Almost
every man wastes
a part of his life
in attempts to display qualities
which he does not possess.
Samuel Johnson
To
the extent that we are all born into a particular climate that
calls for particular adaptations, that we speak a mother tongue,
respect and obey specific laws, customs and traditions, we are
all ‘cultured.’ Despite this definition, when we
express the desire to become cultured, or speak admirably of
someone who already is, we are referring to something quite
above and beyond what is naturally acquired due to the circumstances
of our birth and upbringing.
The
dictionary defines a cultured person as one who takes an interest
in and is acquainted with what is generally regarded as excellence
in arts, letters, manners and scholarly pursuits. Since all
of us early in life are quite naturally uncultured, we undertake
the pursuit of culture as an act of faith, seeing in cultured
persons the promise held for ourselves, as a believer in a God
unseen and unheard might catch intimations of God in the exemplary
life of a nun or priest. At the onset, we, the novitiates, will
be severely tested in our faith because, best teachers and great
works notwithstanding, no one can understand for us what we
wish to understand ourselves. To become meaningfully engaged
with what is excellent in a culture requires we enter into a
vital relationship with a work of culture (an arduous one-work-at-a-time
task), so that what is essential and outstanding in the work
can be revealed and integrated into our primary structures of
consciousness.
Most
of us have a pretty good idea what one must ‘first’
do to become cultured: go to art galleries, read the world’s
great literature and listen to the world’s great music.
And in proportion to our ability and persistence, the more effort
we put in, the more cultured we become, a development that runs
parallel to one’s life over a lifetime.
But
we also know that it is human nature -- the behaviour patterns
all cultures share -- to circumvent difficult undertakings,
or avoid the effort altogether. All of us, at some point in
our lives, will have affected knowledge of an esteemed work
of culture without having put in the necessary effort to lay
authentic claim to it. In fact, we place such extraordinary
importance in being regarded as cultured that, in order to effect
the appearance, we routinely avail ourselves all sorts of ruses
and short cuts (from Coles Notes, to watching a movie of a book
we’re too lazy to read) at the risk of being discovered
by our betters, whom we then conveniently confuse with ourselves.
For
the record, every age has had its share of triflers and dilettantes,
who in their transparency have created, as a reaction, the bloated
category of skeptics mistrustful of culture, of those who have
given culture a bad name. Arthur Koestler, in The Act of
Creation, observes that a snob is someone who when reading
Dostoyevsky is moved not by what he reads but by himself reading
Dostoyevsky, referring to people for whom culture is like a
currency whose accumulation is synonymous with power and status.
And we all know of people (excluding ourselves, of course) who
would rather be seen in prestigious art galleries than see what
is prestigious in the art, or be seen attending the opera than
attend to what is art in the opera. In other words, our great
books and collections of classical music may reflect our pretensions
and/or best intentions, or we may in fact be sufficiently serious
to want to incorporate them into our vital labors.
The
biological-microorganism sense of a culture is informative.
We speak of growing a bacteria culture, or the product or growth
resulting from such cultivation. If we begin to think of a work
of culture as a seed we plant by taking an interest in it, and
its germination and subsequent growth dependent on the labour
and care we give it over a period of time, the conditions will
be propitious for the ideas in the book we are reading, for
example, to establish a permanent space for themselves in our
thought structures. As we react to the book, which in turn informs
our life’s choices, we preserve and renew its meaning
and authority.
Henrik
Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, from the play of the same title,
becomes meaningful as a category when the destructive principle
that operates in some people emerges consequent to our having
reacted to Hedda in the conduct of her daily life. It is not
enough to know what Hedda Gabler did in Act Two and whose lives
she ruined in Act Four. She must rival and compete with the
people we know who inform our choices and worldview. We will
have already imagined being attracted to her energy, her enthusiasm,
the quickness of her mind, her wit and charm, her superb company
and abundant femininity, only to learn that the sum of these
gifts was no match against her demons. We finally, reluctantly
abandon Hedda, no longer able to bear witness to fits of passion
that turn destructive when life doesn’t conform to her
expectations, for whom malice and vindictiveness are their own
rewards, and no act too base against life’s tedium. Hedda’s
mediocrity weighs heavily on us like a regret over something
great left undone.
Through
Ibsen, an essence, or category of understanding emerges so that
we are able to recognize the Hedda Gablers of this world whenever
we confront them. To the extent that we are familiar with at
least one work in such a fashion, we can modestly lay claim
to being cultured.
In
endeavoring to understand the nature of evil, the eminent critic
George Steiner found it incomprehensible that Hitler henchman,
Göring, founder of the Gestapo, by all accounts a cultured
man, could listen to and be moved to tears by the symphonies
of Beethoven before attending to death camp duties; facts which
splinter the mind and render mute a wonderful mind such as Steiner’s.
But was Göring ‘truly’ cultured if, however
moved by the creative powers of the music, he wasn’t sufficiently
moved to act on the humanity the music should have unlocked?
The answer has to be, no. Göring was not cultured; he was
a barbarian, a butcher, and we know this from the historical
record.
It
is only through the deeds we perform and the duties we assume
that sufficient measure can be brought to bear on the question
of whether or not we have become better human beings as a consequence
of our engagement with what is excellent in arts and letters.
Best said by French philosopher Merleau-Ponty: “A man
is judged by neither intention nor fact, but by his success
in making values become facts.”
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