- Evelyn Waugh
Reminds me of the last few paragraphs of Brideshead. Something like the single lamp left in the [chapel’s] window guiding the crusaders home. But the passage you cite describes the entire notion of modern “art,” banal, venal, mindless precisely because of the absence of God.
Waugh anticipated post-Christian Europe, which could be the theme of “Brideshead Revisited,” one of my favorite TV dramas.