Essay & Review: Artwork of Middle Earth

Few modern books, if any, have inspired as much artwork as those of J. R. R. Tolkien. The obvious but incomplete reason is that Tolkien wrote some ripping battle scenes, from the defense of Helm's Deep to the ride of the Rohhirim and the siege of Gondor. I say incomplete because as much if not more attention has been lavished on the quiet and understated moments in the history of Middle Earth. So why should anyone care about the Prancing Pony, Bilbo's foyer, or Theoden's Hall? Why do these created places and spaces take on more significance than actual ones? The answer lies in Tolkien's ability to create a world, and not just a physical one.

While we do relish Tolkien's meticulous descriptions of  Bag End and the seven levels of Minas Tirith, these places also exist in time. If Orthanc, for example, were simply the home of Sauruman it would be, for all its splendor, just a place, albeit one significant to the heroes of The Lord of the Rings. Yet when Orthanc is the ancient fortress built thousands of years ago on the Northern border of the Numenoreans, who in their decline they could no longer maintain it and offered it to Sauruman, it becomes part of the history of Middle-earth, a history we gladly get swept up in. Places in Middle-earth exist not simply now, in the age we are reading about, but they have existed, and this gives them a unique authenticity. The Philosopher said that what appears to have been always what it is, is regarded as real. Indeed. Too, a place which housed great kings and outlasted many battles deserves to endure, a home which has housed generations of a family ought to be the home of their descendants. Their history gives the places of Middle-earth their authority.

Tolkien achieves this authenticity in two other ways, the plainest of which is his use of the languages he invented for Middle-earth. Yet it is not the euphony, novelty, or even uniqueness of the Elvish languages that imbues Middle-earth with authenticity but the logic of the roots and names. Whether it is Nan Curunír, "Valley of the Wizard," or the Noldor "those with knowledge," Tolkien's peoples and realms do not simply have names but feel named. This adds a human presence to all of Middle-earth even where the historical details are not painted in.

Lastly, Tolkien creates his world with details in short, often rather vague, asides. These are easy enough to spot but I would quote one of my favorites from The Two Towers. Treebeard tells Merry and Pippin, who inquire about whether Fangorn Forest is like the Old Forest near the Shire,

Aye, aye, something like, but much worse. I do not doubt that there is some shadow of the Great Darkness lying there still away north; and bad memories are handed down. But there are some hollow dales in this land where the Darkness has never been lifted, but the trees are older than I am.

Tolkien has in fact not told us anything about who is doing what, when, where, or why, rather he has created a sense of the way things are, the nature of things in Middle-earth. In two sentences Tolkien sketches an ancient world full of creatures older even than hoary Treebeard himself, a world which has passed through a darkness so great that evil endures in cracks and crevices. Tolkien's use of the passive voice with," bad memories are handed down" is especially effective, suggesting both that the darkness was so great that it could not be forgotten and that those passing the memories down are still bitter. The information also comes as bit of a discovery about a place we thought we knew.

By these means Tolkien's stories come to the reader not only as romances and mythologies, but as an inheritance of rare histories which invites us to step into Middle-earth. As such, Tolkien enthusiasts have a particular fondness for drawings of Middle-earth. Here are my thoughts on a pair of collections.

–

Realms of Tolkien and Tolkien's World

Harper Collins published both of these volumes in the early an mid 1990s and they feature respectively 58 and 60 paintings. Fans of Peter Jackson's filmed Lord of the Rings will recognize the many by John Howe and Alan Lee and Tolkien aficionados will recognize the handful of Ted Nasmith's meticulously detailed work, but the remainder, a diverse assortment of drawings from lesser known artists and even amateurs, will be a welcome surprise to all.

In particular, Realms of Tolkien features the work of Dutch artist Cor Blok, whose work so pleased Tolkien himself that the two met and the author bought two of Blok's paintings. Blok's work draws least on the common elements of design we associate with Middle-earth, such as the Nordic look of the Rohirrim and so forth. Without the familiarizing effect of traditional visual design elements Blok's paintings focus on the essence of the action.

The bloodiness of at the Hornburg takes on a new starkness with Blok's orange slashes and tiny lopped heads. His Mûmak is a truly alien creature and our shock at it draws us closer to the fear of the humans in the picture far more than our reactions to any old elephant could. Other styles are far from antiquated, though. Nasmith's (above) captures the grandur and scale of that "moving hill," and Swedish artist Inger Edelfeldt captures its power with billowing dust clouds and scattering men. The variety here is a real pleasure.

In both volumes each painting is accompanied by the corresponding selection from Tolkien, and while some of these could have been longer it is helpful to have some of the text beside, both to have the author's description set the stage and to compare the picture. Many but not all of the paintings are full-page for reasons of aspect ratio. The wide landscape paintings are unfortunately not rotated but printed across the page so they can be viewed beside the text, a reasonable decision but one which results in a significantly smaller image and much wasted space. Yet that's a minor complaint about these volumes, both splendid and rewarding paths through Middle-earth.

Paterfamilias

The man of firm and righteous will,
     No rabble clamorous for the wrong,
No tyrant's brow, whose frown may kill,
     Can shake the strength that makes him strong.

". . . The idea of the genius begins from the paterfamilias who in begetting children becomes the head of a family. His essential character is isolated and given a separate spirit-existence; he carries on the family which owes to him its continuance and looks to him for protection. Thus, as a member in that mysterious sequence son–father–son–father, the individual gains a new significance; he is set against a background which, instead of being a continuous surface, is broken up, and the pieces are shaped, and one of them is shaped like himself. His genius, therefore, is that which puts him in a special relationship to his family which went before him, and has perished, and to his family which is yet to be born of his sons. A chain of mysterious power links the family from generation to generation; it is because of his genius that he, a man of flesh and blood, can be a link in that unseen chain.

"Here we may recall the custom, indeed the right, by which noble families set up in a recess of the central hall of their houses, at first, wax-masks and, later, busts of their ancestors who had deserved well of their family or of the state. In the most solemn domestic rites of the household these busts were made to associate. There was no question of ancestor-worship or appeasement of the departed; rather, it was a demonstration that they and all for which they stood still lived on and that they supplied the spiritual life to the family."

– The Romans, by R. H. Barrow

Marcus Aurelius, "From my father. . ."

Marcus Annius Verus, Marcus
Aurelius' biological father.

1. I am indebted to my grandfather Verus for his good disposition and sweet temper.

2. From my father's reputation and my memory of him, I learned modesty and manliness.

4. Thanks to my great-grandfather, I didn't have to waste my time in the public schools but had good tutors at home instead and learned that one cannot spend too much money on such things.

16. From my (adoptive) father I learned:

• courtesy and unswerving loyalty to decisions taken after hard thought
• indifference to pomp and praise
• industry and steadiness
• a keen interest in any proposal for the public good
• reward given strictly to merit
• the knowledge of when to press on and when to ease up
• chaste habits and the love of companionship

My father allowed his friends the freedom to eat and travel with him as they pleased, and he took no offense when their own affairs detained them. In business meetings, he never accepted a first impression or a plausible answer without subjecting it to detailed and searching inquiry. Smiling and calm, he kept his own counsel and did not make capricious or extravagant demands on his friends. In all things great and small, he exercised foresight and prepared down to the last detail for every eventuality, yet without making a big production of it. 

My father taught me:

• to refuse public applause and to eschew all forms of flattery
• to be vigilant in managing the affairs of the empire, to be frugal in spending from the public purse, and to put up with the inevitable grumbling that will follow from those who want something for nothing.
• to avoid being superstitious toward the gods and obsequious toward men, knowing that it is better to be sober and self-reliant and to distrust the novelty of invention and the vulgarity of popular esteem.

My father enjoyed, without pretention or self-indulgence, the luxuries that his fortune lavished upon him; but when these were not available, he never seemed to miss them. No one ever mistook him for a pundit, a toady, or a pedant, nor failed to recognize in him the qualities of a mature and accomplished man insensible to flattery and able to govern himself as well as others. He respected sound learning and those who seek the truth, and he remained on good terms with the rest, but from a distance.

From my father, I learned:

• a cheerful and friendly disposition, within reason
• prudent care for the body–which he neither abused in luxurious living, nor pampered with excessive exercise and diet, nor neglected unduly, and thereby kept himself almost free from doctors, medicines, and salves
• a true regard for those who have mastered a particular or subject–the art of public speaking, for example, or a knowledge of law or history or any other subject–and a genuine desire to see that each of these receives the honor due him.

