Areopagus Volume XCI
Seven short lessons every someday.
Welcome one and all to the ninety first volume of the Areopagus — and the first coming to you from Substack. All being well you won’t notice a difference. But do let me know, of course, if any issues should arise.
So, where to begin and how to set the tone? I have turned to William Wordsworth before; to him I turn again:
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves;
Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.
An eternally relevant reminder not to forget that, above all other books, we must read the living book of our world most often and most faithfully. And so, thus reminded, the Areopagus begins…
I - Classical Music
Sappho Overture
Karl Goldmark (1893)
Performed by the Bamberger Symphoniker
In the Days of Sappho by John William Godward (1904)
An overture is the opening part of a larger work, of something like an opera or ballet. Its purpose, as first conceived in the 18th century, was to introduce the mood and musical ideas of the whole piece. In the 19th century, however, composers started writing standalone overtures. They were intended for orchestra and usually inspired by a specific person, place, story, or event. This soon morphed into the “symphonic poem”, an even freer and more experimental version of the standalone overture. Both are evocative and atmospheric forms; they are, in many ways, the defining genres of Romantic Music.
For this overture Karl Goldmark chose the Ancient Greek poet Sappho for his subject. She was born and lived on the island of Lesbos, in the 6th century BC, and was regarded by her fellow Greeks as “the Tenth Muse”, such was her poetic talent. Sappho’s life is somewhat mysterious and her poetry only survives in tantalising fragments. This, combined with her love for women (hence our modern words lesbian, from the island of her birth, and sapphic) and tragic death, has surrounded Sappho in a long-thriving mythos. Thus she makes for a perfectly romanticising subject.
Still, I cannot honestly say that I hear the story of Sappho in Goldmark’s music. There is much romance and much poetry here, gorgeously melodic, and pulse-pounding drama also — it is a fabulously moving piece. But nothing, to me, that speaks specifically to her life or poetry. That is only my opinion, of course; you may disagree.
But such is the nature of music; it is never, in and of itself, “about” anything. Notes are essentially abstract, and any narrative meaning they have can only come by way of association. Certain notes or combinations of notes do seem to have an intrinsic emotional quality, and sound variously uplifting or melancholy, harmonious or disconcerting. But these are still contextless feelings; they cannot tell a story in the same way as words or images. To put all this another way: unless you knew this piece was called the Sappho Overture you could not have known what is supposed to be about.
In the 19th century there was a fierce debate about all this. Some believed music should never be “about” anything, that it could only express whatever was intrinsic to the sounds themselves. This was known as absolute music. Others — Goldmark evidently among them — disagreed. What they wrote was called programme music, in reference to the fact that such music was necessarily accompanied by a programme to explain its subject matter.
Who was right? I leave you to think on that one.
II - Historical Figure
T.E. Lawrence
Unpicking a man from his myth, nevermind straightening out and looking soberly at either the man or myth itself, is always a difficult task. And in few cases could it be more challenging than with T.E. Lawrence. better known as Lawrence of Arabia. For he was a strange man who lived in strange times, and was even during his own lifetime lauded as an old-fashioned hero of the sort our world no longer produces. Was that true, or not?
Well, T.E. Lawrence was an incredibly unusual man. Peter O’Toole, who played him in the epic 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia, did an admirable job of capturing this. But the real character of Lawrence is almost unplaceable, ever-elusive, as though he were constantly second-guessing both himself and the millions of people who, he seemed to know, would be reading about his life.
The basic facts are these. Thomas Edward Lawrence was one of five sons born (in 1888) to an Anglo-Irish aristocrat called Sir Thomas Chapman who had eloped with his family’s governess, Sarah Junner. They took the name of Junner’s mother, Lawrence, and thereafter settled down to a typical Late Victorian middle class life. Young Thomas studied history at university and wrote his dissertation on castles built during the First Crusade. Signs of his unusual character had showed themselves early: as when he built himself a bungalow in the garden of his family home, or when at 22 he embarked on a solo, three-month walking tour of Syria.
