I tolerate this century, but I don't enjoy it.
All of the ephemera that is far too trivial to be bothered with elsewhere on this site or, depending on your point of view, a meta-commentary on it. This ephemera includes, but is not limited to art, music and literature. Most of the content here will be discussed in terms that are as abstract as possible, reality being a singularly overrated concept.
Saturday, July 11, 2009
During a tour of the Collegium Maius in Kraków, our guide periodically observes that it all went wrong for Poland after the partition of 1791 following a disastrous experiment in democracy during which no-one could agree on anything. Whilst this is doubtless not without a hefty degree of justification, the rather laconic fatalism is somewhat unnerving for a Westerner whose country has always cherished delusions of being in control of its own destiny. From a state that controlled much of Central Europe, Poland went to being divided between Russia, Poland and Austria; even now historical Polish territories like the city of Lvov lie within countries like Ukraine. As a city, Kraków retains the sense of being a mausoleum to better times, with little modern architecture being evident. Weathered plaster crumbles off the walls of buildings, leaving the brickwork beneath exposed. All of which, of course, endear the place to me.
I arrive at the main train station, where the rather grim underground subway connecting the platforms contrasts with the Hapsburg era white and yellow plaster of the main building aboveground. I walk down a covered iron walkway that leads into the city and am somewhat surprised to see a small square being patrolled by a robot. A small thing with treads and a CCTV camera, it resembles the sort of vision of the future last seen sometime circa the nineteen seventies or eighties. It turns out to be owned by one of the private security firms that are legion within the city. I can only assume that a rightwing politician probably decided that state police forces were inefficient when compared to the bracing vigour of the free market. There seems to be a similar approach to public transport, with most trains and trams running late and cars choking up roads and motorways. The latter state looks unpleasantly reminiscent of Britain rather than the usual European efficiency. Much of the city looks like a large market, although most of the larger names in evidence come from other European countries.
The city is heavily reminiscent of Prague and Budapest, with all three being dominated by a castle on a hill by the side of a river with a new town beneath where medieval churches and synagogues. One interesting difference is the Planty, a set of gardens ringing the city on the location of the former city walls. I begin by simply walking around the centre of the city, beginning with the market square. The largest medieval square in Europe, it's dominated by the opposing figures of St Mary's Church and the Town Hall tower. The church is a redbrick exercise in asymmetrical gothic with an exterior covered with monuments, it rather looks like a cross between the Tyn Church in Prague and the Frauenkirche in Munich. The dark interior is quite exceptional though, with the ceiling a dark blue burnished with gold stars and the ceiling covered in patterned red and friezes by Jan Matejko; the heavens above and hell below, I presume. Athough the Veit Stoss altar reflects the Mariolatry implicit in the name of the building, much of the interior decoration tends towards the grisly; tombs decorated with skulls and a painting of Saint Sebastian. Behind it lies the church of Saint Barbara, whose medieval facade is contradicted by a baroque interior. Across the square lies the cloth hall, the Sukiennice. The current use for this building is mostly selling tourist merchandise, with exterior arcades given up to cafes. The opposing side of the square sees Igor Mitoraj's Eros Bendato sculpture placed at the foot of the town hall tower, making a rather odd contrast with the sleepy lion sculptures at the base of its steps. The other thing on the square is the rather squat church of St Adalbert, a small domed building, with a blue and gold art nouveau interior.
I then walk down the main street, towards the church of Saint Peter and Paul, modelled on the Gesu church in Rome and consequently in a somewhat austere Baroque style that contrasts with the rather more florid legions of gold angels in the neighbouring church of St Andrew. The crypt has a rather bizarre tomb with a number of carved griffin sculptures at its base. Opposed churches for the Dominicans and Franciscans occupy nearby streets. The former is a relatively simple affair, with a white interior and blue ceiling, accompanied by a set of cloisters. The latter is quite dowdy from the outside, but the gloomy interior is decorated in brilliant art nouveau by Mehoffer and Wyspianski, with the windows and walls decorated with iris patterns. Further along, the Bernardine church is a dark affair with extensive decay inside, although I'm quite taken with an elaborate dance of death painting cycle. The Collegium Maius is also located in the old town; rather resembling certain Cambridge colleges, the interior courtyard is flanked on each side with a set of cloisters. Ammonites have been built into redbrick walls and a grotesque serves as a fountain alongside various medieval crests. The exhibits include the old Jagiellonian University library, a medieval globe (which puts North America in the wrong place) and a set of paintings where depictions of clock towers had real clocks inserted.
The following day is given up the Polish equivalent of the Hrad, the Wawel. The castle straddles the medieval and renaissance periods, with redbrick towers contrasting with colonnaded courtyards. Many of the rooms have elaborate wooden ceilings decorated with gold flowers, Cordovan leather and friezes by Hans Durer. Many of the ceiling frescos were completed in the early twentieth century; a model shows Wyspianski's earlier scheme for restoring the Wawel, with the inclusion of a large dome at the opposite end to the palace and cathedral. Some of Augustus the Strong's porcelain collection is included, as well as a Bosch painting. The Cathedral is a bizarre jumble of architectural styles; a medieval gothic building with several domed classical structures and renaissance accoutrements. The interior is much the same, red marble monuments in side chapels sit alongside gothic tombs to saints and kings alike in the nave. Some of the painted chapels show a Byzantine influence in their wall decoration (at one point Poland did share a border with Turkey after all). The crypts remind me of the Hapsburg tombs in Vienna, with iron and stone coffins. The poet Mickiewicz and the patriot Kosciuszko are interned here, although the Polish pantheon is located in the nearby St Catherine's church, where the crypt contains the tombs of Czeslaw Milosz, Szymanowski and Stanislaw Wyspianski. The base of the castle contains a small cave, named after the dragon that features in the city's founding legend. A metal dragon sculpture has been erected, which breathes fire every five minutes or so. Kitsch but not unamusing. Finally, the Wawel has an oriental exhibition, centered around the Ottoman booty gained after the battle of Vienna; Persian and Turkish carpets, Iznik plates, Chinese & Japanese porcelain and Chinese bronzes.
The following day is taken with visiting Kazimierz, formerly a separate city and site of the Jewish ghetto. I begin at the Remuh synagogue and cemetery. The cemetery stones are some of the oldest in Poland and are decorated with images of lions and stags; broken stones are assembled to form a 'wailing wall.' Nearby, the new cemetery also contains sets of monuments to Nazi victims made from fragments of smashed gravestones; those still standing vary in terms of resembling older Yiddish gravestones or a style more in keeping with that found in the Polish cemeteries. Many of the headstones have stones placed on them, although much of the cemetery si rather overgrown with long grass and ferns burying many of the graves. Of the other synagogues, the Progressive Synagogue strongly reminds me of the Spanish Synagogue in Prague, with Moorish designs throughout, while the Izaaka synagogue tends towards the baroque, with Yiddish script still visible on the walls in spite of whitewashing. The High synagogue is perhaps rather more nondescript but is notable for an exhibition showing collections of old photos of Jewish life in Poland. Most of the people shown in them would have ended up in the concentration camps. Finally, the Stara Synagogue is a beautiful gothic structure with a wrought iron Bimah at its centre. The annual Jewish cultural festival was in progress during my visit, so the streets were full of school parties, rather resembling Israeli versions of St Trinians. I also visit the Botanical gardens in Krakow; Acanthus, Ferns and Astilbes are clearly much favoured by the staff, although it also has large, if oddly shaped, conservatories. Finally, I visit one of the conventional cemeteries, the Racławice cemetery. I'm struck by the number of both lit candles and metal crosses, neither being common features in Britain. Some of the symbolism is also somewhat unusual; a butterfly for instance, but the grid layout and combination of gothic and classical designs does make the place look like Highgate. There's even a large Sphinx on one tomb.
Kraków's museums and galleries are centred on a building that looks as if it was built during the Stalin era but wasn't. It contains a set of Młoda Polska paintings from the nineteenth century to the present day. Some of the highlights include Wojciech Weiss's Melancholik, Leon Chwistek's futurist City and Lodz, Szancenbach's Lake - Sunset, Zbigniew Pronaszko's nudes, Czajkowski's Orchard in Winter, Stanisław Kamocki, Henryk Szczygli ński and Jan Stanisławski's landscapes and Jacek Malczewski's strange symbolist paintings. I couldn't make up my mind whether I liked Tadeusz Makowski's odd toy scenes or not. There was also an exhibition of Weegee photos, ranging from New York's architecture to drag queens, murder victims and carbonised bodies burnt in fires. The Stanislaw Wsypianski house also houses a number of interesting collections; several paintings of the Kosciuszko mound, modernist-gothic furniture for his theatrical sets and stained glass designs and views of St Mary's and the Wawel. There's also a collection of Ignacy Krieger's photographs, showing black and white photographs of Kraków. On a similar note, the Mehoffer house showcases his art nouveau stained glass designs, paintings of his wife and garden, paintings of the market square and of the Vistula, as well as a bizarre drawing of a lady encountering a skeletal death in the form of a gardener. One rooms includes a Japanese collection of Hiroshige woodcuts. In the garden, a black and white cat sits amidst the roses, secure in the knowledge of its perfect camouflage. The Manggha collection expands on the Japanese theme, containing Felix Jasienski's collection of oriental art. At the time of visiting it was showcasing a set of Noh masks and showing Japanese influences on Julian Falat's paintings, mostly landscapes. The next most prominent museum is the Czartoryski museum; this is next to last remaining section of the city wall and the Barbican, adjoined to it via a sighing bridge; a bronze cast of Hermes by Thorvaldsen stands outside. The interior houses a set of enamel and porcelain designs from Limoges, Italian majolica, Meissen, paintings by Da Vinci (Lady with an Ermine) and a Rembrandt landscape. The antiquities collection contains a number of Etruscan funerary statues, mummified cats (plus a fake mummified mongoose) and a set of Fayum portraits. Finally, there is the archaeological museum; containing a number of mummy cases and Peruvian artefacts (some of them erotic) but especially a stone totem pole showing a slavic pagan deity, Swiatowit. Each side has a face, making it look like a four-face god with the peculiarity that it also seems to be wearing a top-hat.
On my final day in Kraków, I travel to the salt-mine at Wieliczka. This is the sort of trip that makes it clear that one is a tourist rather than a traveller due to the industrial system used to process the volume of visitors; it's also the sort of trip that makes it clear that the difference between Catholic kitsch and Disneyfied schmaltz (via Tolkein's Balrog) is a slender one. The mines contain rock salt carvings of kings, dwarves and biblical figures, as well as more recent figures like Goethe (who visited due to his interest in geology) and statues that reflect a more socialist realist style. Some of the chambers have been flooded while the wooden struts used to construct some of the larger chambers give them the same sort of feeling as a church. The actual chambers range from long corridors to ballrooms, chapels and a cafe. Much of my interest in the place is as an inverted Magic Mountain; certainly either the dryness of the air or the temperature seem to have a beneficial effect on my asthma. Finally, before leaving I spend some time in a park near Blonia; a promenade walkway has busts of famous Polish figures on either side (Curie, Herbert, Kosciuszko) leading to a hedged circle with other busts (Chopin, Mickiewicz).
Arriving in Wrocław the following day (having managed to avoid being run over by a police truck driving down the train station platform), it occurs to me that this more than most places deserves the title of the Venice of the North. The Oder river is relatively shallow here and the islands cluster in the centre of it, on which many of the city's churches and cathedrals are built. The main part of the town would originally have been walled off from the mainland by a defensive moat. Looking at a plan of the medieval city it's clear that it must have essentially been afloat. Its subsequent identity has been equally indeterminate, switching from being Polish to Bohemian to Prussian and back again, its name changing from Breslau to Wrocław at the same time that a new population arrived from Lvov. Buildings by Langhans, architect of the Brandenburg gate, sit alongside the medieval structures. Even its religious identity was somewhat indeterminate, with a Protestant majority having previously tolerated a Catholic minority and competed between them to build churches; the presence of a Jewish minority only further complicated matters.
I start my visit with the Cathedral Island, home to the some of the tallest spires in the city. The cathedral, with its twin Baltic spires is the most impressive, and like its counterpart in Kraków, baroque chapels have been added on either side. Behind it, the city's Botanical gardens have been built. A bust of Linnaeus features at its centre, alongside pools filled with frogs, alpine gardens and an arboretum. The green iron Tumski bridge connects the Cathedral Island to the Sand Island, and the squat and dark church of Saint Mary of the Sand, its interior a combination of striped redbrick, white plaster and red stained glass. The University mathematical tower in yellow & white and the Osslinski library in red and white look out over the river; it's a scene that rather reminds me of Saint Petersburg. The town hall in the market square is an untidy medieval building, its surface pullulating with gargoyles in addition to an astronomical clock. The town square reminds me of Copenhagen's Nyhavn as much as Kraków, due to the bright painting of each house, many of which are identified with animal signs (e.g. the house of the golden deer). The square next to the cathedral houses the cathedral of St Mary Magdalene. Destroyed during the war and largely reconstructed, it still lacks the original baroque spires gracing each tower, as well as having gone from Protestant to Catholic. I'm rather taken with the slender bridge that adjoins the two towers. The interior chapels are filled with renaissance and classical tombstones and monuments, as well as dragon sculpture beneath the pulpit. On the opposed side of the main square is the church of Saint Elizabeth, another redbrick gothic structure surmounted by a squat metal cupola on its tower. I'm quite drawn to a renaissance tomb with a depiction of a sea monster on it. Outside, I spot one of the city's features; a small bronze dwarf sculpture sitting next to an accompanying house. Several of these are dotted round the city; a somewhat amusing, if rather twee, idea.
Much of the heart of the city was destroyed by the Russians, as Breslau only capitulated at the same time as Berlin. Grim 'blokowisko' housing proliferates alongside the older structures. Some of the most interest does reside with the newer structures though; for example, the train station combines a long glass and iron barrel roof with a gothic revival exterior. Various modernist department stores are also contained within the city, some of which were the first in Poland to have elevators. Similarly, the Grunwaldzki bridge was one of the largest iron bridges in Germany and is now the largest in Poland (it rather resembles Budapest's chain bridge). More strikingly, a market hall combines a redbrick facade with a cavernous concrete interior. This culminates in the concrete Centennial Hall, a gigantic concrete dome built as Wrocław's belated answer to the Eiffel tower or the Crystal Palace. With that said, the use of concrete does bring the slightly more unfortunate example of the Royal Festival Hall to mind; the building is presently in a rather bad state and was undergoing extensive restoration work. Upon arrival one walks though a series of concrete pillars (some currently entirely immersed in ivy) and past a tall metal spike, rather reminiscent of Skylon. A lake is in front of the hall, which is surrounded by a concrete pergola. A semi-derelict kindergarten by Le Corbusier sits rather forgotten in the grounds. Beyond this, a Japanese garden was created to go with the hall; Acers surrounded a pool, spanned by wooden bridges. In the centre of the city, the most modern landmark can be found in one of the parks; the Racławice panorama, a nineteen sixties concrete structure built to house Styka and Kossak's panoramic representation of the battle where Kosciuszko lead an army of peasants armed with scythes to defeat the Russians. Much of the foreground before the picture has been designed to create the illusion of perspective; trees and landscape designed to patch the picture. It's a slightly kitsch effect but an undeniably effective one. Behind the panorama building rests an iron statue to the dead of Katyn, featuring a woman weeping for the dead while the figure of death is suspended above. The materials and treatment are quite contemporary but the theme is very classical.
The National Museum in Wrocław has a somewhat odd collection of art that includes a painting of a bearded lady and a clock painting where the eyes tock back and forth. Much of the medieval art is string on portraiture but weak on narrative scenes. It also tends towards the infernal, with paintings showing a rather canine beast from the book of revelations, a hellmouth, a winged devil with a man's body and a bull's head, and a set of the damned being menaced by skeletons and some rather catlike demons. Praying figures of the painting patrons often feature in the lower sections of scenes, making the paintings a form of indulgence. A set of wooden votive figures are missing their hands, creating the inadvertent impression of a scene from Titus Andronicus. A temporary sculpture exhibition shows Behrens' The Kiss of the Sphinx. The collections also includes many of the Piast tombs removed from various city churches. The later sections include several Matejko paintings and a work attributed to Bellotto, showing an entry into Rome, Józef Chełmońsk's symbolist paintings and Maz Wislicenus' landscapes. I'm slightly bemused by one painting that shows the same figure replicated several times; I can't tell whether it was deliberate or not. The building itself is rather Dutch in style covered in icy and facing a Nazi era city council building. A bronze statue of Durer stands outside.
On my final day in Wrocław, I travel outside the city to the Jewish cemetery. Even now, this is far outside the city boundaries, sited near a rather eccentric nineteenth century water tower. Most of the tombs are in a bad state of decay, with ivy overgrowing everything; it certainly qualifies as one of the most decayed cemeteries I've seen. This is particularly unfortunate, as the tombs are quite unusual. This is a nineteenth century cemetery and accordingly many of the tombs are Egyptianate or classical, but some of the Sephardic tombs were created in an Arabesque style.
posted by Richard 5:58 AM
Sunday, June 29, 2008
I saw the work of Vilhelm Hammershøi during my visit to Copenhagen a few years ago, but I can't say with any honesty that it made any great impression on me at the time. This is perhaps unsurprising; understated paintings in grey tones of spartan and austere subjects are comparatively easy to miss in the midst of other works; it's only when one sees the paintings together that one realises the obsessive theme driving them.
Hammershøi's loose brushwork and restricted palette immediately associate him with his contemporary Whistler, but seventeenth century Dutch painting was also a significant influence on him. As with Vermeer, Hammershøi is frequently found depicting figures in interiors, showing the play of light from nearby windows. Where the Western tradition is for the subject to stare out of a painting and challenge the viewer, Hammershøi follows Vermeer in denying this, having his figures (or figure; his wife was his persistent model) turned away from the viewer to give a hermetic aspect to the painting. In tandem with the grey, barely furnished interiors (photographs of the same rooms show them filled with furnishings and decoration), where the light from a window largely serves to suggest that life is somewhere else, this creates the melancholic air that pervades his work. Durer's figure of melancholy was turned away from the viewer as well. Hammershøi returns again and again to the same interiors, the same piano, the same pictures, the same bowls. But his work also rather resembles Escher or Piranesi, showing long corridors with successions of doors, looking out into interior courtyards through layers of interior windows, with doors that are slightly warped and distorted against the overall geometry of the work. There's a disjoint between the realistic, objective, settings and his imprecise impressionistic brushwork; what is being depicted is an objective correlative for his own state of mind.
The other component to Hammershøi's work is his landscapes, both rural and urban. Whether showing the Danish countryside, Copenhagen's royal palace or church spires, the British Museum or a London street, the scene is always devoid of people and depicted with grey wintry skies that seem somewhere between Whistler and Atkinson Grimshaw. I recall Copenhagen as a colourful city with painted buildings and red church towers surmounted with verdigris encrusted baroque spires. But I recall being fascinated by the same buildings, showing the same empty streets. I discover a certain fellow feeling for Hammershøi that I'm rather unaccustomed to.
The following week I return for two exhibitions near Trafalgar Square. I start with an Wyndham Lewis at the National Portrait Gallery. I recall Angela Carter complaining that all of Lawrence's women were just clothes without bodies, as opposed to his meticulous depiction of male physicality. Something similar can be said of Wyndham Lewis's paintings. The subjects of these portraits are puppet or simulacra. They have the quality of remaining just what they are, fixed in a particular epoch to furniture which is now dust (hence Froanna's liminal character in her Red Portrait as she fades ino the background). "The process and condition of life, without any exception, is a grotesque degradation." The stress on dehumanisation in his writing manifests itself in his painting by his focus on clothes rather than people. The portrait of Edith Sitwell shows her with her eyes shut, her face turned from the viewer, buried in a mass of clothes. Sitwell thought her hands to be her finest feature; here, Lewis hides them altogether (the same applies in his painting of Mrs Schiff, unlike Edwin Evans whose hand blends into his trousers). Hats and helmets abound throughout the paintings. Depicting TS Eliot, he gave the poet a "gioconda smile." Sketch after sketch shows the face left unworked till last. Eliot looks downwards, Pound closes his eyes. Like Modigliani or Picasso (albeit without their primitivism), Lewis saw the face as a mask, indistinguishable from the hat he always painted himself wearing.
Confronted with demands for a return to the classicism of Raphael, Lewis responded by suggesting Shakespeare as an exemplar, praising the famous woodcut of the playwright as serene and empty. Lewis develops various personae in his painting and writing like 'the enemy' as his satirical response to the literary and art world, or his embodiment of satire, the tyro. Lewis caught sight of his face in a cracked mirror and saw "the mask of a syphilitic Creole." Whatever was worth recording in life, he asserted, could be mapped in surface forms. On the whole, I find myself thinking tht Lewis is a rather more sympathetic as a painter than as a writer. His painting of Froanna is a particular masterpiece; red tones predominate excepting the blue of her eyes as she stares directly at the viewer, one of the very few subjects to do so in the entire exhibition.
I follow this with the nearby Divisionism exhibition at the National Gallery. Like Pointillism or Impressionism, Divisionism was a response to new scientific theories of light and colour, like colour wheels. Nonetheless, where French art often has an art for art's sake philosophy, with low-lifes or nudes (Longoni's pickpocket painting is the nearest to that here) featured to epater les bourgeoisie rather than for political ends. By contrast, Italian artists were unhappy with technique alone. Italian reunification has created considerable social upheaval, poverty and inequality that lent itself to a realist style of portrature that much of the rest of Europe had already explored. Equally, symbolism offered a more escapist response to the same conditions, one that especially appealed to Catholic artists. Often, divisionist artists would veer between these extremes. Nomellini paints grey scenes of striking workers at one point in his career, and then paints an extraordinary indigo blue symbolist work showing the sea, entitles Symphony of the Moon. Segantini's nature scenes remains sufficiently detailed to sit alongside Pre-Raphaelite painting, but his later symbolist works show a bizarre depictions of sins being punished in hell. His Return from the Woods is the most perfect fusion of the two strains shown in the exhibition; showing a peasant woman dragging wood in a snow scene, but withthe church spire at her destination is reminiscent of David Friedrich (the same applies to some of Grudicy's autumnal scenes; I'm struck by the spider's web drawn on the frame of one of them). Some of the realist paintings, such as those by Morbelli could have been painted fifty years earlier in terms of their technique, even if light falling through windows is a particular theme. Morbelli also painted melancholy quasi symbolist works of sunsets though. In other works, the divisionist technique, so effective in Segantini's Alpine scenes, imposes a stillness and imprecision that fits oddly with the social agenda of the paintings. Morbelli's luminscent painting of women working in the rice fields utterly fails to convey any sense of misery; it's much too tranquil and beautiful. Either these artists assumed that a method that was 'scientific must be allied to social progress, or the political posturing was actually an alibi for aestheticising the predicament of the working class. Much of the symbolist work is also quite socially engaged though but in a more reactionary fashion, as with Previati's paean to the virtues of the madonna. Volpedo's country scenes are reminiscent of Sisley but show christian processions. Many of the forms are religious, such as the tondo or the polytych. At the very least, religious symbolism is used to evoke a sense of secular national identity; Mazzini had argued that Italians must develop a "religious concept of their nation."
It wasn't until futurism that the techniques developed by divisionism could be applied to a specific programme, albeit one where the interest in light was often centered on electric lighting. The exhibition depicts a move from Boccioni's early pastoral landscapes to a picture of a seamstress (albeit one where the focus is on her cobalt blue dress) to his explicitly futurist painting of a dam being constructed. Other works by Balla and Carra show the futurist depiction of movement in still life or the energy of technology.
As I child I recall seeing a particular statue during a visit to Osbourne House on the Isle of Wight; a black basalt statue of Antinous. I couldn't place my interest in it exactly at the time, presuming it to be due to the exotic Egyptinate character of the statue. I now presume that my interest was mostly taken by the frank sexualisation in the semi-nude depiction of Hadrian's lover. No wonder Winckelman had been so enthused at the imagery that showed Antinous as being somewhere between Athena and Apollo. The story of the doomed youth is one of the central myths of gay history, alongside that of Edward the Second. It's the prospect of seeing Antinous that attracts me to the Hadrian exhibition at the British Museum. The depictions of him are many, from the Egyptianate statue of him as Osiris (with whom he had shared a death day), Ephebian depictions of him as Bacchus (another arisen deity) with vine leaves in his long hair or versions of him as a Greek fertility god. In some of these he conforms to the Roman ideal of the beautiful youth (shown here with the inclusion of the Warren cup), in others his sexuality is more aggressively that of an adult male. I find myself wryly amused at the prospect of his cult competing with christianity; if only it had won. Otherwise, the material at hand is rather more conventional; accounts of Hadrian's brutal suppression of Jewish rebellion, retrenchment and consolidation of the empire's borders after Trajan's overly ambitious expansion, the amnesty on public debts, construction of the Scottish wall (admittedly a turf bank for much of its length that could have served little defensive purpose, instead presumably it served as a means of channelling and controlling the border), anf finishing with the construction of buildings like the Pantheon, his Mausoleum and the architectural fantasisa of his Tivoli villa. The images of Hadrian himself seem surprisingly individual, with his beard setting him out (cited as evidence of his love of all things Greek or a means of covering his blemishes, depending on your preferences) as well as a dimple in his ear that may be evidence of heart disease. Giant busts and statues alternately show him as emperor, priest, warrior and deity. Some of the reliefs from Tivoli, showing Parthenon style depictions of naked figures alongside detailed carvings of vines, birds and squirrels also stand out, but I'm especially drawn to two beautiful peacocks that formerly were in place on the walls of Hadrian's mausoleum.
The great court of the Museum currently has a striking work by Zhang Wang inside it; following the Chinese inclusion of weathered stones in gardens, Wang has taken the image of such stones and encased it in silvery metal, which looks as if it were frozen mercury. This questioning of the relationship between nature and art is counterpointed by some temporary gardens outside, where a genuine stone can be found amidst the dogwood, wisteria, lacquer tree, willow, bamboo and peony. An exhibition of Chinese nature painting inside continues this theme. I'm struck by the role of literary allusion in the paintings and ceramics shown; many of the flowers and animals are chosen for their symbolic connotations (like the lotus) others by homophones suggested by their names (bamboo sounding like congratulations, narcissi sounding like immortality) or for compounds formed from the combination of different items. A few weeks later I'm revisiting Silchester and an archaeological dig is on. A small garden has been created illustrating the sort of plants found in a Roman garden and illustrating their symbolic functions. There are some overlaps with the Chinese symbolism, as with peony being used in protective amulets.
Walking around the city, I visit the interior of St Mary Alderdmary, an exercise in hyperreal gothic by Wren. The effect is quite odd; the fan vaulting is decorated with floral patterns that seem to belong rather more to the baroque period. The effect of the interior being coated in white plaster is rather sepulchral, giving it the effect of an alabaster tomb and contrasting oddly with the colourful Victorian tiling on the floor. While I'm there the organ starts playing Bach's Toccata and Fugue. I move onto Wren's St Stephen Walbrook. The interior here is more like a playfully decorated version of the pantheon; unlike Hawksmoor whose eccentric designs seem to match the English character, Wren would have been a much greater architect in a catholic country, where his designs could have made with red marble rather than Portland stone and his interiors gilded and painted. One detail I am struck with is a totentanz on one of the pillars, showing a bride dancing with a skeletal death. This evening, I go to Monteverdi's The Coronation of Poppaea at the Proms. Even if Monteverdi is best known for his ecclesiastical music, this amorality tale does rather confirm the reputation of renaissance Venice as indifferent to religion at best. The plot begins with Cupid asserting her primacy over Virtue and thereafter protecting Poppaea as she schemes her way to becoming Nero's wife, displacing the rather more virtuous Octavia. Poppaea's mother attempts to dissuade her from this course, but only on the grounds of practicality, advising her to go for someone less ambitious instead. Similarly, Octavia's nurse attempts to persuade her to take a lover as a form of revenge. Seneca is depicted as the moral centre of the play but also as a tedious windbag. The only character to receive any punishment is the wronged Octavia, while the assassin Otto is allowed happiness with Drusilla. The staging attempted to draw attention to later events (Poppaea' death at Nero's hands) by having him come close to slapping her as well as introducing an unscripted (and historically inaccurate) scene where Nero drowns Lucan. Since the drama is essentially concerned with Poppae's triumph, I wasn't especially sure I appreciated these interpolations, even if the original audience would have been well aware of Poppaea's eventual fate and that she would have achieved her ambition by remaining faithful to Otto. The Skakespearian approach to casting works bettwe, with both Nero and Poppaea played by women (Nero would originally have been played by a castrato) and various female parts like the nurse played by men (the nurse here bears a disturbing resemblance to Margaret Thatcher).
Later at the Proms, I listen to Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty. The full version is rarely performed in ballet (the story being slight, Tchaikovsky had padded it with various dances). I find myself surprised at the idea of Tchaikovsky writing an opera under the influence of Rameau, although the idea of parallels to Wagner and Brunnhilde's sleep is more natural. In later works, Rimsky-Korsakov's Kaschkey the Immortal inverts this, with the hero's kiss to an evil witch killing her and releasing the princess. I follow this with Dvorak's Slavonic Dances and Janacek's Osud. The latter is quite odd, reminding me of the role of neuroticism in Schnitzler or the sense of impending fate in Kafka (Mann also leapt to mind, prompted by the spa setting). The first two acts describe a conductor's love affair and its end in madness and death. His opera is only written to comprise two acts and the third has his describing the above events it to music students at its premiere, thereby forming the third act.
The following weekend, I go to a Taraf de Haidouks concert in Cheltenham. Much of their music is intended to take orchestral settings of gypsy music by the likes of Bartok and Albeniz and to place in back into its original context, playing it as dance music on the violin, accordion, bass and cymbalum. The result is rather like rock music and it's difficult not to think that where nineteenth century Europe preferred to take folk music and to apply it to orchestral works, twentieth century America preferred to allow black artists to pioneer jazz and blues. The irony of re-appropriating Bartok is born out by the venue, a rather gaudy regency affair. The audience look as if they go there often to attend classical concerts; standing for this one they occasionally manage to sway a bit (aside from one rather energetic elderly lady). It's also worth mentioning the supporting act, the London Bulgarian Choir, who performed a capella folk songes dressed in traditional costumes.
Cheltenham itself, with its rows of regency buildings, seems rather tepid to me. I'm more struck by my visit earlier in the day to Tewkesbury Abbey. It reminds me of Southwell, another place where the isolated location seems to have helped the building survive with comparatively little destruction or alteration. The exterior is rather ungainly; a squat central tower is flanked by various side chapels and fronted with a facade composed of two towers dwarfed by a central window, recessed back as if it were a romanesque arch. The interior is dark, supported by round pillars (each with a face as a corbel facing its counterpart opposite) above a gothic ceiling painted green and white. The effect is rather like a forest. After the rood screen the effect becomes more markedly gothic, with Victorian Minton tiling below matched by white, blue and red patterns above. England's oldest fan vaulting in some of the chantry chapels, some of it still painted. One of them has an effigy of its knight suspended above it, others show statues of mouldering corpses, others show fights with the devil. I'm also quite struck by the lady chapel, with a Byzantine mosaic and icon of St Benedict.
The following day is taken up with a brief visit to Glasgow. I find the Victorian buildings in red sandstone mixed with baroque church spires, Marcochetti statues, greek revival art galleries, elaborate corbel figures and art deco building fronts quite wonderful. I'm equally delighted with the police boxes I keep on seeing on street corners. The back of Prince's Square behind the City Chambers is labyrinth of arches that reminds me of Piranesi. In front, I'm struck by the column surmounted by Walter Scott. London has no statue of Shakespeare, let alone dedicating Trafalgar Squate to him. I walk out to the cathedral and walk around the graveyard. The monuments are eroded and weathered, decorated with skulls and morality symbols. The symbols seem wraithlike when corroded in this manner. On one of them Minton tiling has been badly blackened by industrial pollution. Several more modern tombs are caged in with rusted iron, the interior overgrown with weeds. I walk over to the Victorian necropolis. The presence of the tombs on this hill reminds me of Prague, as does the presence of an old town next to a new one on a grid layout. Presumably Mackintosh would figure as the Glaswegian Gaudi. Paths spiral around the hill, as one passes celtic crosses, Egyptian tombs, funerary urns, all encrusted with rust and weeds as they crumble to dust. The style of the monuments seems rather diverse, from Moorish gothic to Romanesque chapels. Returning, I enter the cathedral. Its stone is quite black with the roof covered in a rich, dark wood. The modern stained glass is a lovely blue. The interior seems as labyrinthine as the necropolis with a crypt where Saint Kentigern's tomb had rested. Medieval German stained glass creates phovist patterns on the floor of a side chapel. Here alone the walls are painted in white and I notice a roof boss in the shape of a skull. Elsewhere, the sacristy's floor is lined with Minton tiles. I look at the funerary memorials in the cathedral. Unlike even those in Tewkesbury they are brightly painted, somewhere between gothic and Tudor in their design.
Lautreamont's Maldoror follows in the path of Baudelaire and Nerval in delighting in contradictions, even as Lautreamont condemns it in his poems. Similarly, the poems are explicit in rejecting the romanticism of Byron, even as Maldoror follows in the path of Manfred, Goethe and Maturin (although he also speaks of tragedy, such as that of Mervyn, as moral, exciting pity and terror). Where, Maldoror denounces god the poems state that "I reject evil... man never fell from a state of grace." Maldoror itself is far from monologic. At one point, Satan is Maldoror's great rival, elsewhere god is essentially identical to satan ("I created you so I have the right to do whatever I like to you... I am making you suffer for my pleasure") at another the archangel speaks of Maldoror in the same terms as Lucifer himself, a fallen angel they would welcome back as one of their own. Since the text accepts the binary logic of christianity throughout, it is split between salvation and damnation as mutually exclusive choices, even as the narrator rejects god as an evil tyrant; "this god who is insensible to your prayers.. this shapeless and bloodthirsty idol... I should like to love and adore you but you are too powerful and there is fear in my prayers." Since man is made in god's image it follows that man is as corrupt and vicious as his creator ("the creator who ought never to have bred such vermin"), making murder a moral act. Applying Blake's dictum that one should soon smother a child in its cradle than nurse unacted desires, Maldoror emerges as a Sadeian rebel in the same way Blake envisaged Milton's Satan. But at the same time the narrative voice can still shift to utter conventional homilectics; "that torch of unjustifiable pride that is leading you to your damnation."
Roderick Hudson reminded me of an observation I'd heard that while homosexuality forms an obvious subtext in many novels by gay authors, the sense can permeate other works (the example cited was a rereading of 1984 as story of gay love and persecution). Here, there are grounds to suspect a subtext; Cecilia introduces Roderick as "a pretty boy" while in Venice Roderick and Rownland watch "a brown breasted gondolier making superb muscular movements." The core of the novel can as easily be read as concerning Rowland's unrequited love for Roderick as it can for Mary. In spite of the depiction of Mary, women essentially figure throughout as sexual threats that destroys men of talent as much as Rowland's interference; "a buxom, bold faced, high-coloured creature... she used to beat him and he had taken to drinking." Then later; "he had married a horrible wife.. it was said she used to beat poor Savage." Similarly, Christina is "as cold and false and heartless as she is beautiful... her disrelish of a man who lacked the virile will."Labels: Architecture, Art, England, Glasgow, History, Literature, Music
posted by Richard 8:14 AM
Sunday, September 9, 2007
"Since first the dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great powers only the memory remains; of the Second, the ruin; the Third, which inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led through prouder eminence to less pitied destruction . . . I would endeavour to... record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat like passing bells, against the Stones of Venice." - Ruskin, The Stones of Venice
Venice is a place that is difficult to summarise in conventional terms. A place of so many different styles seems best described as a set of fragments; the light shimmering on the fade waters of the lagoon, images of the Virgin Mary (even included in glass and metal shrines in the canals), the crumbling white I...strian marble, cracking plaster revealing rotted brick, the gondalas like Turkish slippers riding the waves, the chiming of the bells, red Veronese and white Istrian diamond patterns in the tiling, the seaweed and mussels clinging to the canal walls, the splashing of the waves, the minaret like campaniles, wells in each square, seagulls resting on wooden buoys, images of dragons, sphinxes and winged lions adornining squares, the precarious roof gardens, the capricious (if not Escheresque) medieval streets where serendipity is of rather more use than conventional navigation. Grandiosity and decay sit side by side. As a city it is an anomaly; a place of refuge that became the seat of empire, the product of the accretion of Roman, Byzantine styles. In its present form it is less of a subject in its own right than an object for the gaze of others. The city whose churches are adorned by works from Titian, Vivarini and Veronese became a place depicted instead by foreigners like James, Whistler, Mann, Monet and Turner. It is trapped like a fly in amber, forever preserved more or less as it was at the fall of the Republic, when its history ended.
The one exception to this is the Lido. Until recent times this was simply a sandbank that did little to disturb the oppressive flatness of the lagoon; Byron would ride his horses here; the nearby island of Saint Lazarus, which housed the city's Armenian community and a rather Central European church spire, is rather older. The church of San Nicolo is easily the oldest structure on the island, the scene of Venice's marriage to the sea. It's a somewhat understated church with a brick exterior and painted pink campanile. The local cemetery (incongruously, this is also where the city's Jewish cemetery can be found) is nearby, whose large mausoleums have potted plants and welcome mats for visitors to enter and use the small chapel. Watering cans are on sale to water the flowers planted on the graves. Lizards flit across the stones in the late afternoon sun. Today, these stand alongside an old flack tower errected during the second world war; the Lido is indeed the only part of Venice to include fascist architecture, such as rather drab casinos and cinemas. It's main street also features an art deco hotel, albeit not the one Von Aschenbach stayed at, its exterior covered in beautifully painted stucco sculptures of the muses. There's an art exhibition on at the time I visit and a car painted in red with the hammer and sickle is parked outside. A large black Buddha statue rests further down the main street. A cat bathing in the afternoon sunlight looks suitably unimpressed.
By contrast, the view that greets one at the Piazza San Marco is essentially the same as that depicted by Canaletto, with the conflicting styles of the gothic and Byzantine cathedral next to Sansovino's classical Loghetta and Biblioteca. The iconography is equally conflicted, with St Theodore's column representing the city's links with Byzantium next to the winged lion of the stolen Saint Mark, representing the city's independence. I begin with the Doge's Palace and following Ruskin's recommendations, examine the decoration on the capitals outside; kings, moors, birds, beasts, knights and allegories. Entering inside, the inner courtyard (itself a rather Arabic concept) is lined with colonnades and is overlooked by a clock on a facade filled with Sansovino sculptures that backs onto the Basilica. The Palazzo is entered through a gold and white stucco staircase leading to rooms filled with maps, globes and images of the winged lion. The walls are decorated with paintings by Titian, Carpaccio, Bellini, Bassano, Tiepolo and Veronese. Inevitably, the central Council Chambers is the most impressive, with its paintings of all the Doges (save the black space where Faliero should be), and Tintoretto's Paradise fresco. Coming across Bosch's Triptych of Heaven and Hell, I finding myself once more responding to them rather more readily than the Titian and Veronese paintings, perhaps due to perverse surrealism being their dominant mode rather than the crude allegories of god blessing Venice elsewhere in the palace. Later rooms show other aspects; magistrates in eighteenth century portraiture, the prison cells and bridge of sighs.
Inevitably, this is followed with a visit to the dark and cave-like Basilica of Sant Mark, with the half light glittering across the gold and marble mosaics. Images pullulate across every surface and leave the eye disorientated. The treasury still houses works taken from Alexandria (as well as the corpse of Saint Mark), including the inevitable holy relics, the bone encased in previous metals that simulate the limbs that once contained them as well as a reliquary in the shape of a domed church. As with the Piazzo itself, the originally simple Basilica design has been added to, with gothic spires, painting by Veneziano and later artists as well as statuary on the outside and the more incongrous Tetrarchs statue of Dioceletian. This is followed by the Correr Museum, where I am most struck by a Chinese statue of Marco Polo. Bewhiskered and with round eyes, the statue is covered in gold and in all other respects Buddha like. The interior dates from the Napoleonic era and seems to have been designed in imitation of Nero's palace. The first exhibit is a set of Canova reliefs of Homeric scenes, followed by his statues of Priam, Daedalus and Icarus. The museum also houses an eighteenth century library, complete with Murano chandelier as well as various items like globes, maiolica, cassone, maps and Sevres porcelain. The highlight of the museum is its art gallery though, beginning with the Byzantine work of Paolo Veneziano, proceeding onwards to the more gothic work of Stefano Veneziano and Bartholomeo Vivarini and from thence to the Renaissance and the Bellini family, as well as exhibiting some works by Damaskinos and El Greco. As ever, I find the religious subject matter of all these periods decidedly hostile; it is possible to enjoy them as abstract pattern and colour but as little else. Conversely, a painting like Carpaccio's The Courtesans or Brueghel's Adoration of the Magi are quite different, both displacing the christian in favour of the human. The collection also has a painting in the school of Bosch, The Temptations of St Anthony, which I also enjoy; it seems fitting company for the paintings by Dali and Ernst that I saw a few days later. Finally, the museum also houses a smaller Ancient History section, containing busts of the Roman Emperors, Hellenic statues of the defeated Galatians, Assyrian reliefs and Egpytian statues (as well as a somewhat homoerotic statue of Dionysus and a satyr).
The following days are dedicated to exploring the city; from Castello to the Dorsoduro, San Polo and Cannaregio. The church of San Giuliano in San Marco is an especially elaborate baroque church, with Veronese paintings and a nearby wall relief of St George (who seems especially popular here in spite of not being its patron saint) and an iron dragon as a street sign (rather reminding me of Barcelona). I also note some rather odd calendars on sale in some of the squares. I walk to Santa Maria Dei Miracoli in Canaregio, one of the particular highlight of my visit. The outside is firmly encased in every hue of marble on a comparatively small Renaissance building tucked beside a canal. The interior shares this, with the wooden barrel roof also being studded with paintings in addition to the Pietro painting of the Madonna that the church grew around (most churches in Venice seem to have been founded through some vision of the Virgin or a bird leading out to a reed bed, something that reminds me of the founding of Tenochtitlan more than anything else). For a complete contrast, the gothic Santo Stefano in Castello represents another highlight of my visit. The same red and white diamond patterning seen on the outside of the Palazzo Ducale can be seen on the interior walls here, next to leaf frescos painted atop the arches and a studded ship's keel roof. The pillars are covered in red cloth, something I note in several of the churches. The arches have to be supported by corss beams, presumably due to the lack of firm foundations. The interior is filled with elaborate gothic, classical (one of the equestrian monuments being especially striking hung on a church wall) funerary monuments, including some by Canova and Lombardo, as well as paintings by Vivarini and Tintoretto. San Francesco della Vigna is a pleasant church with a pink and white campanile, offset by an elaborate facade designed by Palladio.
