Classic Decline
New York
America’s diminished intellectualism has made this interminable election period as boring as a Nat Rothschild Corfu party for respectable folk. Part of the problem is that presidential candidates try ‘to reach out to younger voters’, hardly an admirable goal as demographic researchers have gone the way of TV programmers, targeting young morons whose Facebooks comprise 90 per cent of their education. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John McCain have all been forced to make appearances on vile and vulgar TV shows — proof that taking the high ground is as much of a vote-getter as George Osborne’s chances of being invited back to Nat’s Corfu lair. It all started with Bill Clinton — who else? — when the Draft Dodger blew ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ through his saxophone on a cheap, late-night American show. The likelihood of reversing this trend is nil, but stranger things have happened. For example, Taverna Agni could be next year’s venue for the Tory party conference, or even for Labour’s. (Mind you, now that Nat’s Atticus fund has gone the way of Deripaska, maybe George will next do the honours in a rented cabana near Blackpool.)
Do any of you remember the time when politicians were careful about whom they hung out with? Even better, do any of you remember when MPs would communicate with each other — Tories, that is — by conversing in Greek or Latin? Then a eunuch sacked the great Enoch Powell from the front benches and the rot set in. I was once introduced to Enoch by Greville Howard, now Lord Howard, and he addressed me in ancient Greek. I didn’t dare answer in kind, although I understood him perfectly, my classical Greek being rather shaky. The study of those two languages, with their illuminations on morality and philosophy, reached a nadir during the greedy Eighties and Nineties, when students said to hell with the ancients, let’s all become investment bankers and high-tech millionaires. The good news is that the present mess might see their return. Just imagine, 20 years down the road, Nat Rothschild hosting a Corfu party with Amo Latinam as the theme. (Keep imagining because it ain’t gonna happen.) Still, avaritia mala est, and the classics are staging a small comeback right here in the Big Bagel. Enrolment is rising because some young people are seeing the light, Corfu or not Corfu, that being the question.
The bad news is that people are cutting down on charity, especially those who help animals. The men in suits who have so mismanaged the world are doing their best to do little furry things in. Not to mention old, beautifully grimy neighbourhoods. Last week I found myself protesting against yet another outrage, that taking place on West 28th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, where Tin Pan Alley was born. Tin Pan Alley’s golden age was back in the Twenties and Thirties, where titans of song such as George Gershwin and Irving Berlin got their start. But the stretch earned its nickname at the turn of the century, when music companies moved in and the tinkling of pianos could be heard blocks away, 24 hours a day. It was a beautiful kind of clangour, now no longer heard, but the crumbling façades of those historic buildings are still there, unchanged, and one can look up and imagine the melodies.
The tunes back then were lyrical, the words were literate and passionate, and the rhymes were pure. Now a luxury apartment tower is planned to replace a scene that evokes everything that was wonderful about old Noo Yawk, reddish-brown, five-storey houses where talented people worked and created some of the sweetest sounds this side of New Orleans. They were obviously poor, talented, mostly Jewish, and spoke with accents which wouldn’t admit them even to strip clubs. Yet their music was divine, it reminds me of my youth, and that is all that matters. It is very sad and I for one will do anything I can to stop some greedy pig from obliterating a real New York landmark — Tin Pan Alley, for Chrissake, not exactly like tearing down a McDonald’s. We need another luxury tower in lower midtown as much as the island of Corfu needs another Russian oligarch anchoring his disgusting superyacht off its green and lovely shoreline.
But enough of this whining. My brother-in-law, Brian Culhane, married to Princess Victoria Schoenburg, is the winner of the Emily Dickinson First Book Award, as prestigious an award as there is without the name of Salman Rushdie being involved. At a reading down in Greenwich Village, I listened as Brian read out his poem about my father-in-law, Peter Schoenburg, and despite my age — my God, how quickly the tears come after 60 — I kept my composure and had a very good time. William Carlos Williams wrote this about poetry: ‘It is difficult to get the news from poems, /yet men die miserably every day/for lack/of what is found there.’
