To take the latter first, two of the repeated forms of insult which are levelled at Cher are that she is a ‘chav’ and a ‘gypsy’ (the actual word used in connection with the latter is more offensive but I will not use it). It may be fairly objected that the latter in fact introduces an element of racism. Gypsies for some reason seem to be excluded from the general rule (a rule I am very happy about) which restricts the use of racist language in respect of most ethnic groups to the BNP and other far-right fascists and numbskulls. Quite why this should be I have little idea. It seems forgotten that gypsies were in fact one of Hitler’s targets (along with communists and gays) and he sent them to the concentration camps with quite as much assiduity as he did the Jews. Antiziganism (as I have just discovered anti-gypsy prejudice is called) has a long history but is also very much present right across Europe including the UK ( see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiziganism ). In fact…. In 2008 the media reported that Gypsies experience a higher degree of racism than any other group in the UK, including asylum-seekers and a Mori poll indicated that a third of UK residents admitted openly to being prejudiced against Gypsies. I think that this is in part because people consider that they will not be criticised for expressing anti-gypsy sentiments, in part because the Left has (as far as I am aware) completely neglected this issue, and in part because it does tie in very closely with class antagonism.

The rebirth of intense class antagonisms in the UK crystallise around the use of the word ‘chav’. This horrible word has its etymological derivation in the Romani word ‘chavi’ (back to the gypsy theme) meaning child, but is also an acronym for Council House And Violent, which latter makes absolutely clear its class origins. It is used as an expression of abuse against anyone or anything which is deemed to be overtly working-class. What is so shocking about this is that use of the word is considered perfectly acceptable even amongst people who would not dream of using racist or homophobic language. It is part of a process which is best described in the title of a book ‘Chav: The Demonisation of the Working Class’ (by Owen Jones). In a country which is now run by Old Etonians and has recently once again gone into raptures over the marriage of two upper-class twits, the class antagonisms which have never gone away are now laid bare in their naked aggression.

Over and above this process however is the fact that the use of chav is often directed at women and specifically young women. This is where the misogyny arises. In particular it is directed against women who are considered to in any way flaunt or assert their sexuality. This has a very real impact in the appalling conviction rates for rape in the UK and the fact that we have the Minister for ‘Justice’ (Ken Clarke) declaring that there are 2 types of rape – more and less serious, the latter being where the woman is supposed to have contributed to the rape by her dress, attitude or behaviour. One really positive outcome of this has been the sudden growth of a movement to fight back against this which organised a Slut Walk (see http://harpymarx.wordpress.com/2011/06/11/london-slutwalk/ and more importantly http://harpymarx.wordpress.com/2011/06/07/why-i-support-slutwalk/). The depressing thing about this is that I had thought theses battles had been won years ago but in this, as in many other things, it appears that we have regressed. The encouraging thing about Slut Walk is that it seems to have been the initiative of young women themselves and is perhaps tied up with that other bright light on the horizon, the re-emergence of student radicalism.

All these three factors – anti-gypsy prejudice (although her connection to gypsies is somewhat tenuous), class hatred and a renewed misogyny coalesce into a perfect storm around Cher Lloyd and explain the extraordinary and revolting venom which she attracts. The most subtle form of this is to disrespect her musical talent as is the case of a so-called musician called ‘Example’ – I went and listened to an example of his ‘talent’ and found it to be a slice of highly unpleasant misogyny. This miserable specimen (real name Elliott Gleave) no doubt has a great deal of appeal for over-sexed and under-performing male teenagers (ie: nearly all male teenagers – I can remember back that far!) but should know better at his age (in fact to still be called Example at 27 is pretty embarrassing in itself). However the essential point is that this so-called ‘musical’ criticism is just a cover for the misogyny and class hatred which I have pointed out as being real the reason for Cher Hatred. Fortunately this young woman has the talent, the fans and I hope the determination (though I can hardly start to understand how hard it must be to face up to this stream of vitriol) to continue with a very promising musical career.

What especially struck me on this particular viewing however was how Trollopian certain aspects of the film’s themes are. No doubt my attention was drawn to this by the fact that I am reading The Way We Live Now. In both cases we have at the centre grossly excessive mother-love heaped on the head of a worthless young man. Now Welles’ account is in several ways different to Trollope’s, arguably softer (those who see Trollope as soft can never have read TWWLN – actually they can’t have read much Trollope at all!) but because of this it is more emotionally involving, more tragic for the viewer. George (Tim Holt) is just as nasty as Felix Carbury, but his nastiness takes a very different form. Felix Carbury is a wholly selfish, rotten and vicious man who cares for nobody and nothing other than his own immediate creature comforts (a form of existence which was the worst of all kinds for Trollope). George on the other hand does care for other people : he is genuinely in love with Lucy (Anne Baxter) and in a perverse way he loves his mother. But above all he cares about what other people think and possesses a warped set of moral standards. It is because of this that he refuses to allow his mother to remarry and therefore ultimately causes her death. Felix would not give a fig if his mother remarried; indeed if she did so to a rich man he would be delighted, because it would be one more person to sponge off. George’s warped puritanism is, one suspects, Welles’ idea of the worst kind of vice. So it might be suggested that both Trollope and Welles in their anti-heroes, in Felix and George, create characters who embody the worst traits they can imagine. But when it comes to the mothers Welles’ view is much more sentimental. Isabel (Dolores Costello) hardly emerges as a character in her own right at all, where Lady Carbury is a motive force in Trollope. A problem with The Magnificent Ambersons, which one cannot see how even a fully realised version would have resolved, is that it is hard to understand exactly why Isabel inspires this great love from the hero (Eugene, played by Joseph Cotten). She is something of a device, and if she has brought about her own downfall (by rejecting Eugene and then by her over-indulgence of George) she is above all a victim. If however our sympathies are not fully engaged by Isabel this is partly because for Welles the film’s emotional centre is intended in some ways to be Fanny (Agnes Moorhead - a brilliant performance). She is at the film’s dark heart and in Welles intended ending the film ends on her in a state of poverty and madness. This of course would have completed the trajectory – from magnificence to complete decay – and given the whole a grandiose integrity which the studio-imposed happy ending (which is emotionally moving) denies it.

Agnes Moorehead as Fanny

The other central theme of The Magnificent Ambersons is the march of history. This of course is also a Trollopian theme. Once again a comparison of the two is interesting. In the film there is a curious dichotomy in that while it could be argued that the film is in some ways nostalgic for some simpler, more elegant, more picturesque bygone era, the human representative of that era – the Ambersons – are a pretty dismal and decayed bunch, whereas the human representative of modernity, destructive in so many ways, is the film’s most decent and intelligent man, Eugene. All this is conveyed in the dinner-table scene where George’s rude, personal attack on Eugene leads to the latter making a keynote speech in which he admits that mankind may well come to regret the invention, in which he has played some considerable part, of the automobile. And certainly the shots – clearly cobbled together – of the changed town, now a thing of grime and noise and ugliness, through which George, unseen, trudges near the end would seem to suggest that the march of ‘progress’ has been retrogressive. But set against this is the fact that the old order, as exemplified by the Ambersons, is seen, when exposed, to be dysfunctional and rotten. In a way this balanced view, with much to be said against both sides, is also to be found in Trollope, although the proportions vary and by TWWLN his face is more firmly set against modernity, or its most dominant aspects anyway. But we should not forget that many of his portrayals of old style aristocrats can be equally, if differently, damning. In both cases what perhaps needs to be emphasised is the complexity of attitude involved.

Even the remnant of a film which we possess is full of Welles’ genius but somehow this makes all the more poignant the sense of loss which is the film’s keynote. It as though we are mourning not only the loss of those magical sleigh rides but of Welles’ own precocious talent.

A very interesting article by John Sutherland in The Times on October 2nd. Formerly I would merely have directed readers to a web-link so everyone could read it for themselves, but now the Murdochs have decided they are short of cash and need to charge for on-line access to The Times, I can no longer do this. I am therefore forced into making an inadequate summary. Sutherland’s subject is Monica Jones, Philip Larkin’s long-time lover. Sutherland was a student of her’s at Leicester University and subsequently a close companion. Jones shared with Larkin a dyspeptic and jaundiced view of life. She refused to conform and did the absolute minimum required by her job (she came to lectures with an alarm clock). She refused to publish ; it was what Sutherland calls a ‘conscientious objection’. She said that ‘it is more distinguished not to publish’. As a result of this non-conformity she was never promoted and harried into retirement. She was very badly treated by Amis who put her in Lucky Jim as Margaret Peel (Jim is Larkin),which led to many ‘mocking, misogynistic sniggers’ [what a bully and - there is no other word really - shit, Amis was: Lucky Jim is a third-rate book, the product of a fourth-rate mind. He has no excuses.]. Larkin himself was little better; refusing to commit or to defend her properly. Jones’ favourite authors were Thackeray, Trollope and above all Scott – it is to her that Sutherland owes his life-long passions. ” ‘Gold in your pocket for life’ she said when she instructed me to write an essay on Old Mortality. It was.”  This is not to say that she was any kind of saint. Her own political views were reactionary and became racist – she told Sutherland late in her life that she intended to vote for the (Fascist) BNP; and it is clear that she could be acerbic and unkind herself. Nonetheless she suffered a great deal at the hands of Larkin and above all Amis [it is the latter who is far more unforgivable since we cannot really know the truth of her and Larkin's relationship: Amis's behaviour is just wanton cruelty]. The article is itself moving because Sutherland accuses himself of not doing more to keep up the friendship ; he wanted academic recognition and success, and suspected Monica would not help him with this – ‘It wasn’t a noble decision’. It is the self-accusatory note which lifts this article into something which has its own artistic integrity.

