Jane Jacobs

'Constraints on materials, styles, heights, and sizes, rather than on functions; recognition of the street as the primary public space, and of pedestrians as the primary users of it; preservation of façades and street frontages, while facilitating change of use behind them: all such remedies, which are slowly emerging (for example in the renewal of Baltimore and other damaged American cities) and which have been powerfully advocated and illustrated by Leon Krier at Poundbury and by the New Urbanists in Italy and America – all owe an incalculable debt to Jane Jacobs.

But they also illustrate the way in which her own preference for "spontaneity" over "planning" cannot, in the end, be sustained. It is not planning that has destroyed the American city, but the wrong kind of planning directed towards the wrong kind of things.'

Roger Scruton
Jane Jacobs (1916-2006): cities for life

 

Why I Hate Modernism: The Tragedy of St. Stephen Walbrook

Three years ago, I vacationed in London for two weeks: I traveled solo, and so was able to indulge my own interests and eccentricities. One such interest was a desire to see as many of Christopher Wren's City Churches as possible. On my first visit to London, I had been in awe of the sublime beauty of St. Paul's Cathedral, and so returning years later, I wanted to see whether Wren had sustained that vision in less exalted circumstances, the design of several parish churches. 

I was not disappointed: Wren's English Baroque style is impressive on both small and grand scales. Of the many Wren churches I visited, my favorite was St. Lawrence Jewry, (the previous church had stood near the London Jewish Ghetto). Incidentally, the Church was playing host to a fine group of classical musicians when I visited, an encouraging sign. Many of the London Anglican churches hosted lunchtime or afternoon concerts.

When I visted St. Mary Abchurch, a very kind, elderly gentleman escorted me throughout the church, leading me up to the organ loft and allowing me to mount the exquisitely carved high pulpit. He was extremely knowledgeable, and had a great deal of historical and architectural lore to share. He told me that he 'motored' in from the suburbs every week, so that the church could be opened on weekdays for the visiting tourists. (During my own visit, a half-hour at least, not another tourist was to be seen. St. Mary Abchurch is one of the lesser lights in the Wren repertoire.) He'd gotten friendly with the parson a few years ago, and he had a key, and he thought it very important that such a significant building should be open. When I prepared to leave, I asked him if this was his parish church, did he come in on Sundays for service? 'No,' the old man said, 'I'm an atheist. I don't attend church.' 

The very same day I met my kindly atheist-guide, I visited several other Wren churches, including St. Stephen Walbrook.  I will not attempt to describe the revulsion I felt when confronted with the monstrosity depicted below. That very day, I became the implacable enemy of modernism and of all men who would, by subterfuge and in the teeth of a horrified opposition,  intrude their own inferior talents into a masterpiece.

That detestable object in the center of the Church is rumored to be an altar.

Christopher Alexander and the Timeless Way of Building

I'm currently reading Christopher Alexander's The Timeless Way  of Building and acquainting myself with the remarkable ideas of this very interesting thinker.

His magnum opus is his recently completed, four-volume Nature of Order, where he attempts to craft a synthesis of the various strains of knowledge that inform his own thinking: philosophical, scientific, religious, and of course, architectural. As soon as I finish Timeless Way, I'll write up my own thoughts, but for the present, here are some links to whet your appetite:

Christopher Alexander: A Biography

Christopher Alexander's website, A Pattern Language

The text of a debate between modernist Peter Eisenman and Christopher Alexander

James Kalb on Alexander 

Interview with Alexander's friend and collaborator Nikos Salingaros  

(Inner garden of the Julian Street Inn, Shelter for the Homeless,
San Jose, California)

The Art of Loafing

"From the Chinese point of view, the man who is wisely idle is the most cultured man. For there seems to be a philosophic contradiction between being busy and being wise. Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise. The wisest man is therefore he who loafs most gracefully."

--- Lin Yutang "The Importance of Living" 

The Beauty of Order

"To live within a just order is to live within a pattern that has beauty. The individual finds purpose within an order, and security - whether it is the order of the soul or the order of the community. Without order, indeed the life of man is poor, nasty, brutish, and short." 

--- Russell Kirk

Highlights of the Metropolitan Opera's 2009-2010 Season

The 2009-10 season at the Metropolitan Opera promises great things.

