May one be pardon'd and retain the offence?

[steepholm]

For various reasons I’ve been looking back at Four British Fantasists over the last couple of days, and I found myself reading the discussion of James Lovelock’s defence of hedgerows in Ages of Gaia. Lovelock describes the appearance of the English countryside, with its small enclosed fields, as “as much as a sacrament as the cathedrals, music and poetry.” In my book I take issue with this for a number of reasons, but today one particular objection gave me pause. This is what I wrote:

“It is difficult to privilege a particular and historically very specific form of man-made landscape without also implicitly defending the social system for whose purposes that landscape was created and maintained.” (134)

Well, I can see what I meant here. Many of those hedgerows, eco-friendly mouse and vole condominia as they may be today, were built not for wildlife or aesthetics but to enable landgrabbers to deprive the poor of their historic right to common land. They are not a sacrament, but evidence of a historic class crime – and a crime for which redress has never been made.

But should that stop us finding them beautiful? And if so, what are the implications? To take another, perhaps still starker example, can we admire the pyramids without at some level endorsing slave labour? (This is assuming for the sake of argument that slaves were used in their building.) In a very basic and abstract way we might admire their triangularity; we might get a vulgar thrill from thinking that “These Things are Very Old”; but if we’re the kind of people for whom the human history and purpose of such objects is an important part of our response, then how are we meant to reconcile ourselves to that admiration? How can we even be impressed by their size without also quailing a little at the thought of the power that decreed it and what that meant in human terms? Should we, in short, wish that the pyramids had never been made? And is that wish compatible with admiring them now, or does present admiration make us retrospectively complicit?

Am I worrying too much?

Comments

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

Yes : )

[(Anonymous)]

Am I worrying too much?

Probably. I think the amount of time lapse has a lot to do with it; as it happens I find pyramids boring structures, but if I liked them, I wouldn't think "what about the poor slaves", not at this juncture. And I would wonder if there's by this time any famous building in the world where something infamous hasn't happened.

whoops!

[sheenaghpugh]

sorry, that was me forgetting to log in!

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I remember having a similar discussion with my Dad years ago, when I was about 14. We'd visited a stately home, and he said that he was incapable of seeing it as interesting or beautiful, due to his awareness that it only existed because of an unjust social system. One of my counter arguments was that virtually the entire British environment reflects social systems that we no longer support. Castles were built to suppress populaces. Money went on building cathedrals while peasants starved. On a more local scale, millers were notorious for fleecing their fellow villagers. Victorian mills abused child labourers. Forests only exist because of oppressive Forest Law, and wild uplands are the ramblers' paradise that they now are because landowners evicted cottagers and fenced the land in to breed game. Yes, we could go through life despising forests and moorlands and windmills and castles and cathedrals... but that would make life quite unbearably depressing, so I'd rather see the beauty in the things around me, even if they had unpleasant origins long ago. Perhaps not the most morally-sound reasoning, but, still…

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

I feel that, if the social system that used those things as symbols of their power and control no longer have power and control, I can admire them as art, or as peculiarities, without guilt.

But that was a good point to reflect on, about the hedgerows.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure whether Soviet thinking is relevant but, when I visited the Soviet Union as was, I was told that the reason why they put so much effort into restoring Tsarist palaces to their former glory was to honour the craftsmen who created the originals.

[gillo]

Hmm. While you have a good point it's worth remembering that all man-made beauty has come at a price - the underpaid stoneworkers on mediaeval cathedrals, the downtrodden Hindus building the Moguls' great palaces, or the enslaved Chinese workers creating the Forbidden City. Or think of the way Church money was pumped into the Renaissance art and architecture while peasants starved, or the lovely Georgian buildings of Bristol and Bath financed by profits from the slave trade.

In the end, as Artaud pointed out, creativity depends on cruelty, life on death, in a metaphorical if not literal sense. It's also worth remembering that the classic three-field system we learned about at school didn't actually apply throughout England, let alone the rest of Britain, and some hedgerows antedate Enclosures.

How can we even be impressed by their size without also quailing a little at the thought of the power that decreed it and what that meant in human terms?

Shades of Ozymandias, though?

We have what we have and are where we are. We shouldn't be complacent about sacrifices and suffering in the past, but nothing really is to be gained from beating ourselves up about it.

[calimac.livejournal.com]

Every time you speak a word of Modern English, remember that it's a hybrid language originating from the completely wanton and unjustified Norman Conquest. Better to return to Anglo-Saxon. But wait! The Anglo-Saxons invaded and dispossessed the Celts! Who in turn had run out the Hobbits, or God knows who.

You can't win, thinking this way.

[deborah]

I think this is a really interesting set of thoughts. I don't think you're worrying too much, although I think phrasing it as worrying might be giving yourself too much reason to stress. Basically, I think it's incredibly important to remember where they came from and what their effect was, but that doesn't make them not beautiful. Human history is a complicated thing, and the end results are often beautiful. I mean, in my country, EVERYTHING, practically, is the result of a historic crime -- the theft of a continent. My city was stolen from the people who lived there first, people who were killed both casually and intentionally, people who are now the tiniest fragment of a minority in the city's population, but that doesn't mean I don't love my city. It just means I need to remember where it came from.

[intertext.livejournal.com]

I understand exactly what you are concerned about, but I have to agree with those who say "yes," you're worrying too much - that way lies madness. As people have already articulated above, it would be difficult to see almost ANY part of the world as "innocent" of some kind of injustice, human pride, general wrongdoing.

