looking for companions (a phrase, an angel, three camels & a deer)

A companion-phrase  

There’s  this sentence  that keeps popping up in my head – in fact almost every time I check the news:

  "the extraordinary frailty of human affairs"

Arendt coined the phrase in the context of unpredictable human action and political affairs .

In my head it has turned  into an incantation whenever despairing of human fragility, of the failings of our human condition.

A companion-angel

It’s such a wonderful landscape painting (1) – a winding path, magnificent trees, a river, animals, loitering little figures, a hazy horizon with bluish mountains – a complete worldscape.

And in this worldscape Tobias and a companion-angel walk & talk animatedly,  with a dog running joyously ahead.   It’s a very helpful angel, too - a bit later, handily in the same picture space, he points out to the man how to catch a fish.

What more could one wish for, a friendly,  solicitous angel accompanying us on our wanderings in the world.

Accompanied by three camels and one deer

Another painting shows the journey home of young Tobias through a wooded mountain scape. 

He’s still accompanied by his angel and his dog.   

But in his wake now also follows a magnificent party on camel back (carrying Tobias’  new found wife & servants & gifts).

The landscape reminds me of the Belgian Ardennes – and sure enough, a familiar deer can be spotted in the shadowy woods. 

So that makes for three camels and one deer, quite improbably but joyously inhabiting the very same  woods - (however , maybe not that improbable: some sources indicate that  "both roe and fallow deer roamed widely through the Middle East during Biblical times"). 

References and a reality check

1.   Landscape with young Tobias and angel / Landschap met jonge Tobias en engel ,  Denis van Alsloot (Mechelen 1560/15802 – 1626/1628) en Hendrik de Clerck (ca 1560 – Brussel 1630) (KMSKA)    (& how lovely to read that the painter found inspiration in the forêt de soignes/ Zoniënwoud, Groenendaal, Ter Kameren)
2.  Wooded mountain scape with the return journey of Tobias / Bebost berglandschap met de terugtocht van Tobias, David Vinckboons (Mechelen 1576 – Amsterdam <1633 dresden="" i="">both paintings are on show in the Rockox House in Antwerp :"The landscape in the Netherlands")

Checking out the Old Testament story on the web, I learn that Tobias’ father was “Tobit, a pious man living in exile in Nineveh (modern Mosul, Iraq)”.   Mosul  : unexpectedly behind the scenes of an age-old story of angelic succour (lovingly painted in the Low  Countries ), these days a city trapped in the miseries of war. 

“I have no idea what is actually going to happen …”

“I think a great many of us are haunted by the feeling that our society, and by ours I don’t mean just the United States or Europe, but our whole world-wide technological civilisation, whether officially labelled capitalist, socialist, or communist, is going to smash and probably deserves to.

Like the third century, [ours] is an age of stress and anxiety. In our case, it is not that our techniques are too primitive to cope with new problems, but the very fantastic success of our technology is creating a hideous, noisy, over-crowded world in which it is increasingly difficult to lead a human life.  […] as for our public entertainments, the fare offered by television [and internet]  is still a shade less brutal and vulgar than that provided by the amphitheatre, but only a shade, and maybe not for long.

I have no idea what is actually going to happen before I die except that I am not going to like it.” (1)

All I did was adding a mention of internet and deleting “the twentieth” – so as not to spoil the startling illusion of topicality.   Because this is actually a piece written in 1966, drawing parallels between the 3^rd Century Roman empire and the 20th Century.  To complete the comparison, following topics could of course have been added : migrations, shifting identities, religious fermentation – to name but a few.

(1)     from  “The Fall of Rome” by W. H. Auden. (written in 1966, published  in Bowersock’s “From Gibbon to Auden -  Essays on the Classical Tradition”)

Views on the US election from a Brussels hospital

Overhearing two nurses in the hospital lounge

They were taking a short break from their caring duties, the empty sandwich boxes on the table testifying to a quick lunch. They briefly interrupted their conversation for a kindly nod while I sat down with my book about the 18^th C painter Watteau,  cautiously handling my right arm in a sling (1).

“She did seem more competent than him. More responsible. How can they trust that guy?” the youngest nurse wondered.

