Historical
Perspectives
STEPHEN: (Looks up
from his newspaper) Are you feeling all right, Michael? I must say, you do look somewhat pale
today.
MICHAEL: Oh, I'm just
feeling a little glum, that's all.
STEPHEN: (Puts the
newspaper to one side) Why is that, then?
MICHAEL: I'm not quite
sure that I know, to tell you the truth.
In fact, I haven't been feeling particularly pleased with myself all
week. It probably has something to do
with the fact that I've been intellectually barren recently.
STEPHEN: You mean, you
haven't been writing very well, these past few days?
MICHAEL: Worse, I
haven't written anything whatsoever these past ten days! I have been compelled to spend most of the
time reading, which, for a person of my creative disposition, is all rather
depressing! If the weather wasn't so
cold and damp, I would be able to kill an hour or two out walking every
day. But, alas, even that hasn't proved
possible!
STEPHEN: Yes, the
weather has been rather depressing
recently, hasn't it? It makes life
somewhat constricting, being confined to one's room all day.
MICHAEL: It certainly
does! And you are the first person that
I've actually spoken to in over two weeks - a time during which my tongue has
remained restricted to the humble role of tasting food and drink. But I don't particularly desire to plague you
with my problems. I expect you have
enough of your own, anyway.
STEPHEN: Well, at least
I have done some work recently. Although
I'm not altogether convinced that it's as good as I would like it to be. Composing and performing music is just as
difficult as writing prose, you know. In
fact, I sometimes think there is nothing more difficult. But, tell me, why haven't you written
anything these past ten days?
MICHAEL: I don't
honestly know. Ever since I completed
that autobiographical sketch about my philosophical development, I have been at
a complete loss as to what to do next.
It seems as though everything has been said and done already.
STEPHEN: Hmm, I know
how you feel. Most artists and thinkers
have to go through a similar barren patch at some time in their lives. But, oddly enough, there are times when you
are only too glad to take a break from your work, times when you feel in need
of a break and have few worries about the future.
MICHAEL: Yes, and there
are even times when you can go straight from one work to another, when you're
in absolutely no doubt as to what you are doing and where it is leading
you. But this, alas, isn't one of them!
STEPHEN: Perhaps you
are becoming too much of a scholar in your reclusiveness?
MICHAEL: I shall be, if
I'm not careful. You wouldn't think it
possible, but every damn book I read only succeeds in further humiliating me,
in drawing an air of defeatism around me, in making me painfully conscious of
the fact that I'm only reading because I haven't got anything better to
do! You can imagine how encouraging it
is to wallow in one's own sterility every day!
One actually begins to feel sorry for oneself, and not simply because
one can't write or is gradually conditioning oneself not to write, but, no less
significantly, because one has too much culture around one all the time,
because culture becomes one's compulsion, one's prison, one's fate! Yes, one would gladly throw it all away and
embark on something different - if only one could!
STEPHEN: But,
eventually, you would suffer just as much from whatever else you embarked upon,
just as you had previously suffered from your reading.
MICHAEL: Perhaps. But at least it would make a change.
STEPHEN: Naturally, if
only for a while. But, tell me, what
would you do if you were to abandon writing, if you decided, once and for all,
to have done with this 'prison of culture', as you call it?
MICHAEL: What could I
do? Obviously there are a number of
things that I'm not qualified to do and an even greater number of things that I
wouldn't want to do, although I've never bothered to make a definitive list of
them all. I suppose, however, that I
could get a job of sorts somewhere, even a petty clerking one. But whether I'd be able to stick at it for
very long, whether I'd be able to settle down in it, is quite another
thing! Still, if by some unusual decree
of fate, I could get an ordinary clerical job somewhere, I suppose it would
only serve, in the long-run, to induce me to take-up writing again, and to do
so, moreover, with renewed zest.
STEPHEN: You mean the
poverty of clerking would gradually make you more conscious of the richness of
culture?
MICHAEL: That is one
way of putting it. Although whether I
would then be able to write anything worthwhile ... is a question that affords
a wide solution! When one is a clerk one
is a clerk, and when one is a writer one is a writer. To cross from the one context to the other is
by no means an easy thing to do, as I learnt some time ago.
STEPHEN: Nor a very
wise one, Michael! A man of your
temperament, background, and sensibility would probably become neurotic in no
time. Besides, you have already worked
as a clerk and that was hell on earth, as far as you were concerned. At least,
that was how you described it to me one evening, when we got to talking about
neuroses. You weren't exactly describing
the richness of clerking and the poverty of culture then! On the contrary, there was nothing more
important to you than the desire to avoid ever doing any such work again.
MICHAEL: Yes, well do I
remember! Anyhow, I have absolutely no
intention of disobeying my conscience. I
don't intend to pack-up writing. I was
merely expressing my distaste for the fact that I haven't written anything in
ten days, in consequence of which I've been compelled to read the works of
various authors instead. Admittedly, ten
days is no time at all really, but it has still managed to put me in a
monotonously depressed state-of-mind.
