I have had a little time to digest the events of the political world in my own country and the nation of France which has adopted me as a citizen. I voted for the RN of M. Bardella and Mme Le Pen, not because I agreed with everything they seem to stand for, but because I saw the need for change from the failing Tories in England and the technocracy of M. Macron and the obscenely rich oligarchs and corporations set to be the SPECTRE of a new world – but without James Bond to challenge them. How coincidental that two countries seem to follow such a similar trajectory!

I have a better impression of Kier Starmer’s Labour Party and its apparent honesty in its desire for change and social improvement. Different people will say different things between praising him or accusing him of the worst evils. I suspect that the truth will fall somewhere between these extremes. I am English and have been brought up to seek the Via Media, St Thomas Aquinas’ In medio stat virtus, moderation, the middle way, and attempt to go ahead with courtesy, tolerance and a sceptical idea of truth. I am an Idealist. Idealism has no place in the cut and thrust of political power-mongering.

Here in France, things are more worrying with a Left Wing that shows that much more fanaticism and taste for violence. Now is a time to stay out of towns and cities, live in our little country dwellings and hole up for however long it takes for sanity to return. Many things are hidden from us, including the stratagem of making it impossible for the RN to win its desired majority.

As I take my eyes away from the computer screen, YouTube, Google News, various more “philosophical” analyses of what happened both sides of the Channel, the green leaves on the trees and the extremely light drops of rain bring me back to the world that is magical is impregnated by God’s sprit. My trips on my little sailing boat have taken me around the Cap Frehel on the north coast of Brittany, and have filled my imagination with the swirling melodies of Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave which portrayed the waves of the sea among those enchanted rocks.

Our political world once again has become unstable and conflicted. It is not healthy to read too much news or “fear porn”. We should be informed, but rather by reading those who are both informed and can understand the meaning of things better than we can. We must learn to think for ourselves and not follow the mass. This is the condition of our not being seduced by ideologies and their violence. I have written a few things about the theme expressed by Wordsworth at the dawn of the French Revolution, believing it was going to be the Right that would win. I almost have the same feeling on seeing the advent of Mélenchon and his desire to revive Marxist Leninism. If that happens, our only response can be that of men like Nicholas Berdyaev and Solzhenitsyn among so many others whose humanity and divinity refused to be “cancelled” or obliterated. Whilst this instability continues, we can hope for a resolution from the conflict of the opposites as immortalised by Hegel and C.G. Jung.

I do believe that this has come upon us because Europe has lost its Christianity. As Novalis said in 1799:

Seine zufällige Form ist so gut wie vernichtet; das alte Papsttum liegt im Grabe, und Rom ist zum zweitenmal eine Ruine geworden… – Its [Christianity’s] accidental form is as good as annihilated. The old Papacy lies in its grave and Rome for the second time has become a ruin. Shall Protestantism not cease at last and make way for a new, enduring Church? The other continents await Europe’s reconciliation and resurrection in order to join with it and become fellow-citizens of the heavenly kingdom. Should there not be presently once again in Europe a host of truly holy spirits? Should not all those truly related in religion become full of yearning to behold heaven on earth? And should they not gladly join together and begin songs of holy choirs?

Christendom must come alive again and be effective, and, without regard to national boundaries, again form a visible Church which will take into its bosom all souls athirst for the supernatural, and willingly become the mediatrix between the old world and the new.

I take into consideration that Novalis did not experience the 19th, 20th and this early part of the 21st centuries. He had no idea where nationalism or cosmopolitanism would go. He saw the “magical ideal”, not what we in our age would call “reality”. This is why I cut Novalis a lot of slack. We have to see him in his historical time. We have to read Christenheit oder Europa (or the English translation) in its German Idealist context of the end of the 18th century to the beginning of the 19th and not the puerile reflections of some of the traditionalists of our own time.

The institutional Churches are doing nothing other than the political institutions – self-interest, power, money, manipulation and control. We find God in beauty, and there we find wonder and vocation. We are called to live these Hymnen an die Nacht and hold up a light in the darkness. Enlightenment rationalism is being replaced. The Romantics sought to enlighten rationalism by the creative imagination and what it really means to be human. There will be a new Romanticism, but there will also be some very ugly things like political and religious fanaticism and totalitarianism. We may be called to give our lives. I am reminded of the film Mission from 1986 and Fr Gabriel faced with the Portuguese slave traders:

If might is right, then love has no place in the world. It may be so, it may be so. But I don’t have the strength to live in a world like that.

Perhaps I feel the same way, in a world where I feel an alien. I hope still to have some time to write and express a different view of the world that God created. I am very privileged to live in my little house in a quiet place, to be able to put to sea in my little boat and experience something of that holiness and freedom to pursue the good, the true and the beautiful.

People in the 1920’s and 30’s had no idea of where they were going. Men like Thomas Mann had more insight, and wrote about it. It is a human problem, and the good or evil begins within ourselves.