Libre ya Platero del cabestro, y paciendo entre las castas margaritas del pradecillo, me he echado yo bajo un pino, he sacado de la alforja moruna un breve libro y, abriéndolo por una señal, me he puesto á leer en alta voz:
Comme on voit sur la branche au mois de mai la rose
En sa belle jeunesse, en sa première fleur,
Rendre le ciel jaloux de…
Arriba, por las ramas últimas, salta y pía un leve pajarillo, que el sol hace, cual toda la verde cima suspirante, de oro. Entre vuelo y gorjeo, se oye el partirse de las semillas que el pájaro se está almorzando.
…jaloux de sa vive couleur…
Una cosa enorme y tibia avanza, de pronto, como una proa viva, sobre mi hombro… Es Platero, que, sugestionado, sin duda, por la lira de Orfeo, viene á leer conmigo. Leernos:
…vive couleur,
Quand l’aube de ses pleurs au point du jour l’a…
Pero el pajarillo, que debe digerir aprisa, tapa la palabra con una nota falsa.
Ronsard se debe haber reído en el infierno…
— Juan Ramón Jiménez, Platero y Yo: Elegía Andaluza
With Platero already free of his halter and grazing among the chaste daisies of the little meadow, I have stretched-out under a pine tree, taken a small book from my Moorish saddleback and opening it at a marker, have begun to read aloud:
Comme on voit sur la branche au mois de mai la rose
En sa belle jeunesse, en sa première fleur,
Rendre le ciel jaloux de…
Above, in the highest branches, hops and chirps a light bird, which the sun, together with the whole green, sighing treetop, turns to gold. Between flights and warbles, one can hear the crackling of the seeds of which the bird is making a meal.
…jaloux de sa vive couleur…
Something enormous and warm suddenly moves, like a living prow, over my shoulder …. It is Platero, who, attracted, no doubt, by Orpheus’ lyre, has come to read with me. We read:
…vive couleur,
Quand l’aube de ses pleurs au point du jour l’a…
But the tiny bird, who must digest quickly, covers the words with a false note.
Ronsard must have laughed in hell. …
— Juan Ramón Jiménez, Platero and I: An Andalusian Elegy; translated by Antonio T. de Nicolάs
Comme on voit sur la branche au mois de Mai la rose
En sa belle jeunesse, en sa première fleur
Rendre le ciel jaloux de sa vive couleur,
Quand l’Aube de ses pleurs au point du jour l’arrose :
La grâce dans sa feuille, et l’amour se repose,
Embaumant les jardins et les arbres d’odeur :
Mais battue ou de pluie, ou d’excessive ardeur,
Languissante elle meurt feuille à feuille déclose :
Ainsi en ta première et jeune nouveauté,
Quand la terre et le ciel honoraient ta beauté,
La Parque t’a tuée, et cendre tu reposes.
Pour obsèques reçois mes larmes et mes pleurs,
Ce vase plein de lait, ce panier plein de fleurs,
Afin que vif, et mort, ton corps ne soit que roses.
Pierre de Ronsard, Le Second Livre des Amours, II, iv
Just as, upon the branch, one sees the rose’s
Bud bloom in May, young blossom newly spread
Before the sky. jealous of its bright red,
As Dawn, sprinkling her tears, the morn discloses;
Beauty lies in its leaf, and love reposes,
Wafting its scent on tree, bush, flowerbed:
But, lashed by rain or torrid heat, soon: dead,
Leaf after leaf its fragile grace exposes.’
So too, blooming with youth, as earth and heaven
Honored your beauty, to Fate was it given
To slay your flesh, which now in ash reposes.’
Take thus these tears that I, in tribute, shed,
This jug of milk, these blossoms heaped, outspread,
So that in death, as life, that flesh be roses.
— translation by Norman R. Shapiro, in Lyrics of the French Renaissance: Marot, Du Bellay, Ronsard (Yale University Press, 2002), pp. 288-289
“Comme on voit sur la branche” est un extrait du recueil Sur la mort de Marie publié en 1578 par Pierre de Ronsard [1524-1558]. … La vie de Ronsard fut marquée en particulier par 3 femmes, Marie, Cassandre et Hélène, pour lesquelles il écrivit beaucoup. Ronsard composa ses poèmes surtout sur le thème de la fuite du temps, de l’expression des sentiments…
“Comme on voit sur la branche” est un poème officiel écrit sur demande d’Henri III, c’est-à-dire de circonstance, ce roi venait de perdre sa maîtresse Marie de Clèves décédée à 21 ans en 1574. Ce poème fait un parallèle avec la vie de Ronsard qui a été épris d’une paysanne Marie Dupin, morte en 1573.”