STEPHEN: Hmm, have you
absolutely no idea what to write next? I
mean, surely you must have some idea?
MICHAEL: Yes, more
philosophy. But that doesn't sell very
well, unfortunately.
STEPHEN: Why not try a
novel for a change?
MICHAEL:
Impossible! If I knew how to set about
doing so without pushing it in an overly conceptual direction, I probably
would. But to be perfectly honest with
you, I don't have a clue. I haven't read
a novel for months and, besides, I have absolutely no desire to attempt
one. There are quite enough little
story-tellers in the world already.
STEPHEN: Why not a
play, then?
MICHAEL: A play? Good God, that is the last thing I should
want to write! Can you imagine me as
another frigging Bernard Shaw?
STEPHEN: Frankly, no!
MICHAEL: I'm sincerely
glad to hear it! There are some people
who are just not cut-out to write in certain genres, you know. Did
STEPHEN: Well, what
else is there - biography, history, criticism?
MICHAEL: Criticism
possibly. But biography and history -
highly unlikely.
STEPHEN: Ah, but you
can write essays, dialogues, and aphorisms, can't you?
MICHAEL: Yes, and
that's about all! Whether I shall be
able to continue doing so much longer, however, remains to be seen. There was a time, you know, when I wrote
poems - short lyric and prose poems after the manner of Baudelaire. Or, more correctly, before it, since I was
something of an aesthete who praised the virtues of female beauty like some
kind of star-struck devotee of the Blessed Virgin. Well, I stopped doing that a few years ago,
and since then I haven't so much as even read a poem, never mind attempted to
write one! Will the same thing happen, I
wonder, with regard to essays, dialogues, and aphorisms? I can't, of course, be sure, but, if I
continue writing, it's quite possible that I shall have to adopt some other
genre or medium instead - one that I have hitherto disdained.
STEPHEN: You mean the
novel or the play?
MICHAEL: I didn't say
that! But it isn't altogether impossible
that I may take to something which will allow me to continue expressing my
conceptual bent without fear of being misunderstood or censored. These days I tend to avoid poetry. In the future, I may even avoid philosophy. There's no telling what I shall do. Indeed, I may even give-up writing
altogether.
STEPHEN: Or writing
will give you up?
MICHAEL: Perhaps it
already has?
STEPHEN: I would find
that difficult to believe. Why, you're
completely obsessed by it! You rarely
talk of anything else. I mean, has there
ever been a day in your professional or vocational life when you haven't had a
book in your hands? I would wager
anything that, throughout the past three years, you haven't gone a single day
without picking up a book.
MICHAEL: Then you would
lose the wager, Stephen. There certainly
have been days when I haven't read anything.
STEPHEN: Yes, about ten
out of a thousand or so! (Michael shakes his head, but Stephen continues)
Yes, you needn't pretend otherwise! You
are completely obsessed
by
cultural activities of this nature. And
even ten days is being rather generous to you.
In reality, there have probably been no more than five, and on those
five occasions you wondered how you could possibly manage to get through the
day without a book - worse, how you could possibly allow yourself to be drawn
away from books because of some tedious social or business engagement!
MICHAEL: I am afraid
that you are quite mistaken there! You
are quite overlooking the number of days when illness prevented me from reading
anything. And there must have been at
least twenty of those!
STEPHEN: Well, that is
another matter. Although I have little
doubt that you read more when you're recovering from an illness than at any
other time, as if to make up for lost time.
Yet I suppose that is really beside-the-point. I am merely trying to get to the fact that it
would be better for both you and culture if you ignored it sometimes, forbade
yourself to read anything for a week or two, every few months, in order to be
more appreciative of it when you subsequently took-up reading again. Then, with a little luck, you might not feel
so sorry for yourself in your 'prison of culture'.
MICHAEL: But even
supposing I could
give
it up, from time to time, what else would I do with myself all day? You know what sort of a withdrawn life I
lead. If I didn't read for at least two
hours every day, I would be at a complete loss as to how else to fill the
time. If I had a few more friends it
might be different. But the fact remains
that I don't. And I certainly don't see
you that often.
STEPHEN: No, that's to
be regretted. A professional musician is
usually kept very busy. One week I may
be in
MICHAEL: And what would
we do then?
STEPHEN: Sign on the
dole, I suppose. However, getting back
to what I was saying earlier, I still think it would be better for you to spend
at least one day a week away from books.
Naturally, one has to do something, but it doesn't always have to be the
same damn thing.
MICHAEL: Don't be so
sure about it! If I could do so, I
would; but it is only too clear to me that I am dependent on the company of
books - indeed, I'm probably as dependent on their company as you are on the
company of music scores. And to turn the
conversation around, are there ever any days when you don't have a violin in
your hands?
STEPHEN: A few.
