The life bestowed by tradition …

… Found in Translation: Capturing the Sublime with Ryan Wilson | The Russell Kirk Center. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Ultimately, what Ryan Wilson offers is a tradition that has largely been abandoned. The danger in abandoning this tradition, like abandoning religion, is being conscious of what takes its place. If we do not raise our children in this tradition, we do not render them free; we abandon them to a different, darker vision of the world. This world lacks the inspiring spark of poets like Leopardi and Rimbaud, and the shocking admissions of a Baudelaire or Heym. Without poets, as A.E. Housman said, “to friend us…on the dark and cloudy day,” we are left with the saccharine platitudes of sitcoms and the script-by-numbers emptiness of today’s superhero movies.