Poetry, an art I cannot understand or define, but certainly can feel, makes our daily existence mean more to us. Once upon a time, it was the highest branch of literature, but now it has dwindled into a mere craft. Yet it’s wonderful because it has not gone professional, and poets have not sold out like many writers have. Bravo, Brian, and especially as you chose to become a poet when others of your age group preferred the bank route. Again, Corfu or not Corfu, that is the question.
Comments
Taki, you’d be glad to know that Greek, Latin and the Classics in general are also staging a comeback even in the Antipodes with university classes having to add on more teachers and exhibitions being very popular.
Additionally, amongst the Diaspora, Adonis Georgiadis is again visiting our shores to speak in Greek about Macedonia and it is guaranteed to be a standing room only.
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I listened as Brian read out his poem about my father-in-law, Peter Schoenburg, and despite my age — my God, how quickly the tears come after 60 — I kept my composure and had a very good time.
Or even, God help me, after 45. Great morning read, Taki.
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Sir, you break my heart *appropriately since that very act in this case lets it soar, like a kite on a string a little higher.
also (quote): “…and the tinkling of pianos could be heard blocks away, 24 hours a day.” (end quote)
I lived in tin pan alley briefly, sadly in a time when one heard similarly instead, all of the gun shots (mostly) from television programs.
As for poetry, yes it contains some of mankind’s best thinking.
Thought gathers language into simple saying, no, not usually found in fortune cookies.
Even the body [unconsciously] thinks, in all of our organs’ cooperation (and slight competition) with one another. We became Human and capable of *conscious thought, too.
Without a conscious thought, and a more, inevitably open-ended dream as complement, there is sadly only a hand to wipe away the tears. As for coherent, Divinely inspired lyrics, yes:
“Once upon a time
“The world was sweeter than we knew…”
Today one could say without any *actual cause for this now, it all has been reduced to the Bee-Gees: “Saying alive, staying alive…”
Who are these monstrous elites of today-?- Cannibals? Is that their ‘religion’? George Soros would say so – and applaud. For him, as he stated, it is the abject abscence of any morality in the marketplace that makes it run so ‘smoothly’. -?- … Huh? (He must have meant, For him.) George, if I might ask, how does it all taste to you? Was he at Nat’s party?
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Bravo, Taki! This election has been terminally boring.
I read the classical Greek histories (in English) when I was 13 years old. What was G W Bush reading?
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“I read the classical Greek histories (in English) when I was 13 years old. What was G W Bush reading?”
If he read any history it was like I did; “Classics Illustrated” comic books. Used until high school (when I discovered Cliff’s Notes) for many book reports. I did really read a lot of Edith Hamilton and such, so I am reasonably knowledgeable about the imaginary ancient world, though.
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Good to see a proper conservative at once extolling the virtues of Classics, and denouncing the iniquities of the Eighties and Nineties.
Taki is, however, wrong to suggest that, among British MPs, only the Tories ever used to speak to each other in the Classical languages.
Back when Labour MPs were Labour MPs, those who were not toffs (and quite a few were) were either products of the grammar schools and of an Oxbridge system that still required Latin even for admission to read Physics or Chemistry, or else had come up through the subcultures that included such organisations and institutions as the Workers’ Educational Association and the Miners’ Lodge Libraries.
Ave-ing each other and such like might very well still go on among Labour Peers.
, http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com
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Taki is right about Enoch Powell, who was a brilliant classical scholar as well as a
trained economist. It is hard to believe that Western politics, now dominated by
affirmative action pygmies like Barack and Michelle and RINO corpses like McCain, once
featured such Renaiisance minds as Powell.
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Tin Pan Alley does indeed go back beyond the ‘20s, and I prefer the music popular before Wilson bumbled us into the Kaiser War. Ah, but the best use of property is that which produces the greatest profit.
If Taki must still refer to The Great Disappointment as the Draft Dodger, shouldn’t the incrumbent be known as President AWOL?
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Taki’s right about the classics, which is why the Brits always had such a reputation for being “civilized” and smart. They were the last holdouts for the Classics in the educational system (the upper class system anyway). When it ceased being part of the general curriculum, look what happened. An island full of fat, tatooed yobs with coarse language and manners and an utter hostility to their betters due to class hatred. Not that their financial betters are any better nowadays for they aren’t, especially the nouveaus. A century ago Britain had Lord Salisbury and now it has Richard Branson. ‘Nuff said!