MICHAEL:
Precisely! But you wouldn't take me
seriously if I advised you to take a break from it more often, and neither can
I take you very seriously when you advise me, against my better judgement, to
stop reading every so often. Besides, I
hardly wish to give you the impression that books are always a torture to
me. On the contrary, they are one of the
greatest pleasures in my life, although I don't generally feel that to be the
case when I'm compelled to read because I can't think of anything to write. Yet there are some books which I've read time
and time again, books which it was almost fitting to learn by heart, so great
an impression did they make on me. And
yet, one can still have too much of them, one can still feel sorry for oneself
because one is compelled to have too much of
them. As you well know, some people
think that money is the source of all happiness. They acquire a lot of it, only to discover
that it isn't. Others think that sex is
the source of all happiness. They
likewise acquire a lot of that, only to discover that it isn't. And exactly the same thing applies to
culture, any culture. It is a fine
thing, but like money, sex, and a lot of other fine things, it's by no means
everything! Try to make it so and you
will soon perish.
STEPHEN: Indeed, too
much culture is as bad as too little, or maybe even worse. For when one has too little, one can always
wish one had more, whereas when one has too much, one can only wish for less,
which must be somewhat demoralizing. But
one should beware of taking oneself too seriously, since it almost invariably
leads other people to take one too seriously as well.
MICHAEL: Perhaps. Although I'm not altogether convinced that
some people are able to avoid taking themselves too seriously. It often seems to me that those who do so are
generally unable to do anything else, since they have had it thrust upon them
by fate, destiny, responsibility, age, health, et cetera. But that is another story, and usually not a
very pleasant one either! I hardly think
myself enough of a story-teller to enlarge upon it.
STEPHEN: You could
always turn it into a work of philosophy.
MICHAEL: I could. But then very few people would read it.
STEPHEN: Maybe that
would be just as well!
MICHAEL: Yes, though
not for me. After all, it's always
encouraging to earn some money from one's work, particularly when one hasn't
got that much in the first place.
Philosophy can be fine if you are the worthy recipient of a large
patrimony or a state pension. But if you
intend to earn a decent living from it, you might as well take to poetry
instead. You will remain just as poor,
only more romantically so.
STEPHEN: Hardly any
more encouraging, since this isn't the ideal century for romantics!
MICHAEL: Neither is it
the ideal century for metaphysical philosophers. However, I'm not so sure that any previous
century was, either.
STEPHEN: What, exactly,
do you mean by that?
MICHAEL: Precisely that
it isn't easy to be a deeply conceptual writer in any age. Whatever century you choose to study, you
will always find a plentiful supply of similar complaints. Anyway, it's always easy for people who have
to live through the hardships of their time to imagine that things were easier
in earlier times - and by 'things' I don't just mean literature or philosophy -
even when a close study of the past would indicate the contrary. People always have had to struggle for a
living and probably always will have to, no matter what the century, and it's
perfectly natural that they should do so.
For what do you suppose would happen to them if they didn't have to
struggle?
STEPHEN: You tell me.
MICHAEL: They would die
of boredom. Nobody would be able to
tolerate living. For, ridiculous as it
may seem, struggling makes life easier, human beings are so well-adapted to
struggle, in various contexts, that they would be unable to survive without
continuing to do so. People actually go
out of their way to complicate things for themselves, to make life harder in
order to make it more interesting or less boring, as the case may be. And even the most timid of them regularly
read their gruesome newspapers and watch their even more gruesome films,
because such experiences add another dimension to their lives, a dimension
without which a majority of them would be unable to live. Take away all the disagreeable facts of life,
and the world would become a very dull place in no time! Naturally, you may not like many of the
things which are currently happening in it, but does that necessarily imply that
things which happened in the past were any better or that they shouldn't have
happened? No, you won't find the
atrocities and plagues of the past to be any better, or less lethal, than more
recent ones, and I very much doubt whether you would ever be qualified to
construct a worthwhile argument based on the supposition that they shouldn't
have happened. Everything happens for a
reason, and usually for a damn good reason too!
STEPHEN: That may be,
but surely you would agree that many of the atrocities which happened this
century were much worse than anything that took place in earlier
centuries. Why, they were much more
widespread, much bigger, far beyond the scope of previous times.
MICHAEL: But that
doesn't necessarily prove that they were any worse. On the contrary, the global population has
become much greater than ever before, and thus the atrocities of the century
are relevant to the people of this century, to the capacities of the nations of
this century. Can you say, for instance,
that a man who slaughtered a hundred village people in, say, 1850 because there
were only a hundred people available for slaughter, was any more humane or
righteous than the man who slaughtered a thousand village people in 1950
because there were a thousand people available for slaughter? No, of course not! The principle of killing whatever was
available to be killed remains the same in both cases. Consequently it's a serious mistake to
measure recent atrocities by the standards of past ones. People who do this usually have little sense
of history. Indeed, they are quite often
more interested in proving to both themselves and others that their age is
undeniably worse than any previous age.