***********************************************

From the Lists

I am a member of a number of Yahoo lists (to which there are Links on the right of my main page) and when well try to contribute to them. They cover a variety of interests : three are mystery lists which mainly pertain to my mystery blog; two are Ellen Moody’s list – Eighteenth Century Worlds and Trollope and the 19th Century (her third – WomenWritersThroughTheAges – is also excellent but my resources do not allow me to be involved in it); finally there is the Anthony Powell list. From these lists I gain quite a lot of information and inspiration so I thought I would start this new section drawing attention to posts and discussions which have especially interested me.

A wholly disheartening story from the US which Ellen Moody alerted me to…http://www.womensenews.org/story/labor/101001/senate-tanf-vote-means-pink-slips-thousands?page=0,1. I commented on Eighteenth Century Worlds and Trollope 19thC studies that…

when one reads……”The gap between rich and poor is now the largest on record.’ (and a similar trend is at work in the UK which will soon be intensified) we are finding ourselves in societies which increasingly resemble the 18th and 19th centuries. Is the 20thC when this gap shrank in so many ways (not merely the financial) going to become some kind of historical aberration? Are we regressing to vast disparities of wealth and poverty? These pervade almost everything we read on these lists, whether stated or unstated. But one hoped that one read them as history, not as something which one would be able to observe first hand in one’s own country.

********************************************

There was a discussion on the GoldenAge Mystery list which actually had wider resonances. It reflected a concern about the average age of List Members and, by extension, the general readership for GA mysteries. I have always been sceptical of these arguments and wrote…

There are quite a few reasons why I am suspicious of these lines of argument and concerns (about an ageing fan-base, membership etc), which are applied in many areas of human and artistic life. Some reasons are….

1) As far as Yahoo lists (or other such Internet lists) are concerned my suspicion would be that the membership tends to be fairly elderly. I am sure this is true of most of those I am on (others of which have nothing to do with any kind of mystery novel). This is partly for very obvious reasons – if you are at work you are going to have a great deal less time for this sort of thing. I can spend my time participating because I am retired.

2) Some things are just more attractive when you get older. Excellent examples of this include classical music, opera, serious literature and drama. People often cite the fact that audiences for these (especially the first) tend to the elderly: the question is whether they are any more elderly than they were 10,20,30,50,100 years ago? I have only started taking any kind of serious interest in classical music in my 50′s. I suspect that the same may well be true of GA mysteries. Where this is true, the attempt to attract younger audiences by devices which are intended to make something ‘cool’ or ‘relevant’ (horrid word) are not merely embarrassing (sometimes intensely so) but misplaced.  And one should remember that in countries (which are certainly all Western ones) with an increasingly elderly population appealing to the elderly is no bad thing! An elderly audience does not mean that something is going to die out – it can just mean that is replaced by a new elderly one.

3) If somethings are better appreciated by the mature attempting to force them on the young can be positively harmful. A genuinely elderly (93) Aunt of mine whom I have recently re-introduced to Trollope (a fine example of someone you are unlikely to start appreciating till you are 40) remarked on how sad she was at having missed so many years of reading pleasure from having been put off him at school. Discovering someone for oneself is always so much better than being co-erced.

Of course none of the above applies to the issue of writers dropping off the radar altogether because their books become unavailable. Even here however I do not think that GA mysteries are by any means unique. Lots of writers, once hugely popular, from 50,100,200 years ago have disappeared – and then some re-appear as tastes and critical fashions change. Still there is no question that ‘keeping the flame alive’ is very valuable in such instances.

**************************************************

On ECW Ellen posted two strongly contrasting articles on the work of Charlotte Smith. Taken together they serve as templates for good and bad academic practice.

First the good….http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EighteenthCenturyWorlds/message/17698

then the bad…..http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EighteenthCenturyWorlds/message/17699

and finally my commments….http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EighteenthCenturyWorlds/message/17701

*************************************************

On  Trollope and the 19th Century we have just commenced a reading of The Way We Live Now (TWWLN). This my first experience of one of Trollope’s great mature masterpieces and the book’s sharpness and harshness come as, in some ways, surprising. Of course the most commented upon feature of TWWLN is its absolute modernity and this is evident from the start. As  a part of my comments on the first ten chapter I wrote, staring with a quotation….

“There was not one of them then present who had not after some fashion been given to understand that his fortune was to be made, not by the construction of the railway, but by the floating of the railway shares.  They had all whispered to each other their convictions on this head.  Even Montague did not beguile himself into an idea that he was really a director in a company to be employed in the making and working of a railway.  People out of doors were to be advertised into buying shares, and they who were so to say indoors were to have the privilege of manufacturing the shares thus to be sold.”

A wonderful exposition of finance capitalism. Here is Trollope succinctly explaining the basic conception which has, in ever more fantastic variants, landed the world in disaster upon disaster, including the latest one which Governments across the globe are now imposing massive cuts in services to the poor, the weak and the vulnerable to pay for. We are all Melmotte and his partners victims, while his ilk are still sitting pretty in the City of London and Wall Street and every other financial centre continuing to laugh at us. Plus ca change.

***********************************************

 Film

Cracks (2009) directed by Jordan Scott (daughter of Ridley) shares with The Bitter Tears of Petra Kant the distinction of being a film which would satisfy a sort of reverse Bechdel test, in that the only men who appear or speak are in extremely minor roles. And the women (and girls) who are in it certainly do not spend all their time talking about men. Unfortunately this is about the only things the films do have in common. Cracks, as has been repeatedly observed by critics, is a kind of cross of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie with Lord of the Flies. It is massively inferior to both and suffers from the inevitable parallels; even if these are ignored however the film is a distinctly average affair.

Briefly (and the plot is scanty) Cracks is set in a remote girl’s boarding school in Ireland (for some extraordinary reason imdb describes it as elite – elite only if your standard of comparison was St Trinian’s!). Miss G. (Eva Green) is the Brodie figure who has a set of girls whom she inculcates with various Fascist ideas ; the girl’s leader and Miss G’s favourite is Di (Juno Temple). This order is utterly disrupted by the arrival of Fiamma (Maria Valverde) who has been sent to the school for attempting to run away with a Marxist peasant. Fiamma sees through Miss G’s pretences (she tells travel stories which are all culled from books), but at the same time Miss G. falls heavily in love with her. When finally Miss G. seduces a drunkenly unconscious Fiamma she is seen by Di who believes that Fiamma has been doing the seducing. Spurred on by Miss G., who says she will have to leave the school, Di leads her pack in a hunt and assault upon Fiamma, who is finally murdered by Miss G. not giving her the asthma inhaler she needs. The school hushes the affair up though Miss G. is sent on temporary leave of absence. The final shots are of Di running away on the boat to the mainland. While the Irish landscape is occasionally enjoyable to watch there is nothing of visual interest in either the cinematography or editing of the film.

One of the odd things about this film it that it is based on a novel by Sheila Kohler which, quite apart from the fact that it is set in South Africa, from the description given is definitely a kind of cross of Lord of the Flies and Donna Tartt (The Secret History) with no real elements of Brodie. But Jordan Scott says that the reason she was attracted to the project was the stories resemblance to her favourite boarding school movies like Picnic at Hanging Rock and Brodie. Now apart from the fact that Brodie is not set in a boarding-school I find this an odd description of a genre, and the two movies mentioned are utterly disparate. It is this kind of messy thought which is reflected in Cracks. Prior to Fiamma’s arrival we have a pretty straightforward, if vastly inferior, Brodie clone with Miss G. spouting nonsense about Desire being the most important thing in life; being able to achieve anything if you have Will; drilling ‘her’ girls in diving which is filmed a la Riefenstahl, and other Fascist nonsenses. With the arrival of Fiamma a sort of love triangle ensues, which is crossed with the Lord of the Flies stuff ( and I should declare an interest that I have never liked or believed in either the original book nor the film based upon it). In particular though we suddenly stray into something which is vaguely Gothic or horror influenced; fantastic anyway. What is this school in which these people are immured? It clearly has no relation to any sort of reality and there is a suggestion at one point that everyone is permanently trapped there (although at another people speak of going away for the holidays). Really though I am averse to spending too much time discussing this further. Cracks is visually average, thematically a complete mess and is in some ways rather exploitative and nasty – do we need to see midnight nude swims of supposedly teenage girls filmed from underwater? Finally one doesn’t much care for any of these people, and the movies only accomplishment is to make one want to go and re-watch The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.

1. That prices result from the interaction of supply and demand in the market-place.
2. That free trade between nations is an unqualified good: Mill believed that it would render war ‘obsolete’.
3. That there was a limited amount of money available to pay wages, and therefore poverty would continue for as long as families had too many children. This goes some way to explaining Mill’s ‘moral Malthusianism’.

However Mill’s ambitions were not confined to an exposition of economic principles (and Principles gave him a ‘monarchical’ status in political economy according to Bagehot). The full title of the book was Principles of Political Economy: with Some of Their  Applications to Social Philosophy and Mill’s model here was Adam Smith. He wanted to deal not just with production but with distribution, and here the tendency of his though was very different. He argued that property laws were  a product of historical time and place….

The distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society. The rules by which it is determined, are what the feelings and opinions of the community make them, and very different in different ages and countries: and might be still more different if mankind chose.