Soon enough he joined an archaeological expedition to Carchemish, on the border between Syria and Turkey, to excavate Akkadian ruins. Here, alongside perfecting his Arabic, Lawrence did some work for British military intelligence, surveying the Negev Desert to gather crucial topographical information in case of a war with the Ottoman Empire.
Still, what he seemed to be above all was a perfect academic, primed for a career in archaeology. But during the First World War, as for so many of his unfortunate generation, the course of Lawrence’s life was forcibly redirected. Given his regional expertise he was dispatched to Cairo, in 1916, from where he was eventually sent to Arabia to work as an advisor for Faisal, a member of royal Hashemite family and later the King of Iraq.
I will not attempt here to recount the Arab Revolt in full. Suffice to say it was an arduous and hard-fought success. After centuries of foreign rule the Ottoman yoke was finally thrown off — and this peculiar archaeologist had been one of its leading figures. The exact extent of Lawrence’s involvement has sometimes been questioned, but there is no doubting the broad outlines of his achievements both politically and militarily: creating a general strategy of guerilla warfare, fighting himself in such raids, journeying for months with his companions through the desert, and working to lay the foundations for a new regime.
After the war had ended Lawrence was part of a delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, in 1919, hoping to help achieve independence for the liberated peoples of the Middle East. This project failed and Lawrence became, if he was not already, disillusioned. The Revolt itself had begun with a promise by the British that they would recognise a united, independent Arab state; the secret Sykes-Picot Agreement, made between Britain and France, forced the betrayal of this promise and the seeming loss of what Lawrence — and his friends and comrades — had fought for.
Still, Lawrence was one of very few heroes, real or imagined, produced by the First World War. Perhaps people needed a hero — and here was a fantastically dashing figure, more seeming from a novel rather than real life, waiting to be lionised. It was an American photographer called Lowell Thomas who made this happen. His photographs and reportage of Lawrence’s actions during the war — including a travelling picture show — made him into an overnight celebrity on both sides of the Atlantic.
But Lawrence did not want to be famous — or, at least, had a complicated relationship with his fame. He changed his name to John Hume Ross and enlisted in the Royal Air Force, concealing his identity and hoping to live as a more or less normal man, riding his beloved motorcycles along England’s lonely lanes and pursuing his other scholarly past-times. He was exposed in 1923, however, and had to leave. Thereafter he joined the Royal Tank Corps under the name Thomas Edward Shaw and in 1925 was readmitted to the RAF.
Lawrence was also convinced to write an account of his feats. It took years of gruelling rewrites — including, supposedly, losing the whole manuscript and starting afresh twice — but Seven Pillars of Wisdom was finally published, privately, in 1926. It wasn’t until 1935 that a publicly available version was printed, at which point it became an instant hit — and rightly so. For Seven Pillars of Wisdom is as much a literary as an historical masterpiece, undoubtedly one of the greatest books of the 20th century. Some have said, and not unreasonably, that it is the world’s most recently-written epic.
During those long years he also translated Homer’s Odyssey and wrote a book about his time in the RAF, called The Mint. So this was a highly literary man — and a very fine writer indeed, his prose always vigorous and provocative. Consider a few lines from his translator’s note to the Odyssey:
In four years of living with this novel I have tried to deduce the author from his self-betrayal in the work. I found a book worm, no longer young, living from home, a mainlander, city-bred and domestic… Very bookish, this house-bred man. His work smells of the literary coterie, of a writing tradition. His notebooks were stocked with purple passages and he embedded these in his tale wherever they would more or less fit.
Crafty, exquisite, homogeneous—whatever great art may be, these are not its attributes. In this tale every big situation is burked and the writing is soft… The author misses his every chance of greatness, as must all his faithful translators.
…only the central family stands out, consistently and pitilessly drawn—the sly cattish wife, that cold-blooded egotist Odysseus, and the priggish son who yet met his master-prig in Menelaus. It is sorrowful to believe that these were really Homer’s heroes and exemplars.
Not the sort of praise, bland or otherwise, one usually hears in an introduction to the works of Homer. Even these few lines give an illuminating taste of Lawrence’s character, I think: of the unconventional approach he brought to all things, of his recalcitrance and truculence, of his inability not to make a scene of some sort.
