Areopagus Volume LXXXIII

Welcome one and all to the eighty third volume of the Areopagus. During a rather comical encounter with an amphibian today, I remembered that the great and witty poet Kobayashi Issa wrote hundreds of haikus about the creeping creatures of the world. Here is one of them:

I could not have put it better! But the frog I had to leave, for an Areopagus demanded to be written, and written it has been...

I - Classical Music

Piano Concerto in A Minor: Finale

Clara Schumann (1835)

Performed by the Alma Mahler Sinfonietta and Francesco Nicolosi
​The Swan, No. 18, Group IX/SUW by Hilma af Klint (1915)

Clara Schumann's father wanted her to become a great pianist. He was a successful piano teacher and so, as a child, she had little choice in the matter. But Clara rose to meet the seemingly impossible standards her father had set; she became one of Europe's most famous touring pianists, famed for her virtuoso performances, and a respected composer too. The Piano Concerto in A Minor was actually the only piano concerto Schumann ever finished, and — if you can believe it — she completed it two weeks before her sixteenth birthday, in 1835.

Schumann would later become part of a conflict within the mid-19th century German musical scene. On one side were the conservatives, among whom Clara Schumann was a leading member, who believed that music should not be "about" anything. On the other side were the radicals, led by Liszt, who embraced "program music", whereby the music itself could become a form of narration. In which case, I suppose, the best way to listen to Schumann's Piano Concerto (of which we hear the third and final part here) is by letting it guide your emotions purely — that is, rather than trying to imagine what the music is about. Can such a thing be done? Schumann believed it could.

II - Historical Moment

A Restoration

364 years ago today something quite remarkable happened. A man called Charles arrived at the port of Dover, in southern England. He had not set foot on English soil since he was a teenager, over a decade earlier. Why? Because his father was King Charles I of England, Scotland, and Ireland, who had been defeated in the Civil War. Charles I was executed and his kingdom replaced by a republic, the Commonwealth, led by Oliver Cromwell; the younger Charles had fled.

Charles' return to England is a well-known historical event but, as with all things familiar, we usually fail to realise its strangeness. So, although this event is important for a hatful of reasons, let us put such historical significance aside for a moment. Because the return of Charles reveals something strange and vital about the nature of human civilisation more broadly. See, Parliament now declared that Charles was the rightful king, and had been since his father's execution. This was, if you are interested, their rather circumlocutory wording:

The Restoration may not have happened, or at least in the way it did, without General George Monck. He had marched to London from Scotland at the head of an army to insist that Charles be invited to return; if not, Monck suspected, chaos would ensue. Monck's call was answered and Charles duly set out from the Netherlands, arriving in Dover on 25th May 1660. Crucial to this was the Declaration of Breda, issued by Charles a month earlier, where he offered a pardon for all crimes committed during the Civil War, along with several other reconciliatory promises. Much has been missed out in this brief retelling, of course, and much of great significance — but the headline is that, in 1660, it was decided that England would once again become a monarchy... and it did.

What am I driving at? That the thing we call "the state" or "the government" does not exist in the soil or the stars; you cannot find it with a microscope. This does not mean it "isn't real", as some might be tempted to say. Rather, its reality rests on our ability to understand the ideas underlying government, and then — this being the crucial step — agree about them. Thus they are peculiarly fragile, these things we call governments, because ultimately they rely on people accepting their existence. "Obvious!" some may cry. Perhaps, but I dare say it is a thing easily forgotten. And the Restoration, symbolised by Charles' return to England all those years ago today, is a perfect example of this strange but vital truth in action.

III - Art

Visions of Paris

Charles Meryon

Charles Meryon was born in Paris in 1821, the son a French opera dancer and an English physician. He joined the navy, sailed around the world, and took up art on the high seas. When he returned to France he fought in the Revolution of 1848 and, several bouts of schizophrenia and depression later, interspersed with phases of creative ecstasy, died in an asylum at the age of 46.

What sort of art did Meryon produce? Well, he wanted to be a painter. But the trouble is that he was severely colourblind. Thus he turned to engraving — and became a master of this medium instead. For his subject he took the world around him, and Paris above all. The beauty of Meryon's work — not so different from that of the English watercolourist Samuel Prout — is how architecture seems to be a character of its own. Hence I have included a handful of his prints, rather than focussing on one, to give you some sense of his multi-faceted portrait of Paris. Notice Meryon's command of light and shadow: how gloom clusters beneath arcades or scaffolding, how sunlight seems to glitter on the tower-tops. It is all fabulously Gothic, defined by the contrast between imposing architecture and miniature, often industrial, frequently grimy vignettes. Little wonder Victor Hugo and Charles Baudelaire were among his admirers.

So they are true works of art. But that's not all — Meryon's engravings also serve as a wonderful historical record of a world now lost. There are other paintings, and also photographs, of the Medieval Paris that was destroyed during Baron Hausmann's grand renovation in the second half of the 19th century. But Meryon's engravings, precisely because of their atmosphere, and because they show us the city through the eyes of a man with an intense personality, give us a feeling of that lost Paris otherwise only accessible in poetry and prose.

