The Story of a Life

 About the end of September I found myself too tired to follow an argument in print, able to read only narrative. A fat paperback, The Story of a Life by Konstantin Paustofsky, had been on our shelves for some time, and I picked it up. A fortnight and 700 pages later, I was glad to have read it. I should say that this volume has only the first three of the six books in the autobiography.

The NYRB's edition of The Story of a Life takes Paustofsky through childhood to about the age of 35. It is very much the story of loss after loss, beginning with his father's death, continuing through the loss of his two brothers and a beloved during WW I, his mother's destitution and sister's blindness, and the disasters of the Civil War. The book ends with the departure of the last ships to leave Odessa before its capture by the Red Army. Paustofsky had decided to stay in Russia.

Yet the effect on the whole is not depressing. Talleyrand said that one had not tasted the sweetness of life if one had not lived under the Old Regime: Jacques Barzun glossed this to say that life during a decadence is usually sweet. And there is plenty of sweetness in Paustofsky's accounts. There are country visits to family and friends, there are friendships at school in Kiev, there are flirtations and courtships. And there is excitement: near escapes from death at the hands of the German army, Denikin's forces, and in general the trigger-happy and malicious in no man's land or in Odessa.

If NYRB brings out a translation of the next three books, I will read it. 

 

No Polite Shadow-Fencing

 At Second Story Books today, I looked into a volume of biographical sketches by Isaiah Berlin. The most promising name, I thought, was J.L. Austin, and the beginning of the essay did not disappoint. The two decided to teach a class on the thought of C.I. Lewis, which started such that

 Austin opened by inviting me to expound a thesis. I selected Lewis's doctrine of specific, sensible characteristics -- what Lewis called qualia--and said what I thought. Austin glared at me sternly and said, 'Would you mind saying that again.' I did so. 'It seems to me', said Austin, speaking slowly, 'that what you have just said is complete nonsense.' I then realised that this was to be no polite shadow-fencing, but war to the death -- my death, that is.

Still,

There is no doubt that Austin's performance at our class had a profound and lasting effect upon some, at any rate, of those who attended it. Some of them later became eminent professional philosophers and have testified to the extraordinary force and fertility of Austin's performance. for a performance it undoubtedly was: as much so as Moore's annual classes held at the joint meetings of the Aristotelian Society and Mind Association. Slow, formidable and relentless, Austin dealt firmly with criticism and opposition of the intelligent and stupid alike, and, in the course of this, left the genuine philosophers in our class not crushed or frustrated, but stimulated and indeed excited by the simplicity and lucidity of the nominalist thesis which he defended against Lewis.

Probably I should have purchased the volume this morning, perhaps I will yet. 

 

Recently Read

 In A Concise History of Italy by Christopher Duggan, chapter 1, "The geographical determinants of disunity", there appears the paragraph beginning

One reason why so many subversives believed in the revolutionary potential of the Italian peasants was that they knew very little about them. Most of the leading republicans, anarchists, socialists, and communists came from urban middle-class families, and their knowledge of the countryside was rarely direct. The fact that in Italy a large cultural and to some extent economic divide existed between towns and countryside (many peasant families consumed what they grew and did not sell their produce at market) reinforced this ignorance. In such circumstances, it was easy for a romantic notion of 'the people' as an army of downtrodden soldiers waiting for generals to lead them to the promised land to flourish; and this idea survived many indications that a majority of peasants where in fact deeply conservative, if not reactionary.

 

Water Views

At the beginning of The Bostonians, Henry James shows Basil Ransom visiting a cousin in Boston, looking out from a window from which

there was a view of the water; Miss Chancellor having the good fortune to dwell on that side of Charles Street toward which, in the rear, the afternoon sun slants redly, from an horizon indented at empty intervals with wooden spires, the masts of lonely boats, the chimneys of  dirty 'works,' over an expanse of anomalous character, which is too big for a river and too small for a a bay. This view seemed to him very picturesque, though in the gathered dusk little was left of it save a cold yellow streak in the west, a gleam of brown water, and the reflection of the lights that had begun to show themselves in a row of houses, impressive to Ransom in their extreme modernness, which overlooked the same lagoon from a long embankment on the left, constructed of stones roughly piled.

Later, at dinner,

he had another view, through a window where the curtain remained undrawn by her direction (she called his attention to this--it was for his benefit), of the dusky, empty river, spotted with points of light... 