Did he want to be famous, or not? Did he want to become a hero, much less be perceived as one, or not? So often Lawrence said one thing but, by his actions, seemed to feel or believe another. He surely knew that writing Seven Pillars of Wisdom would cement his legendary status. But, from another and more sympathetic point of view, we could say that writing it was one of few ways to deal with those strange and harrowing years of war.
He remained in the RAF until 1935, doing much good work along the way and, so he said, reaching a kind of happiness. It was only shortly after leaving the RAF that Lawrence’s life ended, at the awfully young age of forty six — in a motorcycle crash, on his famous Brough Superior, when he swerved to avoid two boys crossing the road.
In the end, I think, the dichotomy between Lawrence of Arabia as a revolutionary hero and Thomas Edward Lawrence as an idiosyncratic, awkward, reclusive man makes sense. He was thrust into the limelight, into dramatic and unimaginable circumstances, and just so happened to be the right man at the right time. None of us know what we are capable of until we are pushed to find out. Rarely, and thankfully, does this ever happen. But for Thomas Edward Lawrence it did — and there seemed to be more in him than he, or anybody else, despite everything, could have guessed.
III - Art
Tragic Mood
Marianne Werefkin (1909)
A simple but wonderfully moving painting, evocative and troubling at once. It sucks us in, showing us a familiar but altered version of our own world — one more emotionally and sensorially intense. But such was Marianne Werefkin and such is all her art; each painting seems be a different scene from a singular, dreamlike land.
Werefkin was a member of Der Blaue Reiter, meaning “The Blue Rider” in German. This was a group of artists, including the famed Wassily Kandinsky, who gathered in Germany just before the First World War. Their style is known as Expressionism, and Tragic Mood is a perfect example of it.
The world around us, if not exactly looking different, certainly feels different depending on our mood. The night sky, for example, can be either enchanting or terrifying from one day to the next, and much of that depends on the emotions we are already feeling when we see it. It was this emotional texture of reality, rather than its mere outward, physical appearance, that the Expressionists wanted to capture. Hence their use of strange perspectives, warped shapes, and unnatural, vivid colours.
Just as musical notes seem to have an intrinsic emotional quality, the same is true of colour. Regardless of precisely what is being depicted, certain gradients or combinations of colour seem to affect our mood and mindset. And I am not just saying this; music was vitally important to the Expressionists and they often used it as a reference point for what they were trying to achieve.
You can see all this in Tragic Mood. Even its name speaks to both the emotional and musical sides of Expressionism. A discussion of some sort has just taken place, perhaps but not necessarily an argument; clearly, at least, a conversation of some weight and sorrow. In the background we have a lonely and faceless figure, drab, looking out at a woman in the foreground, who even without the features of her face, purely by her posture alone, we can sense is in some real anguish. All is bathed in darkly vivid colours, all is melting and swirling — the world surrounding these figures has been warped by emotion, by the conversation that just taken place. Such is Expressionism.
IV - Architecture
The Clock Towers
This building, despite its astronomical proportions and incredibly unusual design, is less well-known than you might expect. I, for one, was surprised to learn that it is the world’s fourth-tallest building and sixth-tallest structure outright. If you compare the Clock Towers to London’s Big Ben you can see just how colossal this complex is.
The pinnacle of the central tower rises some six hundred and one metres above the Masjid al-Haram, the world’s oldest mosque and Islam’s holiest site. It is an architectural mammoth, then. But what actually is it? A hotel — or, really, several hotels — to host pilgrims travelling to Mecca. The Clock Towers comprise seven towers, all clustered around the central and defining Makkah Clock Royal Tower, each home to a different hotel.
Construction started in 2002 and was completed in 2012. Relatively speedy, then, though it was a project dogged by controversies: of the treatment of workers, of the eye-watering cost (some $15 billion, making it one of the half dozen most expensive buildings in history), and of the complex’s sheer size and its resulting domination of the Masjid al-Haram. Most controversial of all was the demolition of an 18th century Ottoman fort to make way for the Clock Towers. Some said the fort had been a lasting symbol of Ottoman oppression, and therefore welcomed its removal; others lamented the needless loss of an incredibly historic site. Well, the Clock Towers now stand tall— and will, we suspect, for a very long time.
