The Virtual Stoa

Over at Harry’s, Marcus has kicked off a discussion of Britishness, spinning out of this piece in today’s Guardian by the Britishness Tsar himself, the estimable scholar Bernard Crick.

Annoyingly enough, I can’t find my copy of the Parekh Report on multicultural Britain, in which I wanted to check a few things [disclosure: Bhikhu Parekh is one of my favourite human beings]. But I’ll just randomly make four comments here which seem to me possibly to be worth making, and which I’ll post here rather than in the comments at Harry’s for no terribly good reason.

The first is that it seems to me that the basic difference between Crick and Parekh is simply that they’re coming at a sort-of similar problem from very different angles: Parekh has post-colonial Britain and the experience of non-white immigrants in the UK closer to the forefront of his attention than Crick, who has been concerned for a while with the “Britain” chiefly composed of the different bits of England, Scotland, Wales, a chunk of Ireland, etc. And that if we think there’s a disagreement between them, we should probably just reflect on their different standpoints rather than hit one another on the head with misleading arguments about the history of demographics in these islands.

The second is that it still seems a bit strange (to me at least) to be launching something that purports (I think) to be a left discussion of Britishness as Marcus does, by focusing on legal and constitutional history and ignoring questions of class and economics. Boring hemi-demi-semi Marxist that I occasionally am, I tend to find it more helpful to think of “British” as a word referring specifically to the class alliance between lowland Scots elites and the dominant political and commercial classes in England: in return for (basically) surrendering their sovereignty, these Scots were given a privileged place in a transnational economic order (the emerging “British” empire). (From this point of view Sir Alec Douglas-Home is pretty much the definitive Brit.) And one reason why that’s an interesting story to stress today concerns the politics of the present: if the contemporary transnational economic order that matters is the EU, then the Scots can very sensibly reclaim sovereign self-government without making a severe economic sacrifice in doing so, and sometimes I wonder why they don’t. (Would you want to be shackled to England and the English in perpetuity?)

Third point: since it’s not unreasonable to see citizenship law as lying at the heart of any state, and since British citizenship law is so obviously racist (as any glance at the changing content of that law over the course of the 20th century reveals so clearly), I’m puzzled by Marcus’s confidence that “Britain is not a racist state”, and I’d like to hear more about why anyone can plausibly think that it isn’t.

The fourth, and not-entirely-frivolous point is that if we’re looking for a general overarching account of Britain, “Britishness”, etc., “a nation of emigrants” is as good as we’re going to get. These islands have almost always been a net exporter of population to the rest of the world, and when opinion polls ask people if they’d like to go and live abroad, quite high percentages tend to say yes.

And it’s not hard to think of reasons why.

[Click for a full-size image, if this is hard to read].

I found this taped to the inside my second-hand copy of Guido De Ruggiero’s History of European Liberalism, and have been meaning for a while to post it up here. It’s the syllabus for a course its previous owner took at Harvard’s Summer School in 1963, taught by Louis Hartz, and for those of us who spend our time teaching similar kinds of things forty years on, it’s an interesting document to contemplate.

We’ve had tragic news today, and heroic news (and yes, he did go on to make 400, and no, I didn’t get to see any of it on the telly, boo hiss), and we complete today’s tour of the genres with a piece of tragicomedy: Paul “The Thinker” Richards has suspended his blogging-related activities.

“Those that know me will know why I will not be blogging for the forseeable [sic] future”, he writes. “Sorry to all the readers of this blog.”

In a nostalgic mood, then, we can return to the heady days when “The Thinker” was new, and bliss was it in that dawn to be alive and so on:

At a time when traditional politics is dying on its feet, when mainstream journalism is reduced to gossip, smears and plain old getting it wrong, and the public meeting is as rare as a dodo egg, here in the blogosphere ideas still matter, and good writing prevails. Politics is dead. Long live politics.

The Thinker is dead! Long live Paul “The Thinker” Richards!I for one will certainly miss not having Paul “The Thinker” Richards to kick around any more. It’s been fun, but now, alas, it’s over. At least for the foreseeable future.

So we can live in hope.

This is the antepenultimate part. (I like that word).

Earlier episodes: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII, XIX.

