SIXTY FOUR ISOLATED, INTRIGUING PASSAGES FROM ALL GENRES COMPETE!
EAST BRACKET
- Anton Chekhov v. 16. Helen Whitman
- F.T. Marinetti v. 15. Stephen Davis
- Marc Andreessen v. 14. Camille Paglia
- Brian Wilson v. 13. Eric Singer
- Paul Simon v. 12. Edgar Poe
- John Updike v. 11. Travis Kelce
- Sharon Olds v. 10. Taylor Swift
- Steven Cramer v. 9. Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Nathaniel Hawthorne
- Taylor Swift
- Travis Kelce
- Edgar Poe
- Eric Singer
- Camille Paglia
- Stephen Davis
- Helen Whitman
Life, unfortunately, is random, and the way life is ordered makes a mockery of itself, such that those who try and present it, and live it, in all its variety, are doomed themselves to be less interesting than those who present it and understand it from an extremely narrow perspective—these are the “highly skilled” we tend to admire for their “expertise” and who participate in a “craft” or a “guild” which has its own rules and reason for existing, and repeats that narrowness in order to fulfill itself. What distinguishes one craftsman from another in any given field is narrower still, and the preference for one over the other is the basis of all that is crazy and insulting about love—we have a “favorite” who is essentially the same as his or her neighbor—the preferment participating in the narrowness of the perception, which is by the devotee’s own definition and understanding, subtlety and taste, the unique flower which is the end of expertise itself, the pearl, we might say, which exists because it irritates the oyster. We are a “fan” of one player or musician or team in a given sport, one we choose over the others—even as an outsider sees them as virtually the same. This tension between the outsider’s “normal” perception and the devotee’s more subtle one is the basis of all human behavior and thought. The hockey fan is passionate about the difference between one team and another or one player and another, while a stranger to the sport sees a world of similarity—guys in hockey player uniforms skating and wielding sticks. The “fan” is obligated to understand differences and is an “expert” insofar as each minute difference to the “fan” is apparent. But love is blind—the fan judges crudely and passionately. They know a great deal, but their “expertise” is finally opinion, preferential in nature; it is not true expertise; it is not based on real experience—which belongs to the favorite player who is actually “good” at playing the sport—and this “goodness” participates in what is narrower and subtler, still. The angle necessary for a good hockey shot, etc.
So the poetry lover participates in this favoritism; and so does the philosopher; so do we all, but never generally, where we can all see each other, clearly, at once, but only secretly and privately and competitively within chosen fields of endeavor which all contain endless trapdoors of narrowness and expertise that finally die in a betrayal of plainness, irrelevance, and similarity.
So it is with this year’s March Madness, which runs the risk of wordiness, since every genre of words is included, and no participant has any particular reason to exist beside its neighbor. The idea of category defeats itself. The idea of category cannot overcome being categorized. There is too much transparency and not enough secrecy. The well-read person has no expertise. This March Madness has no Madness—it conjures up rebounds without walls, shouts without echoes.
Life is random. But to admit this is to cease to exist. The true meaning of the Scarriet March Madness 2024 East Bracket list of items is profoundly similar to the “real” March Madness playing out on basketball courts across America. The only difference is that the field here is wider, and therefore prohibitively random—even if only in our minds.
Read these. All 16. This is a sample of what is available to me in my home library. Nothing is more important to the civilized person. Do not be confused. The list features difference which is not narrow enough to seem real. Yes, it’s a total illusion. A civilized one.
Anton Chekhov 1860-1904 (“A Visit To Friends” Norton Anthology of Short Fiction, 1978)
Her continual dreams of happiness and love had wearied her, she could no longer hide her feelings, and her whole posture, the brilliance of her eyes, her fixed, blissful smile, betrayed her sweet thoughts. As for him, he was ill at ease, he shrank together, he froze, not knowing whether to say something so as to turn it all into a joke, or to remain silent, and he was so vexed, and could only reflect that here in the country, on a moonlit night, with a beautiful, enamored, dreamy girl so near, his emotions were as little involved as on Malaya Bronskaya Street—clearly this fine poetry meant no more to him than that crude prose. All this was dead: trysts on moonlit nights, slimwaisted figures in white, mysterious shadows, towers and country houses and “types” like Sergey Sergeich, and like himself, Podgorin, with his chilly boredom, constant vexation, his inability to adjust himself to real life, inability to take from it what it had to offer, and with an aching, wearying thirst for what was not and could not be on earth.
F.T. Marinetti 1876-1944 (Futurist quoted in “The Despots of Silicon Valley” by Adrienne LaFrance in the Atlantic March 2024)
We are not satisfied to roam in a garden closed in by dark cypresses, bending over ruins and mossy antiques… We believe that Italy’s only worthy tradition is never to have had tradition. Beauty exists only in struggle. There is no masterpiece that has not an aggressive character. Poetry must be a violent assault on the forces of the unknown, to force them to bow before man.
