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Leamington letters #48: The tradition of the new?

9/5/2013

16 Comments

 
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Lord Acton: "the magistrate of history"
I heard on the radio yesterday morning that the Queen’s speech is read from sheets of goats’ vellum, and that the ink with which the speech is written takes three days to dry. And I remembered that the conclusions of Vatican II, the modernising ‘reforms’ of the Church under Pope John XXIII, were published in Latin.

If the medium is the message, we’re in serious trouble.

Which is not to say that I believe tradition and modernity to be polar opposites. I can understand why some may believe that tradition is a catch-all word for all that they despise, that a reference to tradition is a means of bestowing an illusion of permanence on a policy, an ideology, or anything which is transient or contingent.

But if I believe in anything, I believe in history. And, as Henry James pointed out, “it takes an endless amount of history to make even a little tradition”.

It is difficult to mention even a little tradition without prefixing the word with the qualifying phrase, ‘time-honoured’.

Is it so? Is tradition time-honoured? Or is it merely ‘time-worn’?

There is some truth in the statement that tradition only becomes tradition when it is, effectively, dead; when it is finished as a progressive force. But I am not clear (as my friend Rick Gekoski would say) whether this is useful when comparing it with modernity, or its cousins modernism and post-modernism.

Bob Dylan, for example, was and is an exemplar of modernity and modernism. But as Michael Gray has pointed out, he works most successfully within the tradition of the pre-war blues. He recreates, re-interprets, re-invents the genre for us. In  approach and attitude, tonality and structure, our greatest modern poets – Eliot and Auden - have worked within a tradition, the Metaphysical, which was established centuries before. And Wordsworth and Coleridge, revolutionary in politics and poetry at the time they composed Lyrical Ballads as both of book of verse and a manifesto, were working within a long-established tradition of the ballad. I will leave it to my commentators - Geoff, Chris, Charlotte and Ken - to point with accuracy to parallels in the world of art.

We are not dealing with opposites at each end of some linear progression. Modernity, in reacting against a tradition, continues that tradition, re-forming it and thus creating a new tradition against which a new generation can respond, react and renew.

It is a continual and continuing process, and is thus – in my view – time-honoured. If the tradition is worthy, it gains new life. Otherwise, it has no validity, no attraction, and it dies.

So why is the Queen still reading from goats’ vellum? Come to that, why is the Queen still reading a speech at all?  And why is all this  arcane Black Rod nonsense still going on?

Well, there may perhaps be some truth in another of Lord Acton’s aphorisms: that the authority of tradition serves as a restraint on absolute power.

If only …

Today's listening: correspondence between Rick Gekoski and Kazuo Ishiguro as to whether Dylan's 'lost' song I'm Not There (1956) should qualify for inclusion in Rick's book Lost, Stolen or Shredded has prompted me to return to the complete Basement Tapes and that sublime song in its original, one take version.

16 Comments
Allan Roberts
9/5/2013 04:09:54

From the state opening to Dylan to Wordsworth to Henry James to Acton. As Forster said, "only connect"!

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Max
10/5/2013 01:54:15

Indeed so.

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Carl
9/5/2013 04:36:38

It is absurd, isn't it? And I don't think your tentative conclusion is right, at least not in the political sphere. Of course, it is Acton's conclusion rather than yours. The tradition is part of the oppression and was established by pretty close to absolute power.

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Max
10/5/2013 01:56:36

I think this is right, at least in general terms. It is easy to dismiss these preposterous rituals as unimportant, but it is what they signify and constantly reinforce which is at the heart of it.

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CJ
9/5/2013 04:49:46

The Basement Tapes! Great fun, great music. And you're right that I'm not there is sublime. Interesting that it was never picked up by people like the Fairports who had access to those acetates at the time. Or maybe not all of them. Just listened to that song again and think how brilliant it would sound with Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson.

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Max
10/5/2013 01:58:37

Yep! The acetates were circulating and Fairports, Manfred Mann etc picked them up. I've always hated Mighty Quinn because of the MM version! But almost anything by Sandy Denny is to die for, and I agree this would have been amazing.

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Anders
9/5/2013 05:31:13

Just catching up with your stuff. Is it me or are you quoting more? Are you becoming less confident in your own views? Or reading more?

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Matt
9/5/2013 06:03:17

I've noticed this too. But thought all the quotations were particularly apposite this time round. Let's be clear about this. Faced with either Max Smith or Henry James, with whom would one go?!

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Max
10/5/2013 02:09:19

The Master. Always.

Max
10/5/2013 02:00:36

Welcome back. I wasn't aware that I was, at least no more than usual. Always worth bestowing gravitas on my banalities with an appropriate quote from one of the greats. And not reading more (but not reading less either!)

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Mark
9/5/2013 09:35:52

Isn't this about some form of dialectic? The renewal within the tradition and of the tradition is in fact the antithesis, which creates a new thesis, and so on ad infinitum. The Lyrical Ballads reference is wrong because W & C were merely ensuring that the people's poetry was relevant. It was a low versus high culture thing. And I'm not sure that Eliot and Auden were consciously working within the tradition, but rather drawing on the work of Donne etc for effects.

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Max
10/5/2013 02:05:03

OK. Certainly a class thing going on with Wordsworth and Coleridge. As for the 'modern' poets, I think they rediscovered the Metaphysicals and consciously invoked their presence in their tone and directness. But they did also utilise the effects. Too big a subject for this medium: may e-mail you with more ...

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AnnW
9/5/2013 13:39:05

and as Don often reminds me - Mahler's famous quote "tradition is slovenliness"..... another excuse to be a slob:-)

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Max
10/5/2013 02:08:14

Didn't know that one! Thank Don for me. The distinction is between those who hide within a tradition and those who use the tradition to make something new. I think Mahler was among the latter.

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Max
11/5/2013 05:35:41

Thanks Don for the full quote yesterday: 'convenience and slovenliness'. The excuse that because ones working in a traditional way, one is excused the more egregious errors of the art or craft.

Dan
12/5/2013 04:35:24

Reading your blog whilst listening to Damien Hurst on Desert Island Discs. He has just claimed that "contemporary art is the tradition". Score one for Mahler I think.

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    Max Smith

    European writer, radical, restaurateur and Red Sox fan. 70-something husband, father, step-father, grandfather and son. Resident in Warwick, England.

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