Leo Abse

A biography from the BBC that is well worth watching of Leo Abse, former Labour MP, who died recently. Well worth a watch- though it will be only up for a week.

Milton's Birthday

WHAT needs my Shakespeare, for his honoured bones,
The labour of an age in pilèd stones?
Or that his hollowed relics should be hid
Under a stary-pointing pyramid?
Dear son of Memory, great heir of Fame,
What need’st thou such weak witness of thy name?
Thou, in our wonder and astonishment,
Hast built thyself a livelong monument.
For whilst, to the shame of slow-endeavouring art,
Thy easy numbers flow, and that each heart
Hath, from the leaves of thy unvalued book,
Those Delphic lines with deep impression took;
Then thou, our fancy of itself bereaving,
Dost make us marble, with too much conceiving;
And, so sepulchred, in such pomp dost lie,
That kings for such a tomb would wish to die.

John Milton was born three hundred years ago today. This is what he wrote about Shakespeare. The thing is that it is as true of Milton as it was of Shakespeare.

The secrets of the new foundation

Refounding a city involves reconstruction- the Romans spent 'unremitting toil and labour' in restoring their city. More importantly though it meant refounding a political community- and in that sense a religious community. Livy tells us that Rome was refounded in three steps- firstly with the physical reconstruction of the city, secondly with the election of new magistrates and thirdly with the restoration of Roman religion. This last matter is what the historian emphasizes- the other two matters take up a paragraph, but religion, as ever for Livy, is at the heart of his political narrative. As soon as new magistrates are appointed, he tells us that they 'consulted the senate before anything else on matters of religious observance.' (VI 1). This is important- but so are the actions that immediatly come after this search- this consultation of the senate- because they amount to a restatement in religious language of the key principles that underlay the Roman state .

Firstly the magistrates and pontiffs made a search 'for all that could be found of the treaties and the laws, the twelve tables and certain laws of the Kings'- so far so civil but notice the following- 'to some of these even the common people were given access, but those which applied to the sacred rites the pontiffs supressed, largely so they could keep the minds of the populace under control through religious awe'. (VI 1). The point is important and relates both to the use of religion for social control and the class basis of that use in Rome. Notice here the secular magistrates and the priests- who often would be the same people- search for both judicial, political and religious records- and find them and exclude religious ones from their publication in order to maintain political power. This is a world in which the civil and the religious are not divorced but firmly married together and where the imposing posture of the latter supports the social structure and diktats of the former.

Secondly they declared two religious days. The 18th July became the day of the Allia- the battle lost against the Gauls and decreed 'it should be marked by the cessation of all business, public or private'. (VI 1) Secondly 'some think it was also decreed' that religious rites should not be held on two days following the Ides. (VI 1). Livy is here telling us something important- what the Roman state was doing was twofold. They reintroduced the ritual calendar. Also they added to it to memorialise the stress of the state under the Gallic invasion. The calendar was used to bind together the populace in patriotic and religious zeal. If the first measures about secrecy bound religion to social structure, the second sought to bind it to the fortunes of the state. In so doing, the argument was the state might be blessed by divinity, but even more so the people would see the deeds of the state not as political acts on a civil stage, but as religious acts in a moral drama.

It is impossible to understand anything going on in Livy's history without seeing the importance of the binding together of religious and political. Both internally and externally, opposition to Rome becomes impiety if you take the ceremonial functions of the Roman state seriously. In this sense the religious observances of sacrifice and prayer, fasting and idleness, take on a special meaning- they become part of the ideology of an aristocratic city state, fixed for eternity, and anchored in a world both human and divine. They are the perfect riposte to the Gallic invasion- in that they assert both Rome's civilisation and social stratification and its divine blessing.

Fire and destruction

The history of the Romans from the foundation of the city to its capture, first under the Kings, then under consuls and dictators, decemviri and consular tribunes, wars abroad and dissensions at home, I have set out in five books, covering matters which were obscure both through their great antiquity, like objects dimly perceived in the distance and because in those days there were few written records, the only reliable means for preserving a memory of past events. A further reason was the loss of most of such accounts as were preserved in the commentaries of the pontiffs and other public and private records when the City was destroyed by fire. From now on a clearer and more reliable account can be given of the City's civil and military history, after it made a second start, reborn as it were from its old roots with increased vigour and productivity. (VI 1)

The first paragraph of Livy's sixth book introduces two important themes we need to consider before moving on to the meat of the book. Livy was a textual historian- his understanding was based on written materials because, as he says here, they were 'the only reliable' means for preserving the past. Therefore Livy's historical abilities were limited- by the fact that his hindsight went back as far as the history of literacy and the extant record. That is true of historians today: history is tied to writing. What Livy faced therefore was a project in the early sections of his book of reconstruction: we are looking at an assembly of fragments into a coherent whole rather than a construction of a whole out of the material of evidence. All historians do something of the first- I have heard historians of the modern world claim that ancient history is more difficult precisely because it involves more of the first type of inquiry. We live with limited means and like Livy any inquiry into that distant a past, where records are scant (today we are worse off than Livy was in terms of the written records for the period). Part of Livy's frustration is that he is forced to rely upon an oral tradition that he considers intrinsically unreliable- he is forced to tales of family history and to fables about the Roman past- and we should not see that tendency stopping with the Gallic conquest and retreat- but rather stopping much later, when Rome's history starts being written.

If that process of a change between reliable written and unreliable oral history- in Livy's view- took place later than this passage implies, then why does Livy suggest it took place earlier. What I think is going on here is that Livy wants to set a second beggining to his history- this paragraph functions as an announcement to the reader. Here, Livy is saying, begins the history of Rome as it can be written. Before this, there was obscurity- but here we have the state that will turn into an empire and into the empire that you and I know. That marriage- expressed fundementally through the character of Camillus, Rome's second founder for Livy, is something that is central to the ideology of Livy's text. Its centrality informs this discussion of the historical record- before this we had a fire and have no records, after this we have records. Livy's point may be based on historical occurence- however no archaeological suggests there was such a fire and we know other Roman historians found documents running back into the fifth century. The key fact here though is less about whether Livy was right about the fire- uncertainty in his history continues after this for a long time- but about the point he wanted to make. Here on in, the story of Livy's history is about Rome's advance- through the conquest of the Samnites, the wars with the Etruscans, the Greeks in the south of Italy and eventually the Carthaginians and the conquest of the world. We have a bracket- on the other side of it is the primitive and distant past about which nothing can be said- on this side is empire, the rise of Rome, the rise of civilisation and the written record.

Livy's ideological purpose therefore gives colour to his discussions of the limitations on his historical enquiry. This third foundation of Rome is a moment at which Livy beleives that the continuous history of Rome down to his day begins.

Anatomy Museums

In mid-Victorian Britain there was a craze for anatomy museums- these museums were eventually by 1870 threatened with prosecution under the obscene publications act (1857) and mostly died away. For a while though, Anatomy Museums were places where the learned and scholarly met the populace in an atmosphere of equality- some Victorians saw them as a solution to the public health needs of the time, others campaigned for them to receive a tax rebate from the Treasury and the most popular museums were visited by over 2000 people a week. Dr. A. W. Bates, in Medical History, has just written an article examining the importance of the Museums- why they thrived and why eventually they fell. His arguments are worth considering when we think about the way in which modern medicine arrived at its current professionalised status.

