Looking Out

Review of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon: Part 1

2009-08-06T21:18:00.000-07:00

Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” is an epochal work of true insight.

In this first volume of the abridged Modern Classic edition Gibbon covers so much ground, it is hard to imagine what he will do with the other two volumes. The total of 1477 pages is complimented by dense, paragraph-length sentences. The original and complete text is 1.5 million words, so we should feel either deprived or relieved at 1 million for this edition.

Gibbon lays the foundation of Roman society in thematic fashion instead of in pure sequence. A reader is made to understand not when an event happened, but how events unfolded, and by so doing he elevated the historian forever.

This thematic format makes the Decline a convincing analytic story that is incapable of boorishness despite his meandering sentences. His descriptions of an open Roman whose' leading rule was to permit all beliefs resonated with his contemporary audience in 1776, and with us today. His first readers were in the throes of the Enlightenment, and as benefactors of the movement and it’s demands for plurality, we sympathize with the Romans who puzzled over beliefs about absolute truth.

Gibbon’s first point of five concerning the treatment of the Mosaic tradition and the early Christian church articulated the difficulty of balancing plurality with people’s beliefs about absolute truth: “We have already described the religious harmony of the ancient world and the facility with which the most different and even hostile nations embraced, or at least respected, each other’s superstitions. A single people refused to join in the common intercourse of mankind...the sullen obstinacy with which (the Jews) maintained their peculiar rites and unsocial manners seemed to mark them out as a distinct species of men….” And in chapter sixteen, “Since the Jews, who rejected with abhorrence the deities of their sovereign and by their fellow-subjects, enjoyed however the free exercise of their unsocial religion, there must have existed some other cause to expose the disciples of Christ to those severities from which the posterity of Abraham was exempt. The difference between them…(was that) the Jews were a nation; Christians were a sect:…”

Gibbon honestly created a world where good-intentioned Pagans clashed with Jews and then the Christians. In the same breadth his well-rounded portraits of the early church betrays a genuine understanding for how it evolved. In philosophical strokes Gibbon states, “The condemnation of the wisest and most virtuous of the Pagans on account of their ignorance or disbelief of the divine truth seems to offend the reason and the humanity of the present age….These rigid sentiments, which had been unknown to the ancient world, appear to have infused a spirit of bitterness into a system of love and harmony…Doubtless there were many among the primitive Christians of a temper more suitable to the meekness and charity of their profession.” Only a crystal clear vision of the past, and command of his subject, could give Gibbon the credibility to attempt to judge those early believers in kindness against the morals they claimed to espouse.

Gibbon was able to accurately peer so far back in time so clearly because he was watching the decline of the British Imperialist. A new civilization blossomed on the Western horizon, while fissures in the British Imperial mechanism were starting to show. The Declaration of Independence would be ratified in the same year Gibbon published the first volume.

The dawn of economics as a discipline in the late eighteenth century appears to have influenced Gibbon’s thinking about how to frame the Roman economic descent, or at least gave Gibbon good tools to describe that aspect of Roman life. Starting on page 38, Gibbon uses language like landowner, capital, and artisan—all verbiage that permeates the early works of political economy. He even states, “Agriculture is the foundation of all manufactures; since the productions of nature are the material of art.” He also addresses his own age, and the criticism surrounding the free market. “But in the present imperfect condition of society, luxury, though it may proceed from vice or folly, seems to be the only means that can correct the unequal distribution of property.” Gibbon was talking about the wages paid to artisans by wealthy capitalist for the output of their labor. It is probably no coincidence, but due to the nature of the Enlightenment, and the tone of public discourse, that the “Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith was also published in 1776. Smith spoke extensively to the same phenomenon, and his work marked the birth of modern economics.

It is old hat to come out and say it, but that doesn’t make it any less true; the “Decline,” is a fascinating analogy to modern times. You can’t ignore that Gibbon’s words are always at least thought provoking about the fate of the West. Is there any more familiar description of our modern landscape than that found in the first paragraph? “The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces.” This is probably no more an absolutism now then it was then, but that does not diminish the similarity of obstacles that faced Rome, were decried during the Enlightenment, and are sloshed through today.

2009-05-31T19:50:00.000-07:00

Although many of us in the male species like to think we are modern and sophisticated, Elliot Erwit’s 1995 photograph “Madrid” illustrates that our animal nature can take charge even while we try to prove we’re house-broken, and how we can be so myopic while we’re sniffing around that we fail to recognize our treasure when we’ve found it.

Erwit took “Madrid” inside the famous Prado museum, and the black and white image is of two oil paintings that hang closely together there. The image doesn’t speak to the character of the city, or the museum, as much as it does to an ironic human condition.

The two oil paintings by Goya are together because the placing allows the viewer to learn about Goya’s abilities via the scientific method; holding control variables constant but changing one isolated variable to highlight the effect of its change. The paintings are large, about 5’x7’, framed in heavily ornate wood, and take up the focus of a whole wall. These nearly identical renderings show a gypsy woman reclining. Her head is to the right with her arms raised and her hands clasped behind her head of inky hair, which falls in curls around her rosy cheeks, forced round by a smile. She is lying on two overstuffed Egyptian cotton pillows. The light is softly radiating off the model and shining directly on her from above. This ivory light is focused on the model, leaving the room where she lays dark in the corners, and shoving her into the foreground. The variable that is changed is her clothing. In the painting on the right the model is nude, and on the painting on the left the model is clothed.

In “Madrid” these paintings hang in the background. They sit on a white wall, about twenty feet back, at the end of a room floored with onyx and pewter marble laid in square designs. The full majesty of the Prado’s aristocratic vibe is pulsating around the room. The paintings are behind a heavy velvet rope held by brass stands.