“Comme on voit sur la branche” is an excerpt from the collection On the Death of Mary published in 1578 by Pierre de Ronsard [1524-1585]. … Ronsard’s life was marked in particular by three women, Marie, Cassandre and Hélène, for whom he wrote a great deal. ….
“Comme on voit sur la branche” is an official poem written on request of Henry III, that is to say under the circumstance that this king had just lost his mistress Marie de Cleves, who died at 21 years of age in 1574. This poem is parallel with the life of Ronsard who was enamored of a peasant Marie Dupin, died in 1573.
“This poem and the one following are from a cycle of thirteen on “La Mort de Marie” (The Death of Marie) that constitute the second part of Le Second Livre des Amours. Most, if not all, of these poems sing Ronsard’s love, not of the idealized Marie d’ Anjou, as is most often thought, but of Marie de Clèves, wife of Henri de Bourbon, prince de Condé. See the CéardMénager-Simonin edition, where the editors note the influence on Ronsard of Petrarch’s poems on the death of Laura. Therein Ronsard found a theme that unified the second part of his own Second Livre des Amour.s and concealed its intended subjects: Marie de Clèves and the grieving Henri III. There are numerous echoes of Petrarch in this sequence.
— Lyrics of the French Renaissance: Marot, Du Bellay, Ronsard, footnote, pg. 288
The following is an email of mine to a critic of a post of mine on this site who felt (inexplicably to me) that I had disclosed information in a post about someone from my distant past that I shouldn’t have.
The offending passage in my post (to me innocuous), which caused my relative to complain, was as follows: “There was a Scotch guy named Frank. And, a German guy named Joe, who, in retrospect, I thought might have been gay. He was a very nice man.”
The following is the text of my email in response to the relative who objected to the comment in my post:
The entry I wrote about the experience at the conference was brief. But it could have been even more concise.
I could have simply said, “In 1962, I attended an international youth conference at Springfield College in Springfield, MA. I had a wonderful time. The people were wonderful and I enjoyed meeting them very much.”
How boring.
You objected to one tangential, retrospective comment in the article referring to a person identified only by his first name whom I met at an event over 53 years ago.
It was a sort of “extraneous” remark, but I do not feel it was in any way harmful.
In public posts of this sort — the case can be different when it comes to someone writing a book of a confessional nature — stuff about one’s sex life and uncomplimentary mentions of acquaintances and old friends should be kept out.
I believe in my blog I have said a lot of nice things about people and have made a point of emphasizing the good memories.
An exception might be one of my high school memoirs covering events of 50 years ago in which I said that two teachers, whom I named, were horrible teachers and that a popular physical education teacher and a baseball coach, whom I named, treated me poorly when I tried out for the baseball team.
In writing, I try to work in details that come to mind. I feel that that’s what makes a piece interesting. I rely on memory, intuition, and a mental process of association in doing this. It is a very satisfying kind of mental activity.
It’s the particulars that give the piece life. No experience, no person is quite the same as any other. That’s what makes life so interesting. And, most experiences aren’t plain vanilla, white bread stuff. People have funny idiosyncrasies. Funny things happen. Things don’t hew to the norm. There are all sorts of surprises, twists, and turns.
I feel that the little details make for interesting reading, make the piece credible, make it work, make it clear just what the experience was, make the story believable to the reader.
I regard the observation of mine which you objected to — a posthumous one — as interesting and worth mentioning because it involved experiencing some things that I hadn’t before. It was part of my adolescent development.
It is interesting for me to write about this because I had actually forgotten about practically the whole conference and experience. Then, someone posted a message that brought it back to mind and I decided to write my brief recollections.
In doing this, little things popped into my head, including one little detail which you object to. I think it is interesting to an extent (as much as the other details in the piece are), it is gratifying me for to relive the experience and somewhat therapeutic to write about it, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t do this as long as I don’t hurt or offend someone.
I would like someone to tell me, who could be hurt or offended by a tangential comment such as this?
Let’s leave aside for a moment discussion of the possibility that I may have somehow given offense by disclosing something about somebody. (This was not the case here.) What reader could be offended by reading something like this? Whose sensibilities are going to be offended? How? In this day and age? Is this offensive or problematic content that should not be posted? I think not.
I can see no reason why I should censor myself in this regard, and in this particular case.
I was not writing something meant to be confessional. If I were writing an exposé, or a confessional memoir, the ground rules would be different. A different (in fact more lenient) standard would apply. But I cannot see how I transgressed whatever standard you or any reader might apply here.
