Areopagus Volume XXII

Welcome one and all to the twenty second volume of Areopagus. The sun was shining when I woke up today and the first thing that came to mind was this, the opening stanza of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:

Magnificent & delightful words from the wonderful Omar Khayyam. He was one of my grandmother's favourite poets and she always had a copy of the Rubaiyat to hand. Funny how some things stay with you.

And now - on with the Areopagus!

I - Classical Music

Vikingeblod Overture

Peter Lange-Müller (1900)

Why this piece?

What a rousing piece of music; it just sounds like adventure. And when the strings soar one feels it ought to be the theme tune for an action hero, perhaps an Indiana Jones sort of figure. Not that the music is without a sombre undertone on occasions, even suggesting a sort of bloody tragedy, and at times even verging on romance. A brief musical kaleidoscope of all the ingredients of a great story.

And it's really that simple. The music is fun, thrilling, dramatic without being too serious, and jolly without being light-hearted. Hence why I paired it with Peter Nicolai Arbo's 1872 painting The Wild Hunt of Odin. The music seems to complement the scene rather well. A TV show waiting to be made, you might say.

What style is it?

What's more interesting about Vikingeblod than its stylistic qualities is its theme. During the 19th century, as Romantic Music rose to the fore and brought with it a whole host of new technical trends, the things composers composed about also changed. It seems odd to say that music, more abstract than literature and art, can be about something. But when we hear music, whether because of established conventions or because of something apparently intrinsic, we do sense its theme. That could be an emotion, such as joy or melancholy, a place, an idea, an historical era, a person, or a moment. Action sounds different to romance; the mountains different to the sea. It was this tonal evocation which so gripped Romantic composers in the 19th century.

And the 19th century was the century of revolutions and of nation-building. Old, multi-cultural empires fell apart and were replaced by sovereign states who needed to carve out a distinctive, unifying identity. That process was both reflected by and pioneered in music. For example, some composers integrated folk music into their work, such as Antonín Dvořák's Slavonic Dances, thus forming a direct musical link to national heritage. Others looked to their nation's past or mythology for inspiration, and this is what Lange-Müller did, finding in his native Denmark's Viking past as an opportunity for some bloody good music, and perhaps a little bit of nation-building too.

Who was Peter Lange-Müller ?

Peter Lange-Müller (1850-1926) was a Danish composer who, like many artists, briefly tried (or was forced) to escape his childhood passion. Lange-Müller's father was a wealthy, conservative politician, and made his son attend the University of Copenhagen to study political science. Just three years later, however, Lange-Müller had returned to the passions of his youth and embraced the world of music. For the next twenty five years he worked at an astonishing rate until chronic illness made serious work almost impossible. And so the last two decades of his life were spent in relative peace at the secluded Sophienberg Estate near Copenhagen.

II - Historical Figure

Aristides

The Greatest Greek?

Who was Aristides?

Aristides the Just (530-468 B.C.), son of Lysimachus, was an Ancient Athenian general and statesman renowned for his deep patriotism, his prevailing virtue, and his keen sense of justice. He had an aristocratic background and was therefore largely opposed to the aggressive, popular reforms of Themistocles, another great Greek and his foremost rival, politically and personally. But, so we are told, Aristides was not naturally inclined to politics. He only entered the public sphere to counterbalance Themistocles, who with his brilliant oratory, huge ambition, and extraordinary intelligence had quickly swept all before him. And yet, even while Athenian politics were dogged by bribery, demagoguery, and corruption, Aristides was revered for his imperviousness to such vices.

Indeed, while other political leaders did everything they could do attain greath wealth, either because of personal greed or in order to entertain the masses, Aristides lived - by choice - in poverty. And when he was appointed to supervise state expenditure Aristides uncovered the real extent of embezzlement by public officials. He tried to prosecute them, but they whipped up the citizens against him and made Aristides the enemy, even charging him with maladministration.

So Aristides changed tact. He let them get away with it, even helped them line their pockets with public money, and thus became incredibly popular. The leading men of Athens wanted to re-elect him to his position, but before the voting commenced Aristides stood up and rebuked them:

Quite the statement, and quite the man.

