World War One

June 28, 1914

The forgotten European catastrophe commenced today with the assassination of Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.

War came quickly with the Austrians setting an ultimatum against Serbia July 23, 1914
Austria declared war on Serbia July 28
Russia began to mobilize
August 1 Germany declared war on Russia
August 2 Germany declared war on France

the von Schlieffen Plan swings into existence

Summers are lovely. Few of us want to remember how the old world came to an end then

In the Battle of Somme from July 1, 1916 to November 18, 1916 something on the order of 420, 000 British troops were killed, 200,000 French soldiers and 450,000 Germans

These numbers overwhelm the casualty discussions of today.

Powerful Whispers

One of the classic images of the powerful: two men leaning their faces close to each other, so that the one can hear what the other is saying. Within the staging of this picture, the person listening is the more powerful, the person speaking is at his service.

The whisper could be a kiss, it could be Judas betraying Christ, but in political iconography the hushed words amount to the equivalent of a bow. The photographic close-up can portray power through small details. Presidents still stage massive baroque festivals such as the inauguration or helicoptering out to an aircraft carrier, but film allows the masses to look upon the intimate relations between politicians as if they were seeing power’s moment of truth.


The photographic image allows the viewer to share the proximity of the two speakers, that they are so close to another that one can feel the breath of the other. Whatever they are saying, and this information is always left out, it must be important judging by their posture. The more neutral the facial expression, the more important the message. A blank stare suggestions intense reflection upon what is being said, and a careful calculation of how to respond.

Hank Walker's famous poster of John and Robert Kennedy emphasized the fraternal balance between the brothers, their seated posture directly in front of each other, face to face. The usual relationship is reversed: the President speaks, the Attorney General listening. This conversation grows out of family intimacy, it has happened many times, often about ordinary things, but the pose here, the photographer's respectful distance, still show the hierarchy between equals.

As the court painter for the Gonzaga family, Dukes of Mantua, Andrea Mantegna used this whispering image in a fresco within the ducal palace. This “painted room,” camera picta, was an interior space, not open to the general public. It was intended to impress important guests, not the populace. After a visit to the palace, Milanese Duke Galeazzo Sforza was so taken with it that he wrote to the Mantuan that his room was the most beautiful in the world, and that he wished he had had his portrait on the wall.

In other words the painting in this room made one Duke envious of the other.

Mantegna places the reigning Duke Gonzaga seated in the far left corner of the painting. Surrounded by his family, the Duke can observe a line of courtiers approaching him, but his attention turns at that very instant to receive a letter from a messenger, who is bowing hat in hand at his side whispering a message. The conversation between Duke and messenger takes precedence over the reception, yet the ceremony continues. In other words, the Duke is often interrupted by messengers, and all the court participants take the exchange in stride.

Two levels of power are on display: first, the Duke receiving his subjects in his palace and then, second, the presumably important message from afar. Mantegna does not need to use loud images to celebrate the Duke. Anyone viewing the painting would already have gained some access to the Duke, thus the display of his rank could subtler.

The painting's political message is a favorite of photographers in Washington. The most recent version is the shot of Rahm Emmanuel whispering something important to President Obama. When it first appeared the image conveyed that finally again smart men were making intelligent decisions about policy. That there might be a Machiavellian quality to the political calculation was hardly a problem, for at least it was not a decision made on instinct. Sometimes the picture gets used to suggest a sinister side to the White House—does the chief of staff have too much power, but we are so familiar with the icon that we cannot help admire it.


If American viewers have imported an Italian appreciation of the hard calculations that the posture implies, it is not from admiring Mantegna, but rather from watching “The Godfather.” Brando raises his hand to hear the whispered request. As movie viewers we are allowed to hear the statement, as well as Brando’s response.

The great lesson of American politics: “He has been loyal, but what has he done for us lately.”

African Teacher

The beautiful church of S. Zeno Maggiore in Verona celebrates the city’s patron saint. Zeno came from North Africa, and the sculpture in the church shows him to be dark skinned with distinctive facial features. As the biography of Augustine makes clear, Italy and Africa were of course closely connected during the Roman Empire, so it makes fine sense that an African would lead the church in northern Italy. Still, given the current hostility towards African refugees, the story and sculpture’s presence does seem marvelous.

