THE SCIENTIST MOST LIKELY TO HOLD A MICROSCOPE IN ONE HAND, AND HIS HEART IN THE OTHER

The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf - Vintage Books (2016)

The difficult thing about being a scientist is that once your theories have been debunked, once newer, more efficient methods of experimentation have been devised, or fancy new machinery renders your entire discipline obsolete, you tend to fade from the pages of history. You become a footnote in another scientist’s biography. The lucky ones are given the condescending designation of ‘inspiration,’ which is rather like the academic equivalent of the ‘participation awards’ handed out to talentless young athletes. The unlucky ones are mocked by their contemporaries and ignored by historians. Unlike artists, whose contributions may wax and wane according to changing aesthetic tastes, it is very difficult for a scientist to be resurrected once he’s been flattened beneath the unforgiving bulldozer of progress. After all, one can prefer Michelangelo even after Warhol comes along. It is much more problematic to say ‘I prefer to believe that the world is flat’ when centuries of data prove otherwise. 

Alexander von Humboldt is an unusual case of historical amnesia. Most of his theories, although rudimentary, have never been discredited. In fact, it is rather strange that most modern Americans have never heard of him, because his name can be found on nearly every page of your average atlas. In her fascinating (and beautifully illustrated) biography, The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf strives to articulate the extent of Humboldt’s influence to modern readers. It is not the first time Wulf has encouraged readers to take a closer look at the truths they ‘hold to be self-evident.’ In fact, she is a master at rediscovering the thrilling origins of some of the more mundane elements of twenty-first century life. Her 2009 book, The Brother Gardeners, examines the competitive relationships between gentlemen gardeners in the 18th century and was nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize. Chasing Venus, published in 2012, recalls the imperial race to calculate the distance between planets in 1761-1769, when Venus passed between the earth and the sun. The Invention of Nature has already been nominated for numerous major awards and is a New York Times bestseller. Wulf has a knack for reminding readers of the incredible discoveries and occurrences which allow us to lead our boring everyday lives. She makes gardening, astronomy, and scientific calculation as suspenseful and exciting as trench warfare. She asks us to look at the circumstances of our lives with innocent eyes. In regards to Humboldt’s diminished legacy she writes, 

…while his books collect dust in libraries, his name lingers everywhere from the Humboldt Current running along the coast of Chile and Peru to dozens of monuments, parks and mountains in Latin America including Sierra Humboldt in Mexico and Pico Humboldt in Venezuela. A town in Argentina, a river in Brazil, a geyser in Ecuador and a bay in Colombia—all are named after Humboldt…Almost 300 plants and more than 100 animals are named after him…and on the moon there is an area called ‘Mare Humboldtianum’. More places are named after Humboldt than anyone else. 

So why does Humboldt’s name fall into the fuzzy, half-familiar region of my brain? Perhaps, as Wulf suggests, it’s because his theories have become common sense. They seem obvious to modern readers, even though at the time of their publication, Humboldt’s ideas were as radical and controversial as those of Charles Darwin—a man greatly influenced and indebted to Humboldt. The irony, writes Wulf,

…is that Humboldt’s views have become so self-evident that we have largely forgotten the man behind them. But there exists a direct line of connection through his ideas, and through the many people whom he inspired. Like a rope, Humboldt’s concept of nature connects us to him. 

Wulf uses this ‘concept of nature’ to frame her discussion and rejuvenate her forgotten hero. She digs deep to unearth his philosophical foundations, and then identifies his influence in later scientists who reflect similar underlying values. Rather than examining Humboldt’s specific experiments and discoveries, Wulf chooses to focus on his unique approach to the natural world—his singular vision. By doing so, she facilitates an easy introduction to modern readers. She locates, in Humboldt’s personal reflections, the roots of modern values and concerns. Thus, she emphasizes Humboldt’s prophetic ideas about relevant topics like environmental destruction, colonial exploitation, and the dangers of a cash crop economy. Writes Wulf, 

…Humboldt revolutionized the way we see the natural world. He found connections everywhere. Nothing, not even the tiniest organism, was looked at on its own…When nature is perceived as a web, its vulnerability also becomes obvious. Everything hangs together. If one thread is pulled, the whole tapestry may unravel. After he saw the devastating environmental effects of colonial plantations at Lake Valencia in Venezuela in 1800, Humboldt became the first scientist to talk about harmful human-induced climate change…He warned that humans were meddling with the climate and that this could have an unforeseeable impact on ‘future generations.’

That Humboldt was able to see so far into the future is incredible. Scientists in the late 1700s were never meant to extrapolate, to lift their eyes from the specimens pinned to their dissection tables. They were also never supposed to be present—as individuals—in their published findings. In order to fully appreciate Humboldt’s expansive perspective, one which spanned continents and millennia, it is necessary to remind ourselves of the volatile relationship between Romantic sentimentality and rational empiricism that fueled European debate during his life. 