On the other hand, your attitude does speak to some of the concerns we have now with works of literature that contain or display attitudes that we now find unpalatable. Or when we know something unpleasant about the author - I, for example, have difficulty reading William Mayne now.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think you've got this just about right. The trick is to find a way of taking pleasure in something without needing to induce a kind of voluntary amnesia.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Fair comment, I think. As for attitudes that may be unpalatable, I confess that as a republican I find it increasingly hard to enjoy fantasies that take the 'restoration of the rightful king' (or variants thereon) as the consummation to be wished for any society - especially when the writers aren't monarchists themselves. I can just about manage it by thinking in terms of it being some kind of archetypal metaphor for something else, but it's not easy.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

You can't win, thinking this way.

True enough!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I did know about the age of some hedgerows.

All good points - thank you. And the "Ozymandias route" is one way of processing it, especially when the remains are in a state of ruin, though sic transit is maybe a message that can be overdone!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I wonder whether it might not have had more to do with honouring Uncle Joe...?

Re: whoops!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

:) There's nothing to be done to retrospectively make those slaves' lot better, of course - though I try not to think of them or their suffering less real just because it happened a while ago. But you're right - pretty much everywhere is tainted to some degree.

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

I don't think he was around when I was there... I'm not that old.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

:)

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

I agree with some others here that we need to acknowledge the wrongs of the past but accept we live in the world we do now. But this makes the hedgerow example complicated to me, because we're still continually making land use decisions all around the world. Implying that beauty is worth dispossessing people for is very much an issue at the moment in some countries. So while I think it's OK to admire hedgerows because the dispossession happened so long ago (I pat my local one fondly as I pass by most days) calling them a sacrament ignores the price of their creation, and implies to me that it's OK to focus on the aesthetic value above other concerns.

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

Having done that myself - restored a fictional monarchy even though I am a republican - I justify it as being true to the world that I had created. If the book is inspired by a certain type of society with certain sets of beliefs the degree to which you can play with those is limited by some inner authorial plausibility test derived from history.

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

I think it is Ok to do that when you are making aesthetic judgements.

[emmaco.livejournal.com]

I should have said, it implies it's OK to ignore things such as the rights of the people using the land as long as you get beauty.

Fantastic thread

[(Anonymous)]

Hi--I'm a lurker on the DWJ listserv who was just checking out your blog, and I have to say, wow! Usually, when I read blogs, I skip the comments because they don't usually add much, but both the post and the responses here are very thought-provoking. I think I'm going to have to lurk here too, now. :-)

--Serendipity

Re: whoops!

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

This is really interesting and I hadn't thought about it before - except probably in the context of 'Stately Homes.'
I think I distinguish between an aesthetic response - which is just about beauty, form, colour visual impression and I suppose an 'artistic response' which includes an appreciation of intent and context.
My response to landscape tends to lie only in the former - unless it is an explicitly designed landscape like Versailles or soemthing; I am not an expert on human geography so mostly I don't know anything about intent or historical context. In architecture I veer towards a more artistic response except that ignorance often restricts me so that I am only able to give an aesthetic response. Of course it is more complicated than that but that is more or less how it works for me. I think it is OK to separate out the impact of the thing itself, the context of its creation and the intent of the creator and to have different responses to each: I think a sword can be beautiful, a stealth bomber, a King's throne etc

Re: Fantastic thread

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Hi Serendipity - you're very welcome!

Re: whoops!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I think that your artistic/aesthetic distinction is a useful one for many purposes, and is probably a good way of staying sane about this whole issue! But of course it's not an absolute distinction, especially when aesthetics and artistic intent combine, as in the case of rhetoric, for example. Thus I think it would be quite difficult to separate an aesthetic appreciation of Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will as a piece of cinematography from an acknowledgement of its rhetorical intent and effect. It works through an aesthetics of the viscera. The beauty of a sword can be quite abstract by comparison.

Re: whoops!

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

I think in most intentionally artistic enterprise the one obviously affects the other but it is interesting to consider if your response would differ if you were ignorant of the context and intent or if the the two are actually indivisible. What is aesthetically beautiful is also to some degree culturally determined so it is probably impossible to lose the impact of context altogether. However, I still think that it is a useful distinction with that rider - I think you can appreciate that something is well shot and composed, cut, edited and organised and has a kind of integrity. The degree to which these things are used to further a rhetorical purpose is a separate issue I think. I agree that in this case the definition of beauty is defined by ideology but it is possible to appreciate what something looks like, the artifice necessary to achieve it as well as appeciating how effectively both serve a particular purpose and acknowledging that achievement may also be morally repugnant; I do think those as distinct ways of apprehending an artistic endeavour.

Re: whoops!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think this gets it pretty much right, in an area where absolute rightness is probably not to be had. One can even find a kind of beauty in 'the perfect murder' if it's carried out with sufficient ingenuity and flair. Agatha Christie made a living out of it.

I'd love to be able to pin down a bit further the extent of "some degree" in your "What is aesthetically beautiful is also to some degree culturally determined". I believe there's some evidence that aesthetics has at least in part a biological/evolutionary component, inasmuch as sexual selection teaches us to find beauty in symmetrical people who are also the most likely to be healthy breeders - and the way in which the Golden Section (by way of the Fibonacci series) turn up in many natural contexts, for example the branching of veins and branches. So, to some extent, aesthetics may be hard-wired - and this could account for some of the response to the elegant proportions of the pyramids, too. At the same time, ideally I'd like to have an integrated response that involves the whole of my being, rather than some parts of my mind being offended, while other parts are going "Cool!"

Re: whoops!

[brownnicky.livejournal.com]

I'm shallow so I usually respond first to what is aesthetically beautiful but on the rare occasions where I think about it, I am perfectly happy with holding conflcting views about the same thing simultaneously; it is how I respond to most things : )