The fate of cities

Recently, my friend Gerard Koskovich, rightly concerned about major changes that seem to be in store in his city of San Francisco, evoked the drastic changes that Baron Haussmann had imposed on Paris in the middle of the 19th century.  In this connection I thought of modern Rome.  To be sure the Eternal City has ranked as sui generis, for much of it, the urban heritage of imperial Rome, lay in ruins.

However, modern Rome underwent both of the processes that have transformed out major cities.  First, beginning in 1585 Sixtus V laid out a series of grand boulevards, linking major monuments.  These inevitably involved confiscations.  More serious were the private seizures of the princely families, such as the Colonna and the Torlonia, which gradually devoured the popular quarters, replacing them with great palaces.  In London  “urban clearance” was accomplished by the Great Fire of 1666.  Here in New York City real-estate greed, as seen in the tragic destruction of Penn Station, accomplished this work.  I hear that serious changes are occurring in Rio de Janeiro, one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  All of our great cities, it seems, are at risk.

What hope remains to allow cities to escape these sackings?  It seems that only smallish, out-of-the- way places like Siena, Troyes, and Charleston are immune.

Life's lessons

When one has arrived at a certain stage of life (as I have, and then some), it is common to grouse about loneliness. And so perhaps one should - or maybe not. 

Yesterday, I idly opened a big book assembling the lyric poetry of Lope de Vega. My eyes alighted on the following famous lines: "A mis soledades voy,/de mis soledades vengo,/porque para andar conmigo/me bastan mis pensamientos." 

I take it that Lope is highlighting three things: 1) the solitude that is an inescapable component of the human condition; 2) the melancholy that sets in with one's later years: and 3) the solitude that ensues from commitment to the profession of writer.

These are abiding truths from a major writer of Spain's Siglo de Oro.

Exemptions for creative figures

As regards the controversy about Woody Allen and his possible abuse of Dylan, I have no opinion. At this late date it seems impossible to determine the truth of the matter. Hovering in the background, though, is an unspoken assumption that has bedeviled Western culture for some 200 years: the idea that great geniuses must not be bound by the constraints of "bourgeois" morality that govern the rest of us.

The first figure in which this exemption was observed was Beethoven. Yet as far as I can see Beethoven's eccentric way of life harmed no one. Matters were quite different with Richard Wagner whose anti-Semitism was obsessive, and who seduced his best friend's wife, Cosima, and required her to marry him. All in the service of his art, of course.

When he settled in Munich in 1896, the Russian painter Vassily Kandinsky was accompanied by his lawful wife, who resided in their Munich apartment. A few years later he developed a relationship with a gifted pupil Gabriele Münter, and they lived together in a house in the country. The painter went back and forth between the two homes. The reaction of the Russian wife to this bigamous relationship is not known, but in the later division of their assets Gabriele suffered by having no legal status.

In 1911 the architect Frank Lloyd Wright abandoned his wife and went off to Europe with Mamah Borthwick.

Finally, the artist Ben Shahn, noted for his works exhibiting social conscience, abandoned his family to shift for themselves during the great Depression.

The trope is allied to the legend of the tortured genius, who suffers so that the rest of us may be enlightened.  Key examples from the nineteenth century are Vincent van Gogh and Friedrich Nietzsche. 
 

Disagreemens

A recent book by J. S. B. Morse argues that even in heated arguments, people agree more than they think.  His title, “Everyone Agrees," puts the case too strongly. Nonetheless, in a modified version of the thesis, it may be that in many cases there is more agreement than at first appears - if only the disputants would stop and take a deep breath.  In the last analysis, most would agree with the following two statements:  a) government must continue to assist the poor and disadvantaged; b) government must act more efficiently if it is to retain the trust of the American people. 

Still, there are limits, and I would like to purloin the incisive remarks of one Amazon reviewer (slightly edited).  “Everyone does NOT agree.  Yet beyond the simple fact of disagreement lies the yet more important issue of WHY people disagree. Some sections of the book imply that apparent disagreements occur because people are ill-informed or because they do not think consistently. This is a polite way of saying that disagreements occur because some people are either ignorant or irrational. And of course, the sub-text is that WE are not the ignorant or irrational ones. In other words, if people were just better informed and more reasonable they WOULD all agree--with ME (i.e., with the author of the book).

“This position is arrogant. The fact of the matter is, there are many people who really do disagree with me (i.e., the writer of this review) on issues of substance, issues on which both I and they are reasonably well-informed, issues on which both of us understand the other's position reasonably well. Often the reason for our disagreements are presuppositional: we are not operating from the same set of (unproven and unprovable) assumptions. I am not enough of a relativist to believe that we can both be right when we disagree. Clearly, when a disagreement occurs, at least one of the parties is wrong. But it is often beyond the powers of either to determine with absolute certainty WHO is wrong. In any case, the disagreement cannot be written off by dismissing the other party as ignorant or stupid. And the search for clarity, understanding and (perhaps even) agreement is not facilitated by such intellectual arrogance. In disputation, humility is the queen of virtues, the one which makes all intellectual advancement possible.”

Perhaps it is because of the company I keep, but I find that many of the Facebook contributions I see, especially of the meme type borrowed from “Being Liberal” and other such progressive sites, propound  as their underlying assumption that the liberal view of matters is simply the way things are.  Conservatives and libertarians who disagree are just being stupid and obtuse.

At present the country is pretty much divided between the blue-state and the red-state people,.  The latter will not be brought around by rhetoric of arrogant denunciation.  Understanding and persuasion are needed.