In 1970, W. H. Auden published his commonplace book, “A Certain World.” Until then I’d never heard the phrase. It turns out it’s a notebook where you jot down things you read or hear that are worth remembering, and is more common in Britain. Locke, Milton, Coleridge and Alec Guinness kept one, but so did Emerson and Thoreau. It seemed like a charming idea to the 1970 me, but like keeping a diary is not something easy to sustain for long in a busy quotidian life.
But for the last few years I have fitfully begun to record occasional entries that would otherwise vanish into the forgetfulness of aging. Glancing through them, I noticed that many speak to issues of life’s mutability, fragility, and to good governance. Perhaps I am always drawn to these subjects. Or perhaps, they are top of mind in the Age of Trump. In any case, here are a few selections.
Adam Rutherford’s “A Brief History of Everyone who has Ever Lived,” is a primer on genetic science. Speaking of the fiction of race, he says, “Key physical attributes we identify as being ‘race specific’ are superficial and recent,” and he dismisses the argument from design. “Your face, your physiology, your metabolism, your experience, your family, your DNA, and your history are the contrivances of cosmic happenstance in a fully indifferent universe.”
From Michael Pye’s “The Edge of the World,” which examines the late Medieval cultures around the North and Baltic Seas, comes this quote from Philippe de Navarre, a reminder that the “MeToo” movement is up against a problem with deep roots.
“A woman must not be taught letters or writing, unless she is to be a nun; for many evils come from women writing and reading…you don’t give venom to a snake who already has quite enough already.” It would be pleasant to believe such notions are quaintly old-fashioned, but a Missouri senatorial candidate expressed a nearly identical sentiment in the last few weeks.
Also from Pye comes a discussion of the Hansa, a league of Northern merchants that controlled the local seas, and therefore trade. They were closer to an organized crime or pirate monopoly than to conventional trade among states. Pye sees in the Hansa a precursor of modern capitalism since it was characterized by “the abstract idea of trade, business, money as a profession and a force without roots in the world or responsibility, ready to go anywhere in pursuit of profits and deals.” And to use any means necessary, including force of arms.
Mark Levinson’s economic history of the postwar world, “An Extraordinary Time,” demonstrates that the period from 1945-1975, that the French call “les trente glorieuses,” was an aberration of high growth, prosperity snd productivity. Ever since, economies have reverted to the mean, but the public got accustomed to the exception and seek someone to blame for the return to a less glorious normal. So do those they elect. “Politicians unable to deliver prosperity were left to rail haplessly against currency speculators, oil sheiks and other forces they could not control.”
“Persian Fire” by Tom Holland s a fine retelling of the Greek victory over Persia that allowed western civilization to develop independent of Eastern hegemony. It provides several useful observations on statecraft. On Darius, Holland remarks, “the traditions that define a people, that they cling to, that they love, if cunningly exploited by a conquerer, serve to enslave them.”
He also quotes Solon, the Athenian ruler, whose name is synonymous with wisdom. He engineered a compromise between Athenian factions that allowed democracy to gain a foothold. Solon said, “I used my strong shield to protect both sides of the class divide, allowing neither to gain advantage over the other, that would be unjust.” Where have all the Solons gone?
And he quotes Aristotle on why Nemesis, the goddess of retribution, inevitably destroys those guilty of hubris, the arrogance to aspire to the power of a god. “For this is the crime committed by any man who gains his thrills by trampling on other people, and feeling as he does so, that he is proving himself preeminent.” Perhaps we can think of contemporary persons ripe for Nemesis.
And on this theme of humility versus vainglory, Darwin said, “Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.” And Brecht said, “He who laughs has not yet received the terrible news.”
Roger Crowley, in his “City of Fortune,” on Venice in its heyday, notes that “the lintels of more than one collapsed Venetian house on Crete bears the Latin motto, ‘the world is nothing but smoke and shadows.’ As if they knew deep down that all the imperial razzmatazz of trumpets, ships and guns was only a mirage.”
Apropos of which, the psychologist Daniel Kahneman reminds us that “people can maintain an unshakeable faith in any proposition, however absurd, when they are sustained by a community of like-minded believers.”
All of which suggests why it is useful to read history and literature. Because they provide a larger perspective on life when we are caught up in what Chesterton called “the torrent of change.” Because of it, our time can seem incomprehensible. Robert Louis Stevenson said, “The obscurest epoch is today.” Learning about “Then,” may help us understand and endure “Now,” and with the poet sing of what “is past, or passing or to come.”