A Moment of Camelot

Don't let it be forgot

That once there was a spot

For one brief shining moment that was known

As Camelot.

~From Camelot

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

The few years of the Kennedy Administration have been called a Camelot, but the term is more applicable to John F. Kennedy’s symbol of American liberty and determination in foreign policy rather than in his domestic or economic policies. In fact, his two years in office weren’t enough to either damage or benefit America’s economy. Instead, his hard line with communist USSR in the Cubin Missile Crisis and giving America inspiration in the space race was a last glimpse of prestige for the Office of the President before the Johnson and Nixon years. Kennedy’s presidency represented an optimism amidst a tumultuous time; a hope for the American president against communism. Truly tragic would have been the assassination of any American president in the early 60s, whether he ran the country well or ill; a sentiment not as easily shared today. Perhaps, the American sense of loyalty for the Office of the President was akin to the Biblical example of David, “I will not stretch out my hand against my lord, for he is the Lord’s anointed” (I Samuel 24:10). Kennedy was the "Lord's anointed" for a particular time in American history. In the context of a Christian America during the mid 20th Century, the assassination of Kennedy was the passing of a legendary Camelot before the shroud of the Vietnam War and American pessimism. Modern historians are naturally somewhat skeptical of allowing any element of legend to enter historical research. However, Jacqueline Kennedy offers the credible challenge that there is common ground between history and drama.

Legend is the child of bereavement; that glimpse of nightfall when a knight passes beyond the horizon of that which is no more. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote of one of his characters in Tales of a Wayside Inn:

In vellum bound, with gold bedight,
Great volumes garmented in white,
Recalling Florence, Pisa, Rome.
He loved the twilight that surrounds
The border-land of old romance;
Where glitter hauberk, helm, and lance,
And banner waves, and trumpet sounds,
And ladies ride with hawk on wrist,
And mighty warriors sweep along,
Magnified by the purple mist,
The dusk of centuries and of song.

In this context, legend is not necessarily untrue, although many legends are myths. It is an attempt to understand the significance of events that are final in their ends; a search for a legacy of what has passed. Medieval Camelot, as a once glamorous place long since sunk into the pages of history, exists only as a memorial. When legends become memorials, they are more likely to be applied and reapplied to future events of history, which resemble certain themes of the original legend. This begs the question, should the historian have an appreciation for an application of legend and significance in history? November 22, 1963 marks the death date of two individuals who believed legend was purposeful: C. S. Lewis and John F. Kennedy. Lewis wrote much on myth as a theologian, but Kennedy devoured history and legendary stories of King Author just for entertainment. This pastime of Kennedy’s was something Jacqueline Kennedy never really understood or appreciated until after Kennedy’s death. However, being confronted with bereavement herself over someone who was not only her husband but also a US President, she reminisced over his appreciation for heroic stories, one of which was Camelot. She asked the rhetorical question that many historians would be better to hear, “what’s the line between histrionics and drama?” As Jacqueline’s personal account of her husband’s death demonstrates, history must be cried or laughed at like drama; otherwise it loses its significance in the tragedies and blessings to human existence.

Jacqueline’s Camelot interview

Sources:
Title image composite by Jonathan VanDerhoof of Kennedys arrive at Dallas 11-22-63 and John william waterhouse tristan and isolde with the potion from Wikipedia
http://www.jfklancer.com/pdf/Camelot.pdf
http://www.hwlongfellow.org/poems_poem.php?pid=2013
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCUY2OLZTz8
http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/camelot/camelotreprise.htm

Robert Louis Stevenson: 160 Years

Per Scriptum E. Wesley - Mackinac Center Intern

The below includes four short book reviews in honor of Robert Louis Stevenson's 160th birthday (born November 13, 1850). Stevenson was a master at Victorian children's verse and prose, and formed a canonic realm for other's to follow. Born and bread in the Scottish Lowlands, he later lived in France and America, before settling in the South Sea island of Upolu where his formed a strong attachment with the natives. These fantastical settings produced the dynamic yet timeless backdrops for his poems and adventure stories. For more biographical information see here and here.

A Child's Garden of Verses (1885):

Stevenson was frequently ill as a child and stayed indoors. Child's Garden is like a window into his young soul. His poems contain all the frolics, hopes, and dreams of childhood, with a nievety that is almost melancholy to the adult reader. To the child, it is an encuragement to keep living a chivalric imagination. For example, in his last poem To Any Reader, Stevenson writes:

As from the house your mother sees

You playing round the garden trees,
So you may see, if you will look
Through the windows of this book,
Another child, far, far away,
And in another garden, play.
But do not think you can at all,
By knocking on the window, call
That child to hear you. He intent
Is all on his play-business bent,
He does not hear; he will not look.
Nor yet be lured out of this book.
For, long ago, the truth to say,
He has grown up and gone away,
And it is but a child of air
That lingers in the garden there.

