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| ... and War. 2014 Jānis Taurens, Philosipher | |
| For a man is not good in war if he have not endured the sight of bloody slaughter and stood nigh and reached forth to strike the foe. this is prowess, this is the noblest prize and the fairest for a lad to win in the world.1 With these words, the poet tyrtaeus is said to have exhorted the Spartan warriors of the 7th century Bc. in referring to war, tyrtaeus uses the term polemos (πόλεμος), which in latvian and english has left only a feeble trace in the word “polemic”. on the other hand, the meaning of the word “war” has been transformed during the 20th century in all languages – certainly those of europe – by the two World Wars. they could be said to form part of our language and to have extended our language-game.2 A different paradigm has determined the order of words in the phase “war and peace”. We may pause to think just why they sound so strange when the order is reversed. Did this come about from lev tolstoy’s novel? is it because hesiod wrote Works and days that virginia Woolf had to give her second novel the title night and day, although in her case the conjunction “and” refers to the contrast between the private and the social rather than unity, as it is with hesiod? in everyday language, the conjugation “and” has a different meaning from that of the corresponding logical symbol: the order of words or sentences is not reversible, just as historical time is irreversible. Before 1914 came 1913, when the majority of people had no thought of war; but nowadays, the many facts gathered, for example, in the book 1913: The Year Before the storm (1913. der sommer des Jahrhunderts) by florian illies require us to consider them as leading up to the war. illies’ work was published in frankfurt am main in 2012 (s. Fischer Verlag), and the Russian edition appeared in moscow (Ад Маргинем Пресс) in 2013...in the last summer before the occupation of crimea, we might say, which the Russian Army is carrying out as “unobtrusively” as possible. thus, we have the main players – germany and Russia – in the two World Wars and now again in my thoughts at present, in the spring of 2014. The above should not be regarded as bibliographic minutiae or linguistic notes on word usage but as leading directly to the methodological question of how to regard the year 1914, including the 1914 exhibition shown at the Arsenāls exhibition hall in january–April 2014, and in this case literature is simply a convenient model for my discussions of method. the opening to this article might have been different, starting with a poem by Robert Browning, in which the lyrical hero talks about his dear but unseen friend, who is represented only through letters and works (“loved i not his letters full of beauty? / Not his actions famous far and wide?”). gradually, however, doubts arise concerning these epistles and works, and one might ask why does this friend not shut the foolish mouths of the slanderers who deny his existence, but “he keeps absent, – why, i cannot think”. Browning’s poem Fears and scruples ends with the surprising question or possibility: What if this friend happen to be – god? In a short essay dedicated to the precursors of Kafka, Borges discusses this poem of Browning as one of three such precursors and reaches the conclusion that, after Kafka, we will read it anew andmuch more profoundly. it is Kafka who, unwittingly, creates his own precursors, thus changing our view of what went before.3 one might consider the conclusion reached by Borges as a precursor of presentism in its own right, of “the movement that analyses a literary work from the perspective of the present-day understanding”, as it is interpreted by ieva e. Kalniņa and Kārlis vērdiņš in the collection of papers Contemporary Theories of Literature, published in latvian last year. But in my view this reveals a method of both reading literature and writing history that brings together different times into a single field, or into the perspective of a single subject. But which times? the method permits 1914 to be combined with 2014, zeno’s paradoxes and Browning’s poem with the novels of Kafka, the image of the stooped human figure in Kafka’s works with a medieval capital, or the arcades of paris with the interwar period, when Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project came into being. Several fragments in Benjamin’s grand project are devoted to method, and i might just as well have begun with one of these. | |
 Views from the 1914 exhibition. Detail of the “Witnesses” part of the exhibition. 2014 Photo: Kristaps Kalns Publicity photos Courtesy of the Latvian national Museum of Art | |
