essaysbysean.blogspot.com “Martian Machine Passing Parthenon”
Being the title of a photolithograph, from after the War of the Worlds.
Prologue
Chief Engineer Gordon Malloy of “The Orville” (TV) in Lasting Impressions:
“We look at these images of people who lived hundreds of years ago, and they’re so distant looking, that it’s easy to think that they don’t matter; but then you stand in a room like that and you realize… this used to be their world, and it was just as alive to them as our is to us.”
(‘How can you say that? Are you on drugs?’)
“This is a totally natural high. I just felt like I saw the universe in a new light—and it was a rush!”
Art and History
When it comes to naming their favourite university class, more undergraduates have told me they like Art History than any other course. At the time, I had guessed it was not the “art” but the “history” they liked—from finally being ready to learn. Like when a friend over 30 was amazed by a seminar during a science fiction convention, on “Future Rules of Warfare.” She told me the fans kept referring to historical rules, to a history that sounded so “fascinating” to her, a fascination she had never felt as a girl in high school.
I replied: “History” for school-kids is a glorified vocabulary course; with facts, dates of “battles” and “border changes.” Teenagers aren’t developmentally ready yet to feel concern for people in the past, nor to feel responsible for managing their community today, let alone feel determined as citizens to steer their country’s future by the stars of history.
Later, as adults in university, many still aren’t ready to accept full citizenship, not enough to forgo a Saint Patrick’s Day beer bash and a massive Spring Break in Florida beach towns during the COVID-19 epidemic…
Of course my university guess was wrong. Not history, but art: That’s what the students liked, having their “consciousness raised” for beauty, while having artist’s names, formerly “mere words,” freighted with meaning. If this “crazy” modern art has prices as high as the “crazy” salaries of professional athletes, then it is for the same reason: “market value.” And no, the museum curators and the lovers of art are not being hoaxed.
Over in Central London, I found a brochure listing a score of public artwork, and yet another brochure listing a score of art along the subway lines. One of my privileges, in overcast drizzly London, at the British Museum, was seeing historic Greek marble sculptures, along with a white scale model of the parthenon. I can’t afford to go further east to the Grecian islands , to those hot sunny beaches, but at least I can afford to go east as far as the rainy British Isles, and view the many historical museums and galleries…
One of my fellow nerds went west to Hawaii, to compete in the Highland Games: Like me, he discovered he couldn’t linger on the beaches for very long.
Here on the frigid prairie, instead of lying on a beach reading Danielle Steele, I may drive to a hotel and sit watching the sci fi channel. One scene still has me chuckling: In sunny South America a nerd, Doctor Temperance “Bones,” is on vacation. She’s with her sweetheart, a “regular guy,” Agent Booth. Under the palms, Booth is “relaxing,” reposing on a lawn chair, holding a cold beer, wearing a straw hat, and feeling supremely happy… Bones doesn’t get it. She throws down a book—turns out she has a pile of them—and with gritted teeth declares, “When I’m doing nothing, I get tense.” Like the rest of the audience I laughed, but I’m with Bones on that one.
Which is why, besides to be thrifty, instead of enjoying England’s “pastures green” and “shrouded hills,” (William Blake) I used up all my vacation-time walking around in artistic nerdy Central London… Never mind “the continent:” I have already seen it, back when I was stationed in Germany, and had stayed in Rome—where every square foot of old wall is defaced with graffiti.
As for defacing, Novelist Mark Clifton once said, in effect, that great art can be a noble way of leaving a mark on history, while vandalizing art is an ignoble, “easy-way-out” for leaving a mark. …
Here is a War of the Worlds poem:
Machine Passing Parthenon
After the war,
from a camera lying in Greek rubble,
came that photo of a dark Fighting Machine,
striding past the white Parthenon.
A famous photo,
balanced and proportioned,
Parthenon to the left, machine passing to the right.
The machine
made from cold equations.
The Parthenon
a marvel of the golden mean.
I had learned
of golden numbers,
and nautilus chambers,
back in elementary school.
I was over thirty
in night school with design students,
before I grasped how the eye tracks
through repetition of lines,
echoes of shapes,
tensions of color,
and the geometry of pleasure.
Some appreciate less,
as with modern Greeks defacing their marbles,
and storing gunpowder in the Parthenon.
The Martians in their sunken pits,
never sleeping,
devoid of appreciation,
working their Handling Machines day and night,
were artless and cold and utilitarian,
without sleep,
without dreams,
without beauty.
…
…
…
Sean Crawford, My comment canvas is blank,
In sight of the Rocky Mountains,
September 2020
Grim Update: Another sort of art vandalizing is to assassinate a music-artist “for self-glory,” as today, Sept 22, the man who shot John Lennon gave as his reason for shooting. (link)
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