Marc Andreessen 1971- (The Techno-Optimist Manifesto 10/16/2023)
We are told that technology takes our jobs, reduces our wages, increases inequality, threatens our health, ruins the environment, degrades our society, corrupts our children, impairs our humanity, threatens our future, and is ever on the verge of ruining everything. We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology. We are told to be pessimistic. The myth of Prometheus – in various updated forms like Frankenstein, Oppenheimer, and Terminator – haunts our nightmares. We are told to denounce our birthright – our intelligence, our control over nature, our ability to build a better world. We are told to be miserable about the future.
… We believe in adventure. Undertaking the Hero’s Journey, rebelling against the status quo, mapping uncharted territory, conquering dragons, and bringing home the spoils… We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature. We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt. We are the apex of the predator; the lightning works for us.
Brian Wilson 1942- (“Caroline, No” Track 13, Pet Sounds 1966)
Where did your long hair go?
Where is the girl I used to know?
How could you lose that happy glow?
Who took that look away?
I remember how you used to say
You’d never change but that’s not true.
Oh Caroline, you
Break my heart.
I want to go and cry.
It’s so sad to watch a sweet thing die.
Oh, Caroline why?
Could I ever find in you again?
The things that made me love you so much then?
Could we ever bring ’em back once they have gone?
Oh, Caroline, no.
Paul Simon 1941- (“Cloudy” Track 3, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme 1966)
Cloudy,
The sky is gray and white and cloudy.
Sometimes I think it’s hanging down on me
And it’s a hitchhike a hundred miles,
I’m a rag-a-muffin child,
Pointed finger-painted smile,
I left my shadow waiting down the road for me a while.
Cloudy,
My thoughts are scattered and they’re cloudy,
They have no borders, no boundaries,
They echo and they swell,
From Tolstoy to Tinker Bell,
Down from Berkeley to Carmel,
Got some pictures in my pocket and a lot of time to kill,
Hey sunshine!
I haven’t seen you in a long time.
Why don’t you show your face and bend my mind?
These clouds stick to the sky
Like a floating question, why?
And they linger there to die.
They don’t know where they are going
And, my friend, neither do I
Cloudy.
Cloud-dee-ee.
Cloudy.
John Updike 1932-2009 (Review of Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 2005, in Due Considerations, Essays and Criticism 2007)
The works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez contain a great deal of love, depicted as a doom, a demonic possession, a disease that, once contracted, cannot be easily cured. Not infrequently the afflicted are an older man and younger woman, hardly more than a child. In One Hundred Years of Solitude (English translation 1970), Aureliano Buendia visits a very young whore: “The adolescent mulatto girl, with her small bitch’s teats, was naked on the bed. Before Aureliano sixty-three men has passed through the room that night. From being used so much, kneaded with sweat and sighs, the air in the room had begun to turn to mud. The girl took off the soaked sheet and asked Aureliano to hold it by one side. It was as heavy as a piece of canvas. They squeezed it, twisting it at the ends until it regained its natural weight. They turned over the mat and the sweat came out of the other side.” Aureliano does not take advantage of her overexploited charms, and leaves the room “troubled by a desire to weep.” He has—you guessed it—fallen in love.
Sharon Olds 1942- (from “His Birthday” p. 160 Balladz 2022)
When I’m in New York and he’s in New Hampshire, and I’m starting to make love to myself, on his birthday, I look around for something silky, as I’d rubbed the satin binding of my childhood blanket when I’d sucked my thumb to sleep, until I was 13 and had buck teeth. On his 75th, I wanted to caress myself through something which had a glimmery feeling. And when I came, the first time, it almost picked me up and threw me off the bed. Resting, I panted, like the pleasure-wounded. […]
Steven Cramer 1953- (“I Want That” p. 12 Listen 2020)
As I lay down too tired to believe
is a line I love by Laura Jensen.
I imagine it coming to her quickly
like dictation, like cold with snow.
I want that. How I want that.
And the night I believed I sat
in a chair in the middle of the sea
and yet could see the shoreline:
lights, dune grass, a hut, and bluffs
behind them bright, as if on fire—
Oh, I want them, I want them
back like the waterfall a child built
of cheesecloth, papier-mache, wire.
I called it Salishan, a name sounding
like silver buffed up to a shine.
I want that shine too; a ton of it.
I brush my hand across rough cotton
here, or here. And notice, if I’m naked,
the pelt of shower water against my skin,
the scent of scentless soap, the weight
my feet confer to the tub floor. Today
I’ll amble through the city’s jazz of rain.
And the voice beneath my scalp that says
there’s little to no point? Poor voice.