Humboldt lived at a time when scientific discovery and geographic exploration were the intellectual battlegrounds upon which European empires could compete—much like the ‘Space Race’ of the 20th century. Within this arena, rigid lines were drawn between those who believed that the natural world could only be experienced through direct study and should be subject to strict taxonomic categorization, and those who saw room for an emotional, subjective approach to nature. One can imagine a Kill Bill style stare-down between John Locke and William Wordsworth. Humboldt was the brave scientist who dared to adorn his empirical observations with emotional reactions. Unlike the dry, impersonal reports published by staunch empiricists, Humboldt was never afraid to gush and swoon at the sight of a particularly splendid volcano. Without sacrificing scientific accuracy (his detailed descriptions and meticulous measurements are still cited in academic journals today) Humboldt made room for love, fear, and fascination. What might seem to us like the obvious way to write about nature, was unprecedented in Humboldt’s time. Thus it was that an extraordinary number of scientists, artists, and poets referred explicitly to Humboldt in their own works. His name pops up in so many dedications because he truly ruptured the established mold in a permanent and triumphant manner. Writes Wulf, 

Thomas Jefferson called him ‘one of the greatest ornaments of the age’. Charles Darwin wrote that ‘nothing ever stimulated my zeal so much as reading Humboldt’s Personal Narrative,’ saying that he would not have boarded the Beagle, nor conceived of the Origin of Species, without Humboldt. William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge both incorporated Humboldt’s concept of nature into their poems. And America’s most revered nature writer, Henry David Thoreau, found in Humboldt’s books an answer to his dilemma on how to be a poet and a naturalist—Walden would have been a very different book without Humboldt. Simón Bolívar, the revolutionary who liberated South America from Spanish colonial rule, called Humboldt the ‘discoverer of the New World’ and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Germany’s greatest poet, declared that spending a few days with Humboldt was like ‘having lived several years’. 

At a time when exploration made the distant regions of the world suddenly tangible, but the difficulties of travel prohibited many people from seeing them firsthand, Humboldt made sure to bring the whole experience to Europe, not just the objective facts. As Wulf suggests, 

One of Humboldt’s greatest achievements had been to make science accessible and popular. Everybody learned from him: farmers and craftsmen, schoolboys and teachers, artists and musicians, scientists and politicians. There was not a single textbook or atlas in the hands of children in the western world that hadn’t been shaped by Humboldt’s ideas, one orator had declared during the 1869 centennial celebrations in Boston. Unlike Christopher Columbus or Isaac Newton, Humboldt did not discover a continent or a new law of physics. Humboldt was not known for a single fact or a discovery but for his worldview. His vision of nature has passed into our consciousness as if by osmosis. It is almost as though his ideas have become so manifest that the man behind them has disappeared.

Andrea Wulf clearly admires Humboldt’s comprehensive ‘concept of nature’ because she injects its basic components into the structure of her biography. The Invention of Nature is full of facts, dates, and quotes, but it really about patterns. Wulf uses specific anecdotes and examples to illustrate a historical pattern of thought—a link between Humboldt, the famous men and women he inspired, and ordinary readers in the present. Wulf’s biography can be visualized as a chain of volcanoes, each representing a great thinker, the oldest and tallest being Alexander von Humboldt himself. Although at the surface these volcanoes might appear to be isolated geological phenomena, they all draw from a single subterranean source. Humboldt’s holistic, webbed vision of nature is that source from which we extract our modern understanding of the natural world, and its relation to mankind. 

Andrea Wulf's website

NYT book review

THE FOUNDING FATHER MOST LIKELY TO IDENTIFY WITH MODERN AMERICANS

Alexander Hamilton's Guide to Life by Jeff Wilser - Three Rivers Press (2016)

Nearly all of the biographies I’ve reviewed have been impressive feats of scholarly research. They have been meticulous, obsessive, and in several cases, a significant challenge to my upper body strength. They have been testaments to academic ambition and perseverance. They have also required a considerable input of intellectual energy. It is not always easy to process such immense volumes of information. This week, I decided to give my tired brain a break before it completes its degeneration into oatmeal. 

Jeff Wilser’s newest book, Alexander Hamilton’s Guide to Life, is by no means the definitive biography of Alexander Hamilton. In fact, Wilser happily admits that there are much longer—and more comprehensive—written accounts available. This book is not for the curious reader who is eager to learn everything there is to know about America’s trendiest Founding Father. But it does serve a purpose that other, more serious works of nonfiction, often disregard. Wilser’s book is funny. It is topical. Wilser writes with the sharp, sarcastic wit that is characteristic of blogs and ‘think pieces.’ His tempo is quick, the mental images he conjures are hilarious, and he makes use of inside jokes which speak directly to the modern reader. Wilser’s fast-paced journalistic style helps introduce the young millennial struggling to get by in Manhattan, to the distant heroes of American democracy. He identifies a persistent American spirit. He portrays Alexander Hamilton as a relatable, imperfect human and reminds readers of their own patriotic roots. This connection to the early days of American independence is crucial at a time when many people (younger generations especially) feel estranged from their country and its purported ideals of liberty and equality. With his comical voice and his deliberate decision to frame a biography in the format of a self-help book, Wilser drags the past into the present and reminds readers that there are still many reasons to be proud of American nationality.