Although, had they lived through a previous age, they would probably
have thought just as poorly of that! But
as soon as one begins to measure the present by the standards of the past or
vice versa, one does a grave disservice to both past and present alike. For example, the repressive activities of the
Spanish Inquisition may appear relatively tame when compared to some of the
repressive activities conducted by the Nazis, but that by no means proves they
were tame for the people who had to live through them. On the contrary, they couldn't have conceived
of anything worse! For if the
Inquisition didn't put millions of people to death in Extermination Camps, it
wasn't because they were any better than those who did but, oddly enough,
because such camps hadn't been invented then, because it wouldn't have served
their purposes to put so many people to death, because their powers were mainly
restricted to a smaller area, because the nature of their creed imposed certain
definite restrictions as to the total numbers of people affected by it, and so
on and so forth. No, things of that kind
have always been relevant to the times and, as such, they become the double and
equal of the times, to paraphrase Baudelaire.
If particular aspects of modern life seem difficult to live with, you
should remember that there have always been aspects of every age which were no
less difficult for the people concerned to live with. In certain respects life never changes.
STEPHEN: I agree with
you there. Although I'm not altogether
convinced that it wouldn't have been better living in the seventeenth, eighteenth,
or even nineteenth centuries than at present.
Why, there were no such horrors as the atom bomb, concentration camps,
nuclear missiles, and widespread industrial or commercial pollution of the
atmosphere then!
MICHAEL: No, but there
were certainly a lot of other horrors which various people would have preferred
not to exist. Besides, whether or not
life was better then would have depended, to a considerable extent, upon who or
where you were; whether, for instance, you were rich or poor, soldier or
sailor, Englishman or Irishman, European or African, oppressor or oppressed,
Protestant or Catholic, slave owner or slave, et cetera. For some people life in those centuries had
everything to offer. For others, by
contrast, it had next to nothing. You
probably wouldn't have enjoyed being an African slave in the Southern States of
America, a member of an oppressed or threatened tribe of Red Indians, a victim
of the Thirty Years War between France and Germany, a child factory-worker in
the early decades of the Industrial Revolution, an Irish peasant at the time of
the Great Potato Famine, a hounded noble during the French Revolution, an
ex-convict labouring in the wilds of Australia, a defeated Royalist in the
English Civil War, or one of India's numerous untouchables. Indeed, I could continue the list almost
indefinitely, if I really wanted to shake your confidence in the alleged
superiority of those times. And then we
could take an even closer look at the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth
centuries, at all the known misfortunes which befell various peoples and
categories of persons during those times, like, for instance, the Bubonic
Plague. Then we could go even further
back, back to the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, and so on, to the
barbarous beginnings of Western civilization.
I dare say that you would be more than willing to give the present
century a second chance, after we had travelled through all the previous ages
in such an analytical fashion.
STEPHEN: Heaven
forbid! I have heard quite enough about
them already, and am almost relieved to be alive in an age of widespread
traffic pollution, rather than widespread cholera or the Black Death. If we continue to dwell on the past and, in particular,
its atrocities much longer, I shall be compelled to believe in progress, in the
progress which has thus far culminated in the atom bomb, concentration camps,
nuclear warheads, and all the rest of it!
MICHAEL: It would be a
good thing if you did
believe
in progress, for it's certainly a fact of life.
But it would be an even better thing if you also came to believe in
regress, and in the fact that there can't be any meaningful progress without
it.
STEPHEN: No progress
without regress? Surely that's a
contradiction in terms! How can you both
progress and regress at the same time or in the same place?
MICHAEL: You
can't. What actually happens is that
society progresses in one sphere of life and regresses in another. As Emerson remarked in one of his essays:
'There is no straightforward amelioration'.
What you gain on the roundabout, you lose on the swings.
STEPHEN: But surely
that is most unfortunate?
MICHAEL: Quite the
contrary, it is most just! It's the only
way that society can function. Take away
the many examples of regress and you would thereby deprive it of its ability to
progress. I need hardly remind you that
motorized transportation is, in the main, a noteworthy improvement on the
horse-and-carriage system of transportation, and even on the horse itself. But one also has to admit that it has given
rise to a number of serious regressions, not the least of which being the
widespread traffic pollution you mentioned a short while ago. Of course, there is a great deal of pollution
which has nothing whatsoever to do with cars, trucks, vans, buses, motorcycles,
scooters, mopeds, or whatever. But the
fact nonetheless remains that they are responsible for a great deal of it, and
will doubtless continue to remain so until such time as either we're all
poisoned by it or, hopefully, find an effective way of minimizing it. Although this latter possibility does seem
somewhat unlikely when one considers the ever-increasing amount of traffic on
the roads these days! However, it isn't
altogether impossible that the petrol engine will soon be rendered as obsolete
as the horse-and-carriage system, and that we shall then enter a new and
hopefully safer era - namely that of the electric car or the water car or some
other such fumeless vehicle. But, assuming
we do, there will of course be drawbacks to that development too, just as there
were drawbacks to the formerly-esteemed horse-and-carriage system. Drawbacks, I might add, which neither you nor
I, with all our detestation of traffic pollution, congested roads, high petrol
prices, traffic noise, road accidents, parking fines, and the like, would care
to experience, even if we knew exactly what they were.
