Areopagus Volume LVI

Welcome one and all to the fifty sixth instalment of the Areopagus. I don't suppose there's a better way to begin this week's newsletter than by sharing with you this photograph, sent to me by Alex K and taken on a one hundred year old camera, of the Areopagus itself — that famed rock from which the Athenian Council once gave its judgments and upon which the Apostle Paul gave a sermon centuries later; you can also see the Acropolis beyond.

I should also mention, by way of news, that I have started an Instagram account. Feel free to follow me there, should you be a user of this application. Otherwise, and with our prelude concluded, time to lift the curtain and let the main event commence. Lights! Camera! Action!

I - Classical Music

Gnossiennes 1-6

Erik Satie (1890-1893)

Performed by Klára Körmendi
​Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte (1877)

If you are familiar with Erik Satie's Gnossiennes then you perhaps know when they were written — if not, have a guess. It seems to me that few pieces of music evoke their era so well, both stylistically and atmospherically, as the six Gnossiennes written by Erik Satie in the early 1890s. The strangeness of these short piano pieces (which make up the bulk of Satie's work) is not accidental: it was by embracing experimental new techniques that Satie achieved his distinctive, altogether dreamlike musical language. By simplifying, slowing, and ultimately liberating music from many of the rules that had previously governed it, Satie was able to enter a new world of sound and feeling, each of which feeds into the other: his curiously timed, atonal, inconclusive chords evoke solitude, melancholy, discomfort, and peace... all at once. He even dispensed with time signatures and bar lines altogether; the Gnossiennes are supposed to played intuitively, hence their distinctive roaming quality. You may not be surprised to learn that he was a friend and influence on the likes of Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.

Rarely has there been a composer whose life corresponds so closely to his music. Satie studied at the Paris Conservatoire as a young man and there proved to be a profoundly ordinary, if not rather lazy, student. He was neither of the prodigiously talented nor scandalously truculent sort which so many famous composers once were. Put simply, he didn't much like the place and his teachers didn't much like him. So Satie left the Conservatoire in 1886 and after a brief, unhappy spell in the military, moved back to Paris and worked as a pianist in the cafés and cabarets of Montmartre. It was then, living the penniless life typical of those many bohemians who haunted Paris at that time, that Satie wrote his Gnossiennes. It is a name with no agreed meaning, but Satie rather liked inexplicable and absurd titles — Sketches and Exasperations of a Big Wooden Dummy is one of many examples.

Satie never married and he lived alone in Montmartre until his death at the age of 59, in 1925, at which point he had become a successful and respected composer. He was fascinated by Esotericism and Gnosticism, both of them quasi-religious mystical movements, and paired these various fascinations with rather dandyish changes to his outward appearance: from dressing as a priest in the 1890s to seven identical grey velvet suits (which he wore for a decade) and then, finally, as he is now remembered, with his bowler hat and umbrella. Some of his other eccentricities beggar belief: he founded a new Christian denomination of which he was the only member, ate omelettes made from thirty eggs, and never once let a single person enter his tiny, squalid apartment.

So Satie was a visionary, bizarre, and chameleonic character, floating through Paris in those wonderful and fateful years at the close of the 19th and opening of the 20th centuries. And I dare say in his Gnossiennes we can clearly imagine the strange, sensitive Satie wandering through Paris on some rainy afternoon... By way of conclusion I shall add that, though the Gymnopédies and Gnossiennes are Satie's most famous works, my favourite is Ogives, inspired by Medieval plainchant and the pointed arches of the Notre Dame.

II - Historical Figures

The Crusader and the Pilgrim

I have argued before in these ever-growing annals of the Areopagus that the best way to understand history is not by reading modern books about people who lived in the past but by looking at what they said about themselves, whether in writing or art. Here, then, I offer a brief glimpse into the lives of two people who lived about nine hundred years ago. They were each involved in the First Crusade, which started in 1095 and concluded in 1099 with the European conquest of Jerusalem, though its ramifications continued long afterward. Each of them wrote letters which offer a contemporary vignette of life at the turn of the 11th century, from different sides of the same conflict and in different parts of the world.