I was writing something like a mini-memoir, a little piece of autobiography. Little details bring this kind of writing alive, particularize it, make you (meaning, the writer) come across as an individual.
Yes, one must be careful. I am not just writing for family and friends. I am posting something on the Internet where anyone can see it.
I may have erred on occasion by posting something I shouldn’t have (though I have tried to avoid this). That is certainly possible. But in this case, I cannot imagine how anyone can regard what I wrote as offensive, hurtful, or inappropriate.
The individual was not identified. There are no graphic or prurient details; there were, in fact, none to include.
When one writes, one should feel some freedom to include what comes to mind, as long as it is not offensive to someone or in bad taste.
As I have stated above, nothing was stated or revealed in the “offending” post that should not have been.
It might be pointed out by me, though, that my befriending an individual, a man older than me, at a religious conference, who might have been gay — I was age 15 — was a not insignificant experience in my adolescence. I corresponded with Joe once or twice after the conference, but it was not a deep or lasting friendship. He went back to Germany and we never met again.
At that age, I did not know that there was such a thing as homosexuality, and would not have been able to define it. Yet, I felt there was something different here when it came to his friendliness — it seemed closer or warmer, more ardent, than usual. I did not perceive, consciously, a sexual element. But I did think, how should I respond? And — this happened only once — on the evening before the conference ended, as we were saying goodnight to one another, Joe reached out and patted my shoulder and (I think) rubbed my cheek. He said something affectionate, but not improper, and seemed to be struggling with his feelings. I told him it was okay, that I had warm feelings for my brothers and my male friends.
That was all. But it’s the kind of detail that might be in a coming of age novel. For the carping, pettifogging critic to complain seemed totally uncalled for.
I am writing this post because of — in response to — a development last week concerning so called “language policing” (a term I coined for myself, but it’s probably in common use now), or what would otherwise be termed an assault on our language from the PC crowd.
The development I am referring to was covered in the following articles:
“No More Manholes in Berkeley as City Writes Gender Out of Codes.” by Thomas Fuller and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, The New York Times, July 19, 2019
“Berkeley plans to remove gendered pronouns from its municipal code,” by Kayla Epstein, The Washington Post, July 18, 2019 (Boy, does that term “gendered pronouns” irk me!)
In an effort to make Berkeley more inclusive for its non-binary residents, the city council voted Tuesday night to make the language more gender neutral, following a city clerk review that found that the municipal code primarily contained masculine pronouns. [What is a “non-binary” resident? Don’t bother to tell me. The last time I recall encountering binary, it was in high school math. Now it’s being applied to gender by the PC philistines.]
Manhole will be replaced with maintenance hole. Sisters and brothers will be replaced with siblings. And he or she will be banished in favor of they, even if referring to one person.
“[M]an-made” will soon be “human made,” “chairman” will become “chairperson” … in the city’s municipal code.
… not only would the names of several professions change, but the pronouns “he” and “she” would be swapped out for “they” and “them,” and in some cases, individuals would be referred to by their title rather than a pronoun (“The Candidate” or “The Lobbyist,” for example.)
Keith Johnson, the chair of the department of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley … says the English language has been evolving away from gender-specific terms for many years. Stewardess is out of touch; the preferred term is of course flight attendant. Waitresses and waiters are now often known as servers.
Last month, Multnomah County in Oregon, which … includes Portland, passed a similar measure, replacing gendered pronouns with the singular use of “they” and related words. Miami replaced gendered words in 2017, and changed all singular pronouns — many of which had previously just said “he” — to “he/she.”
Such idiocy, such barbarity — ignorance triumphant — perhaps deserves no comment.
A few thoughts, nevertheless.
“Gendered” pronouns (and “gendered” words) provide INFORMATION.
In school we used to call them masculine and feminine pronouns.
Gender is, as far as I know, a basic fact of life. Without being an expert, I would guess that the perception that one is male or female is fixed from — let’s say for the purposes of discussion — nursery school or kindergarten age. A child knows and perceives his or her class being comprised of boys and girls and knows that there is a difference and that this is a fundamental and pertinent fact.
When one meets someone, observes someone in public — on the street or in the subway, say — what is one of the things that is noticed without fail — perhaps the most fundamental thing? Whether the person met or observed is male or female. It’s not something one has to guess about, and it affects how we perceive others and interact on a basic level.
