ANOTHER VOICE

Can K still stand for civilisation?

CHARLES MOORE

Kenneth Clark's television series Civili- sation is being repeated, but nothing like it could be made today. In his first pro- gramme, Clark contrasts an African mask with the head of the Apollo of the Belvedere, both of which, he says, have the qualities of a great work of art: ... I don't think there is any doubt that the Apollo embodies a higher state of civilisation than the mask. They both represent spirits, messengers from another world — that is to say, from a world of our own imagining. To the Negro imagination it is a world of fear and darkness, ready to inflict horrible punish- ment for the smallest infringement of a taboo. To the Hellenistic imagination it is a world of light and confidence, in which the gods are like ourselves, only more beautiful, and descend to earth in order to teach men reason and the laws of harmony.

I do not know if such a sentiment would actually be banned by the BBC today but it would not, in practice, be spoken. No one would be asked to make a programme called Civilisation which discussed only western Europe. Any programme that was made about western European civilisation would be compelled to include the people at whose expense, allegedly, the civilisation was built — the working classes at home and the slaves and oppressed indigenous peoples abroad. It would have to defer to the idea that women did in fact develop their own, fascinating civilisation which men conspired to conceal. If Clark had, by a miracle, made the programme today he would not have been mobbed by fans seek- ing his autograph (as really happened) but by angry students eager to ensure that he join the ranks of Dead White Males.

Civilisation is interesting in its innocence. The name, Clark wrote, was almost an acci- dent. He was asked to advise on a series of programmes about art, and David Atten- borough, who was in charge of BBC2, sug- gested the title: ... it was this word alone that persuaded me to undertake the work. I had no clear idea what it meant, but I thought it was preferable to barbarism, and fancied that this was the moment to say so.

On screen he said, 'What is civilisation? I don't know. I can't define it in abstract terms — yet. But I think I can recognise it when I see it; and I am looking at it now.' (He was standing on the Pont des Arts with Notre Dame in the background.)

I do not think Clark was, strictly speak-

ing, an intellectual. He was not very reflec- tive about civilisation, but he knew his way round it. Indeed, in prose and voice and manner and the character of his connois- seurship, he was an expression of it. This must be why people loved the programme. They trusted him to know what he was talk- ing about, just like Barbara Woodhouse with dogs or Nanny Smith with children.

What Clark appears to have meant by civilisation were the aesthetic productions of genius. At the very end of the series, he talked about the attitude of the young:

Naturally, these bright-minded young people think poorly of existing institutions and want to abolish them. Well, one doesn't need to be young to dislike institutions. But the dreary fact remains that, even in the darkest ages, it was institutions that made society work, and if civilisation is to survive society must some- how be made to work.

In other words, all the dull things, like money and drains and policemen and poli- tics, are there to allow Rembrandt, Botti- celli, Rodin, etc. to get on with it. Clark is not much concerned with how this is done, with the relation between the life and cul- ture of everyone and the outstanding achievements of the few. In his belief in genius, he is a romantic. His own way of life

• and career hung, almost literally, by a thread, for he inherited his money from cotton manufacturers. He was conscious of this, and worried that the thread might snap, but he was not very interested in it. In his television farewell, walking through the library in his castle, he asks for 'confi- dence' in order that civilisation may sur- vive. He had it, and we don't.

If you argue with one of those whom Clark called 'bright-minded young people' about these questions today, you very quickly find that your view — the general idea that western civilisation is admirable and, if one is pushed to judge, more inter- esting than any other — is described as `subjective'. You say that Shakespeare is more interesting than the Aboriginal 'song- lines', they object, but that is no better than a personal view. In fact, it is, as personal views go, rather a bad one because it is born of your arrogance as conqueror, man, white and so on: before people like you came and spread disease and Christianity and gunpowder and alcohol among them, Aborigines and Native Americans led peaceful lives in which they lived in harmo- ny with the land and one another. You do not have to know much of the his- tory of the indigenous peoples to know that the stuff about peace and harmony is not true. In fact, you do not have to know anything — such societies have never existed since Eve passed the apple to Adam. But the bit about being 'subjective' is harder to answer.

True classicists would have had a ready reply. Their claim was that the laws of beauty were absolute, and were to be found in ancient Greece and Rome. The Renais- sance was the rediscovery of these laws and their reapplication. Just as divine revelation had culminated in a particular time and place, so had the laws of nature been dis- closed to one society. Pope has Virgil set- ting to work:

But when t'examine ev'ry part he came,

Nature and Homer were, he found, the same . Learn hence for ancient rules a first esteem: To copy nature is to copy them.

That is why the ancient world is called `classical': it constitutes the model; and it is why everyone who aspired to learning had a classical education. As the scriptures con- tained all things necessary to salvation, so the classics contained all things necessary to civilisation.

Not many people believe this now: abso- lute rules either do not exist, or are beyond our discerning. Should this mean that the whole idea of civilisation has to be discard- ed, even despised? I do not see why. The fact that we cannot know everything about goodness, truth and beauty does not mean that we can know nothing about them. I cannot prove that the Nike of Samothrace is more beautiful than a Polynesian penis gourd. However, I can set out the assump- tions behind Arch a view to show that it is not merely a piece of passing personal whimsy, but the result of a coherent con- versation which people in the western world have carried on for more than 2,000 years about matters of this sort. The study of civilisation is the tracing of that conver- sation, which takes place not only in the works of art which fascinated Kenneth Clark, but also in the framing of laws, the training of armies, the development of liturgies, the playing of games, the prepara- tion of food, the celebration of birth, the commemoration of death and even in the columns of newspapers. That study is now disparaged, and should be revived. Unfor- tunately, I cannot think of anyone who could turn it into a television programme.