From Tube to Book

...I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta...

...After having looked at some of the Old World's finest artistic treasures, and having dipped into its best philosophy, literature, and music, Clark, facing today's world, is far from happy: "I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction...

...I would be happier if the countless unnecessary phrases such as "I began" or "as I have said" could have been eliminated, along with other informal language, and if certain slick phrases and formulations had not been taken over from television (which, Clark asserts, "should retain the character of the spoken word, with the rhythms of ordinary speech, and even some of the offhand imprecise language that prevents conversation from becoming pompous...

...Similar cases could be cited from the other twelve chapters, not because Lord Clark is either ignorant or superficial, but because television lends itself to casual statements and irresponsibly provocative remarks...

...Lord Clark might still be the best choice for the writing of it, could he persuade himself not to worry about catching the attention of all the people and holding it all the time at all cost...

...Thirdly, the book has no competitor (Malraux' Voices of Silence, which covers more or less the same ground, is much harder to read in its aphoristic, epigrammatic style, and it is addressed to graduates of the lycee...

...the color reproductions do not appear to be especially accurate...

...Looking around, he views a new art that, as he concedes, baffles him, a worship of science, of machines that can help a clever minority to keep the majority in bondage, an anarchic group of people who are as likely to destroy themselves by cynicism and disillusion as they could by bombs...

...This reads as if it refers to Albrecht Duerer's father instead of the artist—and is just a bad sentence...

...For him, the "dazzling summit of human achievement" goes beyond superb frescoes and tremendous structures of stone or brick, all "life-enhancing," to use the favorite phrase of Clark's mentor, Bernard Berenson...

...There is a need for a popular book on the subject of Western art and civilization...

...A scholar of his stature should have realized that it is almost insolent to try to distill approximately thirteen centuries of human endeavor (with particular emphasis on the visual arts) into approximately thirteen television hours, or a text of roughly 100,000 words...

...Nonetheless, large sales can be predicted for Civilization—it will yield its author more than all his other books combined...

...College students would do well to listen to him when he does not attempt the impossible but offers the friendly advice of an Oxonian sage who is also a well-traveled man of the world...

...To begin with, the television series was a great success in England...

...The screening of this series—presented in the United States in movie format for special audiences—shows a paunchy and aging historian in a flannel suit stopping in front of the Cathedral at Chartres, on the Pont des Arts in Paris, amidst the ruins of a primitive Irish monastery, and so forth...

...In the foreword to this survey of Western art he acknowledges that he first thought to give his "summary scripts" for the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) last year a "more literate form," but then felt that would require a year's work and would thereby "deprive the book of a certain ease and speed...

...Secondly, the volume promises to offer instant information somewhat in the manner of H. G. Wells' Outline of History in the 1920s ¦—and on fewer pages, and with the cheerful aid of many pictures...

...For Lord Clark, one surmises, the purpose of civilization is to transform the beast of prey into a gentleman who does not want to inflict pain on others...

...Illustrations are, by necessity, small—the largest measure about eight by ten inches—and, while clear, not sharp...

...Here, no television station has had the courage to gamble oh an American audience's readiness to return as faithfully to a protracted art program as it has in the case of another British import, the Forsyte Saga...

...But perhaps television is not yet ready for the kind of enterprise he envisaged, just as the early movie industry was not ready for scripts by old Count Tolstoy, who welcomed the film as a means to reach people...

...Galsworthy's cycle of novels offers entertainment, whereas Clark's series demands viewers who can tolerate a modicum of pretentious pseudo-culture...

...Unfortunately, through this very book, so pretentious, so full of make-believe as, happily, his other writings are not, Lord Clark has willy-nilly contributed to the new barbarism...

...The man-in-the-street, if he picks up Civilization at all, will just be confused by, "Play it for kicks: that is the Mannerist motto, and like all forms of indecency, it's irresistible...

...The editing was slap-dash: "Although- born and brought up in the Meistersingers' town of Nuremberg, his father was a Hungarian...

...Reviewed by Alfred Werner Kenneth Clark, now Lord Clark of Saltwood, author of scholarly volumes on Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and other artists, is too experienced a writer not to know that slightly revised texts of television scripts do not make a book for earnest and sophisticated readers...

...Clark was at least wise enough to limit himself to the Christian heritage, to the years between the break-up of the Roman Empire, and the end of la belle epoque in the flames of World War I. The lesson to be learned from so heroic an effort is that a book demands far higher standards, and is subject to much sterner scrutiny than television programs that use beguiling sights and sounds to conceal inaccuracies and anesthetize the critical mind...

...He does not equate it with prosperity (though he admits that some is necessary), nor with knowledge of Greek and Latin, nor with clean fingernails...

...The camera shots are often superb, and sometimes overwhelming on the huge screen that sucks you in, and were probably persuasive even on television screens in British homes...

...Best of all, he does not even try to define civilization, though he is bold enough to say that he can recognize it when he sees it...

...By comparison, the book is at a disadvantage...

...Clark would like to see civilization as an upward struggle towards perfection rather than as a mask through which savagery can burst at any time...

...That Civilization turns out to be a mild disappointment will be regretted by all who appreciate Lord Clark as one of the last civilized men in the Nineteenth Century sense of the term —one who knows the best of what has been formulated in the world, either in poetry or in icons...

...It is hard to see a connection between Duerer, Martin Luther, and Sig-mund Freud (an Austrian Jew from Moravia...

...the scholar will be merely annoyed by this reference to the Mannerist school of painting...

...The difference is that today, unlike what the Victorians believed, it is not a commodity that money can buy...

...These are just a few samples of poor style, sloppy editing, and muddy thinking taken from one chapter...

...Any resistance to this visual onslaught is dissolved by the strains of the enticing Gregorian chant, the counterpoint of Bach, or the other great music that accompanies this avalanche of beauty...

...Though an admirer of Clark, this reviewer cannot agree...

...Has man achieved this goal...

...Can one man—even one as erudite as Clark— hope to manage a guided tour of such scope entirely by himself (aided only by a crew of docile assistants) ? It would have been more prudent for him to confine himself to his own specialty, Renaissance Italy, and to delegate the other chapters to experts in their respective fields...

...Civilization, with a capital C, will always be for the few...

...Each sentence can be absorbed slowly, and reread thoughtfully and critically...

...A statement like, "The German mind that produced Duerer and the Reformation also produced psychoanalysis," is startling, to say the least...