Our language and most other languages have pronouns and other grammatical forms that make a distinction between masculine and feminine, often, usually, in the case of male versus female pronouns, but also, in the case of many languages, nouns and other parts of speech (verbs, adjectives).
This is a GOOD thing. Because languages serve to convey information. To not do so and to strip a language of gender is to invite confusion.
Using they all the time in place of a singular “gendered” pronoun — he or she — is downright confusing, besides being uncalled for: a dismantling of our language and desecration of its grammar.
They gave a donation to the charity. Who did? My sister? My niece or nephew? My parents? Some altruistic citizens? An organization I belong to?
If I say that I really liked my waitress last night at the restaurant I dined in and give her a big tip for outstanding service, this is more informative than saying “I gave my server a big tip for great service.” And there is nothing wrong with this. We have (or had) a word for a male waiter and one for a female waiter. It’s degrading to call a female “server” a waitress?
There are some terms that, I will admit, even I have trouble with. For example, poetess. This was a term used in days of yore for female poets. It did seem to be singling women poets out as a sort of sub category of the class of writers who write poetry. I think Emily Dickinson should be called a poet, not a poetess.
But, to return to waitress and waiter. These are two words with a nice sound to them. Euphonic. We all know what they mean. Server is a much more bland (should I say bleached?) and more vague word. Server of what? Process server? Tennis player?
Chair for a department chairman or chairwoman seems ridiculous to me. A chair is something one sits upon. I get it: A woman department head doesn’t want to be called chairman. How about chairwoman? (Chairperson is too bland and “generic.”)
Man made versus human made (per the new Berkeley code)? This is one of those horribly vague and manufactured locutions such as “double plus ungood” in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Human made, as in by humanoids, not robots? This is idiotic. Man since time immemorial has been used to refer to humanity, as in “That’s one small step for man.”
“Manhole will be replaced with maintenance hole.” Yes, manhole undoubtedly comes from the idea that it is a sort of hole in the middle of a street where men can be found working below. They climb down the hole to do some task. And, yes, in the past, at least, almost anyone performing such a task was a man. (But the basic idea seemed to be that it was a hole where people might be found — in contrast, say to a rabbit hole.) “Sexism” aside, everyone knows what a manhole is, and one has a mental (pictorial) image of a manhole. So now we have to confuse everyone who will have to stop and think, maintenance hole, what’s that? Same thing as a manhole? This is messing things up, not making them more logical or sensible.
“Sisters and brothers will be replaced with siblings.” Sorry. But there’s a bit difference, like it or not, between saying “I had lunch with my sister yesterday” and “I had lunch with my brother.” Without any other information being provided (which, in a conversation, would be the case), we have been conveyed some information. Say I am talking with someone who doesn’t know me well, a coworker, say. I tell them: “During my vacation, I spent a week visiting my sister in Colorado.” That conveys much more information than saying, “During my vacation, I visited a sibling in Colorado.” And, what, in God’s name, is wrong with sister and brother? Are we going to get rid of father and mother? “My parent passed away last year.”
It’s like hacking off the limbs of trees for some senseless reason. Deforestation. Who needs those trees anyway? They clutter up the landscape, can “cause” forest fires, and block one’s view. Better to clear the open spaces of them in the interests of prudence.
The great English writers would be rolling in their graves. Fortunately, they didn’t live to see what is being done to their tongue. You know what? England and, by extension, America have one of the world’s greatest bodies of literature. Guess what? The richness of the language — its stupendous vocabulary drawn from the world’s languages; the subtlelties of meaning and tone possible; the intricacy of grammar with much flexibility in things such as word order — has a lot to do with it.
Consider the following: I was walking down the block and saw a lady walking a dog. Woops! A humanoid walking its dog. Or should it be their dog?
Our language works very well, thank you. The PC language police want to make it less precise and rich. They want (to paraphrase a US Army officer during the Vietnam War) to destroy the language in order to save it, or what in their benighted view constitutes civilization (as they see it).
Orwell was on to something. He really was prescient.
When Fairbanks North Star unanimously passed its resolution in February, choosing to use “they” and “their” as singular, one critical blogger called it a “grammatical mutilation.”
Suzanne Downing, the blogger, said the borough should have stuck with he/she.
“There will be a lot of explaining to do,” she said. “The conservative perspective is that this makes the language confusing. It’s a torture of the language.”
Thank the Lord that there are a few people left who haven’t lost their common sense.