Marx denounced Mill’s separation of production and distribution as a ‘shallow syncretism’, but there is no question that if Mill’s views on production were right-wing, those on distribution were radical. His central concern was to distinguish between earned and unearned income. He proposed to use the tax system as a ‘wrecking ball’ against the latter. This would include a financial cap on inheritance. He would have liked to abolish income tax, but recognising this was a distant prospect proposed a substantial tax-free allowance [something which if not at substantial enough a level has become a feature of the UK tax system].

By the time of the publication of the 3rd Edition of Principles in 1852 Mill had revised it in “a more radical and socialist direction”. Undoubtedly part of the reason for this was Harriet. John Taylor had died in July 1849. In April 1851 she and Mill were married by the registrar in Melcombe Regis, Dorset. This was a difficult decision for them as they both disapproved of 19thC marriage laws. Mill wrote….

The whole character of the marriage relation as constituted by law being such as she and I entirely and conscientiously disapprove, I having no means of legally divesting myself of these odious powers….feel it my duty to put on record a formal protest against the existing law of marriage, in so far as conferring such powers; and a solemn promise never in any case of under any circumstance to use them.

[a long way from Trollope!]. Mill’s marriage to Harriet caused a deep rupture with the rest of his family, including his mother, which was never reconciled. Reeves says Mill’s behaviour was ‘indefensible’ and it has been described as ‘the greatest blot on his character’. Reeves says the explanation lies in the fact that once Mill had Harriet he did not feel he needed anyone else. I am quite suspicious of all this, but I have a different moral framework to Reeves: for me it is quite right that Mill should have taken Harriet’s side, whatever the effect on his relatives ; but I have never believed that blood is thicker than water – quite the reverse!

Whatever the case Harriet had a considerable interest on Mill’s thinking especially as regards feminism. This has generally – surprise, surprise! – been regarded as a negative. Stefan Collini wrote of Harriet that she was a…

very clever, imaginative, passionate, intense, imperious, paranoid, unpleasant woman

Reeves comments ‘For what is worth, the evidence on Harriet’s unpleasantness is inconclusive’. Certainly absolutely none has been offered here so far. Collini’s statement is a particularly vicious example of the way in which prejudice against ‘very clever’ women continues to this day: she was very clever therefore she must have been domineering, unbalanced and ‘unpleasant’. It is revolting really.

But Harriet did have a beneficial impact on Mill’s thinking on feminism, even if, characteristically, he was too scared to publish at this time. And he never went as far as Harriet particularly on the question of maternity : she wrote…

it is neither necessary nor just to make imperative on women that they shall be either mothers or nothing, or if they have been mothers once, they shall be nothing else during the whole remainder of their lives

Even so Mill’s views on women and equality were wildly out of step with contemporary orthodoxy. So were his views on race. Mill denied that anyone was born ‘more capable of wisdom’ than anyone else, and ‘never deviated from his conviction that any observed differences in racial or national character were wholly the result of variations in historical and social context’. This stance might be ‘unexceptional’ now but it ‘was bordering in the eccentric in the mid-nineteenth century’. Mill linked his feminism and his anti-racism, and in the Subjection of Women wrote that it was quite wrong…

to ordain that to be born a girl instead of a boy, any more than to be born black or white, or a commoner or a nobleman, shall decide the person’s position through all life.

Harriet also influenced Mill’s thinking on Socialism. This is a complex area and subsequent writing has claimed Mill as both friend and foe to Socialism. There is no question that Mill would have utterly opposed the so-called ‘state socialism’ of Stalin and Mao because of its attack on individual liberty. On the other hand he came to champion the co-operative movement….

We may, through the co-operative principle, see our way to a change in society, which would combine the freedom and independence of the individual, with the moral, intellectual and economical advantages of aggregate production.

But he thought the working-class in England were unprepared, morally unfitted, for the rights and duties of Socialism. He lamented that the working class ‘idea of social reform appears to be simply higher wages, and less work, for the sake of mere sensual indulgence’. But Mill’s position on Work was significantly different to that of some of his contemporaries - ‘Work, I imagine, is not a good in itself’  [Trollope is among many who would have disagreed]. Work is worthwhile because of what it produces; its object. Mill understood that work under a wage system was alienated but he saw the way to change this as not through the Marxist path of economic exchange [The workers to own the mean of production, distribution etc.] but through moral reform.

The great end of social improvement should be to fit (‘the labouring classes’) by cultivation for a state of society combining the greatest personal freedom with that just distribution of fruits of labour which the present laws of property do not even profess to aim at….

I confess I am not charmed with that ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on, that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress.

Reeves comments on the latter that it was easy for Mill, with his comfortable income, to speak in this vein. Once again he seems to me to entirely miss the point. This is a passage which is wholly relevant today: even more relevant than when Mill wrote it. We have certainly not advanced out of that phase of industrial progress (and the use of the word progress now seems ironic). When one beholds the idolisation of naked capitalism, and the ‘trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other’s heels’ which is applauded in television programmes like the ghastly The Apprentice, one can clearly see that we have if anything moved backwards. Mill’s dreams of progress might seem sadly deluded but his words show us to ourselves. There is a profound radicalism here and I find Mill in this vein very powerful. It is Reeves lack of appreciation of the power and modernity of a passage like this which shows most clearly his inadequacies.

But ideologically Mill was a pragmatic Socialist….

the question of Socialism is not… a question of flying to the sole refuge against the evils which bear down upon humanity but a mere question of comparative advantage.

One must agee with Reeves here that this is a long way from the opening of The Communist Manifesto (‘The history of hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle’). However Mill would have endorsed Marx’s goal of a society in which ‘the free development of each is a condition of the free development of all’ and might even have supported the appropriation of all land by the State. Overall however, Reeves describes Mill as ‘agnostic on the benefits of capitalism versus socialism’. Reeves writes that Mill’s ‘doubts about socialism and communism sprang from his liberalism’ and quotes the following passage…

No society in which eccentricity is a matter of reproach, can be in a wholesome state……It is yet to be ascertained whether the Communistic scheme would be consistent with the multiform development of human nature, those manifold unlikenesses, that diversity of tastes and talents, and variety of intellectual points of view, which is not only a great part of the interest of human life, but by bringing intellects into stimulating collision, and by presenting to each innumerable  notions that he would not have conceived of himself, are the mainspring of mental and moral progression.

In fact however one might argue that Mill’s objections were just as much anarchist as liberal: would he not have assented to Bakunin’s great dictum that…

Freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice, but socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality

[in fact Bakunin, who is unmentioned in Reeves' index, lived at very nearly exactly the same time as Mill - Bakunin 1814-76, Mill 1806-73 - and would make a useful comparison point].

Reeves argues that while Mill’s socialism deepened at this time, his liberalism deepened even more. In the Principles he stated his fears about the ‘despotism of custom’ which he would later develop in On Liberty…

In this country, however, the effective restraints on mental freedom proceed much less from the law or the government, than from the intolerant temper of the national mind; arising no longer from even as respectable a source as bigotry or fanaticism, but rather from the general habit, both in opinion and conduct, of making adherence to custom the rule of life, and enforcing it, by social penalties, against all persons who, without a party to back them, assert their individual independence.

Mill set a ‘test’ which established that around every individual human being there should be a circle over which no Government should ever step…

The point to be determined is, where the limit should be placed; how large a province of human life this reserved territory should include. I apprehend that it ought to include all that part which concerns only the life, whether inward or outward, of the individual, and does not affect the interests of others, or affects them only through the moral principle of example.

This is the ‘harm principle’ which Mill developed in On Liberty.

The issue of Harriet’s influence on Mill is another contested area. Mill himself heaped almost unlimited praise on Harriet and ascribed a great deal to her. Reeves believes that this has been too easily accepted by commentators, and has devalued the real contribution which she did make in providing him with an ‘intellectual partnership’ and in managing his affairs. Reeves writes…

Whatever Mill said, Harriet never directly dictated his views, but as two intelligent, passionate people they certainly debated them.

And if Harriet influenced Mill leftward a countervailing trend was that he was writing at a time of great economic prosperity when the case for socialism seemed difficult (things would be very different after the crash of 1873)….

The possibilities and challenges of deep financial ruptures, bitter class conflict and profound ideological struggle did not appear in his mature thought, in part at least because there was so little sign of them around him. In this sense, Mill was a peacetime philosopher.

Unlike Ruskin, Wordsworth and Carlyle, Mill was ‘not instinctively opposed to the outward signs of progress’. He was generally in favour of railways for instance. But he was wary of the environmental impact of too hasty industrialisation; Reeves says he “has a very good claim to the title of the first ‘green’ economist”. Mill’s ’reverence for nature was always democratic’. He (again unlike Wordsworth who opposed building a railway to the Lake District as it would allow working-class access) was a lifelong advocate of free access to the countryside. Mill saw economic growth as a means for prosperity, but feared that as an end in itself it threatened to impoverish both the planet and the soul. This was yet another reason for his continued insistence on population control. He saw nothing to fear in economic stagnation…

A stationary condition of capital and population implies no stationary state of human improvement. there would be as much scope as ever for all sorts of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for improving the Art of Living and much more likelihood of its being improved, when minds cease to be engrossed by the art of getting on.

