Ranjan Ghosh - A Lover's Quarrel with the Past: Romance, Representation, Reading.

The International Institute for Asian Studies has just this week published my review of Ranjan Ghosh's A Lover's Quarrel with the Past: Romance, Representation, Reading. It is an intriguing, provocative and sometimes irritating work, written in dissent and flavoured with indignation, analyzing how myth-makers have come to dominate Hindu collective memory. You can read my review right here.

I hope you enjoy it.

Amputated Memories

Places bear traces of memory for those who inhabit them. In the absence of place, these memories remain beyond recollection.  Aleida Assmann [Cultural Memory and Western Civilization, Cambridge University Press, 2011] writes: “Even if places themselves have no innate faculty of memory, they are of prime importance for the construction of cultural memory. Not only do they stabilize and authenticate the latter by giving it a concrete setting, but they also embody continuity”.  Removed from places that could stabilize their collective memory, the exiled, the trafficked, the economic migrants and entire groups fleeing from conflict, face a discontinuity that is difficult to bridge. Their new homes, their new streets and cities are not conducive to remembering. At the most, descendants of uprooted communities create substitute spaces - places of commemoration. But commemoration replaces what is being remembered, it marks the end of continuity.  Commemoration marks absence.

Anthroplogist Paul Connerton [ How Modernity Forgets, Cambridge University Press, 2009] brilliantly argues that “the locus [of memory] is more important than the memorial.”  The memorial is a deliberate work, born out of a fear of forgetting.  It calls out for attention to its explicit message. A simple, inattentive glance at a memorial is not enough. Otherwise, as Connerton, summarizing Robert Musil, says: “nothing is more invisible than a memorial”.  Likewise, memorials conceal as well as trigger memory, especially war memorials which “conceal the past as much as they cause us to remember it.”  This is because of the partiality of their representation of the past. After all, “their image is designed specifically to deny acts of violence and aggression. They conceal the way they died: the blood, the bits of body flying through the air, the stinking corpses lying unburied for months, all are omitted.” 

Connerton argues that, on the other hand, the house and the city street both provide powerful loci of memory.  The house is a “memory device” or an “aide-memoire”, a medium of representation and, as such, can be read effectively as a mnemonic system.”  The house, or home, is a mnemonic structure that has a certain taken-for-grantedness until a house-moving or, worse, a fire or war deprives one of one’s house. Even the furnishings within the home “remind us of the shared history and the body” , while on a larger scale the city street forms, over time, “a web of contacts and memories that eventually lead to a web of public trust.”

My father's chair

 

Allow me two personal examples. Firstly: at the age of 18 I left the house that I had lived in since shortly after birth. At the same time I left my family, my city and my country, never to return for any extended period of time. Over the decades that passed I have infrequently returned. At each visit I am confronted by an old armchair in the kitchen, made by my father with his own hands. When I sit on this armchair, even now, despite its imperfections and discomfort (or perhaps because of these) I am transported back to the times when, as a teenager, I sat there with Misty, my cat, on my lap and rooted behind a cushion and under a cushion to find the lose pages of newspapers that my father had stuck here. This memory comes to me with immediate force, like a Proustian involuntary memory, and it brings to me the almost physical presence of my father, who died nearly thirty years ago in that very room. Such is the power of the house and its furnishings as a locus of memory. Walter Benjamin [Illuminations, Random House, 20111] would describe the room as having an aura – “If we designate as aura the associations which, at home in the memoire involuntaire, tend to cluster around the object of a perception”.  In this particular case, the aura is made stronger because my father made the old armchair (it is why it is so uncomfortable!) and it therefore bears what Benjamin calls “traces”.

Secondly: aged 18, I worked for some time in southern France, together with labourers who were Irish, Arab, Chinese and Latin American.  Months later I moved to Paris. One day I was approaching a green newspaper kiosk on Boulevard Saint Michel, at the point where the broad avenue crests the hill at the large intersection outside the Jardin de Luxembourg, when I happened to run into a Venezuelan who I had worked with down south. We stopped and chatted amicably for ten minutes of so. Now, whenever I am in Paris, which is at least once a year, and I happen to walk by this intersection (the Luxembourg Gardens are obviously still there, the cafes and shops have perhaps changed, but the intersection seems to be as it was then, even the green newspaper kiosk still remains) I recall running into my Venezuelan acquaintance. Most importantly, the memory is almost physical – I can almost feel what I felt then, aged 18 – and it invariably stimulates scores of other memories of happy encounters I had on the streets of Paris during the late 1970s.