The anatomy museum was the response to a real need. By the late eighteenth century, the dissection of bodies was increasingly difficult to maintain- it was hard to find specimens without breaking the law. As the anatomist Frederick Knox commented 'without the museums, the profession of anatomy would be in the state of a man without a language'. As the eighteenth century opened it became accepted that medical men needed some sort of a training and that that must include knowledge of anatomy. Popular anatomist teachers then arose to fulfill the need- to give pupils training in the arts of anatomy. Frequently what they did was maintain collections of anatomical models which they would demonstrate their arguments with. For people who did not wish to attend a dissection, the prospect of an anatomical model gave them a less sanguine approach to medical training. As the eighteenth century went on more and more of these collections became open to the public- between the early eighteenth century and 1800 Bates estimates that 39 establishments were opened in London. Their primary focus was on supporting the anatomical lecturer- but as the nineteenth century moved on, they became increasingly popular as attractions in their own right.

What they contained were models of the human being. Often these models were based on classical figures- a reclining Venus, a Samson, an Adonis- who could be carefully abstracted from the society of the day. There was a proffusion in particular of female models- partly this was for reasons of a rising interest in obstetrics: one might see in Joseph Kahn's museum, foetuses from the age of two weeks to birth. Anatomy advocates argued that popular knowledge of the subject fortified a more general religious sensibility within society: the knowledge of the mechanism induced in their thinking a recognition of the master mechanic who crafted it. The College of Surgeons in London attempted to monopolise the teaching of anatomy to happen within the Teaching Hospitals- they reckoned without the change from anatomical study to anatomical exhibition. By the 1840s, the Anatomical museums were largely museums- they were run to appeal to clerical and other workers who had both disposable wealth and time. The Anatomical Museums were amongst the few establishments who remained open into the evening and at weekends: both the National Gallery and the British Museum by contrast were closed save for during working hours.

So why did they close? As the anatomical musseums grew, once again they began to challenge the power of the medical proffession. Perhaps this is most noticable in Kahn's case- he started marketting from the late 1850s drugs for venereal disease within his museum. Various marginal and disputed diseases were advertised through anatomical museums. When the obscene publications act of 1857 came into law, it established that in order to publish an obscene publication the offence was not the intention to promulgate obscenity, but the effect of the action of publishing. Consequently defences based on the educative merit of anatomy were difficult to maintain. The medical proffession seized on the law as a means to prosecute some of the museums- and successful prosecutions associated the museums in the public mind with the pornographers prosecuted under the same act. Many doctors in particular disliked the focus on venereal disease- as they argued it encouraged sexual license because such diseases were punishments for sexual indulgence- a similar argument to that used about Aids a century later. The arguments for prosecution were supported by subscriptions in medical societies- and were bolstered by the fact that the law considered such matters were beyond the capacity of the public but within the capacity of the professional. The cool eyed doctor might examine female genatalia in the way that the rough mechanic might not.

In that sense the demise of the anatomy museum represents the rise of the medical proffession. It does that in two ways- firstly by granting a monopoly to that proffession of knowledge. Secondly though and more interestingly it fortified the reputation of doctors as the possessors of special abilities and knowledge. These abilities were not solely medical but also moral. Doctors possessed the ability to look into the arcana of the human body without it being erotically exciting or dangerously provocative: the general public though could not. Hence the anatomy museums perpetrated crimes under the obscene publications act, but the private collections at the Royal Colleges to which only physicians had access did not.

Julian and purity

Julian the Apostate (r. as Augustus 360-3) as an emperor attempted to take the Roman empire back from Christianity and return it to a neo-platonist form of paganism (for those who wish to read more about him, this is an encyclopedia article written by two academics which describes his career). He did this both in his policies as emperor- and also in publications. Julian thought of himself as a philosopher and mystic- a devotee of Hellenic values in the world usurped by the Galileans (as he called Christians). The focus of his arguments is what interests me here: in a fascinating article for the Journal of Late Antique Religion and Culture, Gorgio Scrofani has attacked an issue which might seem perplexing. Julian's major treatise 'Against the Galileans' includes a paean of praise to Judaism- what Scrofani does is explicate where this defence of the Jews fits into Julian's attack on Christianity and his defence of paganism.

As a defender of Judaism, what Julian sought to do was to defend Jewish ritual and tradition. He wrote

Jews agree with the Gentiles, except that they believe in only one God. That is indeed peculiar to them and strange to us; since all the rest we have in a manner in common with them, temples, sanctuaries, altars, purifications and certain precepts. For as to these we differ from one another not at all or in trivial matters.

This passage is interesting- carefully read it demonstrates that Julian established in his reader's mind that the distinction between monotheism and polytheism was less important than the distinction between a religion of ritual and one that disdained those rituals. What Scrofani argues is that Julian's point here was an attempt to do two things. Firstly it was an attempt to show that Christianity was an innovation of inpurity: Christians, Julian commented at other points, needed to be purified before they could take part in pagan rites. Julian was preoccupied by purity- he wanted priests who were morally and physically pure- because he saw in the maintenance of ritual, the way towards the maintenance of imperial Rome. He saw purity as a guarentee of the stability of the state in the eyes of the gods and therefore of men.

This was also though an attack on an area of vulnerability in the faith. What Julian did by using the Jewish example was attempt to open a breach in the Christian world. His attempt was to take the fight, as it were, to the territory of the Christians, to the old and new Testaments. This attempt to divide the Jews from the Christians picked up on anxieties within the new faith- we know from John Chrysotom and others that there were many Christians who even as late as the third and fourth centuries kept rituals like the day of atonement going. By splitting religion on the basis of ritual- Julian's argument drew together the Hellenes and Jews as heirs of the religious innovations of Chaldea against the Christians.

What's interesting about Scrofani's article is that the nature of Julian's attack and the nature of the breach that he hoped to widen should tell us something about what was new and astonishing in Christian doctrine. Those who argued against Christianity at its inception can tell us a lot about what the new religion was and what was astonishing about it. They also inform us about the preoccupations of the time. For Julian what was new and controversial about Christianity was its failure to emphasize ritual and cultic purity: he saw this as a moral failing- and suggested that it marked a boundary between Judaism and paganism on one side and Christianity on the other. He also saw this as an opportunity- because so many of his contemporaries shared his anxiety. These words from the last pagan Emperor therefore tell us a lot, as Scrofani argues, about the context in which early Christianity developed and about the thing that developed in that context.

Crito we ought to offer a cock to Asclepius

An ingenious article from Colin Wells in Arion has just come to my attention. When the Greek philosopher Socrates died, he turned to his companions and in his last words, said 'Crito we ought to offer a cock to Asclepius, see to it' and then died. Socrates died because he had been commanded to drink poison by the state of Athens- and he died quickly and quietly according to Plato. His words though have been a subject of controversy for a long time- most like Neitzsche argue that what Socrates was doing was unfurling a philosophical thesis- proclaiming a message at the moment of his death. Colin Wells though suggests an alternative explanation for the last words of the sage.

What he suggests is that Socrates was behaving as a normal conventional Greek would. He takes us through the moment of Socrates's death- first he drinks the hemlock, then he asks if someone has a drink so they can pour a libation, finding that noone in the room did he prays and then he makes this comment to Crito and dies. The sequence is interesting and suggestive. What Wells argues is that Socrates in reality was doing what all Greeks did when beggining a venture- imploring the success of the Gods for its continuance. Just as you might with a war pray to Ares, so when taking poison, you would pray to the God of medicines and poisons that he would help you die swiftly and smoothly. The sequence suggests that Socrates moved from one adequate form of offering- the libation- to an inadequate expedient- the prayer- and then settled on asking a friend to perform another adequate offering- the sacrafice. Its ingenious as an explanation and its also interesting.