[another delightful and wholly modern passage. Alas, once again we are, if anything, even more obsessed with 'getting on']. Economics was always the servant and never the master of humanity in Mill. The weakness in his thought Reeves claims [and it would seem with justification in this case] is that while he was brilliant at describing the faults in present society, and also what a better society would like, his analysis of how to get there is sketchy and unsatisfying. Vague references to moral reformation and character building do not a programme make. Reeves argues that this weakness sprang from the fact that he was ‘more liberal than progressive’ so shied away from anything which would coerce or force people. No institution, including the state, could be an engine of progress because it would infringe too much on the individual. Again Mill’s dilemma and problem are typically those of the anarchist, and in many ways I think this is a far better description of much of his thought than liberal which is such a loaded and difficult term [and which has such diverse meanings on either side of the Atlantic - to call Mill's thought liberal in the recent American sense is to come up with a description which is almost diametrically opposite to what one intends to say of it]. Reeves neatly concludes….

Presented with the choice between freely chosen selfishness and coerced cooperation, Mill unhesitatingly backed freedom.

The Habit of Art is shallow and meretricious. It is also rather insulting in that it is very specifically written for the National Theatre and the closing dialogue centres on this fact; no attempt was made to rewrite this for a touring production (which it would have been very simple to do) and so this dialogue was faintly ridiculous, as well as insulting to non-London audiences. Bennett’s much-vaunted and assumed parochialism does not seem worth much in this context. The mechanics of the well-worn play within a play device were occasionally amusing but mostly tiresome, and one kept thinking how much better handled they would be by a real contemporary master of theatrical devices like Frayn or, above all, Ayckbourn. None of the speculations on acting were of any great interest or originality and mostly it was played for the rather easy laughs.

None of the above would have mattered (well alright it would have mattered, but it would have been forgivable) if the play had left the sense of getting either Auden or Britten right, or if its central arguments had been interesting or, most crucially, true. I am no expert in the lives of either Auden or Britten especially the former. No doubt he was a cantankerous, difficult, rude, opinionated old boor (and bore). And, yes, there is entertainment value to be squeezed from this and from the chasm between his best poetry and his life. However Bennett’s mistakes in respect of Britten made me wonder how much he really had researched or understood Auden. The most egregious and absurd mistake was in respect of Aldeburgh. Bennett presents this as though it were some kind of Tunbridge Wells, a synonym of English middle-class gentility to which Britten retreated and hid his sexuality. In fact Oxford is a far more respectable place than Aldeburgh, and in any case Britten’s residence there had nothing to do with its social standing (although he contributed enormously to the community) and everything to do with its geography, its wild desolate mingling of sky and sea and shingle beaches and marshland. Aldeburgh is a vital component of his music and his art and you can hear it again and again. If you do not understand that then you do not understand Britten and should not be writing a play about him. The poetry of Crabbe, the music of Britten – does Bennett really fail to understand the link and the link through them to Aldeburgh? Because he makes this enormous error I had little confidence in the rest of his picture of Britten.

The play did improve somewhat for periods in the second half when there was a long period given over to the discussion between Auden and Britten (the first half is nearly all given over to Auden) with few interruptions or break-outs from the play within a play. There were suggestions here of how powerful a play on this theme could actually be. No cheap laughs, no silly tricks. Yet even here Bennett fails to understand or present the arguments fairly. Auden and Britten are discussing the latter’s plan to write an opera based on Death in Venice, by Auden’s father-in-law (he married Erika to get her out of Nazi Germany) Thomas Mann (as Auden keeps reminding us - presumably to indicate that Bennett thinks he was suffering from mild Alzheimer’s by this time). Auden’s line of argument is that Mann’s (and Britten’s) story is somewhat ridiculous in the guises it adopts when at its centre is a story of a middle-aged man (Aschenbach, Mann, Britten) fancying boys: the various ‘artistic’ devices adopted are mere camouflage for this central truth. Britten protests that this is not what Mann wrote, nor what he intends to put in his opera. For him it is Aschenbach who is the innocent (and by extension we are meant to imply Britten himself). Now this is an interesting and complicated argument, and it does spark Bennett’s play to life for some brief moments. But this life sputters because the argument is not allowed to proceed and in any case is much too heavily weighted on Auden’s side.

Another conceptual problem with The Habit of Art centres around the play-wright and the play he has written. Within this play there are various technical devices, such as items of Auden’s furniture relating their story in verse, or, in the second half, Auden’s poetry and Britten’s music in a dialogue. These are mocked by the actors and the verse is bad. So is this Bennett having a rather crude swipe at some modern playwrights? On the other hand our sympathies are all with the writer as some absurd re-writes are introduced. But in general the impression is given that the play he has written is not very good. Which as I have explained it is not. But if this is the case why should we bother to watch it all? What reliance can we place on anything it says about Auden, Britten, art, poetry, sex, music or anything.

I must not omit however the play within a play’s (and the play’s) central argument which centres on the rent-boy. Broadly this argument goes that art is over-rated and what matters are people and particularly the people who, like the rent-boy, are ‘left out’. Now one problem is that I have absolutely no idea whether Bennett actually believes this as, like everything else, it is continuously undermined by jokes. But putting this on one side it is an argument for which I have no time whatever and the supposed contradictions which Bennett seems to be pointing up are so old and worn as to be clichés. Yes Auden was a rude and bullying old man (a very odd programme note relates with near glee how he once reduced Anne Sexton to tears, as if this was some sort of accomplishment): yes Britten’s relationships with young boys were questionable and his tendency to cut people out of his life ruthless. And one can produce countless examples of artists of every sort throughout the ages of who indulged in various kinds of bad behaviour  (Byron was hardly a model human being!). Yes, we should know about these things and biographers should write of them – it prevents us idolising people, which is always dangerous. But what matters in the end is the art – the music, the words, the paintings. These matter because they make our, mine and many millions, lives richer, deeper, finer. Oddly enough Bennett’s play proves this because the two moments when the play really comes alive at a more profound, uplifting level are when some music from the Dawn Prelude to Peter Grimes are played and when Auden reads words from his wonderful In Memory of W.B. Yeats….

 Follow, poet, follow right
          To the bottom of the night,
          With your unconstraining voice
          Still persuade us to rejoice;

          With the farming of a verse
          Make a vineyard of the curse,
          Sing of human unsuccess
          In a rapture of distress;

          In the deserts of the heart
          Let the healing fountain start,
          In the prison of his days
          Teach the free man how to praise.

(http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15544). The actor playing Auden protests that this is how the play ought to end, but in fact we have a soliloquy from the rent-boy about the people left out, followed by the business about the National Theatre mentioned above. But that is how the play ought to end! Of course it does not because Bennett’s view is fundamentally philistine. Art does not matter, or at least does not matter as much as jokes about cocks and peeing in the sink and so on. It does not matter as much as ‘people’. Which of course is true in one sense, a political one – but politics never come near Bennett’s play. However if you are writing a play about artists and wanting to say something serious it is not true. 

The Habit of Art is a mess as a play, but its most noxious aspect is its reduction of art to the quotidian, and is most damning indictment that one does not really come away wanting to hurry away and listen to Britten or read some Auden. It is a species of betrayal.

Blogging    

A brilliant blog by Ellen Moody on her reasons for blogging. This says much of what I have tried to say at http://movingtoyshop.wordpress.com/2009/02/24/my-blogging-philosophy/ but in a fuller, more eloquent and more considered way.                

   Books            

 A Very Short Introduction to Kant by Roger Scruton is an extremely dense and weighty read, and I am not sure that I am that much the wiser at the end of it. This is not altogether Scruton’s fault for as he says in his Introduction ’Kant is one of the most difficult of modern philosophers, I cannot hope that I have made very aspect of his thought intelligible to the general reader. It is not clear that every aspect of his thought has been intelligible to everyone, even to Kant’! Scruton advises that it will probably be necessary to read the book more than once ‘to appreciate Kant’s vision’. However I am not tempted to do so. This may be partly because Scruton’s construction and interpretation of Kant reflects his own philosophy – ie: is from a [very] right-wing perspective. I found as I read that I was either disagreeing with much of what was presented as Kant’s thought – to take a central instance I do not believe in the possibility of disinterested reason which forms the basis for Kant’s ethical thinking; I do not see how in the wake of Marx and Freud anyone can believe in this [in fairness Scruton would have no time for these two thinkers].  More important perhaps than my disagreements though, is the fact that I am not particularly interested in many of the problems with which Kant was obsessed: in particular I am not concerned with the attempt to establish the limits or otherwise of objective knowledge. Wittgenstein’s famous conclusion to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus ‘That whereof we cannot speak, we must consign to silence’ ,with which Scruton also concludes this book, seems to me either a pointless tautology ['pointless tautology' is probably itself a tautology since are not all tautologies pointless?] or, if what it is saying is that we can only speak of that of which we have objective knowledge, bunkum – I will speak of what I like thank you very much Messrs Kant and Wittgenstein. There was not a single thing in this book which really made me want to find out more about Kant and so I think I will leave the categorical imperative well alone.            

