The Age of Satan

I’ve not long finished Satan: a Biography by P G. Maxwell-Stuart, an expert on the history of witchcraft and magic in Europe. It’s a stimulating account, sober and scholarly rather than sensationalist, which explores perceptions of the devil in Europe and beyond, from the earliest times right up to the present day; from religious fears to cultish hysteria.

It’s also, I suppose, an exploration of the function of the great adversary, the purpose he has served through the ages; from seducer of Eve to the friend and comforter of witches. The remarkable thing is the range of identities he could and did assume, not always that of the grotesque and frightening but the beautiful and the seductive. I never really understood why Satan would ever want to come in the form of the beast if his mission was to entice people to take his particular path, rather than the path of God. :-)

Arguably the most enticing part of this book is the way in which Maxwell-Stuart takes confessions of satanic pacts, which one naturally assumes to have been forced, usually by torture or the threat of torture, and tales of demonic possession, at face value, as evidence of a ‘genuine’ experience, evidence which he tests and explores. Dreams, the effects of drug-taking and even real life encounters are all given serious scholarly attention. The important thing here is that the author avoids the usual condescending view of the past. For the most part his account proceeds through the ‘age of faith’, when the supernatural, the experience of the supernatural, was a reality accepted by all sections of society, from scholar to scullery maid.

By the nineteenth century the great division had set in between ‘reason’ and ‘superstition’, casting Satan into the uncertain realms between disbelief and sensationalism. But Satan is always with us, a personification not of the beastly but the all too human; a personification of the darker side of humanity. If the eighteenth century was the age of reason then the twentieth century surely became the age of Satan. Is he a symbol or is he a living presence? Well, I leave you to make up your own mind. :-)

The Demon is always moving about at my side;
He floats about me like an impalpable air;
I swallow him, I feel him burn my lungs
And fill them with an eternal, sinful desire.

Sometimes, knowing my deep love for Art, he assumes
The form of a most seductive woman,
And, with pretexts specious and hypocritical,
Accustoms my lips to infamous philtres.

He leads me thus, far from the sight of God,
Panting and broken with fatigue, into the midst
Of the plains of Ennui, endless and deserted,

And thrusts before my eyes full of bewilderment,
Dirty filthy garments and open, gaping wounds,
And all the bloody instruments of Destruction!

A Good Nazi

I saw Good earlier this year, a movie directed by Vicente Amorim and starring Vigo Mortensen as one John Halder, a professor of literature in a German university in the 1930s. It's based on the play of the same name by Cecil Philip Taylor.

Before proceeding let me just say that I have a particular interest in the process of moral corruption, the manner in which people are compromised by association with evil though not in themselves necessarily evil. It's not that long since I finished reading Jonathan Littell's The Kindly Ones, in which the author tries to determine by what process an ordinary man becomes part of an apparatus of murder. I have to say that I thought this book was grossly over-praised for what it offered, particularly in the way of literary skill, but the idea behind it was intriguing and sound. It rests, perhaps, on one key question: what would you, yes, you, have done if you had lived in Nazi Germany? Would you be the one in a hundred thousand who had the courage to say no or, would you have drifted along, like so many others, for the sake of your family, your friends, your colleagues, or simply for the sake of your career? It's not a question that I personally can answer with any true certainty.

So back to Good which tells the story of a 'good' German, an unassuming man, a family man, a teacher of literature and a lover of Proust, shocked by the barbarism of the new Reich. He refuses to join the Party despite the urging of his Nazi father-in-law. He has a Jewish friend, a psycho-analyst, with whom he served in the same regiment during the First World War. Taking nothing seriously, the good professor believes that the nightmare will pass, as he assures Maurice, his Jewish friend, played by Jason Isaacs.

Halder undergoes, I suppose, what was referred to at the time as 'internal emigration', namely he retreats into himself, into his personal world. During this period he happens to write a novel, a romance, which touches at the end on the subject of assisted suicide, the supreme act of love. That's it, he doesn't think any more on the subject until some years later he is summoned to the Reich Chancellery, there to meet none other than Philipp Bouhler, played by Mark Strong in one of the movie's better performances, who tells him that the Fuhrer himself has been impressed by the message offered by the novel he wrote all those years before.