Jeff Wilser has written four other books, with themes ranging from business, to self-improvement, to modern masculinity. His interest in the present is evidenced by his contributions to magazines such as GQ, Glamour, Cosmo, and Bon Appétit. His particular brand of humour consists of identifying the strange and ludicrous elements of modern behavior. Thus it is that when his online bio states that ‘he lives in Brooklyn with zero dogs,’ it can be read as a playful jab at all the modern writers who fill their back covers with odes to their canine companions. Wilser’s commitment to relevant humour is clear from the first page of his introduction:

…Hamilton fever is owed to the triumph of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical. It connects the old and young, the Left and the Right, the insiders and the outsiders. ‘It’s brilliant,’ gushed theater critic Barack Obama. ‘This is the only thing that Dick Cheney and I have agreed on in my entire political career.’ It will be sold out through 2047. Credit the genius of Miranda, credit the soundtrack, and credit the electric (and thrillingly diverse) cast. 

Yet it is not only Wilser’s punchy voice that distinguishes his book from more conventional texts. To a certain extent, Wilser knows his audience better than many respectable academicians. His choice to organize Hamilton’s life into groupings of related parables for the modern American reader is really rather effective. This categorical treatment of history is easier to digest than the traditional chronological approach. Writes Wilser, 

This book is not the exhaustive, comprehensive, list-every-fact book on Hamilton. Those books have been written and they are excellent. This is a different beast. It’s intended to inspire. Add perspective. Hopefully amuse. It’s organized by topic, from Self-Improvement to Honor, with a few stops in Money, Romance, and Leadership along the way…This is not a ‘How To’ book that will give you Hamilton’s shredded abs. And it won’t tell you how to get rich quick. Yet it cracks open his playbook, suggesting insight into how he went from abandoned son to Founding Father. Some lessons are literal and can be applied directly to your life. Others show us, through Hamilton’s actions, how to be more successful. And because Hamilton was a red-blooded man who made mistakes, still others guide us on what not to do.

In fact, it is Hamilton’s legacy as a ‘red-blooded man’ which sets him apart from the other Founding Fathers. Writes Wilser, 

…there’s a deeper reason we’re drawn to Hamilton—and that’s the man himself. He feels somehow different from the other Founders, who, with their wise words and their marble statues, can seem more like myths than men.

Alexander Hamilton’s Guide to Life is unlikely to survive close scholarly scrutiny. Wilser can be careless with interpretations and is quick to jump to conclusions (assuming, for example, that ‘sober’ in the historical context means ‘not drunk,’ as it does today). He is also unashamedly biased, admitting that his book is, 

…without a doubt, the second-most-pro-Hamilton book in history. (The first? The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, written by Alexander Hamilton. It comes in 27 volumes.)

In fact, it is difficult to predict whether Jeff Wilser will move on to a new subject, or whether his biography of Alexander Hamilton will fade into obscurity first. I don’t anticipate a lengthy shelf-life. But if you’re looking for a quick, jaunty ride through early American history, a casual, unpretentious conversation with one of our Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton’s Guide to Life may be the perfect fit. I read this book in a single morning and spent the rest of the day smiling. If that was Jeff Wilser’s intent, he deserves just as much credit as the ‘proper biographers.’ 

Jeff Wilser's website

THE MAN MOST LIKELY TO EXPLOIT VICTORIAN SOCIAL ANXIETITES

Something in the Blood: the untold story of Bram Stoker, the man who wrote Dracula by David J. Skal - W.W. Norton & Co. (2016)

When I chose to study abroad at the University of Westminster, my feelings towards education were fairly tepid. Two years of sleep deprivation and tear-stained essays on such disparate subjects as conflict resolution and nanotechnology left me drained and apathetic. To be fair, a liberal arts approach is wonderful for people who don’t really know where they want to spend their precious time and energy. My problem was that I simply wasn’t ballsy enough to admit that I already knew what I wanted to do with my life. So I ended up spending most of my first two undergraduate years feeling like I was wasting my time (and my parent’s money) studying topics that didn’t even occupy the same galaxy as my interests and dreams. 

Then I flew to London and everything changed. I enrolled myself in four English literature classes and nothing else. I spent most of my free time reading and debating the merits of various authors with my classmates. I rediscovered what it felt like to look forward to a seminar—to have strong feelings about assigned texts. This experience convinced me to uproot my life and enroll as a full-time student in the United Kingdom. The decision to move across the world, start over at a new institution, and push back my expected graduation date was not an easy one to make. Now I feel certain that it was the best choice for me, and ultimately helped to reintroduce me to myself. I don’t recognize the person I was in New York; there are entire months I can’t remember—almost as if I slept through them. I was lost and confused and unhappy and I didn’t feel strongly or passionately about anything. I didn’t know how to elevate myself above the baseline of depression because I couldn’t remember what it was that made me feel happy and inspired as a kid. Turns out the simple answer was books. 