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Part Twenty

Individualism will also be unselfish and unaffected. It has been pointed out that one of the results of the extraordinary tyranny of authority is that words are absolutely distorted from their proper and simple meaning, and are used to express the obverse of their right signification. What is true about Art is true about Life. A man is called affected, nowadays, if he dresses as he likes to dress. But in doing that he is acting in a perfectly natural manner. Affectation, in such matters, consists in dressing according to the views of one’s neighbour, whose views, as they are the views of the majority, will probably be extremely stupid. Or a man is called selfish if he lives in the manner that seems to him most suitable for the full realization of his own personality; if, in fact, the primary aim of his life is self-development. But this is the way in which every one should live. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them. Selfishness always aims at creating around it an absolute uniformity of type. Unselfishness recognises infinite variety of type as a delightful thing, accepts it, acquiesces in it, enjoys it. It is not selfish to think for oneself. A man who does not think for himself does not think at all. It is grossly selfish to require of one’s neighbour that he should think in the same way, and hold the same opinions. Why should he? If he can think, he will probably think differently. If he cannot think, it is monstrous to require thought of any kind from him. A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses. Under Individualism people will be quite natural and absolutely unselfish, and will know the meanings of the words, and realize them in their free, beautiful lives. Nor will men be egotistic as they are now. For the egotist is he who makes claims upon others, and the Individualist will not desire to do that. It will not give him pleasure. When man has realized Individualism, he will also realize sympathy and exercise it freely and spontaneously. Up to the present man has hardly cultivated sympathy at all. He has merely sympathy with pain, and sympathy with pain is not the highest form of sympathy. All sympathy is fine, but sympathy with suffering is the least fine mode. It is tainted with egotism. It is apt to become morbid. There is in it a certain element of terror for our own safety. We become afraid that we ourselves might be as the leper or as the blind, and that no man would have care of us. It is curiously limiting, too. One should sympathize with the entirety of life, not with life’s sores and maladies merely, but with life’s joy and beauty and energy and health and freedom. The wider sympathy is, of course, the more difficult. It requires more unselfishness. Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature — it requires, in fact, the nature of a true Individualist — to sympathize with a friend’s success. In the modern stress of competition and struggle for place, such sympathy is naturally rare, and is also very much stifled by the immoral ideal of uniformity of type and conformity to rule which is so prevalent everywhere, and is perhaps most obnoxious in England.

[Penultimate episode, coming soon]

Oh to be in Antigua yesterday, not just for the usual reasons, but also to watch Brian Lara making an astonishing 313 Not Out against the English bowlers who have, improbably enough, had the better of the West Indies batsmen in the first three matches in this surprising series. I don’t think there’s anyone in world cricket that I would rather watch making a triple hundred. (Sachin Tendulkar, perhaps, but I’m not sure he ever will.)

The one time I saw Lara bat — on the final day of the Oval Test in 2000 — I’d have happily watched him bat all day and make a lot of runs. But then he was out for 47, and the England bowlers went on to win the game after that reasonably efficiently.

(This was also the day on which two other greats, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh, appeared for the last time in Tests in England, and received the standing ovations they deserved. So it was a memorable day to be at the Oval, even in the absence of a Lara century — or double century, or triple century…)

UPDATE: He did it: 400 Not Out. What a hero.

Ben Pimlott, the Labour historian — biographer of Hugh Dalton, Harold Wilson and, er, the Queen — is dead at 58. That’s too young, and wretched news to read.

Norm has crunched yet more numbers coming out of his scientific attempt to calculate the greatest Bob Dylan songs ever based on the preference functions of some of the people who read and write on blogs:

What are Bob Dylan’s finest albums? If the question interests you at all, you’re likely to have your own view, but it occurred to me to have a look and see what guidance might be had from the results of the normblog best songs poll. This is only a loose indication, of course, because no one was voting for albums as such in that poll, and also because I don’t have the time or patience to collate all the votes that came in for all the songs. But putting together the votes for the songs that made the top 53 shows four albums way out in front of the rest.

And these four are, perhaps unsurprisingly, Bringing It All Back Home (1965), Highway 61 Revisited (1965), Blonde On Blonde (1966), and — his own favourite (and one of mine) — Blood On The Tracks (1975).A “loose indication” indeed: as I’ve already said before, probably more than once on this blog, easily the best Bob Dylan album is John Wesley Harding, even though none of the individual songs on that record made it into my top four, or into Norm’s top fifty three…

UPDATE [11.4.2004]: Norm emails to say “”All Along The Watchtower” was ninth and “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” was one of the songs with three votes - both off John Wesley Harding. I don’t know… I slave over the results and you don’t even study them properly…” He’s right, I’m wrong (again), what can I say? I’ll pay more attention in future.