A true Roman, my father didn't worry about keeping up appearances. He felt no anxiety or stress. He took pleasure in treating familiar subjects repeatedly and in staying in the same old places. Even after the most violent headaches, he would return quickly and energetically to his work. He hated secrets and kept them only when affairs of state demanded it. Moderation and good taste marked his celebration of the holidays, his public works, his distribution of relief to the poor, and his other official acts. Whatever he did he did out of a sense of duty to meet a real need, not to gain popularity.

My father never bathed at odd hours or got carried away with his building projects. Never did he pretend to be a connoisseur of food and wine, a fashion expert, or an authority on good looks. His clothing, generally of Lanuvian wool, was made in Lorium, where he had a country house. Indeed, the way my father treated the tax collector of Tusculum, who hounded him by mistake, is a good example of his manner. No black looks, no harsh words, no aggressive behavior that can lead others to say, "He's got a mean streak." None of this. Instead, a measured and rational assessment of everything, without haste or hesitation, rendering judgments so calm, fitting, forceful, logical, and harmonious that one could say of him what was once said of Socrates: that he could either enjoy or abstain from those things whose enjoyment weakens and whose abstinence strengthens most men. 

These things I learned from my father: strength, steadfastness, and moderation on all occasions, a spirit perfectly balanced and indomitable, like the one he showed during the illness which took him away. 

Meditations. Book I. Translation by C. Scot Hicks and David V. Hicks. 

Movie Review: Wrath of the Titans

Directed by Jonathan Liebesman. 2012.

Spoilers throughout.

Three or so minutes into Wrath of the Titans I was a happy man. I was wearing my big ol' goofy IMAX 3D glasses, I had a colossal cask of Coca Cola (from which I sipped but two or three times, as usual), and I was with a good friend. On screen a Greek man and his son fished and I learned that the gods were dying because people had stopped believing in them. Now I know ye pedants and Gradgrinds were already griping by this time. (Admit it!) I, however, was thrilled about this particular point. Immediately I envisioned the situation. . .

It's the Fifth Age of the world, the Age of Iron. Men have become wicked and corrupt and worse, impious. We see Athens overrun with sophists preaching of the lies about the gods, philosophers teaching about the "physical laws," empty and decaying temples, politicians voting to use the sacred funds for their own purposes, and war among the peoples of Greece. Mankind has put down its own laws and become drunk on its newfound power and prosperity. The primeval gods are going extinct and without their power the Titans will escape from Tartarus. These primordial monstrosities will undo the work of the Olympians and men.

So we structure the series as a Tetralogy:

1. Titanomachy: Rise of the Olympians
2. Clash of the Immortals: The Trojan War
3. Twilight of the Gods
4. Roma Aeterna 

Part I depicts the overthrow of Cronos and establishes the reign of the Olympians. Part II explores the power and capriciousness of the gods. Part III looks at the birth of Western Civilization and philosophy, the death of the gods and the destruction of the Peloponnesian War. Part IV concludes with the resolution of faith and reason at Rome where the pious and diligent Romans defeat the Carthaginians.

And then the fire-breathing dog entered.

Dreams were shattered. Angels wept. Children cried in the distance. Then again it was a two-headed dog. One head spit the doggy kerosene and the other sparked it, because two-headed dogs just love flambé.  Anyway the attack is of course highly unusual because this dog usually runs a successful ceramics shop in the marketplace. I mean it is unusual because the Titans are escaping and the gods can't stop them because people stopped believing in the gods which made the gods lose their power so they need Perseus to. . . do what exactly? It took him five minutes to take down a dog and he's going to do what exactly to Cronus?

The plot at this point had a few choices: Perseus goes on a theological journey to discover the meaning of life, he goes on a proselytizing mission to remind the Greeks of their duties to the gods, or he goes to pick up a maguffin to blow up the bad guy. Guess which one it is!

So our hero needs to pay a visit to Hephasteus, but where to find him? A dying Poseidon tells Perseus to seek the Sea King's son Agenor, a demi-god like Perseus, who knows the way. Agenor has been locked up by Queen Andromeda. You see old Agenor tried to seduce the queen and when she refused, the rascal tried to run off with the crown jewels. (I laughed out loud at that clunker of a line.) Before you know it Perseus, Agenor, Andromeda and some disposable characters are off to find Hephasteus, whom they find on an island guarded by Cyclops. Now I did rather enjoy this sequence, even though it was badly shot and edited, because Agenor is actually a fun and puckish character. I don't know what precipitates his desire to become a team player in spite of his apparent dislike of his godly father, but he's funny. They should have played this scene even lighter with the Perseus and Agenor running around outwitting the Cyclops. They could have made the Cyclops Polyphemus and had the two demi-gods cracking jokes and taunting him: "Hey Polyphemus, guess who's here: no one!" "Hey Polyphemus, how's Venus doing, oh wait!" They also could have worked in a lot of plot, dialogue, and general logic resulting from the fact that Polyphemus was also a son of Poseidon. Yet I digress.

I'm going to kill my agent!

So they find Hephasteus who is more of an eclectic inventor than the smithy of the gods. Nighy does a good job, though, investing the god with a charming crankiness. Again I thought the scene, especially with the presence of Nighy, could have been pitched more comedic, "He knocked me off that bloody mountain and now he wants my help!" Poor Rosamund Pike delivers another horrendous clunker of a line and everyone's off to the underworld to rescue Zeus and combine his thunderbolt with Poseidon's trident. Before moving on, though, I have to underscore what a great job Rosamund Pike did with practically everything working against her. She looked great despite terrible camerawork, she was dignified in spite of wickedly idiotic dialogue, and she had presence onscreen even though the script gave her no significance whatsoever.

The rest of the movie is really quite lackluster. Not for a second do we think that any mortal armies stand a chance against the giant magma monster that is the freed Cronus. The burly fight between Perseus and Mars is competently executed but going in we know that Perseus has no chance based on strength alone and that he has to win. The question is of how will he do it. What happens is Perseus' son distracts Mars by walking up to him with a sword. Not attacking him mind you, but just standing there. This kind of works because it shows Perseus is superior and victorious because he is a father with a son willing to die for him, which is nice because it mirrors Perseus' quest to save his own father. On the other hand it doesn't demonstrate why Perseus is superior as a human, but rather only as a father. So here is where we see that even the movie's simple premise is not at all executed because it's point was that as a human Perseus was superior to the gods because he had virtues that could not be taken away. (That's actually my generous spin on one of the film's many wretched lines.) The plot, however, does not emphasize these or any virtues and in the end Perseus does not win on account of any one in particular. He wins on account of his son, the maguffin, and Zeus, which kind of defeats everything. There is one feeble attempt at explanation in which Andromeda says humans sometimes persevere in spite of the seeming impossibility of a task, but clearly the gods persevere also. Besides, Perseus never acknowledges or struggles with whether or not to give up.

A few items remain for discussion. The casting was very good. Worthington had the makings of the reluctant hero undertaking great burdens. He had romantic chemistry with Andromeda and a fraternal camaraderie with Agenor. Neeson was of suitable stature as the Father Zeus even if he didn't have Olivier's Olympian gravitas. The woefully underused Fines managed to give Hades a whit of pathos to his struggles with Zeus. It was, however, a blast to see the two brothers thwacking the rampaging critters as a divine tag team. This reminds me that there was some interesting potential for a parallel between Perseus and Agenor and Zeus and Hades but the script didn't even come close to weaving that thread.

I didn't find the effects or action very satisfying. It's easy enough to create big waves of rock and dust and such shots can no longer be the money shots of a film. The composited wide shots of the big  battles were brief and gave no sense of space hence the finale did not take on an epic feel. Compare it to the masterful battle outside the walled city in The Return of the King which 1) despite having four different armies attacking from different directions established and maintained a crystal clear sense of who and what was where, and 2) despite having a great variety of sets, places, and characters/monsters, establishes and maintains a perfect scale to tell us how big everything is. Speaking of incomprehensible, it was frequently impossible to tell how the action scenes resolved. For example, in the labyrinth leading to the underworld the characters are stuck between two walls pressing them. They push and push and then suddenly we see them all tumble out. What happened? The fully CGI shots of the underworld and the labyrinth were very nicely done, however. There was a logic to the design of the structures and a proper sense of magnitude. The best 3D effect of the film is Zeus' flight through the ancient crags down to the domain of Hades.