Nathaniel Hawthorne 1804-1864 (“Wakefield” in The Celestial Railroad and Other Stories 1980)
In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth, of a man—let us call him Wakefield—who absented himself for a long time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very uncommon, nor—without a proper distinction of circumstances—to be condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record of marital delinquency; and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in London. The man, under pretense of going on a journey, took lodgings in the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or friends, and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment, dwelt upwards of twenty years. During that period, he beheld his home every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so great a gap in his matrimonial felicity—when his death was reckoned certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory, and his wife long, long ago, resigned to her autumnal widowhood—he entered the door one evening, quietly, as from a day’s absence, and became a loving spouse til death.
Taylor Swift 1989- (“Out of the Woods,” track 4 1989 2014) Jack Antonoff, co-writer
Looking at it now,
It all seems so simple,
We were lying on your couch,
I remember,
You took a Polaroid of us,
Then discovered,
The rest of the world was black and white,
But we were in screaming color,
And I remember thinking,
Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet?
Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods?
Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet?
Are we in the clear yet, in the clear yet? Good!
Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet?
Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods?
Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet?
Are we in the clear yet, in the clear yet? Good?
Are we out of the woods?
Looking at it now,
Last December,
We were built to fall apart,
And fall back together.
Your necklace hanging from my neck,
The night we couldn’t quite forget,
When we decided, we decided
To move the furniture so we could dance,
Baby, like we stood a chance.
Two paper airplanes flying, flying, flying
And I remember thinking,
Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet?
Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods?
Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet?
Are we in the clear yet, in the clear yet?
Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods yet?
Are we out of the woods yet? Are we out of the woods?
Are we in the clear yet? Are we in the clear yet?
Are we in the clear yet, in the clear yet?
Are we out of the woods?
Remember when you hit the brakes too soon?
20 stitches in a hospital room.
When you started crying, baby, I did too,
But when the sun came up, I was looking at you.
Remember when we couldn’t take the heat?
I walked out, I said, “I’m setting you free”
But the monsters turned out to be just trees.
When the sun came up, you were looking at me.
You were looking at me, oh,
You were looking at me.
Travis Kelce 1989- (speech, Kansas City Chiefs victory parade, 2024)
Oh oh uhhhh. (Kansas City Chiefs Tomahawk Chop chant drunkenly slurred)
Blame it all on my roots!
I showed up in boots!
And ruined the 9ers (your black tie) affair.
The last one to know!
We were (I was) the last ones to show!
We were (I was) the last ones they (you) thought they’d (you’d) see there.
And I saw the surprise!
And the fear in their (his) eyes!
Took their (his) glass of champagne—
Pat took that glass of champagne—
And I toasted you!
What I never knew—what?
—mike removed
(Said “honey, we may be through”
But you’ll never hear me complain
‘Cause I’ve got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away
And I’ll be okay
I’m not big on social graces
Think I’ll slip on down to the oasis
Oh, I’ve got friends in low places)
(Songwriters: Dewayne Blackwell / Earl Lee, from “Friends in Low Places”
Garth Brooks 1990)
Edgar Poe 1809-1849 (“The Fall of the House of Usher” Selected Writings of Edgar Allan Poe, 1956)
I had learned, too, the very remarkable fact, that the stem of the Usher race, all time-honored as it was, had put forth, at no period, any enduring branch; in other words, that the entire family lay in the direct line of descent, and had always, with very trifling and very temporary variation, so lain.
Eric Singer 1896-1969 (A Manual of Graphology, p. 50 1969)
Finally, the forger who copies another person’s handwriting has to do it slowly. Often the only sign by which the forgery can be detected is found in comparing the reproduction with the quickly written original. The speed of handwriting therefore becomes the decisive factor in ascertaining the genuineness and spontaneity of all the other signs of handwriting; it is the most important branch of study for the expert graphologist, who has to deal in court with disguised or forged handwriting. As spontaneity and a tendency to be calculating are both present in most human minds you will find signs both of speed and of slowness in most handwritings.
Camille Paglia 1947- (Sex, Art, and American Culture, p. 210, 1992)
I will argue that the French invasion of academe in the Seventies was not at all a continuation of the Sixties revolution but rather an evasion of it. In Tenured Radicals, which treats trendy showboating professors with the irreverence they deserve, Roger Kimball makes one statement I would correct: he suggests the radicals of the Sixties are now in positions of control in the major universities. He is too generous. Most of America’s academic leftists are no more radical than my Aunt Hattie. Sixties radicals rarely went on to graduate school; if they did, they often dropped out. If they made it through, they had trouble getting a job and keeping it. They remain mavericks, isolated, off-center. Today’s academic leftists are strutting wannabes, timorous nerds who missed the Sixties while they were grade-grubbing in the library and brown-nosing the senior faculty. Their politics came to them late, secondhand, and special delivery via the Parisian import craze of the Seventies. These people have risen to the top not by challenging the system but by smoothly adapting themselves to it. They’re company men, Rosencrantz and Guildensterns, privileged opportunists who rode the wave of fashion. Most true Sixties people could not and largely did not survive in the stifling graduate schools of the late Sixties and early Seventies.