Earlier episodes: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII.

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Part Nineteen

It will, of course, be said that such a scheme as is set forth here is quite unpractical, and goes against human nature. This is perfectly true. It is unpractical, and it goes against human nature. This is why it is worth carrying out, and that is why one proposes it. For what is a practical scheme? A practical scheme is either a scheme that is already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under existing conditions. But it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to; and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The conditions will be done away with, and human nature will change. The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result. All the results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable.

It is to be noted also that Individualism does not come to man with any sickly cant about duty, which merely means doing what other people want because they want it; or any hideous cant about self-sacrifice, which is merely a survival of savage mutilation. In fact, it does not come to man with any claims upon him at all. It comes naturally and inevitably out of man. It is the point to which all development tends. It is the differentiation to which all organisms grow. It is the perfection that is inherent in every mode of life, and towards which every mode of life quickens. And so Individualism exercises no compulsion over man. On the contrary, it says to man that he should suffer no compulsion to be exercised over him. It does not try to force people to be good. It knows that people are good when they are let alone. Man will develop Individualism out of himself. Man is now so developing Individualism. To ask whether Individualism is practical is like asking whether Evolution is practical. Evolution is the law of life, and there is no evolution except towards individualism. Where this tendency is not expressed, it is a case of artificially arrested growth, or of disease, or of death.

[To be continued…]

Not long to go now. I think it’ll run to twenty two instalments, all told.

Earlier episodes: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, XVII.

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Part Eighteen

It is evident, then, that all authority in such things is bad. People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous. It has been stated that under despotism artists have produced lovely work. This is not quite so. Artists have visited despots, not as subjects to be tyrannized over, but as wandering wonder-makers, as fascinating vagrant personalities, to be entertained and charmed and suffered to be at peace, and allowed to create. There is this to be said in favour of the despot, that he, being an individual, may have culture, while the mob, being a monster, has none. One who is an Emperor and King may stoop down to pick up a brush for a painter, but when the democracy stoops down it is merely to throw mud. And yet the democracy have not so far to stoop as the Emperor. In fact, when they want to throw mud they have not to stoop at all. But there is no necessity to separate the monarch from the mob; all authority is equally bad.

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People. The Prince may be cultivated. Many Princes have been. Yet in the Prince there is danger. One thinks of Dante at the bitter feast in Verona, of Tasso in Ferrara’s madman’s cell. It is better for the artist not to live with Princes. The Pope may be cultivated. Many Popes have been; the bad Popes have been. The bad Popes loved Beauty, almost as passionately, nay, with as much passion as the good Popes hated Thought. To the wickedness of the Papacy humanity owes much. The goodness of the Papacy owes a terrible debt to humanity. Yet, though the Vatican has kept the rhetoric of its thunders, and lost the rod of its lightning, it is better for the artist not to live with Popes. It was a Pope who said of Cellini to a conclave of Cardinals that common laws and common authority were not made for men such as he; but it was a Pope who thrust Cellini into prison, and kept him there till he sickened with rage, and created unreal visions for himself, and saw the gilded sun enter his room, and grew so enamoured of it that he sought to escape, and crept out from tower to tower, and falling through dizzy air at dawn, maimed himself, and was by a vine-dresser covered with vine leaves, and carried in a cart to one who, loving beautiful things, had care of him. There is danger in Popes. And as for the People, what of them and their authority? Perhaps of them and their authority one has spoken enough. Their authority is a thing blind, deaf, hideous, grotesque, tragic, amusing, serious, and obscene. It is impossible for the artist to live with the People. All despots bribe. The People bribe and brutalize. Who told them to exercise authority? They were made to live, to listen, and to love. Some one has done them a great wrong. They have marred themselves by imitation of their superiors. They have taken the sceptre of the Prince. How should they use it? They have taken the triple tiara of the Pope. How should they carry its burden? They are as a clown whose heart is broken. They are as a priest whose soul is not yet born. Let all who love Beauty pity them. Though they themselves love not Beauty, yet let them pity themselves. Who taught them the trick of tyranny ?

