{Photo courtesy of anton}
I was quite taken by John Zerzan's anti-civilisation book and will try and write about it later. Once one gets beyond the casual and quite ridiculous claims that anyone opposed to technology is a Luddite you get an inkling of just how radical green anarchism is. Not just a questioning of economic growth and commodification, but a more profound and searing examination of the prior 'move' to greater and greater levels of abstraction.
On the other hand, you can't escape the fact that for you fiction, Bach (and, more generally, art (representation)) are supreme achievements. To think of a space like the one shown above is to be reminded of the virtues of peace, order, the equanimity of the mind, settled habits, attentiveness and predictability.
To see through a glass darkly, obliquely; beauty as the soul of distance, second spaces..all that is given form by civilisation and is dependent on refraction, reflection, gaps in our lives that are not necessarily 'closed' by art: we may intuit unity (Iris M) but art is also, and predominantly, a 'broken circle'.
And then you think to yourself, if there is order then there is also the opposite:
This, too, is part of modern civilisation. It gets worse, of course, when you think that the peace and order in some people's lives is purchased at the expense of other people's. It is, no doubt, quite delightful to ponder the varieties of light on the South Downs (as AnnWroe does in her latest book). It is edifying to think of the history of light, to imagine one has-somehow-emerged from centuries of darkness into an enlightened, progressive era. Tea and cream cakes, while you contemplate some watercolour paintings or think of the great advances in spirituality that have been fostered by the book: writing, learning, the diligent, cloistered mind.
But behind it all, the unnameable and uneasy feeling that won't go away persists, seeping into your imagination, slowing down your thoughts and words, giving rise to an awareness of the falseness of your voice. Not only is civilisation a fragile thing; not only has it led to its own horrors and disasters: it's wars against the barbarians, the uncivilised, the semi-rational, the denigration of earth and nature as well as the suppression of our instinctual and sensuous life; no, more: does the very possibility of civilisation itself rest on the exploitation of all that cannot be counted, that is peripheral, marginal to radiant splendour of the centre? Does civilisation itself produce these other, non-worlds, the dark side of Eden?
5 comments:
Dear b. Consider Freud's 'Civilisation and its Discontents', which cogently expresses the enduring conflict between our desire to continue to live in our secure, 'civilised' world and our unavoidable awareness of, and anxiety about, the regions of this planet where there is no such security or 'civilisation' as we know it. Perhaps, when Virgil wrote:'Sunt lacrimae rerum', he said it all?
Yes, that was in the back of my mind while writing the post ("instinctual life" etc).
But Zerzan's book is intriguing not least because he suggests that there's a darkness in the heart of civilisation..it's not so much about *other* regions of the planet.
Yes, 'we' need our barbarians but is that partly because we like to convince ourselves that we're somehow above it all? And yet the most remarkable thing: the Camps, the Bomb, the Killing Fields weren't some throwback to the 'middle ages' but very much part and parcel of modernity. As the Americans love to say, Go figure!
Don't know the context of your lines but does sound about right. Thanks for sharing it.
Out of curiosity C, did you read Virgil at school or later? You've never talked about your school days. Were you a day-scholar? Was it very different then?
Schools over here were much stricter with the pupils twenty, thirty years ago. they've also started something called an IB system which is, as far as i can tell, quite an improvement on the old system. But let's see. early days.
I had a funny feeling that you'd respond to this post. South Downs!
Last lecture of the term in 20 minutes. Everyone is thoroughly bored but I suppose we have to go through with the (last)rites.
orr?
Any news?
Keep well,
b.
Yes, read Virgil in the VIth form for A level Latin! The quote comes from the first book of the Aeneid: in Carthage, Aeneas is being shown by Dido a temple mural on which key figures of the Trojan wars are depicted, which moves him to say of it:'Sunt lacrimae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt.' My school days? I went to a total of 8 schools due to my dad moving jobs. By some miracle I survived well enough to read Law and actually qualify! Anyway,it is a depressing fact that, for whatever reason, our idea of 'the civilised life' can be enjoyed only by a small fraction of the billions on this planet.As you say, maybe the need to identify some as 'other' is wired into our psyche.The competitive nature of capitalism absolutely results in winners and losers!
Interesting. 8 schools! Does sound excessive!
:-)
Thought you might like this, dear C:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n08/colin-burrow/youve-listened-long-enough
Yes, excessive. And one was boarding school when I was 5 years old! Thanks for the link, b. Fascinating.Reminds me that I should re-visit Virgil, possibly revise my Latin.My father died a few days before my 55th birthday, and at his funeral I was handed the gift he'd intended to give me:Collected poems of Seamus Heaney.
Post a Comment