Briefly Noted

My review of Guy Gavriel Kay's new book, Under Heaven, is in today's Montreal Gazette, and up at the Gazette's web site.

Readings — English Romanticism: The Human Context

English Romanticism: The Human Context

by Marilyn Gaull

This is a very impressive introduction to English Romanticism and its era. Gaull gives a real sense not only of the intellectual currents of the time, but of the way people thought and felt. It’s a wide-ranging survey not only of literature, but of politics, painting, philosophy, science, and other forces that shaped those turbulent, fruitful years. Gaull’s style is brisk and authoritative, and she moves quickly and easily from one subject to another. Mostly, she works through descriptions of the lives of prominent historical figures, creating a series of characters who collectively define the time.

It’s not a perfect book. The edition I had suffered from probably the worst proofreading of any book I’ve ever read (including a bewildering insistence on referring to Charles Maturin’s Melmoth the Wanderer as Melmouth). And inevitably there are a few judgements that I’d disagree with. But on the whole, it’s an incredibly valuable resource, and makes you feel the excitement of a time when great spirits on Earth were sojourning.

Readings — Seven Ages of Paris; Paris: A Secret History

Seven Ages of Paris

by Alistair Horne

Paris: A Secret History

by Andrew Hussey

Superficially, these two books appear quite different. But read a little ways into both of them, and you soon see that the core of them is much the same. There’s a slight difference of perspective, yes, and they do in the end do slightly different things; but they’re recognisably telling the same story.

That, of course, is the story of Paris. Horne’s book appears to aim, if not at greater authoritativeness, at least at presenting a more traditional view of the city. Hussey’s more conscientious about digging out opposing voices and counter-currents in the flow of history. Surprisingly, though, the difference seems to me to be not much. I think that’s because the books have to cover history on such a grand scale — well over a thousand years — that differences tend to fade next to the shared substance.

That being said, the books do have differences. Horne chooses to make his Paris a key agent in the story of France, and so provides a pocket history of the country as a whole alongside the story of the city. Hussey, on the other hand, sees his Paris in somewhat the same way Peter Ackroyd sees his London: a metropolis suspicious of its rulers, less a microcosm of the country beyond its gates than a counterweight. Hussey’s also far more sedulous about linking past to present, discussing themes of the city’s past in light of its present, describing present-day Paris as a continuation or contrast to its past, and speaking to relevant contemporary Parisians.

Both books are well-written, Horne’s style more magisterial and Hussey’s more immediate. Both have a tendency to focus on recent history in more detail than more distant times, which in sweeping histories is understandable and usual and, to me, always disappointing. I’d say that Hussey’s book is much better on postwar Paris than Horne’s, which probably gives it a slight edge if I had to pick one or another. Rather than do that, though, I’d say both are fine books, both worth reading, and just different enough to make reading both volumes worth doing.

Readings — Avengers of the New World

Avengers of the New World

by Laurent Dubois

I read this book several months ago for an article I wrote about Toussaint L’Ouverture. It’s a highly-readable narrative account of Haitian independence, from the first uprisings in 1791 through to the country's formal winning of freedom from France over a dozen years later. Dubois has a strong feel for character and incident, and he makes a highly-complex story surprisingly clear, illuminating the way in which factions refuse to be reduced to easy labels.

He also situates Haiti’s story within the overall narrative of Western history, showing its links to the progress of Enlightenment ideals and democracy. I think it’s this aspect that makes the book stick in the mind, especially in light of recent events in Haiti. Without being a propaganda piece, it makes a clear and precise statement for the importance of the country, establishing what its history gives the world.

Haiti’s story is a story of people of three continents, really — the Americas, Europe, and Africa. Dubois makes that clear, and shows how these different groups and different individuals with different perspectives bounced off each other and came to form some kind of whole. That’s a valuable accomplishment, and not an easy one.

Are there difficulties with the book? Sure, since it’s a difficult subject. Dubois has to abandon chronological order at several points to explain one theme or another; that’s obviously not uncommon in historical writing, but I don’t know if it’s always for the best here. It has a tendency to feel, if not exactly vague, at least abstract. Generally, I would have liked to see more a bit more concrete narrative, precise outlines of L’Ouverture’s military campaigns, for example, rather than quick mentions of his brilliance. That said, it would have made for a much longer book, and might have distracted from the points Dubois was making.

Of course it’s impossible right at this moment to think of this book and not think of Haiti’s current situation (reading about a terrible battle around Jacmel, and then seeing that the city is being used by Canadian forces as their headquarters, is oddly sobering). But I don’t know that there’s a direct connection. The story Dubois presents is a human story, men (and very few women) dealing with other men. There’s not much to do with threats of the natural world. The book also gives us a story of, essentially, empowered people; it is in a sense the story of a people coming to power. The nature of the earthquake seems to have been an overthrowing of human agency (certainly the narrative I've seen in North American news reports has focussed on relief efforts from other countries). I suppose the only point I can think to make is that no such disaster can overthrow or obliterate history. Dubois establishes (for those who did not already know) that Haiti’s history is not merely colourful and dramatic, but important.

