The Mythos of Pandemic

"It was tradition and ceremony—a severe formalism of lamentation as in Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers—that reordered the nation’s blasted and scattered emotions after the shocking slaughter of its leader,” writes Camille Paglia in her 1994 essay “Mona Lisa in Motion: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis,” praising the former first lady’s masterful management of her husband’s assassination in the eyes and spirit of the nation. We are once again facing a crisis, though this time a global one—fitting for our cosmopolitan era. Tragically appropriate as well is that it is one to which the...