STEPHEN: Well, we
should have to consult the history books to find out more about that sort of travel.
MICHAEL: Yes, but
whatever we learnt from them would be inadequate compared with what we might
have learnt, had we been obliged to make use of a horse and carriage every day
or, what is probably worse, avoid getting in the way of a horse and carriage
every day. We may have to put-up with a daily
dose of petrol fumes and exhaust gas, but we don't have to put-up with a daily
dose of horse manure!
STEPHEN: More's the
pity! For I am sure it would be more
tolerable than this other stench.
MICHAEL: You might find
it an agreeable alternative to begin with, but when you had to live with it
every day, and not simply to smell it but to see it as well, you would probably
have a different opinion altogether.
Anyway, if for the sake of argument, mankind suddenly adopted the horse
and carriage again, there would be a much greater number of them on the roads
today than ever there had been in Victorian or earlier times. And that would naturally mean a much greater
amount of horse manure as well!
STEPHEN: Well, it
doesn't look as though mankind will be reverting to that primitive
state-of-affairs in the near future, so we shall just have to persevere with
exhaust fumes a while longer. It seems
that every age has its problems.
MICHAEL: Indeed, and no
sooner does an age rid itself of one problem than it acquires another, which is
exactly what happens to people. We will
never have a life without problems, my friend, and neither will we ever have
one without change. In the final analysis
all we can do, and all nations and epochs can do, is change from one problem to
another.
STEPHEN: Hmm, it rather
looks as though I shall have to accept the twentieth century after all,
considering that I am a product of it who wouldn't be better off in an earlier
time.
MICHAEL: I didn't say
that you wouldn't be better off in an earlier time. I said it would depend on who or where you
were. Some people led a fine life in the
seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, and, between you and I, it's
just as well that they did. For it is
always better to lead a fine life than to lead an impoverished, harried, or
disease-ridden one. Admittedly, if you
had been a member of the suffering classes, you might not have agreed, even
when priests went on about the moral virtue of suffering in an attempt to reach
an ecclesiastical accommodation with the poor.
But that is no reason to suppose a good, healthy, adventurous, and
productive life is necessarily immoral.
We may disapprove of many of the things which happened in former times,
but that is by no means a sufficient reason to assume that such things
shouldn't have happened or, alternatively, to pride ourselves on the
supposition that we wouldn't have done exactly the same things ourselves in
similar circumstances. History will
always appear diabolical to people who can only view it with a contemporary
eye, to people who make no effort to see it in the perspective of its
time. If we wouldn't commit similar
atrocities, these days, to the kinds of atrocities committed by certain persons
or peoples in the past, that is only because we have no need to, not
necessarily because we're any better or have grown more humane in the
meantime. Everything that happens does
so for a good reason. Naturally, you may
consider yourself fortunate or even superior for not being as brutal as people in
the past often were. But have you ever
bothered to consider whether a majority of those 'brutal' people really enjoyed
being brutal, whether they didn't occasionally feel sorry for themselves on
account of the fact that survival forced such brutality upon them, as well as
cognizant of the fact that they would have been quite prepared to leave other
people or creatures alone, had circumstances permitted them to do so without
too great a financial or physical cost to themselves? Undoubtedly there must have been times when
even the most brutal people were disgusted with their behaviour, just as I may
occasionally feel disgusted with the prison of thought and letters in which I'm
obliged to live, and you may likewise feel disgusted with the world of music and
travel in which you're obliged to live.
How can we be sure, for instance, that there weren't slave owners in the
Southern States of America who would have willingly, even gladly, managed
without slaves if they thought they could have done so, or who occasionally
felt disgusted with the whole trend of their barbarous lives, despite the
knowledge that a majority of them quite understandably regarded slaves as
inferior creatures who had been put on earth to serve their ends, much as
though they were a two-legged variety of cow, sheep, ox, or horse?
STEPHEN: I don't quite
understand what you mean by slave owners 'understandably' regarding their
slaves as inferiors. If you mean that
slaves of any race are normally regarded as inferiors by their masters ...
MICHAEL: Ah, I meant
more than that! The majority of slave
owners were, by today's standards, somewhat ignorant men. They were mostly farmers and landowners with
business worries, not highly cultivated or educated men-of-the-world. Consequently, one needn't be particularly
surprised if their basic attitude to the Negro should have been such as to
suggest him - hitherto relatively unknown to most white men - a subhuman
creature or, at any rate, racially inferior to themselves. What reason did they have to assume
otherwise? Other white men had
overpowered the Negro in his native land, transported him to
STEPHEN: But to us they
appear evil and unjust. We cannot help
but view them with a contemporary eye, one conditioned to look upon any form of
racial discrimination with disapproval.
