Ariel’s song, from Shakespeare’s last play (The Tempest, 1:ii), seems a premonition of modernism. In traditional poetry, it’s fairly obvious what is being described, represented, or signified. But it takes sophistication to notice the formal features of the poetry itself (such as meter, rhyme, and assonance) and any allusions to other literary works. In some modernist poetry, by contrast, what is described is unclear, or there may not be any literal referent at all, but the formal features of the writing immediately draw our attention. Thus modernist poetry can be more or less abstract in a way that recalls the modern visual arts.
Category Archives: fine arts
New Orleans and Salt Lake City
I’m writing this on Sunday night, flying from New Orleans to Madison, WI, on a precisely northward path across Middle America. I was in New Orleans to give a keynote luncheon address at the International Conference on Civic Education Research. Nine days ago I gave a similar speech at the International Conference on Service-Learning Research in Salt Lake City. I keep thinking about the contrast of these venues. Salt Lake City in November is cold, dry, thousands of feet above sea level, rimmed by snowcapped peaks. It seems a place of stark contrasts, with no gradations between the city and the wilderness, the lake and the desert, the Mormons and the non-Mormons, the prosperous clean-cut business people and the few homeless men with their prophet beards and wild eyes. Large banks and hotels (Victorian or modernist) stand foursquare between straight wide avenues and barren lots. The huge moon and streetlights make the night as light as day. Almost everyone I saw was white.
the many Bachs
For some reason, I was thinking about all the dramatically different
ways in which people have seen and admired J.S. Bach since his own day.
- There is Bach as a virtuouso improviser, the man who could sit
down at a keyboard and swiftly invent a multi-part fugue on any
theme. This is Bach as forerunner of a jazz musician, an exciting
live performer.
- There is Bach as pedagogue, the man who taught three sons who
were much more successful than himself and who wrote great instructional
works such as the "Well-Tempered Clavier." These musical
texts have been consistently consulted by composers even when Bach’s
other works were forgotten (for instance, in Mozart’s time).
- There is Bach the profound spiritual master, the Lutheran churchman,
the author of great narrative choral works such as the Passions,
which realistically depict human emotions in relation to God’s providence.
This is the Bach whom the Romantics admired most. They even disparaged
the "Christmas Oratorio" because it recycled music from
secular works—so it couldn’t be spiritually inspired.
- There is Bach as an anti-Romantic, an unpretentious musical worker.
Whereas Romantic musical geniuses were supposed to be free of all
worldly motives and inspired only by Art, Bach happily turned out
church music for every Sunday, often re-using material, borrowing
from other sources, and making do with amateur performers. For this,
he was admired by leftish anti-Romantics such as Paul Hindemith.
If I recall correctly, Bertold Brecht used to call himself a Schreiber,
not a Dichter—someone who makes his living by writing,
not a literary Artist. The same could be said of Bach.
- There is Bach as mathematical genius, author of technically and
formally complex instrumental works, especially the "Musical
Offering," that seem as other-wordly as mathematical proofs.
After writing a list like this, one is expected to say, "Of
course, Bach was all of these things, and that’s why he is
so great." I’m going to be a little less predictable and say
that Bach was all of these things, of course, but he was
at his greatest as the composer of narrative works that were grounded
in his understanding of human life and emotion.
the printing press didn’t cause a translation revolution
Many people believe that the Church suppressed the translation
of the Bible into modern languages during the Middle Ages, but the invention
of the printing press gave people an unblockable means of access to Scripture.
This story is often cited to show that institutions are dangerous because they
try to control knowledge, but technological innovation enhances freedom.
I
am no expert on this subject, but I would suggest some grounds for caution: —The
Bible was legally translated into certain modern languages, from Slavonic to Old
English, starting before the year 1,000. (See this page;
and I saw a beautiful medieval French Bible at this
exhibition.) —To be sure, there were edicts
against translation in the 16th century and later, and the Catholic Church
developed a reputation for obscurantism in modern times because the Mass was only
said in Latin until 1962. However, the Church became reactionary after the Council
of Trent (1545-63); this attitude should not be read back onto the Middle Ages.
—The Wykliffe Bible was banned and burned, but not because it was written
in English; rather it was considered distorted by a specific heresy. —It
was very hard to translate into the vernacular until the late middle ages, because
modern languages were only gradually developing and gaining enough vocabulary
to render the Bible. There was no such thing as "Italian" or "German"
in 1250; instead there were hundreds of local dialects, each spoken in a small
area, and most lacking rich vocabularies. —No medieval Western European Christians
knew Greek or Hebrew, so they would have had to translate from the Latin translation
by St. Jerome. It took brilliant Renaissance scholarship (and an infusion of Greek
experts after Consantinople fell to the Turks) before there was a reliable original
from which to translate. People who emphasize technology as a historical factor
tend to overlook the profound linguistic and literary innovations that were required
before a first translation could be made. —The Latin Bible was not secret;
Latin was the language of literate people throughout Europe. —The Church
invested tremendous resources in popularizing the Bible through painting cycles,
stained glass windows, "picture Bibles," passion plays, and readings
in churches, including huge, broad-aisled Franciscan and Dominican churches that
were designed to hold mass audiences. (These were "communications technologies"
of great power.) —Some modern critics assume that the Church wanted to control
the original text of the scriptures because then it could withhold the radical
parts. I could be wrong, but I would guess that popular passion plays and Franciscan
sermons actually emphasized the radical messages of the original Bible.
All
of this matters because it casts doubt on some widespread modern assumptions about
power, institutions, and technology.
public work and multiculturalism
Here is a somewhat different way of analyzing the campus battles over
"great books" versus "multiculturalism" or "diversity."
Participants can be sorted into groups depending on what kind of works
they think should be available or required in schools, colleges, and other
venues. "Canonical classicists" want everyone to read great
works from Plato to NATO. "Diversity proponents" want everyone
to be exposed to works written (or composed, or painted) by people
of multiple ethnic, cultural, religious, sexual, and racial identities—in
order to promote empathy, respect, tolerance, etc. And true "multiculturalists"
want people of different cultural backgrounds to be able to study intensively
works created by people like them, so that a campus will be home to multiple
cultural communities.
This is one dimension that we can use to categorize the antagonists in
the campus culture wars. But there is also another dimension. At one end
of this second spectrum are those who emphasize that students should experience,
appreciate, understand, or at least be exposed to works created in the
past or in other places. Somewhat contentiously, I’ll call this the "consumerist"
approach. At the opposite end of the spectrum are those who stress that
we should create new cultural products, including stories and paintings,
performances, critical interpretations, and historical narratives.
Putting the two dimensions together, we see that there are at least six
possible positions in the debate:
|
canonical classicism
|
diversity
|
multiculturalism
|
|
|
consumerism
|
a
|
b
|
c
|
|
creativity
|
d
|
e
|
f
|
The standard conservative view is (a)—there is a fixed supply of
great works from the past that students should experience and appreciate.
The standard diversity view is (b)—everyone should experience works
by authors of color. And the standard multiculturalism view is (c)—people
should be encouraged to study works by members of their own groups, using
their own cultures’ criteria of excellence. These positions are "zero-sum":
adding a text to the curriculum may require taking another text out. In
contrast, options (d)-(f) are potentially "win-win," and I think
they are underdeveloped. There is a fair amount of (e)—i.e., people
of all colors and creeds should collaborate because this will create the
most interesting new works of art. But I think conservatives should work
on developing (d), if indeed it is a viable position. And multiculturalists
should develop (f), which would amount to the view that people of various
cultures should be assisted in producing new works, thereby contributing
to the global commons.