We begin with a French nobleman and knight called Nivello of Fréteval, who after Pope Urban II's call to arms has decided to embark upon this armed pilgrimage eastwards. Here he explains why, and what he hopes to achieve, along with a remarkable confession of his sins:

Now we hear from an unnamed Jewish pilgrim stranded in Egypt in the year 1100, who has been prevented from reaching Jerusalem because of the fallout from the First Crusade. Here he is writing home, perhaps to Spain, to explain the situation in which he finds himself, and provides a gripping first-hand account of somebody living through — and trying to get on with life during — those turbulent times:

I suspect these two brief excerpts will tell you more about the First Crusade than any number of books about the subject — or, at least, tell you something different. One needs more than this, of course, to fully understand that strange and monumental event, and I am certainly not suggesting that we take each writer at face value. Not every crusader had the apparent piety and remorse of Nivello, one might suspect, and not every pilgrim had a thorough grasp of geopolitics.

But, as a starting point, and as a way of humanising history, I can think of no better place to start. There are many conclusions we might draw from these letters, political and religious and personal and more, but all of that I shall leave to you. For now I only hope that these two documents, ordinary in some sense but extraordinary in others, might help to transform history from a distant and rather abstract concept into something far more concrete and immediate. These were people, just like you or I, and just as they lived through their times — which happened to be the First Crusade, as recorded in their correspondence — you and I are living through our times, as recorded in our own texts, phonecalls, and emails. History is always happening.

Both of these letters — and much more — can be found in a book published by Penguin called Chronicles of the First Crusade, edited and introduced by Christopher Tyerman; it is a wonderful selection of first-hand, contemporary accounts. For anybody who wishes to learn more about the First Crusade I thoroughly recommend it.

III - Painting

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

Georges Seurat (1886)

We return to Paris for another experimental work of art, one created only a few years before Satie wrote his mysterious Gnossiennes. This is a very famous painting, but if you have not seen it before then I shall be delighted to introduce you. And, even if you have, I hope to offer a new and potentially surprising way of looking at it.

In the 1870s the Impressionists, led by Claude Monet, burst onto the French artistic scene. Rather than painting classical themes in studios according to the principles of the Renaissance, as they had been taught in the Academy, the Impressionists took art outside. There they painted the world as they actually saw it, with all the changing light, fog, shadow, blur, and movement of real life, rather than how they were "supposed" to see it. And, instead of the grand themes of Academic art, they painted scenes from ordinary life. This was controversial enough (indeed, the term "Impressionism" was originally used as a pejorative term by the critic who invented it!) but in the 1880s a young man called Georges Seurat went even further. He was fascinated by new theories about light and colour. So, rather than adopting the Impressionist method of painting reality as it truly looked, he tried to paint reality as it existed according to science.

Rather than mixing pigments, as had been done since time immemorial, Seurat separated his images into thousands of points of pure, unmixed colour, which the human eye would then blend together. He spent two years working on the first masterpiece of this radical new style: A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. Upon its completion in 1886 the critics and the public were divided — this curious young Seurat had produced something entirely new. Some called his work stiff, formal, meaningless, needlessly strange, and too intellectual; others hailed it as an artistic revelation.

This style was called Pointillism in reference to... well, its many points of colour. Rather than the blurred brush-strokes of Impressionism, here we have a canvas of carefully calculated, uniformly-sized dots. Hence the strange, vibrating solidity of Pointillist art. Seurat, as he understood new theories about light and colour, believed that a greater luminosity could be achieved by contrasting pure pigments rather than mixing them together. Others soon followed, including Paul Signac, who became Seurat's star student and artistic heir.