Wells may well be right- I lack the expertise in Greek religion to comment. But if he is, it is suggestive that he is right and that for so long, scholars have misunderstood these words. It is a classic case of the way that we can read ourselves into the past- and read out the historical characters of a given time, read the Greeks out of ancient Greece, read Socrates out of Socrates. What this instance displays, if Wells is right, is the danger of abstracting people from the past out of their context- by reading that phrase, 'we ought to offer a cock to Asclepius' and knowing enough to know that Asclepius was the God of medicine, we can come to any number of suggestions about what Socrates was saying. It is only when we understand a bit more the function of prayer and offering in Greek society that we can get closer to what the philosopher was actually saying- as opposed to what we would like him to say (some argument about life being a disease or quip to the same effect).

Wells discusses briefly the famous question of Socratic irony in the essay- whether we take the statement as ironic is a different matter (it is always difficult to infer irony in people who we have never met and Socrates has been seen as the ultimate in sincerity before- by no less an authority than Montaigne!) but we cannot even recover the irony, if we cannot recover the meaning and this is one more incident, where a deeper knowledge of context can bring a deeper knowledge of the particular act of an intelligent and important thinker.

Changing Times

It is often said that the United States is a young country. Its often forgotten that it has a very old constitution- indeed I struggle to think of a comparatively old and unchanged constitution in the same format as the United States has in the rest of the world. Recent events demonstrate this. The election of Barack Obama as United States President, to succeed George Bush in January, was a smooth process. Since November though, numerous commentators on the Democratic side of the aisle have expressed frustration with the fact that their man cannot move straight into the White House to start dealing with the issues that the world and America faces. I am sure Republicans felt a similar frustration in 2000- when George Bush succeeded Bill Clinton. What's interesting about this is that this is a classic instance of a constitution functioning in a way that made perfect sense in the eighteenth century- even if it frustrates people now (and there are good reasons for thinking given the number of appointments to be made, it still makes some sense today).

Think back to 1787. When the United States was founded as this article discusses, the President was actually inaugurated in March- a four month gap between the election in November and his arrival in office. That situation persisted right down to the 1930s- with Presidents awkwardly attempting to be out of the way as their predecessor finished their term (Herbert Hoover in 1928 even went on a cruise around South America to avoid tarnishing Calvin Coolidge's swansong). There are reasons though for that long break- and such long breaks existed in other countries too. In the UK in the 19th Century, elections took place over several days- with party leaders standing in multiple constituencies (to give a famous example Gladstone stood frequently in two or three seats- in 1865 he was defeated in Oxford University and migrated to stand in South Lancashire a month later). The reason was simple- travel meant that Parliaments and Presidents could not physically campaign one week and arrive in office the next. In a country as vast as the United States the distances could be intimidating: travelling between Boston and New York in the far north east of the country could take as much as a day and a half even in the 1830s (after significant transport revolutions including a massive road building program in the early part of the 19th Century). That effected not merely the President but senators and congressmen as well- who needed to travel back to visit and campaign amongst their constituents.

We think of politics as something that happens on television screens. I learnt that Hillary Clinton was to be President Obama's Secretary of State hours after the announcement in Washington. But of course that was not the main means of communication in the days of the American constitution. Then the main means of communication was print- journalism, frequently biassed (just look at the election campaigns of the early 1800s if you think any modern election has been vicious), was produced by all sides. The letter in which a person in London or Washington informed those in his locality about what was going on was frequent too: Dr Cust has shown that such letters developed what there was of a national political consciousness in pre-civil war England. All of these things though were indirect forms of communication between the politician and his constituency: and given the lies and falsehoods told about Adams, Jefferson, Gladstone, Disreali, and the rest, to dispel them you had to go and see your electorate- whether in some systems in mass meetings (like Gladstone's speaking tours) or in other contexts in more intimate consultations with the local gentry. Whereas people in Richmond, Yorkshire cannot escape hearing William Hague on the television at least once a month unless they are determined not to listen, in the 19th Century a Yorkshire MP like Henry Brougham would have to travel back to speak to his constituents.

This physical change on politics has lots of effects- some of which I don't think I have probed in this brief article but I think its vital to understand if we want to understand what elections were like in the past. They looked and smelled differently to our conception of elections today. The delay to Barack Obama's inauguration may frustrate Democrats- just as Bush's might have Republicans- but it is interesting not merely from the perspective of present day politics but from the perspective of the politics of the past. The reasons that there is that delay lie in the fact that our institutions reflect those of our parents and in this case great-great grandparents to the nth degree- whether they are still appropriate is a matter for others- but what they are is an archaeological resource, a hole in the landscape which allows us to see back into the mentalites of the past.

What happened when the Gauls arrived

The Gauls arrived in the city of Rome- the consequence of their arrival was the diminution of the power of Rome within Italy. A city under seige cannot be a major power, unless the situation is unusual. The situation in Rome was not unusual- her armies were tied down either defending Rome or massing in Latium and Veii in order to retake the city. Livy invokes the idea of the contrast between the Italians and the Barbarian Gauls- but what his invocations miss are features within his own history which suggest that there were plenty of Italians who were not unhappy with Rome's fall, and plenty of Italians furthermore who assisted the Gauls.

Livy himself tells us this when he tells us of Etruscan forces who drove off 'the cattle they had stolen' from the Romans (V 45) and 'had shown so little sympathy for a city which for nearly four hundred years had been their neighbour' (V 45). The Etruscan forces that Livy mentions were easily defeated by the Roman armies at Veii (V 45) but there were more than one group- and Livy mentions at least two battles fought by Romans against Etruscans: one of which was 'bloody' (V 45). This little account by Livy is interesting- there are two features which fascinate me about it. Firstly there is the fact that these Etruscan forces existed- obviously the internal politics of Italy was not such that all Italians saw the Gauls as a barbarian force and the Romans as defenders of civilisation.

The second aspect that is interesting is the way that Livy couches the story. For Livy this is not a moment within diplomatic history but a moment with domestic history. It is a story about the betrayel of 'neighbours'- notice the domesticated noun- those whom Rome had earlier saved from a Gallic invasion (V 45) (a moment that Livy fails to mention)- to aid Rome or even to have pity on Rome in her hour of need. It is a story that reinforces one of the points of Livy's narrative- that the story of Italy is the story of Rome, indeed that the story of civilisation is the story of Rome. Livy in this sense looks at a diplomatic incident in the 4th century BC through the eyes of the imperial masters of Italy- the embodiers of civilisation in the 1st century AD- and tells us to look at it that way too.

In that sense the Etruscan diplomatic decision to harry Rome whilst she succumbed to the Gallic sword, became not a diplomatic incident between equals, but a betrayel of the city that embodied civilisation and Italy itself. What might be thought of as the exploitation of a political moment turns, in Livy's eyes, into a heinous treason.

