An investigation by The Guardian, mentioned a couple of years ago by Rome daily newspaper La Repubblica, found out that many of its readers make use of books as tranquilizers, i.e. instead of antidepressants like Prozac etc. (I couldn’t find the original Guardian articles and I can’t read the author’s name - and date - of the Italian article).
Italians read little instead, argues La Repubblica, and when they are in a bad mood they switch on their TV set, with devastating effects. Then La Repubblica goes on saying that there are hot and cool media (probably distorting some of McLuhan’s concepts) i.e. “those [media] already baked and those you’ve got to bake yourself. Those where all is already represented and you can sit there and watch without adding anything, with no participation of yours (= TV, cinema); and those which need your brain in order to take shape, and need your imagination and collaboration, and if you provide this collaboration then you fly high breaking loose from the real world and totally forgetting yourself (= books)”.
“People who are not used to reading imagine this ability like a spell or esoteric exercise, which it is, in some way, since you have to start, then you have to open the book, read the first lines, then the following lines and so on and on until you forget you are reading. You are just inside the book story and out of your life story. It is a full antidepressant trip, while at each zap of your remote control, the consciousness of your unhappiness increases exponentially.”
PS
I find this reflection interesting, which of course doesn’t mean I do not like movies and other media, this is not the point. Although I know too well 80% of my (now obsessed) readers will not agree.
How can we live a better life (says Country Philosopher)? According to Socrates (depicted above while he is trying to convince Alcibiadesto leave charming Aspasia’s house) everything is attainable through exercise - I am quoting CP freely - because exercise creates a habit, any habit. Looking habit up in the on-line Webster we read that it is “a behaviour pattern acquired by frequent repetition.” So it seems that all we need, in order to live a better life – CP argues – is just practising regularly what makes us live better, while at the same time we should gradually abandon what makes us live worse. Very easy to say, though very difficult to realize - CP continues. The reason is that very few people know what makes us live better, i.e. what are the things that make us live happily, which are of course the things most convenient (advantageous) for us.
According to our nature we all tend towards our well-being and best comfort, both spiritual and material - it cannot be denied, says CP. In other words we should all tend towards what is really convenient for us, the problem being, strangely enough, that at the present time we seem to have forgotten what is really convenient for us. Otherwise how can we explain that so many people are unhappy despite the fact that they possess what is necessary to live, and sometimes even much more than that?
As we just said we can explain this with the fact that these people (and all of us) know little or nothing of what is really convenient (advantageous), even in small trivia and everyday practical choices. In short, there are so many people around who visibly make the wrong choices, which are disadvantageous choices. These people consequently live worse and worse, while they could live better and better.
(Dario Bernazza, Vivere alla massima espressione, Editrice Partenone - Luciano Bernazza & C - Roma 1989, from page 25 on)
Could this be one of the fundamental problems of our so-called rich countries (I am asking myself)? They should be so full of happy people, all the requirements for happiness (or at least serenity) seeming to be present. But since so many people are evidently unhappy there must be necessarily a problem of ethical confusion: people do not know anymore what is convenient or non convenient for them to do (ethics is a branch of philosophy which encompasses right conduct and good living - a definition taken from Wikipedia).
A Rational Sovereign Spirit
As far as we are concerned, it is very hard to answer to CP’s question (how we can live a better life). We will only consider that the Ancient Romans, who acquired philosophy from the Greeks but were much more practical and solid than their philosophy mentors, faced life with great success thanks to their iron will, their rationality and self-control. The scions of the well-to-do Roman families flocked to Greece to study the Epicurean and Stoic doctrines, two very significant schools of thought for Rome, which Rome was able to adapt to her needs - like everything Rome learned from other nations - and propagated in every region of the Empire. Today we still admire Julius Caesar’s sovereign spirit, calm, quiet, always mastering himself even when facing the most dreadful tragedies, his writings & actions being a vivid testimony of his character. Caesar though was nothing but a fruit – one of the greatest, maybe - of a civilization based mainly (though not exclusively, of course) on reason (conceived in the ancient way). Is a conduct based on this method still valid today? This question arises when reading this Country Philosopher so stubbornly convinced – like the Ancients were - of the thaumathurgic power of human rationality. Is it possible today, while confronting with everyday problems, to draw any benefit from the philosophies of our Ancient World? We do believe (and we do hope) it is possible.
Right Measure in Pleasure
As an example, we can try to apply Roman rational wisdom to the concept of vice, meaning by this term a moral (ethical) fault that can harm us. Vices can in fact ruin our life. If we drink or smoke too much, if we become sex (or gambling) maniacs we gradually (or quickly) ruin our life. Actually vices are not those horrible things depicted by priests - CP argues - and at the base of many so-called vices are in reality those pleasant things which make life worthy of living. Why then don’t we benefit from them? Is it true that all that is pleasurable is harmful and – as some believers say – should be prohibited? What is a Roman-like solution to this problem, since in this blog we are talking about retrieving fragments of our Romans’ ancient wisdom? Surely abstinence is not Roman-like, it is rather monk-like. The Romans loved terrestrial life much more than ultramundane life (a world of pale ghosts to them). They loved life before death (not after death) and were not inclined to reject its pleasures. The solution for a Roman therefore doesn’t reside in renouncing to life and its pleasures. On the contrary, it resides in the correct measure in which we enjoy life, which implies moderation and non addiction, since any addiction makes us slaves of passions (pleasures), makes us non free men.
A beautiful and conclusive sentence by CP: “A right measure prevents the genesis of vice, which incidentally is nothing but a measure not correct – i.e. excessive – which has become a habit.”
