Book Review

“The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West”

by Michael Walsh (Encounter Books, 2018)

Review by Richard Terrell
(Professor of Art, Emeritus, Doane University)

The crisis in Western civilization is all about us and is clear to see for anyone with eyes and a bit of historical awareness. Nation-state cultures are being dissolved under the pressure of immigrants who neither understand nor even want to understand the nations they live in. Muslims, notoriously in Europe, dream of the eventual Islamization of the continent, while native Europeans fail to create a future generation capable of sustaining their cultural heritage. Further, even among the younger generation that exists one finds widespread animosity and disdain for that heritage. Increasingly, westerners express a cultural despondence. But, as author Michael Walsh pointedly states: “The one thing that Islam can teach us—remind us—is that a culture that no longer believes in its own foundational principles is as good as dead.”

This book is rich in history, remarkably erudite in its insights and sources of argument, while being both inspiring and troubling. It is, indeed, both a celebration and a warning. We have much, much to value in Western civilization, and much— perhaps all—to lose if we do not arouse ourselves to defend it in the face of forces, both internal and external, who want to destroy it.

“Fiery Angel” challenges the notion that the most important, crucial issues facing humanity are political/economic (the perspective that dominates this type of discussion). Prior to all of that is the issue of culture, and Walsh focuses his discussion on the arts and what they have to teach us about the soul of civilization. Indeed, each chapter is headed by a reproduction of an artistic image that captures the essence of that chapter’s content (personally, I was much pleased by his attraction to the imagery of David Caspar Friedrich, whose work appears twice). Through these points of focus, Walsh illuminates the dimensions of our society’s crisis today:

“The prolonged assault on our common culture—European-American, for want of a broader, more inclusive description—has intensified, propelled by a burning hatred for a civilization that extends from the ancient Greeks to modern Americans and has been responsible to most of the world’s artistic, technological, and moral progress for three millennia. Indeed, even to rise to its defense at this imperiled moment has become controversial—a measure of just how deep the animosity in civilization’s enemies runs.”

The range of Walsh’s knowledge is astonishing. I think of myself as having a reasonable grasp of Western culture and civilization, but found myself feeling like a bit of an ignoramus reading this book! The author’s background ranges from journalism, music criticism, novels, screenwriting (including work for Disney) and the role of foreign correspondent for Time magazine. His discussion and appeal touches upon classical philosophy and drama, Homer, Virgil, the Bible, the significance of polyphony for the development of western cultural consciousness, Shakespeare, numerous operas, the “Beauty and the Beast” myth, and some of my all-time favorite horror stories (e.g. “Dracula” and “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”). At the core of his argument in the significance of the Heroic Narrative for the distinctive and peculiar accomplishments of the West.

Among Walsh’s more colorful treatments is his contrast between western attitudes toward women and Islam’s. Although western-loathing, “politically correct” voices continually prate about western “suppression” of women, Walsh (who is not above use of some vivid vernacular expression here) offers a corrective:

Christianity transformed women from chattel and helpless rape victims into human beings (a trick of cultural prestidigitation that Islam has not managed to accomplish in well over a millennium) who may not have had the political rights of men but who had the human rights of men. Christianity elevated women from generative to venerative, building on the pagan goddess cults of Greece and Rome, whose literature featured countless examples of the feminist ideal—the “strong woman.”

By contrast, Islam still constrains women, largely out of fear of their potent sexual allure, which is deemed to make the Islamic male lose control of his senses; bewitched by the power of pussy. Pious Muslims regard the uncovered Western woman as a whore, whose exposed hair alone is a satanic temptation. They understand, correctly, that the free deployment of women’s sexuality has destabilizing social consequences (something the Western male has, imperfectly, learned to deal with) and, with their advocacy of sharia law, seek to put the Christian genie back into Aladdin’s lamp.

Walsh reveals the origin and radical center of the self-hatred manifesting itself in the west’s political, social, and educational institutions as residing in the Frankfurt School (founded in 1923) and the cultural negativity spread abroad by various cultural Marxists inspired and shaped by it (for further insight into this subject, see: https://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=8183) Whether one looks at the debasement of language, the attacks upon marriage, the bent toward western self-loathing (a dangerous distortion of the traditional western value of inquiry and criticism), the embrace of childlessness as a social virtue, one can trace the origins to the Frankfurt School philosophers (e.g. Herbert Marcuse, Theodore Adorno, among others) and their widespread influence in western educational institutions (such as Columbia University). Their danger, if I understand Walsh, correctly, resides in their puny and narrowly political frame of reference. How little they understand of the life-shaping power of musical form and the immense human possibilities that reside in such foundational western virtues as inquiry, dialogue, narrative, comedy and tragedy. What they have bestowed upon us is little more than everything implied in the phrase “political correctness.”

“Fiery Angel” is a wake-up call. It should be a book offered as a core reading assignment in colleges and universities everywhere (don’t hold your breath). Indeed, one could get a liberal education just by following up on the references to the philosophers, dramatists, artists and composers that run through Walsh’s discussion. You can begin your role in a real and meaningful resistance by reading this very excellent book. The one criticism I have of this book is some careless editing that proves annoying and fails the luminous content provided by the author. That aside, it’s powerful stuff, and worthy of the time and consideration of anyone concerned about the direction and destiny of civilization, especially ours.