When I was about ten years old, in the early 1980’s, my mother bought me an encyclopedia. The encyclopedia came with a twelve-volume set of Western classical literature called the Harvard Classics. These volumes were representatives of a much larger collection called Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf of Books, because that’s how high the book shelf was with all fifty volumes.I didn’t know all that at the time. All I knew was that my mother encouraged me to read the books because they would “help you when you got to college.”They helped me alright. They opened a door into a world of cultural majesty that has held my attention ever since.This was my introduction to the West.Something latent in me was activated by this encounter with European high civilization. It just felt “right.”
Within those pages I discovered the Greek notion of civic duty as described by Plutarch. I read of Julius Caesar and of the spell he cast over his legions and over Rome.
I encountered the Greek hero Odysseus and tried to follow his course across the waters of the ancient Aegean Sea.
I walked through Hell with Dante and Virgil.
I read in Cervantes of a middle-aged Spanish country gentleman who may or may not have been mad when he announced he was in fact a brave and virtuous knight in shining armor.
I wrestled with Shakespeare’s language for the first time and laid the foundation for my lifelong love of exalted English prose and poetry.
I entered the dark and mysterious German forests guided by the brothers Grimm.
I delighted in the charm of 19th century English Romantic poetry in the works of Tennyson, Rossetti, Arnold, and others.
These were the first hammer blows of Western civilization upon a soul that was uniquely malleable from birth. My character was being forged by its exposure to European aesthetics and intellectual grandeur.
Growing up, I took it for granted that Western culture would always be there. The West represented comfortable constellations of fixed stars that I could rely on. But in recent decades, my heavens have been shaken.
I see now that it is not a given that the West will endure, at least not in any healthy and recognizable manner.
Thus, with the aim of rescuing a culture that has given me much and has sustained me, I seek to save the West from the forces of chaos that mean to ravage it. I want to protect that flame that has brought light to a human race long groping in the darkness because…
