The Wise Men Know What Wicked Things Are Written on the Sky

The Imaginative Conservative ^ | June 2, 2014 | Russell Kirk

[don-o]

The end of the twentieth century of the Christian era is not far distant, and all about us things fall apart. There comes to my mind the last drawing from the pencil of William Hogarth, who died in 1764: it is a sufficient representation of the state of civilization today.

Hogarth's final drawing is known as "The Bathos" or "Finis." This word "bathos" signifies the depths, or the bottom; also it is applied to the process of sinking from the sublime to the ridiculous. Hogarth's pencil shows us a devastated and desiccated world in which all things have come to an end. In the shadow of a ruined tower, Father Time himself lies expiring, his scythe and his hour-glass broken. In the last puff of smoke from Time's tobacco pipe, one discerns the word "Finis." A cracked bell, a shattered crown, the discarded stock of an old musket, the tottering signpost of a tavern called "The Worlds End," a bow unstrung, a map of the world burning, a gibbet falling, an empty purse, a proclamation of bankruptcy, the stump of a broom, a broken bottle - this litter lies about fallen Father Time. Overhead the moon wanes, and Phoebus and his horses lie dead in the clouds. What once was sublime has descended to the ridiculous; thus the world ends, "not with a bang but a whimper." A month after he executed this famous tail-piece, Hogarth himself ceased to be.

This is the world of Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four; and it is the actual state in many lands of what once was a civilized order. Will the wave of the future, perhaps by the end of this century, engulf us all? Are there means for resisting this inundation?

[don-o]

This is a long, thought provoking, and ultimately encouraging essay, better read at the source.

[waterhill]

Excellent, thanks.

[Big Red Badger]

A Final FINALE,

for later.

An opus prepper.

[4Runner]

Hope your son Ben is doing okay. Many thanks for his service.

[FredZarguna]

Your picture is a mirror image of the actual one:

[don-o]

Thanks.

[ecomcon]

“Losing wisdom in a labyrinth of knowledge, losing knowledge in a chaos of information, we Americans have been saddled with a Knowledge Class that takes for gospel the wicked things written on the sky – or, at best, has no notion of how to erase those wicked words. Fancying themselves wise, the Knowledge Class play with their computers in the belief that they open the way to emancipation from old dogmas and old duties. In reality, they open the way to bathos, the descent from the sublime to the ridiculous.”

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[marron]

Good piece. Thanks for posting.

[don-o]

btt