Place des Lices (1893) and The Pine Tree at Saint Tropez (1909) by Paul Signac

Up close we only see individual blobs of separated colour, but from a distance our eyes blend them together to produce the same effect as traditionally mixed pigments. The Pointillists believed "optical" blending (in our eyes) was better than "physical" blending (on the canvas) and produced a more luminous image. But this wasn't just for effect. Seurat, Signac and co believed this to be a more scientifically accurate representation of reality — at least, according to the latest theories. Still, it remained a controversial, largely unpopular style.

Details from A Sunday Afternoon

Seurat's Pointillism was also part of another, broader movement known as Divisionism. Whereas Pointillism is the specific use of small dots, Divisionism is the general notion of painting with separate units of single colours, however big or small. Here we have an example, from Robert Delaunay, of Divisionism, but not Pointillism.

So... was Pointillism a gimmick? Perhaps it was just an artistic experiment inspired by new scientific ideas with no real meaning. As one critic said of Seurat: "Strip his figures of the coloured fleas that cover them; underneath there is nothing, no thought, no soul, nothing." Is that a fair comment? The leading Impressionists, including Monet and Renoir, condemned Pointillism. To the Impressionists it may have seemed like a mockery of their work, turning what was human and emotional into something cold and systematic.

And yet, in some strange way, Pointillism seems to anticipate the major scientific discoveries of the 20th century — the atomic bomb most of all, perhaps — and its associated consequences. This is not just a gimmick; it is a different way of understanding the world altogether. But we shouldn't be surprised. Remember that Pointillism as an art style was directly based on the pioneering work of scientists and mathematicians, much of which challenged long-held beliefs about the nature of light and colour. It was an attempt to be scientifically truthful and reconcile art with the empirical facts of the universe.

Art has always reflected how we see the world and our place in it. So perhaps Pointillism may be, ultimately, a reflection of how science forced us to quite literally see the world in a different way. Seurat, deeply affected by new theories regarding colour and light, could simply no longer see — or paint — the world as he and others once had. We might also note that in the 1800s everything from atoms to radio waves were discovered. People had to realise that the world was not what they had previously believed and that it was built from and controlled by invisible forces and objects. Pointillism, consciously or otherwise, appears to attempt to deal with these strange new truths.

And so Georges Seurat's ostensibly charming painting of a Sunday afternoon in Paris is rather darker and more engaging than one might suspect. This is the vision of a previously stable world almost fracturing before our very eyes, as new knowledge challenges and even undermines everything we once thought to be true. Such, at least, is one potential reading of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte.

IV - Architecture

Dresdner Frauenkirche

An Architectural Phoenix

A masterpiece of 18th century Northern European Baroque architecture, and the heart and crowning jewel of one of Europe's most beautiful and historic city centres. Does this seem like a fair description of Dresden's Frauenkirche? Its dome is among the largest in the world and its interior is replete with all the decorative splendour and gilded highlights you'd expect from the Baroque:

One might also remark on its siting. Unlike many churches and cathedrals, which have been squeezed between other buildings and lack the space needed to emphasise their scale and accentuate their architecture, the Frauenkirche sits in an open, setted square at the heart of Dresden's Neumarkt, as its historic centre of 18th and 19th century buildings is called. An all-round triumph, then.

All of the above is true — and entirely false. Because the Frauenkirche was not built in the 18th century; construction started in 1994 and it was completed in 2005. What on earth do I mean by this? Let's start at the beginning....

In February 1945 the German city of Dresden was devastated by an Allied bombing campaign which saw a fleet of heavy bombers drop four thousand tons of heavy explosives on the city. At least 25,000 people died in the ensuing firestorm and ninety percent of the old city was destroyed. Of the Second World War's many horrors this was among the worst. Dresden's Neumarkt was thoroughly gutted, while the Frauenkirche, the Semper Opera House, the Catholic Cathedral, the Academy of Fine Arts, and several other notable buildings were either completely destroyed or largely ruined. Consider what Dresden looked like before and after 1945:

What next? The Semper Opera was actually rebuilt in the 1980s, but otherwise the former Neumarkt remained empty and the charred stumps of the Frauenkirche lived on as a memorial to those who had died in the war.

