Some idle Sunday reading

If any of you are sufficiently interested in Nietzsche, Chesterton, or the differences between them, you can feel free to read a lengthy and rambling essay on the subject that I produced under the influence of divine fervor and beer. You can find it here.

In the grand tradition of both Chesterton and Nietzsche, I have managed (if I say so myself) to make uniformly beautiful generalisations about both of them without necessarily being specifically correct about anything.

An excerpt follows, that you might make up your mind before committing:

Nietzsche's avatar, one might say, was one of intense physical energy; of the will unbound in lust, movement, and violence. His preoccupation with dance is notable in this regard. By contrast, we see in Chesterton - both in a broad literary sense and an unfortunate literal sense - the sacrifice of such exquisite dynamism in favour of the mind, and of the soul. A reading of Maisie Ward's excellent biography of Chesterton paints a picture of the man as being a creature wrought almost entirely out of brain. Indeed, there was in him no physical vanity, or even care. We read of weeks on end spent doing nothing but writing; of years that see the release of five or six books in addition to the articles he was writing without end for various newspapers and magazines. We see, in the more pathetic (here I use the word in its proper, non-pejorative sense) passages, a man who can scarcely even move, though his brain is a liquid diamond.

You will forgive me, I hope, if this seems an awful lot like self-promotion. Content is content, however, and the article is large enough for two blogs. Good luck with it.