William James on Aesthetics

"I remember seeing an English couple sit for more than an hour on a piercing February day in the Academy at Venice before the celebrated 'Assumption' of Titian; and when I, after being chased from room to room by the cold, concluded to get into the sunshine as fast as possible and let the pictures go, but before leaving drew reverently near to them to learn with what superior forms of susceptibility they might be endowed, all I overheard was the woman's voice murmuring: 'What a depracatory expression her face wears!  What self-abnegation!  How unworthy she feels of the honor she is receiving!"  Their honest hearts had been kept warm all the time by a glow of spurious sentiment that would have fairly made old Titian sick."

Tell me wikipedia: how long did Titian live?

Titian, of course, was the great 16th century Venetian painter.

He is in the news of late because the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, recently compared himself to Titian. Brown was apparently just trying to say that one can keep learning throughout life, and one can end up doing one's best work late -- even perhaps as old as ninety. As a comparison, though, it sounds like Brown was a bit full-of-himself, and it isn't surprising that the head of the Tories, David Cameron, pounced.

Cameron may have hurt himself in the process. Here's a link to what a 1970s American radio personality would have called "the rest of the story".

As you'll see if you follow that link, the good name of wikipedia has become entangled in the brawl over Titian.

This weekend's issue of the Financial Times runs a huffy editorial on the subject of wikipedia. "Any attempt to turn mob opinion into the test for truth is pernicious. That a thought might be popularly believed does not make it true," and so forth.

Valid enough, but still huffy. As for Titian's age at his death, it doesn't seem that anyone is quite sure.

Deal with it.

A Conversational Opening

I've often wondered about "small talk." Since I've never had the gift of gab myself, the whole idea of complete strangers conversing strikes me as full of mystery and complexity.

Not to say that this is a bad thing.

Of course, by writing these words I'm engaging in a conversation of sorts with anyone in the world inclined to read it. And sometimes it amounts just to small talk. Perhaps this will be one of those times.

But I'm thinking of such matters now because of the odd opening of a certain book review in the latest issue of The New Republic. Sherwin Nuland is reviewing a book by Katherine Park about the origins of human/medical dissection.

Nuland starts by telling a story intended to illustrate the conventional wisdom on the subject. He was recently at a "luncheon where alumni of a large Ivy League university had gathered ... one of the group's officers was holding forth at my table on a thesis ... regaling his attentive listeners with accusations of the obstinacy with which the church opposed human dissection during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This, he pointed out as emphatically as if he were addressing a jury, had necessitated all kinds of clandestine and gruesome activities on the part of those whose aim was to study the human body, whether for scientific purposes or because they were artists of the caliber of Leonardo, Titian, and Raphael. Not only was medical knowledge thus stunted in its advancement, he added in his summation, but such opposition necessitated the well-known horros of grave robbing in order to obtain cadavers for study, an unnatural activity that marred the image of the profession of healing until late in the nineteenth century."

Nuland goes on to say that his table-mate was quite wrong, and credits Katherine Park with getting the history of dissection right, as against a venerable tradition of such misconceptions.

But I have to wonder about that conversation at the table. My thoughts linger there. This was, I imagine, an alumi association of a medical school, or of a university with a strong medical school as an important component. Even so, I find it hard to think of Renaissance-era dissection as a natural topic for post-prandial discussion.

Suppose you were brimming with thoughts, erroneous or otherwise, about the history of dissection, and its connection with grave-robbing. Would you just dive into action, to share them with a table full of strangers (or people you hadn't seen in the 20 years since you and they graduated, perhaps?). Or would you have to wait for an appropriate opening in the conversation?

And what might that be? If I complain about my aching muscles, "oh, I did too much walking today, my leg muscles are still sore," would that suffice? "Oh, the science of anatomy developed only rather slowly to the point at which such things can be understood, Christopher. Why, did you know that this is how the horrors of grave robbing came about?" -- and off, in my Nuland-stoked imagination, my imaginary table mate is launched.

As you see, I still have a lot to learn about small talk.