Stephen Davis 1947- (Old Gods Almost Dead p.227, 2001)
Brian was back in court on Tuesday, December 12, to appeal his drug conviction. Three psychiatrists testified that he was “an extremely frightened young man” and “a very emotional and unstable person.” A sympathetic judge commuted his jail time to three years’ probation and a 1,000-pound fine, provided he continue to seek treatment. Mick and Keith came to court to support Brian, who left after the judgment to have some rotten teeth pulled. Two days later, stoned on downers, he collapsed in his new flat in Chelsea and wound up in the hospital. At a press conference around this time, Mick let fly at Brian. “There’s a tour coming up, and there’s obvious difficulties with Brian, who can’t leave the country.” He talked about how the Stones wanted to tour Japan, “except Brian, again, he can’t get into Tokyo because he’s a druggie.” Some people around the Stones were appalled by Mick’s callousness toward Brian. They wondered why Mick saw him as such a threat. Spanish Tony Sanchez, working now for Keith as a drug courier, thought it was because Brian lived the life that Mick only pretended to live. “Brian was genuinely out of his skull on drugs most of the time, while Mick used only minuscule quantities of dope because he worried that his appearance would be affected. Brian was into orgies, lesbians, and sadomasochism, while Jagger lived his prim, prissy, bourgeois life and worried in case someone spilled coffee on his Persian carpets.”
Helen Whitman 1803-1878 (“To Edgar Allan Poe” Great Poems by American Women, 1998)
If thy sad heart, pining for human love,
In its earth solitude grew dark with fear,
Lest the High Sun of Heaven itself should prove
Powerless to save from that phantasmal sphere
Wherein thy spirit wandered, —if the flowers
That pressed around thy feet, seemed but to bloom
In lone Gethsemanes, through starless hours,
When all who loved had left thee to thy doom, —
Oh, yet believe that in that hollow vale
Where thy soul lingers, waiting to attain
So much of Heaven’s sweet grace as shall avail
To lift its burden of remorseful pain,
My soul shall meet thee, and its Heaven forego
Till God’s great love, on both, one hope, one Heaven bestow.
Scarriet 
noochinator said,
March 18, 2024 at 4:12 pm
A musical interlude during the events—‘Le tombeau d’Edgar Poe’ by Dominick Argento
thomasbrady said,
March 19, 2024 at 1:20 am
Bravo
Anonymous said,
March 19, 2024 at 1:57 am
Paul Simon vs. Edgar Poe?
Can you choose between an emerald and a ruby?
A sapphire or a diamond?
Anonymous said,
March 19, 2024 at 2:37 am
I pick Paul Edgar Simon Poe.
thomasbrady said,
March 19, 2024 at 6:58 pm
You’re obviously not a bracketologist.
noochinator said,
March 19, 2024 at 5:27 pm
A Fateful Error—Expanding NATO Would Be a Rebuff to Russian Democracy
By George F. Kennan
NYT, Feb. 5, 1997
In late 1996, the impression was allowed, or caused, to become prevalent that it had been somehow and somewhere decided to expand NATO up to Russia’s borders. This despite the fact that no formal decision can be made before the alliance’s next summit meeting in June.
The timing of this revelation—coinciding with the Presidential election and the pursuant changes in responsible personalities in Washington—did not make it easy for the outsider to know how or where to insert a modest word of comment. Nor did the assurance given to the public that the decision, however preliminary, was irrevocable encourage outside opinion.
But something of the highest importance is at stake here. And perhaps it is not too late to advance a view that, I believe, is not only mine alone but is shared by a number of others with extensive and in most instances more recent experience in Russian matters. The view, bluntly stated, is that expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.
Such a decision may be expected to inflame the nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking. And, last but not least, it might make it much more difficult, if not impossible, to secure the Russian Duma’s ratification of the Start II agreement and to achieve further reductions of nuclear weaponry.
It is, of course, unfortunate that Russia should be confronted with such a challenge at a time when its executive power is in a state of high uncertainty and near-paralysis. And it is doubly unfortunate considering the total lack of any necessity for this move. Why, with all the hopeful possibilities engendered by the end of the cold war, should East-West relations become centered on the question of who would be allied with whom and, by implication, against whom in some fanciful, totally unforeseeable and most improbable future military conflict?
I am aware, of course, that NATO is conducting talks with the Russian authorities in hopes of making the idea of expansion tolerable and palatable to Russia. One can, in the existing circumstances, only wish these efforts success. But anyone who gives serious attention to the Russian press cannot fail to note that neither the public nor the Government is waiting for the proposed expansion to occur before reacting to it.
Russians are little impressed with American assurances that it reflects no hostile intentions. They would see their prestige (always uppermost in the Russian mind) and their security interests as adversely affected. They would, of course, have no choice but to accept expansion as a military fait accompli. But they would continue to regard it as a rebuff by the West and would likely look elsewhere for guarantees of a secure and hopeful future for themselves.