Stylistically, the Clock Towers are wholly out of step with the general current of modern skyscraper design. Rather than being clad in glass, like the rest of the world’s tallest buildings, they are closer in spirit to skyscrapers of the 1920s and 1930s. Think of those famous New York towers, like the Chrysler or Empire State, faced with masonry instead of plate glass.
Its decoration draws on general motifs of Islamic Architecture — particularly with its arcades of pointed arches composed of banded stone, a technique called ablaq. Its overall design, meanwhile, has been rather loosely called Postmodern (because of its various styles smorgasborded together) or even Contemporary Classical (because of its broad adherence to old-fashioned architecture). But we needn’t be too pedantic about what precisely we call the style of the Clock Towers — the headline here is that they represent a serious divergence from the prevailing architectural trends of our time.
V - Rhetoric
“I am the greatest…”
Rhetoric, as we have seen before, is no less than important skill now than it was in the ancient world, and is just as common — if not more — than ever before. Every YouTube video or podcast is, essentially, an exercise in oratory. Sport is also a good example: for what are the half-time talks of coaches if not rhetoric? Along with that, of course, the oratory of sport extends to mind games and trash talk. Think of Jose Mourinho, while he was manager of Chelsea, calling the Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger “a specialist in failure”. And what about Muhammad Ali? His litany of rhetorical flourishes is rightly legendary.
Still, Ali aside, boxers are not generally famous for their oratory. They are rather regarded as vulgar, as doing little more than slinging needlessly offensive insults and threats at their opponents. A cause for lament? Hardly. Because trash talk of that sort is not a modern phenomenon. In the Iliad, which people generally if not always accurately call the foundational work of western literature, we find just such a thing.
This scene comes when funeral games — chariot racing, running, spear throwing — are being held in honour of Patroclus, Achilles’ dear companion. When the boxing contest arrives, Achilles offers the prize of a mule for the victor and a two-handled cup for the loser. Immediately a Greek called Epeius stands up, volunteers to fight, and gives this brief speech:
‘Step forward, the man who wants to carry off the two-handled cup. I tell you, the mule is mine, and nobody is going to knock me out and take her: I am the greatest. True, I’m not so good on the battlefield — no one can be a winner at everything — but isn’t that enough? But I tell you bluntly and I mean it. I’m going to tear his flesh to ribbons and smash his bones. His family mourners had better be standing by to take him away when I’ve finished with him.
Rhetoric, especially but not only in sport, sometimes devolves to name-calling and nonsense, to proclaiming oneself baselessly the best and threatening to finish off your opponent; this is true in 2024 and it was also true in the age of Homer.
VI - Writing
Inclinations of Vanity
Dr Samuel Johnson did not often mince his words. Unsurprising, given that he was the man who almost singlehandedly compiled the first comprehensive dictionary of the English language. He wrote a great many other things too. Among them was a regular essay (the equivalent of an 18th century newsletter, really) called The Idler.
In the 70th instalment of The Idler Dr Johnson tackles one of writing’s oldest debates: the value (or lack thereof) in using complicated words. I recommend reading the essay in full — it is only very brief, and marvellously useful — but, in the interests of concision, I present a few of his choicest comments.
He begins by accepting that certain writers do use complicated language to show off, and even to make themselves needlessly obscure, and that this is a fault which deserves to be criticised wholeheartedly:
If an author be supposed to involve his thoughts in voluntary obscurity, and to obstruct, by unnecessary difficulties, a mind eager in pursuit of truth; if he writes not to make others learned, but to boast the learning which he possesses himself, and wishes to be admired rather than understood, he counteracts the first end of writing, and justly suffers the utmost severity of censure, or the more afflictive severity of neglect.
But, having criticised the improper use of complex language, Dr Johnson begins his argument in its favour — by pointing out, first, that we have so many different words for a reason. Not all words, even close synonyms, are precisely the same. Sometimes a certain word, even unusual or not well-known, so accurately describes a given thing that we are almost obliged to use it if we wish to speak clearly:
Difference of thoughts will produce difference of language. He that thinks with more extent than another will want words of larger meaning; he that thinks with more subtilty will seek for terms of more nice discrimination; and where is the wonder, since words are but the images of things, that he who never knew the original should not know the copies?