PS Note. The Ancients’ reflection on human rationality is of great importance and modern philosophy and science are derived from it. Rationality should though be integrated with the modern concepts of will and imagination. There is some debate today on these topics, I will provide links as soon as I can. The Ancients practiced reason, will and imagination, of course, but didn’t theorize much and didn’t developed techniques that pertain to the last two elements.
Russian composer Dimitri Shostakovich (1906 – 1975) is not boring or academic. He is profound. It took me decades to really appreciate his music. It is hard to understand why sometimes beauty requires a long path to be fully grasped while other times it is so easily attainable. Shostakovich is a master in everything he does, symphonic & vocal music, piano-solo music, chamber music (the quartets etc.). His polytonal solutions and the sense of dislocation they produce seem much more interesting to me than Russian Prokofiev’s (1891-1953). Prokofiev is more brilliant but I definitely prefer Shostakovich. One can really get so much peace from his depths. Great music - like great literature and thought - can provide inner peace and education of the soul (listen to this “unedited live performance by Wendy Warner - cello - and Irina Nuzova - piano - of Shostakovich’s Sonata Op. 40 for Cello and Piano, 4th movement, at the Phillips Collection” - Youtube).
Russian contribution to 20th-century music - and eastern Europe’s contribution- is immense. Many eastern European musicians are perfect musical craftsmen, are very inspired and seem really capable of going beyond Romanticism without destroying musical beauty. One of the reasons of this success is due to the fact that greatest music regions such as Austria and Germany got lost for years in hopeless, neurotic experimentalism (serialism etc.). This decadence does not include Paul Hindemith (1895–1963), a very interesting composer I am so eager to know better, while Richard Strauss (1864–1949), being a late Romantic composer, belongs to the 19th century. This is my personal view and I am sure many people will not agree.
I remember I was a youth in Rome between the 1960s and the 1970s and while trying to study musical composition privately I became more and more disillusioned (and disgusted) when I realised that no other music would have been accepted outside the Neue-Wiener-Schule type of music (Second Viennese School), i.e. twelve-tone or serial-technique music. I wouldn’t be surprised women somewhere in the world had abortion while listening to it (I have to check, it MUST have happened somewhere…). This feeling of oppression we felt (some of my fellow music students shared my view, but not all of them) may be due to Roman musical provincialism at that time, but I assure you that those days, for wannabe composers, were really dull and depressing in many other Italian and European places as well…
Two things should be noted we believe. 1) The crisis of Germany in the last century - political, cultural, psychological - which has been discussed a bit in this blog and it is full of tragedies, although tragedy seems to befit the Germans (follies of the Nibelungs, Italian journalist and historian Indro Montanelli used to say). This crisis seems however to be fully overcome. The German-speaking people of the southern regions are less tragic, or they are a bit, though attenuated by Latin measure and taste. As far as very recent German contemporary music goes, we know very little about it.
2) To this German crisis the end of the Austrian Empire (German: Kaiserreich Österreich) has to be added, which occurred at the end of WW1, this empire being a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire (which by the way was a direct remnant of the Roman Empire of Rome). The Austrian outstanding writer Joseph Roth gives us a highly refined and melancholic acccount of finis Austriae, i.e the end of the Austrian Empire.
Both German & Austrian crisis in various phases of 20th-century created (among excellent contributions) waves of neurosis and pessimism in many fields of cultural activities - to make it simple. This greatly influenced European Continent’s 20th-century Zeitgeist (or “Spirit of the age”) and my generation (take Marx and Freud, or Adorno, how gloomy they were, only to cite thinkers or similar) and all Italy, a neighbour of German-speaking areas and so intensely related to them.
To-and-fro influence mechanisms, history being so fascinating. Germanization of Italy during my generation (well, during 1800 and 1900, to be more correct, although influence of France was great too) and much much earlier though deeper Romanization of southern German-speaking people. We already mentioned Bavaria and Regensburg (Ancient-Roman fortress Castra Regina along the Roman-Empire Limes or borderline) in a previous post, which correspond to parts of the Ancient-Roman province of Raetia, while to the east we had the Roman province of Noricum, coinciding more or less to modern German-speaking Austria. Those Italians who know some history (few are left) realise how close to us these people are. I personally feel this encounter between Roma and Germania so special and sacred.
This is why I now feel like talking about one of the most sublime outcomes of this encounter. It is a splendid musical fruit - this post is dedicated to music, after all - whose apparent simplicity hides a really hard-to-get beauty - since it is one of the most perfect beauties ever produced by man. Oustanding composer and pianist Ferruccio Busoni (half Italian and half German, by the way) was able to appreciate this beauty only at a later stage of his life.
Germans & Italians Meet.
Taste and Knowledge
Speaking of the infancy and of the first adolescence of Mozart, American musicologist Donald Jay Grout (History of Western Music) argues (not having the original text, I am translating from the Italian 1993 Feltrinelli 7th edition, Storia della Musica in Occidente, pp. 509-510):
“After 1760, the two principal national idioms (i.e. musical idioms, ManofRoma’s note) were the Italian and the German. Italy still remained the fatherland of music and the mecca of any student who aimed at becoming a composer ….Which were at the time the differences between Italian and German music?”. Jay Grout answers at the end of the paragraph with the words of appreciation Austrian composer Haydn - who was composition teacher of Mozart and Beethoven also, if I am not wrong - had addressed to Mozart’s father:
“In front of God and as an honest man, I’m telling you that your son is the greatest composer I have ever known, either personally or by name. He has taste and, what counts more, he has the deepest knowledge of composition.”
“These - Jay Grout argues - were the two essential elements: taste, instinct for what is appropriate, awareness of limits; and knowledge plus technique in order to say what one has to say in a complete, clear and persuasive manner. Generally speaking, it can be said that taste was the speciality of Italians, while knowledge was that of the Germans; Mozart in his style combines both.”