Overall, the appalling poverty of the script is the downfall of Wrath. These are rich and timeless tales and to turn them into something so insubstantial reeks of worse than a cheap cash-in, but complete indifference to the stories.

On Graduation

We here at APLV would like to extend warm congratulations to a fine young woman, Derpina, upon the eve of her graduation from college. Congratulations Derpina! As you know, though, we're a curious bunch here at the blog and simply can't resist thinking about things. We just cannot stop wondering: what's Derpie going to do with her gilt diploma? Join us in a little speculation?

Right away we're a little worried because Derpie spent a lot of money on  her education, $100,000 in fact. Unfortunately Derpie didn't have that much money coming out of high school so some generous folks lent her the money. They were so kind in fact that they didn't even ask what Derpie was going to study in college or whether her degree would get Derpie a job and whether she would be able to pay back the money. Fortunately Derpie's parent's have a good amount of money saved so maybe they'll help. Let's move on then.

So what's Derpina going to do with her degree? Well let us see, she majored in comparative literature. Hmm, what can Derpie do with that? Uh oh! Derpie's having trouble getting a job. For some reason she can't find an employer who needs his literature compared. Shocking? Perhaps. Yet Derpina went to a liberal arts college. What does that mean? It means she went there not just to prepare for getting a job but to enrich her mind and character. She went there "to ask important questions." Well what did she ask, we ask.

Here we need to make a teensy distinction because while Derpina's school wrote "A Liberal Arts School" on the brochures and they offered music and philosophy and history, poor Derpina didn't actually get a Classical Education. What is a classical education in contrast to a progressive education? Well, why don't we just compare a classical education to what Derpina actually got in a few of her classes.

I. History

Since Derpina didn't major in history she only had to take two classes of history to satisfy the demands of the "core curriculum" for the "Bachelor of Arts" degree. Both classes met twice a week for four months and cost several thousand dollars each, plus the cost of text books. What did Derpina get for her money and time? In her American history class they spent the first class making some general remarks about history. Then they went to a play instead of class. Another time the professor was away and sent a graduate student to fill in, who showed a video. They spent one class watching a movie about women's suffrage and another about Christopher Columbus enslaving natives. Several classes were taken up by exams. There aren't that many classes left for teaching are there? The professor taught one class about the "robber barons," one on child labor, another on FDR's "Second Bill of Rights," and lastly one on the Vietnam War protests.

In her European history course the professor taught the class like a seminar instead of teaching and the students discussed the role of women in different periods of history.

A Classical Education in history would have taught Derpina a great deal more. She would have analyzed the Classical historians as authors with their modes of analyses: Herodotus' stories to preserve the deeds of the Greeks, Thucydides' painstaking accounts "not meant to entertain," Livy's exemplars, and Plutarch's "parallel lives." She would have learned of the different types of government, republican, democratic, oligarchic, monarchical, the characteristics of each, how each one might degenerate into another, and which Plato and Aristotle praised the most. Derpina would have seen the bright side of democracy in Pericles' shining funeral oration and its dark side in the Melian debate and the invasion of Sicily. She would have seen both the need for change in the expulsion of the Greek tyrants, but also the terrible price paid by subverting the traditional laws in the legacy of the Gracchi. She would have seen that sometimes returning generals leave their armies at the gates, like Cincinnatus, and sometimes they enter with them like Marius, Sulla, and Caesar.

In American history, then, she would study the American republic in the light of the ancient republics and the American Declaration of Independence and Constitution in the light of Roman Twelve Tables, Solon's reforms, and the Greek and Roman courts. In short, she sees that the ancient problems are our problems. Hooray!

II. Logic and Rhetoric

Uh oh! Isn't this embarrassing? Unfortunately Derpina did not have to take a single class in logic in college. She never reads Plato's dialogues or any of Aristotle's logic. She doesn't know about different forms of argumentation, fallacies, about appeals to emotion, about induction vs. deduction. What to do? How can Derpina think? How can she systematically and reliably interpret the world around her? Nothing else in the world, no other experience or form of study, can fill this lacuna in her education. Oh noes Derpina!

It looks like Derpina didn't study rhetoric either. She never read Cicero and Demosthenes to see examples of the best oratory ever written, its attention to cadence, rhythm, periodic length, imagery, argumentation, small and large scale structure, rhetorical devices, and so forth. She doesn't know from Aristotle and Quintilian the different components of a speech, the types of speeches, or topics which one debates. She doesn't know what the emotions are or how to appeal to them. In the absence of such understanding she cannot express herself well or determine when someone else is expressing himself well. Oh my!

III. Literature and the Arts

We've been so harsh on Derpina's education let us see if we can put her major, comparative literature, to good use. Oh good, it seems she studied Shakespeare and George Eliot, surely that must be of some good? Indeed such are worthy studies, yet Derpina cannot really appreciate Shakespeare without a knowledge of Classics, especially Plutarch. Without a knowledge of Plutarch's history, the classical mythology, and the classical languages, Derpina's study will be considerably hobbled. How? Well it's hard to understand, let alone appreciate and enjoy, Shakespeare's vast vocabulary without knowing the lives of his words and many images without knowing the stories of the Greeks and Romans. Yet there is another way in which Derpina's study is hobbled by a dearth of Classical learning.

Wolfgang Sebastian Handel,
composer of Aida.

Derpina only took a survey music course and no art courses. She knows a half note is larger than a quarter note, the oboe is a woodwind, and that Beethoven was deaf, but that's about it. She has not knowledge of musical structures of counterpoint and harmony or historical contexts of styles. She doesn't know it, but this makes her major all the harder to pursue because each of the arts enlivens the others. She can't let Handel and Tiepolo bring Julius Caesar to life, Verdi Macbeth, or  Mendelssohn the world of A Midsummer Night's Dream, because she doesn't know who they are. In short, she studies her discipline in isolation without the Classics weaving the strands into something greater than the sum of its parts.

Conclusion

Perhaps we ought to stop here lest we be thought cruel. It's not a point in need of repetition that a Classical education in fact is education. In need of emphasis, though, is this: it is one thing not to be educated and quite another to be uneducated and think you are wise. To lack a liberal education is not the worst of things. Nietzsche praised the Romans when he said they were at their best when they lived without philosophy as a traditional agrarian people. To graduate from a liberal arts college without a liberal arts education is indeed a waste but such a waste is often the fault of the student. It is something different altogether to spend a small fortune on a liberal arts education, follow the school's curriculum to the letter, and still get nothing for your time. Like Derpina, that student takes from such an education an undeserved confidence dangerous to others and a gross and dangerous ignorance dangerous to himself. Told you have been given all the tools for life, wouldn't it be fair for you to think that when life goes awry, there's nothing more to be done?

Such a student doesn't have Plato and Aristotle to form the bedrock of his mind. Latin and Greek don't teach him to read and write with precision. The advice in the Rhetoric doesn't make him skeptical of the demagogue and the Republic doesn't make him wary of the social engineers. Ovid and Catullus don't ease his heartbreak and Horace doesn't teach him to enjoy simple pleasures. Marcus Aurelius doesn't tell him to get over himself and suck it up sometimes. To understand such a loss as an absence of guidance gives one a sense of the gravity of the deprivation but it is worse still because understanding binds one to the world. The world is for knowing and we are epistemophiliacs, lovers of understanding. The desire to understand is part of our nature and thus to begin to know the world is to begin to know oneself. So indeed it is a crime that the student has no map and a catastrophe that he has no world, but it is a tragedy that he, unawares, goes about without a self.

Causa Pulchritudinis

"At any time between 1750 and 1930 if you had asked educated people to describe the aim of poetry, art, or music, they would have replied: beauty."

So says philosopher and author Roger Scruton in his 2007 documentary Why Beauty Matters. The radical purpose to Scruton's work is the classical notion that beauty matters, that, contra postmodern cacophilia, beauty is a value in itself as much as truth or goodness. He makes an honest and convincing case for beauty while tracing its genealogy from Plato through its banishment in the 20th century.