MICHAEL: Yes, they
certainly appear wrong by the estimation of contemporary values. For the negro has long since been emancipated
from the shackles of slavery and has progressed as far as, if not further than,
a majority of white men, thus removing any serious grounds for considering him
to belong to an inferior race. At one
time a particular class of people always put a hand to their mouth when they
yawned, in the assumption - quite apart from its utilitarian value vis-à-vis
the possibility if not likelihood of bad breath - that such a gesture would
prevent the entry of evil spirits. At
another time a particular class of people assumed the Negro biologically
inferior to the white man. Such is
life! However, nowadays we have little
or nothing to do with either assumption, being the victims of certain other
superstitions and delusions instead. But
if we desire to see how mistaken, stupid, or unjust these earlier people were,
we view them with a contemporary eye.
And if we desire to try and understand what motivated them to behave the
way they did, we use a little imagination, a little patience, a little
knowledge, and endeavour to view them in the perspective of their time. Then we may comprehend something of why they
were justified in doing what they did and in being what they were. Why it was virtually inevitable that a black
man should then appear inferior.
STEPHEN: Thus, in a
sense, it is we who are being unjust when we accuse them of injustice and evil
ways. For we are trying to measure the
standards of the past according to those of the present, which, as you said
earlier, is a serious mistake.
MICHAEL: Actually I
said it was a serious mistake to measure recent atrocities by the standards of
past ones. Although one might also
reverse the idea, like you, by contending that it is an equally serious mistake
to measure what we assume to be the atrocities of the past against the
atrocities, real or imaginary, of the present.
STEPHEN: Ah, but I
didn't say 'atrocities', I said 'standards'.
MICHAEL: One needn't
always differentiate too strictly between them!
However, what you say is quite correct.
We are being unjust to the
slave owners, or for that matter to any other historical category of men, when
we evaluate them according to the measure of contemporary society, instead of
attempting to understand them in the context of their age. By turning them into villains, we become more
villainous ourselves due to a lack of imagination. A fair number of the alleged injustices of
the slave trade are creations of the contemporary mind. They spring from the fact that we are either
unable or unwilling to see things from their point of view, in consequence of
which we're only too ready to do them a disservice in the light of our own
standards. One can understand it, but
one can't reasonably condone it. A lack
of historical perspective is nothing to be especially proud about!
STEPHEN: I suppose not,
although I somehow suspect that the past will always be tinged with a dash of
romanticism for someone marooned in the materialistic present.
MICHAEL: True, but we
must also be grateful for what we have got in this day and age. There is something dreadfully pathological
about being out-of-joint with one's age, particularly when one bears in mind
that we were meant for this age, are children of it, and can't entirely divorce
ourselves from its influence. We may
play at being in another century, decorate our rooms with its trappings, and
generally act as though we were unaware of space travel, nuclear submarines,
industrial computers, and colour televisions.
But we will still do so with the consciousness of twentieth-century men,
we will always be dilettantes, outsiders, and play-actors. Let us cherish our little dreams and
delusions, by all means! But let us not
forget that they owe their existence to the twentieth century, because it's
always pleasant to dream oneself into a 'better age'. God knows, there are enough things to condemn
in this age, but, in that respect, no other age is really any different. Life is always vicissitudinous, and if you
treat the 'downs' as superfluous impositions which one would be better off
without, then you will always be unjust to it.
Admittedly, we could both of us be a lot better off in this age, we
could be more successful and fulfilled than at present, thus making speculation
concerning the alleged superiority of life in a previous century appear quite
superfluous, not to say ridiculous.
Whether or not we shall ever become better off, remains to be seen. Though, to be frank with you, I'm usually
somewhat sceptical about other people's good fortune. It seems to me that one is only too ready to
overlook the misfortunes of certain people when one dwells on their good
fortune, and that one merely distorts their image in consequence. After all, everyone has his problems, and
while there is nothing unusual about assuming others to be luckier than
oneself, one can easily allow such assumptions to cloud one's judgement to a
degree whereby the people concerned appear much luckier than they actually
are. Besides, no matter how fortunate a
person may seem to be, there will always be other people whom he will regard as
more fortunate than himself. For, as a
human being, one is subject to certain immutable emotions, drives, and
attitudes, regardless of whether one is rich or poor, a beggar or a millionaire. There is absolutely no getting away from that
fact. And strange though it may seem,
there are even people who think that we're more fortunate than them, that being
a writer or a musician must be a great life, irrespective of the fact that
relatively few writers or musicians actually convey that impression through
their works! Yet if some of these
envious people were to try their hand at serious creative work for once, and
sacrifice part of their dream world in the process, they might become a little
more realistic. However, if you and I
know perfectly well that the creative life isn't all pleasure, we also know
that it's by no means all pain either.
We have our ups and downs as much as anyone else.
STEPHEN: And sometimes
more downs than ups!