The church of Santa Maria dei Giglio has an especially elaborate Baroque facade, showing maps of the city. Its sacristy is not dissimilar to that at Saint Marks, setting silver reliquaries in the dubious company of a painting by Rubens, while the rest of the church places Tintoretto in the equally strange company of a Creto-Byzantine Madonna icon. The same holds true for the rather understated Santa Maria Del Formosa, which sets a Byzantine icon alongside a Vivarini triptych. Ruskin disliked this church for a baroque gargoyle at the base of its rather pleasant campanile (on grounds I can rather understand) but also for decorative facade by Codussi designed to honour the Venetian nobility rather than god (on which point, I am considerably less in sympathy with Ruskin). Santa Maria Della Salute is rather more famous than any of these, but its Baroque dome seems a more familiar design than many of the city's other churches (in spite of the Byzantine references). It too has a Byzantine icon taken from Crete, from the time it lay within the Venetian empire. Titian's painting of Saint Sebastian in the church is especially striking; it is the first of many in a city routinely decimated by plague and which had come used to invoking him as a patron. The city's interest in Saint Sebastian is nowhere better exemplified than in the church of San Sebastiano. Sebastian appears in a painting by Veronese in a church whose walls are lined with works by him, even covering the organ. Any part of the wall not containing a painting is home to a trompe l'oeil effect. There is even a stone sculpture of him outside, in the place normally reserved for the Virgin Mary.
Another highlight was Santi Giovanni e Paolo. It's funerary monuments are very bit as ornate as those of Santo Stefano, such as the Mocenigo tombs, supported by griffin sculptures while others are emblazoned with double headed eagles. Otherwise, the interior is more plain, in bare stone and redbrick, save for the red painted arches and cross beams. This time it is Bellini who depicts Sebastian in a triptych. Other paintings include Giovane and a Vivarini triptych. The ornate sacristy is filled with Veronese paintings and rather recalls the Doge's Palace. Similar in style is Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. The main nave here is largely empty, filled only elaborate funerary monuments. Most of these are in conventional styles, including one to Titian, which leaves Canova's pyramid all the more striking. It looks as if it should be Pere LaChaise or Highgate, with veiled figures and angels entering the tomb. Next to it is something equally odd, with Moorish bearers and skeletons. The church has been described as a pantheon, given the numbers of the great and the good buried here (though Monteverdi only merited a floor plaque). There is than an elaborate wood and gold choir and beyond that is something altogether more elaborate; here the brick walls are painted and are hung with works by Titian. The sacristy is dark, covered with wooden panels, and here Veneziano, Vivarini and a Bellini triptych can be found, alongside a wooden clock by Lombardo. The Gesuati in Cannaregio is more rococo than classicist, with the walls covered in floral patterns of green and white marble, even down to representing a set of curtains around the pulpit and gold on the ceiling. The weight was enough to cause subsidence and the chapels around Titain's painting of Saint Lawrence's martyrdom are riven with cracks and damp. Its namesake in the Dorsoduro, is a more plain baroque church, with paintings by Tiepolo and Tintoretto and the unusual presence of the earlier church it replaced alongside. The Carmini is perhaps not the best building in the city, but it is quite unusual; paintings depicting the history of the Carmelite order hang on either side of the nave under the ceiling, with dark wood and gold statues beneath. The pillars are again wrapped in red cloth. The windows have red curtains, giving the place a rather gloomy effect. The Scuola Grande di San Rocco, a lay fraternity, has a rather spartan, churchlike, hall on its groundfloor, while its dark wood panelled upper floor has more of the feeling of a sacristy, lined with Tintoretto paintings of the New Testament. A collection of Maiolica and Iznik ceramics is on display in an annex. Similarly, the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni is devoted to Carpaccio, showing narrative cycles based on the lvies of St George, Tryphone and Jerome on the ground floor. The upper floor is also more elaborate, though there is something rather bathetic about its painting of fraternity members in Biblical scenes (not unlike a painting of god, the Doge, Dogessa and the guild of poulterers or St Christopher fording the Venetian lagoon).
The church of Madonna Dell Orto is another of the city's highlights, with an exterior that most closely approximates Northern Gothic. Inside, it is perhaps rather more understated, with painting on the interior of the arches and paintings by Tintoretto, with a set of rather apocalyptic themes of the day of judgement and the golden calf. Nearby is Santa Alvise, with a rather bizarre set of paintings showing the theft of the body of Saint Mark (whose corpse, needless to add, is perfectly preserved). The interior feels more like an art gallery than a church, with an ingenious trompe l'oeil ceiling by Bastiani that seems to extend the church several storeys upward. More striking is a cycle of Carpaccio paintings, alongside works by Tiepolo and Giovane. The church of San Geremia, is a rather bland affair, with some gothic paintings of Lucia (whose stolen corpse the church contains) and Geremia. The church of San Giobbe is also rather uninteresting, save for one chapel containing a glazed terracotta ceiling in beautiful blues and greens, Lombardo carvigs and a Vivarini triptych in the sacristy. San Giovanni Elemosinario, also built to house a pilfered saint's corpse, contains a Pordenone painting of Saint Sebastian, alongside various Titian paintings. The building is largely hidden in the Rialto market (certainly when compared to the nearby San Giacomo di Rialto, with its large, if entirely inaccurate, clock) and is mostly rather austere, save for a sudden lurch into baroque splendour in one of the side chapels. San Giacomo dall'Orio is a rather more spartan church, with only the capitals and ceiling woodwork gilded below its ship's keel roof. A Byzantine style cross by Veneziano hangs in the centre of the nave (several of the columns and font are looted from Byzantium). The church is mostly home to Giovane paintings (especially in its sacristy). Of lesser note, is San Giobbe, a simple building with a wooden rood and some Tiepolo paintings.
San Giorgio dei Greci is hidden in a small courtyard, whose iron railings are overgrown with ivy. The wellhead, walls and exterior mosaics are decorated with representations of George and the Dragon, and the interior with its walls of iconic paintings by Damaskinos, also features him. Finally, there is San Zaccaria, a building with one of the most impressive facades and one of the one of the most drab monochrome interiors in the city, the walls of paintings by the likes of Bellini and Vivarini notwithstanding. There is also San Giovanni in Bragora, the church where Vivalid was baptised, with its lovely Vivarini triptych and San Martino with another saint's corpse and trompe l'oeil ceiling. Across from the main island lies La Giudecca, with its Palladian churches, Santissimo Redentore and San Giorgio Maggiore. In spite of paintings by Tintoretto, Bassano and Vivarini, I find myself sympathising with Ruskin's preference for gothic over classicism; there's something rather puritannical about Palladio's designs. The first example of classicist architecture in Venice is the Arsenale though, with its clock towers and lion statues (stolen from the Peloponnese).
For all of the corrosion of the city's walls through brine laden winds and subsidence, nature is something largely banished from Venice. Its narrow streets accommodate few trees or grass. One of the few exceptions to this is the more easterly districts. The Giardini area is filled with public gardens, divided by a boulevade dedicated to Garibaldi. A statue of the man himself stands at the entrance, atop a large rock down which water spills. Ferns and moss have grown over the rock and terrepins sunbathe at its base or swim alongside carp in the waters below. The gardens are otherwise filled with statuary; a bust of Richard Wagner, a rostral column and assorted statues in a Roman style. The pine trees continue to San Elena, where birds sing as the sun sets. The small church at the end of the island has a rather unpleasant modern campanile but also a beautiful set of cloisters, filled with plants.
Nature is more of an emphatic presence at the outer island of Torcello. Once the first settlement on the lagoon, it is now all but deserted. Ruskin opened The Stones of Venice with an account of the fall of previous maritime empires like Venice and Tyre, in comparison to a Britain that still ruled the scenes. By contrast, Torcello reminds me more of Jeffries's After London and a recent account of what London would like after having been deserted by humanity for hundreds of years; the last thing to collapse would be Canary Wharf, standing above what have reverted to swampland. In Torcello, the trees, reeds and broom grow thickly over what would once have been a settlement. Egrets and herons can be seen flying. The tower of its erstwhile cathedral looms large over the island and can be seen for miles around. As you draw closer you come into a piazza that must once have been equivalent to San Marco. Today, the cobbles are broken up with weeds and parts of the building lie in ruins. The quiet of the lagoon seems unearthly. Statues and ornaments stand silent witness around the square. The cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta itself is home to a dramatic gold mosaic of the day of judgement on one wall (complete with skeletons, demons and ouls burning in hell) and the Virgin at the other. As Ruskin notes, together for the bright and airy character of the church, it was an obvious expression for a people in need of reassurance and hope after the Hun incursions. Plain romanesque arches are supported by elaborate corinthian columns, the walls are decorated with images of peacocks with the floor glitters with a rainbow of marble patterns. A museum stands on the the opposite side of the piazza, including early mosaics, a gold iconostasis and various reliefs. It also includes a history of objects found in the lagoon; Roman lamps, a bust of Hermes, Etruscan metalware, Egyptian statues and other votive objects.
The Island of Murano is rather less interesting, with most of its palaces having been torn down. One of the most interesting buildings is the lighthouse, with an Eric Gill style sculpture of the Madonna at its base. The church of San Pietro Martire is a modest white and red affair, with frescos between the arches and a collection of paintings by Bellini and Veronese. More striking is Santa Maria e Donato, with its mosaic flooring with depictions of eagles and rabbits (nastily depicting the triumph of christianity over the pagan), alleged dragon bones hung behind the altar and a mosaic of the Madonna in the apse. Saint's bones are once more stored under the altar, as at Saint Fosca at Torcello.
More fascinating is the Bocklin like island of San Michele. The product of the Napoleonic era, it feels more like Pere LaChaise than the rest of Venice. The grid layout seems alien to a city whose streets are so chaotic. As often in Latin countries, many graves are simply in shelves, with photos on the outside of each box and an electric light illuminating a fake candle. Where there are conventional graves, the cemetery takes on the aspect of a flower garden, with the plants growing profusely. Ornate tombs line the walls of the cemetery, at corners and intersections and in cloisters; everywhere white marble and orange brick prevails beneath the shade of cypresses. The orthodox and protestant tombs are in their quarantined areas and both have become decidedly more ramshackle. A larger tomb in the orthodox sections has mosaics ion the outside, but the graves of Stravinsky and Brodsky are somewhat nondescript. So too proves the case with Pound in the dilapidated Protestant cemetery where the presence of Highgate style angels seems decidedly odd.
Venice's art galleries are split between medieval and renaissance paintings on the one hand and the modernist collection in the Guggenheim on the other. The Guggenheim begins with a futurist collection reminiscent of the Estorick collection; Boccioni, Balla and Severini. Peggy Guggenhiem's own collection bifurcates between broadly abstract or expressionist works, like Braque, Kandinsky, Delaunay and Picasso (as well as a large Pollock collection) and surrealism, including Brauner, Delvaux, Dali, Ernst, Chirico and Magritte. Although I enjoy most of the collection, it's the surrealist paintings I enjoy the most. There's also a good sculpture collection; Giacometti and Brancusi. At the other extreme, is the Ca' d'Oro and Accademia. Ca' d'Oro is a palazzo on the ground canal. Entering inside through a gothic gate, one walks through a verdant courtyard into the ground floor portego. Statues of satyrs and gods are scattered around and the waves of the lagoon lap against the steps. The floor is mosaic, decorated with stones from North Africa and Greece. The collection is most famed for a Mantegna painting of (unsurprisingly) Saint Sebastian, as well as Carpaccio Annunciation and a striking Andrea Bartolo coronation of the Virgin. Again though, I'm most impressed by Titian's profane Venus at the Looking Glass. There's also a collection of Flemish works; a Van Eyck crucifixion, Van de Velde seascapes and a Van Scorel painting of the Tower of Babel that distinctly resembled the more famous Brueghel. Finally, there is the Accademia. Again, it begins with Veneto-Byzantine artists like Veneziano and Vivarini, containing some rather grandiose depictions of the Book of Revelations and the coronation of the Virgin, though Carpaccio's Crucifixion and Apotheosis of the Martyrs on Mount Ararat and his Ursula cycle is probably the most dramatic. Inevitably, Saint Sebastian is again much in evidence, with two paintings of him by Bellini. The gallery then progresses onwards to the Renaissance, with Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese, though I am again most struck by Lotto's Portrait of a Young Man in his Study. The collection again progressed forward, showing Claude-like paintings of ruins by Giuseppe Zais, a series of architectural fantasias by Marieschi, Gaspari and Battaglioli. There's also the handful of Canaletto pictures to remain within Venice.
posted by Richard 5:01 AM
Sunday, November 12, 2006
"High the vanes of Shrewsbury gleam
Islanded in Severn stream;
The bridges from the steepled crest
Cross the water east and west." (AE Housman)
Shrewsbury is one of the best preserved towns in England, with streets lined with half-timbered buildings (one of them stayed in by Henry prior to the Battle of Bosworth Field), a castle on a hill and a profusion of churches from a number of a variety of different periods. Outside the town and besides the Severn lie the remains of the old Benedictine monastery (including a rather eeriely isolated refectory pulpit standing outside) and the present Abbey. The red sandstone exterior left me rather reminded of Hereford. The interior remains largely gothic, with the remains of St Winfrid's shrine having an orthodox icon of the saint by them (it's not really my sort of reading but I did always rather like the alternative story of Winifrid's arrival in Shrewsbury from A Morbid Taste for Bones), Tudor and Norman tombs, Norman remains, a font made from an upended Roman column as a font and Victorian reredos depicting Winifrid.
Within the town lies the church of St Mary the Virgin, with the third largest spire in England (half of it from the original sandstone, the rest much later). This is one of the most impressive churches that I've seen; the windows are filled with 13th to 16th century stained glass from Belgium and Germany, purchased at the same time as the Lady Chapel of Lichfield Cathedral. The 'Tree of Jesse' window showing Edward the Third is 14th century, Saxon tomb slabs, the floor is covered with Minton tiles, while the wooden ceiling is filled with elaborate angel carvings. Nearby is the more modest St Alkmund, a Victorian church with a painted East window and St Chad, a baroque round tower church with a circular nave. Outside, yellow and red leaves had fallen and covered the ground around the large tombs. Over the road is a park with a classical war memorial containing a statue of the angel Gabriel. Past a statue of Darwin outside the library, lie the remains of the castle, as red as the Abbey. A tower built by Thomas Telford when an earlier part of the structure collapsed stands overlooking the river. Down in the town, the museum houses a number of interesting exhibits from the Roman city of Virconium (Wroxeter), including soldier's gravestones (originally garishly painted) and Samian wear.
Elsewhere, St Michael's in Lichfield is set in one of the largest graveyard in the country. Though it lacks the elaborate tombs in the London Victorian cemetery, one of the larger tombs had it's own clock and gas supply to light it up. St Mary and St Hardulph, or Breedon on the Hill, is siutated atop a hill above the surrounding plain. Originally, the site of a Monastery, the largely Norman church is notable for its extensive Saxon carvings; an angel like the one at Lichfield, Vine scroll above the altar and Anglian beasts. Seventeenth century slates tombstones line up in the windswept churchyard, each decorating with elaborate neo-classical etchings that have survived well. A Tudor family memorial depicts the deceased at prayer as well as showing a skeletal corpse beneath. A wooden pew surives that served as the box for the local gentry during services. Nearby is St Michael and St Mary at Melbourne, a Norman cathedral in miniature, with thick columns and round arches supporting a gallery that runs the length of the church. A wonderful medieval mural of the devil survives on one of the walls, near to columns where Saxon carvings of animals remain, including a Sheela-na-gig, a pagan fertility symbol. Further on is St Mary at Tutbury, a rather more restrained affair which does nonetheless have an extraordinary Norman arch in alabaster (another shows scenes of boar hunting). Finally, I had been to Repton before, but was interested to note the same slate tombstones outside and the statue of St Wystan bearing a metal sword above the door.
Autumn is my favourite time of year, with the world transfigured with green thoughts to shades of bronze, gold and burgundy and where the fallen leaves are suddenly siezed and thrown through the air by the unseen force of the wind. I think what I increasingly like about looking at buildings and the natural world is a sense of transfiguration, something similar to Shklovsky's concept of ostranenie translates as 'making strange.' I think of how buildings take on different characters in different lights, of how the fog I can currently see from the window makes the innocuous and familiar sinister and hidden, of how autumn leaves transform the living into something artificial. Autumn has come late this year and it still feels more like October than November. Travelling into London to the Velasquez exhibition at the National Gallery, the sun is bright and the air still seems gentle. The exhibition itself shows Velasquez as a consummate realist, concerned with the mundane in his genre paintings (in spite of the number of religious or mythical subjects), while also continually suggesting, as with Foucault's analysis of Las Meninas, the limits of representation, as with the two kitchen scenes shown here where christ is seen as being somewhere else beyond everyday concerns. The same applies to The Rokeby Venus, where the mirror image only shows a dim reflection of Venus and one that is at the wrong angle (although most of the portraits show the subject facing the viewer, Velasquez also has his sibyl turned away and hidden). Two other small exhibitions were being held, of Cezanne and Dutch winter scenes. The former seems striking for Cezanne's almost cubist approach to nature painting while the highlight of the latter was Jan Beerstraten's The Castle of Muiden in Winter and Avercamp's Scene on the Ice Near Town. Elsewhere within the gallery, I walked through the Sainsbury wing, responding to the colours, but as ever, finding it hard to respond to the subject matter of works like The Wilton Diptych, until we come to the lascivious mythological painting of Florentine artists like Botticelli, Di Cosimo (though a Crivelli altarpiece with real jewels and gold embedded in it was rather striking), Cranach's Greek allegory of Cupid Complaning to Venus and Venetian portrait painters like Bellini's portrait of The Doge Leonardo Loredan. Van Eyck's The Arnolfini Portrait also stands out for me and I next visit the Dutch section, with its Vane De Velde maritime paintings, De Hootch allegories (although he always seems more amused at vice than outraged) or Ruisdael landscapes. Other striking works included Moroni's aristocratic portraits set in the midst of ruins and Rosa's proto-romantic scenes.
Like several other Icelandic sagas, Njal's Saga depicts the conversion of Iceland to Christianity. Njal is himself shown as an unearthly figure gifted with second sight and whose death has all the hallmarks of a saint's martyrdom. Zola's Therese Raquin shows less of a conflict between physiological and environmental considerations than that seen in his later works, cleaving to a theory of the body as the wellspring of all action (Therese and Laurent do not act consciously but are instead two people, driven by their physiogonomy), something that looks back to the medieval humours and forward to Ballard's instinct driven idea of consciousness rather than inahbiting a conventional idea of character. The results can be somewhat uncomfortable; Therese's actions are attributed to her African blood. Nonetheless, Zola is far from being consistent in this regard; Therese speaks of having her upbringing made her into a hypocrite and liar, while Laurent's suffering is seen to induce a change in his body and character, making him more nervous and feminine. While Laurent is held to act only out of fleshy desire, Therese is supposed to take pleasure in knowing why she acts. Their very guilt seems to product of consciousness rather than the instincts of the flesh, while such tropes as the ghost and their eventual suicide seem to suggest the structure of a moral fable.
The figure in the carpet is often cited as a characteristic of Jamesian fiction. The Europeans exemplifies this through the way it depicts its characters in relation to their environment (America and Europe) but elides description of those environments. Felix resembles a Turgenev protagonist while Eugenia resembles Flaubert's most famous heroine. But both Turgenev and Flaubert depict their characters as part of a complex web of social relationships, while James only briefly limns such matters in. Whereas earlier novelists like Dickens and Eliot had assigned a deterministic element to a character's environment, no such element exists for James whose characters are rather more unpredictable, with the lackadaisical Felix settling down while Gertrude discovers herself out of kilter with her home.Labels: Architecture, England, History, Literature, Weather
posted by Richard 7:39 AM
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Bevis Marks Synagogue is the oldest site of Jewish worship in Britain, dating back to Cromwell and the reformation. I was a little surprised to be asked to wear a Kippah skull cap, not having had any such request in Prague's synagogues, though I rather concluded that I liked it. The interior, in wood, white plaster and gold leaf is similar to Wren's churches, just as some of the Prague synagogues took on the guise of Baroque churches. I was also able to gain access to several Wren churches; St Botolph (elaborate Victorian stained glass with stuccoed angels in line across the ceiling), St Bride's (rather Catholic, with the eye streaming light from the altar beneath a barrel vault, suprisingly homoerotic photographic depictions of the crucifixion on the walls) and St Dunstan in the West (a gothic building, now filled with Orthodox icons). St Bride's crypts were open and were especially intriguing, showing both the foundations of succeeding churches and cleared gravestones. Finally, St Sophia, the Greek Orthodox Cathedral, represents what Westminster Cathedral may one day come to look like, with the mosaics created by the same artist, Boris Anrep. I had been to Brompton Cemetery before but hadn't realised that it is laid out in the plan of a basilica, albeit one with whose plans were incomplete with several chapels and bell towers never having been completed and the catacombs left largely unused. Unlike Highgate or Kensal Green, Bunhill Fields cemetery is only just outside the city of London and represents an outcast's cemetery as much as the Jewish cemetery in Prague (which is what it most reminds me of). Containing the graves of Blake, Defoe and Bunyan as well as assorted Cromwells and Wesleys, the tombstones are packed in thickly and are mostly unostentatious, bar the weathered skull motifs found on many of the graves. I walk to St Giles Cripplegate before travelling to the Tower of London. The tower is a rather hyperreal construct, a process that began as early as the restoration when the Crown Jewels were put on display there (originally so that the king's majesty could be touched, until one of the crowns was damaged) and wooden heads of past kings were put on display to legitimise the monarchy once more (Elizabeth had a special place alongside relics of the Armada and later the Jacobite rebellion). Another curiousity was a Venetian winged lion taken from Corfu, on display inside the White Tower. The white tower itself was only painted and gabled later, while much of the tower is a Victorian reconstruction of the original. Nontheless, what does tend to be interesting about the tower is the Chapel of St John the Evangelist or the graffiti scrawled on the walls by the likes of Arundel or by an astronomer sent to the tower by Bess of Hardwick on suspicion of sorcery. Before I leave I notice a seagull making of with meat intended for the ravens, three of whom indignantly fly in pursuit.
I go for a walk in Greenwich, beginning with St Alfege, whose interior rather reminds me of the churches in Denmark; white plaster and dark wood. Greenwich reminds me a little of Oxford; a place outside of civil society throughout history and whose confrontation with modernity has left it as a fly in amber. I go for a walk around the Naval College Chapel and the Cutty Sark before walking the Greenwich foot tunnel to east London. Here, I return to St Anne's Limehouse and am able to see the interior. Damage due to damp was all too visible, with the elaborate blue plaster horribly disfigured and decayed. The following day is witness to a St George's Cathedral. The building was shorn of its spire the second world war and is consequently rather drab and forgettable. leaving a marked sense of incongruity when one walks through to the beautiful interior. I then walked around the park that was formerly the grounds of the Bethelem Royal Hospital and are now adjacent to the Imperial War Museum (former site of Bedlam); within it grows the 34 native trees that colonised Britain after the ice age. Today, the grass has shrivelled and the tree's leaves are curling and withering in the heat. London silver vaults reminded me of Highgate's Egyptian avenue of funerary vaults; one descends downwards through a series of maze-like passages and stairwells. Upon arrival, corridors stretch off into the distance with doors on either side. Each shop is effectively a walk-in safe, with each of them selling the same kinds of candelabra and assorted ephemera. Visiting Convent Garden, I noticed the church there now has its own orthodox icon, showing the madonna, flanked by st paul and st genesius, the patron saint of actors.
The Holbein exhibition at the Tate represents the point at which art became full human and secular. Although Holbein did produce religious works they could most charitably be described as inferior imitations of renaissance painting. With most devotional work proscribed in Britain, his painting of Erasmus shows the scholar in the guise typically reserved for saints while other works are created as roundels in imitation of classical coins. Holbein pioneered painting where the subject looks directly at the viewer, so that his works acquire a peculiarly intimate quality (the subjects loom large, taking up the entire canvas). Merchants sought pictures that were true to life to send to far-fling contacts and family, thereby displacing classical and religious paintings. Elsewhere, the Tate had a painting of Abd el-Ouahed ben Messaoud ben Mohammed Anoun, Moorish Ambassador to Queen Elizabeth I and the peculiarly surreal painting of The Cholmondeley Ladies. The later section of Blake was also especially interesting, showing Blake's work in the context of artists between the wars who responded to his vision of a New Albion, such as Nash's paintings of the Mansions of the Dead and the Flight of the Magnolia as well as Robin Ironside's Daliesque paintings. Other interesting works include John Singer-Sergeant's paintings of the Middle-East and Whistler's surprisingly traditional Crepuscule in Flesh Colour and Green: Valparaiso , Piper's paintings of Bath destroyed by the Luftwaffe's Baedaeker's raids and Rossetti's The Annunciation. That evening I watched fireworks exploding over London, tracing patterns in the sky with sparklers and watching Millbank Tower silhouetted and Battersea Power Station being lit up by the lights.
Caesar's The Conquest of Gaul exhibits many of the same ambivalent attitudes to civilisation shown by Tacitus; the relatively civilised Gauls prove easy to conquer while the barbaric hunters of the German tribes cannot be vanquished. In a similar fashion, Thucydides records during The Pelopennesian War that the habit of dressing lavishly had been abandoned in Athens as being decadent in favour of Spartan simplicity.
Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop ends with its two protagonists fleeing from the burning shop, a moment Carter saw as being akin to the expulsion from Eden (though the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was perhaps the more obvious metaphor). However, the novel has two such Eirenic moments elsewhere (once in Melanie's garden at home and once with Finn in the pleasure gardens) with the surfeit of symbolism consequently overwhelming precise interpretations (particularly given the question of whether Uncle Philip represents the devil or a totalitarian god in the narrative). Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight affords a similar problem. Szerb was heavily influenced by Lukacs and the idea of the problematic individual, and the novel accordingly presents a disjunction between society and the bohemian aspirations of the novel's characters. Conversely, Szerb was also heavily influenced by Karl Kerenyi, a Jungian scholar of Greek myth Lukacs drove into exile. The character's bohemian rebellion is accordingly expressed as thanatophilia, through doors to the underworld and an Etruscan Eurydice leading Orpheus back down to Hades for their union to take place. The two narratives barely interlock and instead proceed in parallel with one another, the notion of Marxist alienation being aborted in favour of a view of society as despiritualised.
One of the advantages of the layout of the Globe Theatre is that it affords far more possibilities than a normal confined stage arrangement. The last production of Titus Andronicus saw the action spill out of the stage and around the rest of the theatre. Confetti is hurled from the galleries down to the conquering heroes and Emperors of Rome. Bassinius is thrown into a pit into the arena, where scaffolding is errected and moved for hangings and speeches. The actors move amongst the crowds in the arena, all of which seems apposite for a play that is often concerned with bread and circuses. The play itself is an anomaly; its bleak rejection of worldly affairs has more in common with King Lear and Timon of Athens than with the other early works. Like much of Marlowe's work, it seems well characterised by Artaud's ideas; "The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood.
This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid." As in Artaud's manifesto, the play uses symbolism to work with the emotions and to remove the audience from the quotidian, to attack their senses through violence and to use the grotesque (a late Bakhtinian concept that has lost its vital connection with renewal; much of the play can really only be directed as carnivalesque farce or burlesque. Hence Bloom's comment that the play should really be directed by Mel Brooks). Whereas later works, like A Midsummer Night's Dream carefully balance the claims of the wild greenwood and civilised Athens, Titus Andronicus lacks any such symmetry. The play opens with Titus mercilessly ordering the death of Tamora's son in spite of her entreaties and slaying his own, creating a question mark from the outset as to whether Rome is more civilised than the barbarous Goths (throughout, I found myself reminded of Cavafy's Waiting for the Barbarians). Later, the ascending of Tamora to becoming Rome's Empress further blurs that distinction, as much as the use of a Goth army by Lucius to liberate Rome from a despotic ruler. Walking back along the Embankment, I notice that all the trees have had blue and white fairy lights layed over their boughs, vesting the place with an oddly ethereal feel. Two men lovingly kiss underneath the leaves.
Coetzee's Slow Man marks an understated sequel of sorts to Elizabeth Costello, continuing in the same anti-novelistic tradition. Coetzee places the central elements of the novel in the background, whether it is narrative (events are understated, abandoning resolution in favour of the indeterminacy of life) or consciousness (the central character being essentially hollow, experiencing a series of reactions towards Marijana, none of which can be fully characterised as emotion or feeling). As a fable, Slow Man is non-existent, its protagonist gaining no
redemption, resolution or closure, simply a dying fall.Labels: Architecture, Art, Drama, History, Literature, London
posted by Richard 7:37 AM
Monday, August 28, 2006
In many respects, Copenhagen resembles Amsterdam with its docks reclaimed from the sea, its gabled merchant's houses and its canals. Unlike Holland though, Denmark has no history of republicanism and was an absolute monarchy for much of recent history. The city is accordingly filled with towering baroque churches with copper spires, moated palaces, domes and towers. Statues of mythical creatures rear out of every corner. Copper statues fill all the parks, from the monsters in front of the Radhus to the Greek statues in the Botanical Gardens. Beginning in fron the Radhus's gothic towers, the lure singers statue and the three gothic gargoyles by its balustrade, I walked past Tivoli, the last pleasure gardens in Europe, down the main shopping street to the Vor Frue Kirke, the city cathedral. The interior is white and spartan, showing a distinct neo-classical influence; the only ornament is from Thorvaldsen's statues of the saints, which line either side the nave. Although the tone is in keeping with Lutheran theology, the results nonetheless seem odd for a Protestant church. The rest of the building was designed by C.F. Hansen, who also created neo-classical designs for the law courts and palace chapel. Nearby is the Sankt Petri Kirke, the oldest preserved church in the city centre of Copenhagen. Nearby to that is the Rundetaarn is part of the Trinitatis Kirke with its white interior and occasional gold ornament, the gothic interior being relieved by baroque ornamentation. The tower served as an observatory and affords a view as far as Sweden. A whitewashed spiral walk leads up the summit and a wrought-iron lattice railings. Near to this is the Sankt Nikolaj Kirker, now a rather poor art gallery. I feel rather ambivalent to this; I have little to no sympathy for religious belief but am concerned as to the implications of its welcome retreat for the beautiful buildings it has created. Few notable pieces of architecture reflect anything other than commercial ostentation, aristocratic conceit and religios progaganda, none of these boding especially well.
I had been to exhibitions with many of the works from Dahlerup's Glyptotek, but was still impressed with seeing them in place, the red hippopotamus from the gardens of Sallust in the winter gardens. Foremost amongst the exhibits was a bust of Ptolemy, cut from the same black basalt as earlier statues (as well as more impressives statues, such as one of Anubis) but showing a face in the Grecian rather than Egyptian style. One Egyptian stelae shows Octavian making offerings to the Egyptian gods as if he were Amenhotep. This was followed by a set of Roman busts from differing periods and places, the Hellenistic, Republican (a more realistic style prior to idealised Julian statuary), Palmyran, Flavian and Severan. Notable figures included Antinous and a rather ephebian Dionysus (who assumed a more promiment role over time as attitudes became more fatalistic and mystery religions worshipping him or Demeter spread). Some busts retained the ceramic eyes originally placed in their sockets, given them a hauntingly natural sensation in contrast to the glacial and ephereal nature of most unpainted Greek statuary (one surviving bust of Caligula has a painted version alongside). Conversely, Greek statuary has tended to prefer bronze, with less of it surviving as a consequence, with one replica of Heracles also being striking for retaining its white and black ceramic eyes against the verdigris of the copper. Many of the museums in Copenhagen seem to have an unusually large Etruscan section, showing the brilliant colouring on the tomb frescos and statues (one Sphinx in particular), the black pottery and copper tools like mirrors. Where the exhibition also showed Fayum mummies, early rectangular Egyptian coffins, later mummy cases and carved Roman sarcophaguses, the Etruscans created funerary caskets in the shape of houses or even as seated statues (bearing Persephone's pomegranate in one hand) of the deceased placed before banqueting tables in their rock tombs as part of an ancestor cult. More generally, the museum also had ceramic walls tiles from Babylon, depicting lions and mythological beasts.
The Glyptotek also showcases sections on Danish art and French sculpture. Rodin's sculptures, such as The Kiss, depict scenes from Dante, with most of the French sculpture being either religious (the reaper seizing a young girl) or classical (Perses slaying Medusa). The Danisch sculptures are not dissimilar but Frend's works tend to concentrate on Norse myth, showing Odin and the Valkyries. Many of the paintings show the idealised influence of Constable (such as Lundbye's paintings, though some of his paintings of dolmen are more interesting), as a defeated and impoverished nation (after Nelson's naval bombardment and a disastrous alliance with Napoleon leading to the loss of Norway to Sweden) sought refuge in escapism and in paintings of Mediterranean scenes, such as the Temple of the Winds and the ruined Coliseum, painted by Rørbye. The paintings of Dahl (his nighttime pictures of Vesuvius) and Købke (winter landscapes) particularly stood out from this. The Glyptotek is in many a normal gallery today but its central palmhouse and an extension modelled on the statue of Halicarnassus, note that its history is not typical. Created by the Carlsberg brewing magnate, Carl Jacobsen, who had also created some kitsch and grandiolquent (rather Stalinist) architecture at the factory in Frederiskberg; four elephants guarding the gates and tiled paintings of the founders while the nearby worker's housing was rather more dour.
The National Museum also includes many ancient exhibits, such as a giant black basalt scarab, Jewish ossuaries, Christian Syrian mummies, a Phoenician/Aridian sarcophagus where the features were Grecian despite otherwise resembling an Egyptian mummy and Roman silver cups depicting scenes from the Iliad and Odyssey in exquisite detail. Elsewhere, the ethnographic section included Peruvian mummies, Javanese shadow theatres, and Aztec jade mummies. For the most part, the museum dwelt on Danish history though, such as wooden church sculptures, ivory goblets with spheres inside spheres from the royal kunstkammer, the Trundholm sun chariot, rune calendars and spells written onto wooden lengths in runes, golden altars, drinking horns, gold reliquaries, paintings reflected in a central cylinder to become visible, nautilus shells, eighteenth century chinoiserie tapestry and red lacquered panels. Much of the interest in runes seems to have originated with Ole Worm, an antiquarian equivalent to Stukeley or Dee, who was also interested in taxidermy, fossils (determining that certain horns came from narwhals and not unicorns) and helped established the botanical gardens in Copenhagen. Finally, there is a room dedicated to rune stones, contained several showing Swastikas and Triskeli as well as Futhark inscriptions (though it has to be said that it would seem preferrable for these stones to remain outside).
The Slotsholmen area is home to one of the older royal palaces and the current Parliament, separated from the rest of the city by canals. Just outside it, the Holmen's Kirke is decorated in the baroque style, but with the carving in unvarnished wood. This was the naval church and a wooden ship model remains suspended from the ceiling. The church lacks a tower, instead forming a cross with equal lengths on all sides. Within the area, lies the Thorvaldsen Museum. Like the Soane Museum, Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Victoria & Albert Museum cast court, the museum serves as a mausoleum to the sculptor, including many of his sculptures, casts, collections and personal effects as a form of grave good. While the museum does feature his church sculptures, most of his work is classical and explicitly erotic, if not homoerotic. There are three versions of Ganymede (one showing him with the eagle), Adonis, Jason, Apollo and Mars. The building itself appears designed on its interior to ape Nero's palace while the exterior has a frieze showing Thorvaldsen's works being put in place (the tone of hagiography is often rather marked with busts and statues of Thorvaldsen being found throughout the museum). The upper floor displays Egyptian canopic jars, Greek red & black vases, Roman busts as well as a Brueghel that seemed more reminiscent of Bosch's hell paintings. Overall, Thorvaldsen's preference is for neo-Italianate painting in the Renaissance style. Nonetheless, the museum also has more Romantic depictions of Danish landscapes, such as more Dahl nightscenes.
The Botanical Gardens contain a variety of terrains, from Greek mountains, coniferous forests, herbaceous borders, bamboo glades and a lake complete with lilypads and a Monetesque bridge. Fat black and white ducks nestle nearby while a snake slides through the grass. The gardens are exhibiting poisonous plants, such as Belladona and Snowberry. Classical copper statues dot the grounds, such as a discuss thrower. At the centre is a glass Palmhouse, containing cycads, lillies and citrus trees. Some butterflies flit through the air in one of the houses. Nearby to it is the Rosenborg Slot, surrounded by a moat this was the palace of Christian the Fourth and was in use from the sixteenth to eighteenth century. The interior is accordingly varied, featuring the contents of the King's Kunstkammer; a winter room whose walls are studded with Flemish pastoral and winter scenes, a marble room decorated with silver-lined mirrors, amber (Northern gold) caskets and chandeliers, ivory ship models, serrated paintings that display either the king or queen depending on where it is viewed from, black lacquered chionoiserie panels, a room were the walls are entirely covered in mirrors and gold Thorvaldsen statues. Finally, the upper floor houses a throne room, with a decorated stucco ceiling, narwhal throne, Flemish tapestries, silver lions and silver clocks and mirrors. Passages lead off to glass and porcelain cabinets, modelled on Charlottenberg in Berlin. The treasury in the basement houses the Gallehus horns (depicting a horned god), planet and eclipse machines, rock crystal goblets, an altar set with a skull at the base of the chalice and the crown jewels.Nearby is the Hirschprung Museum, featuring nineteenth century 'Golden Age' art. As with the Thorvaldsen museum, this covers material like Eckersberg's portraits, Lundbye's pastoral landscapes, Købke's melancholy paintings of Frederiksberg through to later works like Ejnar Nielsen The Blind Girl (a Klimt like affair, showing a figure in black encircled by a gold river), Harald Slott-Møller's Pre-Raphaelite Spring while other works like Theodor Philipsen View of the Road to Kastrup and works by Johannes Larsen's were more impressionist. The grounds outside the rather funereal building are pleasantly rural, filled with lakes. A tree stump has been carved in the image of a turtle while a heron pauses at the water's edge. Fungi grow from tree trunks. Walking back towards the waterfront, one comes to the Marmorkirken, a baroque green and gold dome. Otherwise known as Frederik’s Church, its grey marble interior is largely baroque, occasionally relieved by bright blue stained glass and gold mosaics. Next to its stands the three gold domes of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral. Walking past it to Nyhavn, leads onto the island of Christianhavn and the Vor Frelser's Kirke. Constructed as an unmissable testament to absolute monarchy (or totalitarianism as we might call it now), its black and gold spire has a spiral wrapped round that was modelled on the interior of a snail (designed by Laurids de Thurah, who also conceived the nearby Charlottenberg Palace near Nyhavn). Walking round the spiral exterior was rather like becoming a figure from Escher's Ascending and Descending or perhaps Tatlin's Tower, Brueghel's Tower of Babel or a funfair helter skelter. The interior is white with a ceiling studded with gold stars, angels lining along the altar rails, a giant wooden barqoue organ supported by two elephants and a gold crown handing above the font.Otherwise, the area is reminiscent of nothing so much as London's Docklands (though the further island of Nyholm retains its position as a naval base and the same crane seen in nineteenth century churches), as warehouses are concerted into offices, save for small pockets like Christiania.
Venturing further afield, I came to Roskilde and its cathedral. Formely the capital of Denmark before being outstripped by mercantile Copenhagen, Roskilde is perhaps best described as being analogous to somewhere like Winchester. Built from red brick and plastered white on the inside, beautiful pre-reformation floral patterns lost in Copenhagen's churches remain here, often depicting local devils (Tutivillus the "patron demon of scribes" or of calligraphy). More modern paintings of figures like Harald Blutooth now join these. The Danish royal family are interred here, often with later extensions to accommodate them; Christian the First's chapel features Renaissance marble tombs in the style of ancient temples. Frederik the Fifth's chapel is neo-classical, filled with black coffins with gold clawed feet and guarded by Sphinxes. Christian the Fourth's chapel is more gothic, with a blue ceiling studded with gold stars where frescos of Biblical scenes line the walls. Finally, a tomb for the wife of Tsar Alexander and mother of the last Tsar is filled with Russian icons - it may now be returned to Russia, the Tsarina having escaped on a British destroyer. Ancient gravestones line the floors. Near to the entrance, there is an astronomical clock, with the roar of the dragon and St George striking the hour. Otherwise, the interior is flawlessly pure, save for gold altars, royal pews and organs. Finally, I visited the Viking ship museum by the fjord. Tiny fish and jellyfish dart through the water while swans glide overhead. Arriving back in Copenhagen, I went to the Helligånds Kirke for an organ recital by Gillian Weir. The church is, once more, white plaster, with dark wood panelling and gilt. It was the only church to still retain stained glass windows. Gold angels appeared on a frized at the back of the church before the baroque painted altar. The recital included Liszt, Durufle, Mushel, Jongen and Slonimsky.
The final day began with a visit to Malmö. Southern Sweden has been Danish for longer than it has been Swedish, and the new landbridge has once more joined the two cities. The city itself is lined by a canal, parks and graveyards (rather less ornate than British equivalents, often featuring natural motifs and still retaining iron railings). Within the city are many half-timbered buildings, a Dutch-style townhall while a Moorish synagogue stands outside the city. A windmill stands outside the moat of the castle. The cathedral is Germanic in style, built by German merchants who has travelled to the Øresund region to exploit the herring trade (the equivalent of the English wool trade), though one of the chapels retains wall painting very similar to that at Roskilde, showing George and the Dragon. The interior is extremely plain, with only a few baroque ornaments. The castle, a former prison, now houses a design exhibition. This covers a range of design periods; Italian and Flemish Renaissance painting (including a Bosch-like Dutch painting of Orpheus in the Underworld), Delft and Maiolica vases, vases in the classical style, with gold Egyptian handles and black ceramic, mirrors with black and white Wedgewood figures, large Art Nouveau vases dominated by dragons and peacocks as well as Art Nouveau stained glass with spider's webs and peacocks. Most striking was the peasant art, with woven tapestries and painted wood. A historical exhbition contained another rune stone, showing Christ painted in gold and red. The castle's rooms had been restored to something like their original state, including paintings of James and Mary Stuart (whose husband was imprisoned in the castle).
Returning to Copenhagen, I visited Kastellet, a citadel similar to that built at Malmö though still in use as a military base. The Little Mermaid statue rests in the waters here, between this and the industrial and naval complexes at Nyholm, as well as a statue of the Norse Goddess Gefion. Another oddity is the church of St Albans, an English church built to serve the British embassy (the Swedish embassy seems to have taken over an old church). I was left ambivalent over the Scandinavian social model; high costs mean that wages can be kept high across the board rather than being driven down as in the Anglo-American model. While this funds an exceptional welfare state and public services, the number of vagrants suggests that it can make it difficult for many to make ends meet. Conversely, working hours seemed much less than in England, suggesting a much greater focus on quality of life than on economic growth.Labels: Architecture, Art, Copenhagen, History
posted by Richard 7:36 AM
Sunday, July 30, 2006
I began by walking through Battersea Park, a beautiful place next to the ruined towers of the power station. The park has been richly planted with cycads, banana trees, tree-ferns, pampus grass and bamboo, which provide a suitably defamiliarised setting for Hepworth and Moore sculptures. A heron looked out over one of the lakes while coots nest next to the shorelines (and an odd pochard duck, with a brown head and deep red eyes). Apparently, the park is having a duck race tomorrow. In time, I arrive at the peace pagoda, a wonderful contrast of white Portland stone, gold Buddha statues and dark Canadian fir. Crossing back into North London via the Albert bridge, I pass by Chelsea Old Church (and Hans Sloane's tomb) and Crosby Hall before walking up to the Albert Hall. Today's Prom consists of Wagner's Meistersingers, Barber's lyrical Knoxville and Prokofiev's music for Alexander Nevsky. As a piece, it seemed to me to illustrate some of the problems with Soviet realism; though this is clearly a composer of the same period as Weill and Bartok much of the tone is nonetheless familiar with Borodin and Mussorgsky.