Aristides later fought with distinction at the Battle of Salamis against the Persians in 480 B.C. and after that took a leading role in the Battle of Plataea, a year on, when the Greeks once and for all defeated King Xerxes' mainland invasion.

Why is he interesting?

Aristides was regarded even in Antiquity as among the most upstanding and virtuous of all Athenians, even of all Greeks. Herodotus, Plato, and Plutarch are but three of his most famous fans. There are two stories in particular which will give you an idea of why Aristides has such a gleaming reputation.

In Ancient Athens there was a legal and political process called ostracism, in which the citizens collectively exiled a prominent public figure - perhaps because they had become too powerful or wealthy - for ten years. The process was simple. Each citizen would write the name of the person they wished to ostracize on a shard of pottery, known as an ostrakon, and these shards would then be counted in all their thousands until a verdict was reached.

In 483 B.C., amidst constant political strife, Themistocles had gained the upper hand and drawn massive support to himself. The time was ripe, then, to remove his greatest rival. So Aristides was nominated for ostracism and the process began. I'll let Plutarch tell you the rest:

A rather revealing tale. But Aristides' prayer proved a hopeless one, as only a few years later the Persian king Xerxes invaded mainland Greece. The Athenians were forced to abandon their city and the fate of all Hellas hung by a thread. In an act either of desperation or pragmatism, all those who had been exiled were invited to return. Aristides was an able general, after all, and his leadership was needed more than ever. So Aristides returned, arriving just in time to take part in the naval Battle of Salamis. And who was in charge? His old rival, Themistocles. But Aristides put aside all personal and political grievances. He told Themistocles that he would offer him his whole-hearted support, and that the national interest superseded any grudges they held. Together, Aristides and Themistocles defeated the Persians and chased them all the way out of Greece. An instructive tale.

How to summarise Aristides? Well, as Aeschylus once wrote:

Where can I read more about him?

Aristides crops up in the work of many ancient writers, but there's no better place to start than with his biography in Plutarch's Parallel Lives. This was a collection of 48 biographies of famous Greek and Roman figures written in about 100 AD. It's an unusual way to read history - through the life of a single person, one at time, rather than an overarching era - but taken together the Parallel Lives are just about one of the greatest achievements in all historical writing.

Plutarch drew brilliant psychological portraits of his characters, sketching their virtues and vices into compelling and rather dramatic miniature biopics. The result is that you get a real feel for these great figures and the times they lived in. Far more than by availing yourself of cold facts, certainly. Indeed, there's a reason why Shakespeare drew so heavily on Plutarch for his Roman plays.

III - Painting

St Michael Archangel

Guido Reni (1636)

Why this painting?

The first thing is that today, the 4th November, is Guido Reni's birthday. No better time, then, to remember this forgotten genius. St Michael Archangel is one of those paintings about which you can say too much. There's nothing obviously extraordinary about it, nothing which gives us any reason to gasp in awe or scratch our heads in perplexion at the unfathomable brilliance of an artistic virtuoso.

And yet, even if it doesn't immediately grab your attention, St Michael Archangel will work its magic. There's something so perfect about this painting: its careful arrangment of colours, of light and shadow; its dramatic but controlled composition; its contrast between the faces of the two figures; its brilliantly rendered forms. I think St Michael Archangel is one of those rare, self-justifying masterpieces. Taken as a whole, it's faultless. One feels that Reni was at the height of his powers when he painted it.

Who was Guido Reni?

Guido Reni (1575-1642) was born to a family of musicians and joined the artistic workshop of Denis Calvaert in Bologna at just nine years of age. The Bolognese School of art, led by three members of the talented Caracci family, was a centre of innovation. Mannerism had proven a false solution the problems posed by the High Renaissance; something else was needed. This group of Bolognese artists, among whom Guido Reni would soon become the most successful, consciously sought to take art in new directions without ever losing sight of the best that tradition had to offer.

And Guido Reni was, for a long time after his death, one of the most famous, popular, and critically acclaimed artists in Europe. It wasn't until the 19th century that his reputation suffered and, beyond art historians, was totally ousted from popular culture. This is interesting because the most famous and popular artists in the 21st century, such as Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso, feel like they'll be popular forever. No doubt people thought the same thing about Guido Reni two hundred years ago. All of this begs the question: in a century or two, who will be the most popular artists?

