--- On Wed, 22/12/10, Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: I was struck by something I read earlier in A. J. P. Taylor's The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918: Referring to the alliance of the Habsburgs and the "Counter-Revolution," Taylor writes, "The alliance of the dynasty and the Jesuits saved the Habsburgs and defeated Protestantism in central Europe; it also gave to 'Austrian' culture the peculiar stamp which it preserved to the end. Austrian Baroque civilisation, like the buildings which it created, was grandiose, full of superficial life, yet sterile within: it was theatre, not reality. It lacked integrity and individual character; at its heart was a despairing frivolity. 'Hopeless, but not serious' was the guiding principle which the age of Baroque stamped upon the Habsburg world. Deep feeling found an outlet only in music, the least political of the arts; even here the creative spirit strove to break its bonds, and the air of Vienna was more congenial to Johann Strauss than to Mozart or to Beethoven. The Habsburgs learnt from the Jesuits patience, subtlety, and showmanship; they could not learn from them sincerity and creativeness." Some might say this is self-description masquerading as analysis: that is, 'if you spot it, you got it'. Would anyone be surprised to find some writing of Wittgenstein's or Popper's, both Viennese, which described the backwaters of Oxbridge "as full of superficial life, yet sterile within: it was theatre, not reality. It lacked integrity and individual character; at its heart was a despairing frivolity."? Or that their self-styled 'analytical' approach requires some patience and subtlety but very little in the way of "sincerity and creativeness"? Taylor's implicit view of the relation between art and politics is perhaps equally sterile and superficial. In the narrow sense of 'politics' as a party-programme etc., it is surely questionable whether the proper function of art is to serve politics or even much reflect it. Insofar as art seeks to illuminate 'the human condition', or some such, it is profoundly political - as all dictators and Plato know, which is why artistic expression must be controlled and suppressed in such regimes. That includes the music. A counter-argument to Taylor's is that it is precisely because music takes its form and content from above the petty day-to-day machinations of the political arena that it is the most political of the arts - in a similar way, perhaps, that it is the most political of positions to decry politics as a necessary evil and not a be-all and end-all. Of course, there are more urgent reasons for dictators to suppress newspapers than music recitals: because newspapers contain propositional/factual claims that may undermine the official line in a way a string quartet does not; as a photograph may also constitute a factual claim [e.g. here are government soldiers shooting unarmed protesters] it may also fall to be suppressed more urgently than the string quartet. But this is hardly the only or deepest measure of the political importance of a cultural item: we may say that while news reports of the assassination of the Archduke or photographs from Vietnam had a direct and immense political impact, this impact is of very little longstanding historical importance compared to works of art on our lives and our attitudes. Donal London ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html