One of the courses I signed up for at Westminster was Victorian Era Gothic fiction. I had no idea what to expect. Now, I don’t know who I would be without such prolific authors as Edgar Allan Poe, Sheridan Le Fanu, and Bram Stoker to call upon. Their twisted world—to which more mainstream authors like Charles Dickens and the Brontë sisters frequently travelled—was a damp, foggy alley, lit by guttering gaslights and peopled by shapeshifting phantoms. 

This is the dark kingdom to which David J. Skal takes readers in his fantastic biography Something in the Blood: the untold story of Bram Stoker, the man who wrote Dracula. Skal’s previous experience includes managing publicity for theatres in San Francisco and New York and writing three science fiction novels. He has also written numerous nonfiction books on horror as a genre, science fiction, and the cultural obsession with certain monsters. His enthusiasm for supernatural creatures and theatrical flair is obvious in his manner of writing. Not only is Something in the Blood one of the most thrilling, absorbing biographies I have ever read, it is also a veritable mine of information. Skal somehow manages to elaborate upon every macabre aspect of Victorian society—from those haunting ‘portraits’ of newly dead children, to frightening epidemics of syphilis, to the mania surrounding Jack the Ripper, to the public display of corpses and severed limbs for purposes of identification—without straying too far from the framing narrative of Bram Stoker’s life. Skal also shrewdly identifies the Victorian obsession with theatricality and spectacle, taking pains to examine Stoker’s lifelong tie to the Lyceum Theatre and his connection to Oscar Wilde. At times, Skal seems to inhabit the world he writes about, and beckons to the reader from within. Thus, the vocabulary he employs ends up sounding an awful lot like Bram Stoker’s famous tale:

…there is nothing final about Dracula at all, nor can there be, Dracula never ends. Not in my life, or in yours. His immortality and cultural omnipresence have everything to do with the magic of blood, the oldest and deepest and most paradoxical human symbol. As shapeshifting as Dracula himself, with the uncanny power to assume endless metaphorical forms, blood is the all-enveloping essence and measure of everything: life and death, sickness and health, anger, passion, and lust—all are blood driven and blood conceptualized. Blood ties bind us to our families. Bloodlines provide a link to our atavistic past, while serving as our primary connection to the future. The sight of blood terrifies some, is eroticized by others, and never fails to draw attention. We are thinking about blood all the time, whether or not we think we are. 

The world of Gothic fiction is only a slight distortion of the Victorian world in general. It is the same scene viewed through a different lens. In both settings, disease and intoxication fester within swelling urban populations. Mysterious foreigners flock to London like flies to a corpse. Decadence and excess are the visible signs of a widespread moral degeneration. It is important to note that the most memorable monsters of Gothic fiction are all ordinary human beings who make some kind of Faustian bargain based on greed and vanity. What is fascinating about Gothic literature from this period is that it pokes and scratches at Victorian anxieties—social, sexual, political—with the same deranged pleasure we derive from picking at scabs and seeing ourselves bleed. Why do we love to watch Dorian Gray saunter towards his inevitable demise? Why does the transformation of Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde make us so delightfully uncomfortable? Perhaps in these doomed characters we catch a glimpse of our own fragility and the ease with which we might sell our souls to the Devil. Gothic fiction is one of those genres with so many motifs and recurrent themes that one would think it a short-lived trend. But these repetitions only seem to emphasize the strength of our deeply-rooted fears. The first thing you learn when studying this genre is how to identify the typical elements. Below is an abbreviated list of the most common:

1. The decay of beautiful things—castles, churches, the human body. In the third example, a deeper layer of fear can be accessed if the process of natural decay has been thwarted by means of dark magic or science. i.e. Dracula is even more terrifying because of his impossible youth. Gothic fiction is often a close and graphic examination of grand-scale ruin.
2. Curses and prophecies—every flickering candle and oblong shadow becomes laden with portentous meaning. This helps create a sense of continuity between past and present. 
3. Immortality—another form of perverse excess, in this case, the excess of life. In contrast to earlier celebrations of immortality as a signal of divine favour, Gothic literature suggests that death is a necessary cap on human greed and depravity. The longer you exist, the more likely you are to flout laws you will probably outlive. 
4. Invasion by a foreign enemy—strange customs and manners often threaten the purity of the host. Broken down to its narrative skeleton, Dracula is about a man determined to relocate to England. 
5. Somnambulism and intoxication—lots of sleepwalking, tinctures, and opium-induced visions. Female characters especially are often ‘taken over’ and controlled by parasitic supernatural beings. 
6. Catholicism vs. Pagan superstition—the thrust of a crucifix might save one from becoming a human sacrifice. On the other hand, churches and graveyards are prime murder sites, so the Gothic stance on Catholicism is decidedly ambivalent. 
7. The ‘Uncanny’—this is a crucial concept to understand before delving into Gothic literature. It is a psychological state of fear and anxiety produced by something that is strangely familiar. Something that is recognizable but somehow twisted or contaminated. To learn more about this, read Sigmund Freud’s essay on the subject or Julia Kristeva’s essay on the related concept of abjection. 