These two examples demonstrate the remarkable importance of the role of place in personal memory. Memory is not simply triggered by place, it is triggered by place because that which is remembered happened in place, was emplaced. We say that events take place. In fact events take place in place. The event takes place within a topography that is sensed, that has become meaningful and that is appropriated by ones identity – not only the event has been lived but the place too has been lived.

Therefore, to lose the place can be catastrophic, for one’s memory and one’s self-identity. To be unable to return, as is the case often with political refugees, can provoke profound sadness. Connerton formulates this well: “As I know my way around the limbs of my body, as a pianist knows her way around her piano, as I know my way around my own house, so I know my way around the paths, landmarks and districts of my city” and to lose one’s way around one’s limbs “is tearfully distressing, an aching catastrophe” but so too, to lose one’s way around one’s house or city “would be a defamiliariztion that would shake my very being.”

How greater the catastrophe therefore, for memory, when an entire social or ethnic group, through forced trans-location, lose their houses and their cities, the primary loci of their memories, and instead, find themselves transported to a new, alien world that knows nothing of their former homes and towns and, furthermore, demonstrates only a profound disinterest in their past, their experiences and their memories. Such people's  memories have been amputated.

New ebook

I published my first e-book the other day. So, if you have a kindle, iPhone or iPad, you can purchase it for $3:99 at any amazon store. The book is called James Joyce and Zurich's Fair City - And other historical reflections on Switzerland..It collects a number of published and unpublished essays and, as the blurb says "offers a series of anecdotal historical essays that will enhance your stay in Switzerland's beautiful city of Zurich. Stagger in the footsteps of James Joyce, drop in at the zany Cabaret Voltaire, get to grips with the philosophy behind Wagner's operas, discover Zurich's connections with Tom Waits, Thomas Mann, Will Self, Herman Hesse, Empress Sissi and many more.

Get you copy at this link now before it sells out!

Reflecting Venice

Last month I spent a few days in Venice, city of stone and water.

Peter Ackroyd has written (Venice: Pure City, Vintage Books, 2010), that "there has been a continuing association between Venice and the mirror".

View of Venice

 Ackroyd also writes: "Venice seems to have no foundations except reflections. Only its reflections are visible".

View of Grand Canal

Nineteenth century American writer W. D. Howells wrote of Venice: "Never did a city seem so dream-like and unreal".

Portrait of Liz

Rilke agreed: "this dream like city."

At the Biennale

Brian Jolley - Zurich Triptych

Zurich Triptych by Brian Jolley

Here is a photograph of one of my favourite views in Zurich. On the left, the Neo-Gothic city hall and the towers of the Fraumunster and Saint Peters churches. On the right, the two towers of the Grossmunster. The River Limmat divides both banks, yet unites the photograph, muscling its way out of the lake and moving northward to the Rhine. The deep blue of the sky and darkness of of the river bind all three panels together. This work is from the American photographer, Brian Jolley.

It is a painterly photograph, the work of an artist who uses modern technology while displaying an awareness of tradition. The left panel is almost abstract, with layers of blues, a hint of brown stone and slash of crimson red. Moving across the work, from left to right, the scene brightens, like night into day. The middle panel captures the magic of the river, steadily receding into light, where the white water almost meets the white of the horizon, bordered by the ancient stone embankment. The darkness at the bottom of the work is balanced by the darkness at the top, the eye is eventually led into the pool of light that forms the photograph's centre.

The secret of Jolley's work, is that he has allowed time, duration,to insert itself into his photograph, drenching the work with a glaze of light and colour. The colours have been impressed upon the piece, layer after layer. This is not a view that you will ever find with the naked eye, no matter how hard you try. The effect comes from using a camera obscura.  Jolley has made his own version of a cardboard shoe box. A pin hole at one end of the box allows the light to enter and the image falls across a layer of tissue paper. Jolley has cut a larger hole at the other end of the box, into which he inserts the lens of his digital camera. With a long exposure, he then photographs the image that is on the tissue paper.

