Navigator, May, 2004

Editor's Desk

In This Issue

Feature Article:

Mozart's Don Giovanni: An Enlightenment Hero? by John Kerns
The greatest of the Enlightenment's composers chose as one of his chief protagonists the seducer Don Giovanni. Did Mozart mean to present the Don as a symbol of independent thinking and action? Or is he supposed to be a dissolute roué who gets his just deserts by being dragged down to Hell?

Perspectives:

Appreciation:An Israeli Airman Attains New Heights in Painting by Michelle Fram-Cohen
When Uri Gil retired from the Israeli air force, he was the oldest combat pilot in the world still on active reserve duty. He was also an accomplished painter, whose quest for beauty has led him to master the oil-and-tempera technique of Jan van Eyck.

Essay: Hollywood Canonizes an Eco-Terrorist by Robert Bidinotto
If violence seems more prevalent today, it is because influential people are more ready to glamorize it. Consider the coming canonization of Paul Watson, one of the Founding Fathers of modern eco-terrorism.

Review:

A Romantic Manifesto by William Thomas
Fans of Ayn Rand have long awaited a new novel similar to hers in ideas and idealism. They may well find what they have been seeking in Alexandra York's recently published Crosspoints.

Cultural Calender:

The Lovesong of Alexander Pope by Roger Donway
In one astonishing poem, a cool and witty Enlightenment Catholic made eternal a twelfth-century woman's cry for carnal love.

Soundings

Suggested Readings on The Fine Arts

Logbook and Sightings