A matter glossed by the hostess's sister:

'That's what they call in Boston being very "thoughtful," Mrs. Luna said, 'giving you the Back Bay (don't you hate that name?) to look at and then taking credit for it.'

 One infers that this takes place in the early 1870s.

In 1872, George Santayana arrived at his mother's house in Boston, where

 They took us into the dining room to show us the "beautiful view" from the back of the house--a great expanse of water, with a low line of nondescript brick and wooden houses marking the opposite bank. It was Bostonian to show us the view first; ...

He gave that view qualified praise:

This view of a vast expanse of water reflecting the sky was unmistakably impressive, especially when the summer sunset lit up the scene, and darkness added to distance made the shabby bank opposite appear inoffensive. Gorgeous these sunsets often were, more gorgeous, good Bostonians believed, than any sunsets anywhere else in the world, and my limited experience does not belie them. The illumination often had a kaleidoscopic quality, with fiery reds and yellows, but at other hours the seasons and aerial effects of the Charles River Basin were not remarkable.

 (Persons and Places)

From the description, Mrs. Santayana's house may have been one of those extremely modern houses to the left of Charles Street; certainly there was an embankment between her house and the river.

Photocopying and Conferences

 In David Lodge's novel Small World, the American professor Morris Zapp, remarking on the view of Rummidge University, says

"Look at the Library--built like a huge warehouse. The whole place says, 'We have learning stored here; if you want it, you've got to come inside and get it.' Well, that doesn't apply any more."
 "Why not?", Persse set off again at a gentle trot.
 "Because," said Morris Zapp, reluctantly following, 'information is much more portable in the modern world than it used to be. So are people. Ergo, it's no longer necessary to hoard your information in one building or keep your top scholars corralled in one campus. There are three things which have revolutionized academic life in the last twenty years, though very few people have taken in the fact: jet-travel, direct-dialling telephones and the Xerox machine. Scholars don't need to work in the same institution to interact, nowadays: they call each other up, or they meet at international conferences. And they don't have to grub about in the library for data: any book or article that sounds interesting they have Xeroxed and read it at home. Or on the plane going to the next conference. I work mostly at home or on planes these days. I seldom go into the university except to teach my courses."

I thought of this in reading Peter Brown's memoir Roads of the World, which particularly mentioned the revolution that photo-copying created. Brown discussed phone calls mostly in connection with this family. But he seems to have spent a good deal of time on airplanes and at conferences.

Brown mentions not only the use of photocopying in scholarly work, but in teaching, in the course packets one could arrange for students to get at Kinko's. The latter use ended, or at least was restricted, in 1991, when a number of textbook publishers won a lawsuit against Kinko's. I believe that I remember picking up a course packet or two from the Kinko's on Route 1 before they got out of that business. No doubt the packet or packets were for computing courses, but I don't remember which. 

 

Journeys of the Mind

Peter Brown's Journeys of the Mind: A Life in History runs to 698 pages, not counting introduction and index. Occasionally in the course of reading it, I wondered whether all those pages were needed. Yet I can't say where Brown would have cut.

I knew of Brown because of his first book, Augustine of Hippo. I finished Journeys of the Mind with the notion that I should find the revised edition of Augustine, which includes insights drawn from recently discovered letters of St. Augustine's, and should probably read two or three more of Brown's books. At least I should read The World of Late Antiquity, and Body and Society. And probably I should read the works of some of the other authors mentioned: the footnotes make for an intriguing bibliography, and a program of further reading, if only one had the tongues and the time.

As an autobiography, it is curious. One reads early and late of Brown's family, mother, father, aunts, and cousins. On the other hand, "my wife Pat" appears first on page 591 and thereafter only on page 631. We learn she wrote her dissertation on "the art and social setting of that most Venetian of Venetian painters, Vittorio Carpaccio", we learn the name of the book that resulted, and we learn that she received a tenure-track position in the Art History Department at Princeton. Comparable memoirs, it seems to me, have given spouses a bit more room.

Princeton University Press will bring out a paperback edition in late October for $28, about two-thirds the price of the hardback. (The date and price are for the US.) The book is not for everyone, but those with an interest in the history of late antiquity will likely find it of  interest. I might buy a copy or two as Christmas presents.

Webs

 There was mist, maybe a light drizzle, last night, and this morning the spider webs on shrubs showed it:

out front,

and a few blocks away.