“Push for Ethnic Studies in Schools Faces a Dilemma: Whose Stories to Tell”
By Dana Goldstein
The New York Times
August 15, 2019
states the following:
The materials [from a draft of California’s newly proposed ethnic studies curriculum for K-12 public schools] are unapologetically activist — and jargony. They ask students to “critique empire and its relationship to white supremacy, racism, patriarchy, cisheteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism and other forms of power and oppression.” A goal, the draft states, is to “connect ourselves to past and contemporary resistance movements that struggle for social justice.” …
It did not help that some of the terms used throughout the more than 300 pages of documents — “hxrstory, “cisheteropatriarchy,” “accompliceship” — were inscrutable to many in Sacramento and beyond.
Words like hxrstory and cisheteropatriarchy jump out at me. They horrify me. The fact of such words being used actually depresses me.
Nothing that can be imagined, dreaded, is beyond the language police.
Such words in particular suggest a thought to me. That the would-be PC czars (language-destroying Robespierres) hate the idea of GENDER. They wish gender didn’t exist.
It’s a basic fact of life, as I noted in this post, that — as far as I know — most people have a gender. Many words do too.
The fact that pronouns and other words are “gendered” is an artifice, so to speak, in that languages, while they developed naturally or “organically,” are not living, breathing things. A word does not actually have a gender. So, one can, in theory, contemplate changing the language with respect, say, to whether I say “he,” “she,” or “their”; “chairman” or “chairperson.” Whereas sex (masculine or feminine) in human beings is intrinsic at birth.
What depresses and bothers me — I find it patently wrong and anti-human — is that the PC language police — the zealots who want to abolish “gendered” words and go to ridiculous lengths to do so, coming up with abominations invented by them such as cisheteropatriarchy — are opposed to recognition being made of gender as something basic, intrinsic — a FACT, as it were. They want to revise gender out of the language (if not our consciousness) and suppress recognition of same.
I am a parent, and I would have been pleased to have had a daughter. I, in common with most men, like women. I am also happy to be male. Growing up, being a boy meant wonderful, open friendships with chums; playing sports and following professional teams; and other “male” things. I am glad I was born a boy, but I had no choice. If I “erred” in associating things like sports with masculinity (girls played sports even in those days, but there was more rigidity and adherence to stereotypes, admittedly, back then about gender roles and activities), so be it. I am not ashamed of or uncomfortable with being a male. And, I have no qualms about using “gendered” words. Why should I?
This morning, I was “tormented” trying to identify a musical passage running through my mind. Passages come back to me like this. Rhythm or stress must be an essential aspect of music (yes, I know, it goes without saying), because — this is from a nearly functionally illiterate music lover — I kept recalling how this particular passage is accented or stressed; that is how I best remember it. I am not sure what the particular musical term is. Agitato? Sforzando?
Listen to this movement for chorus from Vivaldi’s Gloria RV 589: namely, Domine, Fili unigenite (the only begotten Son of God). It’s a little over two minutes long.
Is it not marvelous? It is passages and works like these that make Vivaldi so special and inimitable. His music uplifts.
This wonderful performance is from the album Vivaldi’s Gloria by the Academy of Ancient Music, conductors Simon Preston and Christopher Hogwood; the Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.
— Roger W. Smith
July 2019
P.S. It is music like this that makes me feel like I want to weep with tears of joy.
The Spanish have el mano and the French la fenêtre.
Should we ban these “gendered” articles and insist they be replaced with new ones invented in the “language laboratory” / “incubator” staffed by technocrats in lab coats?
Our glorious English tongue has been around for some 1,200 years.
SOME SPECIFIC COMMENTS ON THIS ATROCIOUS OPINION PIECE (Quotations from the op-ed are in italics. My comments are in boldface.)
The singular “they” is inclusive and flexible, and it breaks the stifling prison of gender expectations. Let’s all use it.
‘[T]he stifling prison of gender expectations.” Is this an op-ed about children in cages? I thought we were talking about grammar.
I am your stereotypical, cisgender, middle-aged suburban dad.
What the f____ is “cisgender”? It’s a buzzword I can do without.
… most people guess that I go by “he” and “him.” And that’s fine; I will not be offended if you refer to me by those traditional, uselessly gendered pronouns.
But “he” is not what you should call me. If we lived in a just, rational, inclusive universe — one in which we were not all so irredeemably obsessed by the particulars of the parts dangling between our fellow humans’ legs, nor the ridiculous expectations signified by those parts about how we should act and speak and dress and feel — there would be no requirement for you to have to assume my gender just to refer to me in the common tongue.
How about moving to Laputa? You would fit right in there. Maybe you could secure a language policy making post there. … Oops, have you heard of Laputa? Did you ever read Jonathan Swift? Why do I doubt it?