Bram Stoker understood the lucrative potential of Victorian anxieties. He recognized the gruesome thrill with which we are all drawn to disease and destruction. Skal utilizes his admirable talents as a researcher to align Dracula with other notable texts which capitalized upon Victorian hysteria. Drawing frequently upon the sensational trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, Skal constructs a world in which sexual identity was a significant source of worry and paranoia. Writes Skal,

Given its many mysteries, it is not surprising that disease would almost effortlessly inform supernatural metaphor. the signature fictional works of both Wilde and Stoker would be fin-de-siècle horror stories easily interpretable as syphilis parables. The secret, corrupted painting in The Picture of Dorian Gray emblemized the process of a hideously insidious disease rising from sensuality and vice. Dracula similarly fixed on a corruption of the blood, pseudoscientific remedies, and the anxious anticipation of tell-tale marks on the skin. Each book illuminates the other, just as the lives of Stoker and Wilde provide endlessly reciprocal insights. 

Perhaps the reason why Gothic literature is so fascinating is because it is usually about something else. Here is where Skal truly shines, because his ability to draw the following connections indicates an immense store of knowledge of which the life of Bram Stoker is only a small part. In addition to being an expert on Gothic literature, Skal is clearly interested in every aspect of Victorian society, which, to be fair, is rather Gothic anyways. In a typical sample of his literary analysis, Skal manages to draw Stoker into a wider cultural conversation and to indicate his relative position within the literary pantheon of Gothic fiction. 

…it is almost impossible to imagine Poe’s claustrophobic tales not being informed by his famous abuse of alcohol, or not to link Dr. Jekyll’s nightmarish personality transformations (reliably triggered by a liquid potion) to Robert Louis Stevenson’s own lifelong struggle with binge drinking. The use of opium as a creative stimulant by the Romantic poets is well known, and that Percy Shelley administered quantities of opium to the teenaged Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin is hardly controversial.

Perhaps the above quotation will clarify the reason why Gothic novels are a psychoanalyst’s wet dream. Gothic fictions like Dracula can almost always be read as extended metaphors. They say something about the authors—their experiences with childhood trauma or an unhappy marriage. They also say something about the current state of civilization, about the psychological cost of living in a metropolis, and about the destructive powers of drugs and alcohol. They reflect fears of disease and immorality which might proliferate in cities where prostitutes run rampant. They often look upon the past with ambivalence—as the time before such large-scale urban degeneration, but also as the time when such immortal monsters were first conceived. In Something in the Blood, David J. Skal touches upon all of these anxieties and reminds readers why Dracula is more than a handsome guy with pointy teeth and a funny cape. Bram Stoker’s monster is the vessel of Victorian anxiety and his image deserves to outlive its cinematic parodies. 

David J. Skal's website

NYT book review

Bram Stoker's estate website

THE PAINTER MOST LIKELY TO IMMORTALIZE THE PANTHEON OF AMERICAN HEROES

A Revolution in Color by Jane Kamensky - W.W. Norton & Co. (2016)

This was a difficult post to write. Most of my neurons are busy struggling to make logical sense of the political circumstances in which I find myself, and the thought of writing something as mundane as a book review seems somewhat absurd—like celebrating Thanksgiving in the middle of a war. The purring, seductive voice in my head which always seeks to justify laziness urged me to neglect my weekly report and blame my absence on existential despair. It would have been so easy. But then I reflected upon the subject of my unwritten review and I realized that I was being offered a critical (and timely) lesson in perspective. 

A Revolution in Color by Jane Kamensky is a detailed examination of the life of John Singleton Copley—one of America’s first internationally-renowned painters. Kamensky, a professor of history at Harvard University and a finalist for the 2009 George Washington Book Prize, is uniquely skilled at transmuting a human life into a veritable tome of information. A Revolution in Color is heavy, dense, and jam-packed with miniature paintings. It focuses as much on the ‘big picture’ as it does on the minutiae—much like Copley himself. Copley painted before, during, and after the American Revolution. He painted British soldiers and Revolutionary heroes alike. He juggled conflicting emotions on both sides of the Atlantic and never established a firm base in either camp. He wanted to improve his paintings so that they might hang alongside the canvases of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, but that future would necessitate abandoning his homeland. And even if he uprooted himself to cross the Atlantic, it was still more than likely that the British elite would dismiss him as a backwoods upstart. John Singleton Copley’s life played out against a brutal background of instability. He lived though four bloody wars. He watched many of his heroes fall from grace, and others degenerate into bloodthirsty monsters. 

