Illuminations
The Wedding Guest
by Anthony Esolen
I don't know that I've ever seen turkey vultures squabbling over a dead animal on the side of the road. Vultures seem to be cooperative sorts. Plenty of meat for everybody, boys. Not so perhaps with man.
Our fiercest social battles now have to do with marriage—what it is, who gets to enjoy it and how many, what it means, and whether children are accidental or accessory to it, like handbags. One would think that everyone was battering down the door of every house of an eligible young person of either or (in our time) indeterminate sex, so that a girl (or in our time, a boy, or a whatnot) could hardly reach the age of fifteen without having to fend off a proposal. Sadie Hawkins, thou shouldst be alive at this time!
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Anthony Esolen is the author of over thirty books, including Real Music: A Guide to the Timeless Hymns of the Church (Tan, with a CD), Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture (Regnery), and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord (Ignatius). He has also translated Dante’s Divine Comedy (Random House). He and his wife Debra publish a web magazine, Word and Song (anthonyesolen.substack.com), on poetry, hymnody, language, classic films, and music. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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