So why does standard English impose a gender requirement on the third-person singular? And why do elite cultural institutions — universities, publishers and media outlets like The Times — still encourage all this gendering? To get to my particular beef: When I refer to an individual whose gender I don’t know here in The Times, why do I usually have to choose either “he” or “she” or, in the clunkiest phrase ever cooked up by small-minded grammarians, “he or she”?
No requirement is imposed. This writer is out of his (“gendered” possessive pronoun) depth. The language evolved that way. The writer probably prefers genetically engineered foods and hothouse plans. Has he ever stopped to admire a dandelion or oak tree?
… why do elite cultural institutions — universities, publishers and media outlets like The Times — still encourage all this gendering?
Before opining any further on this topic, about which you are ignorant, I suggest you take a couple of English courses, grammar and lit; and a course in a foreign language would be very helpful too. This might enable you to begin to grasp and maybe even appreciate the beauty of languages, both grammar and structure, their uniqueness, distinctive features, how precious this is, as a flower to botanist or layperson. Read a Great Book or two. (Please don’t advocate “scrubbing” them.) It won’t hurt. You will see that the King’s English — now spoken all over the world — has a glorious history and the magnificence of a mighty oak.
I suspect my call will be dismissed as useless virtue-signaling, but there are several clear advantages, both linguistic and cultural, to the singular “they.” One of the main ones is that it’s ubiquitous. According to linguists who study gender and pronouns, “they” and “them” are increasingly and widely seen as legitimate ways to refer to an individual, both generically and specifically, whether you know their gender or not — as I just did right in this sentence.
Your “call”? As in a ministerial calling? Why do I get the impression that you — a would be word maven and “word watcher” (read language policeman) — have no facility in (as in infelicitous phrase) or reverence for correct usage? “[V]irtue signaling”?
That’s probably why the singular, gender-neutral “they” is common not just in transgender and nonbinary communities, for whom it is necessary, but also in mainstream usage, where it is rapidly becoming a standard way we refer to all people. If you watch closely, you’ll see the usage in marketing copy, on social media, in app interfaces and just about everywhere else you look. For instance, when Uber or Lyft wants to tell you that your driver has arrived, they send you a notification that says something like: “Juan is almost here. Meet them outside.”
Whom should we entrust with setting language standards? Uber execs, advertisers? Heaven help us.
Other than plainly intolerant people, there’s only one group that harbors doubts about the singular “they”: grammarians. If you’re one of those people David Foster Wallace called a “snoot,” Lyft’s use of “them” to refer to one specific Juan rings grammatically icky to you. The singular, gender nonspecific “they” has been common in English as long as people have spoken English, but since the 18th century, grammar stylists have discouraged it on the grounds that “they” has to be plural. That’s why institutions that cater to snoots generally discourage it.
This post focuses on an opinion piece in Friday’s New York Times:
The Dominance of the White Male Critic
Conversations about our monuments, museums, screens and stages have the same blind spots as our political discourse.
By Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Chi-hui Yang
The New York Times
July 5, 2019
An opinion piece written to challenge conventional ideas and positions. To stimulate readers to rethink issues. To challenge unenlightened Establishment views.
It will get attention, but as a piece of writing it is a soporific.
It is built on a very insubstantial tissue of generalities and awkward locutions often intended to serve as code words. And which shows that the authors are preaching to the choir. They don’t feel compelled to explain and elucidate things for the general reader or for skeptical readers. They are confident that those who agree will get it (the points they are making) without them having to take pains to be clear. In fact, a certain arch obscurity, a predilection for almost unintelligible generalizations couched in faux-high-flown language, which, in their view — from their perspective as writers — fits the piece well. While it challenges conventional thinking, the op-ed is itself an example of weak, unoriginal thinking and a specimen of very poor, insipid writing.
A header states: Ms. Méndez Berry and Mr. Yang started a program to amplify the work of critics of color.”
Quoting from the piece, below, I have provided my own annotations and comments in boldface. Excerpts from the op-ed are in italics.
I am not going to try and respond to the op-ed’s major premises. But here are some examples of what I feel is shoddy writing. Writing that obscures rather than clarifies issues and shows a tendency towards tendentiousness.
Yet those who have for decades been given the biggest platforms to interpret culture are white men. This means that the spaces in media where national mythologies are articulated, debated and affirmed are still largely segregated. The conversation about our collective imagination has the same blind spots as our political discourse.
Typical wording for this piece. This is generic-speak. It is very portentous and actually says very little.
“those who have for decades been given the biggest platforms to interpret culture”
Awkward and wordy.