The elder nurse shrugged : “it’s always the big shots with the biggest mouths that win.”  

The youngest nodded vigorously “yeah, like that bunga bunga guy in Italy. I never understood how the Italians could put up so long with him. “ She fiddled with her smartphone “ hey , look here , photos from his apartment in New York – 'the interior architect wanted to recreate a Versailles atmosphere'  - jeezes,  does that guy think he’s Louis XIV or what? “

Flashing a weary smile, the elder nurse replied “well, he sure has the puffy pride to match. But we’d better hurry now, time’s up”

Contemplating a picture of Louis XIV

I was reading about Watteau’s pictures of unheroic, introverted soldiers– an interiority far removed from the pump & circumstance of the Versailles court. But showing Watteau in context, the book also explained about his contemporary, Louis XIV, who with his reckless wars caused hundreds of thousands people to die and plunged France into a deep debt crisis.

So, sitting in that hospital lounge, plunged into art history, I was quite startled by the nurse’s comparison of a 21^st Century, democratically chosen US president with an 18^th Century  French autocrat. 

But contemplating the famous Louis XIV portrait (by Hyacinthe Rigaud) , I couldn’t but conclude: yes, indeed, there’s the same conceit, the same narcissism, the same strutting on the stage.The same quest for personal glorification.

Does this mean that Democracy cannot do a better job at protecting us from the sense of entitlement of these strutting males than the Ancien Régime? 

A horribly defeatist thought – which I must & will banish. (But then again, pugnacious Putin was democratically chosen, too)   

A jubilant Reagonomics enthusiast

In a financial paper I read an illuminating interview with a jubilant Arthur Laffer (former economic advisor to Ronald Reagan). At last again a man to his liking in the White House! “This is brilliant, especially since the Republicans also control the Congress. This means lower taxes, abolishing Obamacare, scrapping the Dodd-Frank banking regulation”

Aha, so that’s why Wall Street kept its nerves – greed is gonna be good again! 

Elsewhere I read about how leading conservative business men are eagerly lining up to offer their services to the new president “he may have said some rash things during the campaign, but he’s a real business man, he’ll take our sound business advise”. 

It will be interesting to see what happens: lower taxes combined with higher infrastructure spending, higher import tariffs on, say , Chinese imports, higher inflation, a soaring budget deficit (with the snubbed Chinese probably  less inclined to continue financing it).  After an initial boost to growth, how can this recipe durably boost standards of living? Will this bring back factory jobs to the US? (And what about the rest of the world). Will this bring the lower & middle classes what they hope for? 

Will the new administration care at all?  Or shall we find the winners rather among the above mentioned leading conservative business men, including the new president (who, so I read, owes his fortune more to inherited wealth & relations than to superior business acumen & entrepreneurship).

On the ethical & social front, too, it will be interesting (and scary) to see what will happen.  Indeed, how convenient for the new president to buy the loyalty of the evangelicals by pursuing their agenda.

So, now what?

How to domesticate globalisation and complexity? Why can’t we have more responsible politicians addressing the current discontents & fears, without resorting to the usual political party-mantra’s? Why must reckless, self-interested, conceited politicians take the lead - irresponsible politicians who cater to our most dangerous instincts.

Can we no longer escape a clash of extreme standpoints?  Have we perhaps reached such a level of bewildering complexity & frustration that we now all just recoil and massively reject nuance and gradualism? 

But if change cannot be gradual, it will come with a bang.  We only need to look at the 1^st half of the 20th century to be very afraid of that.  

 

           1) Explanatory Note : on what I was doing in that hospital, overhearing a political conversation and contemplating a picture of Louis XIV.

My cycling days are over (my heart sinks as I type this).  Neither caution nor a fluorescent yellow helmet & vest could shield me from another accident. It happened on a lovely autumn Saturday, while I was cycling on a quiet road along a park. All of a sudden a car materialised where it shouldn’t have been – cutting a corner. So I braked violently, my wheel slipping on one of those lovely gleaming yellow autumn leaves. I was projected forward and made a brutal smack on the tarmac, right on the tip of my elbow. Then a second smack on my head, luckily amortized by the helmet.

