Greetings from Vienna!
This weekend, I’m strolling from café to café; touring the Hapsburg summer residence, Schönbrunn Palace; sampling chocolate, and soaking in the beauty of this historic and influential city. From the Romans to the Napoleonic Wars, from the horrors of WWII to majesty of Mozart’s performances here, not to mention Austrian independence – there is ample history here to discover and learn from.
Here is what I’d like to share in the meantime:
There were two Trojan Wars; we’re all familiar with the famous second one, immortalized in Homer’s Iliad, but what do you know about the first? Hint: it involved Herakles (Hercules).
C.S. Lewis opines on chronological snobbery. It will come as no surprise to regular readers that Lewis’ opinions has shaped and colored (in part) my own; an idea doesn’t become false simply because it is out of fashion any more than a falsehood becomes true because it is popular. We moderns tend to think previous generations lived in darker times because they didn’t know as much as we [think we] know. Putting aside the fact much of our bravado is mistaking information found online easily for “knowing” something, life was not a vast unexplored mystery up until the 1800s. The antidote to chronological snobbery is letting the “breeze of the centuries” blow through our minds, stirring up new, old ideas. The key, as always, is selecting the valuable ideas from the chaff. [I’ve also written about Lewis’ ideas around “old books” here.]
I found this classic essay from Christopher Hitchens on Edmund Wilson, the founder of the Library of America publishing house, and how the writer made criticism an art to be written with both beauty and Hitchens’ trademark straight-forward style.
Seth Godin’s missing post.
Kevin Kelly’s very cool library – and many other interesting (perhaps slightly dystopian) ideas are waiting in this new interview.
Currently reading: The Hapsburgs: To Rule the World by Martyn C. Rady
Have a creative and safe long weekend.
Image: Vienna, a View of the Church and Barracks in Mauer seen from Lange Gasse, by Carl Franz Michael Geyling. 1843. Austrian, 1814-1880.