I would like, however, to trace and amplify a point slightly glossed over in the documentary. Scruton calls up Wilde's phrase that, "All art is absolutely useless," by which Wilde meant that art is more than useful. Scruton continues, applying Wilde's pointed compliment to mean that today we suffer under the "tyranny of the useful." We have more than utilitarian needs and suffer in not fulfilling them, he argues. I would like to return to Wilde, though, and ask: is all art absolutely useless?

Yes, and I would add that it is even more obviously useless than it might seem.

Let us begin by looking at the famous work of Hamlet since it seems to have a point. For our purposes permit a gross, obscene even, simplification: that the moral of the story is that indecisiveness and delay are bad. (Gasp! Alack! if you must, but stay with me, I beg.) If that is your goal, to demonstrate that indecisiveness is bad, why would you fulfill that goal by writing a four-hour play filled with complicated dialogue? It would be much easier, much clearer and more apparent, to write a simple morality story. What is gained by pages of complicated dialogue, shades of meaning, and a complex plot? Let me put it this way, why is:

To be, or not to be,--that is the question:--Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them?

so much more full of meaning and portent than

He screwed me! Should I suck it up or kick his ass?

Well, Shakespeare's verse is more meaningful because it is more persuasive and it is more persuasive because it is more beautiful. The logic is the same, but the structure, diction, imagery, syntax, and figurative language of Shakespeare make it seem more important. The ideas take on greater scale and meaning when they are beautiful.

Let us look at another example in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro. We must first observe that the entire fourth act is unnecessary to the plot since Figaro and Susanna are married at the conclusion of the third. Why conclude the opera titled The Marriage of Figaro with the Count being forgiven by his wife, then? Because all of the distrust and running around of the first three acts is well and good, but it only adds up to the rather uninspiring fact that everyone outwitted the Count. We want a bit more.

Unfortunately, the final scene of forgiveness has only a tenuous element of contrast to tie it to the plot. After all of the intrigues and fits of anger and distrust, even by Susanna and  Figaro, the Countess' act seems different, but why does it seem important somehow? Susanna and Figaro aren't villains, and neither are Bartolo and Marcellina, so why is this contrast necessary? Besides, everyone's mistrust is more heated than malicious. This simple element of contrast, then, is a relatively thin thread with which to conclude a three-hour endeavor whose main plot is already resolved. Mozart makes this finale relevant, to the plot and to us, by making it beautiful. This brief moment of sublime beauty takes on extraordinary dimensions and significance far disproportionate to the plot. This scene does not demonstrate that the Countess does the moral or just thing or that the Count will reform and be a better man or that Susanna and Figaro learn a lesson about marriage. The opera simply says that forgiveness is beautiful and the scene says this by being beautiful.

In the above examples we look at beauty acting as the element of persuasion in art which attempts to make some other point. Beauty persuades us that Hamlet's dilemma is grand and that the Countess' deed is good, but what about art which exists purely to be beautiful?

Take the fifth fugue from Book I of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Why is that string of thirty-second notes followed by the dotted figures so full of meaning? More importantly, why does it take on so much more when developed? In fact, why should any figure played in canon, or augmented or what have you, be meaningful? Who cares if something is in inversion? Because the symmetries, rhythmic and harmonic, are beautiful.

Below Botticelli's point is not to describe the birth of Venus or even to show it, but to show beauty. Do we actually care about Venus or her birth?

Why are such symmetries and consonances pleasing to man? Why is, as Marcus Aurelius observed, the cracking of bread and the bursting of a fig a pleasing sight? Marcus' answer was the classical one that such things are naturally beautiful. I'm not sure what scientists hope to discover in asking that question today but is it likely to result in more beauty? The more experiments confirm that people prefer certain shapes and ratios the more the findings, oddly, are interpreted to mean that the pleasure we derive from contemplating and seeing beauty is meaningless. The more some preference is thought to be evolved the more one hear that we "only" prefer it because of such and such.  Yet in truth little seems to hinge on the question. Beauty by nature cannot be made vulgar, unnecessary, or undesirable. Because of its "uselessness" it can never be replaced or outdated. Fragile though it is in our hands, in this respect beauty is indestructible.


If you enjoyed this essay you may be interested in:

• Why Beauty Matters (Documentary) [YouTube]
• Ideas: Part I | Part II
• The Anonymous Artist
• Why I Hate Modernism: The Tragedy of St. Stephen Walbrook
• On Gratitude
• Mozartian Counterpoint: Part VII
• Movie Review: Mon Oncle
• Primitive Romance

Calvin Coolidge on Classics

Is 1921 really so long ago? It doesn't seem so. They had motorcars and electricity, indoor plumbing and pantaloons. Alright, clearly much has changed but so much so that a speech given 90 years ago would be shocking today? Apparently.

There is little in Calvin Coolidge's 1921 speech at the Second Annual meeting of the American Classical League at the University of Pennsylvania that wouldn't create a stir today. The first surprise is undoubtedly the thought of a classicist politician in the 20th century. I must admit I am quite skeptical of, and generally concerned about the competence of, presidents without a classical education. The thought of making political judgments without having read Thucydides, moral judgments without having read Plato, and just plain thinking without having read Aristotle makes me wince. Magnify that concern by the authority vested, wisely or not, in the office of the president and you have an uneasy citizen. This is not to say a classical education is a prescription for virtue or ability. In my own life study of the classics has led primarily to gratitude, humility, conservation, and moderation, but it might just as easily lead one to hubris and grandiosity. That too might not be all for ill. The classically-trained Founding Fathers certainly took a big, liberal step. In either case though, one acts informed. Not to see the modern world in the light of the world from whence it came is quite simply not to see it. We may then safely say that a classical education is at least a prerequisite for prudence.

Returning to "Silent Cal," how surprising it is to see a politician so lovingly and earnestly speak about the classics.  More noteworthy is how forcefully he recommends.

For many centuries, in education, the classics have meant Greek and Latin literature. It does not need much argument to demonstrate that in the western world society can have little liberal culture which is not based on these. Without them there could be no interpretation of language and literature, no adequate comprehension of history, no understanding of the foundations of philosophy and law.

Coolidge is not at all at pains to speak of the necessity of the classics.

No question can be adequately comprehended without knowing its historical background. Modern civilization dates from Greece and Rome. The world was not new in their day. They were the inheritors of a civilization which-had gone before, but what they had inherited they recast, enlarged and intensified and made their own. . .

Here Coolidge is tying self-knowledge to learning and that's when we realize something unusual: he's talking about actual ideas. Not the flapping platitudes and political pablum we are used to, but actual ideas. Ideas worth exploring, I think, at least because it is hard to imagine any politician saying them today. Consider the following passage:

The present age has been marked by science and commercialism. In its primary purpose it reveals mankind undertaking to overcome their physical limitations. This is being accomplished by wonderful discoveries which have given the race dominion over new powers. The chief demand of all the world has seemed to be for new increases in these directions. There has been a great impatience with everything which did not appear to minister to this requirement.

Can you imagine any politician making such a defense of a liberal education? Defending "impractical" education? What about suggesting there is more to life than physical, material concerns? What about the following, a legitimate swipe at commercialism?

The age of science and commercialism is here. There is no sound reason for wishing it otherwise. The wise desire is not to destroy it, but to use it and direct it rather than to be used and directed by it, that it may be as it should be. not the master but the servant, that the physical forces may not prevail over the moral forces and that the rule of life may not be expediency but righteousness.

Now Coolidge doesn't deride commercialism but he does knock it down a few pegs, suggesting it is of less importance and moreover that it can be a danger, and still more that it can be a consuming danger. The phrase, "that it may be as it should be" would probably not go over well today. First, it is compact and requires one to unpack it and think on it. Second, it implies there is a natural order, that commercialism simply occupies a lower rung in the hierarchy of man's goods. "Expediency," that is, convenience, is not man's greatest need. Could George W. Bush, who told Americans after 9/11 to go out and shop, or President Obama, whose economic plan is spending for the sake of spending, have made these remarks?

Coolidge continues to make some genuinely conservative comments which would be alien and tendentious to current crop of "conservative" politicians.

It is impossible for society to break with its past. It is the product of all which has gone before. We could not cut ourselves off from all influences which existed prior to the Declaration of Independence and expect any success by undertaking to ignore all that happened before that date. The development of society is a gradual accomplishment. Culture is the product of a continuing effort. The education of the race is never accomplished. It must be gone over with each individual and it must continue from the beginning to the ending of life. Society cannot say it has attained culture and can therefore rest from its labors. All that it can say is that it has learned the method and process by which culture is secured and go on applying such method and process.