And yet, he chose to find beauty. Here is the crucial lesson we can distill from Kamensky’s fabulous biography: there is room for art in every struggle. From the gory maw of the French Revolution emerged some of the most profound and thought-provoking treatises on what constitutes a man and his contentious relationship with government. Bertolt Brecht converted the horrors of the holocaust and Nazi Germany into fuel for his avant garde theatrical productions. Puppetry and poetry have been implemented as metaphorical weapons during South Africa’s slow emergence from beneath the mantle of apartheid. Art—whatever its form—is a particular kind of resistance. It is both a distraction from, and a critique of, ruling ideologies. It is, along with such things as laughter and religious devotion, a ‘weapon of the weak.’ A person’s appreciation of art cannot be suppressed without their consent—even by the most tyrannical dictator. The determination to find beauty in the darkest of places is itself an act of rebellion. And like every manifestation of rebellion, revolutionary art is complicated and angry and inarticulate and captivating all at once. Kamensky argues that,

To explore Copley’s American Revolution is to treat that war, and its world, with fresh eyes. In the United States, where the War of Independence functions as a national origins story—a ‘founding’—we tend toward histories peopled by Patriots and Tories, victors and villains, right and wrong. Such tales, for all their drama, are ultimately flat: morality plays etched in black and white, as if by engravers who have only ink and paper to depict all the shades of a subject. But like the paintings Copley produced so painstakingly, the revolutionary world was awash in an almost infinite spectrum of color. Allegiance came in many shades. Some pigments were durable, others fugitive and shifting. The age of revolutions takes on a prismatic quality when we try to view it through Copley’s slate-colored eyes, eyes that saw deeply, and revealed many truths, not all of which we now hold to be self-evident. 

Several things can be gleaned from this passage. First, that Kamensky herself is a literary artist of merit. She employs the terminology of a painter to make sense of the greater world. By doing so, she grants her readers access to Copley’s unique perspective, and partially excuses his apparent hesitation—his complicity. Enthusiastic Patriots might accuse Copley of infidelity simply because he painted British soldiers and aristocrats who were loyal to King George. What these readers forget is that Copley belonged to a group of artisans who have long depended upon the patronage of the ruling class. The skills with which an artist might set himself apart from the rest of the ambitious pack—his ability to depict velvet, lace, and jewels—also necessitated a personal relationship with the wealthy and powerful. And, complicating matters even more, there were the benefits Copley personally received during the tumultuous years of warfare. Many artists took advantage of a climate in which performance and symbol had a significant impact on outcome. Writes Kamensky, 

The warm red glow of British valor spread well beyond the front lines. Ordinary colonists mapped out new routes to patronage and preferment within the expanding British fiscal-military state. A portrait in uniform was both a tool in that quest and a reflection of its success, enacting a dawning imperial manhood by robing the sitter in the fabric of the Nation.

Kamensky’s crimson-tinged universe ends up sounding a bit like one of William Blake’s alternative myths of origin—those industrial kilns of creation. She essentially drenches Copley in the blood of the Revolution from which he eventually rose to international fame. She suggests that,

…the war that made British America also made John Singleton Copley and Benjamin West, both of whom grew to manhood during those starving, booming years. The war did not make them artists. The chemical reaction of talent and diligence did that. But war was the crucible in which those volatile elements combined to forge the rudiments of a trade, maybe even a calling. 

This calling went unheard in England. When Copley finally ventured across the Atlantic he found himself on the wrong side of an imposing wall of snobbish elitism. Born and raised in ‘little’ Boston, 

Copley performed both dominance and obeisance poorly. By turns ingratiating and imperious, he kissed up and kicked down. He was probably vain and certainly ambitious: qualities that meshed uneasily with his deep, pervading caution.

Copley was out of his depths in London. Several of his English history paintings achieved critical acclaim and he became a member of the Royal Academy, but he was always an outsider at the mercy of public opinion. Having survived four wars, the loss of his Boston estate, and decades of snide comments from his British peers, Copley ended his life in a state of exhaustion. Writes Kamensky:

Rare is the person who grows easy and generous with passing decades, rare still the artist whose last works transcend biography. The mythos of late style was just emerging at the end of Copley’s life, which means he may have felt some compunction to measure himself against it, thus finding a fresh avenue for disappointment. Copley’s old age was marked by prolonged personal agony, and his late work evinces nothing so much as exhaustion. A faded star in an aging empire, he lived out his final decades still fighting the war he had tried to escape when he left British America in 1774, all the while watching the new United States, with its fetish for youthful innovation and its unshakable faith in its own rising glory, shimmer at the edge of his vision.

John Singleton Copley was too sympathetic to the men and women he painted to be an American. He also lacked the geographic credentials of a true Englishman. This persistent state of limbo must have been excruciating for the artist, but it also provided the electric charge of frustration which pulses beneath some of his most brilliant canvases. Watson and the Shark is one of my favorite history paintings from the eighteenth-century. Likewise, The Death of the Earl of Chatham and The Death of Major Peirson are remarkable in their emotional complexity and neurotic attention to detail. Paul Revere, on which ‘oceans of ink have been lavished,’ is considered by some to be the personification of America. Despite a lifetime of rejection and frustration, Copley did in fact achieve most of his aims. Jane Kamensky makes this clear when she begins her incredible biography with a tour of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Walking past Copley’s portraits of Paul Revere, John Hancock, Samuel Adams and Dr. Joseph Warren, she marvels that

They were meant for separate fates, in firelit parlors in middling homes, in a bustling entrepôt at the edge of an empire. Viewed together centuries later, in the chilly splendor of the great museum, through the glaring light of hindsight, they become a patriotic pantheon: American originals painted by another of their breed. 