There are many other things that one might point out. One might point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great and individual men. One might point out how Louis XIV, by creating the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist, and made things monstrous in their monotony of repetition, and contemptible in their conformity to rule, and destroyed throughout all France all those fine freedoms of expression that had made tradition new in beauty, and new modes one with antique form. But the past is of no importance. The present is of no importance. It is with the future that we have to deal. For the past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.

[To be continued]

While I’m on an eighteenth-century kick, here’s a link to the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert Collaborative Translation Project, which is based at the University of Michigan. They’ve only posted a fraction of the 70,000 articles from the Encyclopédie, and it’ll probably be a work in progress for ever, but it’s a particularly worthy project.

D’Alembert’s Geneva and Diderot’s Natural Right, needless to say, are among the earliest posted translations.

Chris Bertram has just blogged about our little disagreement about just which county Jean-Jacques Rousseau was living in in 1766-7 during his time in England. Is it Derbyshire? Or Staffordshire? Radio 3 agrees with me that it’s Staffordshire, and I’m sure we’ll both be listening to “Rousseau in Staffordshire” (a worthy sequel to “Wittgenstein in Connemara”) when it’s broadcast on Sunday night.

All I’ll do here is post a chunk of the OS map of the area — on the Staffordshire side of the Dove — just because I can. (Apologies for the large image. I think it’s worth it.)

And here’s the obligatory copyright notice: Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland. Thanks.

Tony Cliff, International Socialist and theorist of Soviet state capitalism; b. 1917, d. 9 April, 2000.

UPDATE [4pm]: I should probably link to this collection of his writings. And also note that he’s only the second of the 84 dead socialists watched so far whom I ever heard speak (probably some time in 1993, though I forget the date; the other was Christopher Hill, DSW#71, on 11 May 1993).

Pablo Picasso, artist and communist. Born 25 October, 1881, died 8 April, 1973.

Earlier instalments: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI.

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Part Seventeen

With the novel it is the same thing. Popular authority and the recognition of popular authority are fatal. Thackeray’s Esmond is a beautiful work of art because he wrote it to please himself. In his other novels, in Pendennis, in Philip, in Vanity Fair even, at times, he is too conscious of the public, and spoils his work by appealing directly to the sympathies of the public, or by directly mocking at them. A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent. He has no poppied or honeyed cakes through which to give the monster sleep or sustenance. He leaves that to the popular novelist. One incomparable novelist we have now in England, Mr. George Meredith. There are better artists in France, but France has no one whose view of life is so large, so varied, so imaginatively true. There are tellers of stories in Russia who have a more vivid sense of what pain in fiction may be. But to him belongs philosophy in fiction. His people not merely live, but they live in thought. One can see them from myriad points of view. They are suggestive. There is soul in them and around them. They are interpretative and symbolic. And he who made them, those wonderful, quickly moving figures, made them for his own pleasure, and has never asked the public what they wanted, has never cared to know what they wanted, has never allowed the public to dictate to him or influence him in any way, but has gone on intensifying his own personality, and producing his own individual work. At first none came to him. That did not matter. Then the few came to him. That did not change him. The many have come now. He is still the same. He is an incomparable novelist.

With the decorative arts it is not different. The public clung with really pathetic tenacity to what I believe were the direct traditions of the Great Exhibition of international vulgarity, traditions that were so appalling that the houses in which people lived were only fit for blind people to live in. Beautiful things began to be made, beautiful colours came from the dyer’s hand, beautiful patterns from the artist’s brain, and the use of beautiful things and their value and importance were set forth. The public were really very indignant. They lost their temper. They said silly things. No one minded. No one was a whit the worse. No one accepted the authority of public opinion. And now it is almost impossible to enter any modern house without seeing some recognition of good taste, some recognition of the value of lovely surroundings, some sign of appreciation of beauty. In fact, people’s houses are, as a rule, quite charming nowadays. People have been to a very great extent civilized. It is only fair to state, however, that the extraordinary success of the revolution in house-decoration and furniture and the like has not really been due to the majority of the public developing a very fine taste in such matters. It has been chiefly due to the fact that the craftsmen of things so appreciated the pleasure of making what was beautiful, and woke to such a vivid consciousness of the hideousness and vulgarity of what the public had previously wanted, that they simply starved the public out. It would be quite impossible at the present moment to furnish a room as rooms were furnished a few years ago, without going for everything to an auction of second-hand furniture from some third-rate lodging-house. The things are no longer made. However they may object to it, people must nowadays have something charming in their surroundings. Fortunately for them, their assumption of authority in these art-matters came to entire grief.