Things changed after the fall of Communism and the reunification of Germany in 1991. An organisation dedicated to rebuilding the Frauenkirche was founded in 1994, and by 2005 this apparently ambitious goal had been achieved. In 1999 a similar group was set up with the aim of restoring the Neumarkt to its pre-war state. Crucial in both cases were public surveys which revealed overwhelming support for the reconstruction of Dresden's historic buildings and old town. And so like a phoenix the Frauenkirche has re-emerged from its rubble, complete with surviving elements from the old church (notice those darker blocks of masonry in its walls) while the Neumarkt restoration project is ongoing. The Dresden that was destroyed during the horrors of the Second World War has been meticulously, lovingly brought back to life.

This story speaks for itself. Dresden, though a notably severe case, was only one of countless European cities to be ravaged by the bombs of the Second World War. And so governments across the continent were faced with a choice: to reconstruct what had been destroyed, or build in its place something entirely new? By and large they chose the latter, for this was a unique opportunity to redevelop important cities or towns, fixing old problems of urban design, and essentially — so they hoped — building a fairer, freer, more prosperous, and better world. London's Barbican Centre, built after the war in a location ruined during the Blitz, is one of the most celebrated achievements of this optimistic age. Not all such postwar projects have been successful, however, and many have already been demolished and replaced.

Dresden represents the alternative: rebuilding what was there before. And it has proven to be a major success. There were plenty of architects and critics who argued that it was artificial to simply reconstruct long-destroyed buildings and inauthentic to imitate older historical styles. Were they correct? Well, most tourists visiting Dresden (or towns with similarly rebuilt historic centres, as in Munich or Warsaw) have no idea that the "old" buildings around them are not original; and, as for the residents, to have their heritage restored apparently means much more than any such conceptual qualms. Besides, in two hundred years these "new" buildings will be old once again, and any accusations of inauthenticity will presumably cease to be valid. Dresden's Frauenkirche is proof of what is possible with architecture — despite the claim that we are no longer able to build in historical styles, this resurrected church says otherwise. And it also reminds us of how architecture can eclipse its "function" alone, thus to hold immense symbolic and cultural importance for the people living in and around it. A building like the Frauenkirche is not only stone and mortar; it is also identity, heritage, and meaning. Otherwise it would not have been rebuilt.

V - Rhetoric

My name is Maximus...

Rhetoric is everywhere. Taking the classical definition of the word, which was much broader than its incredibly narrow, pejorative meaning in the 21st century, rhetoric was nothing less than the art and science of communication and persuasion. In which case every time somebody speaks publicly — in whatever form, whether at a political rally or in a YouTube video — they are engaging in oratory. This is also true for the silver screen. We might fairly call Shakespeare one of history's greatest speechwriters, for his plays are filled with some of the finest oratory ever composed, and if the theatre can host masterful rhetoric (from which we can also learn) then why not cinema also?

Let's take one of the most famous (and briefest) speeches in cinematic historic: that which was delivered by Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott's 2001 film Gladiator when he comes face to face with the Emperor Commodus, played by Joaquin Phoenix. These are his lines:

A legendary cinematic speech, and for good reason. It just works, doesn't it? And, especially in the context of the film's narrative, it hits all the right notes. But there's much more going on here than one might think. In other words, it works for some very precise and technical reasons. Let us ask: what rhetorical techniques was Maximus using here?

Remember that Aristotle said there are three rhetorical appeals: logos (reason), pathos (emotion), and ethos (personality/credibility). Maximus appeals to all three here. First of all ethos, by listing his various honours and titles, thus convincing us that he is a noble, competent, and worthy man whom we therefore ought to respect and listen to. He then appeals to logos by revealing his allegiance to the true emperor; Maximus implies that he is, logically, doing the correct thing. And, finally, to pathos, by recalling that his family has been murdered — we imagine his pain and therefore sympathise with him. There is also an element of logos here, since by virtue of having been murdered — i.e. killed illegally and unjustifiably — his desire for vengeance seems reasonable to us. So that's the messaging behind his words. What about the specific devices?