Following a walk to watch the Pelicans in St James Park (descendents of a gift bequeathed by the Russian Ambassador to Charles the Second) around the Jewel Tower and a visit to the top of Westminster Cathedral's bell tower (which did rather confirm many of my prejudices about London, with the most beautiful buildings obscured by modern office buildings; Nelson's Column was barely visible, for example), I arrived at Cadogan Hall. Formerly a church (though its tower rather resembles a minaret), it combines gothic and celtic revival designs (especially in the stained glass) with art-deco sensibilities. The interior is beautifully light and airy and I settled down in the pews for a performance of two of Bach's Brandenberg Concertos and some pieces by Mozart showing the influence of such 'ancient music.' The concert, performed by the Academy of Ancient Music, was extremely pleasant before leading up to an evening performance of Janacek's Taras Bulba, Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements (derived from his wartime film music) and some Sibelius (not to my taste though Pohjola's Daughter had its moments). The following day saw more travels in London, from Temple to The Strand, before arrving at the Albert Hall for an organ recital. Mozart and Back again figured prominently, with the former represented by his Fantasy in F minor for mechanical organ. This is something of a curiosity, being written for a mechanical instrument that renders it impossible to be played as it was written (reminding me somewhat of Nyman's sonata for six fingered hands from Gattaca); this version had been adapted. Another oddity was a quietly beautiful Shostakovtch piece from The Gadfly. A Bach chorale prelude was the foremost representative of liturgical organ music, while many of the other pieces typified its use in Romantic music, such as Glazunov's Fantasy. However, the performance was very dominated by Liszt's Fantasia and Fugue on 'Ad nos, ad salutarem undam,' combining both traditions in a piece that was originally written for an instrument that was a cross between a piano and organ.
One of the advantages of the Proms is the closeness that one has to the orchestra and conductor. When the conductor happens to be John Adams, one is left with the distinct feeling that this is what it must have been like to stand next to Wagner or Stravinsky when they conducted their own works; the comparison is perhaps a little precipitate and somewhat awe-struck, but it was nonetheless rather difficult to keep out of mind. Like Barber's Knoxville, My Father Knew Charles Ives is a homage to smalltown America, pastiching the Ivesian style in its first part before proceeding to something closer to what we think of as minimalism. Pastiche also features in Harmonielehre, which draws on the romanticism of Mahler and Schoenberg, but draws it within the ambit of minimalism. Where the former normally has crescendos and glissandos while the latter only gradually and subtly varies its notes, Harmonielehre builds itself up to peak and simply remains there. The frenzied music simply holding itself at what should have been a point of climax reminded me oddly of the insistent thudding and Dionysiac quality of dance music. Finally, Adams' setting of Whitman's The Wound Dresser was especially beautiful, a poem that perfectly illustrates the gap between the homosexual and the homosocial.
The Kandinsky exhibition at the Tate proved unusual; while much modern art is centred on Western Europe, he is the only Russian representative of note. At first, the patterns in his work appear essentially chaotic, like a surrealist Rorschach test but stochastic is probably the better term as it becomes clear what the patterns represent (angels of judgement, icons, halos, crosses etc). Influenced by muscians like Wagner and Schoenberg, by ethnographic study of peasant art, like Blake, Kandinsky has constructed a private symbolic language in his work, introducing religious symbolism into an otherwise abstract form in an attempt to perceive the inscape of things (many of his paintings suggesting patterns like butterflies, birds or even musical notation). However, unlike abstract art, his work retains depth of field and perspective. Kandinsky's opposite is the protestant, reductionist style of Modigliani, whose portraits, like those of Lempicka, are conventional in how they depict their subjects (though influenced by Cubism, he never fragmented his figures, merely distorted them). Unlike her, his work has a mask-like, impersonal, ritualistic quality to it, like the Benin bronzes. As in Byzantine art, the eyes are striking, often with the 'windows to the soul' blanked out, missing their pupils. Equally, they often retain a disturbing intensity, as the viewer is directly stared at.
Shostakovitch's Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk makes subtle changes to the original novella that leave one wondering if Stalin's verdict of 'muddle, not music' might not have been correct. To accommodate the ill-defined idea of Soviet realism, Shostakovitch satirises and dehumanises all the characters into contemptible vermin except the heroine, Katya. But he fails to turn Katya into a rebel against bourgeois society, fails to overturn her betrayal by her working-class lover, and his tendency to satirise authority figures cannot have endeared him to the totalitarian regime. Had Katya been beated and oppressed, she could have become a tragic heroine in the way Shostakovitch appears to have intended but without that the lack of sympathy for the other characters simply leaves the text unabalanced between tragedy and satire, a combination that works for the music but not the text. The opera was preceded by a screening of Kozintzev's film of Hamlet (where the music was written by Shostakovitch to a screenplay by Pasternak), its black and white eloquently emphasising the melancholy of the play to the same sort of effect as Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. Kozintzev fills the play with fire and water imagery, placing scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses on the castle walls. In tragedy, fate is normally an ineluctable entity; Oedipus and Orestes have already had their destiny cast for them; it only remains for them to fulfil it. For Shakespeare, living in an age whose metaphysical certainties had been upturned by state decree, no such conviction is possible. His characters instead defy augury, dramatising their consciousness and examining their own roles. Hamlet is the overreacher, the machiavel, the fool and the wronged hero, failing to become, as Eliot had it, a clear objective correlative for the events of the play.
Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther presents an interesting dialectic between Romantic ideas of nature and rationalist ideas. Werther speaks of "my resolve to keep to Nature alone in future. Only Nature has inexhaustible riches, and only Nature creates a great artist." Nonetheless he also later reverts to a less idealised conception of nature when he writes; "Nature, which has brought forth nothing that does not destroy both its neighbour and itself." Werther's fall is characterised by his loss of feeling for nature (though the editor speaks of Werther's 'natural powers' being confounded) but it equally suggests that Nature has a dual role within the novel. When debating with Albert he defends the Romantic individual against the contempt of the mundane masses, only to be told; "a man wholly under the influence of his passions has lost his ability to think rationally,"before Albert states that suicide is simply a display of weakness where fortitude was called for.
Rather perversely, La Dame Aux Camelias reminded me of Anne Bronte's The Tenant of the Wildfell Hall, not in terms of any novel attitude towards gender but in terms of its belief that the sinner is inevitably brought back to the path of salvation, with Marguerite repeatedly being described as saint-like before her eventual martyrdom; "to any woman whose education has not imparted knowledge of goodness, god opens up two paths to it; these are suffering and love." Nonetheless, the novel denies the possibility of redemption within Marguerite's life; she dies as surely as a sinner condemned to the fires of hell.
Thucydides's The Pelopennesian War presents some interesting challenges to conventional views of the ancient world. Firstly, that for all of the antipathy towards Persia, the Spartans were as willing to ally themselves with Persia as they had been to ally themselves with Athens at Marathon. Secondly, that it was largely Athenian imperialism rather than Spartan militarism that led to the war.
In the case of a figure like Pythagoras it is comparatively easy to distinguish his theorems from the religious credo that were formulated to prove. In the case of Plato, whose thought uses the principles of logic in the service of a view that sees philosophy as an essentially ascetic and religious function (a means of purging onself of the corruptions of the body), the matter is not so easy. I tend to regard Plato in the same manner as I do Paul or Augustine; as a dreadful mistake. Through christianity, Plato produced a philosphical tradition that disdained empirical experimentation and observation in favour of a focus on the causes of causes (i.e. the forms), disdained the body as a prison and which distinguished itself in opposition to sophistry's concern with descriptions of the world that meet our needs rather than conceptions of absolute truth. Socrates repeatedly scorns those who deal in paradox, viewing their arguments as being concerned with power rather than with truth, but is far from reluctant to marshall sophistical violence in his own arguments.
For example, within Euthyphyro, Socrates deconstructs good and evil into unknowable categories in order to lay blame on Euthyphyro for having laid a case against his own father for the death of a slave (an argument that leaves him open to the modern accusation that he is indifferent to the fate of anyone who was not a citizen. Conversely, in the Phaedo the claims of duty to the law and the state are absolute and transcend those of kin and friendship (equally, the product of a view that placed such emphasis on the role of the philosopher-king and none on the autonomous subject). Nonetheless, Plato regards philosophy as a process rather than a doctrine, suggesting in Phaedrus, that reading philosophy is a poor second to doing it; one can reject a conclusion, but it is much harder to reject a process of imaginative expansion.
Susan Sontag's Against Interpretation is essentially predicated on the argument that "Western man may be said to have been undergoing a massive sensory anesthesia.. with modern art functining as a form of shock therapy for both confounding and closing our senses." Rejecting the idea of naturalism, Sontag sees art as a means of conveying sensation rather than of imparting information. Her Notes on Camp advocate stylised art as a means of obectifying content. Conversely, criticism should not concern itself with content and hermeneutics but with form and the erotics of art. In practice, what this aesthetic translates into varied considerably; the objectified films of Bresson and Goddard with their lack of concern for personality on the one hand and the more convulsive work of Artaud on the other. The difficulty with her work is that she had essentially minsinterpreted the spirit of her age, which was better described in Debord's The Society of the Spectacle as not suffering from sensory deprivation but from a veritable surfeit of images; "the ever more triumphant values of consumer capitalism promote--indeed, impose--the cultural mixes and insolence and defense of pleasure that I was advocating for quite different reasons," as she wrote in a later preface.
Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake posits a world where genetic engineering is used to root out the most aggressive aspects of human nature, creating a new species and leading to the extinction of the old. Michel Houellebecq's The Possibility of an Island follows a similar path, though Houellebecq disdain's Atwood's 'ecologism,' seeing nature as a far more resilient force than human civilisation. Instead, he is concerned with what could be called the engineering of the psyche. Houellebecq cites Peirce in identifying personality and memory, identifying language as the conduit of memory, leaving open the issue of how language can be unbiased and objective (much of the text shows the cloned ancestors of the contemporary characters writing commentaries on their predecessors and attempting to cross-reference them to establish the truth; often failing totally to understand the inherently alien emotions being expressed). His ancestor is later to cite Godel in opposition to the rather mechanistic view of the self being developed. This immediately leads to the difficulty of establishing the unbiased conditons; the central character of Daniel begins the text by complaining of being mistaken for a humanist or a progressive (he later calls himself a rightwing anarchist, although in practice, much of what he achieves throughout the text is precisely that, the sort of progress familiar from Comte and positivism). Accordingly, Daniel spends much of the text advancing a cause that will lead to the extinction of desire in the interests of gaining a form of Buddhist serenity, whiel still fiercely pursuing both love and desire. Equally, Daniel follows his discourse on Peirce by noting that much of his memory, such as why he married his first wife, has simply been erased.
The Elohminite movement depicted in the novel itself rests upon a number of internal contradictions, particularly in the way it depends on a consumer society that turns youth into a commodity that can be indefinitely preserved only for this expectation to be inevitably disappointed. Its force depends entirely on what it opposes, just as Daniel's career depends on the sensibilities it deliberately provokes and outrages; "if the fluidification of forms of behaviour required by a developed economy was incompatible with a normative catalogue of restrained conduct, it was perfectly suited to a celebration of the will and ego". The consequence of this ambiguity is that the new species of neohumans find themselves leaving the calm of their habitations and exploring a post-nuclear wasteland inhabited by savage humans for whom the collapse of civilisation has been total and complete. The neohumans are both revolted by these creatures (the culture of the mind being impossible in a society locked into struggles for existence) while remaining unsatisfied by their own lack of will and consequent stagnation. As a species they achieve nothing and their lack of suffering effectively leaves them as an evolutionary dead-end.
Orwell's novels often depict the fall of a cause and the hero that propounded it, as in Burmese Days and 1984. In Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Orwell appears to be attempting, like Forster in Howard's End, to write a modern Victorian novel which values ideals of discipline and humility rather than individuality or non-comformism; "Money is what God used to be. Good and evil have no meaning anymore except failure and success." Gordon's defeat is as total as Winston's (especially given his comments about how it is women that force men to live by the money-code) but it would strain the novel to read it in the same terms as 1984 (as much as it would read to read The Taming of the Shrew as a parable of abuse or Shylock as a tragic victim). The same depiction of the udnerworld that animates Hamsun's Hunger simply manifests itself as petulance here. It also casts an odd light on Orwell's socialism, with him describing it as youthful fixation when "one can't see the hook for the stodgy bait." The character of Ravelston, is depicted as using a vaguely defined socialism as a lifestyle (where Gordon describes socialism as Huxley's Brave New World), something he can afford but others cannot; when matters are pressed his "class instinct" simply revert.
Mark Twain's Roughing It is a revisionist account of the American Dream, covering all aspects of the mythology of westwards migration (Indians, outlaws and gold mining, for example) through to his travels to Hawaii. However, in spite of rejecting his own misspent youth and the romanticisation of the West (instead depicting it as uncomfortable, lawless, unstable and dangerous) he remains far from immune on that score; "we are descended from desert lounging Arabs and countless ages of growth towards civilisation have failed to root out of us the nomadic instinct. We all confess to a gratified thrill at the prospect of camping out." Equally, his account of one outlaw finds him admiring his "splendid courage" and "peerless bravery." Nonetheless, Twain's astringent brand of realism is not without its attendant problems, particularly in his depiction of the Indians; "if perchance I had been over-estimating the Red-Man, while viewing him through the moonshine of romance... left him treacherous, filthy and repulsive." Twain has no time for the idea of the noble savage but is perhaps not entirely prejudiced in this regard. His account of the Mormons often treats them in the same terms, depicting them as "ignorant, simple, of an inferior order of intellect," and perfidious in their attempts to disguise the massacre of a hundred and twenty people as the work of Indians. Conversely, he praises the disenfranchised Chinese community for their industry and diligence. Nonetheless, his travels in the wake of Captain Cook form the greatest source of interest on this score. Describing the native transition from paganism and scarifice to christianity, Twain writes "the missionaries braved a thousand privations to come and makes them permanently miserable by telling them how beautiful and blissful a place Heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there." Twain appears to be somewhat affected by romantic primitivism after all, in spite of an acute awareness of the previous practice of human sacrifice and his statement that "the benefit conferred upon this people by the missionaries is so prominent, so palpable," in recognition of their ending tyranny, sacrifice and war (while noting that the native population had plummeted since the introduction of christianity). Finally, Twain makes an especially interesting comment about Captain Cook; "plain unvarnished history takes the romance out of Captain Cook's assassination and renders a deliberate verdict of justifiable homicide." Cook is seen as both treacherous and ruthless in his dealings with the natives.Labels: Art, Flora, History, Literature, London, Music, Philosophy, Theory
posted by Richard 7:33 AM
Sunday, June 25, 2006
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was the expression of a society at the zenith of its prosperity and power. Paxton's Crystal Palace was a huge iron goliath with over a million feet of glass, containing such industrial exhibits as the jacquar loom, courts depicting the history of art and architecture from ancient Egypt through the Renaissance as well as exhibits from imperial territories like India and Austrialia. Major concerts were held in the Palace's huge arched Centre Transept, which also contained the world's largest organ. The central transept also housed a circus and was the scene of daring feats by world famous acts such as the tightrope walker Blondin. The Crystal Palace itself was almost outshone by the park in which it stood, which contained a magnificent series of fountains (the water pumped through a set of towers designed by Brunel) and the park's original trees.
Today, it is a rather different matter. What Mayhew described as the glass hive burned down in the thirties; all that remains are a set of empty terraces, the sort of enigma that would leave archaeologists with endless speculation. Some architecture has within it the potential for decay and ruin; the ruins of the gothic St Dunstan in the East wear their decay as if they had never been anything else, while the baroque ruins of Christchurch Greyfriars are decidedly ill at ease with their decline. The terraces of the Crystal Palace clearly fall into the former category, with headless statues gracing the steps and Sphinxes guarding the entrance way to nothingness. Based on the designs of ruined Egyptian temples, the Sphinxes seem entirely at home with their place amidst overgrown oak trees. Behind the trees, a BBC transmitter now lords it over the empty spaces of the park. A nearby lake provides a home for lillies, a family of coots with their shrill young and a heron.
One part of the exhibition was sufficiently at a distance to be spared destruction; the nearby dinosaur park, an exhibition of prehistoric reptiles and mammals, and examples of geology, spanning 350 million years of Britain’s evolution (all rather reminiscent of Conan Doyle's lost world). The park was conceived by Richard Owen as part of the same project that led to the founding of the Natural History Museum. Amongst eminent Victorians, Owen was especially striking. Having identified a giant fossil bird from New Zealand (the Moa) from a tiny fragment of fossilized bone alone and inventing the term 'dinosaur,' he nonetheless became notorious for opposing the theory of evolution. Famously, he hosted an extravagant party in the belly of a reconstructed Iguanodon at the park. Recently, the park has been restored and is now planted with tree ferns and monkey puzzle trees, along with azaleas and Australian bottlebrush, making it a minor botanical garden. Water birds nest inbetween the paws of the dinosaurs and another heron guards the shore line. Infant swans and coots cluster by the side of the water in the expectation of bread. A cormorant preens itself and stretches its wings in the centre of the lake. The dinosaurs themselves are easily as impressive as the skeletons in the central hall of the Natural History Museum, albeit subject to certain inaccuracies (the placing of the Iguanodon's thumb spike on its nose, placing of Megalosaurus on four legs or the turning of Dicynodon into a tortoise-like animal); though it should be remembered that such problems persist to this day (e.g. the discovery of feathered dinosaurs in China).
Ruskin was apparently often in the habit of journeying out from his home in Herne Hill to visit Dulwich Picture Gallery in order to reconfirm his prejudices against Baroque art and leave feeling "encouragingly disgusted." It's difficult not to sympathise with opprobrium against a period characterised by the trivialities of Watteau and Fragonard, Italian propaganda of the Counter-Reformation or the stately but arid paintings of Gainsborough and Kneller. A post-romantic sensibility is inevitably likely to struggle somewhat with this period. Nonetheless, the gallery does contain rather more than Ruskin gave it credit for, especially its collection of Dutch paintings. From a period when Holland had formed a society that was the prototype of everything Europe was to become (liberal democratic, mercantile and tolerant), its paintings were intended for private consumption rather than for ecclesiastical display, opening a space that allowed for a new form of art. Aelbert Cuyp's pastoral scenes were to be greatly influential on artists like Constable but were also to lead to a more proto-romantic sensibility in artists like Ruisdael (the same applyig De Velde's maritime paintings, intended to show the trading status of the Dutch nation). Still-life and landscape became more prominent as genres, historical and allegorial paintings, less so. Rembrandt's paintings denoted a move towards a focus on the individual and the interior life. A particularly Gerrit Dou painting shows a marked move from allegory to realism. The gallery also has a number of striking pictures in other sections; a Canaletto painting of Venice, Claude's equally proto-romantic Arcadian scenes or Reni's Caravaggioesque St Sebastian.
Otherwise, what is most of interest about the gallery is its status as a combined art collection and mausoleum (a form of modern Pantheon, like that of Canova, or a return to the style of cemetery originally found on the Via Appia before they were banished to necropolises outside Rome). The paintings in the gallery are effectively a form of grave good, no different to works found in Egyptian or Viking tombs. The gallery was the work of Sir John Soane and reflect an interest in funerary architecture that is also on display with his own tomb in St Pancras Cemetery and reflects his typically pagan style, placing Roman funerary urns on the outside of the mausoluem. Unhindered by practical considerations, funerary building was to prove an ideal area for architects to experiment with novel forms. Although a classicist in style (regarding himself as a latter-day Etruscan tomb-builder and brininging an Egyptian Sarcophagus of Seti into his house at Lincoln's Inn Fields as well as a monk's tomb, based on gothic arches from Westminster), Soane's ideas for a funerary architecture based in gardens and parks (the Elysian necropolis) were to form the basis of the rather more gothic Victorian garden cemeteries. Previously, churchyard burial had been considered as low status in comparison to the monuments found within churches and abbeys, a shift that was encouraged by the Napoleonic wars creating a need for large martial, public monuments.
Of all the Victorian cemeteries, Brookwood comes closest to having reverted to nature. The stretches of its heathes are filled with heathers and ferns interspersed with sequoia and cedar. This wild aspect is particularly odd as it was also the most modern, with the cemetery's railway bringing in coffins from London. In 1854, Brookwood was the largest cemetery in the world, and is accordingly filled with the customary Victorian angels and funeral urns. But it is also became home to other religions, from Swedish Evangelicals to Muslims. The Zoroastrian section is by far the most impressive though,with stone torches, Persian tiling and ornate tombs that are worthy of Highgate.
I've also recently been to Chelsea Physic Garden, which was founded in 1673, as the Apothecaries' Garden, chosen for its the proximity to the Thames and for a warm microclimate that allowed the survival of many non-native plants - such as the largest outdoor fruiting olive tree in Britain, pomegranates and bananas. The area was already famed for gardens and orchards owned by the likes of Thomas More and was used as a means of growing and studying medicinal plants (though the garden also now has plants like cotton, woad and madder), evolving in time into what we would now recognise as a botanical garden (the cedar of Lebanon was first cultivated in Britain here and its heated glasshouse was the first in Europe). The garden presents its specimins through a number of taxonomies; species (the fernery), geography (North America and Madeira), type (monocotyledons or dycotyledons), usage (Belladona for optics, Valerian for sleep, Digitalis for heart convulsions, Castor Oil Plant for skin conditions as well as curiosities like Mandrake and Mandragora), history (traditional kitchen gardens and exhbitions on the work of Joseph Banks on species like Australian Bottlebrush; Banks also brought back volcanic lava from Iceland for the central fountain) and a garden of world medicine, discussing Maori, Indian and Zulu uses of plants. This last section does have a certain romanticisation of the primitive to it, particularly given that research found that the tribal use of Madagascan periwinkle to treat diabetes was wholly ineffective though the plant did have a marked effect in laying waste to white blood cells. Whereas most gardens rely on sight as the main sense to appreciate them with, flowers are less common here but a thick scent pervades the air as bees, butterflies, and dragonflies flash cut through it. A wollemi pine is on display within one of the greenhouses.
A city like Amsterdam functions as a whole, lacking the grandiose monuments of other cities but rather creating its effect through an accretion of small details. London is quite the reverse, a grey and dirty concrete city, which is nonetheless relieved by the presence of small spots of beauty. One such is St Pancras Cemetery. This was once the churchyard of a village outside London, but urban expansion drew it increasingly within the cemtery. Then came the Midlands railway, arriving by St Pancras Chambers and cut through the graveyard. The then young architect Thomas Hardy was appointed to clear it and instead of stacking the headstones in a corner or cementing them into footpaths, he gathered them round the base of a tree. The Hardy Tree remains as a testament to the dead in the cemetery, as the railway goes through its second expansion. It also retains its mythic aspect, reminding one of that other ash tree, Ygdrasil, with the headstones bearing a grisly resemblance to roots. The cemetery now is more like a park, albeit filled with the more impressive monuments remaining. Foremost amongst these is the Soane Mausoleum, a classical structure that seems to reach back to the times when St Pancras was the site of a pagan compitum rather than a place dedicated to a christian martyr. Elsewhere, the cemetery contains the grave of Mary Wollstonecraft (and it was by this that Shelley first saw Mary Godwin) and the a sundial as a memorial to Angela Burdett-Coutts (in memory of the important people who had been buried near the church, and whose graves had been disturbed by the encroachments of the Midland Railway). The church itself is largely Victorian but does contain a beautiful Blomfield reredo.
From there, I went to the city, to the church of St Giles at Cripplegate (sitting on a moated island within the impenetrable fortress of the Barbican) and to St Botolph's Bishopgate. The churchyard there is especially noteworthy for containing one of the last Victorian Turkish Baths (though why something most likely to have been used by gay men should have been there rather puzzles me). From thence, I left the city and travelled to Westminster and to the cathedral there. This is perhaps a rather odd area, housing the Anglican Abbey, the Methodist Central Hall as well as the Roman Catholic Cathedral. Modelled on the Haghia Sophia so as not to compete with the Abbey, the Cathedral's Byzantine design compares oddly to Pugin's ambition to re-anglicise Catholicism by emphasising its gothic heritage, as with his church at Cheadle (particularly given the way the Cathedral dwells on English saints like Alban, Bede, Edmund, Cuthbert, Winifrid and, rather less convincingly, George, as well as martrys persecuted during and after the reformation, such as Thomas More). Much of the interior is simply blackened brick (still awaiting its mosaics; in this sense it is as incomplete as the Sagrada Familia) but with the lower areas given up to rich marbles and vividly colourful mosaics. Many of these follow Byzantine conventions but one of Boris Antrep depicted them in the style of his native Russia, against pink rather than gold. Work still contines; as I was there a mosaic was laid out on the floor waiting to be put in place in one of the side chapels. Finally, I walked to the Inigo Jones Banqueting House. To some extent this was a disappointment; the exterior had actually been redesigned by Soane whilke the introduction of murals onto the ceiling by Rubens also substantiually changes the building, preventing it from being used for masques.
The half-timbered gateway to the church of St Bartholomew the Great shows the saint wielding the knife with which he is thought to have been flayed (not inappropriately so; the feast day in his name was commemorated by Vlad Dracul impaling thirty thousand Transylvanians). Through the gate, there is an odd sight; the remains of the medieval church, a Victorian tower and heind it the modern Barbican tower. The interior is largely Norman and its blackened stones and dark transepts provide a strange contrast to the gleaming portland stone of the English baroque more commonly associated with London churches (even Southwark Cathedral's stone is a light honey colour that seems to glow in the light). Only a set of painted monument statues relieve the darkness.
Walking past the Old Bailey and the dark tower of St Sepulchre-Without-Newgate, to Postman's Park. St Botolph Aldergate, completed in 1791, has a late-Georgian exterior. The church is most noted for its churchyard, Postman's Park. Filled with tree ferns and a pleasant fountain, this is nonetheless as important a representation of the Victorian interest in death as Highgate or Kensal Green. Established by the Pre-Raphaelite painter GF Watts, one park walls is lined with tiles that serve as monuments to various people that were deemed to have died heroically, typically saving others from either fire or water. As an example of heroes and hero-worship it encapsulates both a Victorian instinct for egalitarianism and for sentimentality. Onwards again, to the ruins of Christchurch Greyfriars. Like St Dunstan in the East, this church was destroyed in the blitz. Where St Dunstan's gothic ruins are now filled with lush and exotic growths, Christchurch's more stately baroque remains are now home to rose gardens. Walking back past St Nicholas Abbey with its boat-shaped weathervane, St Dunstans in the West, the Daily Telegraph building and Charing Cross, I arrived at the Coliseum for a performance of Nixon in China by John Adams.
As a musical style, minimalism has tended to conflate Eastern influences with more popular Western styles, like Jazz, so it is an appropriate vehicle for an opera dealing with the rapprochement of West and East. Following the Second World War, the United States had refused to recognise China, instead conferring legitimacy on the exiled government in Taiwan. Nixon's state visit enabled the US to drive a wedge between Russia and China, and inaugurated a policy of detente that has led to China's re-emergence as an economic power, to the point where it has become quite easy to envisage it overtaking the US itself. The opera recognises this, depicting Map as seeing the demise of all he had worked for before him and alternately lauding how 'the pople are the heroes now' before condemning the collective violence of the Cultural Revolution. Act four in particular, where the Nixons attend The Red Detachment of Women, an opera written by Madame Mao, shows the Nixons responding to the downtrodded heroine but repulsed by the violence used to liberate the proletariat and the ideological conformity behind it. The Nixon's poor background is stressed against Madame Mao's elitism, while the opera repestedly seeks to both counterpoint and undermine right/left distinctions (Nixon and Mao agree that it is only the right that can act). Since both Nixon and Mao were adept manipulators of public opinion the opera seeks to portray the private persona, frequently embodied in Pat Nixon and Chiang Ch’ing.
Thomas Mann journeyed from bourgeois conservative to liberalism and his novels trace a not dissimilar path from from the social realism of Buddenbrooks to the symbolism of The Magic Mountain. Like Joyce in Ulysses, Mann has the real world of a sanatorium in the Alps shadowed by the mythic, with his protagonist entering the underworld in the same manner as Orpheus, Dante, Aeneas and Odysseus. Nonetheless, the novel often slips between realism and symbolism (most obviously with the depiction of a seance where Hans meets his dead cousin Joachim, meeting the dead literally rather than figuratively). The sanatorium represents something akin to Wagner's Venusberg or Spenser's Bower of Bliss, with the death instinct displacing love. However, the symbolism is uncertain; firstly symbols like the lindenbaum form an unclear objective correlative (not unlike Kafka in this respect, the tree of life is a symbol of death, resurrection, life the transcending of time into an epiphany). The mountain itself is revealed as a Freudian symbol by Dr Krokowski; "whoever recognises a symptom of organic disease as an effect of the conscious soul-life of forbidden and hystericised emotions recognises the creative force of the psychical within the material - a force which one is inclined to claim as a second source of magic phenomena." Krokowski sees disease as a physical manifestation of the psychic, forming the magic as much as references to Nietzsche's Zauberberg. Ilness, in Sontagian terms is clearly a metaphor but although she saw the novel as storehouse of the early-twentieth century metaphorical thinking, the nature of that metaphor remains elusive (tubercolisis clearly represents more than romantic wasting) but the wider implications In Memories, Dreams and Reflections , Jung saw mountains as symbolic of life, writing that "this is it, my world, the real world, the secret, where there are no teachers, no schools, no unanswerable questions, where one can be without having to ask anything." The inversion of the mountain and the underworld, life and death suggests how unstable symbols within the novel can be. Although the novel is essentially a bildungsroman, the development of Hans Castorp essentially takes place bu touching the ineffable through dreams and music.
The uncertainty of the symbolism also applies to the role of the characters in a manner that is profoundly dialogic, characteristic of the novel's polyphony. For example, some of the Berghof's denizens, such as Joachim, do not conform to the pattern of the symbolism and instead follow the course one would expect in a realist novel; Joachim feels trapped and imprisoned, not seduced by the Berghof, with his death being due to his escape from it. The oppositions between the differing characters can be read as being both Apollonian and Dionysian, German Culture and French Civilisation. Mann had previously emphatically endorsed Culture and the Apollonian only to later recant, but nonetheless Joachim's military honour and steadfast obedience remain the virtues of the Germany that Mann had turned his back on ("War is necessary. Without war the world would soon go to rot"). Similar difficulties pertain to the others; Settembrini is identified with reason and humanism, the form of positivism ridiculed by Nietzsche and exposed by Naptha as being both transcendental and aristocratic. In the other instance, Naptha is identified with nihilism and romanticism, accordingly somewhat closer to Mann's thought but nonetheless identified with the death instinct. Castorp's dreams suggest both are a destructive force whose positions frequently cease to be stable opposites and converge. Their duel proves the point but the via media of the earthy and sensual advocate of the Dionysian and Eastern gay science condemned by Settembrini and Naptha alike, Peeperkorn proves an equally dead-end with his suicide. Since the novel repeatedly imbricates life, love and death as concepts, each philosophy (with philosophy after all being concerned with being rather than its converse) within the novel fails to offer a coherent and convincing account that could divert it from its thanatophilia.
Mann's Doctor Faustus raises similar issues to Bernhard's Correction in its depiction of a genius throught the mediating narration of an observer; "the highly subjectivising contrast I feel between the nature of the artist and the ordinary man.... Adrian reacted witheringly to such romantic tripe" or "all the ideas and points of view made vocal around him were present in himself." Zeitblom implicitly draws anaologies between Adrian's descent into the irrational and that of Nazi Germany (where mythical fiction must replace debate and consensus) but the parallel is never clear, with Zeitblom also defending Adrian's liturgical music against the charge of barbarism. Adrian grows to look increasingly christlike, spiritualised through suffering; "with it is an inversion of the temptation idea; in such a way that Faust rejects as temptation the thought of being saved." The scene with the devil raises the question of how literally to take the idea of damnation or whether to see it as a metaphor for artistic creation or for the author's homosexuality and Adrian's love for Rudi; "barbarism even has more grasp of theology than has a culture fallen away from cult, which even in religious has seen only culture, only the humane, never excexx, paradox, the mystic passion."
Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul is both a bildungsroman and an account of the history and architecture of his native city. Where a Western writer would typically have sought to interrelate these two themes, Pamuk alternates between them, reflecting his own preoccupation with the idea of the divided self. Pamuk writes of his childhood imagining of another Orhan living in the same city, of seeing his myriad other selves reflected in the mirror, of his father's other life in another flat and of his dual perception of his city as its inhabitatant and under his own westernised eyes so that he comes to see it as a foreigner. The New Life depicts the idea of the transcendent as something disruptive and traumatic that causes people to fall away from their path in life and to encounter death. Pamuk writes that the novel is an unfamilar form, that rather being like Chekhov, writing of the pain and dignity of being alive "instead, like a writer from the East let me take the opportunity to tell a cautionary tale. In short, I had desired to set myself apart from others." Reality is dispersed and fractured, with characters taking on new identities from the dead and establishing new ones as doubles of the deceased; "I used to be someone else once and that someone used to desire to become me." As such, the novel casts its attempts to discern patterns and symbols (few of the characters use anything other than pseudonyms while the line between accident and design is continually unclear) into a cohesive whole through a series of characters, like Doctor Fine's attempts to preserve collective memory in certain objects (" if that were true flea markets would be bathed in spiritual enlightenment" ) like watches. Like the angel, Fine deplores the printing press against the written word but sees the cult as both un-Turkish and un-Islamic and therefore Western. The novel constantly aspires to allegory but is always frustrated.
In the style of Lucretius, Ovid's Metamorphoses concludes with a speech given by Pythagoras; "our souls are immortal and are ever received into new homes... everything is in a state of flux and comes into being as a transient appearance. " The Pythagoreans were known for their theory of Metempsychosis, the transference of souls between man and animal and between man and woman, just as Ovid depicts characters being transmogrified between species and gender. Distinguishing between the material and immaterial, many of Ovid's characters, like Aeneas, Caesar and Heracles, have their mortality burnt away, leaving their divinity. The poet himself concludes by saying that his poetry will perform a similar service for himself; "with my better part, I shall soar, undying." It's easy to see why Ovid was often read as a christian allegorist (or even Pound's "Say that I consider the writings of Confucius and Ovid's Metamorphoses the only safe guides in religion"). This dialectic between the material and immaterial is nonetheless rather problematic for Ovid, leaving the relation between the two rather uncertain; in some cases the deaths that lead to change are those of maligned innocents, in others they are punishments for crimes. The story of Arachne summarises this ambiguity, with Athena weaving a pattern of mortals guilty of hubris and Arachne depicting mortals wronged by the gods.
Daniel Defoe's A tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain is effectively the product of homo economicus; "we saw no idle hands here, but every man busie on the main affair of life, that is to say, getting money." The tour details the trade, commerce and condition of each part of the country (or in the case of Scotland, discussing its lack of trade, industry and discipline), often pausing to look at other matters but largely refusing to "meddle with the antique." Nonetheless, Defoe devotes much of his description of London in particular to lamenting the uncontrolled sprawl of the city, predicting economic collapse (occasionally citing the South Sea Bubble), decrying the mediocrity of the city's church architecture and calling for Whitehall Palace to be rebuilt in such a form as to rival Versailles.
With the return of the Proms, I once more found myself walking across Kensington Gardens to the Royal Albert Hall for the third part of the Ring cycle, Siegfried. In some senses, this continues the anti-capitalist romanticisation of the feudal past that underpins much of the ring; the love of gold destroys Mime while Siegfried is the authentic noble savage, untainted by society. Conversely, there is also something alarmingly feral about his status as ubermensch warrior, with his slaying of Fafnir being precipitate at best. This throws an interesting light upon the 'sleeping beauty' sequence with Brunnhilde, where he is emasculated by his sense of fear in her presence and she is feminised by the destruction of her armour; both experience love as weakness rather than as a civilisation of their wildness.
Jarrold and Dore's London: A Pilgrimage is structured much in the manner of a Dickens or Thackeray novel covering both the highs and lows of London society. Jarrold is quite striking when he describes life in nineteenth century London as a constant struggle for survival with each and every man fixed on commerce as his sole aim. Nonetheless, even after describing the rookeries around Westminster, his account lovingly lingers on society dinners and events before concluding with an somewhat inapposite peroration on the excellence of British charity and philanthrophy.Labels: Art, Flora, History, Literature, London, Music, Victorian
posted by Richard 7:31 AM
Wednesday, June 7, 2006
Anthony Giddens sees modernity as a condition whereby pre-modern (traditional) culture have given way to modern (post-traditional) culture; identity becomes more reflexive and self-consciously constructed. Roles are negotiated rather than assigned by convention. Anthony Trollope is consciously writing in The Way We Live Now as an opponent of modernity, counterpointing the morals and dignity of an increasingly impecunious aristocracy with the corruption of the self-made men of the rising mercantile classes; "his position is a sign of the degeneracy of the age". However, the novel also questions conventional ideas of identity; the stereotypically Jewish aspects of the portrayal of Melmotte's venality is balanced by the portrayal of Mr Breghert as he is wronged by members of the upper classes unwilling to accept that times have changed for social acceptance of Jews. Similarly, Marie Melmotte proceeds from being a hapless victim to revenging herself on her father and taking on property. Equally, the fact that Melmotte is brought down the avarice of the aristocracy and the dissipation of figures like Sir Felix, serves to deconstructs the opposition at the heart of the novel between old fashioned order and middle class rapacity. The novel acknowledges some of this in its discussions of how Melmotte himself is viewed; "as the great man was praised so too was he abused... the working classes were in favour of Melmotte... from their belief he was being ill-used.. that occult sympathy for crime, when the crime committed is injurious to the upper classes... it came to be said of him that he was more sinned against than sinning."
Similar concerns appear throughout Zola's The Kill, where Haussman's rebuilding of Paris serves throughout as a metaphor for the disorientation and the Durkheimite anomie of modernity. As such, Paris is seen as artificial and inauthentic, no longer the organic product of social evolution; "a strange feeling of illicit desire at the sight of this landscape that had become unrecognisable, so worldly and artificial." The preoccupation with the artificial and contrived point clearly to Zola's affiliation with Huysmans. As traditional roles fall into desuetude, so too do traditional ethics of abstinence; "the main preoccupation of society was with knowing how to enjoy itself." Sin becomes a form of consumption, of refinement. Similarly, sexual roles also become fluid once they are no longer constrained by traditional norms; "the sign of his boyish debauchery, this effeminisation of his whole being... he seemed born and bred for perverted sensual pleasure. Renee enjoyed her domination." Renee assumes the masculine role, Maxime the feminine. The paradox in many Zola novels is that while the central fable of his novels is concerning with condemning the immorality of modern, post-traditional society, the syuzhet draws much of its sensational interest from depicting them. As such, The Kill is loosely based on a moral fable, with Renee being betrayed by Saccard and Maxime. However, Saccard's indifference to her adultery goes a long way towards aborting that moral framework, with the cash nexus replacing normal social relations.
Hans Christian Anderson's stories depict a world where, as a character in The Ice Maiden puts it, "antiquated ways are discarded" so that mermaids and telegraph wires co-exist (memorably, the eyes of the ice maiden are described as being like the barrels of a shotgun) and the conventions of folk tales (of the kind described by Vladimir Propp) become contested and dispersed. A tale like The Tinderbox recognisably belongs to the same world as that of the Brothers Grimm; a hero is offered the chance of fame and fortune and is ruthless in his will to power, in contrast to the moral fable of Big Claus and Little Claus or The Ugly Duckling. However, in later stories this is sublimated, either into a thanatophilic concept of virtue being rewarded in the afterlife (as in The Little Mermaid, The Marsh King's Daughter or The Story of a Mother) or where aspiration and virtue alike are thwarted (as in The Shadow). Contingent upon this is a world that is far less centered around the protagonists, where everything from animals to inanimate objects have become anthropomorphised, as cats and storks become participants and commenters within the narrative. The fate of creatures like The Snowman or The Fir Tree is more suggestive of Kafka's Metamorphosis than the Brothers Grimm. Equally, if the stories frequently see female sexuality as threatening (particularly with the Ice Maiden or Snow Queen) then they also displace the role of the hero in favour of female characters, like Gerda in The Snow Queen or The Marsh King's Daughter.
Lessing's Memoirs of a Survivor is one of the most interesting dystopian novels I can think of. Whereas the majority of apocalyptic science fiction, from Wyndham to Atwood, revolves around the causal factors (technological, ecological, political, economic etc) for whatever has changed society from its familiar state, Lessing elides this; "for 'it' is a force, a power... 'it' can be, has been, pestilence, war, the alteration of climate, tyranny." The novel is deliberately dislocated from any specific sense of time or place and instead concentrates on the consequences of social breakdown from feral packs of children to tribal migration. Nonetheless, Lessing undermines the dystopian aspects of the novel in a number of ways. Firstly, dystopian fiction, whether 1984, Day of the Triffids or The Handmaids Tale tends to emphasise individual agency in the face of events. By contrast, Lessing repeatedly stresses that governments are powerless in the face of change while her characters take no actions to change matters. Offered the choice of moving to safer areas in the countryside, they do nothing. Submission is the order of the day (Lessing's interest in Sufism comes through strongly in how she handles time, viewing all phenomena as manifestations of a single reality, or Wujud i.e. being). She also expresses little sorrow for the loss of 'the age of affluence,' implying that the experiments in communalism that emerge represent an improvement on the society that had marginalised people like June Ryan; "all property worries gone; all sexual taboos gone... free, at least from what was left of 'civilisation' and its burdens." By repeatedly 'cutting' to descriptions of Emily's childhood, Lessing also appears to characterise the family in Laingian terms as a source of neurosis whose loss is not necessarily to be mourned.
From Zola's view of the novel as a scientific experiment to Wolfe's 'new journalism,' the novel has attempted to purge itself of all assocations with artifice and imagination, preferring instead to present itself as something objective and factual. If inherent in the idea of realism, it nonetheless represents a problematic conception, if only because if the act of observing something can change a subject, how much more can the act of narrating change it. The most notable example of which being Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, a 'non-fiction novel' relating the murder of four people on a Kansas farm in 1959. Bearing this in mind, the idea of creating a film depicting the writing of the book is an oddly postmodern one (a representation of a representation), particularly since the sparse and austere cinematography appears to be trying to emulate the novel's journalistic style.
Wimpole Hall, designed by Sir John Soane and James Gibbs, appears at first a model of neo-classical symmetry and proportion. However, the interior easily belies this, as corridors snake in on themselves leading to dead-ends. His main contribution is a drawing room with a large domed ceiling, not unlike some of his works at Lincoln's Inn. The main contribution from Gibbs was a Wedgewoodesque book room. The highlight of the interior was a small collection of Gillray prints, mostly lambasting the Prince Regent and the Broad Bottomed Ministry (as well as some more unusual ones with hunting as their target). I was also struck by a Grandfather clock, where a ship rocked on the waves in time with the ticks and tocks.
An interior chapel is painted with a trompe l'oeil effect (something of a theme; there's also a painted playing table, complete with painted cards). The grounds are home to a small church (with a large wing filled with marble monuments of the house owners) and a set of gothic ruins in the distance. The gardens have been restored to their original formal patterns (reversing Capability Brown's vandalism), though landscaped pleasure grounds filled with a wide range of trees and shrubs remain (including the national collection of walnuts). The sky was a brilliant shade of turquoise inbetween dark rain clouds, while the flatness of the Cambridgeshire landscape reminded me strongly of a Trent Valley that had never been industrialised.
