Areopagus Volume XIV

Welcome one and all to the fourteenth volume of Areopagus. It comes to you this week on the second day of meteorological autumn. But fear not - we still have twenty days of astronomical summer left!

Some splendid news: next Wednesday I will be speaking at the Idea Exchange, an online conference run by Nick Milo of Linking Your Thinking. We'll be discussing art, history, architecture, and learning the language of culture. It's at 8am PT, which is 4pm BST and 5pm CEST. Here's a link to register for the talk.​

And with that short announcement duly made, here are seven short lessons that I hope shall be of interest, beauty, and use to you...

I - Classical Music

Daphnis et Chloé, Movement III: Lever du Jour (Daybreak)

Maurice Ravel (1912)

Why this piece?

If I had to describe this piece with a single word I'd probably say: exquisite. And it is. A fantastical, phantasmagorical, typically Ravellian work of pastoral transportative glory. For such superlatives I cannot apologise. Ravel never ceases to amaze me with the luxuriousness and mesmeric qualities of his work. This is no different. Indeed, to listen to Lever du Jour is to be bathed in the gilded light of sunrise. That's the power of music. I should add that this is but one excerpt from Daphnis et Chloé, which comprises twelve 'scenes' in three parts and is nearly an hour long all told.

What is it?

Daphnis et Chloé was described by Ravel as a choreographic symphony, the idea being that it functioned both as a standalone concert piece - Ravel's preference - and also as a ballet. Its debut came in 1912 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris and starred the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky as Daphnis. These days it is largely performed, per Ravel's intentions, as an orchestral concert piece.

It is based on Daphnis and Chloe, written by a Greek called Longus in the 2nd century A.D., and one of very few surviving novels from Antiquity. The story follows two orphans called Daphnis, a goatherd, and Chloe, a shepherdess, as they fall in love and deal with all its associated troubles, featuring pirates and bandits along the way. It is a classical tale of bucolic passion and romantic adventure.

Who was Maurice Ravel?

Maurice Ravel (1875-1937) needs no introduction. What's interesting about him is that he summarises the explosion of musical variety in the early part of the 20th century. Whereas previous eras can be fairly characterised by overarching, coherent compositional trends, the Modern Era was defined by its splintered disunity of style. Composers drew inspiration from all ages of musical history while simultaneously pushing music well beyond its pre-existing boundaries. This was a time of radical artistic evolution, and Ravel is rightly regarded as one its greatest composers.

Alas, how can we categorise Daphnis et Chloé? Perhaps as a work of musical Impressionism. That's certainly what Ravel's work was called even in his lifetime, along with that of his compatriot Claude Debussy, though it should be noted that both men rejected the term. I think it's fitting. Impressionism was all about the interplay of light and subject in painting, after all, and Lever du Jour certainly feels like sunlight in musical form.

II - Historical Figure

Artemisia of Caria

Why is she interesting?

Artemisia was Queen of Caria sometime in the first three decades of the 5th century B.C. Caria was the ancient name for an area on the south-west coast of modern day Turkey, which was then populated by Greek cities including Halicarnassus. During Artemisia's reign, however, Caria was ultimately ruled by the vast Persian Empire.

And when the Persian Empire invaded mainland Greece under King Xerxes in 480 B.C. Artemisia served as a senior officer in their colossal navy. She commanded five ships of her own and was an advisor to the Persian King of Kings. Of course, this invasion would prove unsuccessful despite victory at Thermopylae (of three hundred Spartans fame) and Artemisium (no connection), a naval engagement in which Artemisia fought.

All of this was recorded by Herodotus in his Histories, written in about 430 B.C. and regarded as the first ever work of history. Here is what he said about Artemisia:

And after the subsequent Battle of Salamis, at which the Persian fleet was shattered and Xerxes' hopes of a Peloponnesian invasion scuppered, it was according to Artemisia's advice that the King retreated and left the conquest of Greece to his general Mardonius. Xerxes, the most powerful man of the age, evidently held her opinion in high regard.

But Ancient Greek society was particularly closed to women. As Pericles explained in his legendary funeral oration:

All of this to say that Artemisia's role in the Persian navy is even more extraordinary than it perhaps sounds. She was played by Eva Green in the 2014 film 300: Rise of an Empire. One can hardly call Artemisia's depiction historically accurate - far from it - but there's no doubt her story is worth dramatising. In any case, I often wonder what ancient people would make of their modern cinematic portrayals. Could Artemisia have known that, even two thousand years after her death, we'd be retelling her story? And would she laugh or cry at its radical departure from the real facts of her life?

III - Painting

The San Giovenale Triptych

Masaccio (1422)

Why this painting?

The San Giovenale Triptych, so-called because it was commissioned for a church named after San Giovenale, is a striking work of art. It has all the hallmarks of those beautifully stylised Gothic altarpieces, combined with the golden glow of hagiographic Byzantine art. Curiously, the Madonna's halo is inscribed with the shahada - an important Islamic oath - backwards. That mystery has yet to be solved. The reason I chose the San Giovenale Triptych isn't any of that, however. It's because there's something else going on here...