| “It is said that the dialectical method consists in doing justice each time to the concrete historical situation of its object. But that is not enough. for it is just as much a matter of doing justice to the concrete historical situation of the interest taken in the object. [...] in what way this now-being (which is something other than the now-being of ‘the present time’ [Jetztzeit], since it is a being punctuated and intermittent) already signifies, in itself, a higher concretion – this question, of course, can be entertained by the dialectical method only within the purview of a historical perception that at all points has overcome the ideology of progress. in regard to such a perception, one could speak of the increasing concentration (integration) of reality, such that everything past (in its time) can acquire a higher grade of actuality than it had in the moment of its existing. how it marks itself as higher actuality is determined by the image as which and in which it is comprehended. And this dialectical penetration and actualisation of former contexts puts the truth of all present action to the test.” (K2, 3)4 Here, using his idiosyncratic form of expression, Benjamin is dialectically connecting past events with the present-day view of them, which is capable not only of concentrating the topicality of the past but also of serving as a test of our present activities. in this spring of 2014, when Russian aggression has flared up, could we wish for any better method of examining the outbreak of the first World War or events that occurred even a century earlier than that? The events a century before the first World War serve as the background for the tale of the lives of the protagonists in War and Peace. moreover, tolstoy concludes his grand epic by contemplating the course of history and the forces directing it. in a diary i kept at school i discover quotations from the epilogue and my own doubts about the author’s opinions. Nowadays, i’m interested not so much in tolstoy’s characterisation of Napoleon and Alexander i as the enactors of individual roles within that historical drama, a drama whose essential meaning lies in the “the movement of the mass of the european peoples from west to east and afterwards from east to west”, as i am in particular details of the text. (though the phrase “from east to west” is also of interest in 2014, because its allure has captivated putin as the present “tsar” of Russia.5) Alexander i turned out to be ideally suited to the role he was allotted, or, as tolstoy writes, “What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy with european affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests; a moral superiority over those sovereigns of the day who cooperated with him; a mild and attractive personality; and a personal grievance against Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander i.”6 Does this not call to mind the beginning of the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia (Heinrici Cronicon Lyvoniae): “there was a man who had led a most honourable life and had reached a venerable age, named meinhard...”?7 I have no wish to encourage a reading of tolstoy or a chronicle of early 13th century german colonisation in the light of postcolonial literary theory.8 i’m more interested in how to understand Adorno’s idea that great works of art cannot lie,9 with respect to such writers as tolstoy or gogol. in his lectures on Russian literature, vladimir Nabokov singles out tolstoy and gogol as the greatest figures but sidesteps analysis of such works as War and Peace and Taras Bulba.10 the merciless campaigns waged by the romanticised figure of taras Bulba, brought about, especially in the first version of the story, by his inclination towards raids and unrest as well as his personal tragedy, might be regarded as reflecting Ukrainian national independence wars in the 16th and 17th century (directed against polish–lithuanian Union), as indeed they have been viewed, for example, in the commentary to the 1952 Russian edition of the complete works of gogol. however, knowing the subsequent history, namely the incorporation of southern and eastern Ukraine into the Russian empire at the end of the 18th century, they might be read in the context of a “warlike movement from east to west”.11 Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory itself provides the answer to the question of how to read tolstoy or gogol in the spring of 2014: “many works of the highest quality are true as the expression of a consciousness that is false in itself.”12 the masterful portrayal of Natasha Rostova, Andrei Bolkonsky, pierre Bezukhov and other characters in War and Peace lends a significance to tolstoy’s erroneous philosophy of history, which should otherwise simply be cast aside. more than that, this philosophy of history, one of the parts of which becomes topical in the sense of “now-being”, concretises the meaning of these characters for those present-day readers still capable of taking on such voluminous works. | |