[More in a bit]

Alexandre Millerand, French socialist politician and minister, later non-socialist prime minister; born Paris, 10 February 1859; died Versailles, 7 April 1943.

Richard Titmuss (scroll down for short bio.), social scientist, b.1907, d.6 April 1973.

UPDATE [7.4.2004]: See SIAW for a valuable follow-up on Titmuss and The Gift Relationship.

Chris Young’s blog has moved; he’s abandoning See Why? and is now blogging (with some friends) over at Explananda.

Do go and pay him a visit, and linger with pleasure over the fine Tom Waits lyric that adorns his masthead.

Previous episodes: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV, XV.

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Part Sixteen

However, let us leave what is really a very sordid side of the subject, and return to the question of popular control in the matter of Art, by which I mean Public Opinion dictating to the artist the form which he is to use, the mode in which he is to use it, and the materials with which he is to work. I have pointed out that the arts which have escaped best in England are the arts in which the public have not been interested. They are, however, interested in the drama, and as a certain advance has been made in the drama within the last ten or fifteen years, it is important to point out that this advance is entirely due to a few individual artists refusing to accept the popular want of taste as their standard, and refusing to regard Art as a mere matter of demand and supply. With his marvellous and vivid personality, with a style that has really a true colour-element in it, with his extraordinary power, not over mere mimicry, but over imaginative and intellectual creation, Mr. Irving, had his sole object been to give the public what they wanted, could have produced the commonest plays in the commonest manner, and made as much success and money as a man could possibly desire. But his object was not that. His object was to realize his own perfection as an artist, under certain conditions and in certain forms of Art. At first he appealed to the few: now he has educated the many. He has created in the public both taste and temperament. The public appreciate his artistic success immensely. I often wonder, however, whether the public understand that that success is entirely due to the fact that he did not accept their standard, but realized his own. With their standard the Lyceum would have been a sort of second-rate booth, as some of the popular theatres in London are at present. Whether they understand it or not, the fact however remains, that taste and temperament have, to a certain extent, been created in the public, and that the public are capable of developing these qualities. The problem then is, why do not the public become more civilized? They have the capacity. What stops them?

The thing that stops them, it must be said again, is their desire to exercise authority over the artist and over works of art. To certain theatres, such as the Lyceum and the Haymarket, the public seem to come in a proper mood. In both of these theatres there have been individual artists, who have succeeded in creating in their audiences — and every theatre in London has its own audience — the temperament to which Art appeals. And what is that temperament? It is the temperament of receptivity. That is all.

If a man approaches a work of art with any desire to exercise authority over it and the artist, he approaches it in such a spirit that he cannot receive any artistic impression from it at all. The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. And the more completely he can suppress his own silly views, his own foolish prejudices, his own absurd ideas of what Art should be, or should not be, the more likely he is to understand and appreciate the work of art in question. This is, of course, quite obvious in the case of the vulgar theatre-going public of English men and women. But it is equally true of what are called educated people. For an educated person’s ideas of Art are drawn naturally from what Art has been, whereas the new work of art is beautiful by being what Art has never been; and to measure it by the standard of the past is to measure it by a standard on the rejection of which its real perfection depends. A temperament capable of receiving, through an imaginative medium, and under imaginative conditions, new and beautiful impressions, is the only temperament that can appreciate a work of art. And true as this is in the case of the appreciation of sculpture and painting, it is still more true of the appreciation of such arts as the drama. For a picture and a statue are not at war with Time. They take no count of its succession. In one moment their unity may be apprehended. In the case of literature it is different. Time must be traversed before the unity of effect is realized. And so, in the drama, there may occur in the first act of the play something whose real artistic value may not be evident to the spectator till the third or fourth act is reached. Is the silly fellow to get angry and call out, and disturb the play, and annoy the artists ? No. The honest man is to sit quietly, and know the delightful emotions of wonder, curiosity, and suspense. He is not to go to the play to lose a vulgar temper. He is to go to the play to realize an artistic temperament. He is to go to the play to gain an artistic temperament. He is not the arbiter of the work of art. He is one who is admitted to contemplate the work of art, and, if the work be fine, to forget in its contemplation all the egotism that mars him — the egotism of his ignorance, or the egotism of his information. This point about the drama is hardly, I think, sufficiently recognized. I can quite understand that were Macbeth produced for the first time before a modern London audience, many of the people present would strongly and vigorously object to the introduction of the witches in the first act, with their grotesque phrases and their ridiculous words. But when the play is over one realises that the laughter of the witches in Macbeth is as terrible as the laughter of madness in Lear, more terrible than the laughter of Iago in the tragedy of the Moor. No spectator of art needs a more perfect mood of receptivity than the spectator of a play. The moment he seeks to exercise authority he becomes the avowed enemy of Art, and of himself. Art does not mind. It is he who suffers.