The effect not only impresses duration into the image, but the technique marries the old and the new. The camera obscura has been known for centuries and was made use of by, for instance, Vermeer. So Jolley is in good company. In the nineteenth century primitive images were captured using various photographic papers. Since the late 20th century Cuban photographer Alberdo Morrell  has been using the camera obscura to photograph tantalizing urban scenes from hotel rooms in a variety of cities. Jolley uses modern high tech - a digital camera. But his use of the camera not only is enriched through this technique, but is in itself a performance that demonstrates a respect for tradition.

Madonna Tickles Baby

My recent three day trip to Florence  was a delightful immersion in the great classics of the Renaissance. The main problem is, of course, knowing where to look - another Donatello or should we decamp to Santa Trinita or climb the Duomo or is it time for another espresso at Cafe Rivoire?

Such are the dilemmas when you are free and in Florence. Our visit to the Bargello was an obvious highlight: early in the morning we were the first arrivals and had Donatello's and Verocchio's Davids all to ourselves.With no one else in the room except for a couple of guards, I got so close to Donatello's David, I could see my breath momentarily stain his boots.

But of all the magnificent frescoes and paintings, great and small, it was this painting, in the Uffizi that struck the deepest cord within me.

It is a very small painting, probably by Massacio - the Tickling Madonna.  Somehow the intimacy of the gesture, for me at least, was wholly unexpected.  During this period, when humankind became the measure of all things, even the divine is brought down from the high heavens and made human (and the human is made divine). And here we see the divine, in the form of the Blessed Virgin and the infant Jesus involved in a gesture that signifies something that humans, but also other animals, engage in - play; the mother playfully tickles her child.

Your mother did it to you and even the Mother of God, the Queen of the Heavens, did it to her divine son. As she touches him gently in the folds of his neck and he grasps her hands, she gazes down at him lovingly, yet with sadness.

Jesus was tickled by his mum, that's the message that Masaccio unexpectedly revealed to me from across the centuries, one sunny winter's morning in the Uffizi Gallery.

Forgive the pun, but this painting touched me.

The selfishness of bankers has its uses

Tommaso Portinari

Although he lived many centuries ago, Tommaso Portinari would have been right at home in the world of 21^st century banking.  Sent to the rich Flemish towns to represent the interests of the Florentine bankers, the Medicis, he became enamoured with the ostentatious culture  at the Burgundian court in Brussels.  Republican Florence had never seen the likes of this sort of public display of extravagance. Portinari used Medici money to become the main lender to the Burgundian Duke.  When the Duke defaulted on his repayments, Portinari took out huge loans on behalf of the Medici, and extended this money to the Duke in the form of further credit. When the Duke defaulted again, the Medicis found themselves bankrupted in the Lowlands. Portinari was sent for and found himself before the courts, as the Medicis naturally wished to get their money back. Portinari fought his case for four years, and although he was found guilty of mismanagement and ordered to pay back what he had lost, he never did actually make any repayments.  Throughout this, he personal amassed great wealth. In true 21^st century style, he was a risk-taker, but only with other people’s money. He had all the qualities that we look for in modern bankers – avarice, greed and a complete lack of shame; in other words, he had what it takes to succeed in organisations like Barclays, the UBS, Bank of America, HSBC and other financial institutions whose leadership tries to make a quick profit for themselves, come what may. Just last week the Royal Bank of Scotland announced losses of 1.1 billion pounds (to be paid by the British tax-payer), while the execs of the company, for their good work, have decided to pay themselves 950 million pounds in bonuses (to be paid by the British tax-payer). Shameless, but rich!

But Portinari had two qualities that made him different from the executives who today lead the likes of Barclays, UBS, Bank of America and HSBC. For one thing, as far as I know, he never got involved in criminal activity. Unlike the HSBC for instance, he never knowingly laundered money for terrorists and Mexican drug dealers; unlike Barclays and the UBS, he never illegally cheated in the international lending market; unlike the UBS and Bank of America, he didn’t lie when it came to taxes. So maybe, after all, he would have had some problems fitting in in today’s banking culture.

Another thing that set him aside from the business school graduates who ru(i)n our financial world today: he had excellent taste. His interest in the arts resulted in a number of masterpieces, the greatest being the Portinari Alterpiece by Hugo van der Goes, housed today in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.

