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 Was this Soviet composer’s renowned Symphony No. 5 a poster child for socialist realism, or a jab in the direction of Stalinism? Let’s unpack. Jeth FoggStaff Writer, The Buckley BeaconScholars have long disputed about the interpretation of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony — whether the piece epitomizes Shostakovich as a political dissident or as a Soviet ideologue. Was the subtitle of the piece, “A Soviet Artist’s Response to Just Criticism,” a sardonic jab at Stalin, or an earnest reorientation of Shostakovich’s composing to Soviet standards? Shostakovich was the subject of scathing criticism for his experimental compositions following the premiere of his opera, Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District in 1934. In an edito...

Age gives way to age, but the events of one century are wonderfully like those of another, for they are directed by the province of God, who overrules the course of history in accordance with His purposes in creating the race of man. ~ Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum Jeth FoggStaff Writer, The Buckley BeaconThe Enlightenment’s atomization of truth to human reason delegated ethical questions previously entrusted to the Church to the individual. Ethical behavior was no longer effected through divine grace and human freedom but by individual autonomy. In a Nietzschean estimation, it was no longer in God Whom “we live and move and have our being,” but rather, “God dies; materialized man thinks he can be man or superman only if God ...

 Flannery O’Connor, the American South, and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition. Raleigh AdamsAssistant Editor of Campus Life & Administration, The Buckley BeaconThe American South is a region steeped in Christianity’s pervasive influence. From roadside billboards proclaiming the imminent rapture to picturesque little white churches dotting the countryside, the cultural landscape bears the indelible mark of the evangelical fervor ignited by the Second Great Awakening. Dominated socially and culturally by Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, the South has long been considered the stronghold of Protestantism (Schweiger, B. B., and D. G. Mathews, “Religion in the American South: Protestants and Others in History and Cul...

In a small production at Yale’s Off Broadway Theater, the catchy songs of this classic musical receive entertaining treatment. William BarbeeContributing Author, The Buckley BeaconWhen Grease: The Musical first premiered in 1971, it served as an ode by its creators to the culture of 1950s America. The show employed numerous tropes, from drive-in movies to rollerblading waitresses, which harkened back to a gilded age of American life when affluence, effervescence, and inconsequence was the norm. The 1978 film version further encapsulated these sentiments with over-the-top, yet electrifying performances by stars Olivia Newton John and John Travolta. Though never considered a dramatic masterpiece, Grease has always provided its...