Perched high above the Thames, Cliveden feels as if it should be a gothic castle. Instead, the Italianate building and formal gardens look as if they should be nestled within the gentle slopes of a valley. I'd forgotten the sheer amount of Roman and Italian sculpture in the grounds, such as the Borghese balustrade with its dragons and eagles as well as more modern conceits like the turtles on one of the fountains. The Wisteria was flowering alongside the Acer in the Chinese water garden (it felt as if cherry blossom should have been correct for the pagoda, but the Wisteria made a more than acceptable substitute). Ducklings splashed about in the waters around the Botticelli fountain. Further along the Thames and one comes to Windsor. The castle here towers well above the Thames (the site was chosen by William the Conqueror on defensive grounds) though the presence of the town nestling beneath it softens the scene somewhat. I find a meadow by the river, go paddling in the water and watch the swans glide by. Rather inevitably, the town itself has a rather kitsch feel to it, largely due to the continuous citing of often rather trivial historical associations; HG Wells working as a draper or Nell Gwyn and Shakespeare staying in local taverns. You do have to go back quite a long way before anything actually happened at Windsor. Even much of the castle has a rather Ruritanian feel to it, presumably due to the changes made by George the Fourth. The castle has been redesigned and redesigned so often that its medieval appearance is illusory and hyperreal. The town does at least have a more concrete feel to it, with a Guildhall designed by Wren and the nearby church St John the Baptist, home to an anonymous Renaissance painting of the last supper and beautiful altar mosaics and corbels, designed by the same artist that worked on Westminster Abbey.
Further down the Thames again and one comes to Richmond. When the likes of Hampton Court and Ham House were built here, courtiers would sail to the city on barges establishing its role as a rural suburb early on. Ham House was originally designed in the Jacobean period and much like its rival at Hampton was extended during the restoration. The house reached its apotheosis at this point, described by Evelyn as comparable to the finest villas in Italy and furnished like a palace. Nonetheless, its owner fell from favour at court, penury beckoned and the house was left to stagnate for centuries. Visiting in 1770, Walpole described it as dreary, ancient and decayed, a place barricaded away from the rest of the world and liable to defeat even his passion for the antique. Today, the house seems rather less formidable, in spite of the busts of Roman Emperors filling niche after niche in the redbrick walls at the front of the house. Nonetheless, the house looks out from a long avenue towards the Thames, as parakeets fly overhead. The restored gardens provide a glimpse of what Evelyn meant, with a wilderness area populated by statues of Hermes, hornbeam hedges and secluded gardens, formal gardens planted with lavender and box and overlooked by Bacchus and kitchen gardens (there is also a still chamber for the preparation of perfumes, conserves and cordials). One room contained detailed plans for rebuilding Inigo Jones' Westminster Palace, the subject of much speculation in Defoe's Tour Thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain and a good example of the many unfulfilled projects of what London could have been.
Like Hampton, the planting of myrtle, lemon, oleander and almond trees is of the period (tulips and pineapples are incorprated into statues and gates throughout the gardens). Conversely, the interior tends to illustrate the decayed grandeur of the place. A great hall hung with paintings by Lely and Kneller leads to a grand staircase, with an elaborate wooden balustrade. The North Drawing Room above is hung with Flemish tapestries (still retaining much of their original colour; a later room has Spitalfields tapestries copying Watteau designs), white marble chimneypieces and ionic columns and ivory cabinets. This leads to a long gallery, where dark black wood is gilded with gold, and Van Dyck paintings of the Royal family line the walls. A strange self-portrait hangs above the door, showing him with a sunflower, symbolic of art and nature, sovereign and subject. Marquetry and Japanned furniture, often with blue and white Kangxi porcelain line the walls. A closet leads to a collection of miniatures of subjects like Elizabeth, Lucretia's suicide and a love in flames (he who does not burn will die). Finally, an elaborate four-poster bed forms the centrepiece of the Queen's bedchamber, decorated with Van De Velde paintings.
Lacock in Wiltshire was once the home of an abbey that offered a home to the unmarried daughters of wealthy families, and to a village that grew wealthy through the wool trade. The Abbey was dissolved in the reformation while the nineteenth century cotton imports had a similar effect on the village. The combination of these factors with the relative isolation of Lacock led to them becoming a form of time capsule. The village remains full of half-timbered buildings, while the church of St Cyriac still houses a Lady Chapel where paint remains on the ceiling alongside especially elaborate gargoyle carvings. The church has a window above the chancel arch, indicative of the customary 'wool gothic' style of Cotswolds churches. The walls are still whitewashed, presumably indicative of no Victorian changes. The exterior of the church is equally elaborate, while the size of the tombs testifies to the wealth of the community. The abbey has rather less of a sense of continuity with that period, save for its cloisters. After the reformation, it was converted into a country house and an octagonal tower added to the side. The interior is dominated by a circular table, supported by three satyrs, while much of the house is dominated by images of the scorpion from that owner's crest. Later owners provided good examples of early gothic revival. The great hall comes with a barreled ceiling studded with crests, a rose window and wall niches filled with extraordinary terracotta figures representing death and the scapegoat. Later owners experimented with camera inventions and translation of cuneiform and populated the house with the likes of geological specimens and stuffed pangolins. The grounds are more classical, ranging from a stone sphinx to a botanical garden.
Nearby lies Great Chalfield house, a fifteenth century manor house complete with a moat. The church of All saints lies within the moat and includes a beautiful painted pre-raphaelite organ and wooden rood screens. Swallows nesting in the rafters looked down curiously on the visitors. The grounds bear witness of plants overspilling the paths and forcing their way through the cracks between the lichen covered paving stones (looking rather like Mariana's moated grange), a welcome correction to the meticulous restoration of the house itself. The great hall on the interior is much as one would expect, save for mask-like faces looking down from the galleries with empty eye-sockets (designed for the lord to spy on servants). Red paint remains on the rafters of the hall, while perhaps the most impressive aspect of the rest of the house are the oriel windows.
Having been to Highgate Cemetery earlier this year, I returned to London today for more of the Victorian way of death. The 'mighty seven' cemeteries represent a form of ritual, as much as photographs, death masks and portraits of the recently deceased produced by the Victorians, as well as jewellery that utilized a locket of the dead person's hair, extravagant funerals and the wearing of black crepe. After a stroll round the Kyoto gardens in Holland Park, were I watched the peacocks lazily strut about and a wagtail flit from one stone pagoda to another, I began at Brompton Cemetery. More like a landscaped garden than Highgate, ferns have nonetheless grown thickly across much of the grounds while squirrels scamper across the tombstones. The layout is also more formal than Highgate (based on the structure of a cathedral), with a central avenue leading to a chapel modelled on St Peter's Basilica, which is flanked by long colonnades. The tombs are also more impressive than the majority of those in Highgate, with Neo-classical, Gothic and Egyptian mausoleums lining the central avenue. The most impressive tomb is that of James McDonald (Chairman of Anglo-American Oil), a gothic affair complete with Pre-Raphaelite angels and stained glass windows. Conversely, the names of the dead are rather less noteworthy than either Highgate or Kensal Green; Emmeline Pankhurst being the most well known. The cemetery is also a rather blatantly obvious cruising ground; albeit by coincidence rather than by design, there's something rather reassuring (and oddly apposite) about desire persisting in the midst of death.
I then travelled north to visit Kensal Green, the first of the Victorian 'mighty seven' cemeteries to be constructed and perhaps the most impressive. While the trees were still leafless when I went to Highgate, Kensal had a perversely bucolic aspect in the sunshine with buttercups and daisies flowering while a Green Woodpecker perched on top of one of the graves. Kensal Green would certainly have been rural when it was built, but today the cemetery is dominated by the rusting skeletons of two gasometers and the louring presence of Erno Goldfinger's brutalist Trellick Tower. Kensal is by no means as formally laid out as Brompton, though it does have a set of Greek Revival Chapels (complete with catacombs and hydraulic catafalque) and a central avenue. The tombs along this are especially striking. On one side is the tomb of William Casement (four male statues supporting a stone canopy, in the manner of the Erechtheum), Andrew Ducrow (an Egyptian tomb decorated with scarabs and guarded by two sphinxes), Edmund Molyneux (Italian Gothic in red Peterhead granite) and Henry Edward Kendall (a Gothic cross decorated with Minton tiling). On the other side is Mary Gibson (a Corinthian canopy surmounted by four Pre-Raphaelite angels reaching towards the sky), and the quack doctor John St John Lang (a classical statue standing within a circular canopy) who died of the affliction his medicine purported to cure and William Mulready (a gothic statue lying in state in a classical canopy).
Kensal also has the advantage of the reputations of those interred there, from many writers and artists (Thackerary, Hood, Collins, Trollope, Waterhouse and Grossmith), engineers and scientists (Brunel and Babbage), disgraced royals and fascinating figures like Dr James Barry (a successful army doctor and duellist who was only unmasked as a woman after her death) and the Duke of Portland (an eccentric recluse who had built underground ballrooms and mazes under his estate, and was claimed to have faked his death as part of the Druce affair).
Beginning with Shadwell and Hawksmoor's church of St George in the East before travelling to Limehouse and St Anne's church. I'm always stuck by Hawksmoor's buildings; they make few concessions to architectural tradition and often feel as if they should be stage scenery; viewed from the front they are striking and impressive while viewed from the side they seem two-dimensional. St Anne's also happens to have an unexplained pyramid in its graveyard (drawings in the British Library suggest Hawksmoor may have planned pyramids on the turrets, while Christ Church in Spitalfields does rather resemble a pyramid from the front), possibly a Masonic reference. Walking around these areas, it was difficult not to be struck by how they are changing. High property prices elsewhere in London seem to be driving new property development, with cranes and tall blocks of luxury flats leaping up all around. This gentrification sits alongside the still all too visible poverty of East London and makes for an uncomfortable contrast. Walking back to the Limehouse station, I passed an old public library with a statue of Clement Atlee (Limehouse was his constituency). The architect of the welfare state was decaying badly and was missing his hand; a fitting comment on what was happening around him.
Travelling back into the centre of London took me to another Hawksmoor church, St Mary Woolnoth, a bizarre structure that barely looks like a church at all, lacking as it does a tower or a spire. I then walked around some of the other buildings in the area, like Wren's gothic church of St Mary Aldermary and his more baroque St Stephen Walbrook, before changing location again to the other side of the Thames and Lambeth. The gates of Lambeth Palace adjoin onto the former church of St Mary-at-Lambeth, now home to the Museum of Garden History. The sight of a Victorian graveyard, filled with the typically ornate Victorian funerary monuments and planted with sisal, poppies, roses, foxgloves and acanthus, was an odd indeed.
Passing by, I returned to north of the Thames, returning back to the city and The Museum of London. The first exhibition here was dedicated to Pre-Roman settlements in what was to become London. I was struck by the note that since the Thames is notoriously prone to flooding, entire sections of land could suddenly be left underwater. An excerpt from Pepys' diary captures this well; "digging his late Docke, he did 12-foot under ground find perfect trees over-Covered with earth, nut-trees, with the branches and the very nuts upon them, some of whose nuts he showed us, their shells black with age and their Kernell, upon opening decayed; but their shell perfectly hard as ever. And an Ewe-tree he showed us (upon which he says the very Ivy was taken up whole about it), which upon cutting with an adze, we found to be rather harder than the living tree usually is." Manmade objects seem to have survived well too, with the Walbrook having developed as a religious site, with votive offerings thrown into it to appease the gods (I was struck by a panel paralleling this to Bedivere throwing Excalbir back into the lake); a practice that seems to have continued well into the Roman period. This section showed a number of such offerings, typically carved from evergreen woods.
The Roman section was mainly noteworthy for displaying the statues from the Mithraeum found near St Paul's. As one would expect, several depictions of Mithras and the demon dull abound, along with statues of Minerva and Egyptian deities (apparently the Eastern cults proved more popular in this part of the Empire than the Roman ones). This also included the recently discovered sarcophagus from Spitalfields, decorated with shells throughout. The rest of the exhibition seemed somewhat lacklustre, though I was rather taken by a Victorian automaton called 'Psycho,' who was able to play cards and perform mathematical calculations. Due to the removal of internal workings (or hidden actors, depending on the extent of one's cynicism) the explanation for these feats has been lost.Labels: Architecture, England, Film, History, London, ScienceFiction, Victorian
posted by Richard 7:29 AM
Sunday, January 29, 2006
The Three Emperors exhibition at the Royal Academy covers a narrowly defined period in Chinese history, from the ascendancy of the Manchurian Qing dynasty over the Han Ming rulers to their consolidation of power over Tibet and Mongolia through the reigns of Xangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong. In particular, it looks at their use of religion and art as a tool of statecraft, used to confer perceived legitimacy on regimes that were often regarded as having usurped power. It was also used as a means of cultural exchange, with these period seeing several Western attempts to gain a foothold in China, whether by Catholic missionaries or by delegations sent by European governments . At a period when Europe was eager for Chinese designs in porcelain, China was receiving European expertise in painting, architecture and technology.
The exhibition's scrolls and paintings partly utilise traditional Chinese axonometric perspectives (so that objects that are further away appear nearer and larger than would be the case in Western painting, allowing for the inclusion of extensive panoramic detail) and the use of Western materials and techniques to suggest depth. Long painted scrolls depict imperial processions throughout the Emperor's dominions; the purpose was largely to confer legitimacy on the Qing dynasty but they include a wealth of detail that is more unusual in Western painting (the Emperor is simply one point in each scroll), so that the effect is more reminiscent of Breughel than Holbein (though one other odd comparison did occur to me; the tigers in hunting scenes looked just like Blake's Tyger). Of course, there are paintings that do focus on the Emperor seated on the dragon-throne as the sole figure (where the background seems oddly attenuated with the axonometric perspective lending it a peculiarly flattened quality). More interesting is the painting of Qianlong Emperor by the Jesuit missionary Guiseppe Castiglione; the Emperor is shown depicted on horseback and although the pose is rather more sedate, it's difficult not to think of David's romanticised portrait of Napoleon on horseback. That said, a more revealing parallel is probably Bellini's portrait of Suleyman the Magnificent, where religious objections had impeded the use of perspective.
Frequently in the works of Castiglione (as well as other Jesuits and Chinese artists influenced by them) Chinese themes are depicted in a more typically Western manner. In the portrait of the Emperor, sanskrit text appears on his helmet to reinforce the image of the Emperor as a mean of religion and learning as well as war. Another portrait depicts a number of auspicious symbols, such as fungi, bamboo and pine (representing longevity) alongside a white hawk (symbolic of the sovereign's right to rule); the subjects and style are Chinese but the use of light and perspective are Western. Castiglione also designed buildings for the Qianlong Emperor; the rococo buildings seeming somewhat odd given the prestige attached to Chinoiserie in the European use of the style (for instance, Frederick of Prussia's Chinese tea house on the grounds of Sanssouci).
However, in technology, the picture was more one-sided, with clocks and astronomical instruments being prized especially highly in China. The final aspect to this was the role of religion, with the Emperors being depicted as the Buddha as a means of gaining support in their conquered territories while retaining something of the shamanistic practices native to Manchuria. Many of the items here were of interest more for their macabre quality than for historical interest; a skull cup made from the skull of an especially holy lama stood out in particular. More generally, the exhibits that also stood out for me were the weathered taihu garden rock (a testament to the sacred quality of mountains in miniature), red lacquered screens, five-clawed dragons and the blue-white porcelain.
One especially interesting aspect of the exhibition was the counter-narrative offered in one room, which was dedicated to works by the Han elite; representatives and descendents of the Ming dynasty who were in exile, often to Buddhis monasteries. Where court art was highly colourful and influenced by Western art, these figures clung to older and more austere models and typically used minimal black brushstrokes on paper. The works were not only more austere but were often less polished, using what one artist called an 'aesthetic of deformity' to imply attacks on the Qing regime (the absence of sky in one scroll being symbolic of the loss of heaven).
Finally, I went for a meandering walk along the Embankment, past Cleopatra's Needle, the Temple Church and St Brides. The weather was rather odd; very cold but also very dry; not at all like the usual damp English weather.
Reading a collection of Dickens's short fiction, I was especially impressed with George Silverman's Explanation. Not unlike the diary of a self-tormentor from Little Dorrit this presents an unreliable narration of the consequences of excessive self-denial. Like Fielding, Dickens sees morality as stemming from empathy and emotion (a view most forcibly expressed in Hard Times), a conception that is at odds with Silverman's self-defeating fear of worldliness. However, this also seems at odds with the criticisms Dickens often makes of those corrupted in voluptuaries as they move from city to country, as in Great Expectations. I'd read The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth not all that long ago and had thought that the way Roth tended to dwell on external surfaces, of clothes in particular, reminded me of DH Lawrence. The Emperor's Tomb reinforced this impression. Both this and Women in Love dwell distastefully on the dehumanised aspect of modern life, Lawrence in the character of Loerke, Roth in the character of Frau Jolanth (both defined in connection with primitive art and their sexuality). The difference is that where Lawrence aligns his fiction in relation to a vision of a new relation between men and women, Roth aligns his to a vision of a world that passed with the death of Franz Josef.
Food cooked: Romanian chicken Jubilee, Caribbean Chicken, Jugged hare, French blueberry torte, Greek chicken with figs and mint, Potato and feta salad, Calederete of rice with allioli, Swedish sausage with potato and tomato, Linz Torte, Cassoulet, Flamenco eggs, Pollo con Lagostinos, Circassion chicken with bulgar wheat, Greek duck with walnuts and pomeganates, Alsatian chicken with pork and apples, Kaiser goulash, Swedish herring salad, Irish duck with apples and cider.Labels: Food, History, Literature, London
posted by Richard 7:17 AM
Thursday, September 15, 2005
Vienna is the strangest of cities. During the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, it began to expand and absorb immigrants from elsewhere in the Hapsburg empire, most obviously the Jews that were to be at the heart of its cultural and economic life. Its cuisine began to resemble that of Bohemia, Hungary and even Italy more than that of the German states. With the demolition of the city walls encircling the medieval city, the construction of the Ringstrasse began and the city's architecture became progressively more and more heavily influenced by French and Italian baroque and neo-classical designs. As the seat of the Holy Roman Empire, Imperial Rome was a model for the iconography of much of the city. The older gothic buildings in the inner city became the exception, not the rule. In short, Vienna became increasingly deracinated, something that inevitably lead to anti-semitic backlashes. In music, the likes of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern pioneered forms of music utterly disconnected from traditional forms. In art and literature, a preference for the surreal and the fantastic emerged in the likes of Klimt's paintings. Freud dedicated his work to the interpretation of dreams and in Schnitzler's Dream Story portrays Vienna as an unreal mirage, behind which the machinations of the unconscious lie. Even more traditional art, like that of Strauss or Roth is all surface.
Arriving, I walked around the boulevards of the Ringstrasse, starting with the Byzantine fortress that is the Museum of Military History. Since the ring was designed to be broad enough for the easy military suppression of dissent and protest, this was designed as the city Arsenal. Nearby is the elegant French gothic of the Votivkirche, through to the Rathausplatz. The ring is where most of Vienna's artistic life emerged, from its national gallery, museums, music halls, academies and opera houses. It is also where Vienna's most chaotic and schizophrenic aspects emerge, with differing architectural styles at every turn. Here, the baroque Burgtheater and neo-classical Parlament are confronted by the odd sight of the modern Flemish gothic of the Neues Rathaus, one of the few examples of modern gothic in the city. Like much of the city the platz is occupied by parks and fountains, filled with statues of musicians and kings. From here, the strasse leads to Karlsplatz. Again, much of the trees and fountains are dominated by the bizarre sight of Fischer Von Erlach's KarlsKirche dome and its two flanking pillars, both in imitation of Trajan's column. More oddly still, a Henry Moore sculpture rests in the pond in front of the church. The frescos on the interior were being restored and it was possible to ascend to a platform under the dome and see them in detail. Elsewhere in the platz are Otto Wagner's pavilions for the underground, Jugendstil creations in white marble and gold. Scorning 'folk art' Wagner's designs were every bit as radical as Klimt's paintings. Wagner rather reminded me of Soane's plans for a London modelled on Imperial Rome or Wren's plans to recreate the city along the lines of the great European capitals. Wagner drafted design after design for a Vienna that was gleamed in white and gold art nouveau. As it happened, only his underground station designs, a church some villas and a few other buildings were ever to come into being. Nearby is Joseph Maria Olbrich's even more outrageous Secession building, white marble surmounted with a gold dome. Finally, one comes to a Russian monument for Soviet soldiers which would seem more at home in Moscow (written into the terms of the state treaty, the Austrians were not permitted to demolish it). Finally, the strasse comes to a conclusion with the Stadtpark, filled with statues of the likes of Strauss and Schubert.
Within the Innere Stadt, the street lines of the medieval city remain but, like London, the majority of the buildings are as modern as those in the Ringstrasse. The exception lies at the epicentre of the city; the Stephansdom. few buildings merit the term 'gothic' (in its modern sense, at least) as this. In spite of the tiled green and yellow roof, the exterior is blackened while precious little light filters into the dark interior, while beneath it extend the catacombs, filled with the bones of plague victims. Although baroque paintings have been placed at the bases of many of the columns, medieval wooden sculptures remain above them and very little seems to have changed in the cathedral for hundreds of years. Much the same can be said of the nearby Kaisergruft, which contains the tombs of the Hapsburg Emperors. A Capuchin church, its vaults are filled with pewter coffins decorated with images of skulls, swords and bat wings. Other churches, such as the eighth century Ruprechtskirche with its plain white interior and ivy covered exterior also reflect the city as it was when it retained its walls. But beyond these, the Innere Stadt is as diverse as the Ringstrasse. Wagner's secession Ankerhaus has a Jesuit plague column in front of it, while the second most striking church is the baroque dome of the Peterskirche. Others baroque churches, such as the Jesuitenkirche were decorated with elaborate trompe l'oeil effects alongside the typical red marble and gilt. Other churches, like Griechische Kirche reflect the increasing multi-cultural character of the city as it grew. Designed in mock Byzantine style for the Greek immigrants, the redbrick exterior hid the most ornate gold interior.
On the edge of the Innere Stadt lies the original Hapsburg Palace, the Hofburg. Entered through a baroque gateway surmounted by a copper dome, the palace is a confusing labyrinth of passages and courtyards, until one passes through to the Volksgarten and the Burggarten. The former of these is dominated by a replica of the Thesion in Athens, while the latter now houses a jugendstil butterfly house, containing White Tree Nymphs and Green-banded Swallowtails from Malaysia and Red Helen butterflies from South East Asia, as well as a number of moths and birds (rather portly and apparently grounded).
In time, the Hapsburgs created a new palace outside the city. Schoenbrunn lacks the idiosyncratic character of Sanssouci at Pottsdam but makes up for it in scale. Its park is enormous, lined through with lime and beech trees and inhabited by brazen red squirrels and ravens. The park is dotted with various follies and fountains, most strikingly a set of fake Roman ruins (once more intended to reinforce the Roman character of the Hapsburg Empire) a maze, Japanese garden and the large Victorian Palmenhaus. The Crown Prince Garden next to the palace is filled with fig, orange and lemon trees; a yew tree lies at its centre to commemorate the prince's suicide. After this, the building is nondescript; a squat structure painted in a nasty mustard colour. The interior is more promising, with rooms like the Chinese Cabinet (white walls inset with black and gold lacquer), the Porcelain room (decorated with blue and white plaster) and the Millions room (rosewood inset with Indo-Persian miniatures). Leaving the palace, one is confronted with one of the most ornate of Otto Wagner's U-Bahn pavillions, while the surrounding area is home to many of his villas and tomb in the nearby Friedhof. The pavilion was built for the Emperor, whose disdain for modernity meant that he only travelled through it twice. Though the most clearly successful Hapsburg was Maria-Theresa, the personality of Franz-Josef is stamped throughout Schoenbrunn. Haunted by tragedy (his bother and wife were both assassinated, his son committed suicide) he still seems an oddity, more like George the Third than Queen Victoria.
Further oddities came into being as the city expanded beyond the Ringstrasse. Here two houses lie within a few streets of one another; one designed with austere precision by Wittgenstein, the other the famous HundertwasserHaus and the KunstHaus Wien. Hundertwasser's reputation was that of a latterday Gaudi, the disdainer of the straight line and creator of strange and colourful buildings. In practice, I was rather more inclined to view his buildings as being essentially grimly functional but with the esoteric grafted onto them in a way that seemed annoyingly comic, like a rather forced joke. Further afield within the former Jewish ghetto of Leopoldstadt lies the Augarten. Once a formal garden where Mozart and Strauss gave concerts is now presents a rather sad spectacle, being dominated by the crumbling ruins of two of Albert Speer's World War Two flak towers. These massive concrete towers are almost certainly amongst the largest of Speer's buildings to remain in existence. Around them, the park is largely untended and is being turned into a nature reserve; a sad fate for a park whose beauty Roth had the protagonist of The Emperor's Tomb lament for in Siberia. Nearby lies the Prater fair and its famous ferris wheel. The entire area here reminds me somewhat of the disreputable Southbank (albeit in the age of Vauxhall Gardens rather than in the age of Tate Modern); a seedy and disreputable area given over to pleasure.
In front of the Hofburg on the Ringstrasse lies the Kunsthistoriches Museum. The first floor of this is taken up with the Hapsburg's painting collection. I began in the Italian section, which houses a formidable number of works by the likes of Bellini, Raphael, Giorgione, Bordone, Tintoretto and a particularly extensive Titian collection. The undoubted highlights were the few Caravaggio paintings and some Belotto views of eighteenth century Vienna (the views and buildings were still easily identifiable). The collection then passes on, via a few Velasquez paintings to Germany and the Netherlands where gothic styles were being combined with renaissance painting techniques by Durer, Holbein, Cranach, Bosch and, above all, Breughhel. For all of these is fascinating to see how religious themes were beginning to be combined with realism; for example, paintings of the crucifixion turned essentially into landscape portraiture or realistic scenes with allegorical connotations replacing straightforward Biblical scenes. The later sections with the likes of Rembrandt and Van Dyck showed the outcome of this process, excepting oddities like Arcimboldo and his veering away from realism altogether, depicting faces made up of elemental forces like fire and water. A further highlight was a solitary Vermeer towards the end of the collection.
The lower floor was occupied by Egyptian, Greek and Roman exhibits. The Egyptian section was especially noteworthy, with an entire tomb being built into the building and the supporting papyrus stalk pillars being taken from an Egyptian temple. Much of the statuary represented familiar stylised design, but there a number of Roman influenced realistic figures lacking headdress. Conversely, the Greek section was heavily influenced by Eastern designs, with a Cypriot statue showing clear Egyptian and Assyrian influences. A particularly beautiful statue of Isis, where the robes and figure were cut from different stone was particularly striking; if only in that showed such a clear basis for later representations of the Virgin Mary. This section was largely striking for having an especially good collection of Graeco-Roman crafts beyond statuary and stonework though; painting, bronzes, mosaics, metalwork, glass and even textiles. The highlight was clearly the Brygos-Scythos and its beautifully detailed depiction of Priam's supplication to Achilles. Within the Hofburg was a further museum of ancient history, mostly containing exhibits from Ephesos and Samothrace. This was perhaps more striking, containing octagonal tombs from Ephesus, a statue of Artemis and the Parthian frieze depicting Roman victory and the deification of the Emperor Varus.
The other principal gallery in Vienna is the Belvedere. Formerly a palace for Eugene of Savoy it still contains cabinets gilded with gold and a formal garden dotted with sphinx statues. Its lower gallery is dedicated largely to medieval art, dwelling in particular on the paintings of Michael Pacher, an early example of combining gothic forms with renaissance techniques. Oddly, the pictures of the Virgin Mary proved an interesting example to the principal works in the upper Belvedere, Klimt's most famous paintings. His painting of Adele Bauer, all covered in gold is very clearly drawing on the same iconographic techniques. Sadly, much of the permanent collection was unavailable (so no Munch or Van Gogh) though an exhibition of Finnish art had some striking paintings by the likes of Magnus Enckell and Akseli Gallen-Kallela, mostly based around the Kalevala. Finally, there was the Leopold Museum, a rough equivalent to the Tate. Although this has some interesting nineteenth century Austrian landscapes by the likes of Emil Jakob Schindler and modern works by the likes of Oskar Kokoschka, its collection is heavily dominated by the works of Klimt's contemporary, Egon Schiele, and his intense self portraits and paintings of Bohemian towns. Outside, the belvedere lies the Vienna Botanical Gardens, current residence of a Wollemi pine, a living fossil from the Jurassic period that was formerly thought extinct. A combination of eighteenth century formal gardens and more modern design, the gardens include some small tropical houses, a pinetum and an alpine garden.
Having one day to hand, I wanted to see how Vienna compared to the other capital of the Dual Monarchy; Budapest. As it happens, Budapest is rather more like Prague than Vienna; bisected by a river, one side is dominated by a hill surmounted by a castle and churches where the national galleries and museums are housed. The other is where the more modern city has grown. Arriving at Keleti train station, a nineteenth century structure dominated by a massive glass window, I walked downwards to the Danube. Unlike Prague, this area of the city was clearly impoverished, its buildings characterised by dilapidation and decay (as integral to its aesthetic as that of New Orleans) and the Parisi Udvar arcades seeming more like street markets. With that said, this was rather less disturbing than Vienna's inequality and the sheer number of beggars on its wealthy streets, and the anti-immigrant posters plastered around the city by the far-right Freedom Party (showing social democrat politicians with mosques in the background); though in fairness to Vienna I should note that it has always tended to vote for socialist and social democrat parties. Nonetheless, compared to that Budapest's poverty seemed less disturbing than it perhaps should have; in theory I feel that poverty without inequality is worse than prosperity with inequality, but in practise this seemed less justifiable.
My walk took me through Budapest's old Jewish quarter, with its Moorish and Art Nouveau synagogues until I arrived by the river, crossed into Buda and began climbing up the hill of Varhegy to the castle. The centrepiece of the castle is the Holy Trinity Square, home to the Matyas Templom and the Fisherman's Bastion. Although the red and yellow roof of the former is pretty it gives little idea of how beautiful the inside is, with every inch of the interior being painted so that it seems to blaze with colour. By contrast, the Fisherman's Bastion's is pure white but is like the Matyas Church in that it is a hyperreal construction; the church reconstructs the thirteenth century structure through modern eyes, while the bastion is an attempt to give Hungarian myth and history a concrete form, its seven turrets representing the seven Magyar tribes. Oddly though it reminded me most of Gaudi's Greek theatre at Parc Guell. Crossing back into Pest over the chain bridge and into the Belvaros and Lipotvaros districts, the first building I came across was the art nouveau Gresham Palace before walking along the Danube to the Hungarian Parliament. The other striking building here is St Stephen's Basilica; like St Paul's it is possible to climb to the top of the dome from where the entire city can be seen.
As mentioned, Viennese cuisine is esoteric and meals in Vienna included horse goulash (served with fried egg and gherkins), Wiener Schnitzel, Potato salad, and coffee laced with liqueur served with torte in the likes of Cafe Central and Cafe Demel (the imperial confectioners). More interesting was Heurigen in Heiligenstadt, historically a vineyard licenced as a wine tavern for a brief period. The traditional costumes seemed a little arch to someone for whom such things reek of morris dancing but the sturm new wine was rather pleasant; not unlike fermented grapefruit juice. Austrian dark and wheat beers are also particularly recommended.Labels: Architecture, Food, History, Vienna
posted by Richard 7:05 AM
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
I hadn't walked through Hyde Park for a few years and I'd forgotten how pleasant it is (though perhaps a little too much like a provincial country estate when compared to either the formal gardens in Amsterdam's Vondelpark or the wild areas it shares with Berlin's Tiergarten). The Serpentine is the most impressive part of the park; at one point the lake was crossed with posts with a solitary seagull perched on each of these. Nearby, a coot was building its nest in shallow waters. I left the park at Apsley House and the Wellington Arch (although the park is filed with war memorials, the arch is rather awkwardly militaristic for London) before walking back to Kensington, passing by the Brompton Oratory (an intriguing building in that the light-filled interior could be one of the Catholic churches in Europe rather than their quasi-anglicanised brethren here).
The Victoria and Albert Museum was holding an exhibition on Arts & Crafts, a counterpart to a previous exhibition on Art Deco. Arts & Crafts had an oddly double character; it emerged as a response to industrialisation, asserting the role of rural crafts, but was primarily purchased by the new industrial haute-bourgeoisie (Wightwick Manor, an arts & crafts mansion was also one of the first to have electric lighting and plumbing). By eschewing mass-production the artefacts of the arts and crafts movement would inevitably be high-value items, affordable only for the elites. The English section comprised furniture by Pugin, paintings by Burne-Jones, clocks and furniture by Voysey, ceramics by De Morgan, Morris tapestries and Baillie-Scott's stained glass. The inclusion of works by Beardsley made it clear how the romantic interest in nature held by the arts & crafts movement could lead to both aestheticism and art nouveau. By contrast, arts & crafts in America seemed much more to resemble something that had passed directly on to art deco without the intermediate stage of art nouveau; the materials and subjects were still natural but their treatment stylised and geometric (the only comparable works in the English section were by Mackintosh).
Although figures like Greene & Greene and Lloyd Wright were reacting to the rise of skyscrapers, the American houses appear to have been significantly larger than the English cottages dreamt by Morris (presumably the more deracinated character of America made idealisation of peasant life markedly more difficult; such traits are absent even in works like Walden). Although Viennese design was significantly more stylised (as with Klimt and Hoffmann's designs) and German more comfortable with industrialisation, the majority of European design seems to have been more in sympathy with England. Perhaps unsurprisingly so; Morris's socialist utopianism fed into Gauguin's praise of pre-industrial life in Tahiti. Van Gogh's artist's community in Arles, the Yellow House, emulated Morris's Red House, his famous ladder-backed armchair picture showing an arts & crafts design. Scandinavian design drew on rural traditions (as at Skansen) and myth (as with the snakes on Lars Kinsarvik's furniture), since both Norway and Finland were asserting new national identities. Similarly in Japan, Mingei arose as a response to the Westernisation later decried by Tanizaki, seeking beauty that was born rather than made, part of the traditional Buddhist belief in oneness with nature. I then went to the Poynter (blue Delft tiling), Gamble (white and gold ceramics, rather like the Cafe Imperial in Prague) and Morris rooms (green olive branch wallpaper, lined with gold friezes) for lunch.
The Proms began for me this year with Purcell's The Fairy Queen. This is one of the very few concerts that has made good use of the Albert Hall; at one point flutes could be heard from the upper gallery in imitation of bird song, at another the echo of a trumpet. The following day started at Covent Garden, walking around the market and the pleasant churchyard at St James, before proceeding back to Kensington for a performance of Die Walkure. Last year, Kim Begley dominated Das Rheingold as Loge; this year Bryn Terfel's Wotan and Lisa Gasteen's impish Brunnhilde (who bore a disturbing resemblance to Joan Sims) stood out. It's interesting that where Das Rheingold portrays women as either fickle and frivolous or as helpless, Die Walkure largely performs a volte-face on this, something that is as much emphasised as off-set by the idea that love and marriage as a punishment for Brunnhilde. This is largely because, following Schopenhauer, love and passion are only ever forms of affliction for Wagner; it is difficult for him to retreat to images of the loving wife and he must replace the virgin and the whore dichotomy with the shrew and the warrior. As I left, the London lighting gave the twilight an oddly attenuated quality I've not seen elsewhere, the clouds turned orange against the darkening blue of the sky. Watching Gotterdammerung later, it occurred to me how much Wagner sees love as something emasculating. For Brunnhilde, it is the end of her existence as a warrior maiden while for Siegfried it is that which leads him to first feel fear.
I came across Nightmare in Venice later, a compilation by the much-fabled ensemble Red Priest, who can best be described as playing early and baroque music in the manner of Stravinsky and with the attitude of Siouxsie and the Banshees. Dwelling on the strange and fantastic aspects of the baroque style (perhaps rather implausibly so on occasions), they perform Vivaldi, Purcell and Corelli (with an unscripted detour through Danse Macabre at one point).
Heading into London for the next Proms, I had a chance to see the tight security on the transport system at the moment; I have to say it's both rather reassuring and extremely disturbing to see armed police walking about in the sunlight, not to mention bag searches and scans slowly becoming endemic. Since the number of people queuing for the Proms was noticeably less than usual I went for a look at the science museum and got to stroll past Babbage's difference engine and Stephenson's Rocket. Westminster Abbey reminded me of nothing so much as the John Soane Museum; filled with statues and ephemera where much of the tombs and paintings appear to have survived the restoration unscathed. It is certainly the only abbey I have seen to have glass chandeliers (complementing the fan vaulting rather well). Like Dorchester, Winchester and Lichfield it had a pair of Sergei Fedorov icons. By contrast, the interior of St Paul's was as pure as the spire of his churches, quite unlike the Catholic churches it imitated. As is often the case, the Victorian mosaics on the ceiling have the effect of making it seem more orthodox than Catholic. Towards the beginning of the Prom I was going to a violinist from the American orchestra that was performing leaned over to the front rows of prommers and announced that she wanted to say hello as she rather felt like we were all attending the same dinner party. It's certainly true that there's something very pleasantly democratic and egalitarian about the proms; the prommers that are prepared to stand get the best possible views of the performance after all (even if there are plenty of others with expensive seats). These Proms also had a baroque flavour, with Rameau's Les Paladins and Dardanus and Handel's Water Music. Rameau proved to be quite effervescent in his choice of instrumentation and harmonies, though Handel's elegant simplicity seemed more beautiful than Rameau's more Italianate approach. It was interesting to note that the difficulties for a small orchestra to fill the Albert Hall with sound must have been similar to that of making oneself heard from the Royal barge.
The next Prom began with Berg's Lulu Suite followed by Mahler's Fourth Symphony. Seemingly an odd combination this worked rather well; Berg alternates between dissonance and lyricism while Mahler's philosophy that the symphony must contain everything leads him to alternate between the comic and the plaintive. This was followed by a performance of plainchant and organ music, comprising both medieval and modern works by Arvo Part. The Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir entered from each side of the hall, men on one side, women on the other and gradually walked to the stage, one verse at a time. It was interesting to see how modern minimalism seemed to complement plainsong (and odd given that I had always tended to think of minimalism as an Eastern concept, based on Wabi-Sabi or equivalent concepts), with each syllable being held and repeated over time. The first piece was by an composer I hadn't heard of before called, Sofia Gubaidulina, called The Light of the End. This seemed to move like the tides of the sea, building up and dissipating over and over again, something stressed by the piece's heavy reliance on a rather aleatoric percussion style. Overall, the logic of the piece seemed primarily driven by religious symbolism rather than conventional musical structures. By contrast, there's very little to say about Beethoven's Ninth Symphony; this piece was the one most admired by my favourite composer, Wagner and the ode to joy does have the same exhilarating quality to it that is shared by Tannhauser's Overture or Die Walkure's Fire Music. The final prom surprised me a little; Strauss's Thus Sprach Zarathustra seemed rather mannered when placed next to The Flying Dutchman overture or Beethoven's third piano concerto.
The Magic Flute was rather more odd than I'd supposed. Like many enlightenment narratives, it takes the form of a fairy tale, only to oppose the structure of the moral fable with an enlightenment narrative based on ideas of reason. To a large extent, it's rather noticeable that the narrative tends towards misogyny, privileging reason as a male virtue and slighting emotion as a female weakness. However, it's refreshing to note that the narrative itself overturns this, noting the inability of Monostratos to control himself, the weakness of Papagueno and Pamina's success in taking the ordeal of fire and water (particularly radical given Masonic barriers to women joining the order). In this there is at least the germ of an alternative reading that would see the Queen of the Night as a prototype for Brunnhilde and Sarastro as a tyrant, and the beginning of the romantic rehabilitation of the fairy tale.
I went to Clandon Park recently, an rather sparse (if not even rather ugly) house in Sussex, the exterior only enlivened by a Dutch sunken garden parterre garden and a maori house (surrounded by tree ferns, many carved to form statues). The interior was quite striking though; I walked into a gleaming white marble hall, lined with statuary by Rysbrack, Corinthian Columns and spanning two floors. I was especially taken with the lamps attached to the wall by arms, as in Cocteau's La Belle et la Bette. More odd were some paintings of an Ostrich and Cassowary. Later rooms had wooden furniture mounted on eagles in the style of William Kent and chinoiserie dressing tables by Chippendale (designed to resemble a pagoda). One room had an exhibition dedicated to Maori tribes, including whalebones clubs and jade tiki statues. The paintings were mostly undistinguished (Kneller, Lely and so on, the occasional Reynolds), apart from a caricature of George the Third by Gillray and a painting of the House of Commons speaker by Thornhill and Hogarth. Nearby was the St Peter and St Paul church, a twelfth century building that still had a medieval wooden triptych of three saints. Further away, Hatchlands house was more promising on the exterior (a Dutch design with glass cupola on one wing, a formal garden created by Jekyll and some classical follies in the grounds) but suffered from a cramped and was overly ornate Italianate interior by Robert Adams.
Following an encounter with a Saxon beech maze, shaped in the form of a sea creature, I went to Oxford. Bails lay in fields while poppies and cornflowers grew in hedgerows. I went up the tower of the University church, looking out over at the Radcliffe Camera, the sundial in Brasenose quad and the other spires. The green of the woods could be seen in the distance. The History of Science Museum had a fascinating collection of astrolabes (often Islamic, for use in praying to Mecca) and armillary spheres as well as compasses in ivory cases. Travelling back, I went to Dorchester Abbey. A simple building set in a pleasantly leafy area by the Isis, the interior is more impressive, the white walls being interrupted with 14th century paintings and a 12th century font. The stained glass in the North window is remarkably intricate, with stone patterns in the shape of branches (the tree of Jesse, showing how Chirst was descended from King David's ancestor Jesse). The requiem chapel has an orthodox icon, presumably St Birinus, of the same type I had seen in Lichfield and Winchester. The walls here also had medieval paintings on them, which seemed to have been repainted, presumably in the Victorian period. Reading The Secret History by Procopius, I was struck by the role played by women in it; Theodora and Antonina do not appear more important to events than Livia or Cleopatra but their role is described in so much more detail.
Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters struck me as being oddly European. Where Some Prefer Nettles attached clear symbolic connotations to Tokyo and Osaka, here they are simply places. The weather and accents differ but there is no fundamental schism. Much like Buddenbrooks, The Makioka Sisters traces the decline of a Japanese House before World War Two. One sister, Yukiko, is traditionally Japanese; too withdrawn and retiring to cope in brash, modern Japan. She is counterpointed to Taelo, the most Westernised sister; independent and often ruthless in pursuit of what she wants. Both are counterpointed to the White Russian, Katherina, whose forwardness if greater than Taeko's with a correspondingly greater success. Though both Taeko and Yukiko are counterpointed, both are ill-suited for Japan at that time and fail accordingly (rather than turning into a fable of Taeko's progressive moral degenerations).