There can be no city on a hill, no new era or order or deal. Every society and every man has both an inheritance and a burden. No new plan will remedy all or forever rather it is the duty of each generation and each person to learn, do, and pass on. Culture and education are not objects to be acquired but processes. What a conservative and even elegant thought that puts to shame, to scandalous shame, the "spend more money on education" policy we endure today. How inestimably impoverished the latter! Coolidge continues on education.

Education is primarily a means of establishing ideals. Its first great duty is the formation of character, which is the result of heredity and training. This by no means excludes the desirability of an education in the utilities, but is a statement of what education must include if it meet with any success. It is not only because the classical method has been followed in our evolution of culture, but because the study of Greek and Latin is unsurpassed as a method of discipline. Their mastery requires an effort and an application which must be both intense and prolonged. They bring into action all the faculties of observation, understanding and reason. To become proficient in them is to become possessed of self control and of intelligence, which are the foundations of all character.

The first end of education is not fame and profit? No, but Coolidge does not dismiss the need of profit to support oneself. Again he simply rearranges the hierarchy: the first goal of education is to develop character. Working, then, becomes a subset of who you are, not all you are. Faculties then have two goals also, utility and self-control. Self-control, a virtue? Good heavens! Notice also how Coolidge has managed to make some significant claims here without actually waxing philosophical.

How unusual, too, for a politician ever to use the word culture. When was the last time one acknowledged the existence of culture, of looking at people through a lens not political or social per se, but for the whence and wherefore of their world.

Coolidge now asks a penetrating question, "How are we to justify the existing form of government in our Republic?" which he thusly answers, "The beginnings of modern democracy were in Athens and Sparta. That form of human relationship can neither be explained nor defended, except by reference to these examples and a restatement of the principles in which their government rested." What a far cry from the mindless endorsements of democracy without reference to any value which democracy is supposed to further. Speaking of the loss of those values,

Both of these nations speak to us eloquently of the progress they made so long as their citizens held to these ideals, and they admonish us with an eloquence even more convincing of the decay and ruin which comes to any people when it falls away from these ideals. There is no surer road to destruction than prosperity without character.

With this reference to character Coolidge has linked his political philosophy to his philosophy of education and the lynch pin to both of these is classics. Only a classical education can show you the ideas which justify or condemn. Only a classical education can give you the tools of self control and intelligence to form a character, and only a character can let you weather the suffering of poverty and the temptations of prosperity.

In the most conservative section of the speech Coolidge continues to tie together classical education, the individual, society, and culture:

We do not wish to be Greek, we do not wish to be Roman. We have a great desire to be supremely American. That purpose we know we can accomplish by continuing the process which has made us Americans. We must search out and think the thoughts of those who established our institutions. The education which made them must not be divorced from the education which is to make us. In our efforts to minister to man's material welfare we must not forget to minister to his spiritual welfare. It is not enough to teach men science, the great thing is to teach them how to use science.

Being American is not simply being born in America but too a process. Being American requires you to follow American ideals, in a nice turn of phrase, to "think the thoughts of those who established our institutions." Thus being American too is a process of education, and being conservative is a process of inheriting and passing on ideas. Coolidge concludes the paragraph by reducing yet another star of the modern world often seen as an end in itself, science, to its status as a tool.

Coolidge concludes with an exceptional exhortation:

Unless Americans shall continue to live in something more than the present, to be moved by something more than material gains, they will not be able to respond to these requirements and they will go down as other peoples have gone down before some nation possessed of a greater moral force. The will to endure is not the creation of a moment, it is the result of long training. 

The speech culminates in the idea that everything is a process, and thus that the "now" is never everything. Man must have transcending goals and transcendent values.

Finally, how does Coolidge propose to further the classics? A modern speech would conclude with the promise to have the government support their study, but Coolidge lets the burden rest on the people: "If they are to be maintained they will find their support in the institutions of the liberal arts." It is up to individuals, to "those who believe in America, in her language, her arts, her literature and in her science. . . to perpetuate them by perpetuating the education which has produced them."

This speech from then Vice President Coolidge would make a much-needed splash today. It reclaims the dignity of the individual by restoring character over its replacement, the ego. It makes culture and not politics the essence of living. It restores use to education by insisting on purpose. It reduces tools like science and values like materialism to their proper status and Coolidge weaves these values together with the thread of classics, the discipline that enlightens, scolds, warns, that discipline ever challenging, ever rewarding, ever necessary.

Thanksgiving, 2011

In this year's Thanksgiving list, thanks for inherited wisdom, some if it wrought from philosophical rigor and some culled from simple reflections on long lives. These are reflections not on the great philosophical problems but simply on living, and they are thoughts which grow ever dearer to your aging and still humble blogger. 

On Life and Living

The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline, but is, rather the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.
-Glenn Gould

There are those who have insisted that art is superfluous to life, and again those others who contend that life has no meaning without art. My view is that life is art, and that living is in fact the greatest and most difficult of arts.
-Yehudi Menuhin

Principio caelum ac terram camposque liquentis
lucentemque globum lunae Titaniaque astra
spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus
mens agitat molem et magno se corpore miscet.
-Vergil

O rus, quando ego te aspiciam! quandoque licebit
nunc veterum libris, nunc somno et inertibus horis,
ducere sollicitae iucunda oblivia vitae!
-Horace

Vita humana prope uti ferrum est. Si exerceas, conteritur; si non exerceas, tamen rubigo interficit. Itidem homines exercendo videmus conteri. Inertia atque torpedo plus detrimenti facit, quam exercito
-Marcus Portius Cato (The Elder)

Omnibus in rebus voluptatis maximis fastidium finitimum est.
-Cicero

Nescire autem quid ante qua natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. Quid enim est aetas hominis, nisi ea memoria rerum vetuerum cum superiorum aetate contexitur.
-Cicero

Do your duty–never mind whether you are shivering or warm sleeping on your feet or in your bed, hearing yourself slandered or praised, dying or doing something else. Yes, even dying is an act of life and should be done, like everything else, "to the best of your abilities."
-Marcus Aurelius

One should make a return to those with whom one has studied philosophy; for their worth cannot  be measured against money, and they can get no honor which will balance their services. . .
-Aristotle

The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.
-J. R. R. Tolkien

Movie Review: Immortals

Directed by Tarsem Singh. 2011.

Spoilers within!

But first, a vocabulary lesson brought to you by the letter I.

pas·tiche [pa-steesh, pah-]

1. a literary, musical, or artistic piece consisting wholly or chiefly of motifs or techniques borrowed from one or more sources.

2. an incongruous combination of materials, forms, motifs, etc., taken from different sources; hodgepodge.

Origin: 1700–10; < French < Italian, pasticcio

–

The question is, I suppose, how incongruous. The image to the right ought to suggest the cornucopia of styles and tropes Immortals constitutes. This is not a fault by nature, but the relentless similarities distract, startle, annoy, and eventually tire. Let us first just list the obvious relationships to recent movies or uses of modern trends:

1. the big wall/gate from The Two Towers
2. the population retreating to a more defensible location a la The Two Towers
3. the disfigured betrayer a la 300 & The Two Towers
4. "man must stand alone" a la The Two Towers
5. massive computer-generated armies a la Lord of the Rings
6. angry bad guy with limitless army, a la Hero or The Mummy Returns
7. animal helmets and scenes of gruesome violence a la torture-horror genre

These cliches and others make the film feel filled instead of rich. I would hazard the guess that the cliches result from the "If they liked it once they'll love it twice" mentality of producers. Worse, though, the similarities draw us into the present, a debilitating flaw for an aspiring epic of Greek mythology. 

And then there the general film tropes:

1. reluctant hero
2. destroyed village/murdered family a la Conan
3. wise tutor
4. pretty(!) love interest
5. maguffin
6. end of the world scenario

These cheap ploys are forgivable if the plot stitches them together with great skill. Does it? Sort of. The "hero quest" thread and the "finding his faith" thread sort of work. Maybe. Let us look at he hero quest.