So, Halder, essentially a man with little strength of character or moral resolution, at first frightened by the invitation and unsure of what was wanted of him, is flattered, showing no reluctance to prepare a paper on the subject of 'mercy death.' He even receives rank in the SS, shocking Maurice as much as it pleased his Nazi-sympathising mistress. From this point forward his career takes off and his novel is turned into a movie, with the final scene showing a loving husband holding his dying wife in his arms.

The compromises continue from this point forward. Halder preserves something of his old 'decency' in continuing attempts to help Maurice, though his efforts are never very forceful. Maurice finally disappears during the Kristallnacht pogrom of 1938. Years later, on a visit to what I take to be Auschwitz, Halder, now resplendent in his black SS uniform, comes across Maurice in a kind of tableaux from hell. He observes and he drifts with the same bewilderment that has pursued him throughout.

As a movie Good is not that good. It most definitely suffers in comparison with The Reader: it's anaemic where that latter was full-blooded. But the moral dilemmas explored are interesting, as Halder remains 'good', if perplexed, right to the end. The essential problem with Nazism, of the whole Nazi experience, was not evil in itself; for few people are truly evil. No, it was moral cowardice.

Not PC-in Praise of a Great Englishman

Lovers of the English language, or words in general, will be mindful that this year marks the three-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Doctor Samuel Johnson, the compiler of our first dictionary. His namesake, the equally larger than life Boris Johnson marked the occasion with a piece in The Daily Telegraph, pointing out how ill-fitted he would be as commentator in our PC world: Polly Toynbee would be in a permanent state of apoplexy! He was certainly no believer in the equality of the sexes;

Public practices of any art, and staring in men's faces, is very indelicate in a female.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.

Now add to the mixture an explosive xenophobia, one that still embraced the traditional English dislike of the Scots, the Irish and the French. Even the Americans don't escape a swipe;

Sir, they are a race of convicts and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of a hanging.

The French were a dirty lot and Ireland was worth seeing but not worth going to see. But his sharpest barbs were directed against the 'Scotch';

What enemy would invade Scotland, where there is nothing to be got?

Asked by a Scot what Johnson thought of Scotland: "That it is a very vile country, to be sure, Sir" "Well, Sir! (replies the Scot, somewhat mortified), God made it." Johnson: "Certainly he did; but we must always remember that he made it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. S------; but God made hell."

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees, is the high road that leads him to England!

Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

His distaste even makes its way into The Dictionary, where the definition of oats is given as;

A grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.

Still for all that, for all of his curmudgeonly grumpiness, and the generally reactionary, high Tory nature of his views, he had a huge generosity of spirit. Though no believer human equality in general he was outraged by slavery. After the outbreak of the American Revolution he remarked;

How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?

One of his most intimate human relationships, moreover, was with his black servant, Francis Barber, generally known as Frank, whom he treated more or less like a son, solicitous over his education, and making him the chief beneficiary of his will. And despite all of the barbed humour and sallies directed at the Scots his most fruitful intellectual relationship was with James Boswell, a Scottish lawyer, whose tome-like Life of Johnson, one of the true landmarks of English literature, is the source of some of the more memorable bone mots, including a few of my favourites;

That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea, and that is a wrong one.

Sir, you have but two topicks, yourself and me. I am sick of both.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

I am willing to love all mankind, except an American.

A Frenchman must be always talking, whether he knows anything of the matter or not; an Englishman is content to say nothing, when he has nothing to say.

All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.

It was his own great project, The Dictionary of the English Language, the standard reference work until late into the nineteenth century, which caused the most astonishment when he was alive:

Adams: But, Sir, how can you do this in three years?

Johnson: Sir, I have no doubt that I can do it in three years.

Adams: But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their Dictionary.

Johnson: Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman.