Struck with the grandeur of the church and the enigma of Zeno himself, I started reading up on the bishop once I returned from Italy. Studying is my way of extending the loveliness of travelling in Italy. The sensual wonder of great architecture reverberates in the tomes that describe its inhabitants and namesake.

Zeno preached in Verona during the period we would now recognize as the transition where the Roman Empire became Christian. Emperor Constantine’s conversion set a slow process in motion whereby the old temples were phased out. Reports from 332 and 346 indicate that temples were being demolished and taken over, however Constantine continued to appoint priests. Constantine passed a law banning offerings and closing temples on pain of death, however the law was rarely enforced. His successors Gratien and Theodosius were more energetic in confiscating temples and redirecting religious taxes for the military. For the state the appeal of taking over old houses of worship must have been similar to the motives felt by Protestant princes during the Reformation—suddenly a wealthy, well-landed institution falls into the hands of the government.
Zeno’s collecting sermons cover the decade around 360, a time when pagans still worshipped openly and proudly.

From his sermons you get a sense of the domestic life in the early Church in Verona.

The treatment of women in Christianity distinguished it from pagan practices. One of Zeno’s sermons deals with the question of adultery. Under Roman law only women were subject to judgment for breaking their marriage vows. Christianity introduces the possibility that women could publically object to their husbands having other sexual partners. Constantine had introduced a law forbidding married men from holding concubines in 326. Zeno preached that Christian laws were needed to punish adulterous men. He assures his audience that in his Christian community women would have the same standing as men.

Another issue for the Christian church at the time was the marriage between Christians and pagans. Church fathers acknowledged that in previous times Christians had married outside their religion, but they warned that those who did so were throwing the bones of Christ to the unbelievers, opening the temple of Gods to the devil. Zeno also preached in this vein, drawing tears to his eyes at the thought that in his community Christians were married to pagans. If a Christian wife refuses to accept her pagan husband’s beliefs, the house will be filled strife, God’s name cursed. If she does not respect his gods, will he understand her reserve as just a matter of faith?

Zeno warned that there were many pagan rituals in early Christianity. Church goers would still go out at night to pour libations over graves in order to satisfy the dead. Christians claiming to celebrate martyrs festivals would find a secluded place to hold a drinking bacchanal.

The sermons reflect the competition between sects and religions in the Roman Empire. He preaches against Jews as no longer being the chosen people, as blind. Andreas Bigelmeier writes frankly about the anti-semitism of the early church. The most serious conflict however was with the followers of the priest Arius of Alexandria, who taught that Jesus Christ was not equal in divinity with God the Father, but that he was the First Creation, a supernatural being between the eternally divine and the mortal. Arianism split the early church; it was far and away the most serious challenge to its teaching. As Christianity grew, the large masses that converted did not have the same intense devotion and rigorous understanding of doctrine as the first generations of believers. Zeno responded to the charge that he was too mild in reproaching heretics.

He preached against the excessive wealth of Christians in contrast to their neighbors who starved and froze during the winter. Like many, he used the familiar example of the wealthy Christian woman who spent much of the day in front of her mirror, applying makeup and arranging her hair. His sermons against luxury must not have been successful, for he returns to the topic often. He celebrated the Christian ideal of serving the unfortunate, ransoming the imprisoned, aiding the poor and the abandoned. The doors of Christian house stood open to the wanderer. The Verona church gathered every day to Zeno’s sermons. Easter was the most important holiday, the culmination of the year, for included by baptismal celebrations.

Best source on Zeno, so far: Andreas Bigelmeier, Zeno von Verona (Münster: Aichendorfflichen Verlag, 1904)
picture found at http://santiebeati.it/immagini/?dispsize=Original&mode=view&album=49300&pic=49300E.JPG

Chinese Cookies

As the Western media report with indignant glee about China’s attempt to censor individual computers by requiring filtering controls on all PCs sold in country, we should recall that “cookies” already track users movements and identity as they wander across the internet. The cookie stores information from websites in order to personalize your next visit. Some cookies are meant to expire, however there has been much criticism of Google for setting 2038 as the expiration date for its cookies.
See Daniel Brandt at http://www.google-watch.org/bigbro.html

Legislation in the US and in Europe restricts the ability of intelligence agencies to attach cookies to computers that visit their sites, for the simple reason that both the CIA and NSA have been shown to have tracked users in the past.