It will obviously not be easy to change a decision already made or tacitly accepted by the alliance’s 16 member countries. But there are a few intervening months before the decision is to be made final; perhaps this period can be used to alter the proposed expansion in ways that would mitigate the unhappy effects it is already having on Russian opinion and policy.
thomasbrady said,
March 19, 2024 at 11:19 pm
Wise and prescient.
Thanks, Nooch!
noochinator said,
March 19, 2024 at 10:40 pm
Pat Metheny on Kenny G
Kenny G is not a musician I really had much of an opinion about at all until recently. There was not much about the way he played that interested me one way or the other, either live or on records. I first heard him a number of years ago playing as a sideman with Jeff Lorber when they opened a concert for my band. My impression was that he was someone who had spent a fair amount of time listening to the more pop oriented sax players of that time, like Grover Washington or David Sanborn, but was not really an advanced player, even in that style. He had major rhythmic problems, and his harmonic and melodic vocabulary was extremely limited, mostly to pentatonic-based and blues-lick derived patterns, and he exhibited only a rudimentary understanding of how to function as a professional soloist in an ensemble—Lorber was basically playing him off the bandstand in terms of actual music. But he did show a knack for connecting to the basest impulses of the large crowd by deploying his two or three most effective licks (holding long notes and playing fast runs—never mind that there were lots of harmonic clams in them) at key moments to elicit a powerful crowd reaction (over and over again). The other main thing I noticed was that he played horribly out of tune, consistently sharp (which he does to this day).
Of course, I am aware of what he has played since, the success he has had, and the controversy that has surrounded him among musicians and serious listeners. This controversy seems to be largely fueled by the fact that he sells an enormous amount of records while not being anywhere near a really great player in relation to the standards that have been set on his instrument over the past sixty or seventy years.
Honestly, there is no small amount of envy involved from musicians who see one of their fellow players doing so well financially, especially when so many of them who are far superior as improvisors and musicians in general have trouble just making a living. There must be hundreds, if not thousands of sax players around the world who are simply better improvising musicians than Kenny G. It would really surprise me if even he disagreed with that statement.
But, like I said at the top, this relatively benign view was all “until recently”.
Not long ago, Kenny G put out a recording where he overdubbed himself on top of a thirty-year-old Louis Armstrong record, on the track “What a Wonderful World”. With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I really can’t use at all—as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing; and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music.
This type of musical necrophilia—the technique of overdubbing on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers—was weird when Natalie Cole did it with her dad on “Unforgettable” a few years ago, but it was her dad. When Tony Bennett did it with Billie Holiday it was bizarre, but we are talking about two of the greatest singers of the twentieth century, who were on roughly the same level of artistic accomplishment. When Larry Coryell presumed to overdub himself on top of a Wes Montgomery track, I lost a lot of the respect that I had for him—and I have to seriously question the fact that I did have respect for someone who could turn out to have such unbelievably bad taste and be that disrespectful to one of my personal heroes.
Normally, I feel that musicians all have a hard enough time, regardless of their level, just trying to play well, and that they don’t really benefit from public criticism, particularly from their fellow players.
But this is different. When Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo-bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped-out, fucked-up playing all over one of the great Louis’s tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined to be possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy, and, by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture. We let it slide at our own peril.
http://www.jazzoasis.com/methenyonkennyg.htm
thomasbrady said,
March 19, 2024 at 11:24 pm
Pat Metheny v. Kenny G.
Hilarious!
noochinator said,
March 19, 2024 at 11:37 pm
Metheny’s album ‘Song X’ from around 1985 or so:
noochinator said,
March 19, 2024 at 11:39 pm
Not Kenny G., Kenny G
noochinator said,
March 19, 2024 at 11:35 pm
The following interview with George Kennan took place in Princeton in June 1999, during the days following the end of the war in Kosovo. Kennan was 95 years old!
Richard Ullman: Are you surprised at the role that Russia has played in the bargaining over Kosovo?
George Kennan: Not really. It is, for them, largely a matter of prestige. Precisely because they now have no great military power they fear that the rest of the world will forget that they are a great people, which of course they are in many respects, and by no means only the military ones. To be able to play a useful part in the resolution of the Kosovo crisis is, for many of them, a much-needed source of reassurance about themselves; and I see no reason why we should not, on principle, welcome it. Of course, their involvement will present problems. There will be many disagreements. Compromise will be required at many points. Such is the essence of international life.
R.U.: How do you explain the chaos in Russia?