At the start Theseus does not want to fight and refuses to join the local militia, yet he is apparently skilled in battle. Why might this be? Then his village and mother are killed. So he wants revenge. This makes sense, right? But his tutor counseled him in "living rightly." Does revenge seem quite so "right?" Even if we want to infer that the eye-for-an-eye treatment would be just, Theseus never says so. In fact he says he wants revenge. Maybe Theseus wants to defend others from this ruthless man? Well, contra the advice of his tutor, Theseus explicitly says he does not want to do this because they spurn him and his mother (his mother was raped and he is a bastard.) It is not like there is any subplot in which some villagers who once hated Theseus learn to respect him and Theseus learns to trust others. So when Theseus fights Hyperion at the end, he's only fighting for revenge as far as we can tell. Also, when Theseus rallies the troops at the end, spouting off a whole slew of values that they should fight for, we can only ask, "where  have these values been all along for?" He never mentions liberty or property or progeny or anything else before. Yes, these ideas are mentioned by Hyperion, but first, Theseus doesn't know that and second, Theseus still isn't living those values. So that's a big mess. I can't tell whether the missing sense is on the cutting room floor or whether the writers wrote themselves into a corner, but there it is. 

mess

Now let us look at the "finding the faith" thread. I admit this had great potential. You see, neither Theseus nor Hyperion believe in the gods. Theseus because he and his mother suffer and Hyperion because his family was killed by disease. Thus Hyperion wants to wipe out all life and Theseus. . . well that's where the similarity ends and the problems begin. You see Zeus announces that the gods cannot interfere in mortal affairs. Why? Who knows. Unfortunately we need some answer for the plot and we don't  get one. Thus even if the gods revealed themselves to Hyperion, do you think that he would be satisfied? Yes he might "find his faith" and then what? Hey you know what, maybe the writers could have thought of this. 

Now Theseus does find his faith. How? One of the gods flies down right in front of him and blasts someone to smithereens. Well it wouldn't take Demosthenes to convince him that the gods exist after that, would it? And then Zeus, after obliterating that god for violating Olympus' non-interference clause, promises it'll never happen again. How can he promise that? What's he going to do? Logically he can only promise that if it does happen again Zeus will be back to blast that guy too. So the gods won't interfere, just because they're not supposed to, but if they do Zeus'll blast them. Sounds great! I'll bet Theseus couldn't wait to get those offerings cracklin'.

"Just sign on the dotted line and then we won't simply not help you,

 but I'll personally dematerialize anyone who tries to do so."

Now just one more thing. Actually several more things. If the gods don't interfere, then why are they so secretive? Also, if they don't interfere, why pray to them? Why honor them? Just for thanks I suppose but thanks for what? Did they make man? In one Greek creation myth, yes, but this goes unmentioned in the film. This could not be inferred and had to be said. But if they're not going to do anything for you then you can't ask for help. And if they won't hurt you either, then there is no one to appease. So believing in them is basically just whatever you happen to believe as a creation myth and has no real bearing on anything. So Theseus doesn't find his faith so much as learn a history lesson. Translation: this thread is a mess too. 

A few miscellaneous problems:

1. Where did Hyperion's army come from? Who are these people? Who equipped them?
2. Where are all the Greeks? 
3. Where's that wall and why can't Hyperion go around it?
4. Why are the gods forbidden to interfere in man's affairs, but permitted to do so "indirectly?"
5. If he didn't believe in the gods, why is Hyperion so certain the Titans exist?
6. Why does everything have to look like Lord of the Rings?

I'm not going to discuss accuracy according to the myths, but a few points perturbed me:

1. Why is it set in 1200BC, the approximate time of the Trojan War?
2. Why can't they just call them "Hellenes" and the land "Hellas?"
3. Why does the oracle's gift transcend the place and function like a superpower?
4. Why did they have to call him Hyperion?
5. Why are gods dying?
6. Where's Zeus' thunderbolt?
7. Why are the Titans human-sized zombies?

Lastly, some of the minor characters aren't clearly introduced or differentiated on screen. Likewise the locations are often unclear. I would understand if someone were confused about either. 

So let me explain what I think happened. The producers of 300 wanted to cash in on its success. Clash of   the Titans came out afterwards, though, so they got Tarsem Singh to direct to make it look different from both Clash and 300. On the one hand they wanted big battles between armies and on the other they wanted superhero-style fighting. They couldn't re-create either 300 or Clash so they combined them.  Hence the hodgepodge. 

What do I like? I like the gods. I like how they look like slick and youthful as opposed to the old, regal, aristocratic look they used to sport. They've shaken off the prettified Victorian crust and lost those gentle Renaissance postures in exchange for vivacity and awesome, unpredictable force. They look like the upstarts who would have provoked the Titans and started a war with them. I like their brushed-gold armor, unique to each god. I like that they rule from atop Olympus, looking down and I like that their presence among the mortals feels out of the ordinary. John Hurt was splendid. I liked the Greek in the beginning dialogue.

There was potential in the theme of "immortality." Maybe Theseus wouldn't find his faith, but would attain immortality through fame for his good deeds whereas belief in the gods would dwindle because they did not act to do good. Right? Well. . . Theseus does find his faith (sort of, as we said) and does do good, and is remembered, but they make him a god anyway. Well that ruins, oh I don't know, the title, that's all. It's called Immortals not Divinities anyway, the becoming-a-god part is unnecessary. See how that Socrates quote really doesn't work here? And now as a god presumably he subject to the "no-interference" rule, no? 

Again, the gods looked good, the introduction set an appropriate tone, and there were ideas at play. Unfortunately the script was a mess and the visuals were surprisingly conventional except for one shot of Freida Pinto's derriere which in all of cinema is probably the shot with a keister covering the highest percentage of the frame. The stock bits by their nature weren't interesting enough to be noteworthy and simply carried out their utilitarian roles in the story. Oh, and Mickey Rourke was just plain annoying as Hyperion. He was always threatening people, grumbling, brooding, and adding awkward pauses to his speechifying. It seems fairly obvious Rourke was trying to do here what he thought he was prevented from doing with his character in Iron Man 2. He was also always crunching and fumbling with these strange food chips, though he never appeared to be eating them. I guess this was supposed to be a masculine gesture, though I'm not sure.

Overall, it's hard to call Immortals a success.


What Could Have Been

I usually resist the urge to correct movies and suggest how they might have better succeeded because I appreciate how difficult it is to envision the final product. In this case, though,
the script beyond a doubt was not sufficiently thought out. They committed the cardinal sins of not asking, "Why is the character doing this?" and "Why is this important?" Also, given the richness of the source material, such lack is particularly egregious. That being the case, I offer a few scenarios, not corrections of what was but rather different premises that would have made more sense of the action.

Set-up I:

1. Theseus is a disbeliever, but he tries to survive by himself.
2. Hyperion believes in the gods, but hates that they do not help him. He wants to release the Titans to punish them.

Theseus may or may not find his faith, but he achieves the "immortality" of being remembered for something, any kind of excellence (arete) would suffice. In contrast, the following lines of Zeus from Homer could have been put into the mouth of either Theseus' tutor or Zeus to characterize Hyperion's fatal flaw:

How foolish men are! How unjustly they blame the gods! It is their lot to suffer, but because of their own folly they bring upon themselves sufferings over and above what is fated for them. And then they blame the gods.

I would jettison the prefatory quote from Socrates which is somewhat ham-fisted and does not seem to complement the story. As it is used, are we to interpret that the reward for goodness is becoming a god? The idea of excellence (arete) is entirely more appropriate than Socrates' saying, which prompts a more philosophical discourse the film cannot accommodate without even more revision.

Set-up II:

1. Theseus is the man of piety.
2. Hyperion is a man of arrogance.

This situation could include the gods as major potential players in the affairs of men could take two directions. On the one hand it could tend toward a Job-esque trial for Theseus. On the other it could work in the myth of the ages of man and portray Theseus' age a secular one. Hyperion could be written as the logical, war-like result of this lack of religiosity and/or piety. Perhaps Theseus has to persuade the others to be pious or maybe his piety saves the day at the end. In the later case the film could conclude with the same image (of the Titanomachy, it's most original one) it does now, only here it would be significant.

Set-up III:

1. Hyperion hates that the gods interfere in the lives of men and wants to unleash the Titans to punish them.
2. Theseus tries to stop him.

This set-up could re-institute the notion that either Zeus or Prometheus created man and could thus explain Theseus' piety. This situation would have much potential for weaving in the myth of the ages of man and some of the actual Titans.