What style is it?

This painting is more than just an example of Early Renaissance Art (1400-1495): it is perhaps the founding work of the Early Renaissance in painting. See, the San Giovenale Triptych walks a fine line between the flat perspective and stylised human figures of the Middle Ages and the more lifelike depictions we typically associate with the Renaissance. It represents a crucial stepping stone between these two eras. How? Foreshortening.

This is an artistic technique, pioneered by Masaccio, in which objects or people appear smaller as they get further away, and which accurately represents the profile distortion created by different angles. (For example, if you point directly at your eyes, your finger will appear to have very little length.) Notice how the Madonna's throne in the San Giovenale triptych is foreshortened; you get the sense that she is really sitting on it. This seems obvious - since it complies with how humans perceive the world - but foreshortening is not an easy technique to master, and nor was it common in Masaccio's time.

Foreshortening produced an impression of natural three-dimensionality and depth which was totally at odds with the artificial, two-dimensional perspective of Gothic art. This introduced greater realism into painting. Insodoing, Masaccio completed the process started by his Florentine forebear and Proto-Renaissance master Giotto about a hundred years earlier.

Who was Masaccio?

Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone (1401-1428) better known as Masaccio - a riff on the name Tommaso - was regarded by the famed Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari as the greatest artist of his generation. Given Vasari's sweeping biographical scope - his 16th century book The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects detailed everybody from Giotto in the early 1300s through to Michelangelo two hundred years later and beyond - this statement has some serious weight.

He was born in Florence at a time when Italian art was still heavily influenced by Byzantine iconography, and later moved to Rome. That was where Masaccio's brief life reached its full artistic maturity. What he introduced with the San Giovenale Triptych - foreshortening and realistic perspective - developed even further, as in The Tribute Money below. Masaccio's work sowed the seed of an artistic evolution which was vital in transforming European art from Gothic to Renaissance.

IV - Architectural Masterpiece

Kinkaku-ji

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion

Fact-File

Kinkaku-ji was originally on the site of a large villa built in the late 14th century near Kyoto, Japan. It was purchased by the Shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and, after his death, converted into a Zen Buddhist temple complex. But a few decades later, during the Ōnin War, the entire complex was burned down - with the exception of a pavilion on the edge of the estate. This painted photograph shows the state of the pavilion as it was in 1885, thoroughly lacking in its distinctive gold leaf carapace, which had faded and peeled over the centuries:

And in 1950 this ancient temple was burned down by a schizophrenic novice monk called Hayashi Yoken. He attempted to commit suicide afterwards but failed and was arrested. The inimitable Yukio Mishima later immortalised this story in his 1955 novel The Temple of the Golden Pavilion; it served as a perfect way for Mishima to explore his idiosyncratic fascination with violence and beauty. But the temple was rebuilt in 1955, almost exactly as it had been, with the gold leaf brilliantly restored. It is officially called Rokuon-ji, meaning "Deer Garden Temple", but is colloquially and commonly known as Kinkaku-ji, meaning the "Temple of the Golden Pavilion."

Why is it a masterpiece?

The story of Kinkaku-ji is part of its appeal. But, regardless of these events, Kinkaku-ji is a self-evidently beautiful building. And despite the ostensibly garish notion of painting a building's two upper storeys entirely in pure gold leaf, the pavilion is far from meretricious. Perhaps because its bottom storey is unpainted, perhaps because of its Arcadian setting, or perhaps because of its uncomplicated design, the Kinkaku-ji is captivating, tranquil, and unforgettable. One can understand Mishima's obsession with its profound beauty.

It also characterises the Japanese architectural style discussed in Junichiro Tanizaki's In Praise of Shadows, a short but magnificent treatise on the difference between Western and Japanese design philosophies. He was fond of the shadows inherent in Japan's architecture, which had been banished by modern electric lighting, the natural materials used for its construction (paper and wood rather than glass and steel), a lack of ornamentation, and access to the natural world. I love his description of how Japanese temples are literally built in the shadows:

We see much of Tanizaki's appraisal of Japanese architecture in Kinkaku-ji: a relative simplicity of design, heavy and thrusting eaves, harmony with its tranquil natural setting, and a cavern of shadow beneath a tower of golden light. Beautiful.

V - Rhetoric

Bond, James Bond

Today we look once more to pop culture for a rhetorical lesson, this time from 007. His most famous line is also the one with which he inevitably introduces himself: "The name's Bond, James Bond." In a film franchise (once literary, of course) more famous for its gadgets, guns, and cars, these words do well to stand out.

"Bond, James Bond" is an example of diacope, which is the repetition of a word with one or more intervening words. Diacope comes from the Ancient Greek for "cutting in two" - for fairly obvious reasons - and it has three forms: vocative, elaborative, and extended.

Vocative diacope is used either for simple emphasis or to indicate an addressee:

• Yesterday was awful, just awful.
• We'll figure it out someday, John, someday.

While elaborative diacope reframes or adds new meaning to the repeated word:

• To be or not to be, that is the question.
• He had a friend once, a shamelessly disloyal and sordid friend.