IV - Architecture

The Dunmore Pineapple

The Dunmore Pineapple is, as you can see, a sort of small neoclassical pavilion with a colossal stone pineapple on top. This is a folly, an architectural whimsy, of the sort that became popular all around Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. What defines a folly? They have no obvious "purpose" and they are usually extravagant, experimental, or fantastical in some way. Think of mock Gothic towers in the grounds of the British aristocracy, or the fake Roman ruins at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna:

The Dunmore Pineapple was commissioned by John Murray, 4th Earl of Dunmore, in the 1760s. It sits in the grounds of Dunmore Park, the ancestral home of the Earls of Dunmore in the Scottish county of Stirlingshire, and is surrounded by large gardens. The building itself was connected to a greenhouse where, among other things, pineapples themselves were grown.

But... why the pineapple? Because these were then among the most fashionable and expensive objects in Europe. A single painting should tell you as much — it is the aforementioned King Charles II being presented with the first ever pineapple grown in England. That such a moment apparently deserved memorialising says everything.

Pineapples did become an entirely serious decorative feature of British architecture and design, hence their prevalence on gateposts, fences, and even the Wimbledon trophy. But the Earl of Dunmore's wildly oversized pineapple is a knowingly frivolous take on this fashion craze. Though, that being said, as an architectural project it was taken very seriously. The craftsmanship of the stone pineapple is astonishing; that it is in such good condition nearly three centuries later is testament to how well it was planned, executed, and assembled.

So this building is a tripartite reminder of the age of follies, of the pineapple craze that once swept Europe, and of the fact that architecture can — though we often forget it — be funny. And would not the world benefit from a few more buildings that took themselves a little less seriously, or buildings that refused to be — like so much else around us — merely boring? Yes, buildings can make us laugh, can raise our spirits even for a moment, and the Dunmore Pineapple is one of these.

V - Rhetoric

Argot

In Victor Hugo's Les Misérables there are several lengthy digressions on subjects as varied as the Battle of Waterloo, the nature of life in a nunnery, and the construction of sewers. One of them concerns argot, which can be translated as the French word for slang, but in truth has a larger meaning. An argot is essentially the vocabulary of a specific group, one usually used an exclusionary tool that marks you out as belonging to that group — or not! You may have come face to face (or ear to ear?) with an argot before, as when you enter a new line of work or attend a party where everybody is from a particular group and find yourself unable to understand what they are talking about.

The most famous argots usually emerged among criminals; it provided a way for people to talk about what we might euphemistically call untoward topics without raising unwanted attention. Still, consider what Victor Hugo said in his musings on argot, writing with typical sympathy about a topic — slang — that continues to attract derision:

But it's not only criminals, of course; gurus and specialists and bureaucrats have often created their own, exclusionary argots. Sometimes highly technical words are clearly necessary, but none too frequently we find experts intentionally slipping into a vocabulary that only their peers can understand. Still, I don't want to give the impression that argot is always somehow malicious. Any group, when united by circumstance or profession, will almost inevitably end up producing its own lingo. Creating an argot is also an effective literary tool. The most famous example of this is surely the nadsat spoken by Alex and his droogs in Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, who are perfectly capable of speaking standard English but choose to talk of shlaga instead of club, pooshka instead of gun, and millicent instead of police officer. Perhaps you have even developed something of a minor argot with your friends! I certainly have — were I to speak of "the bunker", "frepping", or "posting", it would mean nothing to any but a handful of people.

VI - Writing

Flee!

Thomas Carlyle has a seductive writing style. It is wholly unlike anything else you will ever have read (in the English language, at least!) and for that reason it is very tempting to try and learn from or imitate his methods. But consider what the critic Matthew Arnold said about him, as reported by Frederic Harrison:

Why would Arnold say such a thing? Arthur Quiller-Couch, writing a few decades later, gives us at least one reason:

Sometimes we must say no to our favourite writers — not because they are bad, but because they are different. That somebody else writes in a particular way, and writes well, does not mean it is the only way to write. Hard though it always is, we must find our way of writing. This asks of us a difficult task: to look our favourite writers in the face and say, "no!" Put that book down, cleanse its style from your mind, and forge a way of writing that is yours, not theirs.

VII - The Seventh Plinth

Changing Times?

A short comment for you:

When do you suppose this was written? The syntax may give away its age, but the substance of the message will sound rather more recent to many of you. Well, that was the critic and novelist Walter Pater writing in 1866. Yes, although we have this notion that "in the past" things were more fixed, Pater seems to suggest not — at least, in 19th century Europe. Do I mean to say things have not changed in the last 160 years or so? Of course not. Rather, I simply present you an observation that does sound startlingly modern, and the real age of which is genuinely surprising. Make of it what you will!

Question of the Week

Last week's question was:

What is the real meaning of "success" in life?

Here were your responses, ever lyrical and eye-opening:

Michael M

Reeshabh C

Jennant B

Chris M

Bob C

Jane L

Ross J

Jonathan R

R

Miguel R

Tom W

Deborah G

Matthias L

And for this week's question...

What is friendship?

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

And that's all

We end with a poem shown to me by a good friend. For as I sit here, in the dark of the night, pondering things past and present, wondering whether you will find anything of interest or use in this week's Areopagus, it was these lines that wandered, unasked for, into my mind:

Yours,

​

​

​