Ancient City

The Ancient City by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, translated by Willard Small, 323 pages

In The Ancient City, the 19th century historian Fustel de Coulanges explores the origins of the great city-states of the classical world, chief among them Sparta, Athens, and Rome.  All of these, he observes, were born out of a context of familial, tribal associations bound together by religious observance, in which the concept of property was centered on the ancestral tomb and law was "at the same time a code, a constitution, and a ritual."  The history of the ancient world then progresses or degenerates as a movement away from this hierarchical religious community towards a polity which is more egalitarian, secular, and dissolute.

In an age like our own when historiography generally treats religion as an accident, this landmark work indisputably establishes religion as the central reality of every ancient civilization.  The family, the tribe, and the city were all religious in their foundations.  Then, as now, those foundations are vulnerable to water and fire, to the slow drip of complacency and the burning flame of resentment.

Prelude

 The Prelude (1850) by William Wordsworth, 227 pages

...Thus I soothe

The pensive moments by this calm fire-side,

And find a thousand bounteous images

To cheer the thoughts of those I love, and mine.

The Prelude was intended by Wordsworth to be his autobiographical masterpiece.  Originally published in 1799 in two parts, it was expanded to fourteen books in 1805, and considerably revised before its final publication in 1850.  It was designed as the definitive statement of Wordsworth's sensibility, his pursuit of

That wish for something loftier, more adorned,

Than is the common aspect, daily garb,

Of human life.

Unfortunately, Wordsworth's passion led him to clasp the bloodstained hands of the French revolutionaries, and if he cannot disavow such friendships entirely, by 1850 he had at least gained the wisdom to criticize even his own excesses.

And thus, experience proving that no few

Of our opinions had been true, we took

Like credit to ourselves where less was due,

And thought that other notions were as sound,

Yea, could not but be right, because we saw

That foolish men opposed them.

While at the same time not rejecting the true instincts and education which nurtured those spiritual convictions.

Nature for all conditions wants not power

To consecrate, if we have eyes to see,

The outside of her creatures, and to breathe

Grandeur upon the very humblest face

Of human life.

And these deep feelings are best conveyed by the passages in which we enter into Wordsworth's relationship with the pastoral countryside of England.  However many times the poet's business takes him to Cambridge or London or Paris, there is always a tangible grace in the passages where he returns, in mind and body or in mind alone, to the nature that he loved.

There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair,

No languor, no dejection, no dismay,

No absence scarcely can there be, for those

Who love as we do.  Speed thee well!

Death in the Afternoon

Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway, 218 pages

Death in the Afternoon is Hemingway's book-length non-fiction essay on the art of Spanish bullfighting.  It is, Hemingway insists, an art rather than a sport, since it is by its nature an unequal contest with a foreordained conclusion.  The question is not whether the bull will die, but how, and the apparent contest is actually the tragic drama of the death of the bull.  In this drama, there are many characters, each of whom will be tested and proven in the arena.

The book is itself Hemingway's proof, an experiment in style that would shape his later writing, an attempt to find new ways to convert experience into prose.  As such, it has its successes and its failures.  The author's long imagined dialogue with an obliging older American woman wears out its welcome long before it is abandoned (a fact which Hemingway acknowledges in the text).  At the same time, there are passages which will make the sympathetic soul yearn to share in the romance of not-quite-modern Spain.  Doubtless, at times Hemingway's own vicarious desire for machismo colors his commentary and judgement.  He seems almost entirely blind, for example, to the obvious ways in which the bullfight symbolically reenacts the triumph of human reason over the brute power of nature.  Yet Hemingway is quite forthcoming about his own inadequacies in the arena, and his analysis of the toreros of the past and present is remarkable in its refusal to accept either the myth of progress or the myth of the golden age.

Death in the Afternoon is, perhaps, a better introduction to Hemingway than it is to bullfighting.  That's not necessarily a bad thing - most readers are probably more interested in the author than the subject anyway.

107 Days

107 Days by Kamala Harris, 300 pages

On July 21st, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris got a call from her running mate, President Joe Biden.  He had decided, after weeks of pressure, to drop out of the campaign and back her as the Democratic nominee for the 2024 election.  It was up to Harris to step into the breach and save the Democrats from defeat by the deplorable Donald Trump.  She only had 107 days to do it, and 107 Days is her own day-by-day account of that momentous campaign and its immediate aftermath.

Of course, Harris failed, but the hidden comedy of 107 Days is that she still does not seem to have realized this.  The book is filled with stories about how her campaign succeeded and Trump's failed, most directly when discussing the Joe Rogan podcast, which she somehow manages to present as something that she was cheated out of and simultaneously something that hurt Trump.  Again and again, the former vice president is caught believing too many impossible things, that Biden was perfectly fit for a second term but should have quit the race sooner, that she was an inspiring success as vice president but unknown to the American people, that it was impossible to mount a successful campaign in 107 days but that on election night she believed there was no way she could lose.

Throughout, it is not entirely clear whether Harris is consciously trying to deceive or whether she is herself badly out of touch with reality, a distressing but by no means unusual trait in an American politician in the early 21st century.  Pointless agreements about combating climate change are touted as great foreign policy successes while wars rage around the globe.  The importance of job programs and affordable housing for American workers are touted as major priorities but legal and illegal immigration are treated as a minor concern.  She repeats Bernie Sanders' advice on the day Biden stepped aside not to concentrate on abortion as her defining issue, yet again and again that is what she does, secure in her complacency that no one who matters could possibly disagree with her.

This is the punchline of a very funny 300 page joke.  Harris claims to represent the future of democracy in the United States, but she repeatedly demonstrates that she neither understands nor particularly cares for the actual people of that country.  The comedy of her comeuppance is that much greater for not being hers alone, but shared by every institution that mocks the concerns of ordinary Americans because they do not conform to progressive ideological orthodoxy.