“Madrid” tells its own story in the mid-ground, where there is an audience viewing the two paintings and turning their backs to the camera. In front of one painting there are seven men, of various ages, from different walks of life standing in assorted ways and grouped around one of the paintings. Can you guess which of the two paintings these art patrons are so concerned with? That’s right, the nude on the right. Some are standing upright, with arms crossed and in poses to suggest they were concentrating on cracking the Enigma code. Another man is standing slack, with slumped shoulders, as if in a mystifying daydream. Some of their shoes are polished and pointing straight, another is wearing a trench coat and a pair of white sneakers, his stance wide. One’s hair is short, the other of a medium length and positioned with care, and yet another with the hair of Albert Einstein. There are no women standing with them.

But there is one woman standing in the room, by herself, far to the left. She is standing in front of the clothed Maja, savoring it all. She is finely dressed and it’s obvious she paid special attention to her hair that morning. Her feet are evenly placed at shoulder distance, and both of her arms are behind her back, hands clasped. She is standing proudly in lone appreciation of the clothed “Maja,” as if to say, “We’re in this together.”

The men, all women-less and herded together, are so busy chasing the shadow of a woman they can’t touch, that they fail to take the time to attend to the single woman standing beside them. And for the lone woman’s sake, she pays them no mind, but is looking elsewhere for her comfort, wondering if Goya loved this gypsy.

Review of Beauties: Recent Drawings by Robert Hanson

2009-05-31T16:33:00.000-07:00

Robert Hanson achieved a coherent triumph for the visage of feminine wisdom with his Beauties, now showing at PNCA's Feldman Gallery. This wisdom can be both comforting and damning, and this multifaceted quality is a testament to Hanson's talent.

The show consist of a series of portraits, all of which are of whimsically clothed females. They are wearing wide-brimmed hats and ornate necklaces, befit for a night at the theatre during the roaring twenties. Hanson rendered these drawings with hasty strokes of graphite while his dashes of color highlighted earrings, necklaces, hair, and carefully applied makeup. Hanson chose to adorn these portraits with consistent expressions of demure smiles. This consistency conveyed the maturity of the artist's view and made it impossible to mistake his loose pencil strokes for nascent talent.

Amongst the loose lines are deliberately crafted squiggles on the fringes which firm up into mathematical symbols, grids, and Morse code. Before you get too excited about the conspiratorial possibilities of this I'll let you know that I tried to decipher the morse code to no avail. You may have better luck with a literal translation, but it is more likely the artist had a figurative point. One observer noted that these seemingly incoherent symbols portend larger mysteries, and the artists frivolous lines throughout his subjects faces might also have a deliberately larger purpose.

The pieces go wonderfully together, but would they seem as mature if they were to stand individually? This question is answered with "Balanced," unique because it is of the whole figure instead of just the torso. The figures limbs seemed life-like as they rested together in a comfortable stance, arms raised to support two walls. "Acorn," hung next and to the right, another of the torso portraits. The impressive reality of her expression next to believability of "Balanced's," stacked limbs, convinced me that he could contain all of the emotion of the entire show in any single piece.

A final view of these ladies' faces reveals another angle to the seemingly wise expression: condescension. The woman in "Balanced," stands with nose to the air and eyes looking down at us, proud of her mysteries.

Let Go of the Color Green

2009-01-01T11:01:00.000-08:00

( From an Amazon book review ) As 2008 rolled to a close in the early days of December I gripped the steering wheel of a U-Haul truck as it shimmied through the plains on I-80, heading towards Wyoming, Utah, Idaho,and finally Oregon. Virginia and Florida were falling to my stern. Right before I left for our big move I read Stegner's "Angle of Repose." Maybe I left because of "Repose." Once I settled at my destination, Portland, I visited Powell's book store and purchased, "Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West." I'll make no pretensions about being able to impartially point out this anthology's strengths or weaknesses. My appreciation for Stegner's work is so profound my judgment is dimmed. I'm still in receive mode, and my thoughts float around digesting what I take as illumination.

Previously here, one reviewer retained sobriety and concluded that Stegner's Lemonade Springs was insular and xenophobic. I think Stegner's work had a geographic focus, and maybe a moral purpose, but that wasn't because he believed in the infallibility of the West, but rather because he loved it with its faults. In his generation, Perhaps he felt his generation under-appreciated, or more likely, misunderstood his Western context. I think that the reviewer's analysis may have more weight if she were from the West, but being from Texas, maybe she was surprised by someone from outside the lone star state celebrating their home.

Stegner's work could be considered advocation, but it is also approachable from all corners because he was inspired by the good, and wounded by the bad. His precision in defining the rough, scrubby edges of his cultural landscape reveal more passion than desire for domination. Stegner not only attempted to define, but genuinely wanted to share whatever nuggets he felt he picked up along the way. Maya Angelou admitted to an audience in New York this year that she was a teacher who writes, and this is a sentiment expressed in Stegner's writing, as well as his years as a professor.

The sense of place is a strong backdrop, maybe too much so, but he also calms us with easy prose, allays our fears about the sometimes biographical nature of fiction, convinces us we're not alone in familial pain of a certain type, and provides lingering analogies about his art.

I still have questions about his view of God and spirituality. He said he was, "not-so-Christian." At times he admired the Mormons, but not completely. He probably meant for it to be this way, not wanting to drift into the ambiguity of the Transcendentalists. I think that these lingering questions become the most important about his work: Did he believe that Nature, dominating the Western man's experience, was a reflection of something higher, or the end itself? Did he view his existence along an arch that began and ended in the arid desert, or did he see the Divine as he gazed across the Great Divide?
I don't think that it was his nature to give it all away, but he did give us Lemonade Springs: a literary gem, a completely engaging book, and a must-read for those interested in learning about living and writing in the West.