Readings — The Realm of Prester John

The Realm of Prester John

by Robert Silverberg

Silverberg, probably best known as a science-fiction and fantasy writer, also has a long list of historical non-fiction books to his credit. This one’s about the Christian King in the Middle East, whom medieval Europeans believed would give them victory over the Muslims who had taken the Holy Land. Guess what? He didn’t exist. How the idea of Prester John took hold, and what fragments of reality underlay the myth that developed, is what this remarkable book charts.

Silverberg covers a lot of ground here — almost five hundred years of history, and a sort of widening gyre that ultimately takes in large parts of three continents. You can’t pack that much into a book without strong writing and structuring skills, as well as a strong command of your sources. His research seems strong, and his ability to evoke the different eras and societies he writes about is superb.

Perhaps most suprising, at least to me, is the extended section toward the end of the book which follows the Portugese involvement in Ethiopia in the sixteenth century, a function of the last belated belief in Prester John. It’s a detailed, intriguing presentation of a part of history that’s not discussed all that much. But it’s only one of the cultures, one of the points of contact between cultures, that Silverberg charts; indeed, one might say that the Prester John myth was born out of a kind of interference pattern where different cultures met and failed to communicate. Medieval Catholics and post-Genghis Mongols, most notably, but also, say, early Christians and Indian kings, or romancers and quasi-historians from across centuries whose imaginings were, bit by bit, integrated into the story of the kingdom ruled by the wise Prester John.

There’s probably an inelegant comparison to be made between the realm of Prester John — said to be filled with wonders and gems and gold — and the riches of The Realm of Prester John — which is inarguably filled with narrative gold and colour. But stories and character aside, this seems to me (though I am not an expert in this field) a well-researched book. The version I have is lacking in footnotes, an omission which grieves me deeply; but Silverberg does not stint on quoting from primary sources, and so the book moves along with the rhythms of medieval prose, and thus also of medieval thought. Which helps the reader, almost subliminally, enter the mindset in which kings who command miracles may be imagined, and indeed may be believed to exist.

Readings 2K9: Captain of the Andes

Captain of the Andes

by Margaret Harrison

This is an English-language biography from the 1940s of José de San Martín, liberator of Argentina, Chile, and Peru. It’s narrative in focus, to say the least. More precisely, it’s intensely romantic. San Martín is cast as an absolute hero; and while there’s no doubt his actions were heroic on a grand scale (raising an army and leading it across the Andes mountains to capture Chile from the Spanish, then leading them by sea up the coast to besiege Lima), you tend to wonder at the enthusiasm Harrison brings to her subject. As noted, the book was published in 1943, and it comes off as a rewrite of Bartolomé Mitre’s The Emancipation of South America — or at least of the chapters to do with San Martín. Mitre’s book is more restrained, and even then it’s been criticised for romanticising San Martín. It may be that the man’s accomplishment lends itself to such approaches. At any rate, Harrison’s book tends to be good at giving background, but occasionally difficult to follow when it comes to the exact chronology of San Martín’s actions. A bit of a mixed bag, but an easy read.

Readings 2K9: The Persians

The Persians

by J.M. Cook

Originally published in 1983 as The Persian Empire, this edition was republished by The Folio Society — meaning that the book is a nice package, with some fine maps, and some truly spectacular photographs of a Persian archaeological site. The text itself is informative, though very much focussed on the reigns of the Achaemenid kings; that is, it deals chronologically only with the era up to Alexander the Great, and sociologically with a very narrow slice of Persian society.

Which to some extent is understandable. The sources Cook was working from were primarily the Greek histories, which dealt with Persia mainly in terms of how the Persians affected Greece. A writer like Herodotus gives some description of the whole extent of the Persian Empire, but the viewpoint is still mainly Greek, mainly focussed on the western part of the Empire. Cook does a strong job of trying to reconstruct events and personalities from a Persian perspective, but the weight of his sources can’t help but pull him back to the Greeks.

I’m no expert in Persian history, but Cook’s own text seemed fine to me. He sedulously presents different interpretations and readings of sources; of course, it’s impossible to present all the evidence for and against an interpretation in a general history, but at least some note of other ideas is there. The writing is fine, if not gripping; structurally, the book reads well, though the next-to-last chapter, a geographical overview of the Persian lands, would probably have been better off at the start of the book. This is a solid book that tries its best to give a Persian focus to Persian history; I can’t help but wonder how much farther that aim has gone in the past quarter-century.