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The Daily Telegraph today reports that several local councils in the UK are to ban Latin phrases as “elitist” and “discriminatory”.
“In instructions to staff, (one) council said “Not everyone knows Latin. Many readers do not have English as their first language so using Latin can be particularly difficult.”
Despite the protests of scholars and the charge that it amounts to an “ethnic cleansing” of the language, a spokesman for the Plain English Campaign has “congratulated” councils for introducing the ban: “If you look at the diversity of all our communities you have got people for whom English is a second language. They might mistake eg for egg and little things like that can confuse people.”
I often wonder these days were one can go to escape creeping multiculturalism ...
Any suggestions?
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Any suggestions?
Leave that cesspool that is the UK. Aside from a few Oxbridge hold-outs, the Barbarians are already inside the gates.
Studete Latinam Linguam!
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Het, Mr Taeka likes Greek in that specvial way - you know what I mean. Greeka, Greeka!
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El Lay Writer, it was always far more than “the upper-class system”. Only quite recently has Classics come to be regarded in the sort of way that gives rise to things such as Geoff Martin refers to.
I say again that there used to be the grammar schools, and an Oxbridge system that still required Latin even for admission to read Physics or Chemistry.
And I say again that there used to be such organisations and institutions as the Workers’ Educational Association and the Miners’ Lodge Libraries.
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@ David Lindsay
What you say is true. In the process of my research, I believe that one had to know both Latin and Ancient Greek to matriculate at Oxbridge before 1920, and after 1920, the requirement for Ancient Greek was dropped which raised eyebrows. Wasn’t it sometime in the 1980s that Latin was dropped from the required curriculum to matriculate to a university?
While I’m all for the lower classes learning the Classics if they are motivated, the loss of interest by the financial betters is the most dispairing. Look at the great architecture and arts that were created when only the upper class were educated. If our financial betters had some civilization just think of the great works they might finance besides football stadiums sponsored by towelheads.
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When was only the upper class educated? Certainly not in Mediaeval Europe.
That is one of the great myths of Protestantism, Rationalism, and Jacobinism.
In fact, it was they, beginning with the destruction of monastic houses (and thus, as much as anything else, with all educational opportunities for women), who caused that particular problem.
, http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com
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My Deacon learned Classical Greek and said he was talking to a Travel Agent before going to visit Greece a couple years ago. Asked if he spoke Greek he mentioned he spoke Calssical Greek. So the agent said say something. He listened and said we’ll have a translator meet you.
I push for the Extraordinary form and he says let’s just use Greek. The Pastor says stick to English.
... jam enim de hac causa duo concilia missa sunt ad sedem apostolicam; inde etiam rescripta venerunt; causa finita est
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El Lay Writer, I sat my Oxford entrance exams in the 1970’s and even then the Latin paper was optional. Anglo-Saxon remained compulsory for first year Eng. Lit. students.
Durant, your post reminds me of the episode in Louis de Berniere’s “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin” in which the English spy/resistance fighter (based, I think, on Patrick Leigh Fermor) parachutes into occupied Greece (WWII). Tall, blonde and speaking only Classical Greek, he is mistaken for an angel by the shepherd who finds him.
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I picked up an interest in the Classics the roundabout way. I was interested in politics and disgusted with our current crop and went back to see where things went wrong. Reading about the figures in British politics in the 19th Century and before WWI was fascinating. The quantity of untranslated passages and quotations in Ancient and Modern langauages was impressive. If one wanted to write fiction or dramatizations about these people, it would be a good idea to learn some ancient languages.
My prosody book for Latin, Latin Meter and Verse Composition by David J Califf, has some of the translation and versification exercises that were used for scholarships in the late 1800s at various Oxford colleges. I bet most PhDs would have difficulty pulling them off nowadays. It’s too bad the privileged youth don’t get these exercises pounded into their heads as children as they did a century ago - the folly in Iraq would never have happened if they did.
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