A Musical Tantrum

I was reading in today's Times about a composer, Nitin Sawhney, who has written a Brexit 'anthem'. He apparently believes artists have failed to get to grips with Brexit, and that music can help bring people together. An extract from the article -- see if you notice the problem:

The new work by Nitin Sawhney described as a “rational anthem for a national tantrum”, will have its television premiere on Sky Arts on Monday after being performed for the first time last month at the Barbican. 

The lyrics seek to unpick the emotions behind patriotism. “It’s only random chance/That we weren’t born in Spain or France/Or China or a plane or ocean liner/Or a field in Asia Minor,” it begins.

The anthem concludes with a lament for the future of the country. “For this land of hope and glory/In the hands of hopeful Tories/And the anti-migrant stories/Of Farage and Nadine Dorries.”

So much for getting to grips with Brexit. I will try to hear the work in order to form a better judgement, but if those extracts are indicative he has made no effort to understand the reasons and sentiments behind the referendum result. There is little evidence of reflection or thought, just a smug sense that he, the enlightened artist, will inform us why Brexit is bad (presumably to an almost exclusively Remainer audience). It is to him nothing more than a 'national tantrum'; and of course he is the rational observer.

Composers used to have strong national feelings. Their homeland was much more than mere 'random chance'. Especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, their patriotism meant they would frequently incorporate national and folk music into their work. Think Dvorak, Vaughan Williams, Bartok...

There used to be clear differences between the music written by composers from different nations. Debussy could not have been German. Purcell could not have been French. And one suspects that the bland internationalism of today is somewhat to blame for obvious musical decline -- and our decline generally. For there is one thing I can agree with him on: we should lament for the future of the country. But Brexit was an astonishing, albeit brief and ineffectual, collective spasm -- the first time Britain had reacted with any power against the dreary liberal future which awaits us. It won't come to anything, and in some ways I'd rather it never happened, but it did show that there was some life left in us.

Who is Smelfungus?

I have changed the blog's name from Imlac to Smelfungus. It is a result of a growing fondness for Tobias Smollett, whom Laurence Sterne referred to as 'Smelfungus' in A Sentimental Journey. Sterne encountered Smollett in his travels and found him the most miserable, fault-finding of travellers. I've not read A Sentimental Journey as I generally find Sterne's writing intolerable, but the relevant passage is easily found online:

THE LEARNED Smelfungus travelled from Boulogne to Paris, from Paris to Rome, and so on. But he set out with the spleen and jaundice, and every object he pass’d by was discoloured or distorted. He wrote an account of them, but ’twas nothing but the account of his miserable feelings.
  I met Smelfungus in the grand portico of the Pantheon. He was just coming out of it. “’Tis nothing but a huge cockpit,” said he. “I wish you had said nothing worse of the Venus of Medici,” replied I, for in passing through Florence, I had heard he had fallen foul upon the goddess, and used her worse than a common wench, without the least provocation in nature.
  I popp’d upon Smelfungus again at Turin, in his return home; and a sad tale of sorrowful adventures he had to tell; “wherein he spoke of moving accidents by flood and field, and of the cannibals which each other eat—the Anthropophagi.” He had been flay’d alive, and bedevil’d, and used worse than St. Bartholomew, at every stage he had come at.
  “I’ll tell it,” cried Smelfungus, “to the world.”
  “You had better tell it,” said I, “to your physician.”

I was never quite comfortable using the name Imlac. The name comes from Samuel Johnson's Rasselas; Imlac is the philosopher who guides Rasselas in his travels through the world. He is not quite the voice of Johnson himself, but he is equally as sage -- far too sage a person for me to name myself after. However, I think I can fairly aspire to the miserabilism and pessimism of Smollett.