MICHAEL: So it would
seem. Although it is no small secret
that artists are regularly inclined to exaggerate their misfortunes, being
inclined, by temperament and vocation, to the grandiose, to exciting the
public's imagination.
STEPHEN: Hmm, that
applies mainly to literary men, especially to poets.
MICHAEL: Be that as it
may, one shouldn't be led to overlook the rhetorical pathos and self-pity of
the great composers, nor of the great musicians. They are inclined to exaggerate their
misfortunes, too.
STEPHEN: The
prerogative of great minds, who see everything larger than life.
MICHAEL: Maybe, but one
can't always take it very seriously.
However, I have no desire to attack the vanity of artists, whatever
their medium. One must judge the
standards of art by the standards of art, not by those of life.
STEPHEN: And I suspect
that one should never judge the standards of contemporary art by the standards
of the past or vice versa - not, anyway, if one wishes to retain an 'historical
perspective'.
MICHAEL:
Absolutely. For one can no more expect
the contemporary artist to go back in time, than one can expect the classical
artist to be modern. The Pre-Raphaelite
Movement may have adopted a sort of pre-Raphael approach and attitude to art,
but they certainly didn't detach themselves from the technical expertise of
their day. No artist before Raphael
could possibly have done the work of Bourne-Jones, Waterhouse, Rossetti,
Millais, et al, no matter how advanced his technique may have been for the
time. And these great artists would have
been quite unable to so much as envisage the subsequent developments of artists
like Chagall, Picasso, Dali, and Kandinsky, to name but a handful of
twentieth-century masters, and a handful, moreover, who are hardly
representative of the most avant-garde developments! No, modern art is a world unto itself, and
can never be measured according to the aesthetic criteria of the past. None of the old masters can ever come back to
life, and none of the moderns should be expected to continue their work for
them. They have their own lives to lead,
and we should judge them accordingly.
STEPHEN: You mean
according to what they do with them.
MICHAEL: Yes, according
to the extent of their creative originality and technical ability, of how much
they remain loyal to themselves and provide us with a glimpse of their own
world rather than someone else's. There
is no art without individuality, just as there is no science with it. And what applies to art applies equally well
to literature and music. We may not like
some of the most recent developments in music, but that isn't to say they're
bogus or futile. One can't reasonably
expect modern composers to write like Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven when their
primary concern is to discover themselves and to write in a manner which best
portrays that discovery. There was only
one Beethoven and he died in 1827. His
music is of course still with us, but every major composer since then has
created his own style and forged a different sound. People who take Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven as
the standard of what music should be are invariably deluded. It's as though one should take Swift, Goethe,
or Rousseau for the standard of what literature should be, quite overlooking
the fact that literature isn't something that remains the same from generation
to generation but, on the contrary, continuously changes, in accordance with
the dictates of the age. Naturally, one
may have a marked predilection for certain twentieth-century works, but that by
no means justifies one in believing the works concerned to be necessarily any
better or worse than those of an earlier century. It is as foolish to judge modern works by the
standards of past ones as to judge modern atrocities by the standards of past
atrocities. For an age is a law unto
itself, with every age possessing its own laws.
Indeed, just as Mozart extended the range of music in his day largely by
turning his back on the past, so Beethoven extended the range of music in his
own day largely by turning his back on Mozart.
Yet we moderns are so accustomed to Mozart and Beethoven that we quite
forget that a majority of their contemporaries looked upon their compositions
with anything but a sympathetic eye and listened to them with either contempt
or ironic amusement. After all, these
two men were breaking many of the rules that had been carefully and
thoughtfully laid down by their predecessors; they were far from immediately
intelligible when judged by conventional standards, and, as such, neither of
them were to be trusted! Nowadays most
people acquainted with classical music think differently, and even if they
don't make a regular point of listening to their compositions, at least they
are prepared to acknowledge that Mozart and Beethoven had genius. But how many of them would be prepared to
acknowledge the genius of the foremost contemporary composers, those who are
currently regarded with the same sort of contempt or derision as was meted out
to Mozart and Beethoven, not to mention to a host of more recent composers, in
former times? You will find that, in this
respect, human nature has changed very little over the centuries, even if music
has!
STEPHEN: That is
probably so, although, despite the well-known fact that I'm a musician myself,
I know damned well that one can scarcely blame the public for its hostile
attitude to some of the more recent composers, who are anything but accessible
and, at times, downright obscure!
However, it could well transpire that many of the composers whom we are
still prepared to perform today will be completely ignored in the not-too-distant
future, and that Beethoven and various other composers of his stature will
simply fade into the limbo of musical history where, to all intents and
purposes, they already belong. It's
extremely difficult to foresee the course of compositional priorities, but I
have little doubt that many of our long-cherished idols are going to be
smashed, if you'll pardon me a Nietzschean hyperbole.
MICHAEL: As a devotee
of rock classical, that is not something I would personally regret very
much. In fact, I have often found myself
beguiled into listening to music by certain 'great composers' who weren't as
great as I had previously been led to believe.