“the spaces in media where national mythologies are articulated”
Yet the most dynamic art in America today is being made by artists of color and indigenous artists.
There is nothing wrong with this sentence syntactically, but such a broad claim is not sustainable.
The example of “Green Book” [an Oscar-winning film, the critical reception of which the authors discuss] shows how uncritical affection for superficially benevolent stories can actually reinforce the racial hierarchies this country is built on. We need culture writers who see and think from places of difference and who are willing to take unpopular positions so that ideas can evolve or die.
Very pretentious.
“how uncritical affection for superficially benevolent stories can actually reinforce the racial hierarchies this country is built on”
More boiler plate generic-speak, a kind of language which says nothing and clarifies nothing.
“culture writers who see and think from places of difference”
This is horribly vague (and affected) wording. So much so that it says nothing. Critics write, they don’t “see and think.” They write at their desks. “[P]laces of difference”? This is doublespeak.
In a clickbait attention economy where more than half of visual arts critics make on average less than $20,000 per year from arts writing, the voices that are most needed are the least likely to emerge.
Something is said supposedly cleverly where the words are actually muddying the waters. “[C]lickbait attention economy” is a maladroit coinage which adds nothing informational- or content-wise.
In 2017, we began an initiative called Critical Minded to help amplify the work of critics of color and knock down the barriers they face. (The project is focused on racial justice in criticism, but we’re also concerned about class, gender identity, sexual orientation and ability.)
This is an example of opinions supposedly being stated forcefully, weakened by careless phrasing: “knock down the barriers” they face,” for example.
“[W]e’re also concerned about class, gender identity, sexual orientation and ability.”
In other words, the authors are concerned about everything. Way too broad and general.
Think of cultural criticism as a public utility, civic infrastructure that needs to be valued not based just on its monetary impact but also on its capacity to expand the collective conversation at a time when it is dangerously contracting. Arts writing fosters an engaged citizenry that participates in the making of its own story.
This is too general. The point is not sharply made or clearly elucidated. And, it is an example of how generic writing can obfuscate rather than clarify things. In my mind, criticism is just that. I know what the word criticism means: a book or film review; a review of a concert or museum exhibit. Criticism as a “public utility, civic infrastructure”? By trying to be profound and all wise, the authors stray beyond the parameters of common sense and lose the reader.
Culture writers are often unpopular, and critics of color doubly so: Marginalized by mainstream outlets, they’re sometimes viewed with suspicion within their own communities when they challenge a beloved artist. At their best they are unbought and unbossed, which makes them difficult to employ, and doubly necessary.
The authors of the op-ed may think this. But the point is so broad, and is communicated in such a fuzzy and heavy-handed manner, that most readers won’t be convinced. “[T]hey are unbought and unbossed” is atrocious wording.
We need a rigorous, rollicking culture coverage that’s uncoupled from class and credentials.
Same thing here. Supposedly en pointe, clever wording which actually says very little and shows writers trying to convince and impress who fall flat. ‘[R]igorous, rollicking” is an oxymoron.
We should move away from anointing a talented two or three critics of color and toward kaleidoscopic ecosystems of ideas and taste.
“[K]aleidoscopic ecosystems of ideas and taste” Another pretentious, fuzzy, and awful coinage. An example of writers violating the principle of simplicity and clarity.
Coverage shifts when people mobilize for change. It’s time for culture writing to follow culture to where it flows and to value the people it engages.
This is overly generic. Such overly generic writing is flabby and invariably unconvincing.
Some of my own thoughts about the term “people of color” and associated or implied ideas. The authors assume that we all know and agree as to what the term means (and, implicitly, approve of its usage).
What is a person of color? It is supposed to mean, in contemporary parlance, a person other than a white person or a person (presumably white) of European parentage.
What is a white person? A person who is not a person of color.
Is a Spanish (i.e., a person born or residing in Spain) person white? Yes, according to the above definition.
Is a Hispanic person (who is presumably or with a fair degree of probability, descended from Spaniards, although perhaps — it often seems to be the case — of mixed ethnicity comprised of descent from Spanish settlers in the American continent and other perhaps indigenous races) a person of color? Yes, as “people of color” is meant to be understood. In other words, perhaps of European ancestry (wholly or partially), going back a way, but not now one of that group.
This divides humanity into wide swaths, with well over a half in the category of persons of color.
These “definitions” seem to be an example of what might be called reductio ad absurdum — in that, by the time we have made the distinctions between categories of persons based upon a nonsensical formulation or formula, we have elucidated nothing and created considerable confusion; and left one wondering why, for example, people of descent from this or that ethnic group end up being in distinct categories. Separated, arbitrarily, into two groups, which obliterates any and all other distinctions.
