Reviews and News:
When Europe was united…sort of: “The Holy Roman Empire, Wilson says, ‘was neither a bucolic, harmonious old-worldly utopia, nor a direct blueprint for the European Union.’ If not a blueprint, it was—and I believe, remains—an inspiration. Charles de Gaulle characterized Franco-German cooperation in 1950 as ‘picking up Charlemagne’s project, this time on modern economic, social, strategic and cultural grounds,’ and the last Habsburg heir, Otto von Habsburg, asserted in 1976 that ‘the imperial idea will rise again in the form of European unity.’ European unity has indeed risen from the dead but, like Frankenstein’s monster, it remains only half-alive because Europe’s elites disavow the kinds of ideals, principles, or beliefs that have always held together our political communities.”
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The vision of Jane Jacobs: “Jane Jacobs’s celebrated attack on modern city planning, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, has a chapter bafflingly titled ‘The Need for Aged Buildings.’ At least it baffled me when a college professor assigned us the book. Were not old buildings the expression of dilapidation and decay, in effect the necrotic tissue of the city? That they were beneficial, let alone a necessity, seemed patently absurd. I happened to be fond of old buildings, but I regarded this as sentimentality on my part, much like the sentimentality in which Edward Hopper indulged when painting forlorn mansions and defeated storefronts. But there was not a dab of sentimentality in Jacobs’s analysis.
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Victorian bodies: “Why did Charles Darwin grow a beard? What was wrong with George Eliot’s hand?”
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The allure of deserts: “The great deserts of the world hold a compelling attraction for a rare breed of men who are ‘unwise and curiously planned’. Once under the spell of that seemingly infinite arena of sand and stone, many are helplessly hooked.”
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What happened to Newcastle’s dream for a vertical city? “In the 60s planners reimagined Newcastle as a 3D multi-level city, but what remains is now being closed off or demolished. Guided by architecture professor Stephen Graham, Karl Whitney explores this disappearing city.”
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James Joyce used 1,105 exclamation points per 100,000 words. Ernest Hemingway used 59.
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Essay of the Day:
In The New Criterion, Paul du Quenoy revisits the Battle of Verdun on its one-hundredth anniversary:
“‘Pour nous, c’est très présent,’ remarked my octogenarian friend, a distinguished French scholar of English literature at the Sorbonne, when I told him of my plan to leave behind the delights of Paris for the somber battlefield at Verdun. A century ago his grandfather, a young subaltern, had served there and been incapacitated in a German gas attack. Today, and perhaps then as well, this defining struggle of World War I could not seem further from the oblivious bobos strolling below the aged academic’s worn but high-valued flat on the Rue des Beaux-Arts. Or could it? From Paris’s Gare de l’Est, Verdun and its surrounding combat zone lie less than two hours away via tgv. An early morning start delivers a visitor there in time for the standard 10 AM opening hours of all the major sites, most of which are accessible on foot, via taxi, or courtesy of special tour programs.
“The town of Verdun, which straddles the river Meuse, is picturesque and well worth a visit without reference to the mournful martial lore that draws virtually all tourists. If one can get past the souvenir shops selling tasteless battle memorabilia (think candles in the shape of the signature French 75mm howitzer shell), the small city yields the undiscovered wonders so often found by surprise when roaming la France profonde.
“Destiny itself seems to have predetermined Verdun’s fate. The strategic high ground around the city has served defensive purposes from time immemorial. The city’s very name derives from the Roman Verodunum, itself a Latin bastardization of the Gallic term for “fortified place.” Facing untamable Germanic tribes in the forests to the east of Gaul, the Romans quickly turned the locale into a strongpoint of their own. By the fourth century it had grown substantial enough to boast a Christian bishopric, a see that would in future centuries erect several prominent churches before settling on the town’s still impressive (if extensively renovated) cathedral. In 843 A.D., long after the Roman defensive line had become obsolete, Charlemagne’s fractious grandsons met there to sign a treaty dividing his inheritance into three portentously delineated realms. Roughly speaking, their independent domains constituted what we know today as France, Germany, and a geographically ill-defined buffer state called ‘Lotharingia,’ so named for its first ruler, Lothar, who had claimed the whole of the imperial inheritance before his brothers fought him to the negotiating table. Running in a strip from the Low Countries to Northern Italy, the name of his realm is most recognizable to us today as ‘Lorraine,’ as in Alsace-Lorraine, the eastern French region that was passed back and forth with Germany until 1945.
“Verdun initially fell in this middle belt of territory, and its further history naturally condemned it to contention. Indeed, the city’s principal monument to the battle is a thick pillar supporting a stern-faced, helmeted statue of Charlemagne leaning down with both arms resting defiantly on the hilt of his sword.”
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Image of the Day: Mount Medvednica
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Poem: Boris Pasternak, “First Frost”
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