 Concerts                  

This year, for the first time, we have booked for a really substantial number of CBSO (City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra) concerts. There are a number of reasons for this. In the first place I am more and more interested in and engaged with classical music. Secondly, in this season, 2010-11, there is to be a complete Mahler cycle and Mahler is my favoururite classical composer. And thirdly because Andris Nelsons is such a wonderful conductor and obviously we should make every effort to see him while we can. The first concert was on September 16th and was a performance of Mahler’s 8th (the symphonies are not being done in any particular order). It was exciting both because it was the first in our ‘season’ – a little like turning up to the first home match when I had a Season Ticket for BCFC (Birmingham City Football Club). That sense of anticipation and pleasure ahead (though the latter is somewhat more assured with the music!). Although we do not have exactly the same seats for every concert they are all pretty near each other. And then there is the work itself. Any performance of Mahler’s 8th generates its own intense excitement, if only in respect of the massive forces involved. The concert was sold-out, but then the chorus takes up a good proportion of the lowest balcony, as well as completely filling its normal position to the rear of the orchestra. Mahler’s 8th grips and immerses from the very start with that spine-tingling opening – ‘Veni, Creator Spiritus’. The music is often overwhelming and demands total surrender. There is no option but to abandon oneself to this emotion and drama. The performance from orchestra, choruses, soloists and conductor was of the highest standard: everything clearly delineated, with the climaxes gloriously realised. Nelsons is like a possessed elf on the podium, seeming to live and breathe every single moment of the music. I am not sure that Mahler 8 is my favourite, in fact I am fairly sure it is not, when considered in any context other than live performance. As a live event it is a different matter however: doubts and reservations are swept away by the power and the passion. A great live musical experience. (A good review which conveys both the problems with the work and the brilliance of this interpretation may be found at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/136f4974-c276-11df-956e-00144feab49a.html).                     

In complete contrast, the very next day, September 17th, I went to a lunchtime chamber concert at the CBSO Centre. I had not been to this venue before (how incomplete is my knowledge of my home city!), which is in fact the CBSO’s rehearsal space: a splendidly converted building, in which the main room is a large, high and spacious rectangle. The concert comprised two Piano Quartets performed by members of the CBSO; they played Mahler’s Quartet in A Minor and Brahms’ Piano Quartet 3. The experience and pleasure of listening to chamber music strikes me as significantly different to listening to an orchestra. I think in part this is due to the fact that I can clearly identify which instrument is playing at all times (as a musical novice I am unable to do this with an orchestra). Beyond this however the experience is somehow more of an intellectual one. I do not mean that the music lacks passion or emotion or beauty, but somehow I feel that I am better able to concentrate, to attempt to follow what is happening. As usual my writing about music is wholly inadequate, as I lack the knowledge to analyse properly and the words to translate my experience. I have noticed that programme notes for classical concerts rely to a considerable degree on technical phrases and descriptions, in a way that would seem jarring and unlikely for a play or even an opera. At all events the Brahms was a wonderful piece with a stunningly beautiful slow third movement introduced by the cello. As a whole the piano (and these were the first piano quartets I have heard) introduced a percussive, rhythmic element which I appreciated. So this was another musical treat, albeit of very different dimensions.             

 On my Birthday (54th for anyone interested!) we went to another CBSO concert. This time the first half featured Brahms Violin Concerto, brilliantly performed by Christian Tetzlaff, which was a lively and enjoyable piece. It was however rather over-shadowed by the performance of Shostakovich’s 8th Symphony which formed the second half. What an extraordinary piece of music! The raw pain and anguish, the near screams which come out of the orchestra (especially in the second and third movements), the near ear-splitting climaxes, the contrast with passages of intense quiet conveying a weary exhaustion, the battles which seems to go on between some lovely music (mainly on the violins) and the threatening, destructive chords which often overwhelm. The passion here kept me on the edge of my seat for long periods. Before the Symphony began Andris Nelsons gave a short speech reminding us of the conditions in which it was composed – in 1943 just as the tide of WW2 turned in Stalin’s favour – and saying that although the opening and middle were dark and depressing he, like Shostakovich himself, saw the ending as positive : there is always hope Nelsons said, which we need to remember in times which while in no way to be compared to 1943 are increasingly bleak (Nelsons is a passionate supporter of comprehensive funding for the arts which does face a bleak future). I have no way to convey just how sensationally brilliant a conductor Nelsons is, how he lives and breathes every moment of the music; on the podium he crouches, covers his ears, dances, explodes. We are quite extraordinarily privileged to be able to witness a great conductor leading a terrific orchestra in a wonderful hall playing this amazing music: yes that is a lot of superlatives and sounds excessive but I assure you that every statement is true. Nelsons is now officially one of my heroes – and I have precious few of those (well among the living anyway!).       

Television    

A mention for a small,  unheralded series called Churches:How To Read Them presented by Richard Taylor. This is a 7 part documentary looking at what parish churches in England and Scotland tell us about history, especially theological history. I am especially impressed because it is precisely this kind of series where I generally end up screaming at the television in rage and turning off after about ten minutes. Unfortunately we have only caught numbers 5 and 6 covering the 16th to 18th centuries (the last has not yet been screened) – but then it is exactly when presenters cover this period that I become most irate at the inaccuracies, stupidity and bias. Taylor by contrast is wonderfully even-handed. For instance he does regret the loss of medieval art, but he carefully explains the theology behind it and admits the power of the religious faith which the iconoclasts displayed. And this was very far from a tour of the well-known, tourist trail churches. Taylor goes to Scotland (wonder of wonders!) and explains the theology behind Scottish churches. He goes to a Baptist church and shows us how adults were baptised in the 18thC (something I have never seen before – and this example is fairly local ; when I saw this  it suddenly struck me that I had never actually been in a historic Baptist church). He goes to a Methodist chapel – the oldest in the world. He very deliberately and obviously avoids Cathedrals – the programme is called Churches and it means that (although of course the Methodist example is, as Taylor explained, very much a chapel – Wesley saw it originally as additional to the parish Church, not a replacement or rival). Of course he does show some architectural gems -  stunning Wren and Hawksmoor London churches (which I have also never visited) to demonstrate Enlightenment thinking and values for instance, but there would be quite a lot of his examples which would not cross-over with Simon Jenkins’ invaluable guide to the best English churches, which is much more aesthetically based. I hope that Taylor produces a book of the series. This was a model small-scale historical documentary: very well-informed and informative, personal, occasionally passionate, wry (the description of the way the local squires pews replaced the rood screen at Whitby was very funny), always careful to present both points of view but still individual. Give the appallingly low standard of most historical documentaries these days it was a real pleasure to encounter a programme like this tucked away in the recesses of BBC4.    

Bon Mots                          

 From Reginald Hill’s excellent The Woodcutter (2010)…..” Choice is a largely delusional concept, her tutor used to say. Whether in politics, morals or shopping, we have far less than we imagine. In the end what we have to do often doesn’t even figure on our list of pseudo-options.”  

Not a position that would have appealed to Kant: but then I am increasingly sure Kant doesn’t appeal to me!        

************************************      

From Victoria Glendenning’s biography of Trollope. She describes AT as a ‘student of the brutal politics of human relations’. A wonderfully decriptive phrase.      

“The first televised debate between U.S. presidential candidates — Nixon and Kennedy — occurred fifty years ago today. It was momentous.

I was at Brandeis, and everyone on campus, it seemed, had rented (or knew someone who had rented) a small TV for the occasion. I don’t think there was a Republican in the whole college. Most of us who were activists (including me) had worked against Kennedy in the primaries, seeing him as a slick moderate, unlike Hubert Humphrey, who was still a passionate liberal. But JFK had been the Brandeis commencement speaker in June (following the primaries), and his appeal was impossible to resist. Besides, everyone who was conscious hated Nixon. In 1960 memories were still fresh of his early use of anti-Semitism and his viciousness as an anti-leftist witch-hunter. Eleanor Roosevelt was on our faculty (and near the end of her long life), and I still remember being startled when, in a public meeting, she referred to Nixon as worse than a snake. In the repressed 1950s, few of us had heard respected figures use language like that, and no one was more revered, more respectable than she was.

The 1950s were a terrible time, and Brandeis then was an island of bohemian intellectualism and progressive politics. We were thrilled by Kennedy’s election. His inaugural address was piped into all the Brandeis dining rooms, as was Robert Frost’s reading of a poem for the occasion. “We were America’s before America was ours,” I think it went. (Despite being a mostly Jewish campus, we were aware of our New England identity, too, and were responsive to Frost’s craggy sensibility.) Like the rest of the country, we were truly excited by JFK’s call for a new generation (us) to come forward to change the world. Already active in the civil rights and nuclear disarmament movements, we were more than ready.

As it turned out, Kennedy was a disappointing president, unable to exert strong leadership over foreign policy or to act decisively in support of civil rights. Lyndon Johnson, his successor, was far superior on domestic policy. (His being a more aggressive imperialist than Kennedy was may be why Kennedy was assassinated.) Johnson was a real shit of a human being, but he knew how to get his way, and because of him the Civil Rights laws of 1965 and Medicare were passed.

I see strong similarities between Kennedy and Obama — both extremely attractive, both representing a breakthrough in U.S. politics, both inspiring great hope, and both surprisingly weak politically. The difference between them lies in their times. In the 1960s U.S. capitalism was vigorous and expanding; today it’s in retreat. And young people then really believed that a better world was possible. It was their radical protests, urban riots, huge demonstrations, loud and thoughtful critiques, and overall courage that prompted Johnson and the rest of the establishment to do the right thing. The alternative was more trouble than the powers-that-be wanted.

Robert Lapides”

I answered….

“Many thanks Rob – that is a fascinating account. Of course it took 50 years for the idea to catch on in the UK and we had our first Prime Ministerial debates  earlier this year! Extraordinary really. The arguments against it were – and I am certainly not wholly dismissing them -

1. that it would concentrate too much attention on irrelevancies of appearance and so on – and indeed in this first example the contrast must have been fairly
stark between JFK and Nixon (interestingly somewhat replicated by the contrast presented between Brown and Clegg/Cameron)
2. that it completely marginalises smaller parties especially in Scotland and Wales (where the smaller parties are not smaller parties if you follow me!) – maybe this does not apply in the US? Do third-party candidates ever get a look in?