Conclusion

Immortals lacks the simplicity, novelty, and clarity of purpose that made 300 noteworthy. Too it lacks the charm of the original Clash of the Titans and the sword-and-sandals epics it succeeded. Lastly, it lacks the plot and structure to make any significant statement. Immortals opens with a very Hellenic feel but the tone soon dissipates. The action is competent but I had quickly seen my fill of computer-generated armies and slow-motion smack-downs. Overall, there is enough to keep you involved as you watch, but once you realize that things don't quite come together, Immortals is pretty flat.

Addendum

I looked at a few summaries after writing this review and they seem to suggest Hyperion intended to destroy the gods, in which case he obviously believed in them. I seem to remember him saying he didn't believe in them in the scene when he sets the priest on fire. I guess by "not believe in them" he meant that that they might as well not exist, but if that is so the scene was written and played all wrong. That said, other characters like Theseus and that idiotic political leader at the end clearly didn't believe in the gods: then why did they believe in the Titans? Who did they think put them there? What did they think Hyperion was doing? Who did they think made the bow, which they were pretty sure existed? 

Why did Hyperion think the bow would let him defeat all 12 Olympian gods, including Zeus himself? And the Titans too. (Or did he think the Titans would follow him? If so, why?) And all of mankind! The bow is pretty awesome but still it's just a bow. One guy had it for a minute and quickly got overwhelmed. Also, I'm pretty sure Zeus could sidestep an arrow. Also, if Hyperion thought the Titans would defeat the Olympians, then he must have thought the bow would let him rule the Titans. Well if the bow would let him rule the Titans and the Titans defeated the Olympians then why not just use the bow to defeat the Olympians? 

I admit, though, that if Hyperion were out to get the gods from the get-go then his character would make more sense. His actions, though, would as we just saw make less sense. It also makes his showdown with Theseus make less sense since Theseus is not really fighting for the gods but for revenge. Even after some gods appear to him, why would Theseus fight for them if they neither created him nor would help him? 

There was also mention of Hyperion wanting to pass on his image and to do this he was sterilizing the men. What? What is this? What's going on? Just looking at various summaries and even the different trailers (which try to have it both ways), it's pretty clear no one knows what's going on here and I'm done trying to figure it out. 

Ancient Music: Euripides' Orestes

The Remorse of Orestes, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Euripides' Orestes (Ορέστης) was produced in 408BC, 50 years after Aeschylus' Orestia and its topsy turvy plot takes place between the Libation Bearers (Χοηφόροι, Choēphoroi) and the Eumenides (Εὐμενίδες.) Here Orestes, son of King Agamemnon, has just wrought vengeance on the murderer of his father. Yet it was his own mother, Clytmnestra, who killed the king and now the Furies pursue Orestes, driving him mad for the matricide.

Yet it is not solely for the great and terrible saga of the house of Atreus or the dramatic and political dimensions of Orestes that the play is important. In 1892 papyri of the play dating to the 3rd  century were discovered at Hermopolis, and one of the scraps contained  musical notation. The papyrus is damaged and incomplete and whether the music is truly by the hand of Euripides is not entirely certain. Still, the fragment is a fascinating and revealing glimpse at ancient music and [musical]-theater for while we know the Greek culture was highly musical, precious little written music survives.

Bearing in mind our significant lacunae in understanding the Greek modes with any precision, the Lydian mode, in which this music was written, was said by Aristotle to produce "a moderate and settled temper" (Politics, III.5, 1340b) and Plato described the "mixed" and "tense" (συντονο-) Lydian modes as "dirgelike" (Republic, III.398e) and the Lydian as "soft" (μαλακαί) and even "for drinking-songs" (συμποτικαὶ) and "loose" (χαλαραὶ.) Writing what perhaps seems most appropriate for this piece, Cassiodorus wrote that the Lydian "is a remedy for fatigue of the soul, and similarly for that of the body." (PL, LXIX, 571C)

The voices were possibly but not certainly accompanied by a kithara and an aulos, which were often used to accompany solo lyrics in competitions and festivals. The monophony of the piece emphasizes its chant-like quality.

The meter is the very variable dochmiac verse, used mostly in tragedy and for moments of great joy or grief. Scansion and transliteration of the first four lines follows, (u = short & – = long.)

N.B. The 1892 papyrus orders the lines differently than other manuscripts, so please note the line numbers.

uuu–u–/uuu–u– (341) ka-to-lo-phy-ro-mai / ka-to-lo-phy-ro-mai

–uu–u–/uuu–u– (339) ma-ter-os hai-ma sas /  ho s’a-na-bac-cheu-ei

uuu–u–/–uu–u– (340) ho me-gas ol-bos ou / mo-ni-mos en bro-tois

uuu–u– (341) a-na de lai-phos hos

ματέρος αἷμα σᾶς, ὅ σ᾽ ἀναβακχεύει;

ὁ μέγας ὄλβος οὐ μόνιμος ἐν βροτοῖς: 340

κατολοφύρομαι κατολοφύρομαι.

ἀνὰ δὲ λαῖφος ὥς

τις ἀκάτου θοᾶς τινάξας δαίμων

κατέκλυσεν δεινῶν πόνων ὡς πόντου

λάβροις ὀλεθρίοισιν ἐν κύμασιν.

Complete translation and transliteration of the text: [Link]

Within this ancient play we have a moment of the sacred, with music amplifying the emotion of the scene and the larger drama. The tonality, meter, and text all produce a haunting moment in which the Argive women plead for the tortured son of the slain king:

D. F. Tovey

Sir Donald Francis Tovey (17 July 1875 – 10 July 1940)

Still over 135 years after his birth, few, if any, have written about music with as much love, sagacity, and good humor as Donald Francis Tovey. His modestly titled "Essays in Musical Analysis" is in fact a six-volume collection of his program notes for the concerts under his baton at the Reid Orchestra in Edinburgh. Since publication in the thirties they have become the model for concert notes aiming to do what they ought to: prepare as quickly as possible anyone who picks them up to appreciate the piece. With them Tovey aimed not to "vex with grammatical minutiae" but rather be "counsel for the defence," to tell you what a work is trying to do and suggest it is successful enough that you ought to keep your seat.

Their author suggested they don't make for good continuous reading and he's probably right, but they are fine preludes to any pieces Tovey deigned to comment on. I say deigned for these notes brim with his character. First, the reflections themselves bear out his taste, a taste moved by Schubertian songfulness as Bachian contrapuntal density. In his mind and character there was room for the Olympian and the urban and throughout these notes one sees as much love for a spiky chord of Beethoven as a chattery piece of Mozart. On the one hand we have sober appraisals like, "The vulgar popular author often does not know that literature and art contain higher thoughts than his own" and on the other, old world parables: "the centipede whose inspiration was paralyzed by a malicious snail, who asked him which leg he put down first."

Tovey's love and reverence for this music is today sometimes seen as uncritical. Arthur Hutchings, whose admiration and reverence for Tovey is clear from his own notes, hit the correct note when he said that to Tovey, to mention weakness in one of the classics was to be "perky."  What a compliment. Should you find a misplaced phrase, a clunky line, thin plots, cheats, or stock bits, do make note and, in the fashion of a good gentleman scholar, enjoy the rest. Must one comment on such trifles? What will doing so teach about, say, Mozart? Yet Tovey's softness is overstated. He can call a phrase trivial, point out (often contra common suppositions) who owes what to whom, and so forth. Yet there is a disposition rooted as much in classical education as humane perspicacity and cultivated by years of pruning away thorny habits from a genteel deportment, that yields a pious, and grateful, temperament. By all means criticize this phrase from Beethoven, or Shakespeare for that matter, but to remember their successes is to see how small the imperfections.

We mentioned a "classical education" and seldom have the joys which spring from it and only it been on fuller display. What else would have permitted analogies between the 18th century Viennese music and Aristophanes, be it likening the croaking chorus of the Frogs to a phrase from Mozart or seeing in Haydn's treatment of a theme the debt-ridden, sleepless Strepsiades: I'm being bitten through the bed clothes by a b-b-b-b-b-bailiff.

Deficiency would mark this essay if we passed over Tovey's charming turns of phrase, turns Wikipedia impenetrably refers to as "Humpty-Dumptyish." Regardless, if saying that, "Haydn never produced a more exquisitely bred kitten" doesn't crack you a smile, then perhaps Papa H. isn't for you in the first place.

