[lit-ideas] Et in Arcadia ego
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2008 12:02:33 -0500
In his interesting post, L. K. Helm writes (¨The arts and the Peloponnesian
War"):
"Someone I read recently (I don't think it was Hanson) wrote, in
effect, that more great works of literature were written in and about war
than in and about peace. I believe it was with that understanding that
Fukuyama didn't end his title with The End of History, but added The Last
Man. Nietzsche's "Last Man" lives during a time of perpetual peace and
creates no great works of art - or anything else. It is during some form of
aggressive affirmation rather than passive acceptance that the great works
are created - so Nietzsche and Fukuyama would have argued, and they may have
been influenced in this to some extent by their study of the Peloponnesian
War."
We´ve discussed this with Geary and Ritchie. Indeed, when it comes to the Great
War, and even the Phoney War, it´s the songs that made them memorable (from
"There´s a long long trail" -- pre-Great War but stupid and meaningless unless
re-analysed in bellic(ose) terms to ¨"Blue birds flying the White Cliffs of
Dover", which must have escaped from the cage of an American submarine on the
English channel, as the bird is inexistent in England (as a species -- and the
song is only a future congintent, ¨There´ll be blue birds flying¨, not that
they are.
I could write miles about war and songs and war and art -- indeed the Japanese
have the martial arts (tae kwon do) but McCreery, who´s going Japanese with a
straight face (not irony intended) must know about the proper Missouri terms
for that.
Problem, Helm, is that war also provokes dudes like Wystan Hugh Auden who
during a war will write AGAINST a war (¨The War Requiem¨) and while the Astors
and the Vanderbilts will not applaud its performance at the Carnegie, the
Leftist intelligentsia gathered around Columbia (or is it Colombia, I never
know).
With the Greeks we have to be careful. After all, it´s the Herodotian ¨Persian
War¨, which predated the Peloponnesian (not to mention -- then why do? -- the
semi-mythical Troy) which united the Greeks, but other than the magnificent
full length statuary in the round of Leonidas at Thermopylae, nothing much
remains in terms of artistic heritage.
When it comes to Athens, we have to be careful in distiguishing different uses
of art of the propagandistic type pro war. It´s odd that we see statues of
athletes rather than warriors. True, Polykleitus´s KANON is the Spear-Bearer
(Doruphoros) but there´s no doubt that no war was meant by the predecessor,
Myron´s Diskobolos.
With Hellenism all art went to the dogs, so it´s good to keep, as Helm does,
the focus on the classical art and not necessarily Athenian.
I think we can leave Nietzsche aside (of course unless you enjoy his
writings!). Ares was the god of war before the Peloponnesian, before the
Persian, and before the Trojan war, so the religious and war-mongering
associations of the art-instinct in the only civilisation worth studying its
history, there were indeed NO PEACE TIMES worth even talking about.
What disturbs me a bit is William Blake RICHMOND. He is not a well known
Victorian painter, who spent two years in the Peloponnesian peninsula when it
wasn´t precisely fashionable, and yet his claim to fame is this statue which he
kept in his studio and called "An Arcadian Shepherd". Having been through Argos
and Sparta and Olympia, he decided that what he loved best -- and sometimes I
agree -- about Pelopponesian art is the ability and the freedom that gives to
utter, naked on a sunny day,
ET IN ARCADIA EGO
J. L. Speranza
(Vacationing on Villa Speranza)
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