Smollett's Prophecy

I am slowly working my way through various novels, translations, poetry and other miscellaneous works by Tobias Smollett. Not all of them, mind you. I don't think I have the obsessive levels of concentration required to read a few of his long and by nearly all accounts tedious novels, at least not cover to cover. There are two, maybe three, great ones, and I'm content with those. Nor do I have much interest in pursuing his lesser journalistic work. He was often in great need of money so he wrote fast and often, without much happiness. A lot of his work is simply not worth reading.

But I do like to quickly skim through some of his lesser works, just in case something interesting pops out. And so it did this evening. Here is a letter Smollett wrote near the time of his death, prophesying what will happen firstly with the slaves in the American colonoies, and secondly with the monarchy in France. It is the second prediction that is most striking. And as you read it you must bear in mind that it was written in 1771.

To return to our own continent, France appears to me to be the first probable theatre of any material change.The present fashion of handling abstract questions of religion and government, so eagerly adopted of late by a great number of people of consideration in that country, is, no doubt, the high road to truth and justice; but, unfortunately for mankind, it must necessarily run through the confines of bloodshed and desolation. Amongst all the best informed people of that country, with whom I have had the opportunity of conversing, there seems to exist an enthusiastic passion for the discovery of moral truth, and a most ardent zeal for its propagation. And in this laudable frame of mind, seems particularly included, a commisseration for the sufferings of the lower classes of mankind; and a desire to relieve them from the shackles in which they have been so long bound, by religious and political frauds. If we consider the weakness, profligacy, and abandoned debauchery of the French court, which they, whose situations entitle them to be the best judges, represent as a second Sodom, the poverty, misery, and discontent of the lower classes, and the violent desire of change, glowing and burning in the breasts of those who are the most able, and indeed the only people in whose power it is to bring that change about, we need not hesitate to assert that some great revolution must ensue, in the course of a few years, in the government, religion, and manners of the people of that country. Indeed, from the best general view which I am able to form, of the internal political state of the kingdom of France, I cannot bring myself to believe that the present despotic system can, at any rate, continue more than twenty years longer. If religion has invented and nourished those frauds, upon whom the despotism of France was founded; and the belief of that religion is now almost obliterated from amongst all ranks, what is in the future to support such a government, even when the general interest seems loudly to demand its demolition? That the change, come when it will, must be thorough , violent , and bloody , we may fairly prognosticate, both from the known character of those who are likely to have the chief hand in the reformation, and from that of the common people of France, whom their whole history proves to be the most sanguinary, unprincipled, and barbarous of any populace in Europe. Were it possible for me to live to witness it, I should by no means wonder to see the principles of Republicanism predominant for a while in France, for it is the property of extremes to meet; and our abstract rights naturally lead to that form of government, and it is not the season to moderate abstraction, during the fury and concussion of political earthquakes.  

Whenever a revolution upon such grounds as these shall happen in France, the flame of war will be universally lighted up throughout Europe; either from the inhabitants of other countries instantaneously catching the contagion, or from the apprehensions of their

respective governments. But whenever the great mass of mankind shall become enlightened, it will be as vain as perilous for governments to attempt to combat principles, which can only be effected with success during the reign of ignorance and superstition. I see it, in the clearest light, that the people of France, Germany, and Italy (but more especially the latter) are bound to become weary of the impositions of religion, and the galling fetters of slavery. And I behold a new order of people about to arise in Europe, which shall give laws to law-givers, discharges to priests, and lessons to kings. 

What's Wrong with Chesterton

There are few things more disappointing than when a man you greatly admire turns out to have some dreadful, possibly evil opinions. With Chesterton, the most common criticism is that he is anti-Semitic. I've not noticed this myself, except in a 'very mild' form (as Kingsley Amis described his own antisemitism). What is more obviously wrong with Chesterton is his usually-overlooked views on two subjects: the French Revolution and the First World War. He supported both, and he supported them enthusiastically. Chesterton was almost a proto-neocon in this respect: he was prone to a form of Christian universalism that romanticises war and revolution.