In addition for me the most poisonous effect is that the questions are set in terms of the political establishment so no radical suggestions are ever posed. The ‘consensus’ (pro-capitalism) is accepted without question and the drive to be ‘moderate’ (in fact to bow down to the market) becomes a stampede.
 
Having said all of this I think that I would probably still come down on the side of having them as a necessary democratic process. But – to come back a bit on topic – I wonder what Trollope’s attitude would have been? As he was in general suspicious of the democratic process and highly attuned to its flaws, I suspect that he would have been opposed. Certainly one cannot see dear old Plantagenet Palliser performing well in a world of spin-doctors and surface appearances and glib rhetoric.”

Bob replied…
“I was drawing on memories of a much more innocent time (and self), and exciting as it was 50 years ago to root for Kennedy (or more recently for Obama), the TV debates are, exactly as you say, superficial and undemocratic. The questions asked are almost always safe; leftist parties are never represented; and good looks and charm count for far too much. American politics has become a show, and the electorate is swayed by how delightful candidates are. My impression of Tony Blair is that he was unusually American for a British prime minister, in that he was a vile man whose glib personality masked profound dishonesty. But I suppose he differed from his predecessors only in how appealing he was on television. The others were no doubt just as willing to betray the majority of the population in order to serve the powerful.”

And I answered…
“….your analysis of Blair is spot on. Unfortunately a pernicious result of his success has been that most leading politicians here now do attempt to be clones of him – including the leader of all three main parties now. Actually I do think his glib dishonesty was new here. This is not to say I approved of all of his predecessors!! But I don’t think you could accuse Thatcher of glibness. The class enemy was revealed in all its horror then - but not glibly .

Actually I was also thinking about what you said about LBJ. Because the best Prime Minister of my lifetime by a long way was his contemporary here – Harold
Wilson. This was definitely not for any personal qualities or charisma, and, although he was a long way to the left of Blair/Brown, he was certainly not a
socialist. But during his term there were several considerable and genuine achievements —
1) we stayed out of Vietnam (Blair would have been in there like a shot of course)
2) Homosexuality was decriminalised
3) Abortion was legalised
4) The Equal Pay Act was passed

Wilson himself probably had little to do with any of these except 1, but they happened on his watch and they all had very, very real and important effects.”

All another way of saying that, despite the mythologising, the sixties were a period of real advance (which is why they come under attack from reactionaries and conservatives).

It is this kind of Tale, and its underlying world-view, which earned Crabbe a (semi-deserved) reputation as one whose view of reality was too bleak and pessimistic. This was uncomfortable for many contemporary (and I suspect later) critics and readers.

Let me tell the story. Thomas is a young man who for 10 years lives with a nasty, capricious elderly Aunt in the hope of her inheriting her wealth….

‘Squire Thomas flatter’d long a wealthy Aunt,
Who left him all that she could give or grant;
Ten years he tried, with all his craft and skill,
To fix the sovereign lady’s varying will;
Ten years enduring at her board to sit,
He meekly listen’d to her tales and wit:
He took the meanest office man can take,
And his aunt’s vices for her money’s sake:

Finally she dies and he does indeed inherit her considerable fortune, dismissing all her other relations. He then looks to marry but refuses to engage in any of the rites of courtship believing that….

He thought attention now was due to him;
And as his flattery pleased the wealthy Dame,
Heir to the wealth, he might the flattery claim:

Not surprisingly, and given that he was unwilling to countenance any young woman of lesser status (and wealth) he was refused….

 this the fair, with one accord, denied,
Nor waived for man’s caprice the sex’s pride.
There is a season when to them is due
Worship and awe, and they will claim it too:
“Fathers,” they cry, “long hold us in their chain,
Nay, tyrant brothers claim a right to reign:
Uncles and guardians we in turn obey,
And husbands rule with ever-during sway;
Short is the time when lovers at the feet
Of beauty kneel, and own the slavery sweet;
And shall we thus our triumph, this the aim
And boast of female power, forbear to claim?
No! we demand that homage, that respect,
Or the proud rebel punish and reject.”

[there is something very Trollopian about this assertion - or observation - of Patriarchy: actually I think Crabbe is probably somewhat more neutral than Trollope. Whatever the case it is an admirable summary of patriarchal mores and realities in the early 19thC].

On someone else’s recommendation Thomas takes on a young man, George, as a servant. George proves highly satisfactory, burnishing Thomas’s ego in subtle ways. He suggests that they visit a fair some miles off, but on the way back, during a rainy night, they get lost until finally arriving at George’s home village where they are welcomed by his parents and his sister. The latter, Harriot, is a ‘tall fair beauty’ but bashful and retiring in Thomas’s presence. Although he falls in love he is unwilling to go any further because she is poor….

Lovely she was, and, if he did not err,
As fond of him as his fond heart of her;
Still he delay’d, unable to decide,
Which was the master-passion, Love or Pride:

but…..

While thus he hung in balance, now inclined
To change his state, and then to change his mind,

George drops a letter from his mother on the floor which relates how Harriot is hopelessly in love with Thomas and pining for him. This decides the matter and they are married. But almost immediately afterwards Harriot’s character changes and she becomes a raging harridan (I suspect the name is deliberate!). Thomas ask her why she is so unhappy and she answers with a rather magnificent tirade….

Your hired domestics–and what pays me?  Love!
A selfish fondness I endure each hour,
And share unwitness’d pomp, unenvied power.
I hear your folly, smile at your parade,
And see your favourite dishes duly made;
Then am I richly dress’d for you t’admire,
Such is my duty and my Lord’s desire:
Is this a life for youth, for health, for joy?
Are these my duties–this my base employ?
No! to my father’s house will I repair,
And make your idle wealth support me there.
Was it your wish to have an humble bride,
For bondage thankful?  Curse upon your pride!
Was it a slave you wanted? You shall see,
That, if not happy, I at least am free:

Thomas accuses her and her family of gross deception, of having trapped him into marriage: at that point she throws off disguise and reveals that her mother was one of the Aunt’s relatives and that all his manoeuvres had been observed…

Speak you of craft and subtle schemes, who know
That all your wealth you to deception owe;
Who play’d for ten dull years a scoundrel part,
To worm yourself into a Widow’s heart?

Her parents then determined that she should be the tool of revenge…

…..my father, in his anger, swore
You should divide the fortune, or restore.
Long we debated–and you find me now
Heroic victim to a father’s vow;
Like Jephtha’s daughter, but in different state,
And both decreed to mourn our early fate:

Harriot demands a large slice of his wealth if he wants her to leave him in peace. But she and her family have underestimated Thomas’ greed…

Her strongest wish, the fortune to divide,
And part in peace, his avarice denied;
And thus it happen’d, as in all deceit,
The cheater found the evil of the cheat;

So they live on together bound only by mutual hatred, endlessly trying to devise new ways to wound each other…

The Husband griev’d–nor was the Wife at rest;
Him she could vex, and he could her molest;
She could his passion into frenzy raise,
But, when the fire was kindled, fear’d the blaze;
As much they studied, so in time they found
The easiest way to give the deepest wound;
But then, like fencers, they were equal still, -
Both lost in danger what they gain’d in skill;
Each heart a keener kind of rancour gain’d,
And, paining more, was more severely pain’d,
And thus by both was equal vengeance dealt,
And both the anguish they inflicted felt.

Which is where the poem ends: no attempts at any contrivance of a happy ending for any of these wretched characters but rather a life-sentence of misery.

My notes pointed out that the story of Jephthah’s daughter is to be found in Judges 11: it is one of those bloody Old Testament stories which tend to convince those of us who are atheists just how unpleasant God is, but would give much comfort to those who love a jealous wrathful deity. In the King James version it is also, as so often, a fine piece of literature. And it has very obvious links to the story of Agamemnon and Iphigenia. Cutting a not very long story even shorter Jephthah (who was ‘the son of a harlot’) , appointed military leader of the Israelites, promises God that…

…..if thou shalt without fail deliver the children of Ammon into mine hands, 31 Then it shall be, that whatsoever cometh forth of the doors of my house to meet me, when I return in peace from the children of Ammon, shall surely be the LORD’s and I will offer it up for a burnt offering.

Of course he does destroy the Ammonites, with the customary ‘very great slaughter’, but when he comes home it is his daughter, his only child, who comes out to greet him. He tells her of his vow and all she asks is that she given two months ‘that I may go up and down upon the mountains and bewail my virginity’, at the end of which time she returned to Jephthah and was duly sacrificed. It is impossible to relate this story without making the observation that biblical passages like these are all too little known. In many ways this is much more horrific and terrible than all those absurd rules which people rightly poke fun at. This is straightforward human sacrifice and differs in no important way from Agamemnon’s ritual murder of his daughter Iphigenia. That is the nature of this holy book;  the values which it endorses; and the deity who accepts such worship.

Of course these observations of a 21st century atheist are not relevant to Crabbe’s use of the story which is somewhat curious. Are we really to see Harriot as similar to Jephthah’s daughter (who is never named – presumably to dehumanise her) as a ‘heroic victim to a father’s vow’? I am fairly sure that, while this is how Harriot might like to see herself, it is not Crabbe’s view and he is being deeply ironic, as he is earlier in the tale when he refers to Thomas as ‘Our Hero’ (whatever else he may be it is certainly not heroic!). No, I think Harriot is shown as just as capable of self-will and self-determination as any other character in the Tale and her motives (a lot of money) are just as base. In that case the reference to Jephthah’s daughter might be an ironic contrast: she was truly heroic where Harriott is in fact just another greedy individual in a Tale full of them. But in that case is Crabbe genuinely endorsing the behaviour and moral of the story of Jephthah? Perhaps, for he was after all a vicar. But as essentially a man of the 18thC Anglican Church, and without any evangelical tendencies as far as I know, is it not possible that he is in fact being ironic about both Harriot and the whole of the Jephthah tale? Suggesting that far from being heroic it is tragic, sad and inhuman? Well I would like to think so in the absence of any firm evidence either way [1].

