PERSONAL COLUMN

Notes on the end of all flesh

CLARENCE BROWN

In the small town of South Carolina where I grew up the first world war was a personal

disaster for the professor of German at the local college and a fair-to-middling gain for the local Lutheran church, where he found work as organist after being sacked from the job of teaching his unpatriotic language. Times are now more enlightened, in some

respects, and the professor is not so often confused with what he professes, nor the language with the worst that it has ever been required to convey. Still, being Professor of Russian at Princeton, as I am, has its little drawbacks—drawbacks that would, I think, be appreciated by Professor von Hassel, were he still among us, which he isn't. The present organist monoglottally reads the English line in the Bach chorales. On the other hand, the little Baptist college now lists a course in the language spoken by Lenin, not to mention that of Marx.

I do not think that I am more than normally inclined to see offence where offence is meant, but it does strike me that were I, say, Professor of Music, or Curator of Recent Insects (a position I have long craved), or the incumbent of some other inherently unpolitical post, my opinion would be more often sought in the councils of the university, and even if it had still to be volunteered, more often attended to.

But why am I telling you all this? Because I mean to offer below, in brief outline, a Proposal for the Salvation of Human Cul- ture in the Present Crisis. And it seems to me that the courtesy of these pages requires me to declare my interest. Be aware, there- fore, that I have not only undergone the possibly upsetting influence of Pushkin, Tolstoy and Chekhov, but have actually, as I was able, transmitted it to 'young and largely uncritical American minds.

I come now to the proposal. It is perfectly clear to me that we are on the threshold of a global disaster such as the world has not known since God first suggested the merits of a three-hundred-cubit gopher wood house- boat to Noah. There do not seem to be any such authoritative leaks, if that is the word I want, to forfend universal havoc now, and the question is whether human culture is to outlast the calamity at all. Perhaps life will start over at the cockroach, that noble beetle. who has survived for millennia our best efforts against him and may now survive, alone, our worst.

Given that there is anything worth saving in the culture of humanity, how do we go about saving it? My premonitions do not suggest water this time: the vibrations are definitely on the side of fire, or something hotter. Arks will not help. It is asbestos that is wanted, or something stronger, and under- ground. if possible. But I do not mean to burden this proposal with anything so trivial as technical details. There will always be professors, as Hitler sagely remarked, to work out the details. Let us strike for the essentials.

The essential is that human culture must Survive the approaching cataclysm by being gathered judiciously together and shielded in certain centres that will (by asbestos, &c. &c.) come through—scathed, perhaps, but

intact. There must be a plurality of such centres (and even a plurality within the centres—but of that, more later), for there is always the possibility that this or that little technical oversight, as sometimes occurs, would cause a single world centre of human culture to be obliterated along with everything else. And there ought to be at least two or three of these oases in all the old centres of life—East, West, and Neutral.

The limitation of space unfortunately dic- tates a stern selectivity. Not every aspect of human culture can be provided for. The manual arts, public relations, sociology, and cemetery management are clearly of great practical importance to us all, but they are, after all, merely the application to everyday problems of the essential principles that govern them. When the disciplines dealing with these essential principles themselves have been accommodated. I fear that there will be no room left for those concerned merely with the application. Television, therefore, will be out, and one will have to hope that in the fullness of time, when the dove, so to speak, returneth not again to the ark any more, the marriage of Physics and Aesthetics will once again result in Tv. But the same applies even to the superior daily arts, such as that of the carpenter and the chiropractor. All of these, in the world after the disaster, will have patiently to await their reinvention.

Or not so much their reinvention, really, as the retraining of their practitioners, for the theoretical knowledge of the more com- monplace abilities of man will be stored alongside his sublimest inventions in the great Memory Banks, or libraries, that I would require, as an essential part of this proposal, to be the centre, not to say the epicentre, of each Centre. If one man and woman, at least, as polyglot as possible, could be preserved at all costs to interpret the suss, and provide further interpreters, in due course, that would be nice—divine, in fact. But the books themselves are basic; com- pared to them, the rest are mere auxiliaries.

With the MRS, or libraries, and the ccs, of Custodian Couples, at the centre, what is the periphery to consist of?

If one thinks of the individual centre as a set of concentric rings, the library being in the middle, the next ring ought, I think, to be rather variously composed of senior specialists in the fields of human culture being conserved. For we must remember that the disaster, and its effects, might last for years beyond its single most brilliant instant.

And if human culture were preserved only in the frozen form of MRS, or libraries, it would lie stagnant during all the years, perhaps centuries, until the dove returned not again any more. The senior specialists would therefore not only preserve, but ad- vance the knowledge and culture within their several spheres.

Specialists, however, above all senior specialists, are no less prone to mortality

than the rest of us. They will scarcely have begun their work before they, too, will be gone.

This melancholy fact dictates an obvious third circle; that of the apprentice specialists —young men and, of course, women. I can- not emphasise too strongly the necessity of beginning now to select these young people. They are the hope of the future, a cliché which, in the darkness of the present moment, glows with a new light.

Unlike the basic disciplines themselves, these young apprentices must be chosen with a liberal, even latitudinarian, regard for variety of background and inclination (but not of ability). That will guard against a dull sameness, which would defeat the whole scheme, for one of the things to be preserved is the multiformity of human culture. Be- sides, one ought to make sure that what we think of as the basic human disciplines will have a chance to evolve into the other, pos- sibly quite different, basic disciplines that will be suitable to their own day.

These asbestos communities, or whatever they will eventually be called, must be set up at once. Time is short, and there is much to be done: the gathering of the books, the appointment of the senior specialists, the recruitment of the apprentices .. . And once they are together, some form of governance must be devised, for their seclusion from the rest of the world, with its soon-to-be-can- celled uproar, should commence at the earliest moment possible. I propose that this governance, whatever its elaborations may be, and they may vary from centre to centre, should rest upon two principles at least, that must be inviolable: mutual respect for each other and abject reverence for the library. Neither this respect nor this reverence will preclude the constant mutual questioning and debate that will form an essential—indeed, given the normal contentiousness of a gifted elite, the most delightful—facet of their common life. Considering, though, the sever- ity of the present crisis, the sternest possible measure (expulsion) must be taken against those, in whichever circle, who violate either of these rules.

There remains the problem of the name. That may be solved one way or the other. It is not important. But for the sake of completeness, I shall not omit it. Since these centres will deal, at least in fundamental principle, with the entire universe of human culture, and since, coincidentally, the uni- verse itself, as we know it, may well depen4 upon them, it might not be a bad thing to call them simply . . . Universities.