Normally in a narrative, an action leads to consequences, with this process being repeated over and over again in any variety of combinations until it reaches a conclusion. Georges Rodenbach's Bruges-La-Morte is an odd attempt to counterfeit this in a form that is more poetic than novelistic. Instead of motivation and action as being paramount, the narrative is driven by a set of competing metaphors such as the crying swan or the martyrs depicted in the Cathedral and the city itself; hence the Sebald-like use of photographs of Bruges throughout the text; "every town is a state of mind, a mood which, after only a short stay, communicates itself." Like all metaphors, both reveal and conceal their object; "by trying to fuse the two women into one he had only lessened the resemblance...day by day the dissimilarities were increasing." The novel is infected with a Schopenhauerian sense of mysticism, with the convent the only truly still point in the city, in contrast to Hugues's willing. As such, the stillness of the city is both a sign of nirvana and of decay. Accordingly, the two layers of narrative and metaphor are not quite contingent, with Jane's ignorance of these contiguities is what kills her "not having comprehended the mystery."
Casanova's The Story of my Life is a fascinating counterpart to more mannered documents like Rousseau's Confessions. Casanova repeatedly avows a faith in christianity, but in practice only rejects converting to Islam in Constantinople on practical grounds. He is surprisingly tolerant of homosexuality (perhaps since he was a sexual dissident himself, comparing the disguised nun he is romancing to Antinous, as well as the episode with Bellino). Equally, he professes to be a great admirer of Voltaire but tells him that there is no substitute for religion as a basis for social order. The tension appears attributable to his attachment to the Hobbesian idea of the passions as the basis for human character; "the fate of every man inclined to games of chance, unless he is able to master his passions," leaving him permanently attempting to balance duty and desire and failing.
The Travels of Ibn Batuttah differ from christian travel narratives in a number of respects. The Islamic world at this point was extensive, stretching from Spain to Mughal India; for the same reason it acted as a form of iron curtain for European merchants who were forced to explore alternative routes. Where Europeans were forced to confront other cultures, Batuttah's travels largely remain within the Islamic world. Of course, this still allows him to come into contact with the Jewish and Christ ain peoples within it, but his attitudes towards it seem somewhat ambivalent. he records the various restrictions placed on non-Muslim populaces (restrictions on trade, specific forms of taxation) and notes how unwillingly such humiliations were suffered. Equally, he notes that Muslim travellers to a Christian Monastery were generously received treating Muslims honourably and exacting no tolls, but approvingly records the destruction of a Greek Church; "I shall be the first to be stricken with madness in the service of god... and god gave the lie to the assertion of the Greeks." This in spite of his admiration of the Church of Sophia in Constantinople. For Battutah other cultures are always infidels; a Jew is denounced for sitting closely to Koranic readers, Hindus and Chinese (and indeed Rafidis) are treated in the same way. He is fascinated by Hindu Sadhus but makes no comparison between their creed and Islam in the way Polo does with Christianity. He is amazed by Chinese civilisation, its pottery and paper money but responds to it by saying "China, for all its magnificence, did not please me. I was depressed by prevalence of infidelity and whenever I left my lodging I saw many offensive things." As with any travel narrative of that period, it is not without its diverting idiosyncrasies; dog-faced men, flying leeches and monkeys with kings. Although the same applies to The Travels of Sir John Mandeville it shows a different worldview. Although much of it is taken up with exhortations for christendom to regain its piety in order to reconquer the holy land, it nonetheless treats other faiths (though showing little lack of awareness that the relative tolerance extended by the Islamic world to Jews and christians would not have been found within Europe) as being worthy of reflection; "it seemed to me a great cause for shame that the Saracens, who have neither a correct faith nor a perfect law, should in this way reprove us for our failings, keeping their false law better than we that of Jesus Christ." The same applies when Mandeville witnesses sutee; "they suffer so much pain and mortification of their bodies for love of that idol that hardly would any christian man suffer the half." Equally, Mandeville's reaction to the lands he describes is torn between wonderment and disgust at their decadence.
Reading Grimm's Fairy Tales, I found myself a little taken aback by a few things. Firstly, that although a number of the tales were a simply moral fable of virtue rewarded and malice punished (typically rather horribly) many of them are simply odes to raw will, rewarding poor protagonists with wealth irrespective of their crimes. Perhaps, this loss of clear patterning was what Gabriel Josipovici meant when he said that the tales "were transformed from tales told by speakers who were deeply convinced that they were true (whatever meaning one assigns to the term) into tales told by writers (Wilhelm Grimm, in effect)." Certainly, the attempt to forge a German nation out of independent states and to reject French conceptions of civilisation after Napoleon in favour of folk art and a Volksgeist. Germany was after all then a cluster of many rural kingdoms and tiny city-states. They possessed forty universities, no modern factories or far-flung colonies, but were united by a language and growing literature. Germany existed as an idea that hoped to become a nation so her poets and philosophers thought societies were shaped and driven by ideas - Christian, feudal, imperial and democratic ideas. Secondly, I hadn't expected to find a story like The Blue Lamp, featuring contrivances like jinis. Listening outside just now, I realised that the familiar sound of pigeons cooing was mingled with the stranger cries of seagulls. The other thing that struck me was how the tale of the princess kissing a frog does invert the normal gender roles of the prince rescuing the princess; more striking was The Nixie in the Pond where the wife must rescue her husband from a water-nymph.
Terry Gilliam's The Brothers Grimm, like The Village, is one of those films that is very difficult to assess in neutral and objective terms, leaving only the messy uncertainty of value judgements. It draws upon films like Sleepy Hollow in showing the reason of the enlightenment giving way to magic (albeit with slightly firmer historical ground; set in the time of the Napoleonic occupation of Germany, Kultur was indeed being advanced against le mission civilatrice).
The problem tends to be that Gilliam's imagination is fundamentally baroque rather than gothic (unlike Jordan's The Company of Wolves), and the number of comic grotesques as characters (even the two brothers come out like characters from Dickens) combined with flourishes like one of the children being turned into a ginger breadman sit rather uneasily with the imagery of the wolf filled forest coming to life or the ruined tower surrounded by tombs. One of the most striking scenes in the film shows a French general addressing a room full of dinner guests, only for the angle to shift and reveal that there are only a handful of guests with the rest being reflections in mirrors. Just as the evil queen is defeated by smashing the mirror containing her reflection the entire film has the sense that these things are but a playful conceit and will vanish like the illusions they are. Partly this is also due to the way the film insists upon the fictive status of what is happening; Briar Rose, Hansel and Gretel, Snow White, Rapunzel and Little Redcape are all clear sources as are a range of other works like Poe's Masque of the Red Death and Anderson's The Snow Queen.
I also went to see the latest film of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, based on the Dahl book I always used to love as a child. Roald Dahl's story can be best described as a sadistic fable; a story whose moral content is rather offset by the vicious glee with which cruel punishments are meted out to malefactors. Certainly, the moral content is rather restricted if we think of stories like his Tales of the Unexpected, where a wife kills her husband with a frozen leg of lamb and then disposes of the evidence by cooking it for the investigating police officers. Mostly, his stories are revenge fantasies, where suffering children are set free as the adults that oppressed them suffer especially vicious ends. Children always need the dark materials of fairy tales as a means of displacing feelings of anger, resentment, and powerlessness. Willy Wonka is more unusual in that it is the children that are mostly made to suffer for their crimes. I rather liked the introduction of a staple for Tim Burton films, the idea of a troubled hero haunted by memories of his father (see also Batman and Sleepy Hollow); the notion of a young Willy Wonka defying his father and naughtily eating sweets goes a long way to subduing the somewhat puritanical moralism on display elsewhere (the other children visiting the factory do rather resemble a list of the seven deadly sins). Returning home this evening, the clouds were particularly dark shades of grey and blue but the sun was still shying brightly and the stone of the nearby Polish church was glowing in the light against the blackening sky.
posted by Richard 7:03 AM
Monday, July 4, 2005
The day started with a visit to the small Guildhall art gallery, a modern building with walls cut from white stone and bizarre hexagonal doors. The gallery undercroft is the interesting part, containing a pre-raphaelite collection, mostly of classical subjects such as Tadema's The Pyrrhic Dance, Moore's Pomegranates (though the dwelling on a handful of colours were more reminiscent of Whistler) and Collier's Clytemnestra alongside more traditional pre-raphaelite works by Rossetti and Leighton as well as Constable's painting of Salisbury Cathedral and two Tissots. Some of the more obscure works, like Webb's painting of Mont St Michel were also surprisingly impressive. The paintings of London elsewhere in the museum were less interesting; mostly views of London painted from Greenwich when it was outside London altogether, showing the church spires and the monument unimpeded by other buildings, or of the demolition of the old London bridge and construction of the new. There was an odd symmetry with the second world war paintings, showing St Paul's towering over London once more as everything around it was destroyed. One especially vivid painting here was a painting by Charles Pears, showing a black Tower Bridge against a blood-red sky during an air-raid.
The basement of the gallery housed the ruins of a Roman amphitheatre, while after leaving I walked around an area that is home to a number of Wren and Hawksmoor's churches (St Mary-Le-Bow and St Margaret Lothbury) alongside the ruins of a Mithraeum and the site of London's Jewish ghetto. It's the type of vision that has so moved Peter Ackroyd, particularly in an area where the modern roads and buildings still trace the outlines of a much more ancient city. Leadenhall market is surprisingly beautiful for the city (a commerical cathedral built out of industrial gothic); more like Convent Garden than Smithfield. I still wonder what London would have been like if Wren or Soane had shaped the city as Cerda and Hausmann shaped theirs. For me, London is summed up by the Monument; a great testament to what Wren might have achieved, currently trapped, surrounded and dwarfed by the ugliest buildings London's financial district has to offer. I then crossed the Thames to Southwark Cathedral. After the grey spires north of the river, the honey coloured stone with its bleached white interior was a welcome relief. The church contains a tabernacle designed by Pugin alongside Tudor and medieval monuments (a particularly striking one for John Gower) that perfectly match Pugin's aesthetics.
Passing by the Golden Hinde I arrived at the Tate for the Frida Kahlo expiation. It was easy to see why Breton had liked Kahlo so much; where Dali remained christian her own brand of surrealism was both Freudian and Marxist. Ex-voto conventions are used to reflect this, typically with a total absence of subtlety (as well as the peculiar trait of being one's own muse, featuring herself in picture after picture). The mythology and symbolism of artists like Blake or even Dali cannot be reduced quite so easily to didacticism; conversely the fusion of Aztec, Christian and Eastern symbols is quite extraordinary. Even so, I still tended to think her most accomplished works were the portraits.
I've wondered in the past if the Globe theatre was not a rather distracting venue, that one went for the pageantry and the building as much as the performance, but of course all performances have some form of vision stamped on them and the Globe hardly seems any different in this respect to one where the sets and costumes of any other period have been imposed by a director. I was always struck by Camille Paglia's observation that she was always struck by the hostility of Shakespeare's prose, the bramble-like thickness of metaphor and simile, its resistance to interpretation. On the one hand, The Winter's Tale is all pattern and symmetry, cycles of death and birth being used to subdue chaos into order. On the other, the play leaves so much unsubdued; mostly obviously, the political elements of Leontes' unjust tyranny being brought low by a subject and that a woman, the redemption of the court through pastoral and the peculiar lacunae throughout the play; the suddenness of the king's jealousy, the death of Antigonus (ambushed by guerilla bears in this case) and the resurrection of Hermione. The performances were quite excellent, with an especially brilliant Prospero-like Paulina. The music for the performance was also rather fine, played on a range of period instruments from pipes to hurdy-gurdys. The seats were just to the side of the stage, which did give an excellent vantage point on the performance. As I left, the dark grey-blue clouds that had overcast the sky all day were counterpointed by the lights tinting the dome of St Paul's with the slightest blush of pink.
Travelling to Birmingham Botanical Gardens near Bournville, I was rather pleasantly surprised by how excellent the gardens are; comparable to gardens in some European capitals. The gardens included a conservatory with gardens with Mediterranean, sub-tropical and tropical houses (some interesting notes; figs are used to make a form of coffee in Austria and Bavaria, Dragon's blood was used as resin for violins). The gardens also had an aviary, holding Quaker parrots, tragedian pheasants and zebra finches. Peacocks stalked the grounds, with one peahen found hiding quietly beneath the shrubs in the historical gardens. These covered Tudor gardens (a knot garden with quince and catnip), Medieval gardens with wormwood and a Roman garden. A Japanese garden had a beautiful set of blue slates arranged to imitate a stream, alongside a bonsai collection. Kept behind bars in the interests of public safety, the trees ranged from Chinese juniper to English Elm. Elsewhere the grounds had a pinetum, woods (filled with tree ferns), rhododendron walks and a set of gardens based on paintings. The gardens based on Blake's Jacob's Ladder and Degas' Dancers were particularly noteworthy.
Nazism and romanticism are often considered as related concepts in their rejection of bourgeois society in favour of the heroic self and idealised visions of the past. In some cases, such as Lawrence and Nietzsche, notions of volk and imperialism were largely repugnant to them, effacing some of the more authoritarian elements of their work. In others such, as Wagner, Pound and Heidegger, it is considerably more difficult to effect any rehabilitation. One such case is the Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun a supporter of the Quisling government who openly wrote in support of Hitler. For instance, in Pan Hamsun contrasts the authentic self of his soldier protagonist, who lives alone in the woods with his dog as his sole companion, to the bourgeois Edvarda, who lives in society and marries a Swedish count.
Central to this joining of Nazism and romanticism was the distinction of gemeinschaft and geschellschaft, with Hamsun's novels typically depicting outcasts from a hypocritical bourgeois society; "I loathe your whole taxpayer's existence... I feel indignation rising within me like a rushing mighty win of the Holy Spirit." Heidegger sought from Nazism "a spiritual renewal of life in its entirety... Only a spiritual world gives the people the assurance of greatness.. and the spiritual world of a people...is the power that most deeply preserves the people's strengths, which are tied to earth and blood." Similarly, Nagel "couldn't understand what human beings would gain by having life stripped of all symbols, of all poetry," often speaking in parables, the fairy tales of a pagan christ. Influenced by Nietzsche, Hamsun's characters do not believe in god but continue to believe in a religious life, the same ambivalent relationship to religion that Nazism had.
But equally, his characters are deluded fantasists, inventors of falsehoods and contradictions. As one character says of Nagel in Mysteries; "I cannot figure out why you are turning yourself inside out for me." He himself speaks of his sudden jumps of thought, being a thinker who has never learned to think; "I admit I am a living contradiction." The vial of prussic acid he carries and his killing of a dog point to a dark aspect to his fantasies, parodying and mocking christ in the same way Nietzsche did. The element of romantic heroism is absent. Perhaps rather predictably, Hamsun's novels cannot easily be diminished to a set of unambiguous propositions. It seems flawed to analyse Hamsun's works for traces of Nazism when it was romantic culture, of which Hamsun was only one example, that acted to create Nazism. If the enlightenment is not viewed as being irredeemably tainted through its association with communism, it seems unfair not to grant romanticism the same benefit of the doubt. In practice, romanticism often acted as a necessary corrective to the extremes of other ideologies, a fact that should efface its own extremes a little.
Captain Cook's Voyages surprised me somewhat. Where nineteenth century explorers saw the world in terms of race and, increasingly, eugenics, eighteenth century notions of racial superiority revolved more closely around manners and morals, often in unusual ways. For example, cook notes that "the inhabitants of New Zealand are as modest and reserved in their behaviour as the most polite notions in Europe," comparing their tattoos with filigree work and admiring their crafts. As with almost any period of exploration attitudes bifurcate around a Hobbesian notion of savagery unredeemed by civilisation; "few consider what a savage man is in a natural state, and even after he is in some degree civilised" (noting that the New Zealanders live in a perpetual fear of being slaughtered by one another) and the notion of noble savagery; "so little does refinement or luxury promote happiness!" The most common complaint is of theft by the natives, but this equally applies to the description of the Dutch Governor of Batavia, depicted as a malevolent slum in comparison to the other islands Cook visits. Cook even complains of Dutch governance being oppressive when he frankly admits the intent to "deprive (them of their) kingdom and their liberties." The contradictions in the notion of liberal imperialism are far from new.Labels: England, History, Literature, London
posted by Richard 7:01 AM
Friday, May 13, 2005
Autumn and spring are my two favourite seasons and the most changeable. Summer and winter present largely unchanging extremes of weather that are both equally unwelcome in their own way. As the sun struggled to make its first appearance of the year yesterday I decided to visit Winchester, beginning with the Cathedral. Surrounded by a large park where the first cherry blossoms were emerging, snowdrop drifts were beginning to be displaced by crocuses and with gardens where medlar trees grow alongside the ruins of the Chapter House, the Cathedral combines the rather squat Norman architecture with the more fluid lines of the later Gothic perpendicular style. Inside, the north and south transepts particularly show the alien Norman influence, with roughly carved arches being supported by pillars stolen from Roman buildings (it is thought that the Normans were not sufficiently sophisticated to have produced them themselves). Overall, the Cathedral's interior is rather austere, with much of its decoration having been stripped out at either the time of the Reformation or the Commonwealth. Most of the present decoration, including various memorials and Kempe's stained glass is Victorian. Some murals have since been restored and several chantry chapels commemorating past Bishops remain wedged between arches, including one for a catholic Cardinal.
More oddly, niches on the retro-choir screen have been filled with a set of icons in the style of the Russian orthodox painter, Andrei Rublev (although two of the saints depicted, Birinus and Swithun, came from Dorchester and Winchester respectively). The Cathedral also has some more macabre oddities; such as a set of mortuary chests in the Presbytery for the Kings of Wessex; Alfred, Cnut, Egbert and the later William Rufus (apparently this was somewhat unwise, since the internment of his bones was followed with the tower falling down). I was then taken on a tour of the tower, proceeding up an extremely narrow spiral staircase, past the bell chamber and sound lantern to the tower. The view of Winchester was rather impressive, showing how the layout of the city was still recognisably medieval.
Following this I walked along Winchester's high street, past a statue of Alfred and the Victorian guildhall, to The Great Hall. The only surviving part of the original castle (destroyed by Cromwell; later plans for Wren to build Charles the Second a Versailles style palace nearby were rudely interrupted by the King's death), the Hall is most famed for the object displayed on the wall; a 13th century round table, painted in the Tudor period to depict the Arthur and twenty four of his knights. Immediately outside is Queen Eleanor's Garden, a recreation of the type of herbaria the castle would have had in the thirteenth century, including a fountain surmounted by a bronze falcon and a tunnel arbour. The plants are specific to the period; camomile lawn, bay hedges, Solomon's seal, iris, hyssop, hollyhock, lavender and so on. Finally, I walked up St Catherine's hill, former site of an iron-age hill fort, plague pits and the present site of a MizMaze. The hill offered a particularly good view of Winchester College and the Itchen flood plain.
Later, I went to visit Lichfield Cathedral. While Winchester's tower is rather squat and unobtrusive, Lichfield's three spires rise far above the town and across the expanse of Stowe pool. Where Winchester's white stones gleam in the sunlight, Lichfield's red sandstone has been blackened and weathered over the centuries. Rather appropriate really, given that the town's name is derived from 'field of the dead.' Accordingly, although the Cathedral is actually more recent than Winchester it gives every appearance of being significantly older. The structure is gothic, modified by George Gilbert Scott, with stained glass by Kempe (I've always particularly admired the window showing the reconstruction of the Cathedral after the Civil War) sitting alongside sixteenth century stained glass in the Lady Chapel. I was somewhat surprised to note another icon, this time of Saint Chad in that chapel, presumably having been created by the same artist (Chad's skull was displayed in an adjacent chapel). Accordingly, much of the Cathedral is essentially high-gothic, though there are some survivals from earlier period; murals whitewashed in the civil war can be seen in the Chapter House where the Lichfield Gospels reside.
Charlecote Park is a largely Tudor house by the river Avon with some later additions; a reconstructed box garden on the front lawn competes with a Capability Brown designed landscape with cedar trees while Jacob sheep graze. The interior is largely notable for its collection of objects from Fonthill abbey; Indian ebony chairs, beds and Chinese Lacquer cabinets mostly. The family seem to have had a taste for the exotic; more than a few paintings of satyrs grace the walls. As is often for these houses, the Tudor collides with other periods; walls covered in damask and furnished with marquetry furniture, a Great Hall whose window is filled with an eighteenth century alabaster fount complete with doves. Returning, I called at St Mary's Church in Warwick. Rather oddly, the tower of the church ends in a follow gateway where pedestrians can pass under. Much of the rest of the church was redesigned in the eighteenth century and represents a peculiar attempt to build a neo-classical church; urns grace the summit of the walls rather than gargoyles while the windows are gently curved rather than being filled with quatrefoils.
Following this, I returned to Kedleston. I'd been there many years ago and it had struck me as extremely austere and cold. To some extent, this impression still persists. Placed in Derbyshire with its attendant poor weather, the structure is defiantly neo-classical. Its front imitates Constantine's arch, the entire building being based on a Palladio design. The entrance hall replicates the atrium of a Roman villa, while the saloon is modelled on the pantheon. Much of this was designed as a temple of the arts rather than a house and I quickly found the impressions of my earlier self being confirmed. More interesting was the church, whose wall was mounted with a sundial and skulls to reflects man's mortality (with an execrable pun on 'sun dial' and 'soon die all'). More interesting was the exhibition of Kedleston acquisitions from his time as Indian viceroy, including Indian ivory and silverwork, Tibetan bronzes and Chinese lacquerwork. The interior has two wooden lids in the floor; lifted up they reveal stone faces of a medieval Lord and Lady Kedleston.
I went to Silchester recently, spending a few hours there and walking around the walls. Not an especially sunny day though, as with Avebury, the ruins do acquire an oddly forbidding aspect when the sunlight falls away. Formerly an important Iron-age and Roman town, little now remains besides the walls and an amphitheatre. I hadn't visited at this time of year before, and I noticed that bluebells were beginning to come into flower in the woods while the meadow was covered with dandelions. One afternoon later that week saw a heavy April shower. When it stopped raining, the sky was still swathed in dark clouds but the sun was very bright. In consequence, one of the most vivid rainbows I've ever seen plunged down from the storm clouds to light up the ground.
Later, I went to visit Mottisfont Abbey. This has actually been a house since the reformation but a cellarium and various surviving arches date back to the medieval period. Stylistically, the house is as much a patchwork as The Vyne, with the redbrick front retaining some Tudor features but the back and flanking wings being in a more downcast eighteenth century style. I particularly liked the parterre garden in front of the house, planted with blue hyacinths and white tulips, with bluebells and wisteria growing nearby. Rooks cawed in the nearby trees. Oddly, a modern mosaic appears in a niche between walls nearby, showing a orthodox icon (in reality the socialite that owned the house) The rest of the grounds also have several tulips displays in black, purple and white with red stripes. Plane trees line the grounds, many of them with mistletoe growing from their branches. The inside is a more nondescript eighteenth century affair, enlivened by some striking trompe l'oeil from the thirties, recasting the drawing room as a gothic palace like Walpole's Strawberry Hill. The illusion is rather well conceived, even down to a paint pot and brush drawn onto one shelf. Elsewhere, the house had a surprisingly good collection of modern art, ranging from Degas and Vuillard to Lowry (some dark but surprisingly naturalistic landscapes) and the Bloomsbury group (a particularly fine country scene from Duncan Grant with an obvious debt to Cezanne).
The following day, I returned to West Wycombe, where I was finally able to climb the hill (earlier the site of an iron age fort) and then the tower of Saint Lawrence's Church. The church itself proved surprisingly ornate inside (modelled on the Temple of Palmyra), with Corinthian columns drawing the eye up to the frescos on the ceiling. The yellow Palladian buildings at Wycombe finally seemed to take on the proper Italianate aspect in the sunlight (though I suspect Palladio was not given to using flint as a building material). The grounds seemed mostly covered in an odd combination of yew and willow while some caged parrots competed with nearby rooks. I also went to Grey's Court. This is a Jacobean house, with a rather nondescript eighteenth century interior; more interesting were the grounds with orchards and knot gardens surrounding the ruins of the original manor. The grounds are strewn with follies like a Chinese bridge and a modern miz-maze with an astrolabe at its centre. Nearby was beech woodland, where the sunlight set the leaves aflame as it fell down on the bluebells below.
Arriving in London, I briefly visited Tate Modern, dwelling on Klein and Rothko's brooding canvases, Braque and Kandinsky's cubism and the surrealism of Magritte. Having since visited the Trade Fair Palace in Prague, I'm inclined to take an increasingly dim view of Tate Modern; it's thematic arrangements of paintings increasingly seems to disguise a rather thin collection. Passing on, I walked past the Houses of Parliament to Tate Britain, for its exhibition of paintings by Turner, Whistler and Monet. "All art," wrote Walter Pater, "aspires to the condition of music," a hypothesis reinforced by Whistler's appropriation of musical terminology to mark his rejection of realism in favour of aestheticism. The exhibition accordingly presents a problem for the writer in its rejection of the concrete, leaving only the subjective and inchoate. The essential difficult lies in seeing Turner placed alongside two artists that refined his impressionism (arguably he would have gained more by being placed alongside his own contemporaries), the serenity of Whistler's nocturnes on the one hand and the convulsive explosions of colour proffered by Monet. Where Turner's serial paintings of the destruction of the Houses of Parliament all appear essentially similar, Monet's serial paintings of the same landscape always seem different.
I went to see The Downfall, a film that chronicles the fall of Berlin, counterpointing the fate of the pulverised city's inhabitants with the parties and dinners in Hitler's bunker. The Downfall has been the cause of much comment that connects it to 'normalisierung' novels like Crabwalk by Gunther Grass or other works like The Natural History of Destruction by WG Sebald. These are attempts to reconsider the second world war, noting the atrocities committed by the British, such as the bombing of Dresden (the type of subject where the British have never truly admitted culpability) and the suffering of German civilians.
To a large extent, such comments seem incorrect. While not depicting a caricature, the essential gist of the portrayal of Hitler is to show him as a deluded maniac, often barely seeming human. Blind obedience and fanaticism figure strongly as a lethal combination. Where the comments have more force is the portrayal of the military and those around Hitler. Although it is certainly known that a gulf over military strategy existed between the German government and its military (probably for the Wehrmacht and Navy, certainly not for the SS officers in the film), the portrayal of them as simply loyal and diligent in obeying orders seems to go unnecessarily far in exculpating them. Wilhelm Mohnke, seen pleading to arrest the needless slaughter of troops had no such compunctions concerning the British troops he massacred at Dunkirk. Dr Ernst-Günter Schenck appears a humanitarian throughout, but such compassion was never lavished on the concentration camp victims he experimented on. Traudl Junge is seen as innocent of politics, though in reality Nazism had shaped much of her life. The tendency is to see the German people as victims of Hitler rather than as agents (although Goerring becomes the unlikely spokesmen for the view that the German people had at least colluded in their fate and a coda at the end sees the actual Traudl Junge speaking of how she had come to realise that she should have been more alive to what the Third Reich had been doing rather than denying her culpability). Nonetheless, it still seems difficult not to feel that Claus von Stauffenberg deserved to be described as a victim more than many of the film's characters.
My view of the film is as such ambivalent to say the least; the film does derive much of its disturbing and powerful effect from a refusal to deal in moral absolutes in one of the very few places where they can hardly be said to seem unwarranted. As I left, a girl seated behind me was crying. "The madness" she said through the tears, "The madness."
Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse presents an interesting cocktail of what could (uncharitably) be called champagne existentialism. The narrator is an uncertain centre who confesses that in a month she would have been differing opinions on subjects, a device that allows Sagan to critique existentialism. Given a choice between being-in-itself and being-for-oneself, no decision can be made. One choice would destroy the hedonism upon which the lives of Cecile and her father depend. The other would destroy what would save them from that hedonism. Her own nausea cannot be overcome.
Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty left me with certain doubts as to whether the social novel is as meaningful a vehicle now as it was for the Victorians. The social novel carried with it a number of assumptions that sit poorly with modern ideas. For instance, ideas on social homogeneity (uniting 'the two nations') that don't coincide with more modern ideas on individualism or multi-culturalism, or on the social basis for character that began to seem difficult after Freud. My general conclusion is that to a large extent, the description of it as a social novel is entirely accurate. The main character certainly does allude to Trollope's The Way We Live Now and there are certain comparisons; the novel depicts a broad swathe of nineteen eighties society and depicts the transition of conservatism from being a party of the landed gentry to being a party of upstart magnates. However, novels like The Spoils of Poynton or The Picture of Dorian Gray seem more apposite comparisons (though it is difficult to see the novel as a moral fable; the crude moralisations of upper class conservatives are typically treated with disdain. Self's Dorian might accordingly be a better parallel). Where a Victorian social novel would have shown how different parts of society were inextricably joined, Hollinghurst deliberately emphasises the divisions of an increasingly atomised society, as the main character's homosexuality clashes with both his middle-class background and the upper-class milieu he has become accustomed to. Where a Victorian social novel would have had events like the stock market crash serve as a central deus ex machina, such things are often little more than background here.
Some time ago I came across a book called Herland in a secondhand bookshop. I had not heard of it previously, but was familiar with the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman from her short story The Yellow Wallpaper. Reading it yesterday, it proved to be a utopian fantasy in the vein of News from Nowhere or Erewhon, founded on both feminist and socialist principles. In common with many other nineteenth century utopian novels, it seems more than a little disturbing today, combining incompatible adaptations of both Marxism and Darwinism (I suspect 'Galtonism' might be a better term in the latter case, if less recognisable).
On the one hand, the novel suggests that through "the most prolonged and careful selection and exclusion" cats could be bred that did not threaten birds and that criminal tendencies in the population could be bred out by simply not permitting anyone with such propensities to breed. Much of the novel attributes the superiority of Herland civilisation simply to the absence of any males in the society, thereby eliminating tendencies towards aggression and struggle. In this sense, Herland is little different from the fantasy depicted in The Time Machine, where the classes have evolved into differing species. After all, Wells found Fabian socialism eminently compatible with advocacy of select breeding; "I believe, that now and always the conscious selection of the best for reproduction will be impossible; that to propose it is to display a fundamental misunderstanding of what individuality implies. The way of nature has always been to slay the hindmost, and there is still no other way, unless we can prevent those who would become the hindmost being born. It is in the sterilization of failure, and not in the selection of successes for breeding, that the possibility of an improvement of the human stock lies."
However, it simultaneously dismisses genetics in favour of a view weighted heavily towards the blank slate. During a discussion of the genetic diversity shown by the Herlander in spite of being parthenogenetic, two characters discuss the matter; "But acquired traits are not transmissible... Weissman has proved that... If that is so then our improvement must be solely due to mutation or to education." In fact, education is what is stressed throughout; "however children differed at birth, the real growth lay later - through education." It is in short, the same view of nature that was to be inverted in the twentieth century's dystopias; "You are imagining that there is something called human nature which will be outraged by what we do and will turn against us. But we create human nature. Men are infinitely malleable." (George Orwell, 1984). But Herland also implies that the reactions of the three protagonists to Herland is a deeply ingrained one that proves not to be susceptible to any amount of re-education. Gilman's notions of human nature appear confused at best; the Herlanders react with horror and revulsion to what they hear of male civilisation but also find the prospect of visiting it enthralling and show blindnesses to its worst aspects. The Herlanders reject male society on the one hand, but are enthused at the prospect of abandoning parthenogenetic reproduction.
Melville's White-Jacket is in many respects a political allegory, drawing repeated parallels between shipboard life and social unrest elsewhere; "were it not for these regulations a man of war's crew would be nothing but a mob, more ungovernable than.. George Gordon... bowing to naval discipline afloat, yet ashore, he was a stickler for the rights of man and the liberties of the world." The navy are persistently held to account by the standards of the Declaration of Independence; "it is no limited monarchy where the commons have the right to petition... vesting in him the authority to scourge, comform(ing) in spirit to the territorial laws of Russia, which is ruled by an autocrat... for him our revolution was in vain; to him our Declaration of Independence was a lie." Meville notes its rigid social hierarchies and its treatment of sailors in the same manner as slaves are treated on the plantations. However, it seems awkward to place it in the category of realist fiction. It restricts itself to a narrow setting away from society, as much as the novels of William Golding. By contrast, Twain's Life on the Mississippi depicts the entire social strata along the river from the boats to the towns. Pioneer myths are dismantled by reference to the economic cycles that changed Westward expansion, while the genuine myths of the Indians are treated with scorn. Conversely, Melville's text is alive with metaphorical references to myth and history. Some of these are political (to Jews in Rome or the Saxons under William the Conqueror), other mythological (the sailors compared to Bacchanals), but all serve to point beyond the immediacies of the social fabric. Equally, the symbolic resurrection of the narrator with the demise of his hated white jacket seems to point to the metaphysical concerns of Coleridge's albatross or the similar death and resurrection in Moby Dick. The text points beyond itself but seems uncertain as to what.
A friend said a while back that she had been reading Golding's Lord of the Flies and had thought that the groups in it had seemed far too reasonable and well organised; to a modern reader, the descent into violence is less surprising than the order that preceded it. I made the point that it the time of writing, society and the education system were considerably more hierarchised and deferential, so I wouldn't be surprised that the groups initially seemed quite ordered. Similarly, I might not find the chaos and death unpredictable but this book was written in a somewhat more genteel age that lacked the benefit of having heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment. On the other hand, it is difficult to deny that Lord of the Flies may have dated somewhat. So, while reading two of Golding's other novels, The Spire and Pincher Martin, I was interested to see whether they would fare better. On the whole, I think they do.
It's often the case that an author's most famous work isn't their most interesting or even their best, and this certainly appears the case with Golding. Reading Pincher Martin I was struck by how little an equivalent to Meville's vision of the world outside impinges on what is a remarkably endogenous system. Pincher Martin is a form of inverted Robinson Crusoe, as much as Lord of the Flies is an inverted version of Ballantyne's Coral Island or The Swiss Family Robinson. Where the latter is humanistic and pragmatic, the former is anti-humanistic and even nihilistic. Golding sees human will in the same terms of Schopenhauer, as a form of violence and even rebellion against god. The extinction of the self in submission is his preference. Similarly, in The Spire, the construction of a spire on a cathedral lacking substantial foundations (the spire sounds like Salisbury, the details on collapsing towers and weak foundations sound like Winchester) proves a form of violent arrogance that corresponds to a psychomachia within Dean Jocelyn. Murders and deaths follow the construction.
I also went to a performance of Handel's Alexander's Feast. This was rather odd work is ostensibly an ode to the christian patron saint of music, Cecilia, but this does sit rather awkwardly alongside its main narrative of music's ability to inspire both love and destruction (recasting the firing of Persepolis in the same terms as the fall of the Troy). The concert was in a nearby church, replete with suitable Victorian high church gothic accoutrements, which made for an excellent setting. On the whole the performance was rather good, with the soprano especially standing out.
Reading Xenophon's The Persian Expedition and Arrian's The Campaigns of Alexander, it occurred to me that much of Edward Said's theories of Orientalism was as applicable to the opposition of Greek and Persian as it was to the opposition of Christian and Islamic. Said argued that imperialism had its scholarly corollary in Orientalism; "But this has often happened with the "orient", that semi-mythical construct which since Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in the late 18th century has been made and remade countless times... Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilise, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort." It's a Foucauldean view, by which the construction of discourse determines power relations, though allowing some humanistic conception of how discourse can also challenge such monolithic views. Similarly, it has been argued that the period between Homer and Sophocles witnessed the invention of the barbarian, a response to conflicts with Persia. For example, in The Persian Expedition Xenophon sees Persia in the same terms Spenser describes the bower of bliss; "if we once to learn to live a life of ease and luxury... then we might be like the Lotus Eaters and forget the way home... to demonstrate to the Greeks that their poverty is of their own choosing." This discourse of Eastern decadence and effeminacy (also seen to some extent in Homer's portrayal of Paris, and in Plutarch's description of the Persian king Surena; "his beauty had a kind of feminine quality which did not exactly fit in with his reputation for physical courage") was to persist until its inversion in the modern period. Persia is a mirror of Greece, its equal and opposite; it is only in Ukraine (Mossynoici) that they encounter something alien, described as being completely removed from Greece.
For Xenophon, Persia's decadence was an effect of the wealth and power of a state far stronger than fragmented and weak Greece, in spite of the efficiency of the Greek Hoplites against the Persian military (the lawless Greek pillagers are in most respects the Barbarians). Following the failure of Athenian democracy, Xenophon clearly admires both Sparta and Persia. For Arrian, the pattern is quite different, with Greece unified under Macedonian dictatorship. His narrative accordingly commences with the destruction of Thebes and the massacre of its inhabitants with the subjugated Greeks later found fighting for Persia against Alexander and his biographer Callisthenes killed for advocating tyrannicide. By contrast, in Persia "he dispossessed the ruling classes and established popular government in their place." Unsurprisingly, a hollow note enters into much of what follows; "our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon have for generations been trained in the hard school of danger and war." As invasion passes into occupation, Alexander increasingly adopted Persian dress and customs, admitting subjugated peoples into his armies to fuel further conquest. Arrain certainly seems to interpret this as evidence of tyranny rather than tolerance; "Alexander came to allow himself to emulate Eastern extravagance and splendour, and the fashion of barbarian kings of treating their subjects as inferiors " For both Arrian and Xenophon Persia represents an odd combination of partly admired and tyranny and reviled decadence.
The essential theme of The Man Who Became Sherlock Holmes: The Tortured Mind of Jeremy Brett is that Brett's portrayal of Holmes as lethargic and blazing with energy by turns was to a large extent informed by his own manic depression. It further suggests that Brett strove so hard to become Holmes that his depression was provoked by the character. It's not unusual for actors to see themselves as being empty, a brass rubbing of the parts they play, but the notion that Brett was otherwise rather gregarious still seems slightly fanciful. The book does have a number of diverting anecdotes though; such as Brett's visit to the tomb of the figure Doyle based Hugo Baskerville on (an especially large granite slab had been placed over the grave to prevent anything escaping) and of Doyle's irritation at the burglar of his house being caught by the police rather than through his own deductions. One of the more striking details is of a play Brett appeared in that suggested Moriarty was simply a figment of the Holmesian imagination. After all, no-one other than Holmes saw Moriarty. With Holmes such an isolated figure (Watson's function is after all to tether Holmes to a world of the everyday that he is otherwise utterly disconnected from), it hardly seems surprising that he would have the need for a figure who was his equal and opposite.Labels: Art, England, Film, History, Literature
posted by Richard 6:56 AM
Monday, January 3, 2005
The Lady Lever art gallery is a particularly idiosyncratic collection covering pre-raphaelite painting, Roman sculpture, Wedgewood pottery, Chinese porcelain and assorted design pieces. The collection dwells on the fantastic and exotic, reflecting its role in advertising Sunlight soap (after all, it is difficult to think of an equivalent collection that did not emerge from an aristocratic background); on the whole, I found it difficult to think any worse of it for this. Most of the pre-raphaelite painting is quite well known (Rossetti's The Blessed Damozel, Alma-Tadema's The Tepidarium, Holman Hunt's The Scapegoat, Millais's Sir Isumbras at the Ford,) but there some good pieces that are less well known (Leighton's The Daphnepohoria, Madox Brown's Cromwell on his Farm), as well as some interesting pieces by more obscure Victorian painters (Etty's Prometheus). Some of the sculpture was also quite exceptional, such as Onslow Ford's Snowdrift. The Wedgewood collection was surprisingly interesting, containing a number of Wedgewood's experiments beyond the more familiar jasperware (as with the Portland and Borghese vases), to imitate Egyptian designs and Greek red figure ceramics with encaustic black basalt. The authentic classical collection covers Attic ceramics (including a black figure Psykter showing a Dionysiac revel) and Roman sculpture (including a statue of Antinous and busts of various emperors, especially dwelling on Hadrian for some unknown reason). The Chinese collection ranged from Kangxi period (including blue and white prunus blossom jars to famille noire vases) to Qing dynasty jade vases and Ming dynasty cloisonne enamel.
The surrounding village of Port Sunlight itself is a model village designed to house Lord Lever's factory workers. Though a benevolent project, its rather hard not to feel a little uncomfortable in the place, which seems too geometrical, too designed and too neat. The homogeneity is unsetting and unreal, emphasised by the obsolescence of its industrial feudalism. Though the buildings were designed by thirty different architects the arts & crafts style is consistent throughout (though it does jar awkwardly with the austere Lutyens-style classicism of the gallery and war memorial) with the doors still being painted the same colour on each street. As a rural idyll it is decidedly hyperreal.
The collection of Futurist art at the Estorick collection is housed in an unprepossessing building, where the spire of the Union Chapel can be seen from behind the metal sculptures and plants in the back garden. The collection is largely concerned with changing ideas of time and space In EM Forster's Howard's End Helen Schlegel finds the speed of travelling in a car disorientating, causing a loss of a sense of space (Forster describes how the landscape appears to congeal as the car gets up to speed). The advent of high-speed transportation radically changed perceptions of both of these, with much of futurism seeking to create a more dynamic concept of art that recognise this, as with Carra's Hand of the Violinist where multiple hands can be seen simultaneously; "Time and Space died yesterday," as Marinetti put it. In the case of flight (the current exhibition dwells on aeropainting), this was combined with an art-deco machine-aesthetic, again as with Marinetti's elevation of the motor car as art above the Victory of Samothrace.
The current Aeropainting exhibition ranges from Crali's vertiginous Nose Diving on the City with its jagged edges to the more organic lines of Tato's paintings. One disturbing suggestion is the linkage of these paintings with Guernica and the Blitzkrieg against East Europe, respectively. Certainly, in some cases propaganda is clearly apparent, with one painting showing the planes as christian crosses. Although futurism was closely linked with fascism (not least in its glorification of war and a military aesthetic) fascism itself diverged into forms of expression better suited to an establishment (becoming more Catholic and neo-classical) and it seems somewhat harsh to read most of these paintings in such terms. The aesthetic behind them might well be disturbingly militaristic, but on the whole, there is little that is directly political about them. With all that said, it does come as a relief to come across Modigliani's Dr Francois Brabander.
The Royal Academy's Turks exhibition covers successive imperial states and nomadic Turkic tribes that went to the form the basis of the Ottoman Empire and modern Turkey; beginning with the Central-Asian Uighur tribes, Iranian Seljuks, Mongolian Timurids through to the creation of the Ottoman dynasty itself. This combination of cultural and religious influences from an area that represented the central axis of the silk road, produced a varied and rich number of decorative arts. In the Uighur period, Chinese silk painting was emulated, the Seljuks produced extraordinarily intricate woodwork (wooden doors and Koran stands arranged in arabesque patterns) and metalwork (especially elaborate lamps and mirrors where the back is decorated in cursive or geometrical Kufic scripts) and textiles (carpets showing stylised birds and dragons; the latter being endemic in Ottoman art, from candleholders and doorknockers to Chinese-style dragon paintings), while in the Timurid period the illuminated manuscripts and calligraphy of Herat and Samarkand far outstripped those of medieval Europe.
This engagement with the East was to continue, as with the adoption of Mamelak Egyptian Koran caskets and the imitation of Ming porcelain to produce Iznik pottery with its serrated leaves and lotus blossoms. Ottoman attempts to 'improve' Ming porcelain by adding gold and jewels go a considerably long way to reassuring all concerned that the Ottoman Empire did indeed deserve its reputation for tastelessness. However, by this point Ottoman Turkey began to engage with the West as much as the East. Although all of the other works in the exhibition have been decorative arts, the Ottoman section begins with Bellini's portrait of Sultan Mehmed the Second. By this point, the European use of oils and shading to achieve perspective had already outclassed Islamic rivals; there is something odd about comparing Bellini's utterly European portraits with Ottoman attempts to produce the same effect in traditional stylised poses (the holding of flowers while sitting cross-legged). It's also somewhat incongruous that this cultural engagement went hand in hand with the point where the Ottoman Empire began to engage with Europe in a more direct fashion; through the invasion of Constantinople and much of the East of Europe. However, as with the difference between Venetian and Ottoman painting, the Empire was already being left behind as Western Europe explored trade routes that did not rely on the silk road.