 Views from the 1914 exhibition. Detail of the “Witnesses” part of the exhibition. 2014 Photo: Kristaps Kalns Publicity photos Courtesy of the Latvian national Museum of Art | |
| The contrast between literature as a temporal art and spatial visual art – for so one might wish to interpret my last note – is no more than apparent, because visual artefacts likewise demand a comprehension of the context, necessitating temporal breadth. And the 1914 exhibition, along with the catalogue, also provides a brief description of the context and its visual reconstruction. particularly impressive is the installation created in the entrance hall of Arsenāls, consisting of “fragments of architecture and interiors, art and religious objects” stuck into the earth, that same earth in which the trenches of the first World War were dug. here begins a structure reminiscent of trench architecture (a covered wooden ramp), which leads the viewer into the next room of the exhibition.13 it could even be said that the idea behind the design of the exhibition itself obtains the status of a work of art.14 on entering Arsenāls, i recalled The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, by her long-standing partner Gertrude Stein, where, at the end of the chapter covering the time of the war (when the war is actually over), we have an account of the thoughts of the two women as they travel from paris to Alsace. they reach the former front line and the endless trenches, and Stein writes that the landscape was not terrifying, but strange. there were no ruined houses or towns; everything was different – it was an altogether special landscape, belonging to no country. She goes on to quote a french nurse. the only thing she said of the front was: C’est un paysage passionnant.15 “It is an impassioning landscape”, one might translate this phrase, which contains a reference to passion, something that in the case of tragedy should, according to Aristotle, lead to catharsis (παθημάτων κάθαρσιν). however, let us leave aside this enigmatic description by Aristotle in his definition of tragedy (Poetics, 1449b25). catharsis, or cleansing, at least a cleansing of the will to power, has not taken place. All the more important is precise reflection on it today. The year 2014 is represented within the 1914 exhibition by three contemporary works of art. Andris Breže’s An Insight into Aviculture, a two-headed dove, even when formulated only verbally, serves to unmask the cross between the two-headed imperial eagle of Russia and the dove of peace that has been created for propaganda purposes. the two-headed eagle seen in the reflection, which i didn’t even notice at first, seemed initially as an overly direct repetition of a message that is clear anyway. But now, as i write this essay on the day of the so-called “crimean Referendum”, the results of which have been assumed in advance and serve as an element of the planned Russian occupation, this exaggerated artistic statement obtains a different, well-founded meaning. the individual aspect of the will to power, which often goes unnoticed on account of casual, everyday attitudes, is revealed by Krišs Salmanis’ Red Button. in this world of hollywood images, the pressing of a button means bringing about a catastrophe, but one that nobody is prepared to relate seriously to what is happening in reality, and even less so to an invisible electric shock inflicted upon the artist. Suspended above it all is ēriks Božis’ Black sun, presenting the unmistakeable form of a naval mine (as is common for boys, as a child i was interested in military equipment and ship models); only later does it bring to mind a hedgehog.... In any other situation these three works might seem to carry an overly simple, even trivial message. As would the inclusion of three contemporary works within a major exhibition of early 20th century painting, graphic art and sculpture, an exhibition i cannot delve into here, and indeed this is not my aim. however, in this case, the context, which i have traced from Sparta in the 7th century Bc to crimea in 2014, from tyrtaeus’s masculine eulogy on war through the development of l’homme révolté to a degenerate contemporary stage that has not yet been adequately thought out, puts everything in its place. is this sufficient for writing “art” in place of the ellipsis in the title? Nevertheless, one more item of bibliographic information may be added. part four of camus L’homme révolté (The Rebel) is entitled “Rebellion and Art”, just as the article by Dace lamberga in the exhibition