I started re-reading it. It is not as beautifully written and poignant - in fact it is sardonic. It is up to you to join the dots.
It is very difficult for me not to see much of what he predicts not playing out and in my mind I see that distraught elderly Ukrainian woman crying to a TV reporter she had lived in two World Wars and now she was living through a third war