 I sat on the ground, dazed for a moment. Then I did manage to scramble back on my feet. The car driver had braked too and got out of his car, apologetic & full of concern.  Picking up my bike, he inquired whether I was ok.  I thought I was, hoping it was just a bruised elbow, just a matter of pulling myself together. I let the chauffeur drive off and tried to mount my bike again  – a sharp pain in my elbow signalled this was not a good idea. I called C, whose phone battery was apparently down.  So I walked all the way home, an hour’s walk, a miserable walk, bike at hand.  Home at last I took off my jacket and saw a swelling the size of a giant premium pear. 

Only then I realized I had to concede defeat.  Again a broken limb, only 4 years after the previous accident. No way to escape from the rational conclusion: henceforth no more cycling for me in Brussels..

Arriving at the hospital, I felt crushed and most of all ashamed, having to call upon their services again with a broken limb.  But praise be (again, too) to this hospital staff – friendly, professional, efficient.  They gave me a provisional plaster on Saturday and swiftly arranged for an operation the next Tuesday so as to mend me again. 

Despite all the inevitable pain & discomfort linked to the accident and the surgery – this hospital stay was also an uplifting reminder that diversity doesn’t need to be the fateful menace to social cohesion, as it has come to be perceived in these perplexing times. Far from me to pitch the Ixelles hospital as a social Utopia in the middle of “hellhole Brussels” (infamous epithet coined by the future US president). But the fact remains that I’ve been treated there (again) with outstanding kindness & professionalism by a staggeringly diverse hospital staff, all working together harmoniously.

Apart from the swift action of the emergency doctor with an Arab sounding name and the unflappable calm of the surgeon of German descent , I’d like to mention specifically the hilarious sense of humour of the anesthesiologist – a black female doctor who managed to make me shake with laughter while I lay helplessly on the operating table, waiting to be put to sleep.

And heartfelt thanks, too,  to the quiet male nurse of Mediterranean descent who all along a miserable night refilled the drip with glucose and painkillers and assuaged my worst nightly fears. Not to forget the Asian nurse who taught me how to put my arm in a sling without breaking it again. 

“conscripts to our age”

We are all “conscripts to our age”, as Auden wrote.

These days, we are all drafted as horrified spectators.

And too many of us as sharing & tweeting commentators. Once hailed as a conduit of democracy, free speech and empowerment, the social media now rather seem a murky pool bubbling with unchecked, biased information.Unreflective fleetingness rules. Organised chat bots manipulate news flows, individual fools unthinkingly look for their minute of fame. Propaganda & hate speech are amplified– endowing any new Radio Mille Collines with global poisonous reach.

How not to worry? The growing violence (ever closer ever more frequent) which hardens the souls, the growing resentment everywhere. Social cohesion frays, the centre cannot hold – or so it seems.

Each group (social, racial, political, national, …) distrusting the other, reproachful of the other . “Il y a trop de tensions, ça va péter” a Lebanese colleague said, on a matter of fact tone, after the UK political murder, after the Brexit. My French colleagues have fallen silent altogether, after Nice, just doggedly getting on with their lives.

In today’s context it even comes as a relief, when a shooting, however horrifying, turns out to be an act of a “mere” crazy lone shooter. I so felt for the Germans, with their lockdown of München, with their public life paralyzed by an avalanche of (quite understandable) fear-fuelling speculations on the social media.
And each time I checked upon the FAZ website for the latest update, a governmental ad popped up, with such poignant contrast: a photo of a young eager dark-skinned apprentice saying “my German is not yet perfect”, with behind him an older fair-haired man exclaiming admiringly “ but his motivation is !” and the tagline running “Integration which helps all - Deutschland kann das”. Germany can do it.
Can it? Can we? 

"The extraordinary frailty and unreliability of strictly human affairs."

"Since we always act into a web of relationships, the consequences of each deed are boundless, every action touches off not only a reaction but a chain reaction, every process is the cause of unpredictable new processes.

In acting, […], it is indeed true that we can really never know what we are doing.

And […] though we don’t know what we are doing when we are acting, we have no possibility ever to undo what we have done."(1)

(1) Hannah Arendt, The Vita Activa