Waltz with Bashir

A cartoon about war might seem to trivialise its subject. When the cartoon is not so much about war as it is about the memories of war, the detritus left in the mind after war, then you might add the accusation that such an account would lack the power to make you identify with the novel experiences portrayed. Waltz with Bashir therefore comes with baggage in addition to the fact that it is about Israeli, Lebanese and Palestinian politics. I want to leave that politics behind- partly because not being involved it is difficult to write about it- and partly because that's not really what the film is about. It is about the fact of the war and the fact of Phalangist atrocities in the Lebanese conflict, not about the reasons for the war or the complex issues at the heart of the Israeli Palestinian process. The Phalange were the Christian faction in Lebanon- and the film suggests that on the night of the 15th September 1982, Israeli forces stood around and watched as the Phalangists murdered hundreds and possibly thousands of Palestinians.

Waltz with Bashir is about the invasion of Lebanon by Israel that occured earlier in that year- and the way it proceeded right up until the massacre. It deals with the experience of one soldier- remembering twenty years later (so in 2002) the events that he had been through- and attempting through interviewing others that he knew to find out what was going on at that point. The characters are all shown through the medium of cartoons so though we hear their words, we cannot see their real faces. The tale is mediated already- and is a tale about the way that memory mediates experience. It is definitely true that the leading characters' main memory of the massacre was wrong: memory is not a reliable tool in this film.

It is not a reliable tool partly because of the trauma of what happened to the central character. Again and again on this blog we come back to the experience of war as much as war itself shaping later history- when you have, as this man does, the experience of shooting a kid holding an RPG in your unconscious, you cannot but be effected. There are some wonderfully dramatic moments in this where you can feel the uncertainty of a soldier in hostile territory. One that comes to mind immediatly is where an Israeli force marches down through western Beirut, and comes across a junction, there are snipers in the building shooting down and as they shoot, two Israeli soldiers squabble over which gun they will use. The winner takes the gun and moves like a beserker into the centre of the junction, shooting wildly in all directions. Another has the Israelis, again in Beirut, move through the city shooting and surreally Lebanese families standing on their balconies watching. You might pick out too other moments- young soldiers taking the wounded back to a helicopter landing pad to be returned to Israel and coming across for the first time real wounds, or another young soldier swimming away from Lebanese forces who have just killed his entire unit, and always feeling guilty of desertion from then on in his life.

The portrait of military life is convincing. In particular the way that travel to Lebanon turned into a kind of fraternity party, with soldiers in tanks singing pop songs- or the way that another kid at war decided that if he died, at least his ex-girlfriend might regret she'd just split up with him- all makes sense. Furthermore these guys do not know why they are fighting- they have no real idea of what they are fighting for. Military life for some of them is an imposition- for others it is an escape or a means to prove themselves. Its not about the actual cause that prompted the war- whatever that was. This is important- for we need to recognise what the film seeks to do and what it does not: it does not seek to give a complete picture, it gives the partial picture of these particular people going to war.

SPOILER ALERT. The experience of war is described in cartoons- but that is not the only thing described here. For right at the end- the experience of atrocity is described in actual television footage. Personally this deepened the impact of the atrocities to me- and suggested that the experience of the soldiers who stood by as they happened was in some way less important than that of the people who suffered. It contributes to the sense that the rest of the film is something of an illusion besides what happened inside the camps. The sense of guilt an illusion beside the guilty deed. A feeling which afterall has an ethical resonance for us all- however guilty you are there is nothing you can do to rebuild what you have done. The deaths of the Palestinians in the camps could never be undone and their blood never return to their bodies. That sense of the irrevocable nature of the deed may be good ethics- it is definitely good psychology for one of the key factors in guilt as an emotion at least for me is the sense that guilt has a past. Guilt is always felt about something that one cannot undo.

The film was based on the director's own experiences at the front in the war. The political issues to me are less interesting here- though they were bound to be focussed upon- than the issues to do with the psychology of the troops. The youth of troops is important- as is the fact that their experience remains a chord in the symphony of their lives right into middle age and beyond. There is interesting discussion in particular of memory in the film. The war be like a shattered glass with every character holding a separate shard- our main character seeks to repiece together the experience of war- but I was left with a lingering doubt about whether he had completed the pieces or about whether anyone could. Tolstoy captured war best in War and Peace- and what he showed was that noone at the front or in the general's tent understands war- the movement of thousands of men, their individual stories, tragedies and grim triumphs are something that escapes our comprehension. What we have here is one of those shards- and its importance lies in the way that it pierced the rest of a man's life, rendering him incapable of remembering the deeds for which he felt most truly sorry.

Attila the Hun

Christopher Kelly's new biography of Attila the Hun is a welcome addition to the scholarship surrounding the later Roman empire. It is welcome because Attila is one of those figures who is always off stage in accounts which focus on what is happening in Ravenna, Milan and Constantinople- as the Eastern Empire struggled to survive and the Western Empire failed to. Attila himself as Kelly argues deserves a more constructive place in history- rather than just destroying an empire, the Hunnic King created one- presiding over an area which swept through northern Europe from the southern tip of the Danube to the northern banks of the Rhine. He also was not merely a terrifying warrior- indeed as Kelly comments his success as a warrior has been overrated (Attila did not, unlike the Goths at Adrianople, defeat a major Roman army in battle and his two encounters were bloody draws rather than victories)- but a cunning and skilful diplomat with an excellent appreciation of the realities of Roman power in the later empire.

What were those realities- what did Rome face and who were the Huns? Those questions are vital to considering Kelly's narrative of Attila's life. The first set are easier to answer than the second- so let us start with considering the strategical dilemmas faced by the Roman empire. From the time of Constantinople the empire had been split in two- one half contained all the lands west of Italy, the other half all those to her East. The capital of the West moved from Rome, north to Milan and later to the stronghold of Ravenna. That of the East was at Constantinople- a key fortress dominating the Bosphorous. The Romans faced a quandary by the time of Attila both in the West and in the East. In the West, they faced worries about the Rhine frontier and the barbarians ammassing there and also about the fact that from the early 5th Century the Vandals had conquered North Africa. In the East- the Danube was the frontier where Barbarians might pour through, but Eastern Emperors also were concerned about the long frontier along the Euphrates with Persia and about the Vandal threat across Africa to Egypt. In order to understand Attila's role in this- you have to understand those facts. Attila was neccessary for the Romans- as the Western Prefect Aetius understood- because he maintained a kind of stability on the northern frontier- at least he was predictable. He was also though in a position to extract conditions when Roman forces were engaged either in Africa or in Persia away from the Danube and Rhine frontiers.

But who was Attila. Attila was a Hun. The Huns, Kelly argues, arrived in Europe coming across the Asian steppe from somewhere in modern Kazackhstan. They intimidated and destroyed armies of other tribes- but they also incorporated other tribes. Gothic armies for example fought with the Huns against the Romans under Attila at the battle of the Catalaunian Plains. They also evolved as they moved across into Europe. Kelly argues that in the steppe, the nomadic lifestyle traditional to the Huns was economically possible. Once at the beggining of the fifth century they arrived in the Great Hungarian Plain- the resources of that little steppe in central Europe could not support the Hun horde and so they had to rely upon the farmers and others that inhabited that area. Kelly reccomends that we think of the Huns as a semi-sophisticated warrior aristocracy moving through central Europe, living off the revenues of plunder and of taxation from the empire to the south and the people that surrounded them. Attila was a figure within the Huns who arose in the 430s, having slain his brother Bleda. There is no real record of his early life- and we have only one pen portrait which comes from a Roman diplomat, Priscus, who met him. Priscus's history of the Huns from which this comes though has vanished, we rely on later Byzantine compilers of an encyclopedia of knowledge for our awareness of what he said about Attila.