G.K.: Chaos? I am not sure that that is the best word for it. Conditions are, of course, terrible. But life goes on. We seem to have expected them to change, within a single decade, an entire great governmental, social, and economic system. Even in more favorable conditions that would have been difficult. But consider their situation. Since the Thirty Years’ War, no people, I think, have been more profoundly injured and diminished than the Russian people have been by the successive waves of violence brought to them by this past brutal century. There were: the Russian-Japanese War of 1904-1905; the fearful manpower losses brought about by Russia’s participation in the First World War; the cruelties and the fighting that were a part of the consolidation of Communist power in the immediate aftermath of that First World War; then, the immense manpower losses of World War II; and finally, extending over some seven decades and penetrating and in part dominating all these other disasters, there were the immense damages, social, spiritual, even genetic, inflicted upon the Russian people by the Communist regime itself. In this vast process of destruction, all the normal pillars on which any reasonably successful modern society has to rest—faith, hope, national self-confidence, balance of age groups, family structure, and a number of others—have been destroyed. The process took place over most of an entire century. It embraced three generations of Russian people. Such enormous losses and abuses are not to be put to rights in a single decade, perhaps not even in a single generation.You may ask: Was not much of all this the fault of one or another of Russia’s own governments? Certainly it was. But it was not the fault of the great and essentially helpless mass of the common Russian people.
R.U.: One of the striking things is the absence of a feeling of common endeavor. Everyone seems to be out for himself.
G.K.: Yes, that is the way things look, but mostly among certain fringe sectors of Russian society. And one must not forget the positive features of the situation. Communism has been cast off. They have a constitution. They have elections, and elected institutions. Of course it is true that these institutions function extremely badly. But no one has seriously urged their abandonment. To me, one of the heartening aspects of the recent period has been the almost pathetic patience of the common people of Russia in the face of the terrible conditions under which they have been compelled to live. I think it amazing that there has not been more of a popular demand for a return to communism, since in many instances much of their recent condition has been worse than it was in the final years of Communist rule.
R.U.: I am surprised that the public hasn’t rebelled against enormous profits made by some individuals.
G.K.: Well, I think that is coming. I hope, at least, that with the approaching elections in Russia you may see a change for the better in that respect. The outgoing parliament embraced many people who had one foot in the old regime and one foot out of it, and never knew quite how to behave. But what is now impending has to be a change in the generations. Younger people are bound to come more prominently into more powerful positions than has been the case in the past. And I am hopeful that they will bring to their participation in political life many positive contributions of one sort or another.
R.U.: One of the striking aspects of the present situation is the degree to which Russians whom I would have characterized as liberal—indeed, scholars from the institutes with whom we all interacted for many many years—have taken a very hard line against NATO and NATO enlargement and against NATO’s intervention in Kosovo, and I wonder whether they have taken that line because it really represents what they feel and think, or whether this is another example of posturing, of aiming at domestic opinion in Russia. There is great animosity toward NATO on the part of many people whom I would characterize as liberal. There are few who have the courage to say that NATO does not threaten Russia and that the ethnic cleansing and the events in Kosovo are so egregious that they deserve NATO involvement.
G.K.: If I understand your position correctly, I am afraid that on this point you and I have a real disagreement. I have never seen the evidence that the recent NATO enlargement (that brought the Poles, the Czechs, and the Hungarians into the alliance) was necessary or desirable. We are now being pressed by some advocates of expansion to admit the Baltic countries. I think this would be highly unfortunate. I agree that NATO, as we now know it, has no intention of attacking Russia. But NATO remains, in concept and in much of its substance, a military alliance. If there is any country at all against which it is conceived as being directed, that is Russia. And that surely is the way the Poles and others in that part of the world perceive it.
These are sensitive borders—these borders between Russia and the Baltic countries. I will not go into the history of Russia’s relations with those Baltic peoples, other than to ask you to remember that they were included in the Russian empire for nearly two hundred years in the two centuries before World War I, and much of their advance into modern life was achieved during that time. And then, for a period of almost another two decades, they were quite independent, and this was accepted by the world community and, with the exception of the Communists, by most of the Russians themselves. It took Hitler to virtually compel the Russian government to take them over in 1939, and then to put an end to their independence in 1940. And the later entry of Russian forces onto their territory occurred (and this we should remember) in the process of pushing the German army out of that region—a process which had our most complete and enthusiastic approval.
In other words, the Russian relationship to the Baltic peoples has had many ups and downs. They have been a part of Russia longer than they have been a part of anything else. For a time they were fully independent. I never doubted or challenged the desirability of their independence. I never ceased to advocate it in the years when they didn’t have it. But I don’t think that it would be a good thing for NATO to try to complicate that historic relationship by taking these countries into what the Russians are bound to see as an anti-Russian military alliance.
R.U.: What do you think the relationship between Russia and the former Soviet republics will look like say a decade or so from now?
G.K.: Oh, I don’t think it will be too troubled. After all, the Russians, under Yeltsin, took the lead in pushing them into independence ten years ago. He left them no alternative but to accept it. Why should the present Russian government wish to reverse it? By and large, Russia has been better off without them.