Amongst the exhibition's curiosities are a medieval computer; a geomantic engine where soil proceeded through a set of what we would call logic gates to produce the desired divination. Similarly, if a dice was rolled a book of divinations could be used to look up precisely what this portended (rather like a Tibetan prayer wheel, I suppose). Any observation that a culture's most bizarre relics can usually be expected from its religions can probably be taken as read.
Ogier Ghislan of Busbecq was Habsburg ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, a period when the Ottomans controlled most of Eastern Europe and the Middle East. With the Ottomans closely allied to the French and constantly making incursions into Hapsburg territory, Busbecq was sent to negotiate improved terms. However, progress was slow and uncertain, with much of his Turkish Letters consists of his observations on matters antiquarian, numismatic and botanical (Busbecq appears to have introduced Tulip bulbs into Europe; though the Turkish taste in such flowers bore little resemblance to the modern version).
His attitudes towards the Ottomans are rather schizophrenic, fearing its order, discipline and military supremacy while describing it as backward and primitive (with surprisingly little sense of the apparent contradiction). On the one hand, the Turks had a highly disciplined standing army; "on their side, the resources of a mighty empire, strength unimpaired, experience and practice and fighting, a veteran soldiery, habituation to victory, endurance of toil, unity, order, discipline.. on our side is public poverty, private luxury, impaired strength, broken spirit, lack of endurance and training; the soldiers are insubordinate, the officers avaricious, there is contempt for discipline, licence, recklessness, drunkenness and debauchery are rife." It seems a somewhat odd judgement; in practice most of the wars that were to come resulted in stalemate (excepting the seizure of Cyprus), though it would be another hundred years before the Ottoman decline would begin. To take the example, of technology, Busbecq himself cites the Ottoman refusal to adopt clocks (as it would undermine the authority of the muezzin), the printing press and the destruction of Ottoman forces by a smaller European force armed with rifles. Equally, Busbecq portrays Ottoman society as meritocratic rather than hereditary; something of a distortion from someone whose illegitimacy had left him shut out from the upper echelons of the Hapsburg aristocracy.
Some counterbalance can be found in Busbecq's depiction of the Turks as backward barbarians. Though the ruins of Christian Constantinople do provoke an outburst against the Infidel from him, his outlook is essentially rationalistic rather than religious, characterising the Turks as superstitious and easily swayed by auguries and omens (though he doesn't seem entirely immune from such matters himself). He ascribes to the Turks a form of fatalism attributable to their religion; "they are persuaded that the time and manner of each man's death is inscribed by god on his forehead; if therefore he is destined to die, it is useless for him to try to avert his fate," citing a sanguine approach to containing the plague (the number of fatalities a day shocking Busbecq) as an example. On the other hand, when a Turkish official expresses the view that all men of piety are likely to be rewarded with salvation, Busbecq does not hesitate to condemn the view as blasphemous (perhaps somewhat oddly; the idea is present in Dante and can hardly have been an entirely alien concept); though he condemns Turkish oppression of the Greek and Hungarian peoples, the Ottomans still appear to have been more tolerant than christendom would have been.
Shugborough's gardens and estates are pleasant enough for a variety of reasons, most obviously the follies dotted throughout its grounds; a temple of the winds, a victory gate, a Chinese pagoda and a romantic ruin. But I was more interested in the Shepherd's Monument, a structure that depicts a Poussin painting with an encoded inscription beneath it; interpretations of its meaning relate to heretical sects that denied christ's divinity, the Templars and the grail and to Latin love poetry. Elsewhere, Middleton Hall, is an odd building surrounded by a moat and trees on two of its sides and gardens on the other two. The buildings are a hodgepodge ranging from Tudor to Georgian. I saw it covered with snow and with red squirrels playing on its front lawn. More forlorn is Bradgate Hall, the ruin of a Tudor palace now surrounded by open parkland with only a hilltop folly for company. Food cooked: Partridges and grapes, Chicken with black fruit stuffing, Persian duck with pomegranates, Moretum, Chicken and bacon in Tokay, Hungarian chicken in wine, Catalan Paella del Mar, Elizabethan chicken with sack mead, thai chicken legs, chicken Baltic, Hungarian cherry soup, prawn and crayfish laksa, Swedish fish and potato casserole, Moroccan pigeon pie, German pork and sausage casserole, white chocolate cheesecake with blueberries, Catalan chicken with figs, cherry and pomegranate khoresh, milanese risotto, chicken biryani, Singapore noodles, Corsican stew, baklava, Hungarian lamb with pickle sauce, chicken foo yung, chicken satay, Himmel und Erde, chicken tikka masala, Italian vinegar poached chicken with gnocchi.
Down south, I spent the day in Oxford, first climbing both St Michael's & Carfax Towers and gazing out over Oxford's rooftops and weather vanes (rather reminded me all of the viewing platforms from Prague's towers, particularly with the medieval clock on Carfax Tower; not unlike Prague's Horologe) and then going to the University and Pitt Rivers Museums. I love the iron forest canopy that makes up the University Museum, especially with various whalebone jaws propped against the pillars. The effect of walking into the main hall with its glass ceiling is more like one of Kew's palm houses than the London Natural History Museum. I was especially struck by the faked dragon embryo; as it suggested such a creature would be quite difficult to categorise (opposable thumbs more typical of mammals, and a combination of wings and limbs more typical of insects). Equally, I love the clutter of the Pitt Rivers and the totem pole that dominates the interior of the hall. Finally, I went walking amidst the emerging snowdrops and crocuses from the parks. The idea of a genetic garden to plant hybridised species alongside their forebears is a rather interesting one; it'll be worth coming back when more of the plants are in full leaf.
The QI bookshop in Oxford is based upon the excellent idea that the books are arranged by abstract themes rather than the usual classification by genre. As such, the themes included 'Ice,' 'Sea,' 'Bohemia' and 'Watching.' Since the usual divisions between specialisms were absent you found that a heading like 'The Big Picture' would include Milton's Paradise Lost, Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach and Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. I thought these serendipitous connections between works that would otherwise have been on completely different shelves was rather engaging; perhaps the Radcliffe Camera should be re-ordered.
Recently, the sun was shining and the sky was blue, while a sudden snow shower drifted down to the ground. With odd meteorology like this, I wonder why people find the English obsession with the weather to be so unusual. I'm always struck by how snow makes the familiar unfamiliar, making every leaf stand out, making one's own footprints tangible. The presence of newly opened daffodils and crocuses only accentuated this even more. A watery and pale sun struggled to make its presence felt
in a clouded sky. One morning I found myself face to face with a fox (presumably in search of food amidst the cold). I'd never been this close to one before, and though it wasn't an especially dramatic encounter (it simply stood still, meeting my stare, until the cold persuaded me to go inside) it was wonderful to see such an impressive creature.
Reading The Motorcycle Diaries I had much the same reaction as I had to the film. Che's mestizo nationalism has racism at its centre; "Anglo-Saxon immigrants in Chile do not mix, so preserving the purity of the indigenous race... the pure expression of the most powerful indigenous race in the Americas still clean of contact with a conquering civilisation... the African race who have maintained their racial purity." However, Che is not consistent about this - he heaps praise on the Spanish general Validivia for his will to total authority, also striking an unpleasantly fascist tone.
Baudelaire's On Wine and Hashish makes an excellent reading of DeQuincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. Where DeQuincey is concerned with a Kantian dialectic between reason and emotion, the ability of the mind to intuit the infinite rather than itself. By contrast, Baudelaire's concerns are more firmly materialistic and indeed visceral, as Benjamin put it "Baudelaire placed the shock of experience at the very centre of his artistic work" For much of the time, Baudelaire's language is as mystical or transcendentalist as that of DeQuincey or James; "the proportions of time and being are distorted by the innumerable multitude and intensity of sensations and ideas... you have cast your personality to the four winds of heaven." However, in many respects, his concerns are not with ethics or with mystical experience but with something more utilitarian; the transformation of authentic experience into a commodity; "what indeed is the point of working, ploughing writing, producing anything at all, when you can paradise at a stroke?.. enthusiasm and will-power are sufficient to raise him to supernatural existence... incapable of work, action or energy." As such, DeQuincey was concerned about solipsism, truth is not of concern to Baudelaire. He is instead concerned that if hashish simply opens up inner experiences then it represents a failure of will to be unable to access them without the use of artificial means; "a magic mirror in which man is invited to see himself.. the abyss by which he may admire his face like Narcissus... hashish reveals to the individual nothing but the individual himself." Benjamin suggested that Baudelaire was concerned with the commoditisation of culture and certainly such metaphors as "selling himself wholesale" recur. Marx supplants Kant.
I've described Orhan Pamuk as an existentialist mystic before and Black Book would add 'semiotician' to that list. Reality in the novel emerges as a form of text, where the link between signifier and signified is the key to a form of transcendental reality; "the world was not a place that yielded its secrets right-off, that it swarmed with secrets, and that in order to comprehend the secrets it was necessary to comprehend the mystery of letters," to see clues in things like in a detective novel. But equally Galip "despised the way he couldn't live without narratives...there was no room in this world for signs, clues, secrets and mysteries." Interpretation becomes a subjective affair; "he might get lost between these interpretations." Between solipsism and mysticism pamuk seeks a via media "realms unavailable to the 'objective and subjective styles' is the third voice: the dark persona, the dark style!" Reality becomes a narrative the characters can rewrite and reinvent, but only through a glass darkly. The novel accordingly teems with the imagery of darkness, literal and figurative in place of the white of Snow; "these dark, black, pitch-black pages." Peering through the darkness is far from easy, as with the Bektasi alchemists unaware their acolytes were Marxist-Leninists; "whichever realm was successful in seeing the world as an equivocal, mysterious place that swarmed with secrets got the better of the other."
In part, intertextuality counts as a means of rewriting reality; "he was being drawn into a world that was unintentionally transformed into a fairytale... the man in the street began to lose his authenticity because of these damn moves that came in canisters from the West." Cultural identity, is driven into the darkness like the ships at the bottom of the Bosphorus or the puppetmaker's figures in the tunnels. However, as with the narrative of the westernised Sultan, there is no identity without emulation; "we are also affected by those who have a distinctive personality and command our respect because we unconsciously begin emulating them.. I was unable to be myself," just as much as Galip becomes Jelal or the journalist becomes Proust (and the same reason Galip will not spend time in the Anglicised world of Ruya's detective novels); "No-one can ever be himself in this land!.. I am someone else therefore I am."
Peter Ackroyd's biography of London reminded me of an argument I had heard that histories dedicated to cross-period thematic approaches were eroding more scholarly works limited by their period. Certainly, Ackroyd approaches London as if it were a text to be interpreted, using literary criticism as much as non-fictional historical sources. He discusses London as a city dominated by symbols and theatricality, where the division between such things and the real is not clear (I was especially struck by his citing an example of Conan Doyle's The Man with the Twisted Lip being used as the basis for a begging career by one middle-class professional). In particular, much of the biography recalls Ackroyd's discussion of Blake and in particular Blake's dictum that without contraries there can be no progression. Accordingly, a chapter on noise is followed by a chapter on silence and Ackroyd alternately condemns London (for its imprisonment and cruelty towards its inhabitants, its ugliness and rapacity) and celebrates it (for its self-renewal, energy and enterprise).
Ackroyd's novel Hawksmoor, like Winterson's Lighhousekeeping dwells on the same ideas of permanency within mutability, but perhaps weights the balance in favour of the former. On the one hand, there is the architect Dyer's mystical demonism and on the other, Hawksmoor, a detective that forms Dyer's modern counterpart. People, places and events recur between the two time periods. The two characters gain a perverse communion, both alienated from their selves through various means (gazing into convex mirrors, insanity, drunkenness and sex). Hawksmoor notes that the Thames was "perpetually turning and spinning: it was going in no certain direction." He imagines tracing a murder "backwards, running the time slowly in the opposite direction (but did it have a direction?)." He might then "have to invent a past from the evidence available," which would make the future an invention too. Toward the end: "the future became so clear that it was if he were remembering it, remembering it in place of the past which he could no longer describe. But there was in any case no future and no past, only the unspeakable misery of his own self.' As such, the novel's two narratives proceed in parallel lines like trains on opposite tracks, mirroring each other but never converging. Ackroyd's conception of time is one founded on eternity and permanence; it does not admit of resolution or conclusion (a perhaps somewhat awkward conception, given the pulp fiction nature of the plot. For example, at one point a lunatic in Bedlam tells Dyer that Hawksmoor will be his undoing, a promise that remains unfulfilled).
DH Lawrence's Sketches of Etruscan Places is a later text in his 'savage pilgrimage' series of travel narratives, it is built on a series of dichotomies between Ancient and Modern, Roman and Etruscan. Accordingly, it is a good example of the progress paradox where one of the more marked features of civilisation and its discontents is an avowed preference for more primitive modes of society. To Lawrence, the Etruscans represented a more natural existence that was extinguished by Rome, something he sees continuing throughout history and exemplified by the distaste with which he responds to Italian fascism (given that he is often accused of fascist tendencies in his own thought, it is interesting to see how he reacts to it its manifestation). Lawrence's response to the Etruscans is essentially one of pagan mysticism; "In my tissue I am weary of personality.. all the pearly accretion of personality in mankind - what a disease it has become. Stubborn pagan indifference and sufficiency in the self; where can one find it?" Though Lawrence dwells on the balance of male and female sexual symbolism in Etruscan art he suggests a modern inequity; "if a navvy working in the street takes off his shirt to work with a free, naked torso, a policeman rushes to him."
Lawrence's Sea and Sardinia presents a less clearcut case and rather reminded me of an especially acerbic observation Angela Carter made of Women in Love; that all the men were depicted in close physical detail ("hard cheek, and hard dangerous thighs... to see these limbs in close knee breeches, so definite, so manly") while all the women were depicted as little more than walking piles of clothing (with detailed descriptions of the pleating and colouring of female peasant dress). Later, Lawrence approvingly describes how the young men all masquerade as women during the carnival and describes their two male drivers as being like man and wife, Jane Eyre and Rochester; "so terribly physical all over one another. They pour themselves one over the other like butter on parsnips. They catch each other under the chin, with a tender caress of the hand."
In Orlando Figes's Natasha's Dance he speaks of Russian literature as being a fusion of Europeanised upper-class culture and the folk traditions of the peasantry. Though Turgenev is always cited as a zapadnik rather than a slavophile Sketches From a Hunter's Album shows this quite clearly, in spite of the political mythology concerning the emancipation of the serfs that surrounds it. The sketches certainly do depict the oppression of the peasantry ("They work for him like they were in bondage to him.. bled them white he has"), with the aristocracy either being seen as rapacious, indifferent or ineffectual, with the results being similar in each case (with the rather totalitarian 'Peter the Great of his own village' in The Reformer and the Russian German being a case in point). How ever, the peasantry are instead often transmuted into mystical figures ("a strange and wonderful man he is, truly a holy man" or with the suffering and death of Lukeria in Living Relic). The suffering of the serfs is simply part of this transmutation; "What an astonishing thing is the death of a Russian peasant!... he dies as if he is performing a ritual act." The oppression of the serfs is not necessarily much attributed to the social order as to the moral corruption of the aristocracy (most starkly in Meeting where the jaded valet can only speak of the wonders of St Petersburg to the peasant girl he is abandoning or the Dasha mentioned in Death). For example, in Tatyana Borisovna and Her Nephew, the eponymous nephew is corrupted by his time in the city, but the narrative equally shows contempt for Russian parochialism against European internationalism.
Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Bronte records some of the more interesting ambiguities in the Bronte attitudes towards religion. Anne had inclined towards a heterodox notion of universalism, wherein suffering for one's sins would lead all towards salvation (an idea with an obvious resonance within both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre; though not Villette which ended in tragedy in spite of Charlotte's proscriptions against such melancholia). Charlotte's attitudes do indeed appear ambivalent (though she does repeatedly denounce "ghastly Calvinistic doctrines" of predestination; if christian perfection is necessary for salvation she admits she will never be saved; however, her attitude to existence if one of submission to what is predetermined). Gaskell records that "She had a larger religious toleration than a person would have who had never questioned, and the manner of recommending religion was always that of offering comfort, not fiercely enforcing a duty." Elsewhere, she speaks of how "it is more in accordance with the Gospel to preach unity among the christians than to inculcate mutual intolerance and hatred." She is struck by one of Mr Heger's exercises in portraying a subject from differing perspectives, using Cromwell as an example. However, she is revolted by Catholicism, describing her reaction as to that of the false Duessa.Labels: Art, England, Food, History, Literature, London, Oxford, Weather
posted by Richard 6:53 AM
Saturday, October 9, 2004
I had hoped to see the exhibits of the Carlsberg Glyptotek in the Copenhagen gallery that normally houses them (if nothing else because the prospect of a gallery and museum that has its own heated palmhouse seems more than a little striking), but since that is shut for renovation for several years, the current exhibition at the Royal Academy makes a reasonable substitute. The exhibition certainly makes clear that it is the product of the vagaries of a family of private collectors, consisting of Danish and French painting and ancient sculpture. The Egyptian exhibits are rather fine, including an impressive seated statue of Anubis and a bust of Pharoah Amenemhat the third. Rather memorably, it eschews the typically stylised nature of Egyptian art in favour of a more naturalistic style, emphasising the Pharoah's rather sharply defined cheekbones. The Roman exhibits covered a variety of periods and geographies, the most unusual being the Palmyran exhibits, showing many of the conventional aspects of Roman sculpture (e.g. couples with linked hands) are combined with Asiatic dresses and even camels. Of the native Roman exhibits, I was especially struck by a sarcophagus showing ships at sail; the waves are filled with dolphins and one man is drowning; very Musee des Beaux Arts. Other impressive exhibits here included a rather adorable red marble hippo from the Gardens of Sallust, and some statues of three of the Muses from the Sabine hills.
Nineteenth century Danish painting proves to have had a rather agreeable penchant for landscape and ruins. Much of this can be accounted for with paintings within Denmark, like Lundbye's painting of Zealand (a somewhat Constableseque affair, enlivened by a burial tumulus on the hill and what looks like a stone circle in the foreground) and Lake Arre or Kobke and Skovgaard's paintings of Frederiksberg Castle. But like many other European painters of the same period, the ancient world looms large, as with Rorbye's painting of the Tower of the Winds and Cypresses by the Baths of Diocletian, Hansen's painting of Rome, Naples and Vesuvius. By contrast, the French painting tends to be impressionist, heavily weighted towards Degas, Cezanne, Lautrec, Courbet and Manet (whose The Absinthe drinker, I especially liked). Most interesting here were paintings by Monet (a dark and unusually realist piece showing smoke stacks along a Dutch canal, counterpointing a more turquoise typical seascape) and Sisley. However, the highlight was clearly Gauguin, with paintings of Frederiksberg woods and Ostvald windmill showing his early realist style, and his later riotously colourful paintings of Tahiti. Of especial interest was a wood carving, recasting the narrative of the fall in Tahiti.
I then went for a walk, past Fortnum & Mason's clock with its automata appearing on the hour (a rather odd contrast to the Horologe in Prague), a market at St James Church, the Athenaeum and the Haymarket theatre, before emerging in Trafalgar where a group of pigeons were holding a sit-in against the London Mayor. Finally, I went to the National Portrait Gallery to looks around the Victorian and Modern wing. It's interesting to note that the museum inadvertently traces the decline of the court painter, so that the likes of Holbein are gradually replaced with Millais painting Gladstone and Disraeli or Singer Sergeant painting Balfour. In the modern area, it was especially good to see Brigid Marlin's portrait of JG Ballard alongside Graham Greene and Phillip's painting of Iris Murdoch.
Run Lola Run has a peculiar mix of chaos theory and free will; the slightest change in events has wildly different repercussions (along the lines of the flapping of the butterfly's wings), but the action is rerun until it produces an outcome satisfactory to Lola. The changes each time seem essentially unpredictable, but there is an order in how the lives of each of the characters proves to overlap, as well as in how Lola seems to retain a distant memory of how the events had previously been played out. In contrast to the wasted and conventional lives of her parents (The film shares Goodbye Lenin!'s anti-materialism; Lola's mother is the only point in the film never to change, more wrapped up in television than in events around her), Lola's actions reinvent reality, as much as her travels take her through an impossible Berlin that barely corresponds to the actual geography of the city and stitches together East and West, crossing the formerly restricted Oberbaumbrucke.
The Motorcycle Diaries seem an oddly empty film, just as after his death Che Guevara became an oddly empty symbol of rebellion. Much of the film is taken up simply with the cinematography of the South American landscape and lacks any specific ideology other than a broad protest against social injustice and some more specific sympathy for indigenist causes. With the actor playing Guevara's Hollywood looks, the motorbike (more Brando than Lenin), the rock & roll soundtrack (more Jagger than Castro) and incongruously American metaphor of the road (more Kerouac than Marx), Guevara becomes the perfect rebel without a cause. Ironically, given the criticism of how a sisterhood of nuns run a leper colony in the film, one of the most powerful images in the film, that of Che's body wracked by his asthma, is arguably an icon of Catholic martyrdom (communism may have officially been atheist, but it hardly seems unreasonable to characterise it as a religious movement in its own right). It is, in short, the perfect film was a post-ideological age that believes that everything communism said about capitalism, as was everything capitalism said about communism.
On the other hand, it's difficult not to suspect that the film represents something noted by the likes of Martin Amis, Robert Conquest and Anne Applebaum; a tendency to excuse the horrors of communism where one would do nothing of the kind for other ideologies (It's somewhat difficult to imagine a film that lovingly depicted the coming of age of an idealistic Hitler or Franco.). I am reminded of a quote Lessing attributes to Koestler in the Golden Notebook, that it was only possible to continue to cleave to the idea of communism out of a personal mythology, as a form of denial. Having read Arenas's Before Night Falls, and his descriptions of Che's labour camps I find it difficult to witness the mythologisation of Che. Certainly, the sole indication of the later Che (the Commandante of the Cuban labour camps) in the film is a scene at Machu Picchu where he dismisses democratic change in favour of armed insurrection. Nonetheless, I have to admit that it's difficult not to respond to the sense of injustice in the film, to the idealism, to the beautiful South American landscape. By contrast, Pedro Almodovar's Bad Education (also starring Gael Garcia Bernal) is oddly reminiscent of what Hitchcock might have made of Death in Venice; the same confused identities feature for both Directors, with the glacial blondes being replaced with dark latin men.
Meteorology, it seems to me, can be considered as a form of aesthetics (nature as a form of art; typical romanticism). During fog the most familiar of objects become rich and strange. Most obviously, the brick church steeple I can see from my window, rising through the trees. Reduced to a faint sliver of darkness ("Annihilating all that's made / To a grey thought in a grey shade. "), the denial of the usual detail grants it an otherwise unknown air of the unheimlich. Equally, the loss of colour in the trees as they become simply shades of grey, between which the difference is in degrees of colour rather than kind, seems to change the depth perception. Later, the sky grew more and more overcast until it rained, and it rained more and more until the rain became almost a solid wall of water. The level ground all around turned into a fast flowing river that had to be waded through and the thunder was deafening. One especially striking morning saw rime frost covering the ground all around, a light mist in the air and a grey sky; but a ferocious crimson sun staining the sky pink, like Homer's metaphor of dawn's rosy fingers.
As ever, Autumn is my favourite time of year and the golds, burgundies and crimson of the leaves at this time are something I can never tire of. There are few things as wonderful as walking through piles of crisp leaves as the wind causes others to swirl in the air around you. Accordingly, Wayland's Smithy is rather fine at this time of year; the funeral barrow is at the centre of a copse of beech trees that have turned to a yellowed shade of brown. Whereas the Kennet barrow can be seen for miles around, one simply happens across Wayland's Smithy. I noticed that someone had left some flowers and a note for a lost son on a tree stump amidst the beech mast. Uffington is more austere at the best of times and today (with the wind howling and walls of rain descending) the landscape in the distance seemed to dissolve into the bleached white sky, leaving the hill with its bare scalloped slopes (cut during the last ice age) against the tide of nothingness. Since the Uffington white horse can only be seen properly from the sky the most striking thing is Dragon Hill. Like Silbury Hill, this can be easily recognised as an artificial structure; like the stuffed animals in Bernhard's Correction these things impress because they are neither nature nor art.
Nearby is Ashdown Manor. This tall building is designed in a pure Dutch style, with hipped roof, dormer windows and a peculiar round glasshouse surmounted with a cupola and finial. Lacking any attached wings, the building towers over the surrounding landscape; in the seventeenth century lanes would have radiated from it at each of the four points of the compass, cutting across a square of domesticated parkland. The geometrical precision with which nature is subordinated, especially in the elegant curves of the parterre garden, has something to it that is at least as ritualistic to it as the Uffington horse. Today, the landscape is sparse downland, with sarsen stones embedded throughout the fields in front of the house and inkcap mushrooms growing between them.
I felt that Alan Hollinghust should have won the Booker Prize with The Folding Star ten years ago, so I was pleased to see that The Line of Beauty has won it this year. Firstly, on account of the sexual politics involved and secondly, because it is a social novel. Possibly, I'm becoming a new puritan ("In the name of clarity, we recognise the importance of temporal linearity and eschew flashbacks, dual temporal narratives and foreshadowing... We recognise that published works are also historical documents. As fragments of our time, all our texts are dated and set in the present day."), but the recent vogue for postmodernist, historical and speculative fiction (typically revolving around a somewhat superficial attempt to instantiate a rather limited set of metaphysical ideas) has become more than a little tiresome. Meals cooked recently: Javanese curry and Nasi Goreng (a form of spiced Indonesian paella), Mexican chicken with pineapple rice.
Marco Polo's Travels are rather more odd than their later English counterpart, Hakluyt's Voyages and Discoveries. Whether Hakluyt's compilation divides the world between noble savages and barbarians, Polo is more nuanced, typically cataloguing the wealth of other states in true mercantile fashion. The wealth and technology of the nations visited by Polo is typically more advanced than Europe (as with the Yuan dynasty postal system, paper money or the great canal; oddly enough, coal and stone bridges seem to fall into the same category while Polo neglected to observe either the Great Wall or printing). Polo is especially impressed with the city of Kinsai (City of Heaven), seeing its lakes, lagoons and bridges as being like Venice; it is easy to see where Calvino got the ideas for Invisible Cities. However, the narrative is far from lacking in ethnocentricism (for instance in the description of Christian Abyssinia's attack on Islamic Aden), often recounting miracles by which Eastern christians were preserved against the Saracen. However, the narrative is also a romance, and the sensationalisation of the east often interferes with this, as with the descriptions of the magical powers of the Brahmins and Buddhist monks, leading to the Khan's comments; "You see that the Christians who live in these parts are so ignorant that they accomplish nothing and are powerless. And you see that these idolaters (Buddhists) so whatever they will" Polo attributes such magical powers as refilling cups without touching them to the devil (certainly such things remind one of Marlowe's Doctor Faustus), but his descriptions of Buddhism and Hinduism are remarkably sympathetic, seeing Buddha as the equal of a christian saint.
Tanizaki's The Key presents the text that has no more connection with naturalism than the Bunraku theatre of Some Prefer Nettles, being composed of a dual narrative taken from two diaries, the authors of which frequently elide information or include misleading detail. But it is more interesting than either Some Prefer Nettles or In Praise of Shadows in that it breaks down the binary division they established between oriental and occidental social norms; "In the old days a woman simply obeyed her husband's wishes, not matter how indecent or disgusting.. I'd begun to understand that making him jealous was the way to make him happy - that was the duty of a model wife."
Maupassant's Bel-Ami is largely cast in the form of critique of a nouveau riche overreacher, criticising Duroy's both racism and chauvinism, his sense of emasculation stemming from the women he uses to progress his career. However, this moral fable is one that exists in spite of the death of god, "there are some people who really do suffer. And he felt a sudden anger against the cruelty of nature... these people at least thought that someone cared about them in heaven.. In heaven? Where's that?"Norbert de Varenne's complaint of the futility of things substitutes a form of hedonism for morality in much the same way as that of Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray; "no doubt the truth is that we were born to live more materialistically and less spiritually; but through too much thought we've created a discrepancy between our overdeveloped intelligence and the unchanging conditions of our life.".
Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma is set in a period where Jacobinism threatens to overturn the established aristocratic order, and his novel correspondingly pulled between romance, picaresque and the more modern novels that followed. The romance elements of melodrama, the heroic quest romance for self discovery, aristocratic dramatis personae ("That commonplace does not rise to the height of ours") and almost courtly love are certainly present, so too are the more novelistic elements of character development and the depiction of characters in terms of their social interrelation, as with Eliot and Dickens. In terms of the picaresque, events frequently occur by accident (Fabrizio's exploits at Waterloo or the death of Giletti) or through a fortune beyond the control of the protagonists. Equally, causality pertains as much as in Dickens or Balzac, with the difference that the characters rarely seem aware of the implications of the actions. The resulting combination of accident with the crossed wills of the characters tends to recall Hardy as much as Defoe.
Astrology is a particularly difficult area for the novel; "inoculated him with unlimited confidence in the signs by which the future may be foretold... my imagination took upon itself to give them meaning and the most romantic one possible." As such. events frequently occur as if predestined by the heavens (as with Father Blanes's predictions or Clelia's prediction of her son's divinely ordained death), but the narration is distanced from the events it depicts and is consistently counterpointed to them; "she did not make that moral reflection that which could not have escaped a woman brought up in one of the Northern religions which allow self examination... That religion deprives men of the ability to reflect on unusual matters and particularly forbids self examination as the most heinous of sins;" Parma is persistently seen as a land governed by an arbitrary and unpredictable despotism (and therefore lacking the social stability that is a precondition for the realist novel) and whose inhabitants are governed by uncontrolled emotions ("Fabrizio was one of those unfortunate people who are tormented by their own imagination; this is a fairly common fault of men of intelligence in Italy") that they are unable to reflect upon. Much of religion is satirised throughout the novel, as with Fabrizio's use of the preaching as a means to see Clelia.
In Stendhal's Memoirs of an Egotist Italy emerges in the similar terms for Stendhal as it later figured for Forster and Lawrence. Describing himself as a liberal who despised other liberals, Stendhal's loathing of aristocratic privilege was only matched by his loathing of the crass mercantilism that was replacing it, something he saw prefigured in England, where all society has been subordinated to the cash nexus. By contrast; "How ridiculous it is for the English worker to have to labour for eighteen hours. The poor Italian in his ragged clothes is much closer to happiness."
Reading Twain's contemporaneous The Gilded Age alongside Maupassant was especially interesting. Twain departs to a large extent from the individualist conventions of American fiction in favour of something that does resemble a European social novel, examining each social strata through a broad cast of characters. However, there are differences. For example, Twain notes that a conventional novel would resolve the question of Laura's parentage, using it as means of demonstrating the interconnection of all parts of the social fabric (as with Esther in Bleak House), equally failing to provide a moral fable in the verdict of Laura's trial (often interrupting the narrative to make these gaps between artifice and nature clear in a surprisingly postmodern way). Maupassant depicts a society where social advancement is predicated on exploitation, counterpointed to the simple life of the peasantry. To some extent, Twain shares this, describing that "they were honest and straightforward, and their virtuous ways command respect" but also tends to see poverty as a form of injury to a greater extent, as with Colonel Sellers' turnip feast. Conversely, although elites are characterised as utterly corrupt, social advancement is seen in the gentler guise of a series of impractical visionaries (more like Skimpole in Bleak House).
Like Twain, Howells creates a social novel in The Rise of Silas Lapham, but the form seems hollow in comparison to its European counterparts. When Bromfield Corey notes that workers will in time dwell more and more on their poverty and become increasingly discontented, Lapham's reaction is that a poor man is satisfied if he can make ends meet. Lapham's fall is not attributable to anything that is deserving of censure, but instead to his unnecessary guilt over ousting Rogers from his partnership and "(if) he had looked after the insurance of his property as carefully as he had looked after a couple of worthless women that had no earthly claim on him, they should not be where they were now." Throughout the novel's moral scheme is an essentially utilitarian one, where Pen's self-sacrifice is seen as a form of "shallow sentimentality" that punishes three instead of one. In consequence, the moral fable of the novel deliberately undoes itself, with the fall into poverty having little more redemptive power than wealth had a corrupting one.
Darwin's The Origin of Species had always struck me as typifying the Victorian emphasis on the systematic, seeing all things as interconnected as much as Dickens or Eliot. The Voyage of the Beagle shares these traits, interweaving geology, paleontology and biology, but equally presents a more problematic picture. Darwin's observations here are equally amenable with a view based on Gould's punctuated equilibrium model (describing both natural disasters, such as the extinction of a land snail in St Helena when its habitat was destroyed and human disasters, such as the various South American dictatorships and revolutions as well as noting how South America would once have been populated with monsters, whose extinction left only pygmies in their place) as on natural selection (as with observations on the acquired blindness of a mole). His views on the introduction of alien species are without sentiment; modern environmentalism is anachronistic here, instead he comments on the historical ironies of the reintroduction of the horse into South America after its earlier extinction, these discussion of earlier mass extinctions sitting alongside extinctions caused by the introduction of European species, with the pig replacing the peccary; "according to the principles so well laid down by Mr Lyell, few countries have undergone more dramatic changes."
Although Darwin admires the tattoos of the Tahitians and vehemently opposes slavery ("I shall never again visit a slave-country... I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening atrocities which I authentically heard of"), his views are nonetheless imperialist; it is greater than between a wild and domesticated animal, inasmuch as in man there is a great power of improvement." Comparisons between native races and animals, even in the context of arguing against slavery are commonplace; "one can hardly make oneself believe that they are fellow creatures and inhabitants of the same world. It is a common subject of conjecture what pleasure in life some of the lower animals could enjoy; how much more reasonably the same question could be asked with regard to these barbarians!... persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal." Darwin's imperialism lies in his belief in the ability of colonial administration to effect an improvement in the character of the natives ("at the present day, from the progress of civilisation, there is much less warfare"), invoking Lamarckian terminology where he would have been contemptuous of it anywhere else. But elsewhere, Darwin appears to see the process in terms of natural selection. Just as he had written of how English vegetation was introduced into St Helena or how the Norway rat annihilated much of New Zealand's fauna, he writes of how the eventual extinction of the Australian aborigines and Tahitian natives ("it was melancholy at New Zealand to hear the fine, energetic natives saying that the land was doomed to pass from their children") due in part to European diseases to which there is no immunity and in part of the extinction of the wildlife seems inevitable to him. On one particular occasion, Darwin explicitly applies the idea of natural selection to the natives in a way he is rather unlikely to have done to Europeans; "nature, by making habit omnipotent, and its effects hereditary, has fitted the Fuegian to the climate and productions of his miserable country."
Pliny's Letters seem rather odd, recalling some of the reservations I had about medieval literature. In that context, all ideas of character and personality were related to moral and social schemes, without the modern idea of any form of interior life. It seems much the same as Chaucer's descriptions of his pilgrims, which almost exclusively relate them to essentially social ideas of morality. Much the same applies to Pliny, with the additional complication that (as a politician) much of the letters are a studied description of the author's public aspect, his pietas, that of his patrons and those that received his patronage. The Letters are an attempt to display his own suitability to be a member of the ruling class and for manipulating other members of that elite to subscribe to the same moral values and patterns of behaviour which he felt to be important. More interesting perhaps are the descriptions of the other sides of Roman society, opposed to this public aspect; the slaves that killed their Master, the husband who had a centurion convicted of adultery and exiled him, but refused to banish his wife.
Much of this relates to an attempt to gain immortality through his writings, as when he writes to Tacitus saying "I believe that your histories will prove immortal: a prophecy which will surely prove correct. That is why (I frankly admit) I am anxious to appear in them" and is later unafraid of appearing boastful when his own name is recognised and set along that of Tacitus. However, this is far from problematic, as when he notes that "my idea of the truly happy man is one of who enjoys the anticipation of a good and lasting reputation... lives in the knowledge of the fame to come. Were my eyes not fixed on the reward of immortality I could be happy in an easy life." Others, such as Regulus and Pallas whose monuments are without proportion to their objects are derided as immodest, and Pliny records how "people have criticised me in your hearing for taking any opportunity for the exaggerated praise of my friends.". The negotiation on this subject, between fame and hubris, are delicate, especially when Pliny defends his friend Verginus Rufus for ordering an inscription on his tomb, instead of forbidding such things; "do you really think it shows more reticence to publish throughout the world that your memory will live on, than to record your achievement in a single place in a couple of lines?" Tacitus's own Agricola and Germania is an equally odd text, lauding what he sees as the barbarians of Germany for their sexual morality (in contrast to Roman decadence) and both the Germans and Britons for their struggles for freedom (to some extent in contrast to Rome under Domitian). On the other hand, he derides their indolence and the primitive nature of their societies; seemingly he endorses a mid-point between barbarism and civilisation that can never be wholly satisfied by either.
Some of the most vivid aspects of Pliny's writing are the descriptions of his villas, where each of the elements are harnessed. Water falls by each seat, while each room catches the sun at different times. Quite a different conception is at work with Derek Jarman's Garden. Influenced by Gertrude Jekyll, it lacks any fences or hedges and is filled with the same wild flowers that grow in the shingle elsewhere at Dungeness. Stones are arranged in intricate patterns according to colour, in an imitation of Avebury. Gorse grows in a circle around a pole, which has patterns raked in the centre around it. It seems more reminiscent of the Japanese notion of shakkei, borrowed scenery, and the practice of raking gravel as a meditation exercise. But, as with the stone circles, Jarman does not fully subscribe to any notion of oneness with nature, setting rusted pieces of metals as found sculptures in his garden. Basho's The Narrow Road to the Deep North encapsulates this idea of oneness with nature, being distanced from an idea of a distinction between subjective and objective; "whatever such a mind sees is a flower, and whatever such a mind dreams is the moon. It is only a barbarous mind that sees other than the flower." The results of this are variable, with the poems often being rather abrupt.
As with Pliny, Suetonius is not especially interested in the psychology of imperial rule, tending not to speculate on the character development of the twelve caesars. However, he does shun a chronological narrative in favour of a more thematic approach (combining both of what we would see as the public and private), a technique that allows him to finely balance the vices and virtues of each Emperor. This doesn't seem especially surprising, since Suetonius presumably had to approach his subjects with considerable diplomacy. On the one hand, it would have been expedient for someone at the court of Hadrian to diminish former emperors by describing the arbitrary and cruel nature of their rule. On the other, his descriptions of attempts made to restore the Republic make it equally important to describe the need for Imperial authority against instability (including that of the Emperors themselves, especially Claudius). One of the more awkward aspects of The Twelve Caesars is the role assigned to augury. Although many of the defeats and downfalls chronicled throughout are foreshadowed by various omens, there is something often rather mechanical about such things with either generals or priests offering the most convenient interpretations of decidedly ambiguous events. Equally, Tacitus seemed to view such things as barbarian superstition in the Germania, while Plutarch noted how strange it was that Marius succeeded by heeding prophecies while Octavious was destroyed through them. It all rather reminds me of a story in Frazer's The Golden Bough, where a woman buries her son to his neck in the sand and sits nearby, wailing and lamenting in the hope that their particularly gullible rain god would take pity and cry (rain).
An interesting comparison is offered by Sei Shonagaon's account of her life at the Imperial Court of Heian Japan, where the sense of the noumenal is very strong throughout (and as manifest as her descriptions of the phenomenal world of her nature descriptions), with Shonagon often shunning rooms and paths proclaimed to be plagued by demons and spirits and fearing the return of ghosts at festivals. Her descriptions show a court that was heavily dominated by a ritual and etiquette that barely manages to conceal her own playfulness. However, as with Pliny, there is the sense of something repressed; given her distaste of the menial and common, to the point where it breaches etiquette even to mention such things, it's difficult not to wonder about what took place outside of the rather mannered court.Labels: Art, Copenhagen, England, Film, Flora, History, Literature, Weather
posted by Richard 6:50 AM
Friday, July 16, 2004
There can be something rather disturbing about visited restored buildings. The act of restoring an old building frequently does so by destroying layer after layer of history to reveal the desired outcome, just as Schliemann did with all of the cities he found at Hissarlik until he was satisfied he had found the Troy he wanted, or as Evans did at Knossos. In other words, it can be an extremely destructive and arbitrary process. Equally, there is something rather awkward about the hyper-real recreations of buildings, which seems as lacking in authenticity as the faked ruins favoured in the eighteenth century. Not to mention that the very idea of conservation has the unwelcome tinge of conservatism to it, which sits uncomfortably for someone ill at ease with the idea of tradition for tradition's sake. After all, most of the buildings prized as part of our heritage were built by either discarding the styles of the past or through the more literal means of destroying the buildings of the past.
So, I wanted to visit an unrestored building instead, of which there can be few better examples than the Midland Grand Hotel, now known as St Pancras Chambers. If there was ever a case study in architectural hubris it was this; built in luxuriant gothic style (it was not unknown for visitors to mistake it for a cathedral and ask when services began), its lack of either central heating or bathrooms ensured its downfall; perhaps rather incongruously so, since its 'ascending rooms' were state of the art at the time. Entering inside, elaborate columns coated in gold leaf sit alongside walls where the paint has flaked away and floors where the boards have rotted away. Pre-raphaelite murals of Chaucerian scenes and wyvern gargoyles rest in the darkness. In spite of my above comments it's difficult not to feel disconsolate at the Fifties beige or Edwardian burgundy paint covering the gold and crimson Victorian wall patterns. This is particularly so when one ascends the best preserved part of the building; the grand staircase. This imposing lined with gothic arches, through which light seeps into the gloom, leads up to a ceiling vaulted around a central boss, and incongruously painted with a blue sky and gold stars. Even in the dark the blazing colours shine out.
I'd certainly hate to think that such a building would fall further into decay and would love to see what these rooms look like once the paint has been scraped away to reveal the original frescos. But equally, much of why it is so striking is simply because it is a modern ruin; brightly lit and immaculate rooms as opposed to the current dark and cavernous interior would in many ways be a poor replacement. Apparently, now that St Pancras is set to become the main terminal for the Eurostar its restoration in some form is more likely than at any point for decades; I can only wonder what it will become. Later excursions proved rather more diverting. I went for a walk in the sunshine; past Lincoln's Inn Fields, St Clement's Church, The Royal Courts of Justice and then (avoiding the offices of the Daily Telegraph) to Smithfield Market and the sinuous Florin Court.
Elsewhere, in the country lies the awkward red-gritted bulk of Powis Castle, a building which nature seems to conspire to hide. Its rather impressive interior courtyard (flanked by a pair of Indian cannons whose barrel apertures are shaped as a tiger's jaw) is increasingly shrouded by wisteria and evergreen magnolia, while the yew trees are no longer shaped as topiary but have grown into a strange inchoate masses. The castle gives way to a set of seventeenth century terraces, originally progressing from aviary to orangery to a wild area planted with Acer and Stag's Horn, swallows flying low over the lawn at the base. Now the planting is more Edwardian than baroque and leads to a wild area where Acer and Chinese dogwood grows. Each border is lined with purple dahlias, blue salvias, acanthus, blue agapanthus, hostas, phormiums and aeoniums. Since only southern winds blow on the terraces a micro-climate has formed and bananas share the borders with fuchsias. The house combines baroque trompe l'oeil linenfold panelling and tudor plasterwork. Interesting exhibits included a beautifully intricate roman sculpture of a cat, imari vases, a View of Verona painted by Bellotto (slightly more down at heel than Canaletto) and an Elizabethan miniature of Herbert of Chirbury as a melancholy knight (I always wonder what went wrong with English portraiture between the Elizabethan and Victorian eras). The castle also has a clive of India collection, including a palanquin and a finial from Tipu Sultan's throne.