Kelly tells his story as a narrative- and there doesn't seem much point in repeating all his points here. However it is the analytical thrust of what he says that is particularly interesting. The main point about his narrative is to reinforce the idea that Attila was a brilliant politician- when the Romans and Goths defeated him at the Catalaunian Plains in France, the Hun King switched his attentions to an invasion of Italy. Valentinian the Roman Emperor was then faced with the dilemma of calling in the Goths to Italy or facing the whole Hunnic force on his own. The diplomatic mission that I discussed Priscus being involved in is equally interesting: the Huns found out that the Roman mission contained (unknown to Priscus) assassins sent to murder Attila but the King instead of revealing the fact instantly, allowed the plot to unravel in front of his very eyes and used it as a weapon in his negotiations with the Roman Emperor, Theodosius. Attila exploited divisions in the Imperial households in both East and West. He was able to turn the discontent of Valentinian's sister Honoria into a major casus belli. The Romans may have been able to cope with Attila's armies- but the consequences of fighting him- even to a victory- would be so grave, particularly in terms of stripping the frontier armies and the potential of another Adrianople that they preferred not to fight.

This picture of Attila's strategical nous and his ability to hold together his disparate group of followers through tribute received from Rome- a minor tribute that Kelly reminds us represented the income of a moderately wealthy senator- is a convincing one. It is an interesting one too because it contributes to the picture of what the barbarians were like and the ways that they were affected by the Romans. Still Kelly leaves in the story enough detail about the horrors of the Hun conquest to remind us of why St Jerome styled Attila a wolf from the north and others considered the Huns the whip of God, sent to spur sinners to repentance before the second coming. What Attila was able to do, which other barbarian kings before him were unable to do was succeed a seige warfare- this major advance made his incursions more lucrative and more terrifying for Roman citizens than the invasions of the third century by the Goths.

All in all, Kelly's account suffers from the odd colloquialism- from some imaginative reconstructions- but presents in a broad sweep a story about Attila that fits into conventional notions of how the Roman Empire collapsed. It is unsurprising to note the way that he sees Attila as a leader who thrived on plunder, or that Hun society was influenced by Roman society, or that the Romans were decisively weakened by losing to the Goths in 378 or lastly that they were threatened on several frontiers. What is new is the enthusiasm with which he knits these things together with the life of Attila- so that characters as various as Aetius (Attila's ally who was also a general of the Roman forces in Gaul), Theodosius (Emperor in the East), the eunuch John and the historian Priscus all emerge in their vitality and all have roles to play. The broad contours of the story may be familiar- but the detail was not and the read was enjoyable.

The Dumbest Generation?

Ashok always manages to provoke and challenge me- and a recent post on whether we are the dumbest generation ever has managed to do exactly that. You see in one sense when he describes what it is to be truly interested in intellectual subjects he is entirely right- it is the challenge of realising that you are ignorant and attempting to do something about that ignorance that is at the centre of any proper intellectual life. When I look at history and see the amount of subjects that Hobbes, Newton, Aristotle, Plato, Marie Curie and the rest got wrong, that does not put me in a position to exalt myself above them but rather humbles me: they all thought they were right, so do I but have I any more warrent to say I am than they did? The quest for understanding is a never ending one- and it is one that we all follow to the best of our abilities and with reference to our own interests. The key thing though is that that journey is one that we may never succeed in finishing. I remember once being told the story of a historian interviewed for a post at an English university who was asked 'you have always said your life is a pilgrimage where are you going?', to which the wise don replied 'Pilgrimage comes from peregrinatio (Latin: to go about), the point is not to arrive, the point is to travel'. I agree with him.

So where do I disagree with Ashok. Well its this. It is far too easy to go from the realisation that noone in the modern world knows everything- to the discovery that there are some who are not concerned with knowledge- to the idea that things have never been this bad. I'm not sure that is true. Simply empirically, there are more people who are literate today than there ever were in the past. There are more people with degrees than there ever were in the past. Ashok may reply- ah but are they thinking. The problem with that is that it is a highly subjective judgement- I do not know about the comparative rate of deep thought today and in the 17th Century (and if I don't know, I suspect Ashok doesn't either!) What I do know is that as I travel to work on the London tube every morning I see the normal awful tabloids and multicoloured books- but I also see people reading Henry James (Tuesday morning), Umberto Eco (Wednesday) and Jose Saramango (today). I can't tell you how they are reading those texts but I can tell you they are- and I can tell you that more people are reading those kind of things than they did in the comparatively recent past (just go back 200 years and think about what the average person read then!)

So whilst I agree with Ashok's high aspirations about the intellectual life- I do not agree that the world today is less intellectual than it was in the past. Indeed I think it may be as much or more intellectual. There are more people who have access to this stuff- there are more people going to read, to the theatre, to the cinema and those people travel and meet other people more. This is not a utopian vision- obviously there are ways in which our society is not and maybe should not be a society of philosopher citizens- but its far from the dumbest society ever.

Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis

Greece, said Horace, had captured her wild conquerer Rome. We in our vocabulary and our habits of thought consciously and unconsciously echo or imagine we echo the Greek philosophers. The interesting question for historians and others to consider though is what happened in Greece- why suddenly in a burst of centuries do we get Homer, Hesiod, Herodotus, Hippocrates and many others- what happened to create that burst? Professor Walter Burkett of Zurich University gave some interesting lectures about this in Venice in 1996, which he later expanded into a book. His argument is essentially that Greece profitted by being close to the traditional sources of civilisation in the ancient world- and that furthermore when those traditional areas were disturbed by productive change, the Greeks were just near enough to reap the reward but too far away to lose much in the wars and civil strife that ensued.

There is a lot of sense in what Burkett argues. Let us start with something that we can understand- writing. Writing letters like those I am typing is a technology that was discovered in the Western Semitic areas sometime around 1200. It took a while to become truly popular- but eventually replaced cuneiform writing in the Assyrian empire and spread up into the Western lands of Greece sometime shortly after 800. The Greeks used the same sequence of letters in their alphabet, the phoenician 'alpu, betu, gamlu, daltu' becoming the familiar 'alpha, beta, gamma, delta'. The Greeks believed that this invention had come from the Phoenicians and there is evidence to support the idea that it spread along trade routes. That idea of a spread of an idea from east to west is obviously not implausible- if the alphabet and other things like forms of statue and the architectural models for temples could so move then it isn't unlikely that ideas did too.

Burkert offers plenty of examples of ideas that might well have moved from east to west. He groups them into four sections: the orientalising features in Homer, borrowings from Eastern wisdom literature in Hesiod and other places, Orphic influence from Egypt and the idea of the Magi from Persia. There is something to be said for all of these particular cases of influence. Burkert notes interesting passages in Homer which are more theological than the normal narrative- some where the Greek bard seems to have quoted directly from Babylonian texts like the Atrahasis, others for example a passage about Aphrodite which seems to contradict the normal Greek myth by saying that the goddess of love was a daughter of Zeus and his wife Dione (the only time Dione is ever mentioned in the poem) which are almost exact copies of an earlier oriental story. The same is true in the wisdom literature of the pre-socratics where Burkert notes common themes with say wisdom literature from the Bible and other Eastern or Babylonian sources. The Orpheus cult he shows has links to Egyptian mysteries about the dead and their protection. The Magi were Persian priests- and Burkert shows that they must have been known about in Ionia from at least the coming of Darius to the throne- furthermore he traces ideas from them into Greek philosophy, particularly the idea of immortality and the conception of dualism.

