Nemesis
It is not widely known that, in ancient Greek, Nemesis meant not only vengeance, but also evil reputation, especially the evil reputation that a person got to deserve. The complex of ideas this represent may be strange to us on the surface, but it is very easily explained by considering the opposite of Nemesis was Hybris - vanity, arrogance, pride. That is, if you are a vain, self-regarding bastard, you may or may not necessarily attract the "vengeance" of the cosmos, but you will certainly draw "vengeance", or retribution, in the form of the loathing and contempt of your own fellow citizens. And that was something that Greeks, very sociable people who spent most of their lives in the open air, would feel keenly.
I am now hoping that nemesis in one way, if not another, may have struck the most shameless practitioner of artistic hybris in English literature. This is what I had to say about Hilary Mantel three years ago:
Probably the worst man in the history of England - unless his owner and eventual murderer Henry VIII should be judged worse - was the loathsome Thomas Cromwell, a butcher's son who transferred his father's avocation to nuns and monks. He was the Beria and the Heydrich of his day, the comparison is not exaggerated, and in the end Henry killed him because he had grown too notorious even for the fat murderer. (Besides, there were no more monasteries to plunder; even the guilds and corporations of London, whose connection with religion is not clear, had been plundered and crushed in a final frenzy of theft.)
Last year, the prominent British novelist Hilary Mantel wrote a novel which made a hero of the monstrous Thomas and a criminal of the great Thomas More (the man of whom the Emperor Charles V said that he would rather lose the finest city in his kingdoms than such a counsellor).
The novel received the main British book prize, and its anti-historical and fraudulent talking points are now the common talk of book readers.
The world turned upside down, indeed... I think this is more than just a matter of [single absurd or wrong-headed political choices]. I think a real attempt to reverse our moral instincts is taking place - of the kind Hitler theorized but was incapable of enforcing.
Think about it. It is not since the days of Froude, and before him of forgotten liars such as Hume and Burnet, that anyone had ever tried to make a case for Henry VIII, let alone for his despicable enforcer; other than, at most, that their crimes can historically be justified in that they led England to her current happy state. That is, of course, if you happen to think that the present state of England is at all happy. Then along comes this woman and writes a novel in which black is white, in which Thomas Cromwell, the secret policeman, the torturer of monks and abuser of nuns, the coward who begged for his life when his owner got tired of him, is apparently a steadfast hero of English patriotism, while Thomas More, the canonized saint, the most learned man of his day, the just judge and revered lawyer who was still half a century after his death so revered that the playwrights of London risked royal displeasure by making him the hero of a collectively-written tragedy, the man whose end was rightly compared with that of Socrates', and of which the Emperor Charles V said that he would sooner lose the fairest city in all his realms than such a counsellor, as a rat-like, underhanded Catholic conspirator and persecutor.
Of course I haven't read it! Do I have to subject myself, at my time of life, to the loss of however long it would take to actually read the thing, to know that it is trash? it is trash; worm-like, poisonous trash; and the more poisonous, the more any literary skill is prostituted and perverted in its service.
Now, Hilary Mantel, do I turn to thee,
And mark my greeting well; for what I speak
My body shall make good upon this earth,
Or my divine soul answer it in heaven.
Thou art a traitor and a miscreant,
Too good to be so and too bad to live,
Since the more fair and crystal is the sky,
The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.
Of course, the vile stuff triumphed, granting Mantel both the greatest sales success in her long and so far distinguished career, and the highest literary awards in England. The woman knew her dupes well; she knew that they were ignorant of history, except for a dying but never quite dead ember of "Whig interpretation of history" whereby history in general and British history in particular tended from the worse to the better, and all the things that make it "tend to the better" are justified, since you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. She knows that they want to believe that tyranny is for others, and that England has never really had to suffer the kind of murderous and thieving misgovernment that haunts other, less fortunate countries; and that they are nervously rather ill at ease with the ordinary picture of Henry VIII, which, however diluted and mediatized, still suggests murderous evil and nameless appetites. So Mantel pandered to their worst instincts - which she probably shares - and they paid her handsomely for it.
The thing I can't forgive her is her blackguarding of Saint Thomas. After the filthy novel first came out, I must have had half a dozen flamewars about the characters of the two Thomases, till I had to bitterly accept that Mantel's readers weren't going to let the facts confuse them. This damned woman has set the understanding of history in this country back by at least two centuries, at the same time proving the nastiest claims of relativism - there is no such thing as truth, truth is what suits me - efficacious beyond contradiction.