[More soon enough.]

Previous postings: I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, XI, XII, XIII, XIV.

“The Soul of Man Under Socialism” by Oscar Wilde, Part Fifteen

In old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an improvement certainly. But still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralizing. Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism. In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever. Fortunately, in America, Journalism has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a natural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt. People are amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments. But it is no longer the real force it was. It is not seriously treated. In England, Journalism, except in a few well-known instances, not having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a really remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people’s private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary. The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands. In centuries before ours the public nailed the ears of journalists to the pump. That was quite hideous. In this century journalists have nailed their own ears to the keyhole. That is much worse. And what aggravates the mischief is that the journalists who are most to blame are not the amusing journalists who write for what are called Society papers. The harm is done by the serious, thoughtful, earnest journalists, who solemnly, as they are doing at present, will drag before the eyes of the public some incident in the private life of a great statesman, of a man who is a leader of political thought as he is a creator of political force, and invite the public to discuss the incident, to exercise authority in the matter, to give their views, and not merely to give their views, but to carry them into action, to dictate to the man upon all other points, to dictate to his party, to dictate to his country; in fact, to make themselves ridiculous, offensive, and harmful. The private lives of men and women should not be told to the public. The public have nothing to do with them at all.

In France they manage these things better. There they do not allow the details of the trials that take place in the divorce courts to be published for the amusement or criticism of the public. All that the public are allowed to know is that the divorce has taken place and was granted on petition of one or other or both of the married parties concerned. In France, in fact, they limit the journalist, and allow the artist almost perfect freedom. Here we allow absolute freedom to the journalist, and entirely limit the artist. English public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or revolting in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists in the world and the most indecent newspapers. It is no exaggeration to talk of compulsion. There are possibly some journalists who take a real pleasure in publishing horrible things, or who, being poor, look to scandals as forming a sort of permanent basis for an income. But there are other journalists, I feel certain, men of education and cultivation, who really dislike publishing these things, who know that it is wrong to do so, and only do it because the unhealthy conditions under which their occupation is carried on oblige them to supply the pubic with what the public wants, and to compete with other journalists in making that supply as full and satisfying to the gross popular appetite as possible. It is a very degrading position for any body of educated men to be placed in, and I have no doubt that most of them feel it acutely.

[More shortly]

This one’s very fine.

[Via Sarah]

This one concerns the word Jew.

[Details here.]

[The Santorum googlebomb, incidentally, has been a triumph.]

Let’s raise a bit of Anne Carson-related consciousness around here.

Here are one, two recent articles from the American media; here’s some basic info and here’s a bit more, at slightly greater length.

And there are pages with some of her poems on them here, here, here, here and here.

And a few other reviews and other chunks of writing on her work are here, here, here and here.

So: next time I mention the subject, we’ll all be a little better informed.

It’s February’s news, isn’t it, but I’m pleased to say that we’ve finally posted Jerry Threet’s account of his wedding to his partner Seth at City Hall in San Francisco over at The Voice of the Turtle.

As he concludes: “I am married to Seth through a process sanctioned by an agency of the state of California. Now, just let any person try to tell me I am not. As our President is so fond of saying, ‘Bring it on.’ When you come after my family, you should expect some resistance.’”

No April Fool joke over at the ever-serious Virtual Stoa, I’m afraid. (I did enjoy reading about Peter Mandelson becoming chairman of the BBC in the Guardian, especially for his suggestion that the Today programme could be broadcast in a much earlier slot, so that people could get some exercise at the time it’s currently on.)

But instead here’s a link to a post on the excellent new groupblog The Panda’s Thumb. The blog has been set up as part of the propaganda effort against Creationists, advocates of Intelligent Design, and others who want to replace science education with nonsense; the particular post documents some of the extraordinary credulity — some of it 1 April-related — of these perennial (and pernicious) fools. Good work, chaps.