And here he makes his most troubling observation: that we much prefer to criticise writers for using words we do not understand, or a style that is hard to follow, rather than asking ourselves whether we are to blame for our own lack of learning:
Yet vanity inclines us to find faults any where rather than in ourselves. He that reads and grows no wiser, seldom suspects his own deficiency; but complains of hard words and obscure sentences, and asks why books are written which cannot be understood?
Dr Johnson also makes a convincing defence of technical language, something easily and often criticised:
They that content themselves with general ideas may rest in general terms; but those, whose studies or employments force them upon closer inspection, must have names for particular parts, and words by which they may express various modes of combination, such as none but themselves have occasion to consider.
Dr Johnson rightly says that each art — meaning any field of expertise — requires its own terminology. The trouble is when those technical terms are used at the wrong time:
An art cannot be taught but by its proper terms, but it is not always necessary to teach the art.
But they do have a place, primarily because they allow us to talk much more precisely and clearly. He uses the example of architecture to show what he means:
He that sees a building as a common spectator, contents himself with relating that it is great or little, mean or splendid, lofty or low; all these words are intelligible and common, but they convey no distinct or limited ideas; if he attempts, without the terms of architecture, to delineate the parts, or enumerate the ornaments, his narration at once becomes unintelligible.
So that is Dr Johnson’s take on the use of technical or complicated words — they allow us to engage with the world much more closely, deeply, and fully. A strong antitode from an eminent authority to the broad thrust of today’s writing advice, which is to encourage simplicity at all costs. Dr Johnson is not advocating for obscurity here; he is writing in support of maximum specificity in writing, which can only come when we use the most specific and most accurate words, however “hard” they may be.
VII - The Seventh Plinth
In the most recent instalment of the Areopagus I asked you this:
What is one thing that everybody should learn in school?
Your answers were of such depth, breadth, and insight, Dear Readers, that they demanded the seventh plinth entire…
Donald P
The one thing everyone should learn in school is Bayes' theorem. It is the key to understanding conditional probability, which sounds dull but is actually very empowering. A simple example shows why it is so important: say you are diagnosed with a disease, and the doctor tells you only 1% of cases are false positives. You think it is 99% certain you have the disease. But Bayes proves this makes no sense. You need to know how common the disease is: if only 1 person in 100 ever catches the disease, then there is a 1 in 100 chance you have the disease and a 1 in 100 chance you have a false positive. In other words, there is a 50%, not a 99% chance that you have the disease. It is the most beautiful, poetic, practical idea that helps to understand the modern world.
Jeremy W
The one thing that everyone should learn how to do in school is Think Critically. In this age of Gen AI & Social Media propaganda, the ability to think critically about information & opinions that one is exposed to has never been more important.
Helen D
You asked what is one thing that everybody should learn in school. I would answer: how to answer questions properly. In answer to your question, I might, for example, suggest the Nernst equation. However, I would not explain why I think the Nernst equation is one thing that everybody should learn in school because you have not asked what is one thing that everybody should learn in school, and why. Once the art of answering questions has been mastered, one may study the art of asking them.
Annette W
Using your hands to create enhances the complexity of interconnected neurons and thus enhances intelligence, deep understanding of, and immersion of oneself into the world around us.
Leo D
Curiosity and how to follow up on it. School should provide an introduction to a bouquet of topics and teach how an interest in any of these topics can turn into a passion and/or expertise.
Ashim D
That making food you enjoy is easy… it’s lovely to know so much of the world is made by people and that you can do the same. So much of our food comes pre-prepared, it blew my mind when I learned you can make pasta yourself, or bread, or salad dressing, or broth, or cookies… and much more. So many foods I thought came out of machines and had to be bought in packages.
Deborah G
The one thing that every teacher ought to address is how to help students think for themselves. It doesn’t matter if you’re teaching fourth grade, high school, or college level. We all need to know how to think, not what to think.
Among the many ways of accomplishing this includes asking open-ended questions, and helping students recognize cause and effect. It’s powerful when a teacher talks through their own thought process, because thinking isn’t always straightforward. It helps to have it modeled. It’s also important to give students time to reflect, which promotes self-awareness.