Of course, there are the problems of Russian minorities in two or three of those countries. In the case of Ukraine, in particular, there was the thoughtless tossing into that country, upon the collapse of Russian communism, of the totally un-Ukrainian Crimean peninsula, together with one of the three greatest Russian naval bases. For that we, too, must accept a share of the blame. But even in this case, all the recent Russian aspirations have been limited to the alleviation of the effects of these blunders; they have not taken the form of any encroachments upon Ukrainian independence.
R.U.: Now, what has the United States done that’s right and what have we done that’s wrong in dealing with the problem of Russia since the end of the cold war?
G.K.: Well, it certainly has been a record of well-meaning. I think we were mistaken in believing that a certain amount of money placed in the hands of the present Russian government would improve things significantly. A large portion of it has, after all, ended up in the pockets of various individuals. We should not have put money into that country unless and until there were real institutional guarantees against its misuse for purposes we never intended.
R.U.: How do you assess Yeltsin?
G.K.: Well, you ask me what our government has done wrong in its relations with Russia. One thing that falls at once to my mind, in that category, has been the over-personalizing of the relationship—treating it as though it all stood or fell with the fate of one or another individual, Yeltsin or Gorbachev or whoever. I might point out that this is a weakness in our diplomacy that goes far beyond Russia. We seem to love to deal with individual statesmen rather than with their governments. Of all these so-called world leaders whom we have cultivated, some were real dictators, some were not. But we seem to have treated them all as though that was precisely what we expected them to be, and, in a sense, wanted them to be. Hence all the summit meetings, with the immense wastages of money and of people’s time that they have involved. I submit that governments should deal with other governments as such, and should avoid unnecessary involvement, particularly personal involvement, with their leaders. The leaders, ours included, come and go; governments remain; and for this reason relations among governments are, in the long term, perhaps less glamorous, but more dependable.
R.U.: How would you conduct these relationships?
G.K.: I would urge a far greater detachment, on our government’s part, from their domestic affairs. I would like to see our government gradually withdraw from its public advocacy of democracy and human rights. Let me stress: I am speaking of governments, not private parties. If others in our country want to advocate democracy or human rights (whatever those terms mean), that’s perfectly all right. But I don’t think any such questions should enter into our diplomatic relations with other countries. If others want to advocate changes in their conditions, fine—no objection. But not the State Department or the White House. They have more important things to do. Least of all should they allow such matters to affect our relations with China. The Chinese, to my opinion, are the French of Asia. The two peoples are similar in a number of respects. They are both proud people. Both are conscious of being the bearers of a great cultural tradition. They don’t really, in either case, like foreigners; or at least they don’t particularly appreciate the presence of foreigners in their midst. They like to be left alone. Our policy, in any case, should in my opinion be to treat them with the most exquisite courtesy and respect on the official level, but not expect too much of them. I see no reason, in particular, for all these ups and downs in our perceived relations with China. What do we expect of the Chinese? They are not going to love us, no matter what we do. They are not going to become like us. And it really is in ill grace for us to be talking down to them and saying, by implication, that “you ought to learn to govern yourselves as we do.” For goodness’ sake, can’t we get away from that sort of nonsense? Let people be what they are, and treat them accordingly.
R.U.: Of course, American administrations often feel compelled to take rhetorical stands because of congressional opinion.
G.K.: Well, we pay the price for it. That’s all I can say. I think that the executive branch of government has been just as bad, if not worse, than the Congress in this respect. But this whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious, and undesirable. If you think that our life here at home has meritorious aspects worthy of emulation by peoples elsewhere, the best way to recommend them is, as John Quincy Adams maintained, not by preaching at others but by the force of example. I could not agree more.
R.U.: But are there not occasions—such as mass murder in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in Kosovo—when violations of human rights are so horrendous that standing by and doing nothing places us in the position of virtual accomplices of a murderous regime? What would you urge as US policy in instances when we clearly have the resources and the power to prevent or right enormous wrongs with minimal harm to ourselves, and where we would be accompanied in intervening by a number of other states that collectively make up the evolving international system?
G.K.: I hope you will forgive me, Dick, but I stand somewhat aghast at your question, because it seems to me to imply that we should not simply engage in a brief humanitarian intervention—which might be feasible—but should seriously consider taking over, and this for an indefinite time, a good part of the powers of government in a number of non-European countries, and to run things there in our own way rather than in ways that are traditional to their societies. You think, I gather, that we have the resources to do that. This, I greatly doubt. Neither dollars nor bayonets could secure success. It would take a lasting commitment on the part of people and government to make even a beginning at this task, and for this I can see no reason or possibility. We had, as a rule, nothing to do with the origins of the ways in which regimes in other continents oppress elements in their own populations; and I see no reason why we should be held responsible for these unpleasant customs and see ourselves as guilty if they continue to be observed. Europe, naturally, is another matter. Yes, of course, we cannot stand aside and profess to have no interest in such abominations as the Holocaust or Milosevic’s efforts to deport or destroy the entire Muslim population of Kosovo. Such undertakings strike at the roots of a European civilization of which we are still largely a part. Our participation in NATO would alone preclude any tendency on our part to take a wholly detached posture toward these developments.
