Why isn't the work of an anonymous African sculptor afforded the same prestige as the work of a European artist of whom little is known, assuming both are of equal technical quality? Why is it safe to assume that a certain type of art collector would spend money on an anonymous and mediocre portrait of a Knight of Malta rather than on a painting by Ibrahim El Salahi, possibly the most important contemporary modernist African painter? Why did the Mona Lisa become the 'most famous painting in the world' but only from the 19th century onward?
Probably, the simple and obvious answer to these questions is that beauty is not really in the eye of the beholder, but in the eye of the educated beholder.
The educated eye will see well beyond what the uncouth can ever imagine, which partly explains the ongoing destruction of the urban environment and why, for instance, the Barriera building outside the Valletta/Floriana lines has been allowed to crumble down little by little into the sea, with the same fate awaiting Fort Ricasoli. What survived the Nazi air raids will not survive Maltese negligence and will slowly decay and collapse into the sea - mostly because the educated are a minority.
Then again, the other part of the explanation obviously is the beast that dwells in many, if not all, of us: greed - which, at times, can demolish not only beautiful buildings but also the refined sound judgment of the educated mind.
To be fair, it's not all doom and gloom. There are people who do their best to try to preserve the beauty previous generations left us, as well as natural beauty. The latest example has been the heartening resistance to the project which, all said and done, would sound the death knell for a wonderful valley in Rabat. But these initiatives are the exception, not the rule, and so far many of them have failed, because profit is more persuasive than beauty. Whereas beauty is multi-dimensional, profit has only one dimension, easily understood by even the dumbest of the dumb.
I am not saying that one has to be an expert, or possess the 'art of seeing art', to recognise what is beautiful and worth preserving. I am simply referring to the refined mind which, though unable to analyse beauty in technical terms, can still see it and distinguish between present beauty and potential future ugliness. The refined mind can also resist the temptation of short-termism because it understands that, in the long run, preserving historic beauty rakes in huge profits.
The silly idea that Malta is like a pin cushion waiting to be stuck with pin-like high-rise towers is both the prime example of Maltese short-termism and the most permanent among the destructive legacies the present administration will bequeath the nation. The Knights left rococo and baroque buildings and the present government wants to leave towers. In a moment of generosity, one might think that it is all inspired by idyllic San Gimignano, nestled in the hills of Tuscany, but then realism takes over: the idea probably owes its origins to some shopping spree in pedestrian, soulless Dubai.
The quest for profit at all costs offends not only those who love the environment but also those who look deeper into things. As I write this, I remember Franco Zeffirelli's masterpiece on Francis of Assisi, Brother Sun Sister Moon. Saint Francis is a beacon for ecologists and all those who value the environment. But Francis also represents a link between capitalism and the poor. Recent scholarship seems to point to a Franciscan origin of capitalism.
In his book entitled Il Gioco e il Peccato (Gambling and Sin), Tiovanni Ceccarelli, a researcher at universities in Venice and Padua, argues that, from the 13th century, Franciscan thinking was behind the transition from the blanket condemnation of gambling to its redefinition as a contract based on risk. The Franciscans' reflections on voluntary poverty recognised that owning wealth and goods is a natural and universal human desire.
But I mentioned Zeffirelli's film. There's a goose-bump scene in which Francis tells one of his followers who wants to confront the Emperor regarding his riches and his attitude towards the poor: "You could say, 'Otto of Brunswick, let the birds nest in your crown. Let the winds of heaven blow through your empty palaces. What good is your life to you, if your riches bring you no peace of mind... and all your people starve?' That's what should be said to an emperor."
My Personal Library (14)
I decided to start this sub-column 14 weeks ago, not because I wanted to write about my hobby, but because a library - not a book collection, mind you - can become, as all bibliophiles know, a very personal thing. Some books you choose because of their intrinsic value (whether antique (pre-1830) or modern antique (post-1830, what the Italians call modernariato), or literary or scientific). Other books remind you of a sweetheart from your younger days, or a family member now departed, or a friend whom you cherish, or even somebody whom you thought was a friend and later turned out to be a glans (I use the anatomical term as I surmise the Editor won't approve if I use the slang picked up on the street).
Reading books is an activity which trains you to separate the prigs from the cultivated minds. But it can also draw you into unexpected adventures.
One such episode occurred to me a few years back when I was somewhere else, walking along a street, and I noticed a coloured paper snuggled comfortably between a wiper and the windscreen of a car. It was an invitation to the feast of Mary Magdalene celebrated in an isolated village not far away. I decided there and then that I would go, out of curiosity more than devotion, and that if it turned out to be boring, I would have with me a book I had just received from an online bookstore which analysed the structure of two biblical passages, the cycle of stories about Jacob and the story of the Tower of Babel.
Now this was a nice coincidence, as Magdala, the city whence Mary came (see Luke 8:2, "Mary called Magdalene"), derives from migdal which in Hebrew means 'tower'.
The feast was nothing like our festas. You simply bought a sausage daubed with mustard and a pitcher of blonde beer, and you sat down on a wooden bench to eat and drink. Since I was alone, I was happy to indulge in the book on the literary structure of the story of the Tower of Babel. The author explains how, when read in Hebrew, the text betrays an intimate relationship with the story. In other words, the language and form used complement the themes of the story. I'll mention just two examples: (1) The narration is nine verses long and has the form of a tower, or ziggurat. The first four verses are about Humanity's hubris, the last five describe how God deals with Humanity's plans against Him. (2) The verb used to describe Humanity building the tower - l-b-n - is the mirror image of the verb used to describe God cutting men down to size and confusing them: n-b-l. And so on.
I read the entire part on the tower, and, as by then the clock had struck a certain hour, left with the clear intention of hitting the sack, happy with the reading but unhappy with the feast. Despite my firm intention, I couldn't fall asleep so I decided to continue reading the other book I had started, Paul Auster's The New York Trilogy (1987). Some people are huge fans of Auster's; others consider his novels nothing but psychobabble. I find them uncanny and metaphysical.
I sat in the armchair and, book in hand, decided to continue from where I had left the night before. And, believe it or not, the next passage I had to read was... a digression on the Tower of Babel.
"The building of the Tower became the obsessive, overriding passion of mankind, more important finally than life itself. Bricks became more important than people."
Paul Auster is an American Jew who was born in New Jersey and then lived in Paris and New York. The New York Trilogy is, as the name suggests, a collection of three novels, the second of which is entitled The City of Glass, from which the quotation above is taken. Auster's take on the building of the Tower seems related not only to the physical city of glass - the New York forest of towers and skyscrapers - but also to the underlying mentality.
"Apparently," he wrote, "there were three different groups involved in the construction: those who wanted to dwell in heaven, those who wanted to wage war against God, and those who wanted to worship idols."
Some critics dislike Auster because he's too direct and explicit. Others, who are not uncouth, like him just for that very same reason. Because his directness is only superficial; his style of writing is reminiscent of the Bible. You think it's telling you a simple tale whereas, in reality, it's conveying a hidden (though supposedly and paradoxically self-evident) truth.