In a nutshell, everyone who learns critical thinking (in a fun way, appropriate for their age) is better off.
Susan B
A Lifetime love of learning; patience and tolerance.
Michael M
Skepticism.
John L
The one thing to learn in school if nothing else: to read.
PP
Mathematical courage has been one of the greatest strengths I’ve gained through my studies, and I consider it invaluable for any student. It’s the ability to face a complex, often bewildering problem and dive into solving it, even when the solution seems impossible at first. More often than not, after some trial and error, a solution emerges.
This courage grows through tackling complex problems, but mathematics in particular presents these challenges in a way that lets you practice overcoming confusion in a more structured environment. This skill—facing initial confusion head-on—extends beyond math to all areas of problem-solving. When you're accustomed to this process, the initial confusion that stops many people from even trying no longer feels like a barrier; it becomes just another step in finding a solution.
Tim S
Two things:
How to learn
How to communicate effectively
Both these are far more important than learning facts (though one may have to learn facts in learning how to learn) as most facts are now so readily available. And the ability to communicate effectively becomes ever more important the more that young people bury their noses in their phones and don’t talk to each other.
The syllabus of most schools was established in the Victorian era and promulgated by an academic elite who think that the highest pinnacle of education is to be a university professor. It’s not. The education system needs a radical overhaul!
Tim B
As a past philosophy and history major (not that it is in the past, always present) I would advocate that every student be taught the principles of "Critical Thinking".
Empowered individuals make informed decisions concerning all aspects of life based on what they perceive their reality to be. Critical thinking, I believe, helps people gain a more realistic and balanced/informed view of what that reality is.
I would also like to see every student to be able to create and present a paper based on the standard philosophy format that is used in undergraduate programs today.
Kari M
Logic! Should be taught starting young.
TP
What to do when someone dies. How to handle grief, and the grief of others (especially adults, who may be falling apart). Practical things like who will need to be informed; and what will happen, when, and in what order. Funerary arrangements and costs, wills and probate, timescales. The availability of counselling and other support, and how to access it.
Hopefully a lesson few will need for a long time, but which will be useful eventually.
Jill B
In response to the question posed by you this month - vital to be added to every school’s curriculum should be a basic understanding of politics and economics, at local and national level . How can we expect children to be sufficiently interested in such subjects to use their individual vote for a particular party or individual without such knowledge? It is well documented that the older generation - 60+ - are more likely to turn up at polling stations to register their vote in local and general elections. However in years to come that cohort of voters will disappear and in the meantime the younger generations need to be engaged or the concept of democracy and universal suffrage could be swept away by future authoritarian governments due to apathy and ignorance.
Economics even at a basic level such as managing one’s own bank account and budgeting would also be essential.
Steven L
Perhaps you didn’t noticed it but you answered your own question… learn. I’m semi retired and work as a substitute teacher, and one of my favorite things, besides interacting with all the students, is reading and seeing what the classes are working on. I was in an English class and they were studying Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Raven”. I had perviously read it in high school many ages ago for an assignment, but rereading it again and admiring why it’s become such a classic poem was an eye opener and a learning experience. In high school and college,I was doing the things I needed to do to graduate and not really having the time to appreciate some of the things I was studying. Later in life, I am able to take the time to learn and enjoy these things I had skipped over, ignored, or never thought about. Learning is something that starts in school, and should continue for the rest of your life.
Question of the Week
And for this week’s question, inspired by Goldmark’s Sappho Overture, I ask:
Can music ever be “about” anything?
Email me your answers and I’ll share them in the next Areopagus.
And that’s all
Another Areopagus draws to a close — and another year soon with it, as the final month of the year that has been 2024 reaches its midpoint. What to expect? Perhaps we think, as Sappho did two and a half thousand years ago:
someone will remember us / I tell you / even in another time
Too often we anticipate the future, either fearfully or hopefully, and forget that nothing ever really exists but for the precise moment in which we now, luckily or unluckily, inhabit. If we cannot be grateful for this one thing then what could we ever, truly, be grateful for?
Yours,
The Cultural Tutor