But even here there are limits to what others should be encouraged to expect of us and what we should expect of ourselves. The resources on which we would have to draw in any greatly expanded involvement in Kosovo would be bound to become increasingly competitive with domestic requirements. And any participation by our armed forces in serious combat in that region would be something for which neither our public opinion nor congressional opinion is adequately prepared. And beyond that there is the fact that Kosovo is only one part of the problem of the Balkan region as a whole; and this is clearly a problem for the Europeans themselves. They, not we, would be the ones who had to live with any long-term solutions to the problem. We cannot solve it for them, and should not try to do so.
These thoughts, and others like them, cause me to feel that what we ought to do at this point is to try to cut ourselves down to size in the dreams and aspirations we direct to our possibilities for world leadership. We are not, really, all that great. We have serious problems within our society these days; and it sometimes seems to me that the best help we could give to others would be to allow them to observe that we are now confronting those problems with a bit more imagination, courage, and resolve than has been apparent in the recent past.
R.U.: The United States is these days the world’s only superpower. How long will this last?
G.K.: If you measure it only by military statistics alone, it could last, I suppose, for a long time. We have by the tail, after all, in the form of our Pentagon, a vast bureaucratic monster that we don’t know even how to cut down, not to mention to bring fully under control. But purely military power, even in its greatest dimensions of superiority, can produce only short-term successes. Serving in Berlin at the height of Hitler’s military successes, in 1941, I tried to persuade friends in our government that even if Hitler should succeed in achieving military domination over all of Europe, he would not be able to turn this into any sort of complete and long-lasting political preeminence and I gave reasons for this conclusion. And we were talking, then, only about Europe. Applied to the world scene, this is, of course, even more true. I can say without hesitation that this planet is never going to be ruled from any single political center, whatever its military power.
R.U.: It isn’t only our military power that makes us number one. For better or worse, our cultural impact is equally profound. The world flocks to American popular culture.
G.K.: This, alas, appears to be true. We export to anyone who can buy it or steal it the cheapest, silliest, and most disreputable manifestations of our “culture.” No wonder that these effusions become the laughingstock of intelligent and sensitive people the world over. But so long as we find it proper to let millions of our living rooms be filled with this trash every evening, and this largely to the edification of the schoolchildren, I can see that we would cut a poor figure trying to deny it to others beyond our borders. Nor would we be successful. In a computer age, it is available, anyway, for whoever wants to push the button and receive it. And so we must expect, I suppose, to appear to many abroad, despite our military superiority, as the world’s intellectual and spiritual dunce, until we can change the image of ourselves we purvey to others.
R.U.: Let me ask some questions about your own work. You have had a career both as a diplomat and as a historian—an analyst of international politics. Can you imagine having not had the diplomatic experience, yet still being the kind of historian that you were? How did your previous diplomatic experience affect your scholarly work?
G.K.: Well, yes, but this was of course the sort of history that I chose to write. Had I been writing poetry or novels, my diplomatic background might not have been much help to me. But there was another reason, and even more important, why I got enjoyment and satisfaction from doing this kind of writing. Everybody who tries to write such history should, it seems to me, meet two different demands. The first is that they do all they can to elucidate the facts of any particular incident or chapter in history and to make these accessible to the reader. The bare facts represent the what of history; and they demand of course the highest respect. But beyond them lies the question of the how—of the relation of these facts to the behavior of the personalities involved. How did these actors in any historical drama perceive the facts and how did they relate them to whatever they themselves were doing? Here, in trying to answer this question as a matter of critical analysis—here is where the historian himself enters the picture, because he has to ask himself (and this is partly a matter of being able to identify imaginatively with the people he is writing about) how these historical personages were motivated. What was their own vision of what they were doing and why they were doing it? And what role did this vision play in the outcome? To what extent was it distorted by the subjective astigmatism of their personal emotional lives? And how did their efforts relate, in the light of historical perspective, to the ultimate results of their behavior?
It seems to me that it is in the analysis and description in all this that the diplomatic historian, if he is worth his salt, comes into his own. For the people he is writing about were of course in many ways the creatures of their time—of its customs and its way of looking at things—but they were also human beings; and human beings have not essentially changed very much from generation to generation. If you, as a historian, can show to people of other ages, and in this given instance to our own contemporaries, something that explains why these historical characters reacted as they did—something, as I say, about the how of history as well as the what, then you are telling our contemporary companions something not just about people of another age but also something about themselves. And there you have, for me at least, the fascination and the enjoyment of writing this sort of history. It is more than just an account of what happened in the past; it is an account of how, transposed into a different age with all the different environmental circumstances, we ourselves might have reacted.