Elsewhere, Packwood house proved quite extraordinary. The exterior is a confusion of styles; stone, resembling Kelmscott to the Victorian redbrick. An enclosed garden with gazebos at each corner combines wilderness, a sunken garden, a terrace filled with foliage and flowering plants (easily rivalling Powis) and a symbolic yew garden, where the numbering of the yews along a long walk represents the apostles, with a spiral hedge leading a conical apex represents the sermon on the mount. The choice of the pagan yew invested a peculiar symbolism in this scene that seemed to resemble Avebury as much as the country churchyard. The interior is a product of the arts & crafts movement, an obsessive, even spartan, recreation of the medieval (even down to turning a barn into a great hall) and tudor at odds with the exterior of the house. Flemish tapestries and stained glass roundels abound alongside English flame-stitch textiles on the chairs. The only interruption is the red lacquer chinoiserie long clocks. Nearby, Baddesley Clinton seems to offer something similar, being a medieval and tudor manorhouse surrounded by a moat (occupied by predatory ducks) with a sunlit courtyard within. Although the house has beautiful wooden carving, offset with ivory and mother of pearl inlay, the effect is one of shabby decline, relieved by occasional odd items liked a narwhale tusk propped by in the corner.
Richard Haykluyt's Voyages and Discoveries is an Elizabethan compilation of travel narratives, written as a source of information on commerce, politics and geography that superceded the inaccuracies of Ptolemy and Mandeville. It regards natives (in this context the term can be applied to Russians and Tartars as much as the inhabitants of Africa or America) as either noble savages (docile and uninhibited by christian morals) or as Hobbesian barbarians existing in the brutish state of nature. These two postures prove to be far from incompatible. More interesting are the more ethnographic recordings; of an Indian Rajah's collection of white elephants or the ritual suicide of bereaved Javanese wives with a kris dagger (an odd combination of Indian sati and hari-kiri) which sit alongside wonder at the never-setting sun above Scandinavia, skirmishes with Tartars, capture by Moors and Spaniards, encounters with whales and sea-unicorns, and Raleigh's credulous belief in El-Dorado and of tribes without heads, whose faces appear in their chest.
Through Daniel Defoe's fractured and episodic narratives there is an inconsistent attitude towards the moral status of the protagonist as the genres of criminal biography and confession are combined, something enabled by the gap between the events and their narration. Accordingly, at the start of Daniel Defoe's The King of Pirates Avery protests of "the scandalous and unjust manner in which others have already treated me." Instead he describes his adventures as "unhappy though successful." Divorced from the social context of Moll Flanders the travel narrative represents a form of liberation from moral codes, with the piracy being depicted as offering both greater equality and opportunity than convention. Avery affirms that they had regretted "heavily they had not practised the same moderation before" and that "the men would be ruined by lying with the women in the other ships, where all sorts of liberty was both given and taken." From one aspect Avery is a sound entrepreneur as much as any government privateer, from another a criminal.
I also went to the National Gallery's Russian Landscape in the age of Tolstoy. The initial pictures by the likes of Shiskin are quite odd, painted in a similar style to Constable (later broadening to a more realist vein similar to pre-raphaelite landscape painting) and with the same idealised vision of pastoral. The serfs are typically shown in the fields but never labouring and with little suggestion of hardship. Tolstoy's outraged reaction to Chekhov's depiction of the serfs as living lives that were nasty, brutish and short (and sharing these characteristics accordingly) comes to mind. Though all of the pieces were pre-revolution it is doubtful that communist propaganda could have produced a worse historical distortion than the idealised illusions of these paintings.
Fortunately, genre painting later gave way to landscape paintings. Of some note here were Isaak Levitan, whose Above Eternal Peace shows a hilltop graveyard with a similar sense of symbolism to Holman Hunt, and Sarasov's feverish Sunset Over a Marsh. Of these, the most talented appears to have been the expressionist Arkhip Kuindhzi with his penchant for vast, depopulated landscapes (perhaps oddly so; I normally only care for landscapes as a setting in painting). The use of light in some of paintings, like Evening in the Ukraine, where everything is bathed in a crimson glow and the vertiginous perspectives, like The Steppe, a stark piece where a featureless green plain and white mist sky stretch off into a hazy distance, make him stand out from his contemporaries. The most striking painting was his Moonlit Night on the Dnieper, a panoramic piece where the iridescent reflection of the moonlight on the river recalled some of Atkinson Grimshaw's works. It reminded me of the night sky a few days ago where the moon's fitful light had emerged from two inky clouds both above and below it; although the moon was just short of being full, it strongly resembled scenes from many a horror film. I then walked past St Martins and the Coliseum Theatre to the National Portrait Gallery. I was pleasantly surprised by this; I've always loved the rich colours and finery of Tudor portraiture but been wary of later developments. Here at least, the flashes of recognition overruled the distaste for the muddy palettes and pedestrian themes of eighteenth century portraiture.
Huysmans's Parisian Sketches is an interesting dialectic of naturalism and aestheticism. Although the narrative describes events in precise detail these events are nonetheless recorded as subjective impressions or even sensations. On the one hand, the content is explicitly political; "have they never been moved by the desolate inertia of the poor... do they only admire nature when it's haughty and in its finery." But the aesthetic overtones cast the oppressed as romantic outcasts; "an obscure hideaway dreamt of by those in solitude... those disinherited by fate or crushed by life." Huysmans, like Baudelaire, aestheticises urban decay and squallor, writing that "nature is interesting only when sickly and distressed," there is a marked element of romantic pastoral throughout; "the joyous appearance of a country lane, enlivened by bothies and little gardens," something which easily shades into invective against industrialisation. Equally, much of the sketches are dedicated to the worship of the feminine but the tone is frequently one of revulsion, with smell being something Huysmans appears to find especially offensive.
Kleist's The Marquise of O and Other Stories presents rather bizarre combination of ontological ideas. Kleist developed a pre-Nietzchean form of pessimism surrounding Kant's distinction of the unknowability of things as noumena and as phenomena, so that his work is replete with ironic misprisions, with tragic consequences in The Betrothal in Santo Domingo, The Foundling and The Earthquake in Chile. However, this also leads to an emphasis on supernaturalism as inThe Beggarwoman of Locarno and St Cecilia or The Power of Music, implying a divine ordering in the sense that Kant had originally intended rather than Kleist's pessimistic interpretation.
Bernhard's Correction is in many respects a meditation on the division of nature and civilisation, reminding me of Paglia's observation that civilisation is a defence against nature. The character of Roithammer is a natural scientist studying genetics, with a preference for walks in the wilderness and admiring Hoelle's stuffed animals for precisely the reason that they were only barely the product of art rather than nature; "these products of nature always provided an occasion for reflection on art and nature... nature is that incomprehensible force that... forcibly pushes people together so that these people will destroy themselves." However, science raises the question of what Wordsworth referred to as how we murder to dissect, to divide the totality of existence (as with Roithammer's order discipline, his concentration chamber being a stand against the untidiness and clamour of existence, and conversely with the narrator's ordering of Roithammer's papers being seen in the terms of an act of violence) and the theme of building sets man against nature throughout. Roithammer's cone is at the exact centre of a forest, while Hoeller's house stands fast against the flooding of the river at the gorge, which has swept away all other buildings there. Nature is frequently seen as an entropic force, from the woodworm destroying Altensam to the decay of the derelict cone, to the flooding of Aurach; "nature hadn't changed so the people in their natural setting were still the same, with all their malevolence and frightful fecunity.". However, it is the aspect of gender that gives this theme its sharpest focus. The feminine is throughout identified with nature as being emotive and volatile ("people like my mother aren't rational beings... unconscious falsifications of nature"), the masculine is identified with rationality and intellect. This theme closely relate to the other central concept of the novel; the status of correction as refinement, as progress, or a form of destruction; "his utterly ruthless, hence utterly perfect corrections" By extension, this questions whether Roithammer is an isolated genius, struggling to create existential meaning in a void ("a man's lack of ideas is his death"), or a neurotic obsessive ("all those experts thought they were dealing with a madman.");.
The novel functions through the accretion (the text being almost cast in a constant stream of consciousness with few pauses) and revision of detail, viewing character as a palimpsest where excavation of history is intrinsic to an understanding of how inheritance has determined its course; "we still had the same conditions and therefore the same relationships as existed two hundred years ago... things that would determine our lives.. Altensam as the making of Roithammer, the source of all he ever was and still is". The novel casts into doubt our ability to live in our own world rather than that of our parents and educators. In the course of this, a rich set of polyponic perspectives become apparent. One particular aspect of this is the conflict between the perspectives of the narrator and those offered by Roithammer's own papers, and the question of reading-as-nature; "at certain points in our existence we break off the nature of our existence and proceed to exist only in books, until we again have the opportunity to exist in nature." Reading and art become substitutes for the intolerable freedom of nature, but is also an equally intolerable imposition on that nature. The result of that substitution is a blurring of the space between subject and object, part of the palimpsest's overlayering; "we become absorbed in the subject and can no longer think it through." As DeLillo put it "In the novels of Thomas Bernhard, the human mind in isolation is the final spiraling subject... a man so compulsively preoccupied with his art that this quality must inevitably destroy him. It has to be understood that Bernhard himself writes a prose so unrelenting in its intensity toward a fixed idea that it sometimes approaches a level of self-destructive delirium... Bernhard's fiction is anti-cinematic. There is almost nothing to see in his work. It is all personal history and tossing emotion, all voice--no faces, rooms, rainy days. There are references to streets and cities but no sense of place, and the novels I've read have no paragraphing, no divisions of text or accommodating space breaks. Bernhard's prose has a rapid and clamorous pulse rate. The narrator delivers eloquent chronicles of misery, illness, madness, isolation, and death. There are points at which the narration amasses such compressed layerings of loathing and self-loathing that it becomes rackingly comic. And weaving bleakly through it all is a sense of themes and patterns that ride recurringly in the mind." Bernhard's work generally works through the creation of a number of doubles; in The Loser the narrator is paired by two chiastic doppelgangers, one an ironic caricature of Wittgenstein as a failure, the other a model of Glenn Gould as the antithesis of all that is Austrian. Nonetheless, the potential different perspectives seem undermined by the monologic narration. Equally, while Bernhard advanced an idea of tragic comedy in which the accretion of tragic detail reached a point of comic release (certainly neither novel leaves much that isn't worse in Austria than anywhere else). Again the problem is that irony implies distance, and the first person narration leaves no room for this.
For most of The Village I was breathless at the combination of a Wicker Man style sparse and naturalistic cinematography with a rich sense of symbolism (especially with the way colours are presented, so that red is feared as enraging the animals that inhabit the woods leading the villagers to wear yellow cloaks). The result is something that intimately depicts the village but has a myth or fairytale's lack of exactitude (again, with the way the outside world was rejected by the villagers as sinful but where original sin recurs in their own eirenic valley with its autumnal beauty), so that in spite of the veneer of nineteenth century puritanism the villagers are never seen at church or praying. All of which is all well and good. I had realised during the course of the film what the ending would probably be and began hoping that I was wrong; I wasn't. Perhaps the difficulty is that, much like the villagers of the film, I find romantic myth rather too entrancing to be discarded, even if it does happen to be an illusion. Even a rationalist like myself would prefer Sleepy Hollow or the more nuanced dialectic of reason and unreason in Brotherhood of the Wolf.
The latest Prom was rather odd; the first half being dominated by Saint-Saens's Organ Symphony, the second being a selection from the nineteenth-century Austro-Hungarian hit-parade. Saint-Saens is rarely capable of restraining his eclecticism and the Organ Symphony demonstrates playful flourishes, lyrical passages and gothic romanticism alongside one another. That said, I have always preferred the darker aspects of Saint-Saens and although his work shares a baroque quality with that of Johan Strauss feuilletonist waltzes and polkas, the combination seems rather odd to me (Poulenc or Bach might have been a more obvious combination from my point of view). Gillian Weir played the Albert Hall organ and as with Janacek's Glagolitic Mass, the orchestra and organ competed through the fortissimo passages. Weir then proceeded to perform a Messiaen piece, which fully displayed his mad organist tendencies.
The second half proceed immediately in a more frivolous vein, as the cymbals proclaimed the beginning of the Radetzky March before the conductor had come on stage, followed by other works from Strauss the elder and Strauss the younger; Voices of Spring, Frederica Polka, Cachucha Galop, The Blue Danube and The Gypsy Baron. I'm very much reminded of a Joseph Roth novel called The Radetzky March; an elegy for the Austro-Hungarian Empire which dwells on the surface of its characters, recording them almost as a set of clothes and dress uniforms more than people. The same superficial pomp and circumstance is at work in the music, which is diverting but inconsequential. More interesting were the other Austro-Hungarian operetta composers. The Hungarian Emmerich Kalman's Gyspy Princess in particular, strayed into gypsy music and away from Viennese ballrooms.
Considering that Wagner has long been my favourite composer (rivaled by Handel and Tchaikovsky) it is a rather unfortunate fact that I have never had the opportunity to see any of the Ring cycle being performed, only Parsifal and the Tannhauser overture. As such, last night's Prom concert of Das Rheingold, performed by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and conducted by Simon Rattle (who had also conducted the performance of Parsifal I saw, something I'd quite forgotten about), was a rather special happening. Wagner saw himself as being both the Shakespeare and Beethoven of his day and this idea of the kunstwerk informs all of his music; I tend to think the ninth symphony's setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy is the most 'Wagnerian' of Beethoven's works. But like seeing Wittgenstein's duck-rabbit in both guises simultaneously it is never possible to attend fully to both at the same time. Previously, I had always listened to the voices in Wagner almost as another instrument and certainly the music throughout the concert soared through the Albert Hall. But in Das Rheingold Wagner allows the narrative to dominate in a way that recedes in the rest of the cycle and the discipline of standing through the entire concert with translated text meant that I paid more attention to the lyrics, with little impression of difference being made by the use of period instruments. The moral concerning the corrupting effects of wealth is at best trite and not one Wagner ever paid much attention to; perhaps as well since a music of excess is poorly matched to an ethics of chivalric renunciation. More unusually the cycle, initially suggests that greed exists in the absence of love, but the tauntings of the Rhine maidens and Fricka's jealously undercut this; the ethics of the ring are a peculiar mix of the romanticised Christian and the Schopenhauerian; hence the disenchantment of the Nietzsche who had seen the Dionysian in Wagner's music and rejected Schopenhauer).
Perhaps surprisingly, the text proves to be rather comic, with the Norse gods imagined in the same petty and impotent fashion that Homer created his in The Iliad (though as mentioned above the explicit moralism is very similar to the Brother's Grimm and much of the proceedings seem more drawn from fairytale). It's easy to sympathise with Nietzsche's view in The Case of Wagner that one must translate Wagner's gods "into reality, into the modern - let us be even crueller - into the bourgeois!" The excellent cast brought this out fully (for instance, with Fafner resembling nothing so much as an East-end gangster) and although there was no stage the opera was nonetheless acted to the full, with Kim Begley's outstanding Loki (Loge) easily outshining the rest (including Willard White's Wotan, I have to say); the most honest character present is the most amoral and therefore the least hypocritical. More than a few times as I stood in the arena I thought how unlucky all the people with seats were, since they missed so many of the small gestures and expressions that brought the characters to life. Finally, feeling blissfully happy I left the Albert Hall, seeing the golden statue of Prince Albert shining in the darkness. I walked down the stone steps, glanced briefly back at the Hall, with its iridescent new portico frieze glimmering in the light emitted from the Victorian street lamps, turned and headed to the tube station.
During the performance of Britten's Prince of the Pagodas the sound of something falling over filled the hall just at the point where the music was fortuitously reaching a fortissimo peak. It rather reminded me of the anecdote of Joyce and a 'Come In' to a visitor that had been accidentally transcribed while he was dictating the text of Finnegan's Wake; he decided to leave it in. Where Britten is normally dissonant and sparse, the Balinese gamelan influences on this added a more lush orchestration. Finally, Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition appeared. Since Mussorgsky only wrote a piano arrangement for this its most famous arrangement was actually created by Ravel. This performance instead saw the piece as a blank slate, and each picture had arrangements by differing orchestrators (being quite a varied piece from the outset this did make it seem oddly like Saint-Saens's Carnival of the Animals). Emile Naoumoff's delicate arrangement of Il Vechio Castello stood out for its replacement of Ravel's horns with piano (it did rather resemble a jazz version of the aquarium section of the Carnival of the Animals as a consequence) while Walter Goehr replaced the brass arrangement of the Promenade theme with a version strings and woodwind. On the other hand, Ashkenazy and Stokowski's more muscular arrangements (of Bydlo and the ride of Baba-Yaga respectively) were well counterpointed to these gentler arrangements. I've also listened to a different arrangement of Pictures at an Exhibition; James Crabb's dual accordion version, which brilliantly captures the more lyrical pictures but is less successful with the more powerful pictures, like the ride of Baba-Yaga.Labels: Art, Decay, England, Film, History, Literature, London, Music
posted by Richard 6:47 AM
Friday, April 16, 2004
Oxford is beautiful at the moment; cow parsley and buttercups flower in the parks, accompanied by horse chestnut, rhododendrons and laburnum. I'd gone to see the Radcliffe Observatory at Green College. This is actually rather larger than the observatory at Greenwich and much more elaborate, being modelled on the Athenian Temple of the Winds (another copy of which exists at West Wycombe Park) and accordingly decorated with astrological and mythological sculpture; an excellent combination of the scientific and the artistic. The building gains from being set in the college gardens, which are rather more impressive than most of the college gardens and were originally used as physic gardens. Various herbal and poisonous plants remain but overall it is as much of a botanical garden now, with wisteria, redwood, catalpa (Indian bean tree) and goldenrain trees. The actual University Botanical Gardens are also rather fine at this time of year; the grounds were filled with irises, tree peonies, anemones and euphorbias while some of the Chinese trees (such as dove trees and Kousa dogwood) with bright blue and white blossom were especially striking. The glasshouses seemed to have similar plants to the gardens at Montjuic; many South African and Chilean plants as well as lily house. On the other hand, the didactic bent of many botanic gardens was rather too apparent in the insistence on featuring plants like papyrus, cardamom and ginger, known for their utility rather than botanical or aesthetic interest. Finally, the gardens were host to a rare plants sale, so I am now the proud owner of a cycad, a living fossil I've always been fascinated by.
The University Botanical Gardens also own the Harcourt arboretum. At this time of year the collection of Lebanon cedars, giant redwoods, monkey puzzle and Moroccan blue cedars is complemented by hosts of rhododendrons throughout the gardens, with everywhere being lit up with purple and red. Most of the gardens are taken up with bluebell woods filled with oak, ash and beech, but many of the glades and walks are also host to less traditional denizens; Acers and Bamboo. The grounds were patrolled by a number of peacocks (apparently indifferent to humans, if their occupation of some of the benches was anything to go by), whose beautiful plumage was perfectly balanced by their horribly shrill calls as they prowled around the irises bordering one of the ponds . Again, the gardens at Montjuic, a section was dedicated to plants from high places (Magnolias from the Himalayas, berberis from Chile and so on.
One of the Sir John Soane Museum shows many of his unexecuted designs, covering such buildings the Houses of Parliament and Royal Palaces, all apparently designed to recreate the splendour of Imperial Rome; a bridge design crosses the distance between the Thames and the Tiber. As his austere design for the Bank of England shows, Soane was very much an architect in the style of Wren, with his failed Palladian designs for London (unlike Haussmann's Paris, Schinkel's Berlin or even Cerda's Barcelona) reflecting a similar intent to Gilbert Scott's gothic design for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (or Albert Waterhouse's design for the Strand law courts), but his own house seems more of monument to baroque fancy, a cabinet of curiosities (perhaps not entirely surprisingly; his interest in Roman ruins is a product of the romantic era as much as the enlightenment, while his taste in painting and architecture both betray an interest in the gothic).
Each room is crowded with curiosities from Rome, Egypt and Greece, but both normal and curious convex, fish-eye mirrors are used to create the illusion of space. As corridors and chambers cluster around a central courtyard, the result is much the same as Palau Guell; a confusing Escherian building where space seems to fold in on itself; Soane was greatly influenced by Piranesi and it is not hard to see the resemblance (there is even a portrait of Soane's Bank of England reimagined as a Roman ruin). The most impressive rooms are perhaps the breakfast rooms and library; the latter painted red in imitation of Pompeii and decorated with Chinese chairs and vases, where the windows are occluded by arches and a profusion of Apulian vases. The breakfast room in No.13 is covered with a vaulted ceiling arranged in a starfish shape from each corner of the room to a domed ceiling, which is covered in the aforementioned fish-eye mirrors. The breakfast room in No.12 has a ceiling covered in with vine and flowers painted in the style of a pergola; they even spill out onto the walls. The Hogarth paintings certainly live up to their reputation; the best is probably The Election, which is worthy of Gilray, where The Rake's Progress is perhaps more moralistic than satirical today.
The oddest thing I've read recently is William Bligh and Edward Christian's The Bounty Mutiny, a collection of firsthand accounts. Any expectation that such source would permit a judgement on the events in question is largely thwarted by the text though; if ill-tempered Bligh would hardly seem to have provoked Christian with any adequate motivation for the mutiny, even on the basis of Edward Christian's own accusations against Bligh. Most interesting was the least known part of the narrative; the anti-Rousseauist fable of the mutineers on Pitcairn Island.
Angela Carter's Wise Children, is a picaresque novel where the carnivalesque world of music hall gives way to the more constrained world of television. With a number of intertextual references to Shakespeare's comedies; except that here the anarchic aspects of carnival triumph. Edmund Crispin's The Moving Toyshop is really rather impressive. While writers like Agatha Christie moved detective fiction towards a more realist strain (The Forsyte Saga with more corpses), Chrispin instead took the more playful aspects of Conan Doyle and Chesterton and produced something rather more surreal. My favourite part is a rather postmodern little paragraph where the detective, Gervase Fen, decides to pass the time by 'making up some titles for Crispin.'
By now I have read so much Kundera that each novel begins to seem the work of someone trying to imitate a Kundera novel) represents another dialogic novel featuring Bakhtinian themes of laughter as a subversive force and folk art (whose status is more ambivalent). To a large extent the novel resembles Lessing's The Golden Notebook, in that a set of differing narrations converges at the end, but Jaroslav's opposed reaction to Ludvik retains a dialogic quality that staves off any simple convergence or resolution in the ending. As always with Kundera the most dialogic aspect of the novel is the comedy of errors that ensues from the character's misperception of each other. On the one hand Ludvik states that "the virulence of his (communist) faith was alien to me." But Jaroslav sees him differently; "He had the look all communists had at the time. He looked as if he'd made a secret pact with the future and thereby acquired the right to act in its name;" the same principle applies to Ludvik's misjudgment of Lucie and Helena's misjudgment of Ludvik. Similarly, the character of Kostka even deconstructs much of the basis for the novel; "No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches." The most interesting aspect of this is the role of folk art in the novel, as it revolves around a folk ritual depicting the ride of a king. On the one hand, this is a source of collective tradition against the corrosive effects of capitalism ("We needed to purge our musical culture of the lifeless hit tune cliches that the bourgeoise had used to force-feed the people. We needed to replace them with an original and genuine art of the people."), but later as a symbol of the communist dereliction of tradition ("nothing but good old romanticism with a thin veneer of folk melody."); it is only as Ludvik ceases to see it as a symbol, as much as he sees other as symbols that it can be revived.
Much of Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London is as much polemic as documentary, two genres that never seem entirely reconciled. This respective sections on Paris and London each conclude with polemical sections that cleave to socialist conventions, asserting that "there is no difference between rich and poor" anymore than there is a difference between white and black, while demonising the rich by snidely commenting of American hotel guests "perhaps it hardly matters whether such people are swindled or not," essentially the inversion of the fear of the mob he had denounced previously. More strikingly, themes of false consciousness appear in the descriptions of waiters; "waiters are seldom socialists, have no effective trade union.. they are snobs and find the servile nature of their work rather congenial." However, the book has many differing views on poverty. Most obviously, Orwell contradicts his own argument on equality by observing that "and educated man can put up with enforced idleness, which is one of the great evils of enforced poverty... the man who really merits pity... faces poverty with a blank, resourceless mind." Equally, Orwell may well be sanguine as to swindling American hotel guests, but seems to dislike the same attitude when demonstrated by others, such as a communist waiter; "He had a curious, malignant spirit. He told me, as a matter of pride, that he had sometimes wrung a dirty dishcloth into a customer's soup.. just to be revenged upon a member of the bourgeoisie." Elsewhere, when reviewing the inhabitants of a hotel, Orwell writes that "poverty frees them from ordinary standards of behaviour, just as money frees them from work," a view that seems more to romanticise poverty, casting it as a form of freedom rather than of oppression.
Given this, it hardly seems surprising that Orwell excites such divergent attitudes (For instance, the recent account of him as someone who dressed his conservatism in progressive rhetoric persistently attacking the legitimate socialist movements of his time. He blamed the poverty in Wigan on the failure of socialists and the rise of tyranny on the success of socialists. Presented with any given problem, he was more enraged by the failure of the left than by anything else), but it's difficult to avoid wondering if it isn't more a case of 'all things to all men,' since the account of poverty in Down and Out in Paris and London is such that it can easily accommodated into any number of political creeds. Orwell's political philosophy seems as occluded as the trouble with Hamlet, to borrow TS Eliot's description.
Another peculiarly inconsistent figure was Derek Jarman, whose Smiling in Slow Motion I have just completed. On the one hand, his vision is one of inclusion and social equality; "queer people should demand equality in all aspects of life" while decrying the fact that "lesbians and gay men have no way of sanctioning of their relationship" i.e. marriage. On the other hand, he can proclaim that "it is the assimilationists are the enemy," and celebrates the polymorphous perversity of queer, denouncing social conformity; "why does he wants us to fit into a pattern of life that is so obviously outmoded.. if this is what gay has to offer, I'm glad I'm queer." Although the term 'gay' is frequently used as with invective it is also often used as a mark of identity, reflecting the ambivalence of wanting equality and denouncing that with which equality is sought and wearing the red badge of the outcast with pride. For example, Jarman can relish the prospect of cathedrals being burned down; "It is a delightful outcome that the church should tear itself apart. I hope it as destructive as possible to that prison of dreams and desire. let the trumpets blast the walls of the churches till they fall into a picturesque ruin." But when he visits Durham Cathedral he finds himself holding back any invective to the clerics he meets and follows a life redolent of tradition. To some extent, it's impossible not to be reminded of his own complaint against Wilde; "an infuriating icon for queers - the complicity with snobbery and writing less interesting than the life."Labels: Architecture, Flora, History, Literature, Oxford, ScienceFiction
posted by Richard 2:59 PM
Tuesday, April 13, 2004
I've been to Moseley Old Hall recently, a rather strange building in Staffordshire. From the outside it appears essentially Victorian, save for the twisted chimneys, knot garden, hornbeam and honeysuckle arbour and an orchard filled with cherry and quince. On the inside, it is lined with dark wooden panelling over wattle and daub construction. Similar peculiarities were in evidence at Hardwick Hall, not least the row of ash trees outside with their strange swellings amidst the branches. This building has been largely left as it was in Elizabethan times, with the occasional room that is incongruously filled with eighteenth century furniture. It is always pleasant to have a prejudice confirmed, so I was quite pleased to note that the elaborate design of the original furniture seemed much more spectacular than that of the later pieces (unfortunately most of the other original items such as wall paintings and tapestries are now all badly faded; in many respects the interior is an exercise in the poetics of decay as much as the largely glass exterior seems bold and ahead of its time). One particular item of note was the long gallery, which included an unusual painting of Elizabeth the First, her dress showing a depiction of the sea monsters Hilliard had imagined whales to resemble.
I went to Birmingham at Easter to listen to a performance of Bach's St Matthew's Passion at the Symphony Hall. While I like much of Bach's works, this did rather tend towards being the kind of religious work it is difficult for an atheist to appreciate, like much of the works of Thomas Tallis or George Herbert. Looking around earlier, I discovered that the city has an interesting Church designed by Chatwin with a wooden roof and a stained glass window by Morris and Burne Jones. I'd forgotten how much impressive architecture Birmingham has, such as the town hall and cathedral in addition to the rather oppressive disused factory buildings and warehouses. More recently, many of the grimy concrete buildings for which the city is infamous have been demolished and a new centre built. This includes a strange new shopping area, consisting of a sinuous organic shape whose surface pullulates with silver hemispheres; an impressively futuristic building but one which looks incongruous at best in a rather traditional setting. During this time, I often found myself thinking of the idea of the manufacturing of tradition; though the idea of continuity of tradition embodied in the above stately homes is probably a myth, it is nonetheless a powerful one and the lack of any historical sense of time or place in Birmingham is disquieting at best.
Later, I visited the De Morgan Centre; a single room in Putney library that blazes with colour as one walks in. It includes a good selection of William De Morgan's work including a number of tiles featuring Islamic designs and a distinctive dark blue moonlight suite. Much of the centre is taken up with Evelyn De Morgan's work, equally characterised by vivid (possibly too vivid) colours. She has been described as a symbolist rather than a pre-raphaelite (her work is much later than that of the original Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood). Unfortunately, much of the symbolism is rather crude and seems regrettably influenced by spiritualism (I suppose it could have been worse; spiritualism left E F Benson with a morbid interest in demonic slugs). Her better work tends is devoted to classical themes, such as a portrait of Phosphorus and Hesperus; more the sort of subject matter one would expect from Simeon Solomon.
The same afternoon was devoted to the Wallace Collection. This house is decorated in typically Rococco style; red crimson and gilded walls, Sevres porcelain and Boulle marquetry furniture. I tend to have ambivalent attitudes to Rococco, since it very much seems a style designed to demonstrate wealth rather than taste. It has a certain kitsch quality to it. Beyond this, the ground floor is filled with a strange diversity of exhibits; Iznik ceramics, Venetian glass and German pewter, for example. It also has an extensive armoury of which the centrepiece is clearly the Islamic section. The Mughal and Persian shamshirs are much more ornate than any European weaponry, save perhaps those of Venice. The upper floor is more dedicated to painting, including the entirely expected horrors from the likes of Fragonard. However, it also has an excellent selection of Canaletto paintings and a good mixture of Dutch genre and maritime painting. Amongst the less well known artists, Horace Vernet's paintings of Napoleon and the Middle East stand out. The highlight is the Great Gallery, with Velasquez's The Lady with a Fan, Rembrandt's Titus and, above all, Hals' The Laughing Cavalier. This really does stand out; the facial expression is immediately individual unlike the posed expressions of most portrait painting while the elaborate symbolism of the motifs of the clothing recalls Hilliard as much as naturalistic painting.
Elsewhere in London, I spent a pleasant day in Greenwich. This seems a place quite apart from the rest of London; a leafy setting filled with Hanoverian period architecture that looks directly opposite to the Manhattanite setting of Docklands and Canary Wharf. I recall HG Wells once predicted a future where height restrictions would be abolished and it is interesting watching that come to pass. Initially, I had a look at Wren's Royal Naval College. The banqueting hall is perhaps less impressive than it should be; the use of painting as a substitute for plasterwork (a'la trompe l'oeil) is rather transparent while the choice of colours is rather subdued (mostly browns). More promising is the opposite chapel where the later interior neo-classical design recalls Wedgewood (presumably Wren's original design might have looked more like the gold and white rococco design of St James's Church, rather similar to the gusto italiano interior to the nearby Royal Academy). Following this, I went on to the Queen's house. Designed by Inigo Jones, this is an odd Jacobean version of classical architecture. Much of the painting is more of historical than aesthetic interest. That said, it does have a Canaletto painting of the Naval college, some works by Hogarth and some maritime paintings by Dutch artists such as Backhuysen and the Van De Veldes. I went on then to the Royal Observatory, with its display of camera obscura, telescopes that more closely resembled cannons and John Harrison's timepieces (I'd been reading Eco's The Island of the Day Before illustrated many of the themes in evidence here). Finally the Maritime Museum was of least interest, save perhaps for Prince Frederick's barge and its gold Chinoiserie decorations. Instead of returning by rail, I took the boat back, passing under Tower bridge and past most of London's main landmarks. Given London's maritime history I must say that this does seem the most natural way to travel, though perhaps without the tedious commentary on luxury flat property prices I had to endure. I note that the new Norman Foster skyscraper is visible from most points of this tour; perhaps it needs to have a restaurant built on the upper floors so that we can follow the approach Maupassant took to dealing with the Eiffel tower.
A later visit saw a climb to the summit of Wren's monument to the great fire; a tower that must have originally dominated the skyline in the same way as Nelson's Column. Now it is hemmed with other buildings and once one has climbed to the top it becomes apparent that the same applies to other buildings such as the Bank of England, the Royal Exchange, St Paul's and the Tower of London, all of which have been bested by taller modern buildings such as Canary Wharf; only Tower Bridge stands out as much as it would have done originally.
Conversely, where London is a cacophony of architectural styles Oxford manages to assimilate each new development, even the ziggurat of the Said Business School. While in Oxford, I went to the Ashmolean museum. I've often thought the Ashmolean has to be counted as one of the most impressive museums outside of London, if only due to the size of its collection of oriental exhibits., which has a large range of objects like painted silk screens, red lacquerware (as well as one lacquer casket formerly owned by Beckford), arita porcelain and a large wooden bodhisattva statue. Similarly, there is also an impressive Islamic section, featuring the customary display of Iznik ceramics and wooden arabesque patterns. The more customary historical sections, such as those of Rome and Egypt are more modest, including a well preserved statue of Athena, colourful mummy cases and an entire Nubian shrine. More impressive though, were the examples of Romano-Egyptian funeral art, the paintings made on coffin lids; the quality of painting is such that wasn't seen again for hundreds of years. One of the diverting section was that devoted to the Tradescant collection, an original bequest to the museum that reflects the cabinet of curiosities approach to such things. I must admit to finding this ad hoc collection of Malay kris, Danish wooden tankards and Tomahawks rather more engaging from an aesthetic standpoint than the usual collection of like for like. The galleries similarly reflect a high standard; especially the selection of Dutch paintings including one Hals painting. Beyond that, the modern section has some good Pisarro paintings in a pointillist style (Les Jardin Des Tuileries) and a new gallery includes an excellent selection of Sickert paintings, an intriguingly impressionist Picasso painting (Blue Roofs) and a vivid Kandinsky painting. The pre-raphaelite section was dominated by Holman Hunt ranging from religious allegory (a painting of a priest being sheltered from the druids) to painting of London bridge and continuations of his middle-eastern paintings. As in the earlier pre-raphaelite exhibition, some of Seddon's similar paintings were included, especially a panoramic painting of Jerusalem. In terms of the other pre-raphaelites excellent paintings by Alma-Tadema, Burne Jones (as well as an arts and crafts wardrobe decorated by him) and Millais (The Return of the Dove to the Ark) are included.
Following the interest in De Morgan, I went to Kelmscott Manor, the former home of William Morris. This is an Elizabethan house built next to river, where willows dip their branches into the water and rooks caw in the horse chestnuts. It still looks exactly like its engraving in News From Nowhere The gardens are a riot of colour, even at this time of year, with bluebells, irises, primroses and tulips in a variety of colours (scarlet, black, lilac, white and some striped red and white). The centrepiece is an ancient mulberry tree at the centre of the garden. The interior retains much of its original character, including Flemish tapestries and a considerable amount of seventeeth century furniture (considerably more ornate then the over idealised rustic simplicity of Philip Webb's chairs). The arts and crafts tapestries, wallpaper and decoration all accordingly fit in well with their surroundings (a prelapsarian vision of history counterpointed to the reality), though it is perhaps a little surprising to discover the amount of Chinese and Burmese furniture and ceramics (including a star shape tile decorated with the first sura of the koran set in a wooden frame) in the house. Dutch imitations of Iznik pottery and an Icelandic casket were rather less surprising. Beyond that the house has several Durer engravings and Rossetti paintings; more particular portrait of Jane Morris with a gold frame against the dark blue wallpaper (the same colour as the blue silk dress Morris wears in the painting) was especially striking.
I've been reading Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet. A review of this seems a little otiose, given the futility of deconstructing a book that deconstructs itself, but nonetheless. Although ostensibly written with one authorial persona or heteronym, the book deconstructs that notion to a large extent, with each of the subject it treats of being rewritten throughout the text. On religion, the text veers from mourning the death of god; "Never reaching union with god... always with a longing for it." and castigating atheism "to deny the existence of this intelligence, namely god, strikes me as one of those idiocies... every sound mind believes in god," whereas elsewhere it is stated that belief in god is impossible and the very concept is castigated as dangerous. Similarly, an aesthetic view of art is propounded; "Art is a substitute for acting or living...Why is art beautiful? Because it is useless" But elsewhere, advances a view of art that sees it in didactic terms, as advancing human civilisation. In some places, dreaming is described as "superior to reality," while later it states "I lack the money to be a dreamer," recasting it as a luxury, rather than a retreat from the quotidian. The text even asserts its own plurality, "I have the most conflicting opinions, the most divergent beliefs," only to deny this later, "I reread some of the pages that will form my book of random impressions..even while saying that I'm always different, I feel that I've always said the same thing." The result is that reading The Book of Disquiet becomes a matter of finding the figure in the carpet.
Pessoa reminded me of Coetzee's The Master of Petersburg a revisionist novel fictionalising elements of Dostoevsky's life (an unusual concept to begin with; A Dead Man in Deptford being the only other example to come to mind). As much as The Life and Times of Michael K pastiches Kafka (it's difficult not to use that term in a pejorative sense, and to some extent I can thinking of Bakhtin's concept of heteroglossia) The Master of Petersburg pastiches Dostoevsky. This is in spite of the novel having a similar structure to The Life and Times of Michael K, representing a dialogic conflict between a social ingenue (Doestoevsky, with his view of anarchism as a form of nihilism at best, possession at worst) and elements of social extremism (Nechaev with his denunciation of Dostoevsky's greed in his gambling and ignorance of the economic forces that determine existence). In his own way though, Coetzee deconstructs the idea of an authorial identity every bit as much as Pessoa. Waiting For The Barbarians presents a more idiosyncratic work, wherein the narrator wavers between dissolving the dichotomy between civilisation and barbarism (by presenting the two as part of a cycle; "civilisation entailed the corruption of barbarian virtues.. I never wished it for the barbarians that they should have the history of Empire laid upon them.") and doubting this dissolution (something epitomise by his archaeology, the preservation of the filiations of memory; "Do I really look forward to the triumph of the barbarian way; intellectual torpor.. if we were to disappear would the barbarians spend their afternoons excavating the ruins? ")
I've also been reading Atwood's Oryx and Crake. Science fiction often tends towards the extremes of the utopian (in this case, an extropian or transhumanist view) or the dystopian (in this case, environmentalist or religious conservative; whose language Atwood seems peculiarly close to here), with little time for the no-man's land between that the present is invariably composed of. This book is no exception to that, following the likes of Brave New World or (perhaps more accurately) Day of the Triffids. With that in mind, it would be perfectly possible to read Oryx and Crake as a dystopian text where Crake, a Faust-figure like Nemo, Moreau or Frankenstein, pursues dangerous technologies without thought for the consequences, unintended (such as the Craker's development of symbolic thought and religion) or otherwise (the success of the engineered virus). On the other hand, most dystopian novels, including Brave New World, 1984 and We deal with the suppression of biological imperatives rather than their alteration. But comparisons with other Atwood novels suggest otherwise. Surfacing is full of similar dystopian theories concerning an American invasion of Canada for its oil reserves, and sees its protagonist retreat from civilisation into nature (feeling a guilt at being human and expressing a desire for humanity to disappear); similarly, throughout Oryx and Crake mankind is viewed as an aggressive species that consumes resources indiscriminately (essentially, as Easter Island writ large); the Crakers represent a similar retreat to nature, allowing Crake to take on the mantle of an almost heroic figure instead. To be specific, Oryx and Crake shares the same concerns over capitalism as Surfacing but its depiction of gated communities having evolved into a corporate caste system is essentially tangential to the plot, and the overall depiction is more ambiguous since the damage is largely done by environmentalist characters rather than corporate strategy.
Umberto Eco's The Island of the Day Before, on the other hand, was something of a disappointment, seeming more a vehicle than a novel. More promising was VS Naipaul's Beyond Belief, an examination of Islam considered as a colonial force in formerly non-Islamic countries. Naipaul characterises islam as a totalising ideology that isolates it adherents from both regional traditions and foreign influences, leaving those societies in an ideological vacuum with islam as the only philosophy available to them (though many of the outcomes of that seem typical of monosyllabic post-colonial societies to some extent). Although he compares the Islamic displacement of other faiths to the spread of christianity in the Roman Empire, Naipaul suggests that christianity tends more to assimilate other traditions and to allow some form of congruence. Certainly, it is possible to think of examples that might confirm this, such as the use of pagan symbolism at Christmas, but equally the history of Protestantism after the reformation hardly seems all that different from islam. Equally, Naipaul notes the Islamic assimilation of Hindu myth and suggests that islam in these societies had become less tolerant in recent times (again inviting parallels with the change from Catholicism to Protestantism). The overall impression is that a predetermined thesis has been proved, with the result that much of the picture painted is both uniform and monolithic. By way of contrast, compare Naipaul's account to that of Orhan Pamuk; "it seemed to me that their little bursts of lawless individualism were strangely at odds with the state-imposed religious laws that dictated every other aspect of life in the city."
Junichiro Tanizaki's Some Prefer Nettles represents an interesting continuation of the themes I discussed from In Praise of Shadows. Interestingly, where a European novel would have rendered these themes against a wider social panorama with a large cast, Tanizaki uses a narrow number of characters and suggests such wider concerns through metonym and symbol. The book suggests that Kaname's westernisation lies at the root of his personal problems; "the tradition of woman worship in the West is a long one, and the Occidental sees in the woman he loves the figure of a Greek Goddess, the image of the Virgin Mother... to some extent every woman tries to make herself look like an American movie star." Conversely, Kaname's emulation of his father-in-law, with his doll-like concubine, upholds a more reactionary set of Oriental norms, and Tanizaki implies that Kaname has allowed his wife too much autonomy (though conversely, the father-in-law's concubine appears unhappy).
In terms of film, I've been watching Before Night Falls, Beau Travail (a film that reminds me of Apocalypse Now in that cinematography fails to act as a proxy for the interior narrative of the novel used as a source in either case) and Le Fabuleux Destin D'Amelie Poulain, a film that avoids sentimentality through its suggestion that happiness is something that must people must be cajoled or deceived into. Similarly, Delicatessen is an excellent film. Where the Americans always envisaged the post-apocalyptic future as being one of urban warfare and anarchy, the French see it more as people going quietly insane behind masks of middle-class respectability. Interesting food cooked recently: Polish sauerkraut stew, Hungarian ghoulash, Turkish bobotie, Turkish Lahmacun, Chicken Fricassee, Chicken Marengo, Lebanese spiced chicken and Coq au Vin.Labels: England, Film, Flora, Food, History, Literature, London, ScienceFiction
posted by Richard 2:57 PM
Monday, February 23, 2004
I visited Avebury on Saturday. As I arrived the sky was a rather watery white, and there was a particularly chilling wind; the only colour was the splashes of white snowdrops. This seemed entirely appropriate, adding considerably to the rather forbidding aspect of the stone circles. The windswept plain, the sarsen stones, the skeletal beech trees and the crows perched on them all made more of an impression than a verdant and sunny day would have, quite different to a later trip to an iron age hill fort through silver birch woods filled with flowering furze.