Stevenson was writing of himself as an adult, but also he was preserving the eternal virtues of childhood. In this world of freedom and idyll, children march out for battle with handkerchief flags, play by the seaside, admire the innocent beauty of the seasons, and enjoy stories. However, Stevenson tempers the freedom of children with good behavior and security. Good morals and homeliness transform Child's Garden into a typical Victorian work of not just Romanticism but also cultural and family stability. Stevenson discovered that a child, far from being carefree, needs that motherly security and comfort, that homely bedroom, to keep out the scary night. Stevenson's In Port is perfect in that respect:

Last to the chamber where I lie
My fearful footsteps patter nigh,
And come from out the cold and gloom
Into my warm and cheerful room.
There, safe arrived, we turn about
To keep the coming shadows out,
And close the happy door at last
On all the perils that we past.
Then, when mama goes by to bed,
She shall come in with tip-toe tread,
And see me lying warm and fast
And in the Land of Nod at last.

Stevenson is perhaps the last person we would expect to see such gentleness from, and yet he knew firsthand as an invalid child the need for companionship. In fact, this delicacy, need, and bittersweetness are rarely seen in children's literature, but are the very attributes which make Stevenson's poems so childlike, real, and exemplary. In Child's Garden, Stevenson sets forth an image of family life which is stable, Victorian middle class, and free.

Treasure Island (1883):

Now for a complete change! Little elegance can be found in Treasure Island, but only danger, blood, lust for gold, and opportunities to make right or wrong decisions. Bare of the typical Victorian heaviness of historical description, Stevenson builds the setting and plot with rapid sensations of perspective. This was a unique approach, as Sir Walter Scott and G. A. Henty would rather insert chapters of introduction and explanation before getting to a plot.

In Treasure Island, Jim Hawkins as the young and innocent son of an inn owner, finds himself in possession of a treasure map, and decides to pursue the quest. However, the entire crew of the old treasure secretly accompany Jim on the voyage to the island of treasure, capture the ship, and force Jim into their confidence. Despite all the adventure, Jim desires justice and mercy rather than violence and piracy. In fact, Jim carries with him a sense of nobility and reserve that is juvenile and true. In this respect, the pop cultural stereotype of pirate adventures is unfair to Stevenson's original intent. The often unremembered last words of the novel read (Jim is narrating):

The bar silver and the arms still lie, for all that I know,

where Flint buried them; and certainly they shall lie there for

me. Oxen and wain-ropes would not bring me back again to

that accursed island; and the worst dreams that ever I have are

when I hear the surf booming about its coasts or start upright

in bed with the sharp voice of Captain Flint still ringing in

my ears: “Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!”

The adventures serve Jim by haunting his dreams, and he emphatically throws off all future opportunities to get the rest of the treasure. He would rather retain civility than get riches through incivility. Jim is the star of moral light in the novel. When faced with the opportunity to embrace freedom almost totally on an island, he would rather choose that freedom within a moral society. In this sense, Treasure Island is a Victorian novel; both Romantic and chivalric. In rhetoric, it is modern; almost akin to Doyle's Sherlock Holmes novels.

Kidnapped (1886):

Stevenson's Kidnapped is like Scott's Waverley at light-speed, having much less introduction than Waverley, but more cultural setting than Treasure Island. Set in a Romanticized 18th century Scotland, the novel chronicles the adventures of David Balfour, who is kidnapped in an attempt to reclaim his newly inherited land, loaded on a ship headed to the Carolina's, shipwrecked in Scotland, blamed for the murder of a Campbell, and forced to hide with aJacobite outlaw named Alan Breck Stewart until he can get back to his estate. David, aCovenanter and a Whig, clashes with his gambling, drinking Highland rough, but in the end gains a friendship that only the struggle for survival could create. David and Alan part as fellow soldiers would. This connection, stronger than the Long John/Jim partnership in Treasure Island, usually serves the main character to remain true to his morals despite the broadening of his relationships. The challenge is to be in the world of adventure but not of it, and is topical of Victorian novels of the time. David is but a sojourner in the Scottish Highlands, and can walk away from his adventures with a sense of intrigue and unfamiliarity.