Now, however, Mantel has wrecked her own reputation. Her nasty criticism of Kate Middleton is so evidently mean-sprited - especially as it is thrown at a person whom protocol keeps from defending herself - that it has worked against her. Perhaps, now people will begin to mind her attitudes as shown elsewhere, and what they mean.
EDITED IN: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100203563/hilary-mantels-take-on-kate-middleton-is-snobby-inaccurate-and-oddly-sexist/
I am now hoping that nemesis in one way, if not another, may have struck the most shameless practitioner of artistic hybris in English literature. This is what I had to say about Hilary Mantel three years ago:
Probably the worst man in the history of England - unless his owner and eventual murderer Henry VIII should be judged worse - was the loathsome Thomas Cromwell, a butcher's son who transferred his father's avocation to nuns and monks. He was the Beria and the Heydrich of his day, the comparison is not exaggerated, and in the end Henry killed him because he had grown too notorious even for the fat murderer. (Besides, there were no more monasteries to plunder; even the guilds and corporations of London, whose connection with religion is not clear, had been plundered and crushed in a final frenzy of theft.)
Last year, the prominent British novelist Hilary Mantel wrote a novel which made a hero of the monstrous Thomas and a criminal of the great Thomas More (the man of whom the Emperor Charles V said that he would rather lose the finest city in his kingdoms than such a counsellor).
The novel received the main British book prize, and its anti-historical and fraudulent talking points are now the common talk of book readers.
The world turned upside down, indeed... I think this is more than just a matter of [single absurd or wrong-headed political choices]. I think a real attempt to reverse our moral instincts is taking place - of the kind Hitler theorized but was incapable of enforcing.
Think about it. It is not since the days of Froude, and before him of forgotten liars such as Hume and Burnet, that anyone had ever tried to make a case for Henry VIII, let alone for his despicable enforcer; other than, at most, that their crimes can historically be justified in that they led England to her current happy state. That is, of course, if you happen to think that the present state of England is at all happy. Then along comes this woman and writes a novel in which black is white, in which Thomas Cromwell, the secret policeman, the torturer of monks and abuser of nuns, the coward who begged for his life when his owner got tired of him, is apparently a steadfast hero of English patriotism, while Thomas More, the canonized saint, the most learned man of his day, the just judge and revered lawyer who was still half a century after his death so revered that the playwrights of London risked royal displeasure by making him the hero of a collectively-written tragedy, the man whose end was rightly compared with that of Socrates', and of which the Emperor Charles V said that he would sooner lose the fairest city in all his realms than such a counsellor, as a rat-like, underhanded Catholic conspirator and persecutor.
Of course I haven't read it! Do I have to subject myself, at my time of life, to the loss of however long it would take to actually read the thing, to know that it is trash? it is trash; worm-like, poisonous trash; and the more poisonous, the more any literary skill is prostituted and perverted in its service.
Now, Hilary Mantel, do I turn to thee,
And mark my greeting well; for what I speak
My body shall make good upon this earth,
Or my divine soul answer it in heaven.
Thou art a traitor and a miscreant,
Too good to be so and too bad to live,
Since the more fair and crystal is the sky,
The uglier seem the clouds that in it fly.
Of course, the vile stuff triumphed, granting Mantel both the greatest sales success in her long and so far distinguished career, and the highest literary awards in England. The woman knew her dupes well; she knew that they were ignorant of history, except for a dying but never quite dead ember of "Whig interpretation of history" whereby history in general and British history in particular tended from the worse to the better, and all the things that make it "tend to the better" are justified, since you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. She knows that they want to believe that tyranny is for others, and that England has never really had to suffer the kind of murderous and thieving misgovernment that haunts other, less fortunate countries; and that they are nervously rather ill at ease with the ordinary picture of Henry VIII, which, however diluted and mediatized, still suggests murderous evil and nameless appetites. So Mantel pandered to their worst instincts - which she probably shares - and they paid her handsomely for it.
The thing I can't forgive her is her blackguarding of Saint Thomas. After the filthy novel first came out, I must have had half a dozen flamewars about the characters of the two Thomases, till I had to bitterly accept that Mantel's readers weren't going to let the facts confuse them. This damned woman has set the understanding of history in this country back by at least two centuries, at the same time proving the nastiest claims of relativism - there is no such thing as truth, truth is what suits me - efficacious beyond contradiction.
Now, however, Mantel has wrecked her own reputation. Her nasty criticism of Kate Middleton is so evidently mean-sprited - especially as it is thrown at a person whom protocol keeps from defending herself - that it has worked against her. Perhaps, now people will begin to mind her attitudes as shown elsewhere, and what they mean.
EDITED IN: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100203563/hilary-mantels-take-on-kate-middleton-is-snobby-inaccurate-and-oddly-sexist/