When the NY Times reported December 29, 2005 that the NSA removed cookies it had set on computers and the CIA removed cookies it has “inadvertently” placed on computers, one should not believe that Chinese intelligence agencies were the first to surveille personal computers. That from which spies are banned, search engines are permitted. Google has a vast cache of information on search preferences of its users. Personal freedom from interference is invoked when restraints are placed on government tracking of computer uses, however another personal freedom, namely consumer satisfaction, justifies commercial profiling of computers.

Advertising and marketing is the key difference between the Google tracking and governmental surveillance. Search engines want to more smoothly address the consumer by knowing his or her preferences. US intelligence agencies do not wish to block an individual users access to dangerous web sites; like commercial search engines, they merely wish to track it. Let's be real, this blog exists on a Google server. That such marketing information might have further uses one can hardly doubt. The Chinese devices were supposedly intended to censor, or “filter,” access to web sites. Western readers no doubt instantly saw the analogy with a parent trying to prevent Johnny from looking at the wrong web sites.

The paradox of electronic media: we are constantly under surveillance, indeed we depend upon being identified when we use a web site. We enjoy the recognition we receive from the internet, that a web site “befriends” us. This same electronic acknowledgement depends upon our identities being stored by some very large cache.

Rather than blocking access to web sites that contain information threatening to the regime, a far more effective strategy is to lead consumers to sites that appeal to them. Before long they will be pulled away from critical sites and directed toward those that bring more immediate and less threatening satisfaction. Most internet consumers freely let themselves be tracked, they want to be recognized and simultaneously protected from Russia teenagers hacking and political fanatics plotting. American internet consumers are politically docile precise because we feel so free.

US Fascists

We aren’t back in the Weimar Republic, but the assault on the Holocaust Museum needs to be understood as a fascist maneuver aimed not just at the museum but at the White House as well. As a mild-mannered academic, I don’t like to think about Nazis in the American hinterland, nor ponder the unmentionable, but I want to trust that there are earnest officials in dark suits tracking fascists with guns should they approach government officials. These security personnel ought to be so thorough that they have monitored this posting as I edit it on-line-- another super-ego fantasy.

The eighty-eight year old man was giving his own version of a suicide attack, no doubt intended to send a message to the wrong people. A few years from now, we do not want to look back in order to reconstruct the resurgence of the American fascists, the gun fanatics who all supposedly signed up for the war in Iraq and therefore are no longer planning attacks on government buildings. We have apparently not exported all our terrorists to the Middle East.

We need to take our own native-born assassins seriously.

Forgotten Tyrannts

The most impressive church in Verona was originally built outside the city walls—S. Zeno, an imposing Romanesque structure. It is but a short walk from the city center, even on a hot day without a map it takes less than an hour. The high sweeping doors are covered in bronze reliefs depicting scenes from the life of Christ, many of which date back to the thirteenth century.

Inside is an imposing space. The nave is cool and wide, filled with enigmatic historic knights performing the sacred and the profane. The guide book will give a name to some of the knights and you have to take their word on the attribution, for it is not always clear who is doing exactly what in some of the scenes, but you come away with a clear sense that the church is a repository for important political events. It is easy to see that the abbey had long been a favored resting place for German emperors passing down from the Alps into the turmoil of Italian city state rivalry.

Today, in the piazza outside the S.Zeno there is a small market that sells socks and fruits. If you walk across the sun-filled place to a row of trees on the far side, you can find a café where old men have all found their shady seat to drink wine in the afternoon. If they may have left one table free, it is basking in the sun. The struggle between light and shade is all that occupies the piazza now, but if you sip your drink and stare across the plaza, you can easily believe that in 1238 the medieval emperor Frederick II celebrated the marriage of his natural daughter, Selvaggia, to Ezzelino da Romano in this place.