John Singleton Copley’s story proves that a man can spend his entire life struggling against political fanaticism, elitism, and international upheaval, and still find his place within the whispering vaults of history. Once the turmoil of the current political climate is diluted and we’ve had several decades to reflect and theorize, perhaps we shall drag forth our own unrecognized heroes. America is a bubbling cauldron of strong opinions and volatile energy. With time—and a healthy dose of hindsight—we identify values which endure; individuals whose legacies persist. Thus we build upon the nebulous body of which we are all constituent parts. And we define ourselves. 

Jane Kamensky's Harvard University bio

THE PRINCE MOST LIKELY TO CAST ASIDE HIS ILLEGITIMACY

The Black Prince of Florence by Catherine Fletcher - Oxford University Press (2016)

My favorite period in European history ended before the birth of Shakespeare. In fact, if I were called upon to provide specific dates, it would begin with the ascension of Alexander VI to the papal throne in 1492, and end with the decapitation of Anne Boleyn in 1536. A mere forty-four years during which the face of European politics was ripped apart and stitched back together so many times that it emerged unrecognizable. A period during which ‘common’ men like William Tyndale, Thomas Cromwell, and Niccolo Machiavelli exerted unprecedented influence upon the ruling elite; in which Cesare Borgia flung aside his scarlet robes to pursue princely glory; in which the word ‘heretic’ inspired as much fear as the word ‘communist’ did in McCarthy era America; in which one king’s request for a divorce turned the Christian world upside-down and initiated the Protestant Reformation. A lot can happen in forty-four years, especially when armies and countries can be mobilized to fulfill the selfish whims of monomaniacal sovereigns bent on hoarding treasure and immortal fame. During this period of uninterrupted turbulence, a handful of powerful dynasties competed for dominance, formed alliances, and broke agreements throughout the European world. 

This was the time of child brides, extravagant ceremonial processions, and the strategic dispensation of titles. This was also the time of fratricide, matricide, regicide, and nearly every other kind of ‘cide’ one might imagine. Tyrants loom large in our collective memory. Real men like Henry VIII, Sir Thomas More, and Rodrigo Borgia have been obscured by their mythical personas, constructed by guttering torchlight in the seediest taverns and brothels in Europe. One of the most notorious names in Renaissance Italy belonged to the Medici—an ancient Florentine family whose history reads like a endless loop of violent expulsions and triumphant returns. In her fabulous biography The Black Prince of Florence, Catherine Fletcher examines the spectacular rise (and violent murder) of Alessandro de’ Medici—illegitimate son of the Duke of Urbino and an unknown woman, who may very well have been a black slave. Born in 1510 and murdered in 1537, Alessandro’s life epitomizes the violent absurdity of the times. Fletcher’s scandalous, thrilling biography reads much like an episode of Game of Thrones and is equally addicting—albeit without the added entertainment provided by an army of ice zombies. 

Catherine Fletcher is a notable Renaissance historian who has written extensively on the Borgia, Medici, and Tudor dynasties. Although she claims to be ‘not exclusively interested in the glitzy people at the top,’ her attraction to the despotic rulers of the 15th and 16th century is, in my opinion, completely understandable. One can never spend too much time in the presence of Henry VIII and his six wives, and historians are always anxious to rehabilitate the baddies and uncover new evidence. Just as we begin to tire of the Tudor reign, up pops A Man for All Seasons, or Hillary Mantel and her serpentine reincarnation of Thomas Cromwell. Fletcher has certainly done her part to shine a spotlight on the lesser players of the Renaissance stage. Her 2012 book Our Man in Rome picks apart the diplomatic puppetry of Gregorio ‘The Cavalier’ Casali, Henry VIII’s ambassador to Rome, and the man entrusted with finding a solution to the ‘King’s Great Matter.’ She also served as a historical advisor for the BBC’s adaptation of Wolf Hall, and has participated in numerous academic radio discussions. Fletcher was named a BBC New Generation Thinker in 2015. 