It is upon this unfamiliarity, or what C. S. Lewis would call a longing for "northernness," that the seemingly paradox of Scottish Romantic myth is formed. Although the Highlanders are contrarians and worldly, their geographic and cultural setting is almost ethereal. Highlanders are forced to traverse the wildernesses of Scotland like deer, and the beauty of such an adventure is almost like a crusade. In this sense, the Highlands prefigure a mystic land of paradise rather than worldliness. The protagonist is unfamiliar with the Highlands because it is filled with worldly characters and because it is oppositely filled with beauty and intrigue. In the first case, the protagonist has a desire to get back to his homeland, and in the second, he wishes to explore. This is why David has mixed feelings in the story. Regarding the intrigue for mystery and beauty, there is a scene in the book where Alan and a MacGregor have a bagpipe duel to settle their differences (see illustration above). David is enthralled. The geographic and cultural setting in Kidnapped is far more developed than in Treasure Island.

The Black Arrow (1888):

Evidently, some readers were not satisfied with the quaintness of Treasure Island, and The Black Arrow was Stevenson's attempt to create a more intellectually fulfilling novel. In his preface, he writes, "...in the eyes of readers who thought less than nothing of Treasure Island, The Black Arrow was supposed to mark a clear advance. Those who read volumes and those who read story papers belong to different worlds." In trying to penetrate the world of volumes with The Black Arrow, Stevenson slows down the plot, complicates the political setting, antiquates the duologue, and tells a chivalric romance between the two protagonists Richard (Dick) Shelton and Joanne Sedley.

Although Stevenson still retains his knack for adventure, The Black Arrow almost resembles a Scott or Henty novel in delivery. The story itself takes place during the War of the Roses. Dick, the protagonist, joins an outlaw band and welcomes the York dynastic cause in order to rescue Joanne from the clutches of Sir Daniel Brackley who intends to marry her off to Lord Shoreby. Being a far more complex character than Jim Hawkins or David Balfour, Dick often finds himself making flippant decisions about complex political and social issues in order to accomplish his narrow goals. Throughout the story he is bombarded with the ill effects of such a disrespect for the complexity of his surroundings, and repents for his many flaws. By the same token, he never gives up his narrow quest to save Joanne. The Black Arrow is a rich story that demands the attention of Stevenson's greatest criticizers. It is a clear departure from his simple adventure novels.


Stevenson was a man of diverse talents. Forming an critical opinion of him from Treasure Island or Kidnapped would be very narrow minded. His unique ballance between ever changing and enduring themes is due to his emphasis of liberty and constancy. There is almost certainly something for everyone in Stevenson's works.

Sources:

Image of Robert Louis StevensonJune 1885 from Wikipedia

Image in Child's Garden form Gutenberg

Image of Treasure Island-Scribner's-1911 from Wikipedia

Image in Robin struck into the slow measure of a pibroch from Google books

Image in The Black Arrow from Google books

http://fliiby.com/file/220231/obior6x8pe.html

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/rlsteven/blackar.pdf

http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/Kidnapped_NT.pdf

http://ebooks.gutenberg.us/Coradella_Collegiate_Bookshelf_Collection/stevenson-treasureisland.pdf

http://www.heartoscotland.com/Categories/RobertLStevenson.htm

http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/

http://people.brandeis.edu/~teuber/stevensonbio.html

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Last Bard of Russia

Sérénade mélancolique, Op. 26, for violin and orchestra (1875).

Oh sing to me beauties which in peril return!

In days dark their whisp’ring notes sweetly burn
A mournful air of perished golden days;
All gain hope who hear these emboldened lays.

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s compositions were the last petals of Russian classical music before the winter of Communism, and as such, his music affords an unassuming glimpse of Russian art just before its fall. The lavishness of Russian ballet is imperishably preserved in his Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty ballets, and his Romeo and Juliet Opera, to say nothing of the 1812 Overture, embody the Russian Romanticism of his day (although Tchaikovsky believed himself to be a realist). Unknowingly, Tchaikovsky was of the last great musicians of his country. His work would be as a burning coal of freedom during the dark days of Communism.

Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 and died on November 6, 1893. During his life, his music was met both with initial criticism and later with highest praise. Separated from his family at the age of ten, Tchaikovsky was sent away to the School of Jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg, a separation that would become permanent with the passing of his mother when Tchaikovsky was only fourteen. Working with the Ministry of Justice from about 1859-1863, Tchaikovsky still found time to develop his passion for music and also take an extended trip to Western Europe. He entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1863 while teaching private lessons on the side, and in 1866 he began as a professor of harmony at Moscow’s conservatory. Being at first unable to satisfy either conservative musicians or those of a nationalistic frame of mind, it wasn’t until the performance of his First Symphony in 1868 at Moscow that the public viewed him favorably. He preferred to interject themes into his work rather than build a melodic transition from one theme to another. In 1870 Tchaikovsky released his first version of the “Romeo and Juliet” opera, and reconstructing material from his rather unpopular opera, “The Voyevoda,” he released “The Oprichnik” in 1874 at Saint Petersburg. In 1875, he composed his Third Symphony and “Swan Lake,” and after another trip to Western Europe, he wrote the “Rococo Variations” set in the 18th century. The setting for his “Eugene Onegin” (1879) was rural Russia, with many lavish ball scenes that idealized Russian drama. Tchaikovsky was preserving the artistic atmosphere of his homeland.

