{"id":21693,"date":"2018-03-23T18:30:22","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T12:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/?p=21693"},"modified":"2018-03-22T19:36:10","modified_gmt":"2018-03-22T13:36:10","slug":"prophets-of-a-new-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2018\/03\/prophets-of-a-new-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Prophets of a New Age"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Lytton Strachey, famed as a member of the \u201cBloomsbury Group\u201d and for his war against Victorian values, wrote to Leonard (husband of Virginia) Woolf in 1904:<\/p>\n

\u201cI sometimes feel as if it were not only ourselves who are concerned, but that the destinies of the whole world are somehow involved in ours. We are \u2013 oh! in more ways than one \u2013\u00a0 like the Athenians of the Pericles Age. We are the mysterious priests of a new and amazing civilization. We are greater than our fathers; we are greater than Shelley; we are greater than the eighteenth century; we are greater than the Renaissance; we are greater than the Romans and the Greeks. What is hidden from us? We have mastered all. We have abolished religion, we have founded ethics, we have established philosophy, we have sown our strange illumination in every province of thought, we have conquered art, we have liberated love. It would be pleasant to spend our days in a perpetual proclamation of our magnificence\u201d (quoted in Michael Holroyd\u2019s biography<\/a>, 100).<\/p>\n

How much of this is tongue in cheek? It\u2019s hard to tell, though Strachey\u2019s letters tend toward the histrionic. If his overwrought prose isn\u2019t sincere, it doubtful there\u2019s any sincerity anywhere.<\/p>\n

Strachey didn\u2019t think his band would triumph immediately, especially in that area where they are \u201clike the Athenians,\u201d a not-so-veiled reference to his homosexuality. Two years later, he wrote presciently to Maynard Keynes, another member of the group who was also a homosexual:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t be content with telling the truth \u2013 we must tell the whole truth; and the whole truth is the Devil. Voltaire abolished Christianity by believing in god. It\u2019s madness of us to dream of making dowagers understand that feelings are good, when we say in the same breath that the best ones are sodomitical. If we were crafty and careful, I dare say we\u2019d pull it off. But why should we take the trouble? On the whole I believe that our time will come about a hundred years hence, when preparations will have been made, and compromises come to, so that, at the publication of our letters, everyone will be, finally, converted\u201d (Holroyd, 92).<\/p>\n

Holroyd\u2019s biography was controversial when first published in 1973. At the beginning of the 21st century \u2013 right on cue \u2013 virtually everyone has been \u201cconverted.\u201d\u00a0If Strachey is full of himself, we can say that history has somewhat vindicated his prophecy.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lytton Strachey, famed as a member of the \u201cBloomsbury Group\u201d and for his war against Victorian values, wrote to Leonard (husband of Virginia) Woolf in 1904: \u201cI sometimes feel as if it were not only ourselves who are concerned, but that the destinies of the whole world are somehow involved in ours. We are \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":21699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1895,558,1983],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bloomsbury-group","category-homosexuality","category-lytton-strachey"],"yoast_head":"\nProphets of a New Age<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Lytton Strachey, famed as a member of the "Bloomsbury Group" and for his war against Victorian values, wrote to Leonard (husband of Virginia) Woolf in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2018\/03\/prophets-of-a-new-age\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" 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