Ezzelino was a rising political power whom the emperor needed to court in his attempt to assert control over Italy. At the time of the wedding Ezzelino was not yet the hated tyrant , infamous for his cruel treatment of enemies, despised by an army of exiles, excommunicated by the Pope, and denounced in the vilest terms available to medieval Christianity. Dante imagines him in a river of boiling blood receiving his just punishment along with other tyrants. Ezzelino was notorious for burying his enemies in castle dungeons, sometimes bricking over the cells as the inmates pleaded for bread and water. His vicious nature grew with his power. If a castle’s defenders resisted his siege, he would have their eyes put out once he captured the place. Jacob Burkhardt opens is masterful book, Civilization of the Italian Renaissance, with the stark contrast between Ezzelino, the vicious usurper, and the worldly emperor Frederick.

As you sit before S. Zeno, you can think how the marriage between Ezzelino and Selvaggia unfolded across six days of feasting on the piazza. We don’t know much about Selvaggia other than that she was the described as the emperor’s beloved natural (i.e. illegitimate) daughter. Some years later, after Ezzelino was strong enough not to need the emperor’s approval, he married another. In footnotes, historians debate what became of Selvaggia . Ezzelino, we know for certain, was eventually caught exposed without many troops in a running battle outside Milan. Wounded in his foot, he died in prison. Verona, like many other cities in the region, declared a holiday upon receiving the news of Ezzelino’s death, at the time it was announced that the city’s freedom should be forever celebrated on that day. One wonders if it is still so remembered.

Photo taken from Wikepdia commons

Where to stay in Verona

A Germanist in Italy

The Hotel Aurora is located in the heart of the old city, directly on Piazza Erbe, as central to the loveliness Verona offers as humanly possible. Fairly priced with a friendly and helpful staff, this small hotel provides a delicious breakfast buffet, has a shady balcony for evenings overlooking the Piazza. Most impressively, the rooms have air conditioning, crucial in the summertime for over-heated tourists.

http://www.hotelaurora.biz/indexGB.htm

Just a reminder

Rock and Roll

"It’s dead. It’s a disease. It’s a plague. It’s been going on for too long. It’s history. It’s vile. It’s not achieving anything. It’s just a digression. They play rock and roll at airports. It’s advanced as it can possibly get. It’s too limited. It is too much like a structure, a church, a religion, a farce."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BZ2UoBZzEI&feature=PlayList&p=C2B9E57BE6B684DE&index=4

The augury of pop culture.

A basic premise of our society is that the young know a truth everyone else ignores at their own peril. The triumph of the sixties and rock music was so complete that even the hoariest conservative knows not to get caught out grumbling about “those kids and their music,” and succession of styles, punk, hip-hop, have been taken seriously by many who care not a wit about its content, simply because they do not want to miss out on the secrets they may reveal.

Even when youth culture is steered by studios, it presents its message always in the guise of subversion that might overthrow the uptight adults. This is not just cynical manipulation, it is also the real expectation that the tastes of the young do represent the future, that somewhere beyond the maneuverings of film-makers and recording executives there still remains a kernel of truth. If all the girls want to see Twilight just as they once all wanted to see Titanic, they are acting according to some principle that augurs the future.

The truth of teen tastes is easily equated with the invisible hand of the market. Even universities now run on this principle, what the young want represents truth and the future.

There are of course other modes of education: wherein the young receive knowledge garnered from the past or from those who have studied the world longer. The market approach to education means that universities teach what students want, as opposed to students learn what universities teach. The difference is crucial, for it shifts the presumption of knowledge onto the students.

Those who learn already know something the professors have forgotten. They know what courses matter, they already know how to organize an education.

According to this Liberal thinking, the function of the university is learn from its students, so that they can teach what the students already know they need to learn. This is the implicit rule behind so many university decisions.

If students don’t enroll in a class, then it must not be important. If a department does not have many majors, then it must not deserve to continue. Never mind that the subject may be difficult.

If they do not come, then we will dismantle the discipline.