Thus is the proportion of Samuel Johnson, a great lexicographer and a great Englishman. So, here is to you, Doctor Johnson, with all your sexism, with all your xenophobia, too big for this little age.

You've Got Blood on Your Hands

Do you wonder why Tony Blair’s Euro bandwagon, at once so strong, died not with a bang but a whimper? Among the reasons offered is that Britain still has a less than complete relationship with the rest of Europe, not being within the Euro zone itself and not being party to the Schengen Agreement. And, of course, there is the decision to go to war in Iraq, which does not make him the most popular figure across the Continent, though this consideration obviously weighs more heavily with ordinary people rather than politicians, who have continued to fete this vile man despite his bloody hands.

If the Eurocrats really wanted Blair I’m convinced that Iraq would have been but a minor consideration. Ah, but think again; he really was hoist by the petard of popular contempt, at least according to a snippet of information that I have come across. In October he had the neck to attend a memorial held at the Guildhall for those killed in Iraq, who included Lance Corporal Shaun Brierly, who died in March 2003. When Blair made to shake hands with Peter Brierly, Shaun’s father, he was snubbed with the words-“I’m not shaking your hand; you’ve got blood on it.”

This may have passed but the story reached Paris. There, according to senior government sources, Nicholas Sarkozy told his staff that the EU could not risk having a man as president who might very well be confronted by similar angry scenes. At the end of October he met with Angela Merkel and both agreed that Blair was indeed a potential public relations disaster. Various excuses were devised to excuse Sarko’s change of direction but the ‘blood on your hands’ confrontation is thought to be the decisive factor. Mister Brierly has expressed his pleasure. Sometimes, just sometimes, the things people do and say really do matter in changing the course of history.

Cossack Pirates

I suppose when people think of Cossacks they bring horsemen to mind, but the story of the sea-going variety is every bit as dramatic, and still remembered in Ukrainian foklore. Their story really begins after the Ottoman Turks gained control of the Crimean Khanate, and began to operate a trade in Ukrainian slaves out of the port of Kaffa. In 1553 Dmytro Vyshnevetsky organised several Cossack bands into a single host, centred on a fortified camp, known as a sich. This fortification was located on the lower Dnieper River close to a series of cataracts or za porohamy. Because of this the host took the name of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, and began raiding Turkish settlements along the shores of the Black Sea.

Their first recorded naval raid dates to 1538, with an attack on the fortress of Ochakov. This was followed by more frequent and better-organised raids elsewhere, the freeing of Christian slaves being one of the chief aims, as well as the acqusition of plunder. Their success was such that they attracted the attention of the western European powers, including the Papacy, who made diplomatic overtures in the hope of launching joint ventures against the Turks.

During the early decades of the seventeenth century the Zaporozhian naval war reached the height of its success. Using small, shallow-draft, and highly manoeuvrable galleys known as chaiky, they moved swiftly across the Black Sea. According to the Cossacks' own records, these vessels, carrying a 50 to 70 man crew, could reach the Anatolian coast of Asia Minor from the mouth of the Dnieper River in forty hours. The chaiky were often accompanied by larger galleys, that served as command and control centres. The raids also acquired a distinct political purpose after Petro Konashevych-Sahaidachny became hetman in 1613, intending to turn the host into the nucleus of a Ukrainian nation with the support of the European states.

By 1618 the Zaporozhians were members of the Anti-Turkish League, as Schaidachny transferred his seat of power to Kiev, nominally under Polish control, but functionally independent. The fighting qualities of the sea-going Cossacks was even admired in the Ottoman chronicles: "One can safely say that in the entire world one cannot find a people more careless for their lives or having less fear of death; persons versed in navigation assert that because of thir skill and boldness in naval battles these bands are more dangerous than any other enemy."