What style is it?

The genius of Guido Reni was to take the different trends in Baroque art and bring them together successfully. The vivid blocks of colour that form St Michael's robes are just like those of Titian and Poussin, while the bold diagonal composition reminds us of Tintoretto. And the dark background to the figures of the action, dramatically lit from a single light source, speaks to the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio. St Michael's face, far from the contorted, naturalistic, Caravaggian face of Satan, takes us back to the saintly serenity of Raphael a hundred years before. Indeed, the general simplicity of the painting gives it a strong classical slant, a vision of that High Renaissance harmony.

So much was Reni's talent; to blend different styles and schools of art into single, cohesive works.

IV - Architectural Masterpiece

Muqarnas

Divine Architecture

I've gone for something a little different this week. Rather than looking at a single building I thought it might be interesting to explore an architectural motif.

The muqarnas, in technical terms, is a honeycomb-shaped arrangement of curved or rectilinear mouldings along the underside of an apse, a semi-dome, alcove, iwan, or pendentive; they can be ceramic, earthenwear, stucco, terracotta, or even marble. It first appeared in Baghdad in the 11th century - at least, that's when the first known reference to the Arabic word muqarnas can be dated. And from there, it seems, the muqarnas spread like wild-fire across the Islamic world, from Iberia to North Africa through the Middle East, all the way to Central Asia and India. They started as relatively simple, almost rudimentary decorations, but with the passage of the centuries blossomed into an art form all of their own. One could delight for hours in exploring their ever-unfolding complexity...

Muqarnas is a self-evidently dazzling architectural achievement, for it dissolves otherwise large and robust structures into a sort of weightless, formless nebula of colour and shape. And they take obviously man-made structures and lend them a deeply natural quality; the perfectly receding geometry of miniature niches reminds us of a sunflower, of flames, of a tree canopy fluttering in the wind, of gems glittering in the sun...

There is also an important religious quality to muqarnas, as with all their interlacing complexity they are said to represent the divine majesty of the universe itself, as created and held together by God.

The muqarnas is also, I think, an excellent example of how often restrictions are the route to real creativity. Whereas in Christian churches architects and artists could decorate domes and pendentives with frescoes and mosaics of saints, Islamic rules forbidding representational art required artists to find other outlets. Left with geometry as their foremost ally, the great Islamic architects of the Abbasids, Timurids, Safavids, and Ottomans worked quasi-abstract wonders of colour and shape, elevating pattern itself into something reminiscent of divinity no less than the solemn, haloed faces of Byzantine iconography.

Without doubt, I'm sure you will agree, one of the most spell-binding architectural motifs anywhere on earth.

V - Rhetoric

Why study it?

Rather than looking at a specific rhetorical device, as usual, I'd like to zoom out and think about the value or purpose of rhetoric itself. Why should the art and science of speech receive such careful attention? Why does a close study of the techniques of persuasion deserve priority among all the many other subjects worth exploring?

Plato can answer these questions for us when, in Phaedrus, he described rhetoric as:

Beautiful. And powerful. That was the full height of the regard in which Greeks (and, later, Romans) held rhetoric. Both cultures were deeply interested in the civic sphere. Theirs was a world in which the upright citizen was one who contributed to public discussion, who had mastered the skills of persuasion and inspiration. But rhetoric wasn't only for the political sphere; its relevance and usefulness extended to eulogies, private conversations or audiences, to spontanous addresses, to celebrations, to military speeches, and even storytelling. Communication - language - permeated every aspect of classical culture, as it does ours or that of any society.

Plato captures this rather beautifully by linking language to our innermost selves, and by arguing that that, should we know how to use language well, we can engage with the souls of others. He relays not only how important the art of rhetoric was to the Greeks, but touches on a universal and interminable truth about human civilisation: that, at its heart, is language. Who, then, ought not study it?

VI - Writing

Long(inus)ing for Perfection

The great bane of many writers is desire for perfection. You write, rewrite, edit, rewrite, edit, delete, and start again. You're never happy with what you've written.