For someone who otherwise made such a noble effort to re-enchant the ordinary, when it came to the French Revolution in particular he was oddly seduced by abstractions.In What's Wrong With the World, Chesterton made this astonishing argument:

A cultivated Conservative friend of mine once exhibited great distress because in a gay moment I once called Edmund Burke an atheist. I need scarcely say that the remark lacked something of biographical precision; it was meant to. Burke was certainly not an atheist in his conscious cosmic theory, though he had not a special and flaming faith in God, like Robespierre. Nevertheless, the remark had reference to a truth which it is here relevant to repeat. I mean that in the quarrel over the French Revolution, Burke did stand for the atheistic attitude and mode of argument, as Robespierre stood for the theistic. The Revolution appealed to the idea of an abstract and eternal justice, beyond all local custom or convenience. If there are commands of God, then there must be rights of man. Here Burke made his brilliant diversion; he did not attack the Robespierre doctrine with the old mediaeval doctrine of jus divinum (which, like the Robespierre doctrine, was theistic), he attacked it with the modern argument of scientific relativity; in short, the argument of evolution. He suggested that humanity was everywhere molded by or fitted to its environment and institutions; in fact, that each people practically got, not only the tyrant it deserved, but the tyrant it ought to have. “I know nothing of the rights of men,” he said, “but I know something of the rights of Englishmen.” There you have the essential atheist. His argument is that we have got some protection by natural accident and growth; and why should we profess to think beyond it, for all the world as if we were the images of God! We are born under a House of Lords, as birds under a house of leaves; we live under a monarchy as niggers live under a tropic sun; it is not their fault if they are slaves, and it is not ours if we are snobs. Thus, long before Darwin struck his great blow at democracy, the essential of the Darwinian argument had been already urged against the French Revolution.

How could Chesterton find attractive the slippery language, filled with vague exceptions, of The Declaration the Rights of Man and of the Citizen? 'No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.' I do not how Chesterton found such abstract 'rights' to be rooted in the Christianity. Perhaps someone could explain it to me, though I doubt it's possible.

As for his claim that Robespierre was a greater theist than Burke, and that the Revolution 'appealed to the idea of an abstract and eternal justice', I find it impossible to restrain my anger, even after reading the passage for the umpteenth time. The terror, the secular cult, the loss of liberty, the military dictatorship... Chesterton might have adopted the foolish but common opinion that the Revolution, and left-wing revolutions generally, have Christian values at their heart; namely that they are done in service of the poor. But that he singles out Robespierre as seemingly divinely inspired, and Burke as a proto-Darwinian, means there is simply no way to excuse him. His attempt at paradox collapses and he instead inverts history and even morality.

Chesterton's strong support for the First World War was certainly a grave mistake and is nauseating to read, but it is not as horrid as his enthusiasm for the French Revolution. Admittedly, my opinion is softened by the fact that 1) he courageously opposed the Boer War and 2) he wrote a brilliant and damning anti-war poem:

The men that worked for England
They have their graves at home:
And birds and bees of England
About the cross can roam.

But they that fought for England,
Following a falling star,
Alas, alas for England
They have their graves afar.

And they that rule in England,
In stately conclave met,
Alas, alas for England
They have no graves as yet.

There are other minor issues I have with Chesterton. His drinking habits were awful. By even the most liberal measure he indulged in alcohol far too much. And he was an enthusiastic democrat (which I'm not), yet he opposed female suffrage (which I support). Personally, I think we should have a somewhat limited suffrage, but one that includes women. (I know, I know: I'm such a terrible, incorrigible liberal.) Universal suffrage is a bad way to govern; what parties have to do and promise to please 'the people' is seldom good for the nation, and modern election campaigns are a political and economic nuisance. Chesterton's enthusiasm for democracy was an extension of his tendency towards abstract rights and, dare I say, utopianism. He idealised the ordinary man too much, and he put too much faith in the crowd.