In 1615 the raiders even sailed to the walls of 'Tsarhorod', as they referred to the Turkish capital, plundering the ports of Mizevna and Archioca. An attempt by the Turks to blockade the mouth of the Dneiper, and thus deny the Cossacks access to the sea, was defeated in the spring of 1616, the raiders going on to capture Kaffa, which was burned down after all of the slaves were freed. That same year Trebizond, in eastern Anatolia, was captured and destroyed. Sultan Ahmed I sent his fleet to the Dneiper in pursuit; but instead of going home the Cossacks once more sailed to Istanbul, where they raided at leisure, even rampaging through the Topkapi Palace, according to one account. The city was raided four more times, once in 1620 and no fewer than three times in 1624.

After 1624 the Zaporozhian raids gradually died out, as the Cossacks began to devote more and more of their martial energies to land-based campaigns, fighting on one side and then the other during such conflicts as the Thirty Years War. But the legacy of the raiders remains an important part of the Ukrainian national consciousness. And if anyone wants a little fanciful insight into the spirit of these indomitable men, then I would suggest looking at Ilya Repin's marvellous painting Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV.

Keep Calm and Carry On

The fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago signalled the beginning of the end for communism across much of the world. When the flood was over the one major outpost left was China. Why? Was it simply because of the brute force show at in the Tiananmen Square Massacre? In part, yes, but mass killings did not save the vile Ceauşescu regime in Romania. The real answer lies in the collapse of a second wall, a wall built on lies and hypocrisy. China continues to be ruled by a corrupt and self-perpetuating oligarchy but communism, the ideology of communism, is long dead.

There was a point when the regime seemed to be about to lose the 'mandate of heaven'. The resignation of Erich Honecker, the colourless dictator of the old East German, in October 1989 was serious blow to the morale of the Chinese gerontocracy. It was Deng Xiaoping, the second Great Helmsman, who urged them to keep calm and carry on with reforms.

It was a subtle process, though, not at all like the Gorbachev programme in Russia, floundering on the promotion of idealism, on the gap between image and reality. The Chinese saw that disaster was like a tree refusing to give way to the wind: an ossified ideology, an entrenched an unimaginative elite and an inflexible party organisation all standing on top of a stagnant economy.

The Chinese would not have political liberty, but they would have economic liberty. They would, in other words, have capitalism. Walls came down, economic walls, the walls that had restricted and frustrated personal initiative. The paradox here is that, in China at least, it was capitalism that saved communism, or saved the Communist Party, to be more exact.

There are, as the Marxists would say, serious contradictions here, contradictions between economic liberalism and state authoritarianism. The Chinese establishment has adjusted very well to the new realities and the new riches that owe nothing at all to the official state religion. But how far this can continue it is difficult to say. How far, indeed, can economic liberalism continue without political liberalism? If China were beset be a serious economic crisis the structure of the state itself is likely to come under the closest of scrutiny rather than simply the policy of the government.

The oligarchs have kept calm and are carrying on in the fashion urged by Deng. But freedom, real freedom, still scares them. Walls have come down, yes, but firewalls have gone up.

Art and Power

All official art contains an element of propaganda. Let me give you a specific example. If I mention the name of the English king Henry VIII does this conjure up a specific image in your mind? Yes? Well, if it does, I think I can probably guarantee that it is the same confident and bull-like presentation that most people have: a man of boundless arrogance and limitless self-regard. This is the image that has made its way into popular culture, and possibly makes Henry one of the most recognised monarchs in all of history. In my estimation this puts Hans Holbein in the first rank of 'propaganda' painters. His paintings are not about people: they are about power.

It was Thomas Cromwell, the great Machiavellian, who first detected Holbeins's potential as the 'official' artist of the Reformed party in England, commissioning him to create anti-papal illustrations for books and pamphlets. In 1536 Holbein reached the very top of his profession, when he was appointed as the King's Painter. All images for public consumption were now his responsibility, and he depicted the Tudors very much in the fashion desired by the king, including the huge mural he painted in the palace of Whitehall. But of course being the painter of the rich and powerful also had dangers. Flattery and magnification became second nature to Holbein, who even did his best with the unprepossessing Anne of Cleves, Henry's mail-order bride. The gap between the 'ideal' and the reality was to lead to the fall of Cromwell, and the partial reversal of the English Reformation. Such is the power of art!