catalogue is headed “the War and Art”. War comes before art? But how did the artist feel before the first World War? At the end of his book (December 1913), florian illies quotes a letter by Rainer maria Rilke in which he writes that he would like to be faceless, like a hedgehog rolled into a ball that unrolls only in the evening in the city ditch, climbs out of it and bumps its nose against the stars.16 the hedgehog also appears in friedrich Schlegel’s “fragments” in the magazine Athenäum: “A fragment, like a miniature work of art, has to be entirely isolated from the surrounding world and be complete in itself like a hedgehog”.17 peter osborne, in turn, considers it a significant aspect of romantic epistemology: the hedgehog represents insight and wit, without which philosophical knowledge is impossible. (the unrolling of Rilke’s hedgehog would be a second significant moment for the jena Romantics – a striving that can never be fully realised for the systematisation of knowledge and a philosophical system). moreover, osborne identifies the sources of post-conceptual art, to which these three works also belong, specifically in early (jena) Romanticism.18 | |
 View from the 1914 exhibition. Detail of the “on the Ruins of empire” part of the exhibition. 2014 Photo: Kristaps Kalns Publicity photos Courtesy of the Latvian national Museum of Art | |
| The hedgehog serves to characterise rolling up, seclusion and a momentary flash that permits us to concretise the past from the present-day perspective,19 as well as unravelling, openness, a striv- ing for rational clarity, for a system. But the animal can also symbol- ise something unexpected – a symbol of fortuity, of a creative spir- it – as imants ziedonis views it in an essay from 1975, referring to the widely familiar gesture by Aglaia, when she sends prince mishkin... a hedgehog.20 only when i write these lines (although i’ve known about Aglaia’s hedgehog since school) do i finally discover the right title for this article: The hedgehog and War. 2014. A less definite and less optimistic ending may be found in the last pages of thomas mann’s The Magic Mountain, begun in 1913 but published only after the war, in 1924. (in this case, it’s not important that thomas mann is describing the german army, the ranks of which are joined by hans castorp, the main protagonist of his novel.) Ah, this young blood, with its knapsacks and bayonets, its mud-befouled boots and clothing! We look at it, our humanis- tic-aesthetic eye pictures it among scenes far other than these: we see these youths watering horses on a sunny arm of the sea; roving with the beloved one along the strand, the lover’s lips to the ear of the yielding bride; in happiest rivalry bending the bow. Alas, no, here they lie, their noses in fiery filth. they are glad to be here – albeit with boundless anguish, with unspeakable sickness for home; and this, of itself, is a noble and a shaming thing – but no good reason for bring- ing them to such a pass.21 Translator into English: Valdis Bērziņš 1 english translation by j. m. edmonds.www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?- doc=perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0479%3Avolume%3D1%3Atext%3D2%3Asection%3D2. 2 cf.: “in language as we use it there are not only words and their combinations but also words which make reference to samples. the word “blue”, for example, is correlated with a certain coloured patch which is a sample. Samples such as this are part of our language; the patch is not one of the applications of the word “blue”. the phenomenon of love plays the same role as the patch in the use of the word “love”. two people in love may serve as a sample, or paradigm. We might say that it is the paradigm which has given the word “love” content. But for this purpose we need not discover two people in love, but rather the para- digm, which belongs to the language. We can say the paradigm gives the word meaning. But in what sense? in the sense of enlarging the game. By bringing in a paradigm we have altered the game.” (Wittgenstein, ludwig. Wittgenstein’s Lectures: Cambridge, 1932–1935 / ed. by Alice Ambrose. chicago: the University of chicago press (midway Reprint), 1989, p. 143.) 3 Borges’ essay, written in Buenos Aires in 1951, is included in the volume Otras inquisi- ciones, 1952. 4 Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. translated by howard eiland and Kevin mclaughlin. cambridge (mS), london: the Belknap press of harvard University press, 2002, pp. 391–392. . 