It seemed evident to me that the name and reputation of the composer had
a stronger grip on life than his music.
Now I'm not trying to insinuate that his music wasn't good, for that
would be highly presumptuous of me, but am simply trying to point out that it
was much more pertinent to the age in which it was composed than to the modern
one. When I compared it to some of the
more recent compositions I had heard, works by men like Prokofiev, Poulenc, and
Martinu, it seemed indisputably stilted, tedious, predictable, pompous,
unadventurous, constrained by manneristic convention, and so on, in consequence
of which I felt obliged to dismiss it as comparatively inferior, outmoded,
pretentious, overrated. Yet when I
endeavoured to forget about those more recent works and concentrated, instead,
on listening to a piece of music composed, say, in 1784 or 1821, and on
listening to it, as far as possible, within the context of those dates - ah! then
it was possible for me to appreciate its beauty as in fact it should be appreciated. Instead of foolishly comparing it to modern
works and then deriding it for its obvious limitations, I let it speak to me
from its own day, let it represent history, let the then-advanced attitudes and
techniques of its composer enlighten me concerning the development of music in
late eighteenth- or early nineteenth-century man, of man in his finest creative
capacity at that time. And, you
see, I learnt there and then that it's futile to match the standards of the
past against those of the present, to do a disservice to both past and present
by so comparing them. This work by
Mozart, or whoever it may have been, was of course great music. It may not have sounded that great when
compared with, say, Tchaikovsky's second piano concerto or Brahms' first
symphony. But it was unquestionably
great for its time, and that, believe it or not, is the important thing. However, I'm not really cut-out to be a
musical antiquarian. For although I may
be prepared to listen to a classical composition in its rightful historical perspective,
I would much rather listen to a modern one, to one which spoke directly to
me. And there is much about modern
music, especially rock classical, which makes me if not exactly grateful, then
at least resigned to being alive in the present century rather than in some
earlier and more primitive time, despite nuclear warheads, oppressive news
bulletins, cultural anachronisms, hyperbolic advertisements, political
confusions, ideological conflicts, economic disparities, racial tensions,
industrial pollutions, and the thousand-and-one other things which constitute
such an integral element of modern life.
It seems almost axiomatic that the better things become in one context,
the worse they get in another.... Which brings us back, if you remember, to
what we were discussing earlier, about progress and regress. No matter what century you lived in, you
would be able to draw up a formidable list of like-phenomena - of divine
creations that scale the heights and diabolic creations that plumb the depths;
of beautiful and ugly, good and evil, strong and weak, true and false things
continuously co-existing in different guises, continuously influencing and
spurring one another on to the establishment of new manifestations of their
respective types, whether for better or worse.
Reject the horrible and questionable as much as you like, but attempt to
get rid of it and you will have nothing wonderful or pleasurable to fall back
on. I, for one, am only too relieved to
be living in an age when it is possible for a person of my temperament to
witness the creative ingenuity and share in the intellectual richness of such
minds as Carl Jung, Bertrand Russell, Oswald Spengler, John Cowper Powys,
Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, and Jean-Paul Sartre, to name but a handful of
the truly great writers of the twentieth century. In this respect, we are more fortunate than
people who lived in any previous century.
No, I wouldn't wish to go back in time for anything! If it meant losing out on the experience of
reading and studying writers like these - writers, by the way, who have had a
seminal influence on contemporary civilization - then any other century would
be anathema to me. To be sure, there
were a number of great minds at work in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, but whether you could have got a hand on their works, whether you
would have been in a position to do so, is quite a debatable, not to say
doubtful, point. It often takes a number
of years for the finest works to be recognized and appreciated as such, years
during which they may lie neglected or slandered, mixed-up with a number of second-rate
works or left to rot in a bottom draw somewhere. But even if this is still the case, even if
there are still such underrated or unrecognized masterpieces in both literature
and music today, at least we have the opportunity of appreciating more of what
has been recognized and acclaimed for its true worth than was ever possible in
the past. The modern world may be
afflicted with economic recessions, but as far as culture is concerned, it has
never been richer! There are more
worthwhile works of genuine artistic merit available in the world today than at
any earlier time, works, I need hardly remind you, which not even the most
creative of the ancient Greeks could have conceived of. Indeed, when unjustly put under the scrutiny
of the modern eye, they appear comparatively poverty-stricken.
STEPHEN: Well, by now
I'm quite willing to believe that we are better off living today than at any
former time. Even if both of us could be
a lot better off in this age, it is also sufficiently evident to me that we
could both be a lot worse off. No, I
don't desire to dream of being a seventeenth-century nobleman or an
eighteenth-century composer any more, for such dreams have worn thin on me. If I daydream about anything else, I shall
remember that it's just a dream and that I'm really a product of the twentieth
century who owes the pleasure of his dreaming to the fact that he occasionally
rebels against it. The important thing
is the dream itself, not the dubious possibility of its ever being realized.
MICHAEL: How true!
