Old Kenneth Clark was such a towering intellect and man of basic decency and conviction, I weep at the thought and realisation that men like him are now gone. Here are Lord Clark's first ("The Skin of Our Teeth") and final ("Heroic Materialism") episodes of his superb 1969 BBC documentary, Civilisation.
Above, Kenneth Clark opens Civilisation with a quote from Ruskin, who said that the manuscript of a nation is found in a book of their deeds, a book of their words and a book of their art, but mostly in a book of their art. We may not be able to define civilisation in abstract terms, but we sure in the heck know what it is when we see it. The great man explains how European civilisation got through by the skin of its teeth.
In the final episode, Lord Clark re-emphasises his central theme of why civilisations require confidence to survive, and how cynicism and disillusion can do us in as easily as bombs and barbarism. We are not at the end, but we are in trouble because there is no longer a (Christian) Center holding it all together. Heroic materialism is no substitute for the moral and intellectual failure of Marxism. "One may be optimistic, but one can't exactly be joyful at the prospect before us."
A big hat tip to Sunlit Uplands.
To all us sticks in the mud!
ReplyDeleteBrilliant post!
ReplyDeleteSplendid, but oddly distressing to watch. His vague concern about the future of civilisation puts me in mind of the 1918 Treaty of Versaille cartoon of the weeping 'class of 38'.
ReplyDeleteWonderful video, I'm going to have to rent the series now. I've been a long time follower of your blog and I truly enjoy it.
ReplyDeleteAren't you changing Clark's words somewhat? He did seem to support other religions than Christianity, and seemed not completely unhappy with nature worship.
ReplyDeleteMy interpretation.
ReplyDeleteHe only actually said that there is no "center", to which he meant that a civilisation which in the larger cultural sense includes the arts, customs, habits, beliefs, values, behavior and material habits that constitute a people's way of life, must worship more than just the material. For Western civilization, the word that still loosely encompasses all these things is Christendom.
To Lord Clark, a strictly material civilisation is a primitive one. A lot of things that pass off as modern art and modern music today he would probably deplore as something less than noble savage.
I saw nothing in the series documentary to suggest he thought nature worship was included in his understanding of civilisation. Any philosopher would probably agree that pure nature worship is an aspect of "primitivism", those that maintain that life was better and more moral during the early stages of mankind and has deteriorated with civilization.