Readings 2K9: King Arthur

King Arthur

by John and Caitlín Matthews

This book, published by the Folio Society, is an examination of King Arthur and of the stories of the Round Table and the Holy Grail. It’s got some interesting material in it; the first chapter is an analysis of a historical figure in 2nd-century England who might have been the original Arthur, which is a relatively new (or newly-revived) theory. There’s a lot of speculation involved, but it’s a creative take on the perennial problem of Arthur’s historicity.

Subsequent chapters move in stages through the evolution of Arthurian myth — examining the historical age of Arthur and its first historians, Welsh narratives in which Arthur appears, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s contribution to the figure of Arthur and the use to which that figure was put by Normans seeking to justify their rule of England, then on to medieval narrative epics, Malory and Le Morte d’Arthur, and finally the modern age and the contemporary explosion of Arthuriana. It’s at this point that the book begins to weaken, enough so that it makes one question the scholarship of earlier chapters.

Structurally, the last chapter doesn’t make any kind coherent argument about the use of Arthurian story, which is a pity, as the book’s analyses of what Arthur meant in earlier ages was quite involving. Instead, after the Pre-Raphaelites, the chapter becomes a series of quick mentions of different Arthurian stories. The selection of works referred to is mostly strong, though the inclusion of the original Star Trek is puzzling — the stated justification is that Kirk is an Arthur-figure with Spock as his Merlin, but surely many other stories have the same character dynamics, and the comparison is never made in the show itself. The greater problem is that there’s not much context given for the different works, and the balance of space given to some seem out of balance. I like Charles Williams, and I enjoy his Arthurian poetry, but there’s a page about his poems while Wagner’s Parsifal is described in one sentence. Moreover, by following specific forms (novels, poems, operas), chronology is lost — there’s no sense of how one work influenced another, how the story changed over time.

There are also some factual errors in this chapter, and those are particularly worrying in a scholarly work. Spenser’s Faerie Queene is said to have “been planned as a work in twelve parts”; actually, it was planned to have twenty-four books. Una is described as a “female knight”, which more properly describes the character of Britomart. Later, the creator of the TV show Babylon 5 is named Michael J. Straczynski, instead of J. Michael Straczynski. Both in the text and in a picture caption, the comic book Camelot 3000 is described as created by Mike Barr, with no reference to artist Brian Bolland — which is to say that the man who drew one of the images in the book wasn’t credited for it. Minor details like this make one wonder how thorough the research was in previous chapters as well.

(I’m not entirely sure what to make about the book’s praise for the 2004 movie King Arthur, which gets a whole paragraph: “a convincing picture of the Arthur of the Dark Ages ... unflinching in its depiction of the savagery of the times. Cive Owen makes a strong and thoughtful Arthur ... after decades of films portraying Arthur as a hero of medieval splendour, this is a welcome move towards an alternative, more consciously authentic characterisation.” I’ve not seen the movie, so I have no opinion on whether this is accurate or not. But it’s troubling to find out — from online sources, and not from the book — that John Matthews was a historical consultant on the movie. Surely that would be worth noting in the interest of clarity?)

With these things in mind, one begins to wonder about earlier choices in the book. This is a relatively slim volume, and can’t go into either all the contemporary manifestations of the Arthur myth or the wide range of medieval texts. So choices had to be made, which is understandable, but I wonder now whether some of the complexity of the Arthurian corpus is given short shrift. Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival is given a cursory mention, for example, but no more. The story the book tells, of how the Arthurian story develops, requires that certain manifestations of that story be passed over in silence. That’s fair enough, as every history must make its choices about what to include and what to leave out; but it means that the historian must maintain the confidence of the reader in their selections. In this case, I have my doubts.

Readings 2K9: The Egyptians

The Egyptians

by Alan Gardiner

This is a reprinting by the Folio Society of Gardiner’s 1961 book Egypt of the Pharaohs: An Introduction. It’s apparently a classic in its field, and still used in places as a textbook, despite its age. There’s no doubt it’s an informative, scholarly work. It’s a chronological examination of the history of the Pharaohs of Egypt, as nearly reign by reign as feasible. Of course, that’s not really possible; there’s too little known. The book is effectively an attempt at establishing a chronology of Egypt up to the time of Alexander the Great.

There’s nothing, or very little, about the experience of the people of the country. There’s some discussion of Egypt’s wars, but little about the way they went to war — either in terms of attitudes to war and soldiering, or in terms of weapons and technology used. There’s effectively nothing about religion, except insofar as it connects up with the political history of Egypt. Nor about art. Nor about culture or literature. Nor even about mummies. 