And extended diacope is a triple repetition of the word (which can also be considered one of the other two):

• O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art out thou Romeo? (Extended and elaborative)
• Help, help, somebody help! (Extended and vocative)

Diacope is a fascinating device. On one hand it simply serves to make a phrase more memorable by adding some symmetry or emphasis, and on the other it works some subtle rhetorical magic. This is especially true of elaborative diacope in which the repeated, emphasised word can almost have two distinct meanings because of the intervening, reframing words. "To be or not to be" is the most obvious case of that.

"Bond, James Bond," is elaborative diacope. The addition of his given name adds to the incomplete information provided at first, though the overall effect is more than merely factual. It somehow tells us that this James Bond is somebody to be reckoned with. It's certainly subtle, but far from insignificant, and the result is one of cinema's most iconic lines.

An important qualification here is that diacope often overlaps with other repetition-based rhetorical devices such as anaphora and epizeuxis. Rhetorical devices aren't mutually exclusive, and they are often most effective when layered together to create real linguistic texture.

VI - Writing

Horatian Advice

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 B.C.) known to the Anglosphere as Horace, was one of Ancient Rome's greatest writers. His Odes were regarded even in his lifetime as the finest lyric poetry of the age, while his satirical style has become, along with that of his compatriot Juvenal, quite literally genre-defining. To this day we distinguish between the two forms of satire: Horatian (light, humorous) and Juvenalian (caustic, bitter).

In the tenth of his Satires, Horace attacks another satirical writer called Lucilius, whose style Horace found to be wordy, pretentious, and poorly constructed. This tenth satire ends up being something of a personal masterclass on the art of writing well. Here are some of his comments:

This is hardly rocket science, but I love it. Horace is asking how you can expect anybody else to read your work twice if you haven't even read it twice? A very fair question.

This seems to be one of Horace's major bugbears: unnecessary wordiness. He does praise Lucilius' wit, but points that it was obscured by grandiloquence. Conciseness, says Horace, is vital for good writing. Otherwise it will "weigh heavy on weary ears", a vivid image indeed and one which should frighten any writer:

And here is a sort of Roman version of that old saying about driving out the devil with jeering, for he cannot bear scorn. Horace almost smugly observes that satire is often far more effective than overly serious criticism:

And, finally, I think Horace's urge against seeking popularity is worthy advice not just for writing but for any walk of life:

Despite Horace's memorable turn of phrase there's nothing ground-breaking here, nothing you haven't head before. But that's the point. It is a welcome (or harsh, depending on your perspective) reminder that the requirements for good writing are no different now than what they were over two thousand years ago.

VII - Historical Anecdote

Xenophontic Mindset

In 401 B.C. an army of Ten Thousand Greek mercenaries were hired by Cyrus, brother of the Persian King Artaxerxes II. Cyrus wanted to claim the throne for himself. So he marched with this mercenary army several thousand miles through modern day Turkey and all the way down to Mesopotamia, where he fought against his brother's army at the Battle of Cunaxa.

But Cyrus was killed and the Ten Thousand were suddenly left stranded in a foreign land without money or supplies, thousands of miles from home, and surrounded by enemies. Then the Persians made a truce and invited the Greek generals to a conference - at which they were captured and murdered. The Greeks were despondent. On the night of their generals' capture the whole army was frozen with despair; they barely ate or slept and lit no fires. They were simply waiting for something to happen.

But on that very night a young Athenian officer called Xenophon experienced something of a revelation. Here is what he wrote in his account of this expedition, called Anabasis:

Then it occurred to Xenophon that he could speak up:

Xenophon confronted the eternal truth that there is never a perfect moment when you will be perfectly ready to do the right thing and sort yourself out. He spoke with the other officers and roused their spirits, urging them not to think "what is going to happen to me?" but to ask "what action am I going to take?" Xenophon's revelation of mindset had its intended effect. The Greeks sorted themselves out, made preparations for battle, and survived. Two years later they returned home.

The desperate state of the Ten Thousand, stranded in enemy territory and without any obvious prospect for survival, is analogous to our own lives. Many of us have, at one time or another, felt as though everything is going wrong. And yet, even if we realise that something must be done, we fail to take action. At such times we must ask ourselves, like Xenophon did millennia ago, am I waiting until I become a little older? I shall never be any older at all if I am taken by the enemy today.

Question of the Week

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

What is the point of art?

Your answers were engaging, deeply considered, and eloquently expressed. However much I share in the Areopagus, I honestly feel like I learn more from you than you do from me. Here was a profound and beautifully articulated answer from Roraig F:

Olasubomi O starting by asking what art actually is:

And, as ever, somebody questioned the question itself. Heather A did so incisively:

For this week's question to test your critical thinking:

Do humans have free will?

And that's all

Writing the Areopagus has been a beautiful way to start September. I hope it finds you well, wherever you are.

And not to forget: I'm speaking next week at the online Idea Exchange conference about all things culture. There'll be a Q&A at the end of my discussion, so if there's anything you're burning to ask that'll be the place to do so. It would be a delight to meet (inasmuch as a Zoom call counts as meeting) some of you there.

Yours,

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