After a hiatus, the Met is again performing a German-language version of The Magic Flute, re-using Julie Taymor's production. I've only seen the production on the computer screen, but what I saw impressed me. The Magic Flute, with its improbably fantastic plot and its ethereal music, offers the gifted producer an opportunity to explore new scenic possibilities and remain faithful to the letter and spirit of Emanuel Schikaneder's libretto.

In a similarly whimsical but eminently musical vein, the Met offers again its English-language production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel. 


Last year's production was my first time hearing and seeing Humperdinck's minor masterpiece, and I was pleasantly surprised by the real musical virtues of this fairy tale opera. I was, however, non-plussed by the production; it certainly compares unfavorably with Taymor's Magic Flute. 

Exaggeratedly grotesque, the production lacks the essential faerie quality that inspires Humperdinck's lyrical music. All in all, it seemed a missed opportunity to create a production as stunning and faithfully original as Taymor's Magic Flute. The Met also intends to reprise what I deemed a serious artistic mistake: the use of a tenor, rather than a soprano, for the role of the Witch. Philip Langridge, an otherwise talented singer, seemed uncomfortable in the role. And if the Met intended the production as child- and family-friendly, the mistake seems all the more unfortunate.

Despite these reservations, I cannot recommend the opera itself highly enough. It's too easy to assume a haughty attitude to works as whimsical as Humperdinck's fairy tale, but it would be a serious mistake to do so. 

The Met is also staging Richard Wagner's Der Fliegende Hollander, with Deborah Voigt singing the role of Senta. The first of Wagner's operas to lodge itself in the canon, Der Fliegende Hollander is famously difficult to stage, so I look forward to seeing how the Met's creative team resolves the difficulties. With Voigt at the helm, we can confidently expect a stunning musical performance.

The last production I'd like to highlight is the Met staging of Leos Janacek's From the House of the Dead. I've never heard the opera, but in preparation for hearing it at the Met, I've ordered a copy from the New York Public Library. I am cautiously pessimistic about the production itself, if only because it is the work of the iconoclast Patrice Chereau, designer of the infamous Bayreuth Ring cycle of 1976. 

Janacek is a favorite of my favorite contemporary philosopher, Roger Scruton, and so I anticipate hearing something quite marvelous.

Dvorak and the Stabat Mater

The next two weeks in the liturgical calendar contain feasts common both to East and West: the Nativity of the Virgin Mary on the 8th and the Exaltation of the Cross on the 14th, but the day following Holy Cross Day, the 15th, commemorates the Sorrows of the Virgin Mary, a feast peculiar to the Catholic Church. 

The Tridentine rite of the Catholic Church, now commonly known as the Extraordinary form of the Roman Mass, contains a variable part known as the Sequence: largely disused and abandoned in the modern rite, the Sequence was a poetic hymn inserted between the reading of the Epistle and the Gospel. Perhaps the most famous Sequence is the Dies Irae, one of the signature elements of the Requiem Mass: Mozart and Verdi, inter alia, composed justly famous versions.


The Sequence for the the feast of the Seven Sorrows (Sept. 15th) is Jacopone da Todi's Stabat Mater. Like the Dies Irae, the Stabat Mater is a fine example of medieval Latin poetry. The Sequence, as a portion of the Mass, had both a didactic and devotional purpose: its ejection (or attempted ejection) from the modern rite is one of only many flaws in the contemporary Roman liturgy. 


As a devotional hymn, the Stabat Mater is surely meant to evoke an attitude of contrition in the listener: the poetry itself pictures the distressed Mother of God witnessing the agonies of her son's death. This kind of dramatic imagery' was doubtless intended to summon similar feelings 

The Flemish Josquin des Prez and the Italian Palestrina both wrote polyphonic versions of the Stabat Mater, but my personal favorite is Antonin Dvorak's, the Czech composer of the late 19th century. Composed after the unsettling deaths of two of his children, the work is suffused with an intense feeling of fellow suffering, the subject matter by no means remote to the grief-stricken father and family man. 


The extract below, Quando Corpus Morietur, is the last stanza of the Stabat Mater:

Quando corpus morietur,
Fac, ut animæ donetur
Paradisi Gloria.
Amen

When my body dies
Grant that to my soul is given
The glory of paradise.
Amen

I'd urge the would-be listener to acquire another version, if possible, of this fine piece: the above example is insufficient to the task. And if Dvorak's Stabat Mater piques your interest, do listen to his unfortunately little known Requiem.