Then in 1880 began Tchaikovsky professional connection with the Russian royal family. That year, Czar Alexander II asked him to compose an accompaniment for the Czar’s 25th anniversary as Czar of Russia. Unfortunately, that arrangement was suddenly canceled, but later Alexander II asked Tchaikovsky to commemorate the opening of the nation’s primary Orthodox Christian church, Christ the Savior Cathedral. This church was built to honor Russia’s victory over Napoleon in 1812, and for the dedication ceremony Tchaikovsky composed his flamboyant 1812 Overture. Alexander III, who also loved Tchaikovsky’s music, soon succeeded Alexander II as Czar of Russia. Tchaikovsky received the high honor of composing Alexander III’s Coronation March, much like what Elgar would later do in Great Britain for King Edward and Queen Alexandra. For this, he was invited to the Palace of Facets, and later was given a diamond ring for his services. Although Alexander III was not the last Czar before the Communist takeover (his son, Nicolas II was), Tchaikovsky drew the curtain on the Russian imperial age. Tchaikovsky’s musical abilities far surpassed most in Russia, and Alexander III was certainly the last prestigious Czar of Russia, if not tyrannical and repressive to the people of Russia. The combination of Alexander III and Tchaikovsky was certainly the height of Russian pomp and circumstance, both musically and imperialistically. Next, Alexander advised Tchaikovsky in 1885 to write more Christian pieces, and Tchaikovsky accordingly composed many choral chants for the Orthodox Church. He was awarded a sum of 3,000 rubles per year for his efforts, enough to set him financially among the rich.

His final years saw perhaps his finest works, including the Sleeping Beauty (1890) and Nutcracker (1892) ballets, and the 1890 “Queen of Spades” (a highly emotional drama of Russia during the reign of Catherine the Great). Tchaikovsky’s own view of art was simple: “I think that I really am endowed with the ability to truthfully, honestly, and straightforwardly express through music those feelings, moods, and images which the text of a libretto or poem awakens in me. In this sense I am a realist and a deeply Russian person.” That Russian spark of art would have to last for just under 70 years of communism before the arts could lawfully be resumed in Russia. Still, to this day, Russia’s greatest composer is Tchaikovsky, who preserved for all time a specific time and culture that no longer exists.



Here is a list of some of Tchaikovsky’s accomplishments from PBS:

“Dramatic music

The Voyevoda (1869)
The Oprichnik (1874)
Vakula the Smith (1876)
Eugene Onegin (1879)
The Maid of Orleans (1881)
Mazeppa (1884)
The Sorceress (1887)
The Queen of Spades (1890)

Ballets:
Swan Lake (1877)
The Sleeping Beauty (1890)
The Nutcracker (1892)

incidental music

Orchestral music

Sym. no. 1, G, "Winter Daydreams" (1866, rev. 1874)
Sym. no. 2, C, "Little Russian" (1872, rev. 1880)
Sym. no. 3, D, "Polish" (1875)
Sym. no. 4, F (1878)
Sym. no. 5, E (1888)
Sym. no. 6, B, "Pathétique" (1893)
Manfred, sym. (1885)
Romeo and Juliet, fantasy ov. (1870, rev. 1880)
Francesca da Rimini, sym. fantasia (1876)
1812, ov. (1880)
Hamlet, fantasy ov. (1888)
Pf Conc. no. 1, B-flat (1875)
Pf Conc. no. 2, G (1880)
Pf Conc. no. 3, E-flat (1893)
Vn Conc., D (1878)
Variations on a Rococo Theme, vc, orch, A (1876)
Serenade, strs (1880)
over 20 other works

Chamber and keyboard music

3 str qts (1871, 1874, 1877)
Pf Trio, A (1882)
Souvenir de Florence, str sextet (1890)
12 other chamber works
Pf Sonata, G (1879)
over 100 other pf pieces

Vocal music

circa 30 choral works, incl. sacred pieces, secular cantatas
over 100 songs and duets”

Here are some free samples of Tchaikovsky’s music:
http://www.turgenevmusica.info/en/recordings.html#Romeo
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - romeo and juliet- overture-fantasy
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - 1812 overture

Sources:

http://www.turgenevmusica.info/en/tchaikovsky.html

http://www.turgenevmusica.info/en/recordings.html#Romeo

http://english.ruvr.ru/_print/277487.html

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/education/tchaikovsky.html