Much of this is by design.“We frankly admit our aim to have been propaganda,” Gardiner says in his Epilogue, “and our ambition will not have been satisfied unless we succeed in winning at least one fresh recruit to our fascinating field of research.” He writes this explaining why he’s left out the things he has, and why he’s spent much of the book discussing archaeology, and deliberating between different theories or analyses of archaeological research. He’s frankly hoping to draw people in to the field. I find his choices have the opposite effect: rather than presenting Egypt as a subject in its own right, with its own mysteries and fascination, it becomes merely a field of rubble for scholars to pick over. Something dead. Something mummified.

Up to a point, this is actually valuable; there’s no romanticism about the mysteries of the Pharaohs here. But the style can’t help but be dry. There’s too little known for sure about the Pharaohs, and specifically too little known about their individual personalities, for the subject to connect on a human level the way more recent history can. Gardiner’s choice to present pre-dynastic Egypt out of chronological sequence at the end of the book doesn’t help matters.

Gardiner’s writing doesn’t always help; it’s not that he’s a bad stylist on the sentence level, but he doesn’t seem to have understood how to construct a paragraph. Again and again paragraphs sprawl shapelessly for a page or more. One wishes a bit more craft had gone into the shaping of the text.

I can understand why this was a valuable book in its time; I’m not sure how much of it has been superseded in the past near-half-century, but as I say, I have read that it was being used as a textbook in an Egyptian history class. There’s a lot of information in the book; but lacking human context, it’s difficult to keep that information in memory, difficult to make it connect with anything, difficult to give it a human face. On one level, it has to be admitted that Gardiner accomplished just what he set out to do — he wrote a book containing exactly the information he wanted, and leaving out what was not relevant to his theme. But on another level, I can’t help but think that according to his stated aim, he failed. This is not the sort of book that I can see easily sparking the imagination.

Readings 2K9: Blenheim

Blenheim: Battle For Europe

by Charles Spencer

This is a solid work of narrative history, arguing for the importance of the 1704 Battle of Blenheim in the overall history of Europe. For Spencer, the battle marked the beginning of the decline of French military power on the continent. A skeptic might argue that the advent of Napoleon less than a hundred years later mitigates the point somewhat, but Spencer certainly makes an efficient case for the battle being a turning point in the War of the Spanish Succession, which itself went some way toward defining the political map of Europe — establishing Spain and France as separate countries, for example.

The story of the Battle of Blenheim is dramatic: a general in late middle age, the Duke of Marlborough, marches his men 250 miles in a move hidden even from his allies, in a desperate attempt to bring his enemies to battle before they can launch an attack against the empire at the heart of a grand alliance struggling against the greatest military power of the age. That said, the details which surround the core of the story are legion. The War of the Spanish Succession itself is neither well-known nor easy to summarise; and other than Marlborough and his ally, Prince Eugène of Savoy, there are few great personalities involved. The battle was long — beginning at 8 AM, it lasted until 9 PM — and complex, with a number of reversals spread over several interlinked fronts. Spencer manages to make the details comprehensible, presenting events chronologically, but breaking away when necessary for as long as a chapter-length in order to provide context or biographical detail. It tends to blunt narrative drive, and Spencer does double back from time to time in providing information from different perspectives, but is overall effective.

The most curious decision here is to underplay some of the hard calls Marlborough made. Most notably, after arriving in Bavaria in July, he had to find a way to lure his enemies out of their defenses into an open battle; his solution was to lay waste to the countryside, burning villages and terrorising the inhabitants. This was controversial even among his allies. Spencer doesn't sell this decision short, but more discussion of what Marlborough was thinking — even if Marlborough wrote little or nothing about this tactic, that very absence should be notable — would have been nice.

On the other hand, Spencer does make effective use of memoirs, diaries, and letters from both Marlborough and the men who followed him, as well as their allies and enemies. Generally, Spencer is very effective at presenting the realities of eighteenth-century warfare, from the appalling medical conditions to the difficulties of navigating bad terrain while under artillery bombardment. This almost tactile sense of the period helps make his description of the battle of Blenheim succeed, even when the movements of different detachments of men grows complex.

Overall, this is a valuable resource both for the battle of Blenheim and for descriptions of the strategy and tactics of warfare in the period. I do wish that the publishers had included another map in it —there are good small-scale maps for individual battles (though maps showing Blenheim at different points during the day of the battle might have been useful), and a good overall map of Europe during the War of the Spanish Succession, but a map showing the route of Marlborough's march would have been very useful; Spencer casually mentions a number of towns along his way which I can't find in my atlas, and I would have liked to be able to follow the geography more closely. Still, that minor caveat aside, there's no doubt that this is a useful and engaging book.

(And a note with respect to the overall purpose of these posts — I took this book out from the my local public library, so it doesn't count as far reducing the unread matter in my apartment. The count for the year so far is thus two books down, three overall. More, I hope, to come soon.)