The problem with all of this is that showing that two groups of people shared the same idea is not showing that they transmitted it, that one received it and the other initiated it. However by establishing a series of links- what Burkert shows is that it is quite likely that these ideas did not exist in isolation. Greeks were trading with the East from very early on. We see that in the alphabetic trail. We also can see a direct connection from the conquest of Ionia onwards- whereby Persians and Greeks frequently traded and fell out. Notable Greeks like Themistocles of Athens even went to work as satraps for the Persian King. Earlier Greek philosophers like Heraclitus may have lived under that King within Ionia. We also know that ancient cultures were receptive to influence- whether that's Rome with Greece or Rome and Greece with Egypt- from the trading connections and the intellectual connections to do with writing, it would surely be sensible to infer that further simularities of ideas come from communication. Sensible furthermore because we are not the first to have had these thoughts: Herodotus, Plato and Aristotle all argued at various points for the origins of Greek concepts from the outside world. There are times when I feel Burkert makes too much of his simularities- but the essential point is still there- that the Greeks were trading and influenced by the East and therefore must have been influenced intellectually.

So what does this say about the Greeks- it does not downgrade them in the history of civilisation. Rather it places it them where they ought to be- as master adapters of skills passed to them from other places. That is in a sense the story of civilisation, no one people owns or has ever owned it- rather ideas are passed around the world or around a locality and then used. Economic and social factors- particularly in Greece the rise of the city state (an event paralleled in Phoenicia and north Africa which we know far less about and which may have produced a efflorescence of its own) allowed a trading class to develop who would use and exploit these ideas. Ultimately the acheivement of Greece was less the origination of these ideas than their combination- what Burkert shows is that the Greek experience was not that of a sole light of civilisation in the darkness of barbarism but that of a people on the edge of a civilisation who absorbed and changed the things that their neighbours showed them. Reflecting those things back to their neighbours in new and innovative ways- ways that for example changed the way that semitic religions- Judaism and later Christianity- were understood in. Greece can take its place within an Eastern Meditereanean filled with trade and chatter about ideas and philosophies.

The Baader Meinhof Complex

Reviewing a film about terrorism is always hard- making one is of course harder. A film like the Baader Meinhof complex tells the story of the terrorists- in that sense it invites you to sympathise with them and it disregards the pain of their victims because that is not what it shows mostly on screen. The danger is glamourising terrorists and turning them into heroes- furthering the myth of their own creation, that they are in some sense the only principled ones standing against a society of compromise. I think this new German film about the Baader Meinhof gang- a group of leftwing terrorists in the Federal Republic in the 1970s (with one exception I have to say I rely in this review on the film for my account of them)- partially avoids that danger. We will discuss how partially it does in a minute- but first its worth describing the story of what happens to the Gang in the film.

In the late 1960s, student revolt swept through Europe- against the Vietnam War and various other injustices around the world. In Germany this swept up for various reasons a group of journalists (like Ulrika Meinhof), students (like Gudrun Ensslin), dropouts (like Andreas Baader) and even lawyers (like Horst Mahler- now curiously a neo-Nazi activist). These individuals then decided that unlike the main student leaders- who include many of the current German social democratic and green leadership (Joshka Fischer included)- they would not merely pursue peaceful protest but would violently attack the institutions of the Federal state and in particular those of its allies the United States. They trained with the Palestinian terrorists- came back to Germany committed various acts of arson and assacination and then were captured. After their capture, their noteriety became mythical- and others inspired by their story joined the gang. From within the prison, thanks to messages smuggled out with their lawyers (Gerhard Schroeder was one- though I hasten to add not guilty of the smuggling)- they kept the network going. Other atrocities followed- including the storming of the German embassy in Sweden, the hijacking of planes and further bombings, murders and kidnappings. Eventually the campaign to release Baader, Meinhof and Ensslin failed and the three of them, with some of their fellow prisoners, committed suicide- the group calling itself the Red Army Faction survived but gradually petered out into the 1990s and finally called a ceasefire in 1998.

The film takes this story until the suicides in the late seventies. Partly because after then- though there were further murders, the strength of the group died away. What it shows is the personal lives of these terrorists- their plots and conspiracies and the things that moved them to do what they did. Most of them it portrays in a very unedifying light. Andreas Baader in particular comes across as a pure thug- a sexist, violent bully. Baader on this account found a narrative that would award him the right to take on bourgeois society- and used that narrative to justify his speeding, gun toting lifestyle. The moment in the film which exemplifies his character is when he steals from someone- a minute later someone else steals his car- suddenly property is important and theft is not so funny. There are others too in the group for whom you can tell that the old adage that a political terrorist is a gangster with the sense that they are justified is right. The cast is glamorous- one issue I have with the film makers- but its still possible to see that Baader is not that far removed from Joe Pesci's character in Goodfellas or Al Pacino's in Scarface- save for the fact he lacks their cunning and has a political ideology to make him a 'hero'.

The other main strain in the group is an ideological one- one that believes the myth of Baader. Ulrike Meinhof is our main illustration of this tendency. Meinhof worried that she could not fully commit to revolutionary socialism without committing violent acts to overthrow the capitalist regime. She saw Baader at various points- according to the film- as someone entitled to judge her bourgeois socialism. Something as the savage bully that he was he took full advantage of. Ideology committed her to a cause- and everything else came second to that cause. But it is a curious kind of commitment- for this is commitment to 'the people' and not to any people- to principles of love, charity and equality, rather than to behaving lovingly, charitably and equally. She uses her political beliefs as a crutch, as Baader, to give her life a meaning and to look down on others- her view may be more intellectual but it is no less selfish. It is also worth noting what kind of causes these ideologues espoused- quoting Mao in the late sixties and early seventies is as forgivable as quoting Hitler in the forties with approval. For them one senses that the millions dead in the Cultural Revolution were comparable to the tens they killed in terrorist atrocities: the revolution had decided that these should die and therefore they were no longer part of 'the people' but only dispensible people.

This is particularly evident when the gang go to Palestine. One of the things that they talk about constantly is their concern for the third world. But when they arrive in the third world- they insult its inhabitants. We see this from an earlier scene where Baader calls an Italian a 'wop'. But we also see it, in Palestine. The group refuse to live like the PLO fighters they stay with- refuse to segregate the sexes- and furthermore the women sunbathe naked. I have nothing against that, but the PLO did- and rather than take their objections seriously, the response of the group was thoroughly stupid. They told the PLO guards that they understood anti-imperialism better than the PLO, they even told them that 'shooting and fucking were the same thing' whilst refusing of course to do any training. Its odd but in their attitude to the Palestinians- the fundamental self righteous, self obsessed nastiness of the group comes over.

The film is clearly told and well acted. There are no bad performances here- there are plenty of good ones and throughout the story is conveyed simply. It should not be easy to make the German politics of the 1960s-70s uncomplicated and simple but the director has acheived that. But he has done that at the expense of two things that were central to the Gang. The first was that they saw themselves as battling the 'Auschwitz generation'- many of their victims were former Nazis. In reality though, the terrorists were backed by the Communists- the Stasi gave them aid- and lauded and quoted approvingly Mao (who genocidally murdered millions of Chinese people across the same rough period as the gang formed) and Ho Chi Minh. Clearly telling the story means that you miss this larger context and you do need to know it in order to understand the group and its true nature.