Humor aside, the essays brim with scholarship and for their variety demonstrate a surprising interconnectedness. Yes, Tovey can speak about the "Beethovenian sonata" because he has in fact been through every bar of every Beethoven sonata but it is not so much overt research and arguments that come through, or even his lively literary characterizations of the musical gestures but the, often rather oblique, discussions of style. This phrase or development is very Mozartian insofar as. . .  Such and such could never have written this. . . Whose style anticipates whose, who had whose procedures in mind, whose subject resembles whose, who perfected his use of the orchestral ritornello. . . Nearly every essay is littered with throwaway observations and comparisons. Observations and comparisons which could only be made by someone who spent a lifetime studying, playing, and loving music. Many such observations could be turned into volumes of their own and the dutiful student will be rewarded by pulling out scores and following Tovey's prompts to follow up a discussion. 

So cast aside the flashy irreverence of modern criticism and the gobbledygook of contemporary scholarship. Too cast aside Tovey's own modesty about these enlivening and invaluable volumes and seek them out. Born before the premier of Parsifal, Tovey was of the musical tradition he wrote about. For someone who heard Joachim himself play those famous cadenzas to the Beethoven Violin Concerto Tovey is more approachable, more near to us, than we could ever expect. He bridges the world between the living culture of classical music and today. We may only look back at, but he would be happy, delighted, to introduce you to the "elaborate mystifications" of Carnaval and the "eternal laughter of Mozart," though you'll make a few stops, and jokes, along the way.

Some Classic Tovey

On Mozart's Piano Concerto in B-flat, KV.450

The raillery is continued even more quizzically. But soon Mozart, though refusing to leave the tonic chord, plunges into the usual forte theme which comes to the usual half-close. Then, thinks the usual theorist, we have the usual second subject. But, as we have seen before, it is impossible to tell which, if any, of the themes of a Mozart tutti is going to belong to the second group. Another tutti theme, beginning with a conspirator's crescendo, leads to the cadence-figure of the whole ritornello. On the state this would imply a ribald gesture addressed to deluded husbands. See Figaro, Act IV, No. 26 'gia ognuno lo sa'.

On Verdi's Requiem

The language of the theater was Verdi's only musical idiom; and our musical culture, resting secure on its foundation on Bach and Beethoven, can derive nothing but good from realizing that to object to the theatricality of Verdi's Requiem is about as profane to point out that Beethoven lacked the advantages of a university education.

On Haydn's The Creation

Asbestos is not in common use as material for writing or printing, and so I cannot express my opinion of the cuts sanctioned by tradition in performances of Haydn's Creation.

 On Bach's Jesu, Meine Freude

The ninth movement, the fifth verse of the chorale, is oneo f Bach's great choral variations; not, this time, in the free declamatory style that so effectually disguises the structure of hte third verse, but in a stupendously complete and clea rform which only Bach has achieved, though his examples of it are so numerous that they are believed to be normal specimens of academic music. (The first chorus of the Matthew Passion is one.) The essence of this form is that, while one voice or part sings the chorale phrase by phrase, with pauses so long between each as to stretch the whole out to the length of a long movement, the other parts execute a complete design which may or may not have some connexion with the melody of a chorale, but which in any case would remain a perfectly solid whole if the chorale were taken away. . . we may confidently say that before Bach it was hardly known, and that it has never been attempted since. 

Cato on Education

Reflecting this past Father's Day on the thought of the Roman poet Statius on his son and fatherhood I shortly thereafter came upon yet another discussion of national standards for education. Already with one great Roman in mind my mind drifted to another and his thoughts on education. These too center on fatherhood and family life. Let us consider them in brief, as reported by Plutarch*:

When he began to come to years of discretion, Cato himself would teach him to read, although he had a servant, a very good grammarian, called Chilo, who taught many others; but he thought it not fit, as he himself said, to have his son reprimanded by a slave, or pulled, it may be, by the ears when found tardy in his lesson: nor would he have him owe to a servant the obligation of so great a thing as his learning; he himself, therefore (as we were saying), taught him his grammar, law, and his gymnastic exercises. Nor did he only show him, too, how to throw a dart, to fight in armour, and to ride, but to box and also to endure both heat and cold, and to swim over the most rapid and rough rivers. He says, likewise, that he wrote histories, in large characters, with his own hand, that so his son, without stirring out of the house, might learn to know about his countrymen and forefathers. . .

–Life of Marcus Cato, Plutarch

Though this cultivation of, "the old habits of bodily labour" as Plutarch calls them elsewhere, will strike us as unusual for one reason, I hope the thrust of the passage would not strike us as odd at all: that it was important for Cato that he teach his own son. Well why wouldn't he? Why would you contract out something like learning and let someone else decide what, how, and for how long your son should study? Though we will address these points separately, we ought to emphasize that the education was private and at the parent's discretion. His son's education was ultimately his responsibility and he had the authority to determine what it ought to be. Could you imagine Cato submitting to a governmental "mandate" that he hand his son over to a state-run educational system in which the curriculum, location, methods of instruction, and evaluation were determined by distant panels of phds?

Considering the curriculum, Cato was famously skeptical of "Greek education," so he chose a more physical routine for his son. He was also concerned that his son understand and take part in the affairs of the republic so he learned of the law. In contrast the general and contemporary of Cato, Aemilius Paulus, was far more persuaded in the value of Greek education. (Yet though he hired expert tutors Paulus closely saw to his children's education. See Plutarch, life of Aemilius Paulus.) These men were passing on the traditions of their family and their own education to their children, choosing what they thought was best of what came before them. Cato would teach his son about Greek literature, but he might want to attach a warning to it. These men had a particular vision of Rome, Romans, life, and man that influenced, and in effect was expressed by, what they thought constituted a proper education.

How might Cato want to teach his son? With recitation, dictation, or some other emphasis? Does he care how long it takes him to do the work, does it matter that it takes his son forty-five instead of thirty minutes? Maybe he wants to teach one thing sooner rather than later. No one came knocking on Cato's door because he was teaching fractions in second grade instead of third. (Had they, they wouldn't have gotten very far.) Recalling again some recent effort at educational standardization I recall the architects of the plan left room for states to develop their own social studies curricula. This isolated moment of perspicacity of course begs a question: why stop there? Are children only different insofar as they live in different states?

Of course these questions all center around the purpose of education but beneath this question is a more profound one: what is the good for man? For to ask what a man must know is to ask what he ought to do and be. This, of course, ought to be left to the individual and, in the case of children, the discretion of parents. In his quartet of essays on education published together in the volume, To Criticize the Critic, T. S. Eliot wrote,

In so far as a system of education is something shaped by the conscious aims of a few men. . . there is always the grave danger of borrowing or imposing something which does not fit the ethos, the way of life, the habits of thought and feeling of that people.

The backlash against this view is easy to foresee and has merit Some will complain that children will be taught badly or be taught untruthful things. Others that not all parents are capable of teaching their children for whatever reason. These are wise concerns. Equally, though, we must beware of using the powerful, dangerous, and unwieldy tool of the state to correct problems. Any action by the state implies the sanction of its members who delegated their power. Earlier we asked what the purpose of education was and it seems safe to say it is not agreed upon. How can the state, then, act on education? How can it avoid acting for a particular interest?

The present crises of education are not trivial to solve and cannot be fixed by a few swift strokes of the state. No sudden influx of money, teachers, or resources will solve all problems. What is needed is a culture, i.e. a world of ideas and traditions, held by individuals and shared and discussed with others. Only this can point to what and education ought to do and thus what it ought to be. These ideas emerge in living and doing and it is in living and doing that the character of an individual and a people are formed. They are passed on not from president or secretary of education to citizen but from person to person, friend to friend, parent to child. They are known by reputation, not certification.

Cato's lesson is not so much that one must teach his children, although such is admirable and beneficial to all. It is seldom possible wholly to achieve though it may be far more easily done in degrees and by judicious prioritization of one's values. The lesson of Cato is to inherit, live, and pass on an idea of his family, country, world, and man himself to his children, and as much as possible to take a direct, personal care to do so. To see one's self both in place and time, and passing through. To see in education one's inheritance, oneself, and beyond. Lastly, to take a personal, direct care for these things.

–

* Translations by Dryden. The Modern Library Edition of Plutarch's Lives. New York. Reprint of Clough's edition of 1864.