Well, here's some helpful advice from On the Sublime, an essay composed sometime in the 1st century A.D. and one of the finest and most inspiring works of literary criticism ever written. We're not exactly sure who wrote On the Sublime, since the manuscript contains no clear authorship. It has been tentatively attributed to Dionysus of Halicarnassus and Cassius Longinus, though any number of stylistic differences and anachronisms render these theories unlikely. And so it is attributed to the rather mysterious figure of "Pseudo-Longinus". I thoroughly recommend reading On the Sublime in its entirety. But, for our present purposes, there's one particular passage I wish to pull out:

Extordinary stuff. Pseudo-Longinus, whoever he was, knew how to write - and write convincingly, too. I love this idea that when writers let go of the search for perfection, when they cast off the burden of "correctness", when they no longer fear mistakes and concern themselves with "trifles", it allows them to enter a sphere of creation beyond perfection itself, a "brave disorder" in which sublimity shines forth.

How to apply this practically? Just write. Trust your instinct. Let your heart and the subtle, unreadable patterns of your mind guide your words. Don't stop to check where you're going, to think whether it makes sense or what anybody else will think. Just write your way, fearlessly, into that brave disorder, and see what happens. You may yet surprise yourself.

VII - The Seventh Plinth

The Ship of Theseus

Theseus, one of the great Greek heroes alongside such familiar names as Perseus, Bellerophon, and Heracles, was the (mythical) founder of Athens. Though the son of the King of Attica, Theseus was born in a foreign land and, modelling himself on Heracles, became something of a hero even before finding his long-lost father. And it was Theseus who ultimately convinced the agricultural population of Attica to gather into a single urban centre: Athens. Before that, however, came Theseus' most famous exploit: his tangle with the Minotaur.

See, King Minos of Crete had long been extracting a rather brutal tribute from Athens, originating in an old grievance. Every few years a number of Athenian youths were shipped off to Crete, where the story goes that King Minos forced them into his colossal labyrinth, only to be hunted down and devoured by the gruesome half-man, half-bull Minotaur. So Theseus, recently returned to Attica and hoping to prove himself worthy of the throne to the people, came up with a plan. He was still young, after all, and made sure that he would be selected for the next tribute.

You know the rest: he sails to Crete, receives a divine spool of wool with which to track his progress through the labyrinth, slays the Minotaur, ends the tribute, and saves the children of Attica. Passing over the tragedy of his father's death and his scandalous rendezvous with Ariadne, Theseus returned to Athens and become the hero known to us even today.

Now, the ship with which Theseus had sailed to Crete and back was kept in the Athenian harbour as a monument to his heroism. The ship lay there for several centuries, so we are told, and the citizens of Athens kept it in good nick by replacing rotten planks, damaged masts, rusty bolts, and fraying ropes. Eventually, none of the original parts of Theseus' ship remained, and yet it was still used by Athenians in religious festivals as the Ship of Theseus. Hm.

This story provided a philosophical conundrum for ancient thinkers, who debated whether or not it was still the same ship...

Question of the Week

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

How, if at all, can we get an ought from an is?

This has been a real philosophical Gordian Knot for centuries. Here were your efforts to solve it...

Nick W made an excellent case for emotions as one possible solution:

As a former law student myself, I enjoyed how Megha A brought jurisprudence into the discussion:

Deborah G gave a brilliant answer, but there's on particular line I want to pull out, because it seems to encapsulate what many of you argued; that beyond logic lies our natural, emotional intuition for what is right and wrong (for what we ought to do):

The laconic answer of the week goes to Marcia F, who certainly summed up my own perplexion at David Hume's famously flabbergasting philosophical fuddle:

And for this week's question to test your critical thinking... you guessed it:

If you replace all the parts of something over time until none of the original parts are left, is it still the same thing?

And that's all

As I write this little epilogue to the Areopagus that bright morning sunshine has descended into typical English autumn-ness (is that a word?) - rain so cold it plies your bones and wind so bitter it rattles your teeth. Home, sweet home... Alas, writing about Aristides has given me the taste for some Plutarch. So I'm off read a few of his Parallel Lives and listen to Sibelius' 7th Symphony, which feels appropriate for such moody and tempestuous weather.

Wherever you are in the world, I hope you have a good Friday. Adieu, adieu.

Yours,

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