#16 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Monday May 3)
Good morning!
For the next several weeks, I’m devoting the Monday Musings to observations about race, culture, cancelation, what to do about history, and the study of the classics. This is the first.
COMPLEXITY OF HISTORIC FIGURES
There we were, my parents, Gale and me, listening to the Los Angeles Philharmonic playing Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde” at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. My mother turned to me and quietly asked, “do you like Wagner?” “Yes, very much,” I responded. To which she whispered, “He was a raging anti-Semite.” Hmmm…Jessica, never subtle, popped my balloon.
After the concert, we retired to Chinatown for dinner (sometimes I feel we lived a cliché…). The conversation at dinner was centered on the question, “How could someone so hateful in his beliefs produce something so beautiful?” And that begat the second question, “How can one love the artistic creation of someone so hateful—particularly someone who hates you directly?”
This got me thinking about other ways in which we deal with unmentionables in history. As a huge fan of the space program, I accepted a narrative on Werner von Braun and other German scientists who came from Nazi Germany to the U.S. space program after the war that went something like, “they were able to escape the Nazis and help us.” But that fails to acknowledge that many of these people were involved in the German V2 program and other scientific work that furthered the Nazi regime. How could we use their work, even if it benefited us? Even more morally complex is the use of the work of Dr. Josef Mengele. How could the results of his sick experiments ever be turned to the benefit the health of our more enlightened civilization? These are just some of the conundrums of history—it is not neat and clean but rather messy, contradictory and thought-provoking.
We face questions like this all the time. In our own day, we are seeing moves to eliminate the study of the classics from our classrooms. While I support diversity, and it is important to include more diverse voices in the study of literature, philosophy and history, diversity ought not become synonymous with replacement. Just because dead white men wrote most of the literary and philosophical canon does not mean that their ruminations and analysis of the human condition should be relegated to the dustbin of history. It is a fact that it primarily was white men who wrote the history and had the privilege of time, education, and means to produce some of the most sublime writings and thoughtful meditations throughout history (at least in the European world). They are part of our collective past, as much as if they were our own blood ancestors—even if they were oppressing and committing violence against our blood ancestors.
Another example of this is at the Roman Forum in Rome. I was taken aback by the Arch of Titus, which has engraved in it “the Spoils of Jerusalem,” showing Roman troops defiling the Temple and carrying off the Menorah. To see this in relief brought home that the Romans were no great fans of my ancestors. It was then that I had to accept the Romans as both barbaric in their violence against others and yet made great contributions to mankind. They brought us the plunder of rival civilizations but also gave us Marcus Aurelius, Thucydides, Julius Caesar, and Cicero. Curiously, they also presaged the idea of multi-culturalism within the context of a large empire. The Romans typically allowed conquered peoples to continue their traditions and religion, not unlike the Austro-Hungarian Empire (which also disintegrated under the inability to maintain a central government). One can see other examples of multi-cultural societies struggling to honor cultures and yet maintain a semblance of national culture, by force (e.g., the USSR and perhaps China) and three immigration, like the U.S. Hopefully past results are not indicative of future performance…
Here is what Professor Cornell West has to say:
“The Western canon is, more than anything, a conversation among great thinkers over generations that grows richer the more we add our own voices and the excellence of voices from Africa, Asia, Latin America and everywhere else in the world. We should never cancel voices in this conversation, whether that voice is Homer or students at Howard University. For this is no ordinary discussion.
The Western canon is an extended dialogue among the crème de la crème of our civilization about the most fundamental questions. It is about asking “What kind of creatures are we?” no matter what context we find ourselves in. It is about living more intensely, more critically, more compassionately. It is about learning to attend to the things that matter and turning our attention away from what is superficial.
…Education draws out the uniqueness of people to be all that they can be in the light of their irreducible singularity. It is the maturation and cultivation of spiritually intact and morally equipped human beings.”
The bottom line?
History is messy. There are misogynists, racists, jingoists, and all other type of person who falls short of our modern sensibilities in our past. And while I wouldn’t encourage erecting a statue in honor of Wagner I also wouldn’t eliminate his genius from the musical canon.
TWO GREAT VISIONS
Let’s end with a little amusement regarding visions of spirituality. The first is that of the emperor Constantine in the fourth century. Constantine legalized Christianity and converted to Christianity himself, moving the entire empire that direction. It is said that his conversion was the result of having a vision of a cross in the sky, demonstrating that his great success was owed to God’s protection.
There is another vision of similar import to civilization. That is the vision of Sammy Davis, Jr. Sammy wore a mezuzah around his neck but failed to do so on the night of a major traffic accident (in which he lost an eye); he is also claimed to have had a vision of the Star of David. He studied Judaism after that and, seeing similarities between the Jewish experience and Black experience, elected to convert.
Davis was a fascinating cultural icon. A member of the “rat pack,” he was a supporter of Jack Kennedy’s. That said, he was denied a chance to appear at the inauguration because Kennedy objected to his marriage to a white woman. Davis later supported Richard Nixon, who invited him to stay at the White House—the first Black man invited to do so. He toured with the USO, entertaining U.S. troops in Vietnam. He later turned away from Nixon over Nixon’s lack of support of Civil Rights.
The story has it that Sammy was asked at the first tee at Hillcrest, “What’s your handicap?” His answer—“I’m black, I’m Jewish and I only have one eye. That’s my handicap.” Arguably the greatest entertainer ever. Saw him twice in Las Vegas. He was spellbinding, multi-talented, and hard working. In the parlance of sports, “he left it all on the field.”
Have a great day,
Glenn