Portinari Altarpiece

Hugo van der Goes was a Flemish master who lived from 1440 to 1482. Born in Ghent, he was a lay monk in the order of the Red Cloister. His conviction that he was damned led him to sometimes use violence against himself, and he may have died as a consequence of a particularly vicious bout of banging his own head against a brick wall.  His mental instability, and his membership of a religious order, however, didn’t keep him out of the limelight, and he was one of the most famous and feted  artists of the age.  While living in Bruges, Tommasso Portinari commissioned van der Goes to paint the altarpiece.

It was the largest Flemish triptych ever painted. Portinari had it shipped to Pisa and from there it took 16 men to carry it to Florence. Its arrival in Tuscany was like an aesthetic assault from the North and its influence was felt in the work of a number of Italian renaissance artists. Today it hangs opposite Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus – two masterpieces, but very different from each other.

Van der Goes depicts the birth of Jesus, as revealed in the vision of St. Bridget of Sweden: “Mary took off her cloak and veil, let her hair loose, knelt in prayer; suddenly the new-born lay in front of her in a shaft of light”. In other words, no placenta or blood needs to be included, or any other reminder of what an actual birth involves.  Instead, the baby simply appears lying on the ground.

Portinari Altarpiece: Central panel

 But Mary doesn’t look all too happy.  The ground around baby Jesus has been beaten flat, a bit like the ground upon which villagers beat or thresh the wheat.  And of course, the symbol of Jesus is bread, that is, wheat. Some day in the future he will take bread and say: “This is my body”. So what we are seeing here is not so much a birth scene, but a sacrificial scene.  This baby will be sacrificed, and the mother somehow knows it. This baby will grow to be a man, will become God incarnated in the body of man and on the eve of his ultimate sacrifice he will announce that the bread is his body, and he will order his friends to “take it and eat it”. So, what van der Goes has painted is not just a birth scene but a sacrificial scene that is almost cannibalistic. This baby will be eaten in the form of the blessed Eucharist. In fact, the Portinari Altarpiece shows us the first ever sacrament of the blessed Eucharist. If we are in any doubt, look at the angel who stares back at us and use his hand to welcome us to partake.  He is dressed in the robes of an archdeacon and his robe bears the words “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus” – “Holy, Holy, Holy”, the words recited at mass when blessing the bread that will become the body of Jesus, and will then be eaten by the congregation.

Portinari Altarpiece: detail

 If we need further evidence, immediately below the baby Jesus we find what Belgian art historian Dirk de Vos has described as “the most beautiful still life ever painted’. 

Portinari Altarpiece: detail

The bundle of corn, of course, represents bread, the body of Jesus. In front of it stands a Spanish albarello with a design of vines and grapes (the blood of Jesus) holds flowers – white lilies (the purity of Mary) and red lilies (the future suffering of Mary). In the clear glass with water we see columbines (Christ’s love) and carnations (Christ’s suffering) and along the floor we find a scattering of violets, representing Mary’s humility.

Portinari Altarpiece: detail

Above the baby, his mother Mary's hands, loosly joined, form the shape of a heart. These are the exact centre of the picture. Around the centre various objects are arranged in perfect balance: Joseph, on the left, is balanced by the group of shepherds on the right; the white angels in the lower left are balanced by the blue angels above; the seraphim in the lower right are balanced by the flying angels in the upper left; the mother and child form the hub of a giant cartwheel that encircles them. The entire left of the picture  is dark, the right half is light; darkness and light meet at Mary. Mary is, literally, the bridge between the dark and the light, between the human and the divine, between the profane and the sacred – she is the mother of God. In the portal of the palace above her head we see a harp, the symbol of the House of David, so she is of noble blood, and so is Jesus, descended from the King of Israel.

Of course this painting has a lot more to it, and I haven’t even mentioned the side panels. But it should be clear that Van der Goes has given us a painting that is not only beautiful, but incredibly rich in meaning. He himself was a torn soul. He has left us no self-portrait. But I think this central panel is the closest we have to a self-portrait. It represents Van der Goes’ agonized mind, a mind devoted to all that is holy and good while being tormented by the wickedness that he sees within himself and the conviction that he deserves damnation rather than salvation.  It is no wonder that Mary does not greet the birth of her child with joy, but rather with ambiguity, suspecting the pain that is stored in the future.

Without Tomasso Portinari’s wealth and vanity we would never have had this marvelous work of art. Which goes to show, in the great scheme of things, that the selfishness of bankers might have its uses after all.