Appositio is a way of identifying something by giving it different names, usually alongside one another, which supply additional information. For example: "Claude Monet, the painter, went to Venice." Here Claude Monet and the painter are in apposition to one another. So Maximus uses appositio to identify himself before Commodus, with each of his successive identifiers (commander, general, loyal servant, father, husband) adding supplementary information.

Asyndeton is the omission of conjunctions (and, but, or etc.) between related clauses. The most famous example comes from Julius Caesar: Veni, Vidi Vici. "I came, I saw, I conquered," rather than "I came, and I saw, and I conquered." Notice how Maximus avoids connecting his phrases with conjunctions. This speeds up and adds a sort of sharp, almost violent intensity to any speech. All in all this is an exercise in parataxis, then, which is the use of short, simple, direct sentences. Both of these, taken together, make us feel that Maximus is building toward something. And so we have another device at play — auxesis, which is usually translated as "increasing" and refers to any techniques which convey the impression that we are moving towards a climax, usually by arranging facts or ideas from least to most important. And so, as the facts of his life pile up, we feel that the stakes are increasing, and we wonder what Maximus' conclusion will be...

We conclude with a splendid union of antithesis (the contrasting of two opposite ideas or things in a single sentence, to plant a powerful comparison in the listener's mind) and hyperbole (exaggeration for dramatic effect). The antithesis comes in the contrast between this life and the next. Meanwhile, to suggest that he will pursue Commodus even after he has died in order to get his vengeance, Maximus is clearly exaggerating. So often hyperbole, as Aristotle said, is simply ridiculous and best avoided. But, here, justified by all that has led to this rather striking claim, we do not think it inappropriate at all; we believe him.

You can also see how these many rhetorical devices do not merely exist separately, but work with one another to produce a powerful effect; they are more than the sum of their parts. There are several more rhetorical devices we might have mentioned here (some wonderfully subtle wordplay, a neat isocolon, and a little underhand oratorical logic) but I think this should suffice for now.

We must end by commenting on Russell Crowe's delivery. It was Quintilian, I think, who said that the success or failure of a speech rests entirely on its delivery. Well, here is Maximus' speech as we hear and see it in Gladiator...

Crowe could hardly have delivered it any better than that. The music helps, of course, but by his manner of speaking — his pace, his pitch, his timbre — we are swept away, stirred, and totally convinced.

This is cinema, of course, and not real life. But whenever an actor gives a speech they are doing exactly the same thing that anybody speaking in the real world does, abiding by all the same rules and trying to realise the same ends. Crowe is trying to convince us, the audience, no less than a politician tries to convince voters. And, indeed, in the same way that a famous line given by a real politician can become iconic:

So might the words of a fictional character become equally well-known and oft-quoted:

The former came from John F. Kennedy and the latter is a line from Christopher Nolan's 2008 film The Dark Knight; both of them have firmly entered popular discourse, not least because they are miniature masterpieces of rhetorical manipulation. All of this to say, then, that we needn't think of rhetoric as applying in a narrow context. Its usefulness is universal — and, therefore, the places in which we can study and apply it are equally broad.

VI - Writing

Unfinished Sentences

I suspect few great novelists have had such an unintentionally disastrous influence on young writers as Ernest Hemingway. Famed for his short sentences, simple words, and direct prose, Hemingway has understandably inspired and continues to inspire thousands of people to imitate him. And, given that the internet seems to reward simplicity and brevity, his style is essentially ready-made for the online world. You know the sort of thing people say: Write simply. Keep things simple. It doesn't need to be poetry. Don't use a thesaurus. Clear not clever. Fewer commas. Nothing fancy. Make it shorter...