Does the term “people of color” have meaning and is it based upon skin color, as the words seem to say unmistakably? It must be based upon skin color, since whites are in a separate category from non-whites. But how does one distinguish between the races this way, and make sense of it? When I was growing up, we were told that there were four races: white, black or brown, yellow, and red. Do Asians have yellow skin? I have met hardly any American Indians, but they don’t, in photographs I have seen, look that different to me from white people. Perhaps their skin is slightly more ruddy, and they do seem to have distinctive features that I would not be able to categorize. I don’t know and I don’t care.
I think this whole thing about “people of color” and the rest of humanity (us whites and Europeans) is nonsense. It is a very crude “measuring device,” rule of thumb, guidepost, or whatever one wants to call it. It divides people arbitrarily with no rationale and negates our common humanity.
I will probably be accused of having reactionary, benighted opinions for saying the following. I believe that race and ethnicity do matter. A lot. What was my ancestry? My ethnicity? My nationality or my parents’, grandparents’, or ancestors’ nationality, which is to say cultural heritage?
Is it surprising that often athletes seem to have children who are also good at sports? Often the great athletes were sons of athletes of more than average ability. That great scholars and intellectuals often were raised in an intellectual milieu by parents who themselves were intellectuals? That prodigies in the arts often had parents who were similarly gifted or inclined? Offspring of singers and actors? Siblings who excel in the same area such as scholarship, sports, or the arts. And so forth. (A critic will say, the only reason the children of composers or musicians, say, are often musically gifted themselves is because their successful parents gave them lessons, or could afford to pay instructors, or had a prior interest or expertise that they passed on to their children. Perhaps so — undoubtedly environmental factors or what is called nurture were important — but I don’t think the fact can be ignored that there might be genetic factors in play by which traits get passed on to offspring: a “musical gene,” say, a baseball, basketball, or track and field “gene.”)
What does this show us? That ethnicity and heritage can mean a lot. In individual cases. Which will not lead one to jump to the conclusion, I hope, that I am a racist. I am not trying to say that belonging to a particular racial or ethnic group makes some people “better” than others in any conceivable way. But the group I was born into, which I am descended from — my genealogy — made and makes a difference to me. Meaning that, when I consider my strengths and weaknesses, my talents and proclivities, and so on, I can see that circumstances of birth and upbringing (the latter of which was influenced by cultural factors) had a lot to with the kind of person I turned out to be. Was I good at sports? music? book learning? learning languages? mathematics? dexterity? mechanical things and “practical wisdom”? Et cetera.
I have always felt that we should not leap from this — from analyzing and trying to understand how heredity and environment may have shaped and molded an individual, and may well influence his or her current outlook — to making generalizations or unfair comparisons, or setting up yardsticks. To favoring one group over another, barring anyone from competing in “the game” of life or getting an education or training in this or that field. It is my firm conviction that there should be a level playing field for all; and that race, ethnicity, color, or what have you — choose your own criterion — should not be a factor in making decisions about who is admitted, hired, gets a scholarship, and so forth. But that goes for EVERYONE, as I see it, all races and ethnicities, all nationalities: for “people of color” and the rest of humanity — there shouldn’t be any distinctions made in this regard between groups. And, generalities and commonly held beliefs are just that: generalities. For every example of behavior or achievement befitting a common assumption about differences among races — a presupposition someone has or that was once held (I see no point in enumerating stereotypes) — there are a zillion exceptions.
So (the authors note), the six most influential art critics in the country, “as selected by their peers” (this is important) are all white and almost all male. To me, this is not a problem. There would be a problem if women or minorities were excluded by policy as cultural critics and newspapers or magazines would not hire them. And, the fact of a critic being a woman or from a minority group might enable them to see things from a different perspective. But, basically, when I read criticism, I want it to be well written and worth reading, and to “educate” me in a way that is possible when the writer has a deep knowledge of the discipline. That’s all I care about. If a critic is good, he or she is good; and vice versa. I’m color blind and sex indifferent when I read criticism or anything else. Except that, I might realize that the critic is bringing to bear some of his or her own experience or background. One doesn’t have to ignore ethnic or cultural background, if it seems relevant or pertinent to what the critic is saying, somehow. That may add to our understanding, but if the critic is not, as is most often the case, a “person of color,” I feel that it is wrong of persons such as the authors of this op-ed to find that to be problematic, and to object.
