The. Classical. Tradition.
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| The Libreria Marciana, a radical classical intervention on the Piazzetta S. Marco |
In my forthcoming book The Challenge of Emulation in Art & Architecture (Ashgate, UK),
I make a case that the culture of emulation depends on a canon of achievements,
and some consensus on what defines excellence. For the classical artist, that
canon has its roots in the art and architecture of ancient Greece and Rome, but
is by no means confined to that. Emulation also presumes that one can, indeed
must, apprehend the principles by which the canon is achieved, or else one is
reduced to merely copying the forms. And if one apprehends the principles, one
is prepared to develop new forms to add to the canon, since the principles need
to be constantly applied to new and different needs and contexts, not to
mention that each interpreter of them brings his or her own predilections to
solving problems. The canon thus grows, and evolves.
On a day when a pope resigns—as some would claim,
for the first time in 598 years, although it could be argued that no pope in
history retired from office for precisely the reasons that Benedict XVI
outlined—it is apropos to consider the radical, the traditional, and the nature
of the classical. Benedict’s scholarly outlook, in many ways, has affinities to
the classical. And in his capacity to do something radical or revolutionary, he
operates very much as a classicist. A classicist is not a traditionalist. A
classicist believes in principles more than precedents. There is nothing "traditional" about Benedict’s resignation from office.
The
Classical Tradition (Belknap/Harvard) is a weighty tome edited by Anthony
Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis. It is an odd book: neither
encyclopedic nor introductory, it at once assumes the reader’s deep curiosity
about the classical tradition and general lack of familiarity with it; it wants
desperately to be relevant (Pop culture references abound), and revels in the
esoteric; it makes a case for the continuity of “the classical tradition”
across the millennia yet worries not a little about its imminent demise. The
February 21 edition of the New York Review of Books tackles the tome in a review
by Stephen Greenblatt (The Swerve: How the World
Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton; Will
in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare. New York: W. W. Norton) and Joseph Leo Koerner (The Reformation of the Image, U. of
Chicago). Their “The Glories of Classicism” seems to want to poke holes in the
pretense of being able to put this subject in a book, especially today. As they
say, ‘With this ambition comes a set of difficult problems that may be summed
up in three words: “The,” “Classical,” and “Tradition.”’ Like the Holy Roman
Empire, there may be no “the,” no “classical,” and no “tradition” (discuss
amongst yourselves). And certainly Grafton et al wouldn’t disagree. But the many
scholars who contributed to this remarkable if odd book had a different end in
mind: not to summarize in any definitive way “the classical tradition,” but to
collect much that is relevant and seductive about it and drop it into the
culture like a time capsule or life raft, something to hold onto when all else
goes the way of Gangnam Style or
Twitter (admit it, you know it’ll happen eventually).
Although the reviewer’s
elective affinities are revealed in leaving the last words to Marx and Nietzsche,
they do have a point about “tradition.” Using the word to refer to the
classical is fraught, and perhaps folly. There really hasn’t been a classical
tradition since the fall of the Roman Empire, but rather a series of (albeit
prolonged) self-conscious recoveries of it. While the last may have ended
decades if not centuries ago, there are those like me who would want to see
another one. And if we want it we need to acknowledge classicism’s radical
nature, its selective capacity to reject what is its nemesis and embrace what
is essential; and each classicist may disagree in larger or smaller measure
about the nature of each. What largely defines a classicist is that one considers oneself
so, and a classicist has no particular interest in tradition per se; nor does he or
she worry that the best is the enemy of the good; nor if they are architects do
they care much about context. Jacopo Sansovino's Library on the Piazzetta S. Marco owed little directly to its architectural context.
Classicists are traditionalists with
higher standards.