From the village and stone circles, I went on to Silbury Hill. This is certainly an oddity; it remains entirely artificial and alien to the landscape with erosion having done little to soften its conical shape or the abrupt plateau at the summit (as opposed to even the more genteel tumescences of the surrounding barrows). I rather like the fact that little seems to be understood about its purpose (excepting tiny details like the month construction began, determined by winged ants specific to August being found buried at the base); I expect it would be rather disappointing to determine exactly what it was for. As with most psycho-geography what meanings we impute to it are rather more important. After also looking at West Kennet Barrow, I returned via Stonehenge (and Salisbury Plain with all of its 'Warning: Tanks Crossing' signs). Since you can't get close to the stones there, it's difficult to be precise, but I think John Aubrey was probably correct to describe Avebury as the more impressive of the two, due to the sheer size of the Avebury stones alone, if not the scale of the circles (it might be more fair to describe Stonehenge as the greater work of engineering, Avebury as having the greatest aesthetic value).
I've been pleased to note the presence of cherry blossom on the trees, apparently here and abroad. Autumn with its gold and red leaves remains my favourite season, but the opening of the cherry blossoms always reminds me of the cherry tree we had in the garden at home. In the few weeks following, it was equally pleasing to see the flowering of daffodils, bluebells, hyacinths and magnolias, and for the first blush of green to touch silver birch and hawthorn. Oddly enough, I seem to notice the change of the seasons much more than I used to, even though I grew up in the countryside.
The Tate have had an exhibition on Pre-Raphaelite landscape painting. The exhibition outlined the Ruskinian principle of rejecting nothing and selecting nothing; the same philosophy that led Ruskin to advocate one of Inchbold's paintings being viewed with a magnifying glass, recording geological and botanical detail with scientific precision (the archetype being the famous portrait of Ruskin against a waterfall by Millais). Such a philosophy has interesting effects; it creates the profuse imagery of a painting like Ophelia by Millais (where I could stare for hours at the intricate imagery, like the small robin in the upper left corner), but can create an impression of flatness (Edward Lear's painting of a Syracuse quarry creates the awkward impression of a shepherd being the same size as one of the large flock of ravens).
It has to be said that the most interesting paintings are the least naturalistic (I could only nod in agreement at a quoted letter from Ruskin complaining that surely the painter could have found something more interesting to paint than a ditch); the dazzling colours and joy of the mere look of things in Holman Hunt of Ford Madox Brown, for example. Hunt's paintings of the Middle east (where the atmosphere is sufficiently dry as to suit Pre-Raphaelite exactitude); are especially noteworthy, painted in far more livid colours than those of Thomas Seddon, who was painting the same subjects at the same time. Hunt's painting of The Scapegoat with the purplish mountains, whitened ground and water with all the iridescence of a film of oil (as in his more picturesque paintings of
The Fairlight Downs). The exhibition ends by chronicling the movement towards a more impressionist style and away from the Ruskinite conception of painting, such as that of Leighton or Whistler, and the lesser known John Brett, painter of some particularly impressive Italian seascapes, with consummate depiction of the play of light on the water while the haze in the distance is counterpointed to a Canaletto-like detail in the foreground.
One particularly interesting aspect of the exhibition was showing contemporary photographs alongside portraits of the same subject; photography was used for practising painting, a rather odd idea when we consider how photography's strength at detail supplanted the Pre-Raphaelite ideal and led to impressionism and expressionism; when arguably a similar process is at work today.
Looking round other Tate galleries, I was impressed at the amount of other Pre-Raphaelite paintings on display, several of which I hadn't come across before, such as Waterhouse's Consulting the Oracle and Leighton's Lieder ohne Worte. The entrance was rather impressively flanked by two portraits of Victorian actresses, one a livid redlight affair from Sickert (whose The New Bedford paintings were also new to me) and a painting of Ellen Terry by John Singer Sargent (again, whose magical expressionist painting Carnation, Lily, Lily was also new to me). Equally engaging were some of the later works; Various works by Beardsley, Tissot, Solomon's radically androgynous The Moon and Sleep and various Whistler paintings such as Nocturne: Blue and Silver..
Beyond this though, English works before Turner are of little interest to me (at least until the sixteenth century; the gallery had a fine Hilliard painting of Elizabeth), and only a few artists really struck me and all of them on grounds of how opposed they were to the spirit of their ages; Blake, Fuseli and Hogarth. In contrast to the placid docility of a Reynolds portrait, Hogarth's O the Roast Beef of Old England (`The Gate of Calais') mercifully revived the spirit of Gilray. The only curiosity worth mentioning was a small gallery of Asian subjects, such as Daniell's painting of Sher Shah's Mausoleum; not especially brilliant but the more exotic subject matter came as a relief after some of the eighteenth century landscapes.
On a more mundane note, I had a look round Reading Museum. This is, in truth, nothing very special but it does have some rather nice Samian pottery imported from Gaul and Roman glassware taken from Calleva Atrebatum. It also seems to have acquired an odd room filled with various pieces of bric a brac; an Indian stamped metal and enamel vase, a portrait of Elizabeth the First, delft tiling, a fossilised Icthyosaur, a Sudanese scimitar seized after the battle of Khartoum (held together by metal strips taken from a huntley and palmer biscuit tin) and an Egyptian tombstone. More oddly, there's also a replica of the Bayeux tapestry made in Staffordshire in the 1880s. I also had a look at the rather small Ure Museum, which has some rather fine Egyptian wall reliefs and faience scarabs, and some good examples of Attic red and black figure ceramics.
Of late, I've been reading assorted novels from the Austro-Hungarian Empire (an unusual interest, albeit one shared by Michael Moorcock in The Brothel in Rosenstrasse). Most of the interest in that period stems from the benefit of knowing its fate; everything acquires a certain romantic lustre as a result of that. Foremost amongst these is Robert Musil's The Confusions of Young Torless. This is a dialogic interpretation (a modern greek tragedy) of Nietzsche's division in The Birth of Tragedy between the Apollonian (connected with modes of appearance and representation; Torless is described as an aesthetic character) and the Dionysian (connected with modes of reality); "a portal led from the bright, daytime world which had hitherto been the only world he knew and into another world that was gloomy , surging, passionate, naked, annihilating... between the life that is lived and the life that is felt, sensed and seen from a long way off, that invisible frontier lies like a narrow door." The novel is caught between differing modes of realism and existential or stream of consciousness fiction as a result of this. Like Foucault, Musil sees individuality and modernity in problematic terms, though the anti-essentialist critique mounted by Foucault is only implicit in Musil.
The novel posits differing responses to this conflict; Reiting's will to power and Beineberg's mystical Schopenhauerian approach; "cosmic human beings, capable of losing themselves until they connect with the great universal process.. the outside world is stubborn." In this context, the erotic is seen as a form of mystic experience. The novel endorses neither approach, where these Nietszchean responses are contradicted by what seems a Freudian view; "People in whom there has not been a proper confluence of the affectionate and the sensual currents . . . have retained perverse sexual aims . . . whose fulfilment seems possible only with a debased and despised sexual object." Again, the affectionate and sensual are Nietzsche's Apollonian and Dionysian, suggesting that the means of reconciling the two also represent a symbol of their schism through sexual repression. Equally, the novel suggests that conventional morality (depicted as slave morality in the character of Basini or in the deceitful silence from Torless) is also an inadequate response.
I also read Joseph Roth's The Radetzky March; I found it interesting that both of these novels were essentially concerned with the illusory nature of appearances; to quote AS Byatt "The Austrians, according to both Mitchell and Magris, have complementary passions for detail and for the dissolution of boundaries - between the real and the unreal, between dream and waking, between life and death." For instance, Schnitzler's Dream Story portrays Vienna as an unreal mirage, behind which the machinations of the unconscious lie. By contrast, Roth's characters are all surface (only DH Lawrence devotes so much attention to clothing) and civilisation is seen as being founded on courtesy rather than truth (not unlike Freud's argument in Civilisation and its Discontents). This is the opposite to Kafka, where there is nothing beyond appearance. Given the importance of sight and sound to writing, Patrick Suskind's refreshingly amoral Perfume (inverting the moral function of that genre in exactly the same way De Sade did with Justine) presents the interesting idea to dwell on one of the other senses instead.
Nabokov's The Gift reminded of Camille Paglia's observation that every time she read Shakespeare she was struck by how hostile the text was, and how resistant to interpretation it is; in this case Nabokov's dense thickets of prose are often prolonged for whole pages before a reprieve is offered in the shape of a new paragraph. As with John Bayley's The Uses of Division, Unity and Disharmony in Literature there is a glacial quality to the artifice of The Gift, as opposed to the untidyness of a Dickens, where truth is an immediate concept and not a stylised one. At the centre of the novel is a thesis written by the poet Chernyshevski entitled The Relation of Art to Reality; "art is thus a substitute or a verdict, but in no wise the equal of life, just as an etching is far inferior to the picture from which it has been taken" Much of the text consists of Godunov-Cherdyntsev exploring the history of others, but always from a distance, so that the relation of sign and signifier becomes distant, as when he glances a man on the train he presumes to be a stereotypical German but who proves to be one of his countrymen. For instance, he speaks of "butterflies not as they really existed but as of a certain attribute of my father, which existed only insofar as he existed," or of Godunov-Cherdyntsev's relation to Chernyshevski "projecting inward the coincidental similarity of external features... in reality, the little there was within us corresponded to the little there was without." In each case, truth is kept at one remove (for instance in the question of the veracity of Godunov-Cherdyntsev's biography, a question mirrored through a series of uncertain reviews). In writing of his rather or in his biography of Chernyshevski, Godunov-Cherdyntsev faces questions of the anxiety of influence; "words are pale corpses, incapable of expressing our thingummybob feelings... an excessive trust in words" and broader questions of truth beyond that "perhaps I am wrong in retrospectively forcing upon him the secret which he carries now."
posted by Richard 2:55 PM
Sunday, December 7, 2003
I've just been to the latest pre-raphaelite exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, this being the third such exhibition I've been to and, if not having the most impressive exhibits (as with the Ruskin and Turner exhibition at the Tate) then certainly being one of the most impressively varied. My own liking for pre-raphaelite art stems from its rediscovery of the colours of medieval and early renaissance but tending to substitute sensuality for the religiosity of that period (excepting the rather crude symbolism of Holman Hunt, though the exhibition made clear that Hunt is a reasonable landscape painter). The first rooms consisted of paintings from Millais, Rossetti and Burne Jones. I've never truly appreciated Burne Jones; this paintings seem too listless and enervated to me. On the other hand, Millais and Rossetti are quite a different matter. In the latter case, such paintings as A Vision of Fiammetta, in the former case such paintings as A Huguenot and The Proscribed Royalist, as well as an early version of his painting of Ophelia. Millais also proves to have been a rather good landscape painter as well, not something I had been aware of (there was also a painting showing a map wearing a deerstalker proposing to his beloved. I couldn't help but mentally caption it 'Holmes Proposes to Mrs Adler').
However, the highlights for me were the paintings of Atkinson Grimshaw and John Waterhouse. In the case of the latter there were a series of excellent works; two of Ophelia, Pandora and St Cecilia. It's particularly interesting to observe how more striking the impressionist influences on Waterhouse are when his work is set alongside his earlier contemporaries. In the case of Grimshaw, it was interesting to see pre-raphaelite influenced compositions such as The Lady of Shalott and landscape paintings alongside his more familiar urban paintings such as that of Cornhill or Liverpool.
The collection also encompassed a number of other painters such as Arthur Hughes (not especially talented though his paintings of Ophelia and April Love are fine enough), Lord Leighton (not in truth the best selection), Poynter (the same cave of the storm nymphs painting I saw at the Tate's Victorian nude exhibition) and Alma Tadema (a variety of Roman scenes; not his best work either but interesting all the same). A very pleasant surprise was the presence of a large amount of De Morgan pottery (one especially fine Iznik design with snakes as handles and dragons on the side of the vase), Pugin tables, Morris carpets, Kelmscott press books and an interesting cabinet by William Burges (I'd never seen a wardrobe with crenellations before).
I also went to the Enlightenment Exhibition at the British Museum's renovated King's Library, a meta-collection dedicated to collections from the enlightenment. While I suspect the Pitt Rivers Museum to be a more accurate representation of the transition from the cabinet of curiosities to modern museums, it was nonetheless interesting to see an exhibition covering the development of modern classifications and disciplines such as Linnaean taxonomy. Like much of the British Museum the interest is largely in the beauty of the objects (art rather than history), whether large ammonites, nautilus shell, Wedgewood jasperware pottery, Islamic tiles, Chinese pottery, Japanese porcelain or Egyptian sarcophagi (or indeed John Dee's crystal ball, orreries or astrolabes). If I had a criticism it would be that the exhibition seemed to be at pains to deny any idea of development in art, which seems an odd notion give the theme of the exhibition. Much the same applied to the rest of the Museum; the basalt Egyptian statues, the head of Ramses, an Erechthean Caryatid, Easter Island Moai, black and red Athenian pottery, or the Assyrian winged bulls guarding the gates of Nimrud. The Great Court is, it has to be said, very impressive; mostly in terms of its sheer scale (since to be blunt, the Museum's original neo-classical architecture, like that of the National Gallery, is rather too austere for my tastes).
One source of irritation with the exhibition was the somewhat condescending account of how artworks were originally arranged according to a nation of progress, where works were measured against a Greco-Roman ideal. While such ethnocentricism can certainly be mistaken, it seems our loss to discard the notion of development entirely; the number of artefacts within the exhibition demonstrate clear variations of artistic sophistication between cultures. That said, the choice between presenting the interesting aesthetic possibilities of conjoining such different objects and demonstrating the development of different scientific disciplines is not an easy one.
Returning, I had become tired of the notion of a traditional Christmas (in so far as the traditional British Christmas is better described as a traditional American thanksgiving) and it was decided to try a goose instead (this being the traditional German Christmas, though it proved that the recipe in the end was than of a traditional Christmas in the Veneto). The recipe was cooked with quince; more so than the goose it seemed difficult to account for changing culinary tastes; the flesh was sweeter than apple and with a better texture than pear. Cooking Moroccan roast chicken this weekend was quite odd; I'm far from being used to using apricots and raisins for what would be a savoury dish in European cooking (though perhaps it's not so unusual; mince meat pies did originally contain meat after all).
Over Christmas, I went on a number of long walks, typically in the grounds of places like Chatsworth (always a little too manicured a landscape for my tastes and the rather squat and dark house does little to improve matters and the grounds of Calke Abbey (its rather more romantic grounds being strewn with aged oak trees, the ground covered in bracken and roamed by stags). The only house that was open was Little Moreton Hall, a Tudor house where the National Trust had set out some period celebrations (the idea of Christmas dinner involving Boar's head seems quite sensible to me) such as a musician with a hurdy gurdy (which I hadn't heard before, at least in person). Elsewhere, Hereford Cathedral seems very odd to me; most of the structure is Norman, with the characteristic architecture of the period; next to the later French gothic that had been built onto it, it looked rather strange, as alien as Moorish architecture in Spain must look.
I've recently been reading the Gormenghast Trilogy. On the one hand, to the Machiavellian Steerpike "Equality is the thing... Absolute equality of status. Equality of wealth. Equality of power." On the other, the defence of ritual by the likes of Flay and Barquentine is not reciprocated by Titus or Fuchsia themselves, where aristocracy is envisaged as a stultifying force. It is difficult to determine the extent to which Peake was of Steerpike's party or not. On a similar note, I've finished reading Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Generally speaking,it seems to me that our culture has become progressively more infantilism on a number of fronts, and I was loathe to add to the fashion for adults to read children's books. However, the trilogy does remind me of the kind of work William Blake might have produced had he been favourably disposed to Newton's ideas (though a reworking of the Chronicles of Narnia is probably more apt as a comparison than Paradise Lost; the work of Michael Moorcock might be an even closer comparison). One interesting point though is that the Alethiometer and the subtle knife are both based in heuristic reasoning, while the weakest sections of the trilogy, those with Mary Malone, are where rationality is most important. The fantasy form seems to oppose certain themes. Incidentally, reading Lyra's Oxford I was left wishing that Oxford had a Zeppelin station. Incidentally, a friend wondered what Jesus' daemon would have been; I thought a snake might be an interesting choice.
Niall Ferguson's Empire is a revisionist account of the British Empire, which while acknowledging the frequently illiberal and draconian character of the Empire, suggests that in terms of disseminating and enforcing such Anglosphere notions as free markets and trade, democratic governance and individual liberty (Ferguson adds Anglicanism to this list, which seems somewhat odd given that one of Britain's clearest Imperial legacies was secular administration in countries like India), the Empire can be regarded as having fulfilled a civilising role. Ferguson's book is essentially polemical in tone and more scholarly detail would have been appreciated on several points. In particular, one of the problems with this hypothesis is that it lends itself as well to the strictures of the counter-factual genre as well as it does to that of conventional history. At one point Ferguson suggests that less developed countries, such as Britain's African territories, benefited from the Empire in terms of investment and infrastructure while the progress of more sophisticated nations, such as India, was more likely to have been retarded. Elsewhere, he observes that repatriation of finance from India to Britain in the nineteenth century amounted to no more than one percent of GDP and was most likely outweighed by the intensive investment in infrastructure.
To a large extent this depends on a judgement of how India would have developed without colonial rule, with Ferguson observing that Chinese independence during the nineteenth century had done little to ensure its prosperity. However, although weak government due to dynastic decline (by the same token declining Mughal rule may have been unlikely to produce Indian economic growth in the nineteenth century) played a part in this, foreign intervention and the ensuing Boxer Rebellion were surely not incidental to it either (though it may be more relevant to compare the failure of democracy in China with its entrenchment in India), particularly if Angus Maddison's view that India was the world's largest economy at the start of the eighteenth century and was overtaken by China over the course of the following hundred years (certainly Indian GDP declined as British GDP grew, while China remained the largest economy until either 1830 when it was overtaken by Britain or 1890 when it was overtaken by the United States).
I've also been reading G K Chesterton's Father Brown stories, which has rather reminded me of Umberto Eco's essay on Casablanca; "one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it, so that one can only remember parts of it, irrespective of the relationship with the whole." As Tzvetan Todorov observed, detective fiction has two components; the narrative of the crime and the narrative of the detection. One of the features of the detection narrative (or at least the English variety) is its conservatism; unrest in the social order is typically resolved by civil society itself (i.e. a private detective or citizen rather than the state, whose representatives can be reassured of a dismissive portrayal), a conditions exemplified by Agatha Christie. On the other hand, such a conception can be subverted, as with Wilkie Collins or even Conan Doyle. In the case of Chesterton, the notion of Valentin's scientific nature and atheism are well suited for murder. For much of Chesterton, the narrative is a moral one; Father Brown solves crimes through moments of epiphany rather than a process of ratiocination, and the criminal is often engaged in confession rather than punishment (as with Flambeau). But equally, in the case of the solution narrative (Doyle and Poe favoured this, casting the genre as a form of literary puzzle) Chesterton, like Christie (in The 4.50 From Paddington, for example.) is liable to introduce dissolute characters specifically as red herrings, for instance in stories where there is no crime, bringing the two narratives into conflict.
On a rather more elevated note, I've read Therese by Francois Mauriac, a book condemned by Simone Weill as giving sin the monotony of duty. On the whole, that seems somewhat unfair, as the book oscillates between a similar pattern to that of Madame Bovary (i.e. a sin committed in a stifling social context with later contrition through suffering; "they were right to imagine her as a monster, but in her eyes they too were monstrous") and that of L'Etranger (where the sin is that of refusing to acknowledge social norms and the sinner becomes a rebel. As Mauriac puts it "that power, granted to all human beings, no matter how much they may seem to be the slaves of a hostile fate - of saying not to the law that beats them down"). To some extent, this is attributable to the absence of a notion of identity in the novel; "never, for a single moment, to be sure of one's own identity... I am aware, all the time, of this mental disintegration." Accordingly, the absence of volition that characterises stifles any repentance.
John Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang is an odd novel. On the one hand, the historical setting and theme are rather reminiscent of Hardy, but the content is more reminiscent of Marx than Schopenhauer; "they knew full well the terror of the unyielding law the historic memory of unfairness were in their blood," being a accretion of episodes that determine the characters (though there is little sense of history within the novel). More interesting was Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K, a novel that reprises the theme of the idiot from Dostoevsky and Cervantes. The obvious influence though, as indicated by the title, is Kafka, reminding me of some of Zadie Smith's recent comments; "His influence seems to cause a mutation in the recipient, metamorphosing the novel into something closer to a meditation, a fantastical historiography, an essay, a parable... Novelists simply do not resist life in this fashion. Life, in its shared social form, is, for lack of a less vulgar term, their material. They cannot say, as Kafka did, "Never again psychology!" Or, as Walter Benjamin put it Kafka used the traditional forms of representation without the associated truth value. Like Kafka, Coetzee inverts the normal function of the novel, serving to obfuscate rather than elucidate social relations (hence the lack of a definite setting); "barely aware of its surroundings, enveloped in itself". The novel is therefore polyphonic, offering a narrative of resistance to social norms (even to civilisation, since Michael is described "as if he had once been an animal") or of emotional dependency to matriarchal domination. Experience cannot be reduced to the neat patterns of literary convention.
posted by Richard 2:52 PM
Sunday, February 9, 2003
I visited the Royal Academy's Aztecs exhibition today. The most interesting thing about the Aztecs is simply the extent to which their art represents a largely alien aesthetic sensibility, of a society largely isolated from influences beyond their continent, one that seems both strange and macabre (as with the statue of Mictlantecuhtli and various other undead gods; their skins flayed and their livers exposed). A society that disdained gold and preferred feathers. A society capable of massive construction projects and impressive craftmanship but which was technologically backward in most respects. As this Spiked Online review notes, the Aztecs raised a primitive base (quasi-neolithic) to a very sophisticated level (The Incas had developed a sophisticated irrigation system and used draft animals). Many of the exhibits were sculptures made of basalt, which was robust enough to survive the Spanish, but rather unpromising as a material (lack of resources being a common problem for the Aztecs; the resulting sculptures were, to be frank, mostly rather crude). Some of the most interesting artefacts amongst them were depictions of animals scared to the Aztecs all depicted several orders of magnitude larger than their normal size; the snake, the feathered snake and the frog.
I could certainly understood why JG Frazer was so enamoured of the Aztecs; their religion has a certain elegant simplicity to it in its sharp dualism, as opposed to the rather haphazard Greek pantheon. As such, much of their craft reflects the role of nature in their religion in using natural materials (feathers, carved bone etc); one does wonder if this is an inevitable constraint of a religion dedicated to worshipping aspects of nature. On the other hand, the only metal available to them was gold, lacking bronze or iron. Even basic resources like food were scarce, with sacrifice and cannibalism arguably being a result of this.
More interesting to my mind was the clay pottery; plates supported by tripods (each leg being a circle or a claw), braziers cast in the images of dead warriors, or a bizarre container designed to hold flayed human skin (its surface resembling a mass of pustules; apparently designed to resemble the bubbles in the fat layer under the skin). In terms of more intricate artefacts there were the masks; made of mosaics of turquoise and jade, fans made out of beautiful green feathers, flint knives (some with human teeth glued to them, often with handles decorated in the image of Aztec warriors), mirrors made from obsidian (more volcanic material), and wooden drums with beautifully intricate carvings. Finally, the codices were especially interesting; the surviving Aztec texts still had the most vivid colours. My only complaint with the exhibition was simply that it was too popular; as I arrived, a queue stretched out into the courtyard alongside the academy's rather miserable fountains and each room was decidedly crowded.
Before going to the exhibition I decided to do some research. Those who hold to determinist notions of history would do well to peruse The Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Díaz (in conjunction with a compilation of Aztec writings, Broken Spears to provide the opposite perspective; I bought this at the exhibition; it seems a shame that Diaz's book could not be bought there also) which makes a compelling case (albeit unintentionally) for entropy.
My impression is that none of the assumptions one would normally make about an imperial state (i.e. concerning military and economic might) were correct. Instead, Spain was not a strong nation state but rather a set of dynastic alliances (starting with that of Ferdinand and Isabella), burdened with a small population and large debts; technologically backward, militarily feeble and culturally hermetic. Cortes was dispatched to the new world to negotiate trading agreements and lacked authority to begin mass conversions (though looting clearly took place the book is almost obsessive in the role it assigns to religion) or military campaigns (contrast to how the British were later to shun imposing christianity on India until the mutiny; this was, after all, still the society of the reconquista), taking the authority upon himself as the result of factional infighting. Cortes was certainly an opportunist, but I suspecting that following Fuentes and calling him Machiavellian was being too generous. The Spanish were massively outnumbered by the native population and suffered several humiliating defeats in the course of the Mexican campaign.
To a large extent, Cortes was succesful due to the weaknesses of Aztec rule. In the first place, Aztec subjugation and taxation of other tribes made it easy for Cortes to found alliances, especially after the flowery wars that had been inflicted on all the rival tribes. When Cortes held Montezuma hostage, the Aztec state essentially disintegrated as rivals sought to replace him; demands for his restoration seem to have been largely besides the point, When confronted with such a tottering edifice as this, divide and conquer was not especially difficult. The imposition of sacrifice onto the populace (Díaz recounts that each town had a set of wooden cages for the victims; notions of the noble savage are not easy to apply here, to say the least; since the Aztec supreme god, Huitzilopochtli, was the equivalent of both Zeus and Ares. In their favour, the Aztecs were more sexually enlightened than the Spanish) also made christianity an appealing alternative. In addition, Aztec myth spoke of Quetzalcoatl returning to rule over them, and the conquistadors were accordingly regarded as being gods, an impression magnified by the presence of that strange creature, the horse. The Aztec priests themselves suggested fealty to Spain on precisely these grounds. One further observation: I was greatly interested to learn that the appropriate recipe for Spaniard is with salt, peppers and tomatoes. One simply never knows when this might come in useful.
I read A Meeting by the River by Christopher Isherwood on the way to the exhbition. Reading it, I began to recall some of Isherwood's religious essays in Exhumations (published two years before the novel), where Isherwood had described his wish to write a religious novel, showing spiritual revelation in relation to the ordinary and mundane. The protagonist would be uncertain, and would not be able to say "No, I can't - yet" when asked to affirm their belief. A Meeting by the River would appear to be that novel, a fact which is at the root of my antipathy to it. The novel describes the viewpoints of two brothers, one a succesful businessman, the other seeking to become a monk. In doing so, this dialogic form asks more questions than it answers. The brother suggests that the protagonist is in hiding from aspects of himself that he is seeking to repress; but this view is neither denied nor affirmed. The 'yet' lurks behind every such question. The novel also has an unpleasantly reactionary element to it; like Christopher Hitchens I tend to find the religious advocacy of docility and passivity to be nothing short of corrupt.
Also read was Sartre's Words an autobiography that openly foregrounds its similarities with Roquentin's development in Nausea (interesting to compare it to Gide's If it Die). The interesting difference is that the autobiography collapses the character of Roquentin with that of the Autodidact. As such, Sartre's development as a subject described in relation to a number of competing discourses. For example, Marxist; "teaching me my duties as a citizen and recounting the bourgeois version of history." Or Freudian; "a very incomplete Oedipus complex; no Super-Ego," as well as more staid variants such as Christianity (all of which are nonetheless teleological to some extent or other, as is existentialism). All of which competes with the more easily existentialist narrative; "a Platonist by condition, I moved from knowledge to its object I found ideas more real than things." As a consequence, there is something performative to Sartre's personality; it comes as little surprise that he and his mother used to refer to each other in the third person plural. As such, what is especially striking about Words is the extent to which it undermines the authenticity of the notion of discovering being in itself. On the one hand; "I became it myself and stretched myself to breaking point between these extremes," and on the other ; "I could not admit that a person received his being from outside, I had stuffed my soul in the middle-class idea of progress." But Sartre's release from this predicament is couched in terms of Marxist dialectic, from one episteme to another (perhaps hence Sartre's irritation with Camus for observing that Marxism and Capitalism were variants of the Enlightenment discourse of progress).
The final book, I've just finished is Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. There's little to be said of this, other than that Calvino shows that the significance of each city is splintered into myriads of memories; "each man bears in his mind a city made only of differences, a city without figures and without form." As such, Tamara is recognisable by it statues (signs), whereas travellers disagree as to how to recognize Zirma.Labels: History, Literature, Mythology
posted by Richard 2:42 PM
Thursday, September 19, 2002
After Amsterdam last year, Berlin was quite a different experience; though permissive and liberal in most matters it is rather more restrictive in other matters then comparatively illiberal Britain. Certainly, few people in Britain would put up with the Gestapo-trained museum attendants. Berlin itself is a rather impressive city, in spite of the further reconstruction needed by the East and the architecture destroyed
in the War (Potsdammer Platz in particular now resembles New York more than
most European capitals, fulfilling Weimar Republic ambitions; the commercial grandiloquence seems a poor substitute for the former countercultural city described by Highsmith and Isherwood). I began by walking the length of the Tiergarten,
the forest area that used to Frederick's hunting ground, to Siegessaule,
the victory column from the top of which the entire city can be seen for
miles around. At the end of the wooded area the Brandenburg gate demarcates
the beginning of the city, with the Reichstag next to it. This looks somewhat incongruous from a distance; the Germans have been far more diligent in precisely reconstructing damaged buildings
in all other matters and the sight of an eighteenth century building with a glass dome rather than the original copper one is decidedly odd. However, the dome does look rather more impressive at close quarters (the idea was to symbolise transparency in viewing the deliberations of the Parliament below; needless to add one cannot actually see those deliberations from the dome, proving once more the triumph of symbolism over fact. Similarly, when Joseph Roth visited the building in the thirties he recorded that the main doors were kept shut, so that the bourgeois-democratic representatives came and went through a small tradesmen's entrance at the side.) and the views from the roof are again impressive.
Passing through the gate and down Unter den Linden (containing some of the city's finest buildings such as the Humboldt University), it does not take long to realise that Berlin's architecture was conceived on a grand scale (though I was somewhat unsettled that the first thing I saw in the East was a branch of Starbucks). Mostly constructed under the direction of Friedrich Von Schinkel, much of it would seem to have been a response to the cultural inferiority Germany felt towards France at the time. Much of Germany's cultural development occurred in a comparatively compressed period of time. For example, Schinkel's buildings are mainly neoclassical, yet his paintings are typically romantic depictions of medieval society and gothic building. Much of his buildings destroyed in the war were apparently experiments in brick (though more of that survives than Nazi period architecture). Many of Schinkel's paintings are contained within the Old National Gallery on the Museum Island
and show a skilled, if not brilliant, painter. The highlight of the collection
has to be the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich though, showing a talent for landscape painting similar to Constable but also to Turner, and with one painting that even resembled Whistler.
The other noteworthy aspects of the collection are paintings from Carl Blechen,
Arnold Bocklin (including a rather amusing portrait of a somewhat overweight dragon as well as his rather more famous Isle of the Dead painting) the paintings of Berlin in the nineteenth century by Gaertner, and a good selection of impressionist paintings including Cezanne, Gauguin and an excellent Renoir. I also briefly visited a collection of Picasso's paintings from a Jewish private collector. I must admit to not especially liking Picasso, though his early phase under the influence of Braque was quite pleasant, if a little austere. Another slight disappointment was the Bauhaus Archive, although it did have an interesting painting by Klee. On the other hand, the Brohan Museum, for art nouveau, art deco and functionalism was wonderful, containing Tiffany glasses, Guimard's (most famous for designs of the Paris Metro) furniture designs and Hagemeister's paintings.
The old gallery is next to the Pergamon Museum, which is a further testament to grandiloquence, containing an entire temple from Pergamon, a three storey gateway from Miletas, a balcony from Balbeck, and a palace from Jordan. I was mainly interested in the gateway and ramparts from Babylon, where the blue ceramic tiles remain extraordinarily vivid. Next to them was a rather unmarked exhibit, which I presume to be the original tablet of the Code of Hammurabi. The city's Egyptian Museum is in a similar vein, containing numerous gateways and mummies, though the most extraordinary thing about it is the bust of Nefertiti, one of the first and most iconic moments in western art.
Outside Berlin, Pottsdam contains the Sanssouci palace and estates, in much the same manner as mad King Ludwig, Frederick the Great's palace has an almost unhinged quality (literally if one considers the deranged parrots crawling across the walls in the Voltaire room) to it's splendour, resembling Tennyson's palace of art (One might have said that the New Palace built later on the same estate was more restrained, were it not for the ballroom whose walls were festooned with seashells). There is a separate gallery for Frederick's painting collection, though little of it was to my taste, excepting a typically gory Caravaggio. The estate was rather vast, though I did have time to look
at the Chinese house (largely characterised by a rather poor conception of what was or wasn't Chinese) and the somewhat incongruous presence of a windmill. Similar architecture was to be found at the Charlottenburg palace back inside Berlin. Built for Sophie Charlottenburg, the ground floor is
quite similar to Sanssouci, though the upper floor is rather more interesting, having rather more esoteric portraits. The Schinkel Pavillion on the grounds was also well worth visiting.
The final item of note from Berlin was the Botanischer Garten, which boasted considerable grounds and a very large set of glasshouses. While containing all of the usual suspects (cacti, insectivorous, succulents, ferns and so on), it was interesting to note that they have followed the lead of the Eden Project and introduced animal species; upon one sign a lizard rested, and in one room zebra finches filled the air with their song. In another, terrapins rested next to stepping stones across a pool; as one crossed one became aware that carp beneath appeared to be behaving in a manner rather
more expected from pigeons in Trafalgar square.
Moving on from Berlin by train (most of which network is better than Britain even in the East, though I was a little unsettled by the fact that the doors would open before trains had quite stopped; though the warning signs were nothing if not direct), it was somewhat depressing to view all of the derelict factories and dilapidated housing in the East, where reconstruction has many years to go. That said, arriving in Leipzig via Wittenberg (only catching a glimpse of the Cathedral en route), one can only pay tribute to how far they have come; the city is now indistinguishable from any other city in Western Europe. Leipzig is a rather quiet city (though the number of skinheads, punks and goths was markedly higher than in Berlin), proud of its cultural heritage (Bach and the Luther-Eck disputations), though the quiet was undermined somewhat by the election with the PDS campaigning
on the day I arrived and the SPD on the day I left. The Bach Museum and the Thomas Church were and adequate diversion, though the truth is that there is very little there.
More interesting was something the city was rather less enthused about; Colditz. The trip there was not easy, as it was necessary to take a train out to an unpleasant town in the middle of nowhere, with a six minute transfer to a coach I had no idea how to find, which only left once every two hours. In the end the journey was completed without incident, and I arrived. The castle's museum depicts something almost like a public schoolboy's game. As with the prison camp in Vonnnegut's Slaughterhouse 5 the inmates had few diversions; sunbathing, music, pantomime, bridge and bizarre escape plans, which each nationality created in secret from prisoners of other nationalities. These
included destroying Colditz with dry rot, walking out disguised as a woman (only foiled by an overly helpful British officer who told the German guards that the lady had dropped her watch) and building a glider out of floorboards, cloth and glue. The most alarming thing about the last plan is that it would probably have worked (as shown in a later experiment) had not the war finished
first.
I read Franklin's autobiography during the trip; not the most interesting of documents, it must be said, and the quasi-puritan work ethic (occasionally slipping into schadenfreude at the failures of those he is pleased to call the less industrious) was not especially agreeable.Labels: Architecture, Art, Berlin, History
posted by Richard 5:59 AM
Thursday, August 30, 2001
Alternative versions of history are a perennially engrossing topic, with perhaps the most elaborate exposition of the theme being from Niall Ferguson in Virtual History. This propounds the idea that as individuals in history are not aware of the future, but are aware of possible courses of action that are open, to them it should follow that history is partly a documentation of those courses. What if the Roman Empire had succeeded in vanquishing Germany? What if Charles the First had continued his invasion of Scotland and thereby prevented Cromwell from taking power? What if Stuart Britain had been more inclined to grant devolution to North America and had thereby assuaged the need for US independence? What if French military assistance to the American colonists had never been needed and French finances had been left sufficiently robust to avoid the revolution? What if the Stalin had maintained his pact with Hitler and not entered the second world war, thereby allowing a German victory over Europe? What if the Soviets had opted for a full-out attack on the West rather than opting for a cold war policy? At that point the powers were more finely balanced while Russian endurance in adversity (as demonstrated in the Second World War) was far stronger than that of the United States (which had been extremely reluctant to enter either world war and whose population detested the idea of soldiers dying for the Europeans). The result would well have been Soviet victory, a scenario made impossible by the advantage given by the Cold War to the United States (allowing the US to accumulate both capital and weaponry).
All of which somehow falls short of bringing us to the topic of The Difference Engine by Bruce Sterling and William Gibson. The alternate history presented by this book follows from the premise that Charles Babbage had been able to perfect and build his analytical engine, thereby transforming the industrial revolution and inaugurating the era of computing a hundred years early. The industrial revolution becomes an automation revolution (so that Jacquard looms can be programmed) which in turn worsens the luddite riots, which in turn leads to the destruction of the assets of the landed classes, and which in turn leads to the election of a new reforming administration that continues the technological revolution but with the pace of democratic and social reform quickened. As an end-result the British Empire is greatly strengthened in both economic and military terms. The premise is reasonable enough, but the consequences that the authors trace as following from it are far more questionable.
For example, in this version of history New York has become a communist republic under Karl Marx. Even given the context that the authors build around it (one where most of North America is part of the British Empire and the remaining regions are impoverished) it is somewhat difficult to see that this eventuality could ever have come to pass. In the first place, it seems improbable that the British would have allowed New York of all cities to remain independent (the city had been finely divided during the war of independence). In the second place the tradition of individualism in the United States makes it improbable that communism could have gained a hold, even if the communist victory was achieved as an accident during city-wide rioting. The appointment of Byron as Prime Minister is also somewhat suspect. It is accurate to note that Byron did address the House of Lords on liberal subjects, but his private life was nonetheless already more than sufficiently scandalous as to make any furthering of a political career somewhat unlikely.
All of these occurrences are far from having been impossible and all of them can probably have reputable defences put forward for them. The issue is how these changes have been made. Unlike Ferguson, Gibson and Sterling do not appear to see history as a sequence of events, but as the product of entropy operating within an otherwise ordered system, or, perhaps more accurately as a pseudo-random system. Certain facets of this version of history appear quite unaltered (Huxley and Marx), while others appear entirely different (Byron and Disraeli). For example, if Byron was respectable enough to become Prime Minister and to avert the divorce from his wife it seems improbable that Ada Byron would have been educated with such an emphasis on the sciences and mathematics - under Byron's influence literature and music would probably have dominated her education. Why was Ada not transfigured in the way her father was? Moreover, characters are deliberately depicted as inherently unpredictable. For example, Mallory's sudden visit to a prostitute does not appear entirely congruent with the earlier depiction of him, a fact that appears to be deliberately held in reserve to catch the reader off guard. The point is not so much that it is 'out of character' but that no attempt is made to relate it to his character as another novelist might well have done. The same applies to the structure of the novel, which can neither be properly described as being either linear or episodic, and would instead appear to be based on "causation, contingency, chance."
As such, Sybil is introduced as the main character and is then deposed with the phrase "their paths diverge forever." Oliphant is casually announced to be dying of cancer at the end of the novel, with a potential death for Mallory is averted in favour of a more pleasant one; "that chain of events does not occur."(1)
The novel explicates much of this in the debate over evolution in the novel, with Mallory favouring a model based upon mutation in response to catastrophic events, and denounces the "doctrinaire" "true and natural course of historical development" in these terms "history works by catastrophe... there is no history - there is only contingency." This appears to be endorsed by the chance Marxist rebellion (one could argue that this is in keeping with the Victorian preoccupation with their society being overwhelmed), caused by the pollution of the Thames forcing all but the working class out of London and only foiled by the arrival of the rain. Yet the novel modifies this view, as catastrophism is forced to give way to the discovery of continental drift.
The novel resolves this ambivalence by pulling something rather surprising out if its hat; Gödel's theorem; "any formal system must be both incomplete and unable to establish its own inconsistency," as expounded by Lady Ada Byron. The principle is of a plot hinged upon the discovery of Gödelian theory (not unlike the role of the chapter of Aristotle's Poetics devoted to comedy in The Name of the Rose).
It is one thing to suggest that Gödel's theorem applies to differing disciplines
(including the humanities) and quite another to suggest that it does so in same manner to all disciplines. As Jerry Fodor writes "It is, after all, entirely possible to doubt that 'art, ethics and religion' are primarily in the business of explaining things: not, anyhow, in anything like the way that geology and biology and physics seek to do. In which case, it's hard to see how the putative unity of scientific explanations could be a model for consilience between science and 'the humanities'." But this would appear to be precisely what Ada Byron states in the novel; "if human discourse could be interpreted as the exfoliation of a deeper formal system... it was a dream of Leibniz to find such a system, the Characteristica Universalis." Mallory says much the same thing when comparing the social disorder in London to molecules flying apart.
In describing consilience Jerry Fodor criticises Edmund Wilson thus; "The psychology endorsed here is no advance on Hume or Mill, and the exposition is markedly less sophisticated." The point is a legitimate one; as the book would appear to advance a form of taxonomy in which all may be described using the vocabulary of physics, including the workings of social unrest. In fact, the Victorians placed considerable faith in taxonomy, of all things been related in a systemic manner, something that the book mentions with regard to Marx, but which would also have applied to Bentham, Eliot, Darwin and Dickens. While Gödel's theorem would have been a somewhat alien concept for the Victorian mind, the doctrine of consilence would have been much less so, as it was to be propounded in the Edwardian era, especially by the Logical Positivists. The failure of the Positivists to make a case for this theory goes some way to explaining the sense of unease at the view of history in this novel.
(1) As a side note it is worth noting that while much of this would appear to be akin to John Fowles and The French Lieutenant's Woman, with its alternate endings. However, Fowles is concerned to contrast the attitudes of present day and Victorian society, where Gibson and Sterling allow the two to run together and congeal (Luddism and Marxism appear to merge while Rudwick and Mallory appear to be playing Victorian versions of Dawkins and Gould).
On another literary note, I'm somewhat puzzled by the controversy surrounding Fay Weldon's decision to accept a fee from a firm of jewellers and include references to them in her book. While it is easy to see that product placement of this kind could be little more than intrusion into a novel, this surely depends on how adept the author proves to be. It is difficult to imagine Fay Weldon being especially clumsy in introducing the references, and she is to be congratulated for having made them a part of her book, rather than leaving them as alien introductions that sit uneasily alongside the rest of the text. As Weldon herself points out this advertising does not seem to be terribly different from artistic patronage as it has been practised from Maecenas to Kreutzer; the idea that literature is a sacrosanct object that transcends such base affairs is naive at best. To borrow a common adage, if literature has a role it is to challenge our perceptions, which, judging from the sound and fury of the discussion, Fay Weldon has succeeded in doing.Labels: History, ScienceFiction
posted by Richard 12:53 PM
