The famous allegorical painting at the head of this essay,
one of the great treasures of the Borghese gallery in Rome, was made by Titian
around 1514. For at least the last
three centuries it has been called “Sacred and Profane Love”. That is probably an accurate title.
Titian is probably making an
emblematic contrast between the two conceptions of love (amor) known in the old Christian ethical vocabulary as caritas and cupiditas. According
to the vastly influential opinion of Augustine in his City of God, these are the “two loves that build two cities,” the
metaphorical versions of Jerusalem and Babylon, the City of God and the City of
Man. The ambiguities in the word
“love”, when operating within the more limited and intimate sphere of
individual human psychology, provide about half of the materials of Western
literature.
Getting
back to Titian and his much-admired painting, I would make two points. The first is that we are only pretty
sure--not absolutely certain--that
the subject is “Sacred and Profane Love.”
The second is that among the learned art historians who have written
about “Sacred and Profane Love” there has been no general agreement as to which
of Titian’s beautiful babes is which!
I want to stress that point.
Important scholars—men and women who have spent years and decades
studying Renaissance art and iconography—dispute the most essential feature of
this painting’s “meaning”. Of
course I know the answer, but if you
think I am going to tell you for free, think again. Such point as I would claim to make has to do with the
uncertainty—or as the fancy critics call it, “indeterminacy”—of iconographic
representation.
I
would not idly contribute to the cataract of photons that have been poured out
in the last week over the fanatical murders recently perpetrated at the offices
of Charlie Hebdo in Paris—were it not
for one salient fact. Unlike the
large majority of American commentators I have read, I actually knew a little
something about Charlie Hebdo before
all this happened. I have lived in
Paris for periods of time. Most
weeks (“Hebdo” being short for hebdomadaire,
“weekly”) I used to try to take a look at it. Its sophomoric humor appealed to me—insofar as I could grasp
it. For in engaging a foreign language,
satire is one of the very last cultural forms to float into
comprehensibility. This paper is
full of slang, dirty talk, and above all obscure political and cultural
allusions that must challenge many native speakers. Its point of view is post-modern, urban, utterly secular,
and flagrantly irreverent. Notice
that is calls itself a journal irresponsable!
Since
it scorns all pieties, it was scornful of the most hallowed ones, religious
pieties. But in my experience its
principal targets were cultural and above all political pretension. Oversimplifying wildly, I would say
that the most glaring weakness of American politicians is limited
intelligence. In France they tend
to be smarter, but also more pompous.
The pomposity of French politicians, indeed, seems almost to have been
invented for the delectation of satirists of the sort who worked for Charlie Hebdo. And of course both in history and in current radical Islamic
thought the distinction between religion and politics is hardly a bright line. Some of the implications may bemuse
infidels. Just today I learned of the fatwa of a Saudi cleric declaring the
building of a snowman haram! (It has been snowing of late along the Saudi-Jordanian
frontier.)
In
an important passage in my own Scriptures (I Corinthians, cap. 10) Paul has
some advice for the Christian minority living in a pagan culture. All things are lawful, he says, but not
all things are expedient. Just
because you can do something doesn’t
mean you should do it. How about Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons?
It’s
a judgment call, but there are times when making a point is the point. The
street on which I live, Hartley Avenue, is a relatively new extension of the
older Faculty Road, which runs through the campus along the northwestern most
banks of Lake Carnegie, linking at right angles two well traveled county roads. Faculty Road, though now serving as a
fairly major traffic artery, is technically private property, owned by the
University. For one day a year
campus security officers close it off with barricades. This action, which on that day is
annoying and inconvenient for large numbers of motorists, cements the
University’s point, its legal property rights, which for three hundred and sixty-four days
of the year are effectively waived.
In
a pluralistic society cultural difference is inescapable, and if the difference
is so great that there are some people willing to kill you for what you say,
draw, or doodle, it may need a little thoughtful negotiation. Expression incapable of inviting offense
or contestation needs no legal protection. On the other hand rights never exercised are utterly
meaningless. Take a look at the
so-called “Stalin Constitution” of 1936 some time. Charlie Hebdo
thought the exercise of a fundamental civil right more important than the
sensibilities of some fundamentalists.
What
remains of their editorial board apparently still does, to judge from the cover
on today’s edition. Titian’s
example can teach us that the artist’s intention cannot always conquer the
inherent ambiguity of pictorial forms, but in a preemptive exegetical interview
the cartoonist himself said that his subject is the Prophet shedding a tear
over the wicked folly of some self-proclaimed followers. There may, alas, turn out to be other
interpretations.
Source: Libération
