Dear reader,
I have just finished a collection of prefaces by J. Frank Dobie and am working on a short biography of Oscar Romero, the martyred El Salvadoran archbishop, as well as The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin, a book required for a humanities class. Thus far it is only vaguely interesting; the Aboriginal concept of Songlines and Dreamings is very interesting, but the story at times feels more like a self-indulgent travelogue (i.e. "I did this, and I went there, and I ate this, and I think this") than anything resembling a true exposition on the Songlines, or even some sort of "meditation" on its meaning, modern application, universality, whatnot.
The Dobie book, on the other hand was endlessly fascinating. Given its format as an anthology of sorts - there's a reason it's called Prefaces - I could overlook its occasional redundancy. But in these pages, whether musings on the western art of Charles Russell and Frederic Remington, or the comparative merits of writers Andy Adams and Eugene Manlove Rhodes, or any other topic under the Western sun, Dobie never fails to evoke some essence of the departed Old West, to bring back, if only fleetingly, the smell of sage and the easy-like drawl of a contented cowboy. His reflections on the importance of the land and the need for historical and generational continuity particularly resonated with me. A quote of his struck me especially: "...carrying on a good tradition requires creative energy and is not accomplished merely through passive inheritance."
I have of late been thinking a great deal of tradition and its importance - my reading has conspired against me in this manner I suppose. The Songlines and the age-old traditions that define the Aboriginal mindset; Dobie's Prefaces and the traditions born of the land, and of the land's men; Michener's Covenant and its Afrikaners strengthened by tradition and history to the point of brittleness; even The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century, detailing the decades-long coup-de-grace against the traditional relations between Church and State and the core concept of un foi, une loi, un roi. And more, stretching back even to Kirk's The Conservative Mind.
All of these books, coupled with my own experience, have led me to ponder Tradition and its role in our society, and in societies generally. There are of course the common answers - that tradition acts as a societal "adhesive", if you will; that without tradition and the common story that it entails, communities would not cohere; that, in large part, both individual and societal identities are molded by tradition. But is there anything more? What would lead Dobie to assert that, "carrying on a good tradition requires creative energy and is not accomplished merely through passive inheritance."? Why does Russell Kirk continually sound off about the "Conservative Imagination"? What could possibly be imaginative in the acceptance of an inheritance, passive or otherwise? What could possibly inspire intellectual or spiritual fecundity in the maintenance of a prefabricated patrimony?
More to come.
Yours,
Mr. Windsor
