More than half a century after the fall of the Third Reich, Nazism, its roots and its essential nature, remain a central and unresolved enigma of the twentieth century. During the period of Hitler's ascendancy, most attempts at explaining this unprecedented phenomenon were framed in "economic," often Marxist, sociological terms and concepts. Peter Viereck's Metapolitics, initially published in 1941, broke with this convention by indicting Hitler in terms of the Judaic-Christian ethical tradition and locating certain elements of the Nazi worldview in German romantic poetry, music, and social...
More than half a century after the fall of the Third Reich, Nazism, its roots and its essential nature, remain a central and unresolved enigma of the ...
Peter Viereck, poet and historian, is one of the principle theoreticians of conservatism in modern American political thought. In this classic work, Viereck undertakes a penetrating and unorthodox analysis of that quintessential conservative, Prince Metternich, and offers evidence that cultural and political conservatism may perhaps be best adapted to sustain a free and reasonable society.
According to Viereck's definition, conservatism is not the enemy of economic reform or social progress, nor is it the oppressive instrument of the privileged few. Although conservatism has been...
Peter Viereck, poet and historian, is one of the principle theoreticians of conservatism in modern American political thought. In this classic work...
The great critic Peter Viereck, in a volume that both reproduces an earlier effort and presents an entirely new work on the intersection of history and literature, offers a biting critique of the American desire for normalcy that leads to a culture of the surrender of personality. In contrast to this voluntary thought control process is the unadjusted person. Cast in the mold of great individualists from Thomas More to Friedrich Nietzsche, such a person responds to fundamental values of conscience rather than conformity built exclusively on ego gratification and icon worship. Viereck's...
The great critic Peter Viereck, in a volume that both reproduces an earlier effort and presents an entirely new work on the intersection of history an...
A reviewer once called Peter Viereck's thought -not common sense but inspired, electric common sense.- This volume of Viereck's selected essays on poetry and on history, written between 1938 through 2004, exemplifies this quality. Its main theme is suggested in Viereck's coined phrase -strict wildness, - which suggests a balance between restraint (which by itself is staid and rigid) and passion (which by itself is incoherent). Frost called free verse tennis without the net. Viereck calls dead mechanical form -net without the tennis.- Strict wildness, then, is spontaneity of feeling within...
A reviewer once called Peter Viereck's thought -not common sense but inspired, electric common sense.- This volume of Viereck's selected essays on poe...