On the whole I don't suppose we can call this bad advice. After all, simple writing exposes our flaws much more ruthlessly than "flowery" writing, whereby we might obscure our shortcomings with long words and pretty sentences. But there are two objections which ought here to be raised. The first is that Hemingway's terse style belies the monumental skill required to make it work. We would be woefully mistaken to believe that good simple writing is straightforward; it is incredibly difficult and more often than not becomes incredibly boring, if not outright stilted, at best — to say nothing of how it might inhibit our capacity to think and write in a more explorative, meandering way. Remember what Hemingway said about his laconic style:

To be economical is to forgo saying what we already know. One must know and understand a great deal, then, to write simply. The second objection is that "flowery" writing is much too often maligned for what it is not; long words, long sentences, and punctuation marks are not necessarily a bad thing, nor need they be any less clear than their "one dollar" equivalents, to borrow one of Hemingway's famous phrases. Besides, as Quintilian once said, we should not be so afraid of falling from the skies that we merely creep along the ground. And we should add, in defence of Hemingway, that many more young writers, under the influence of novelists whose styles were rather more loquacious than his, have committed the equal sin of writing in an artificially complicated way. No writer can be blamed for those who ape their methods and misapply their style.

Anyway, I say all of this by way of introduction to some advice once given by Hemingway — or, rather, a description of his own habits which we may take as advice if we so choose. He preferred to leave a scene unfinished so that he could return to it the next day, and would often even leave sentences incomplete, broken off midway, so he could jump straight into them upon sitting back down at the desk:

Or, as Roald Dahl once recalled:

Well, there you have it. At least one solution to writer's block might be leaving our sentences unfinished and coming back to them the next day so that

VII - The Seven Plinth

Politics Then vs Now

In 49 BC the orator, philosopher, and statesman Cicero wrote a letter to his friend Atticus. The Roman Republic had been ravaged by several decades of civil strife and political turmoil which showed no sign of abating. Nevermind the political machinations that had been slowly but surely transforming its democracy into an autocracy, Rome had just been plunged into yet another civil war, as Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great — and their respective factions — geared up for what would end up as five years' fighting on three continents.

Cicero was torn. Who should he support, if anyone? How could the Roman democracy be saved? He was a devoted republican and dreaded the apparently inevitable rise of one-man rule. So, troubled by these conflicts between his principles and the practical reality, Cicero wrote for Atticus a series of questions which outlined his major concerns:

The last of these questions is quite specific — it applied to Cicero's personal situation as a former consul and important politician — but the others, I think, apply no less to the chaotic, closing years of the Roman Republic than to the present day. Or, at least, these are questions which many people in the 21st century have also asked — had to ask — themselves, and which people have been posing time and time again down the centuries.

As ever, there is more than one way to interpret this. In some sense it is a sorry condemnation of humanity to learn that in two thousand years we have not, apparently, much improved. But, equally, it is almost reassuring: to know that our modern problems are not uniquely ours, that we have struggled with and perhaps even solved them before, and that things have still turned out, broadly speaking, fairly well. It is also, of course, a reminder of the importance of history and an invocation to engage in its study. Certain political and ethical dilemmas are timeless, and it would require immense hubris to suggest that we couldn't learn something of value from those in the past who have faced them already.

Question of the Week

Last week's question to test your critical thinking was:

What's so good about democracy?

These were some of your answers...

Nicholas W

David R

Donald H

This week's question to test your critical thinking comes from Cicero, who in his treatise On Duties outlines a hypothetical situation which challenges us to decide whether there is any difference between what is "right" and what is "advantageous":

Imagine that there is a food shortage on an island and that the price of corn is very high. A merchant arrives from the mainland with a large stock of corn. He is aware that many more cargo ships are on their way and will arrive very soon. Should he tell the islanders this fact? Or should he say nothing and sell his stock at the highest price he can?

Email me your answers and I'll share them in next week's newsletter.

And that's all

Our time together has come to an end, at least for now, and I must bid you farewell 'til Friday next. I suddenly wonder how many of you are travelling as you read these words? Well, wondering this, I wish safe passage to any and all of ye journeyers and offer, for companionship, a poem written by the great and underrated Malcom Lowry:

Life save us all, indeed — and with that the curtain falls.

Yours,

​

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