They were convinced totalitarians- in a way the communism seems to me to have been less important to some of them (Mahler, Baader) than the violence it allowed them to commit- many of them could easily have gone the other way to the extreme right and quite a few (Mahler, Ensslinn) had flirted with it. Dispositionally as well as ideologically there may not be as much to choose between the extremes as we sometimes think. In that sense the film gives food for thought. It is entertaining- but it is also something to dwell on and unpick. Perhaps it has no real message about terrorism, but I would suggest it is a film to see if you want to develop an idea of what terrorism is and why people become terrorists.

The first fall of Rome

What happened in Rome when the Gauls arrived is something that has been told many times. Livy tells the story of the Roman defeat at Allia and the arrival of the Gauls in Rome with a brilliance that demonstrates the perfection of his writing style and the power of his evocative imagery: he writes with an immediacy that is perfect in committing the idle reader to the Roman side. He is particularly impressive when it comes to describing what happened in Rome when the Gauls burst through- when they seized the city, and the citadel alone remained indomitable in the service of its Gods and its history. What we see here is a version of patriotism that fuses the city and the state, the human and the divine, the story of Rome and that of the cosmos. Let us turn though to the fundementals of the story- what happened according to Livy when the Gauls overwhelmed Rome- what we must understand as we read this passage is that for Livy's story the moment when the Gauls came over the wall was akin to the way that the British regard Dunkirk, it was the defeat that became a moral victory.

What happened? What Livy outlines is a 'cruel separation'. The old and infirm including many of the heroes of the Republic were left in the outer city, whereas the younger men of military age retreated to the citadel. The rest of the Roman people including the priests seem to have fled into the Italian countryside. Let us for a second acknowledge that much of what Livy writes at this point is conjecture- even so what he tells us is something important both about the identity of the city state and its security. To start with the second point, what Livy tells us here is that ultimately the city state is its food supply and its population fo military age- Rome was threatened as the Gauls occupied its lower levels with starvation, hence the disposal of surplus population, and the only way to save itself was through military resistance. In the end military service was tied to suffrage- because ultimately Rome was a state which was an army. Taking this point on, Livy does not demur from its consequences, rather he celebrates them- celebrating the military virtues even of the non-combatants who face their inevitable death with stoicism- seeming to be heroic statues for a while to the Gauls.

This militaristic- state as an army- dynamic in ancient Republics is a consequence of the instability that was natural to them which we talked of in our last post. It is something that made Livy and others resent empire as a civilian enterprise that sapped military vigour because it destroyed uncertainty- a point that echoes through European history even until the 18th and 19th centuries. Livy's point is curiously a democratic one- at its roots- the senate may be the 'fountain head of true government' but it is only such when its members behave on an equal footing with the commons. Conscription we have seen is a democratic point in Roman politics- and in a sense this invasion returned Rome to the world of conscription, from the world of paid armies into which she seemed, on Livy's telling, to be embarking. As a moment though, this brings to bear everything Livy felt nostalgic about in the early Republic- primitive vulnerability and martial vigour breeding a superstitious yet egalitarian republican virtu.

Defence in the Ancient World

Modern warfare is a very different beast to ancient warfare. In the 2003 war on Iraq, Saddam Hussein knew that an attack was coming, even if there was not that much he could actually do about it. The danger of a surprise attack is of course always present but thanks to satellite technology, communications especially via the net and the large bureacratic machinery of the modern state- the surprise attack will be discovered instantly even if it cannot be met. The wars of the pre-modern world in this sense are very different- it took people in Egypt sometimes over a hundred days to find out that their emperor in Rome had died. If we think rightly of the modern state of something with a wide and slow turning circle- then the ancient state was even more a logistic nightmare to manage especially when it came to anticipating great changes occuring far off from the centre.

Thinking about empires less and city states more, we can see in a microcosm in the way that Livy describes the arrival of the Gauls in northern Italy. Rome's complacency is something that we have already noticed. But Rome was not alone: 'the plight of Clusium was a most alarming one; strange men in thousands were at the gates, men the like of whom the townsmen had never seen, outlandish warriors armed with strange weapons, who were rumoured to have scattered the Etruscan legions on boht sides of the Po' (V 36). Notice the two phenomenon here: firstly there is the fact that the inhabitants of Clusium had no idea about what they were facing- what kind of army stood outside their gates and what kind of behaviour this army would exhibit both in capturing and after the conquest of their city. Secondly without truth, all they had was the rumour which exaggerated the success of these foreign raiders- and suggested that their defence would be forlorn.

This obviously alters the challenge for the defence of a city. It is what makes religious arguments about the unpredictability of invasion more plausible- afterall there could be no possible way to predict the Gauls were coming so it must be a decision taken by the Gods. Furthermore it advances the attractions of a view of the world which sees the barbarians as other- and the city states as all being interested in the defence of every other city state. Livy stresses that this identity between city communities existed even at this point- and that Rome possibly should have done more to help Clusium. By telling this story, he perpetuates the point- that cities are vulnerable to sudden shocks and must band together against the outsider. In those few lines, Livy does two things- he describes to us the fear of the barbarian and why that fear, in his view, must be maintained politically.

In that sense we have here an instance not merely of the analysis of the perils of the city state- but of the promulgation of the myth of the barbarian.

Have you seen...

David Thomson is one of the doyennes of the American cinematic critical community. His book 'Have you seen...' has many merits- it is written by someone obviously obsessed and discontented with the art that he writes about- a positive attribute for any critic. He aspires to a cinema which really does touch the stars and explain them and the void beneath in sentences of perfection and images of perfect clarity. And yet, and yet, for me there is something that does not quite work about Thomson's book- though I admire it in so many ways, its completeness, the ability to give an opinion on so many films, the verve of the writing and its style- there is something which makes me wonder about how profound the critic is when he looks at that he loves.

What's the problem? Let us distinguish between two things- one is cinema, the other is 'Hollywood'. One sees Grace Kelly, the sexiest blonde in film history but also the coolest, as the heroine of Rear Window, the other sees the actress as a nymphomaniac and later a princess. A great test of whether you like Hollywood or cinema is whether you are interested in Princess Grace- if you are its not the films but the glitz and the gloss around them. Robert Bresson never cast an actor or actress twice in a film and always chose unknowns because he never wanted the actor to overshadow the performance, the stylist the sentence that the film delivered. And that's the problem with Thomson's work- he takes a great film like Voyage to Italy and tells the story of its production as though that explains what the film 'means' to an audience that never heard of Ingrid Bergman and Rosselini's flawed passion and never cared.

Ultimately if we are to ask why a film was made the private story matters- Taxi Driver might not have been made without Scorsese's drug fuelled crisis, the battles between Hitchcock and Selznick changed the nature of Notorious, Kidman and Cruise's dynamic in Eyes Wide Shut almost certainly influenced the way that film was made and was perceived. But those movies all have to survive in a world where few know and fewer in time will care about those moments. And films flower in that harsher world when they say something important or interesting and they say it with verve and interest. Lets face it, there is a great backstory to the recent film Mr and Mrs Smith starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, but noone would match that film up with Voyage to Italy and that's not because the back story of Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rosselini is more interesting, its because the film is better.