For the rest of this tale it is, as I suggested at the beginning, unremittingly bleak in its view of what Victoria Glendenning calls ‘the brutal politics of human relations’ (she is speaking of Trollope’s work but the phrase is wonderfully apt in many other cases). Everyone is out for their own ends, which means here the accumulation of wealth, and will try any deception, endure all humiliations, to achieve their goals. The punishment which Crabbe ends up inflicting on Thomas and Harriot, trapped in their hellish marriage, is, for once, one that feels both realistic and deserved. Although it lacks any especially fine passages and is decidedly down-beat, in a way Squire Thomas is something of a mini-masterpiece, certainly if your view of those politics of human relations is, whether temporarily or permanently, somewhat jaundiced. I would generally be considerably more optimistic, but I love the way in which this poem can also be read as a treatise on the distorting effect of money and the acquisitive drive on humanity. If not the source of all evil then  the love of money here is certainly the source of misery, dishonesty and cruel deception.

Notes

1. In fairness it needs to be said that there have been all sorts of attempts to explain away the story of Jephthah’s daughter within both the Jewish ( see http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=222&letter=J ) and Christian (eg: http://www.crivoice.org/jephthah.html ) traditions. Interestingly and more relevantly for Crabbe a fairly recent article by Susan Staves in the December 2008 Huntington Library Quarterly ( see http://caliber.ucpress.net/doi/abs/10.1525/hlq.2008.71.4.651?cookieSet=1&journalCode=hlq) considers 18thC analyses of the story : she starts…

Eighteenth-century debates over the story of Jephtha illuminate contemporary biblical hermeneutics. Deists used it as an example of religious fanaticism. Learned Anglican and Presbyterian commentators, responding to such skeptical critiques, used other modern textual critical approaches, sometimes to deny that Jephtha had made his daughter a burnt offering, sometimes to acknowledge that the interpretive problems were too difficult to admit of certainty. While scholarly, orthodox Christian commentators wrote about the sacrifice of Jephtha’s daughter with calm detachment, the deists used strong language of revulsion to arouse outrage.

[I cannot access any more of this article]. Perhaps Crabbe was aware of these debates? But if he wished to defend biblical othodoxy would have he drawn attention to a story which gave great ammunition to ‘free thinkers’?

But let me start with a description. The film is shot in five scenes all of which occur in the apartment of Petra von Kant (played by Margit Carstensen) a successful fashion designer. Petra lives with her devoted secretary/companion Marlene (Irm Hermann) whom she treats with contempt and is more of a slave than an employee. Petra is introduced by her friend Sidonie to Karin Thimm (Hanna Schygulla) with whom she falls deeply in love. Karin turns out to be little more than a gold-digger and abandons Petra when her husband turns up (off-screen – there are no men on-screen in this film). Petra, whom in the early scenes of the film was shown as thoroughly hard and selfish, goes completely to pieces and treats her mother and her daughter (the latter especially) cruelly when they turn up for her Birthday. In the final scenes however it seems the fever has passed and she speaks, for the first time, to Marlene as a human being: the latter then packs her bags and leaves.

The first thing to be noted, before approaching any exposition, is that the film is a masterclass in technique. It manages within this very confined space to be continuously visually inventive and the colours are lush and lavish. The film is often beautiful but this never becomes a barrier to the intense emotion which Fassbinder is concerned to convey. At times I was strongly reminded of some of Godard’s interior discussion scenes but Fassbinder’s approach is more baroque, more classical – as is emphasised by the enormous painting which dominates one wall. This painting is in fact Poussin’s ‘Midas and Bacchus’ (1629) – a fact revealed by a very fine on-line essay on the film at Jim’s Film Website….http://jclarkmedia.com/fassbinder/fassbinder13.html#crew.

Now in my view the film’s complexity is one of its strengths, and the multiple reactions which it might engender a tribute. However, in a fascinating extra on my DVD, Harry Baer, longtime Fassbinder collaborator as actor, assistant director and production manager, says that the film was in fact a roman a clef in which Petra represents Fassbinder, Karin Gunther Kaufmann and Marlene Peer Raben. Baer claims that there was a lot of laughter during the making of the film as they had heard many of the lines in real life. If this is so it certainly offers an extraordinary glimpse into the world of the Fassbinder menage/ensemble. Whatever the truth of this Baer later makes the assertion that in order to understand Fassbinder’s work as a whole you have to understand his theme. Fassbinder apparently claimed that to be a great Director you had to have a ‘theme’ and his own was that ‘love can be exploited’. At the heart of many of his films will be a relationship where one person is more in love, and they will lose out to the person who is less in love [a striking example of what Victoria Glendenning calls the 'brutal politics of human relations' which she sees in the work of Trollope]. Baer says the archetype of this is to be found in Berlin Alexanderplatz. Certainly in terms of the films I have seen so far in my Fassbinder re-watching it is very true of Lola, The Marriage of Maria Braun and here in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. I am less sure of its applicability to Effi Briest though there Fassbinder was clearly constrained by the source material. It would certainly be interesting to consider this as an Ur-motif and see how it emerges in individual films. If we add together this theme and the autobiographical element then it would be possible to say that Fassbinder was an artist who was very prepared to confront his own demons, weaknesses and flaws.

Returning to Jim’s essay he suggests that….

it can be argued that with Petra’s emotional epiphany at the end of the film ultimately, if tentatively, presents a sanguine view of a person’s ability, after great suffering (not to mention histrionics), finally to come to a new, deeper self-understanding.

Certainly this is one possible interpretation. The film was controversial and criticised at the time for its “harshly limited view of women” and its failure to portray lesbian relationships in a positive light (something Fassbinder also did in films with gay themes). I would reject both of these accusations, though I do understand the second, especially in its historical context. At a time when lesbian and gay relationships hardly ever appeared on-screen it might have been felt that there was a need that when they did it should be in a positive light. In reality of course there is no reason whatever why such relationships should be any more positive than straight ones, and Fassbinder as a gay man was doubtless very aware of this. The ‘harshly limited view of women’ accusation is far less justifiable: in the first place none of the characters are monstrous, although all behave badly at one point or another, but more importantly there is a substantial range of character types in the film. Whatever the case this is a film which very much passes the Bechdel test (indeed as there are no men at all present it probably establishes some kind of different test!).

Jim rightly points out the brilliance of the acting: for once, good as she is, Schygulla is overshadowed by Carstensen’s extraordinary, bravura performance. Of Fassbinder’s directorial genius Jim writes….

The emotionally ugly – and literally claustrophobic (we never leave this one apartment) – world of the film yields images of striking beauty, and resonance. The rich autumnal palette of the setting (orange, gold, brown, black, white and bursts of red) is contrasted with the bright, clashing colors of the costumes (such as Gaby’s cartoonish yellow suit and purple tie). Fassbinder and director of photography Michael Ballhaus (who shot about half of the director’s films, and now does all of Martin Scorsese’s pictures) wrest every bit of visual interest from the single set. The endlessly inventive deep focus compositions provide a series of emotionally penetrating, and technically virtuosic, comments on the action – ironic, allusive, symbolic, and visually gorgeous.

It is as if Fassbinder were using the resources of film to close in, rather than open up, his play; to force even more pressure on Petra. She is often framed within bars of shadow, and frozen in tableaux. And the camera’s sinuous tracking shots – rather than simply following her movement, as in a conventional picture – encircle Petra, binding her. Zoom shots are reserved for Marlene, taking us nearer to her face but no closer to unraveling her ambiguous nature.

He points out that some critics have argued that the Poussin picture….

represents the patriarchal system which “underlies, and perhaps even dooms, the relationship of Petra and Karin.” But I am equally struck by his own observation that the figure of Midas suggests the moral of being careful what you wish for.

Jim points out that class relations and exploitation are an almost ever-present in Fassbinder, here highly dramatised in the treatment of Marlene. He also points out a number of sly comic references: the one to Joseph Mankiewicz which occurs early in the film is relevant because Mankiewicz was “the writer/director of All About Eve (1950), whose story of an established star’s life appropriated by a conniving upstart bears an intentional relationship to Fassbinder’s film.” All in all Jim’s comments are invaluable and insightful and highly recommended.

Having said all this and drawn attention to the film’s many strengths I would have to say that this is the least favourite of the 4 Fassbinders I have had so far from Lovefilm. When all is said and done it remains a somewhat theatrical chamber piece. Yes, of extraordinary visual and emotional power and interest but lacking the sweep, both cinematographic and thematic, of the other films. I certainly recommend The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and would like to see it again, but it’s very nature imposes constraints which do not allow Fassbinder’s talent to flourish to its full extent.

**********************************

Harry Baer had a lot of interesting observations to make in his interview. The picture of Fassbinder as a human being which emerged was not an attractive one : in particular he was highly manipulative and could be cruel. The only actress who was really allowed to share in the creative process, and was treated very differently to the others, was Schygulla. Baer said that he thought she was to some extent Fassbinder’s ‘alter ego’. And he had created her, as he discovered how to light her so as to draw out her beauty – when you see her work with other directors this is very evident apparently. She was his Marlene Dietrich, even his Joan of Arc (I have no idea what Baer meant by thislatter comment).