The process of scholarly rehabilitation can be seen in the history of research into the Medici family. Alessandro, twice-damned by his relatives and contemporary biographers for being a bastard and having a dark complexion, enjoyed his own cultural resurrection in the 1930s when African American historian Arturo Alfonso Schomburg published an article about the ‘Negro Medici’ in The Crisis, the NAACP’s official magazine edited by founder W.E.B. Du Bois. Alessandro went on to become a kind of symbol for racial discrimination, and was featured in Augustus Rogers’ 1947 book World’s Great Men of Color. Despite his newly-minted celebrity status, Alessandro cannot be definitively categorized—a fact that Fletcher repeatedly insists upon. In her conclusion she writes, 

The simplest explanation for the existence of a tradition that Alessandro was of African descent is that it was based on fact. The story that his mother was a slave may be true as well, or it may be an invention derived from the fact that Alessandro had dark skin…Beyond that I am reluctant to try to read the specifics of ethnicity from artworks. Race is not a scientific fact: it is a social construction. If there is one thing that Alessandro’s life teaches us, it is that ‘black’ is in the eye of the beholder.

The evidence of Alessandro’s ethnicity is paltry: a few scattered portraits and the imaginative accounts of contemporary biographers who sympathized with his assassin. Even these writers—who were undeniably interested in portraying Alessandro as a vicious tyrant whose dark skin was the visible manifestation of internal corruption—focused more on his illegitimacy than the color of his skin. The fact that his mother might have been a slave is damning because she was a mistress, not because she was black. Fletcher concludes many of her chapters with a warning against reading too much into historical accounts. At one such juncture she writes, 

Reading the accounts of Alessandro’s lascivious behavior, we should bear in mind that most of them were written after his assassination. They fit the classical narrative of hubris, the idea that extreme pride or arrogance comes before a fall, in other words that Alessandro brought his murder upon himself. They reinforce an argument that Alessandro was unfit to rule, that his masculinity was compromised by the excessive influence of women. It is remarkable how hindsight can change a picture. 

Due to her mistrust of Medici biographers (Alessandro’s assassin was also a cousin and the family had to excuse his behavior in order to maintain their Florentine dynasty) Fletcher finds her evidence elsewhere. A surprising amount of information can be found in Alessandro’s household documents, and Fletcher displays her genius in using inventories and transactions to extrapolate upon the Duke of Florence’s relationships with his treacherous cousin Ippolito, his Uncle Pope Clement VII, and Margaret of Parma—illegitimate daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and Alessandro’s eventual wife. Fletcher uses an itemized description of the Duke’s closet to introduce a lesson on life in the Renaissance court:

While dressing up was sometimes a matter of fun, it could also be deeply political. During the Italian Wars, for example, the Spanish were subject to similar mockery by locals hostile to their troops’ presence in Italy. For Alessandro himself, masquerading was perhaps a brief distraction from weighty responsibilities, but it might also have had political overtones. As Castiglione had observed, for a prince to put on a mask and ‘mix with his inferiors as an equal’ could also help him show that ‘it is not being a prince that accounts for his worth’; this is one way Alessandro’s contemporaries might have perceived his dress. 

At other points, Fletcher uses the content of Alessandro’s closet to comment on the threat of impending war (new purchases of armour and firearms) and his courtship of Margaret and her imperial father (elaborate gifts and theatrical props). Fletcher also lists Alessandro’s growing collection of art to imply his pride as a patron, and his commission of silver platters to suggest that he hosted regular feasts and was not as detested as Medici biographers would have readers believe. In fact, writes Fletcher, 

…there is much to suggest that Alessandro fulfilled the expectations of a Renaissance prince rather well. By most accounts he was charming and popular, accomplished in sports, a patron of the arts. He kept his hands clean and left the less salubrious aspects of his rise to power to others. If the womanizing stories are true, it would hint at recklessness, but the limited contemporary documentation should lead us to wonder whether they are. Unlike his cousin Ippolito, he respected Pope Clement VII, the head of the family, and did what the house of Medici required of him. Had it not been for Lorenzino [his assassin], Alessandro and Margaret might well have founded a Medici-Habsburg cultural centre in Florence to outshine even the Glamorous court of Duke Cosimo and his wife Eleonora di Toledo.

  

In her examination of Alessandro de Medici, Catherine Fletcher depends more upon the dry, unembellished records of wardrobe supervisors and manservants than she does upon the official family biographies. When she does quote from contemporary historians, she begins with a brief analysis of the writer’s motives and relationship to the Medici family. More often than not, it becomes clear that the historian was a friend of Alessandro’s rivals, and his personal advancement depended upon a condemnation of the fallen Duke. Fletcher introduces positive accounts in a similar manner. This strategy leaves the reader with a feeling of helplessness when it comes to distilling the ‘truth’ from historical accounts. Pinning down an accurate understanding of events is, as it is with the Tudors and the Borgias, an impossibility. Such mythical men cannot be treated fairly. When they are finally laid to rest, the empires they leave behind must choose whether to celebrate or condemn their fallen leader. Was Alessandro de Medici a gracious prince, or a lecherous villain? Should his death be recorded as a murder, or a tyrannicide? When the contemporary biographer’s future (and life) depends upon which adjectives he employs, there can be no middle ground. In The Black Prince of Florence, Catherine Fletcher paints a rich picture of the Manichean world of Renaissance politics. It is luxurious, it is treacherous, it is hysterical. Perhaps this nervous energy is what draws readers to every resurrection.

Catherine Fletcher's website

'The Economist' review