Thomson and Kermode and other critics that I like often seem so carried away with the back story- the trivia of whose career is up and down and what a film does to a career- or who is having an affair with whom- that they forget the first duty of a critic. Is this a good film, and if it is, why, what does it tell us that we need to or want to hear? Once I've heard that- I may be interested in why it is a good film and the process of production, the relations of the leading players etc, but the key point is not what Goddard was feeling on the set of Le Mepris, but what he created and what it means to the viewer. Of course, one of the ways of understanding that is placing Le Mepris against others of Goddard's films, to get the syntax of the director and against other films of the time, to get the cinematic syntax of the time, but the reasons why the film was made are unimportant beside the question of whether it is interesting or not.

Ultimately films cannot be judged independently of their times- their times tell us a lot about the context of what the film is saying- but we should never lose sight of what the film is saying. That is what is interesting about the film- and only after that is the question about why the film was made in this form an interesting one. This is an unfair criticism of Thomson perhaps who is less guilty of this sin than many others- but it is a sin and it besets film criticism today and irritates your blogger profoundly. If you want to take film seriously, lets take it seriously and explore the film as an intellectual creation not as an excuse to gossip about the stars. 'Hollywood' gossip is interesting, but cinematic genius is essential to our civilisation and the way that we think about it.

Gracchi is back

I am back- thanks to Vino for a fine guest post. I was away for work for a week but normal service is now returned.

Guest post - On The Age of Empire

I was invited to write a guest post here and so have decided to write about Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Empire – which I see as a good popular history book that reawoke my interest in the period. It’s the 3rd of his series of modern history books (the others being The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital and The Age of Extremes).

The key point of the era he is writing about (1875-1914) is that it saw the territorial conquest of much of Africa and Asia that had hitherto remained independent by European colonial powers. In Africa, only Liberia and Ethiopia remained independent. This age of Empire saw not only territorial conquest but the spread of the capitalism. Underdeveloped parts of the world were partly integrated into what was becoming a global economy.

Being a Marxist, Hobsbawm goes into detail on the topic of economic change and economic development. This period marks the continuation of what can be seen as the ‘first phase’ of globalisation. Perhaps it is the second phase that we are living through now.

He sees the post-1875 period as a move away from the Cobden-Bright ideas of free trade into one of competing national economies. These national economies may be capitalist but they do not subscribe to the orthodoxies of free trade of what he dubs The Age of Capital (1848-75). Germany and the USA economically develop rapidly within tariff walls. This enables them to protect their domestic industries from British exports. The increasing division into national economies makes it more essential for European powers to obtain colonies to acquire cheap raw materials and markets for their goods.

Now, the Marxist interpretation of this period can be challenged, since it is not clear that that many colonies were actually profitable for their rulers. However, the perception at the time was that they could be. And, what’s more, the fear that a rival country would take the territory often spurred conquest. At this stage, rivalry between European nations tended to stick to the diplomatic and economic arena. It would only turn into military conflict later on.

The growth of social-democratic and workers’ movements is also of great interest to Hobsbawm. While not able to attain power given the nature of the German political system, the SPD still manages to emerge as the foremost party in the land. Its very strength implied that – by its rapid industrialisation – the German state had also created its main political opponents (the industrial proletariat).

The other interesting thing about much of the 1870s, 1880s and 1890s is that it is a period of deflation. Deflation is not something that really occurs much nowadays, but it was common then. This deflation partly spurs the move to a more protectionist world economy after the 1870s. But it also means that employers try to reduce workers’ nominal wages. This results in the growth of trade unionism and goes hand-in-hand with a growing political polarisation in advanced economies.

The end of the period also sees revolutions attempted in Turkey, Persia and Russia. These can be seen as the forerunner of later, modernising attempts in those societies.

In that way, the Age of Empire sets the stage for much of what happens in the 20th century – with nationalism and revolution continuing at a more intense level after 1914.

Let it Rain

Let it Rain is a film about the return of a French woman to her family home. She is a feminist intellectual and a Parliamentary candidate. For everyone in the house, the arrival of the feminist politician is like a stone falling upon a still lake. For her sister it reactivates all kinds of resentments- from those of an unloved child for a loved child- to those of a domestic housewife for her emancipated peer. For her sister's husband it presents a challenge to his position as the incompetent head of the household. For others too in the community it represents both a challenge and an opportunity: two drifters- Karim a hotel receptionist and Michel an amateur camera man- want to make a film about the feminist as an example of a successful women (a series on which the local television station appears to be running). Karim as well is tempted into infidelity- whereas Michel is sleeping with the sister of the feminist. Its all complicated- and we end up at one point with Michel, Karim and Agathe (the feminist) followed by a herd of sheep trying to walk to the local town- but the intention is there to make a film which thinks about the challenges within contemporary France of race and sex, does it succeed?

It does not really. That is partly the fault of the direction and the acting- there is no real sense that anything much is at stake here. I found myself curiously abstracted from the film- perhaps mildly amused but nothing more. Ultimately there are some wonderfully comic moments in the movie- pure slapstick for example a camera man dropping a slide into the baptismal font or the stupidity of Karim and Michel's questions- but they do not really go anywhere. I watched abstractly- enjoying the film and there is plenty to enjoy but it did not force me to think. The reason for this is partly because the film wraps its character's courses up so neatly- no one really loses at the end of the film- and every character is given a final scene of resolution. You could argue that all those resolutions are false- but in reality, the director does not give us any insight to say that- all the resolutions are bourgeois- the film is about family and the resolutions bring all the characters back to human companionship, but I did not get the feeling that there was any neccessary ominous tint in the happy story.

There is more than that though that confuses me about this film. For at its deepest it is a film about deep subjects- sex, relations between human beings, race- and yet it seemed to have no core. There was no coherence. You could read it as an anti-feminist film- the feminist politician learns she has to have a man to be happy. You could read it is a feminist film- the sister's dire life continues because she subjugates her desires to a series of inadequate men. You could read it as a film about the way that white France plays with ideas from the new left, without really caring or considering what Arabic France thinks. You could read it as a film about the unkindness of bourgeois humanity. I could go on- but none of those interpretations is sustained and some of them seem contradicted by other moments in the film. There is something intensely human about the film- which makes it hard to fit into a pattern- but then it comes up against the simplicity of the motivations it ascribes to some of its major characters and their worlds. Karim seems for example entirely non-plussed by any moral forboding when he neglects his wife to take a mistress- indeed the poor wife is forgotten about half way through the film and seems to be a mere dramatic device- a stage woman to be wheeled on as a prop (a further feminist or anti-feminist point?)

There is some nice humour here- its sweet and well meaning but without a message, there is nothing radical about it. Indeed one might argue that there is something deeply conservative about a film in which you see a radical feminist politician who has no political program- apart from being a bit headstrong. There is something light as a feather about the film- and for an evening out it is good entertainment. Go with that mindset and you will not be disappointed- there are some really nice moments, some good laugh out loud lines, but there is nothing here which will make you consider or rethink anything. I saw this on Thursday, its taken me so long to write a review, not because the film was bad but because I struggled to think of what to write. I actually think for once that says something about the film- there is something there but its light and amusing, there is no message, no description that you could not see elsewhere.

Go and be amused by the folly of mankind, but seek no answers as to why men and women are fools for you will not find them.