MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
DR. EMIL LUDWIG, who has always possessed an acute instinct for the topical, has written a long book upon The Mediterranean which Hamisn Hamilton publishes (at Iss.). The plan of this book occurred to him many years ago when he was flying, on a blue August afternoon, from Corsica to Tunis. Since then he has read most of the appropriate works of reference and devised many effective parallels and stories ; in the leisure accorded to him by his exile at Santa Barbara in California he has compiled an extensive work in which the soul of Emil Ludwig confronts two million years of geography and three thousand years of history. There are few subjects on this earth which interest us more than the history and geography of the Mediterranean basin and of the lovely civilisations which have risen and fallen lapped in the ardour and the luxury of that delightful climate. From the mists of legend, from the smoke-clouds of Calabrian invasions, figures of men and women emerge, more lovely than reality, more heroic than life- size. Ulysses and Nelson, Polyphemus and Circe, Nausicaa and Sappho, the young Caesar and the old Marius, the stripped corpses of Palinurus and Shelley, the black ships of the Achaeans, the black landing-barges of the Canadians—all these stand out for us, illumined by eternal sunshine, outlined against a purple sea. It would be impossible to write a dull book about the Mediterranean, -nor could it be said that any paragraph of Dr. Ludwig's book is dull. Yet as I read through the five hundred odd pages of this compendium I was amused to find within myself a surge of something which was more than dislike and which approached indignation. The book is skilfully written ; the inaccuracies of fact or interpretation which I was able to detect were few indeed ; the space covered is compre- hensive and even vast Yet when I had finished Dr. Ludwig I wax conscious within me of what Byron called " the wine of passion- rage." How came it that I was so annoyed?
* * * * I must confess, I suppose, to a certain prejudice against Dr.
Emil Ludwig. His book on Bismarck was an acute interpretation ; his book on William II, although mean to a degree, was, I suppose, a brilliant biography ; his more recent book on The Germans con- tained many useful and indeed valuable suggestions. I do not allow myself to be unduly influenced, either by his vulgar work on Heinrich' Schliemana or by the unctuous eulogy which he wrote of Mussolini. I am willing to admit also that his present book contains many passages of interest and even beauty, and that he has managed with skill to compress into a single volume the main features of a vast and varied history. Although he is more interested in human character than in geo-politics, he has certainly succeeded in maintaining as his central theme the constant if undefinable
influence of the tideless inland sea. His gift for introducing the telling detail at the apposite moment has seldom been put to better effect. I enjoy reading about the development of the Greek trireme, about the Roman landing-barges, about the construction of Pharos, about the foundations of Alexandria, about the deforestation of Libya, or about that senile card-sharper, Casanova, for whom Dr. Ludskig has so strange an affection. I do not mind even the intrusion of personal prejudice. Dr. Ludwig has every right, if he so desires, to dislike the Romans, the German's, Augustus and Bernini. His strong anti-British bias, his refusal to admit that any of our actions (even the surrender of the Ionian Islands) could have been dictated by any but the basest motives, does not, I trust, influence me in my judgement. But the fact remains that I fail to appreciate the works of Dr. Emil Ludwig: they fill me with a fury which I find it difficult to account for or define.
* * * From the literary point of view, Dr. Ludwig has a style of the consistency of nougat ; it is sweet, it' is soft, it is sticky, and it is strewn with little bits of pistachio and almond. His love of antithesis and analogy is so constant that it leads him all too often into associations and contrasts which are false and foolish. In one pompous paragraph, for instance, he links together Salamis, Actium, Lepanto and Aboukir, and discovers a coincidence in the fact that each of these four battles took-place between the months of August and October. He adds this silly sentence: Three of the four Mediterranean naval heroes were commoners born. Themistocles aside, they all fought for lords and masters who knew nothing of seafaring. None of them fell in these battles. All four mixed in politics, the Greek and the Roman at the head of their states, the others in a more private capacity.
Assuredly that sentence can mean nothing at all. The superficiality, and even the ignorance, of some of his comments are at moments beyond belief. "Nero," he writes, " a man of many gifts, is more attractive, with all his assassinations than Seneca, his chancellor, whose pretensions should have carried with them an obligation... There is a burlesque side to Nero, a sort of cynical innocence, from which his crimes arise." It is possible, as we know, that the character of Nero has been much traduced ; but whatever may have been his essential nature, the explanation given by Dr. Ludwig is frivolous in the extreme. And there are moments, which are not infrequent, when his journalistic habit of mind leads him to write phrases which leave the reader agape: To understand the Mediterranean, it is as necessary to know Casanova as it is to know Cleopatra or the temple of Paestum or the Venus de Milo or the Golden Horn at Constantinople.
How can one take seriously a man who can write a phrase like that? * * * *
All this may explain why I do not regard Dr. Ludwig either as a competent historian, or as a reliable interpreter, or as an admirable stylist. It does not explain why I should become so angry about his work, or why his approach to his subject should fill me with something more than a vague distaste. My indignation is certainly not due to the quantitative success which Dr. Ludwig has achieved ; -there are many far more disreputable best-sellers, the success of whom leaves me completely calm. Nor do I really mind overmuch the fact that Dr. Ludwig, in his egoism, always sees himself in the foreground of his own writings, whether it be against the back- ground of the Simois and the Scamander or against the background of the Nike Apteros. Nor is it, I trust, that I resent the parasitic habit of this type of compiler, who draws so much more from literature than he contributes. I am enraged by the skill of Dr. Ludwig rather than by his incompetence ; by his ability rather than by his defects. Although an educated man, he has no deep respect for scholarship ; although possessed of great powers of assimilation, he has but slight reverence for learning ; although endowed with an ingenious sense of proportion, he has little understanding for values; although extremely clever, he lacks creative intelligence. My objection to him is certainly not personal ; I have met him three or four times in my life, and have found him cultivated, agreeable, interested and polite. It is that I see in him a gifted man who presents a wealth of information in the semblance of learning, and can disguise vulgarity in the suit of elegance. In him art becomes artifice ; there are moments when it sinks to artfulness.
* * * *
If one compares Dr. Ludwig's Mediterranean with a book such as Dr. Ellen Semple's The Geography of the Mediterranean Region, one becomes conscious of a completely different angle of approach and tone. Dr. Semple seeks only to provide the student with the results of long and laborious research. Dr. Ludwig seeks to acquaint the reader with his own reactions to casual, if comprehensive, read- ing. I am not blaming Dr. Ludwig for writing an entertaining book on Mediterranean history. What I resent is that he should deal with so vastly serious a subject in so slight a manner. Even that I could condone, were it not that he adopts throughout the tone of self-satisfied sagacity. His conclusions are both slick and positive; his allusions telling but irrelevant ; his analogies striking but false. Today the fortress of learning is in danger: the moat has silted up and the outworks have been sapped ; one is justly indignant when a man who ought to be in the ranks of the defentlers devotes his great ability to the assault.
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