The Ballad of the White Horse

2024-09-22T00:00:00-04:00

Maintaining a little G. K. Chesterton page is supremely uneventful, so I was pleasantly surprised to spot a new review of his work at Scott Alexander’s blog, Slate Star Codex. Note that this review is most likely not by Scott Alexander; it’s an entry in his ongoing anonymous “book” review contest.

[T]he Ballad is Chesterton’s love song to conservatism as he understands it. In it Chesterton weaves the ideas that he has been writing about all his life and creates a cohesive narrative theme. The Ballad is like a melody that all his other works, fiction and nonfiction, dance to. Chesterton wrote many books, yet none seemed to stand higher than the others in terms of quality or popularity. Because of this he has been called “the master without a masterpiece” (though, appropriately, the quote itself seems legendary: I have found it referenced everywhere but I cannot find the source). I disagree: the Ballad of the White Horse is his masterpiece. It is Chesterton boiled down to his essence. Within it we find two core themes of Chesterton’s body of work: hope in defiance of fate, and the eternal revolution.

The whole review is worth reading, as is (as always) the unexpectedly long comment thread, which touches on the origin of the masterpiece quote, JRR Tolkien’s critique of the poem, the confusing variety of Danes, and other points of interest.