The Way We Live: The Architecture of Community

Newman on the Gentleman

"It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature: like an easy chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat without them. The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast; — all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make every one at their ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation, and never wearisome. He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort, he has no ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to those who interfere with him, and interprets every thing for the best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a long-sighted prudence, he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend. He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical principles; he submits to pain, because it is inevitable, to bereavement, because it is irreparable, and to death, because it is his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind, his disciplined intellect preserves him from the blunder."

--- The Idea of a University

The Four Arts of the Chinese Literatus

The title of the blog, Apologia pro Literati Vita, has two sources. One is Cardinal Newman's memoirs, Apologia pro Vita Sua; I merely subtracted the pronoun and added the genitive form of literatus, the word generally used to describe the Chinese gentry scholar. Cultivating the virtues and arts of the literatus, the rediscovery of leisure, and the role, attitude and responsibility of the gentlemen towards his cultural patrimony are precepts inspired by my reading in Chinese philosophy, though the essential elements are no less present in the ancient Western philosophers.

The Chinese literatus was trained from childhood in the Chinese classics, the Confucian Analects, Mencius, The Doctrine of the Mean, the Taoist scriptures, particularly the Tao Te Ching and the works of Chuang Tzu, and the more catholic-minded, studied the Ch'an Buddhist scriptures. But above all, it was the works of Confucius and his followers that pre-occupied the minds of Song, Ming, and Q'ing literati. Men, young and old, read and re-read the Confucian classics in the hopes of obtaining the coveted jinshi degree. It was not uncommon for men in middle-age to devote their time and energy to obtaining the degree, perhaps studying with young sons or kinsmen who, half their age, also hoped to pass the Imperial exams.

If the Chinese literatus passed the exam, he could hope for a governmental job that would provide a lucrative income for his family. And when the literatus had successfully secured himself and his family an income and property and after he discharged his duties, he devoted himself to the art of leisure.

“Happiness is thought to depend on leisure, for we are busy so that we may have leisure, as we make war so that we may have peace," writes Aristotle in his Nichomachean Ethics. Leisure is the prerequisite for philosophy: the search for wisdom requires freedom, a freedom that can only come when one's own basic needs, for shelter or food, are satisfied.

The Chinese literatus, by virtue of his governmental provision, enjoyed a life of comfort and ease: his material wants were amply provided for and he enjoyed the respect of his colleagues and inferiors. He maintained this respect by a constant cultivation of the scholarly arts. He discharged his own official duties; he continued his study of the philosophical and religious classics of ancient China; he provided for his own sons' educations, and he practiced the Four Arts:

The Playing of the Guqin

Calligraphy

Playing Go

Painting

I hope in the future to enlarge on the theme of 'leisure', what I mean by the word, and its role in the most important cultural developments: philosophy, art, religion, literature. What's important about the Chinese literati tradition is the presence of a canon of philosophy and of artistic technique. Contrary to the Modernist sturm und drang, tradition does not mean cliches and kitsch. One need only study the history of Chinese landscape painting to see the work of millenia being distilled to a purer and higher degree, through a conscious use and adaptation of traditional techniques and through individual innovation. At present, there is no class in contemporary society trained in a widely accepted canon of philosophy or artistic technique.  T.S. Eliot, in his classic Christianity and Culture, writes:

"You cannot expect continuity and coherence in literature and the arts, unless you have a certain uniformity of culture, expressed in education by a settled, though not rigid agreement as to what everyone should know to some degree, and a positive distinction--however undemocratic it may sound--between the educated and the uneducated. I observed in America, that with a very high level of intelligence among undergraduates, progress was impeded by the fact that one could never assume that any two, unless they had been at the same school ... had studied the same subjects or read the same books, though the number of subjects in which they had been instructed was surprising ... In a negative liberal society you have no agreement as to there being any body of knowledge which any educated person should have acquired at any particular stage: the idea of wisdom disappears, and you get sporadic and unrelated experimentation."

Would that we had a class of individuals, educated to an exemplary degree, trained in music and the arts, philosophical in outlook. It seems impossible to imagine a happy future without some such class coming into its own. What will the modern American literatus look and what will his Four Arts be?