5 the reference to the “tsar” may be viewed not only as a rhetorical, polemical gesture; it may also point to an archaic stratum that has not been fully analysed in theoretical thinking and which has remained unchanged during all of Russia’s “revolutionary” transformations in the 20th century. camus, one of the most consistent Western critics of Stalin’s regime, published his L’Homme révolté in 1951 (latvian edition in 2003), but i would like to see a possible continuation (transformation) of his thinking at the present day. 6 first epilogue. chapter iv. translated by louise and Aylmer maude. 7 Indriķa Livonijas chronika. Book one, chapter i, paragraph 2. Riga: valtera un Rapas A/S apgāds, 1936, p. 13. 8 Symptomatic, however (in the sense of a lust for power), and topical is the observation made by Benedikts Kalnačs that “academic discourse in Russia reveals a disapproving atti- tude towards discussion of the colonial aspects of Russian culture, evidently corresponding with the continuation of imperial ambitions in 21st-century Russian politics, seeking to influence its former colonies, which are now sovereign states, by military means (in the caucasus) and ideologically (in the Baltic States)” (Kalnačs, Benedikts. Postkoloniālisms // Mūsdienu literatūras teorijas / ed. by ieva e. Kalniņa and Kārlis vērdiņš. Riga: lU lfmi, 2013, pp. 429–430). We might add only that it’s also a question of military-ideological influence in Ukraine, since armed conflict and propaganda are no longer strictly separable. 9 “great artworks are unable to lie. even when their content is semblance, insofar as this content is necessary semblance the content has truth, to which the artworks testify; only failed works are untrue.” (Adorno, theodor W. Aesthetic Theory / ed. by gretel Adorno and Rolf tiedemann. Newly translated by Robert hullot-Kentor. london, New york: continuum, 2002, p. 130.) 10 leaving aside the precursors, pushkin and lermontov, Nabokov ranks the great Rus- sian writers as follows: first, tolstoy; second, gogol; third, chekov; fourth, turgenev. Nabok- ov has a particularly disparaging, critical attitude towards Dostoevsky, so he does not ap- pear in this list. gogol is usually known as a Russian writer born in Ukraine because he chose to write in Russian. on the other hand, joyce, who made a similar “choice” (and in every case this word needs to be qualified) in favour of english, is nevertheless referred to as an irish writer. And Kafka, born in a jewish family in prague – does he belong to german literature? (Kafka’s friend, the prominent jewish intellectual gershom Scholem, has said that he doesn’t see Kafka’s place in german literature at all.) Nabokov himself resolved this ques- tion by writing in both languages – Russian and english – and in some cases by translating his own work from one language to the other. 11 the writing of Taras Bulba continued, with interruptions, over a period of about nine years (1833–1842). the later history of Ukraine, following the partitions of poland and the incorporation of part of present-day Ukraine into the Russian empire in the late 18th centu- ry, is very complicated and cannot be summarised here. 12 Adorno, theodor W. op. cit., p. 129. 13 this part of the exhibition is to some degree covered by the article “the damage to latvia’s cultural heritage during the first World War” by imants lancmanis and two articles by historian ēriks jēkabsons. 14 the architectural concept and design are by Rūdolfs Bekičs and monika pormale. 15 Unfortunately, i can only refer to the Russian translation available to me: Стайн, Гертруда. Автобиография Элис Б. Токлас // Автобиография Элис Б. Токлас. Пикассо. Лекции в Америке / Сост. и пер. с английского: Елена Петровская. Москва: Б.С.Г.– Пресс, 2001, с. 252. 16 Иллиес, Флориан. 1913. Лето целого века. Пер. с немецкого: Сергей Ташкенов. Москва: Ад Маргинем Пресс, 2012, с. 258. 17 fragment 206 [Athenäums-Fragmente], see Schlegel, friedrich. Philosphical Frag- ments. transl. By peter firchow. minneapolis: University of minnesota press, 1991, p. 45. 18 this is one of the ideas set out in his book Anywhere or not at All; on the quoted frag- ment from the work by friedrich Schlegel, see osborne, peter. Anywhere or not at All. Philosophy of Contemporary Art. london, New york: verso, 2013, pp. 59–61. 19 Benjamin begins his notes on methodology in The Arcades Project with the following aphorism [N1, 1]: “in the fields with which we are concerned, knowledge comes only in lightning flashes. the text is the long roll of thunder that follows.” (Benjamin, Walter. op. cit., p. 456.) the analogy is not simply fortuitous, because Benjamin’s dissertation is devoted to the concept of art criticism in german Romanticism. 20 the essay is published in a collection of articles under the same title: ziedonis, imants. Garainis, kas veicina vārīšanos. Raksti, runas, studijas. Riga: liesma, 1976, pp. 40–41. 21 translated by T. H. Lowe-Porter. | |
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