Baer also spoke of Fassbinder’s death saying it was definitely not suicide – Fassbinder died of too many pills, but he was accustomed to take vast quantities of powerful sleeping tablets due to his problems with sleeplessness. In fact Fassbinder was planning more movies and had spoken to Baer on some technical issues hours before he expired. It was just that his body was finally unable to cope with all the pills he put into it. It was for Fassbinder a ‘nice death’ Baer said, but an artistic tragedy for the rest of us.

Berlin says that Friedrich Schlegel, himself a part of the movement, named three vital components of this movement: Fichte’s philosophy, the French Revolution, and Goethe’s novel Wilhelm Meister.

Fichte’s philosophy

The innovation which Fichte and his ‘glorification of the active, dynamic and imaginative self’ brought to philosophy sprang out of Hume’s empiricism. Hume had said that he found it impossible, when he looked inside himself, to ‘perceive any entity which might justly be called a self’, and concluded that the ‘self’ was not a thing, but ‘simply a name for the concatenation of experiences out of which human personality and human history were formed’. Kant ‘made valiant efforts to recapture some sort of self’, but Hume’s notion was much more passionately accepted by Fichte. What Fichte argued was the one only becomes aware of the self when one meets some ‘kind of resistance’. There is a ‘me’ – something which can be objectively studied – but that is quite separate from the ‘I’ self which only becomes apparent from being impacted upon. The answer to the question as to how one could be sure that the world existed; how one could be sure solipsism was not true; was to be found when there was a clash between you and what you wanted: ‘In the resistance emerged the self and the not-self’. This radical philosophy asserts that….

The world as described by the sciences was an artificial construction in relation to this absolutely primary, irreducible, fundamental datum, not even of experience, but of being.

From this comes ‘the whole vast vision’ which proclaims that the only thing that is worthwhile is the ‘exfoliation’ of the self; its struggle and creative activity as it seeks to impose itself. When this is extended to the political sphere it can have very unpleasant implications, because the Church or State or class becomes ‘a huge intrusive forward-marching will’ trying impose itself on the world. In his political speeches Fichte claimed that only those who accepted the doctrine of  freedom are ‘the Urvolk, the primal people – I mean the Germans’, and all others are to be ‘excluded from the Urvolk, they are strangers, they are outsiders’ and ‘one would hope that one day they would be wholly cut off from our people’. Now Berlin says that Fichte did not mean just ethnic Germans and in his day only a tiny number of people heard his speeches, but nonetheless one can see how poisonous this doctrine could become.

‘The fundamental notion is not cogito ergo sum but volo ergo sum’.

A different course was taken by Fichte’s younger contemporary Schilling, who was to influence Coleridge, whose thought is little read because it is ‘exceedingly opaque, not to say unintelligible’. Schilling argued that the whole of Nature is alive and in a state of self-development from the unconscious rocks, through plant and animal life, to man who ‘begins to strive and becomes aware of what he is striving for’, which is God, who is the end of creative evolution. This doctrine had a ‘profound influence on German aesthetic philosophy’. If everything in nature is alive and we are simply the ‘most self-conscious representatives’, then the function of the artist becomes to ‘delve within himself’, and above all to delve into the ‘dark and unconscious forces which move within him’ and bring these to consciousness. It follows that, for art to be art, it cannot be simply based on knowledge or copying – it must have what we admire in nature: ‘power, force, energy, life, vitality’.  This is a ‘fundamental romantic, anti-Enlightenment doctrine’ and it goes back, via its stress on the unconscious, to Herder and his admiration of folk culture.

Out of ‘Fichte’s doctrine of the will and Schelling’s doctrine of the unconscious’ came the Romantic obsession with symbolism. Berlin writes…

Let me try and make it as clear as I am able, although I do not claim to understand it entirely, because, as Schelling very rightly says, romanticism is truly a wild wood, a labyrinth in which the only guiding thread is the will and mood of a poet.

There are two kinds of symbols….

1. Conventional symbols. These are simple: the symbol means a certain thing and operates according to rules. Traffic lights are a classic example.
2. Non-conventional symbols. Here a symbol is something that can only be expressed symbolically. To take the traffic lights: replacing a green light with a sign with the word ‘Go’ on it would be quite satisfactory. But for this second type such a substitution is impossible. Symbols of this type include national flags or songs or a phrase like ‘England expects every man to do his duty’: what is meant by England here? Clearly not a geographical, political or sociological definition. It is something nebulous. It is not just a matter of arousing emotion because a sunset can do that, but a sunset is not a symbol. So what are these things symbolic of? These Romantics argued that it was symbolic of something of which the whole was ‘literally infinite’ and therefore only to be conveyed by symbol and allegory [I find this argument unsatisfactory as least far as the England example is concerned as I believe you could and should analyse the phrase - and resist it!]. This relates to the notion of depth and profundity and how this differs from the beautiful – these thinkers believed there was a value in incomprehensibility.

Out of all this concern with the unsayable and unattainable come two phenomena which have been present in 19th and 20thC thought and feeling. The first is nostalgia – this arises from the fact that as the infinite cannot be exhausted, we will never be satisfied. So all the strange, exotic writings full of symbol and allegory are attempts ‘to go back’ to the mystical unknowable ‘home’ from which everything derives. This is absolutely opposite to the Enlightenment belief that there is a ‘particular form of life and of art, of thought and of feeling, which was correct’. For the Romantics there are no correct answers. Berlin cites the story of the cynical critic who asked Dante Gabriel Rossetti ‘But Mr Rossetti, when you have found the grail what will you do with it?’ – the Romantic answer would have been that the Grail was unrecoverable but one’s life should still be a search for it [I am rather with the critic!].

The second phenomenon is paranoia. One version of Romanticism is optimistic which feels that by connecting with our true selves and destroying the rules/obstacles/codes which prevent this we will ‘soar to greater and greater heights’: the pessimistic version says that while we seek to liberate ourselves ‘the universe is not to be tamed in this easy fashion’, and there is always something to prevent us. In its crudest from this is seen in conspiracy theories where history is controlled by malign forces such as the Jesuits, Jews or Freemasons. At a more sophisticated level there are impersonal forces as represented in Hegel’s statement that ‘The spirit cheats us, the spirit intrigues, the spirit lies, the spirit triumphs’ – the spirit being that of history. This paranoia accumulates to  a height in Schopenhauer and Wagner and climaxes in 20thC writers like Kafka.

In this way the romantics tend to oscillate between extremes of mystical optimism and appalling pessimism, which gives their writings a peculiar kind of uneven quality.

The French Revolution

In Germany one result was, in the wake of the Napoleonic wars, an outbreak of national feeling. But more important was the fact that the failure of the Revolution to achieve its goals attracted attention not to the triumph of reason, but to irrationality, violence, the power of individuals – ‘the poetry of action and battle and death’. The question was asked as to why the Revolution failed and one of the answers which Romanticism provided was that there is some hidden force which prevented it – ‘human nature’, ‘the dark forces of the unconscious’ or whatever. This fed into what Berlin calls theodicies, which attempted to explain this, including the Marxist and Hegelian theodicies [this reveals Berlin's political bias since in reality Marxist history provides a perfectly rational explanation for the failure of the Revolution, albeit one which would not be acceptable to Berlin or many others]. The Revolution therefore buttressed both Romantic individualism and Romantic paranoia.

Wilhelm Meister

The romantics admired Wilhelm Meister for two reasons…

1. Because ‘it was an account of the self-formation of a man of genius’.
2. Because of the ‘very sharp transitions’ within the novel: from sober prose to ecstatic poetical accounts of various kinds. This latter the romantics saw as a way of blowing up reality, of liberating us, which is the purpose of art.

Goethe himself did not regard this as a valid analysis. He had an ambivalent relationship with his romantic contemporaries; grateful for their admiration (even adulation), but suspicion of their artistic qualities and their philosophy. Late in his life he said ‘Romanticism is disease and classicism is health’, and Berlin calls this his ‘fundamental sermon’. Critically ‘the general tendency of Goethe is to say that there is a solution’ and this is ‘essentially that of order, self-restraint, discipline and the crushing of any kind of chaotic or anti-legal forces’. For the romantics that was ‘absolute poison’. They not only preached but practised free love. The book which encapsulated their views was Lucinde (1799) by Schlegel : Berlin describes this as ‘a pornographic novel of the fourth order’, but its importance was in its attempt to describe ‘ a free relationship between human beings’.

Much more interesting in literary terms in breaking down conventions were the plays of Tieck which used post-modern devices, and the stories of E.T.A. Hoffmann which demonstrate the ‘transformability of everything into everything’.

 ’The general proposition of the eighteenth century, indeed of all previous centuries, as I tirelessly repeat, is that there is a nature of things, there is rerum natura, there is a structure of things. For the romantics this was profoundly false.’

This Romantic art is the precursor of Dadaism, surrealism, the theatre of the absurd etc.. The idea is to ‘confuse reality with appearance’ and to produce a sense of the ‘absolutely unbarred universe’ where people can do as they please, even if only temporarily [I wonder about Tristram Shandy as a fore-runner here?].

The final weapon in the unbridled romantics armoury was ‘romantic irony’ – whenever you see anything which is living by the rules, whether it be a social group, a poem, an institution then you should ‘laugh at it, mock it, be ironical, blow it up, point out that the opposite is true.’

These two elements – the free untrammelled will and the denial of the fact that there is a nature of things, the attempt to blow up and explode the very notion of a stable structure of anything – are the deepest and in a sense the most insane elements in this extremely valuable and important movement.