Winner of the 2025 Essay Prize for Aesthetic Reflection, conferred by the Party of the Right
Wonderment comes from things that are very big and very, very high up. There is no Wonderment left in this world. It died not with castles, of which many stand uncrumbled, but rather with the last virtuous serf. For the true seat of Wonderment is within men’s hearts.
(To my tut-tutting critics: “Men” is gender-neutral. “High” is a relational term and does not refer—even obliquely—to intoxication. Castles are the only architecture of world-historical significance.)
Over spring break, I traveled to many parts of the Spanish countryside. I witnessed youths playing soccer outside when they should have been sleeping in their beds; older women who had permitted themselves to grey and wither; and normal-aged people working hours that confused me. I witnessed a body politic that never chafed at being held hostage by leisurely wait staff. I witnessed immigrants who frighten me for abstract reasons.
In short, dear Reader, I witnessed a culture in grave decline. And I felt Despair.
But then I reached Pastrana, and I saw its castle, and all was redeemed. For I understood Wonderment—or, at least, Wonderment’s modern shadow.
From the disordered and bestial green of a hillside, there rose steep rocks permitted to persist in their roughness; atop them, there jutted upwards a strong, firm, thick wall of pale stone. Behind that wall was erected a palace so brilliant, so high up, it could have been a cloud. But it was better than a cloud—for clouds are but mute and stupid water, while walls instantiate the genius of their mason.
I had been in the backseat of a cab. I compelled the driver to pull over and jumped out. Suddenly, I felt myself a peasant—a dull Spanish peasant with a flock of something—rounding this same dirt road in a simpler time, and being overwhelmed by the splendor of that castle, towering over my own socioeconomic abasement.
I prostrated myself on the dirt road to better simulate that abasement. Wow. The castle became even higher—and, somehow, even more inconceivably large. I was awed and wonderstruck.
A voice in the back of my mind rebelled. This is shorter than a skyscraper, said the voice, with petulant modernity. There are warehouses bigger than this, and strip malls more sprawling. This castle holds no king with the power to seize me roughly.
I began to cry. The palace was high—much hi-er (misspelling intentional) than I. But it was without the soul of hier-archy. It was a sad relic. Archaic pageantry of a bygone arche.
Every school needs boys and girls; a kingdom needs peons, serfs, and churls. I believe it was G.K. Chesterton who said things that sound like that. Tragedy and drama require noble subjects; but low people must exist to behold the high, and to be uplifted by them. Today, no one is lowly enough to marvel at that which is very high and big. I wept into the dirt of that Spanish road.
After a time, my driver’s charming agitation compelled me to rise. But my heart aches still for the bygone pageantry of power. I want civilized men to build works that strike fear and inspire Wonderment. I want there to exist rural simpletons whose eyes widen when they behold those works. I want police officers to wear capes.
But in mourning lies purpose. By God, I vowed, when I return home, I will do all I can to restore the world I weep for. I will wear suits to casual events and pen tepid opinion columns suggesting the sexual revolution wasn’t all good. I will imply that what we really need is a good war to set us all straight. I will not enlist in the military. I will exhort other people to learn Latin. I will return to the Party of the Right and enter her Aesthetics Essay Contest.
So I swore to the Deity. To that, I now add this: I will praise poems with pentameters and buildings with colonnades. I will convert to Catholicism but retain the right to disagree with the Pope based on my own understanding of Scripture. I will gloat about the fall of USAID, because there is naught in all Creation more based than the deaths of children.
Someday, I will run for office. And when I do, I will dedicate myself to making sure as many Americans as possible experience real Wonderment.
—I. Arroyo
