Who Was the Emperor?

OK. First off, I want to make this post the only thing you will ever read about the Holy Roman Empire that doesn’t tell you what Voltaire said.

Secondly, I have to admit that I gave up on a book, something I’ve only done a handful of times in all my life. It’s not like Peter Wilson’s Heart of Europe is a classic of great literature, so I don’t feel too guilty, just a little lopsided in a mild-OCD way. Wilson claims up front that he didn’t arrange his 600-page book chronologically but thematically, with a timeline at the end. So when he says that such-and-such an event hadn’t happened since Otto II without having told the reader about Otto II or provided any contextual dates, I don’t know what he’s talking about. Could any reader know?

I’d rather have a story with an appendix of interpretation than a thematically ordered history with an appendix of dates. Of course, I’d really rather have something like a narrative with explanation and interpretation folded in all along the way. But it seems that’s too much to hope for in a history of the HRE. The other longish book I saw on Amazon claimed the same thematically driven organization. So I just settled for the Very Short Introduction to . . .  from the Oxford series (this one by Joachim Whaley). These little guides are also not anything like great literature, but every one I’ve tried has done a good job of laying down a foundation of understanding about some difficult topic.

The big question on this topic is always, “What was the Holy Roman Empire?” I’ve come to the oxymoronically temporary conclusion that the question is perennial because it’s simply the wrong question. The better question is, “Who was the Holy Roman Emperor, and what did he think the Empire was?” The Empire was at least an ideal whose chance of realization definitely started in 800 and definitely ended in 1806, but apart from that, it doesn’t seem to have been much of anything. There were many years in the Empire’s history in which no emperor was crowned. The Emperor never had a central army or the ability to raise taxes. Starting in the fourteenth century, the electorate was codified as one set of seven (later eight, and then nine) German leaders who wanted the prestige and stability of an emperor. So the Emperor represented seven out of millions, but to what extent did this elected figurehead preside over and unify the territories of these princes, not to speak of the hundred-fifty or so towns, duchies, and bishoprics that got no vote? At times over the years, some groups of towns and territories within the Empire, most famously the Hanseatic League, formed mutual defense and economic pacts, leaving other parts of the Empire out. The Empire fought a civil war in the seventeenth century that lasted thirty years. In the eighteenth century, various pieces of the kingdom sided at different times with France against “the Empire” and yet remained within the Empire. And in Napoleon’s time, several of the Empire’s territories voted to become part of France.

Now what kind of country would the United States be if, say, West Virginia had been able to form an alliance with ISIS and yet stay within the U.S.? What would Italy be if Tuscany and Umbria could form their own army and make a trade pact that excluded Venezia? What would Canada be if Alberta could just vote to become a part of Mexico and then be exactly that, without any further ado?

So the story of the HRE, I think, is really a story of people. It’s the story of Otto I, the first German Emperor; of Henry IV, who made obeisance to the Pope in the snow at Canossa; of Frederick II, the stupor mundi (wonder of the world); of Charles IV, who wrote the Golden Bull enshrining the election process; of Charles V, who cared more about Spain and American colonies than he did about German lands and left his brother to try to handle the Reformation; and of Charles VI, who really only cared about Austria. These fascinating people all had ideas about what the Empire was and tried to make it what they wanted it to be. But if generations of potters continually work at the wheel trying to make and reshape the same vase, is it ever really a vase?

Better Times for Hard Times

Around some twenty-five years ago, I used to see the occasional student walking around campus carrying a copy of Hard Times. Some course at the U of Oklahoma – maybe in English, but more probably in history – required it, and I used to feel sorry for the members of this captive audience since they were, as I saw it, asked to become acquainted with my favorite author through my least favorite of his novels.

The book has its advantages for academia. It’s the shortest of the complete novels (the unfinished Edwin Drood might be a touch smaller), making it much easier to fit into a curriculum than, say, Bleak House. And it gives clear presentations of two important movements in nineteenth-century British history: utilitarianism and labor unions.

But it has its drawbacks, as well. For one thing, the language of the characters is unusually difficult to read, even for Dickens. Either they’re trying to speak philosophically, or they’re trying to outdo one another in piling up politenesses at the beginning of every simple sentence (I hope I do not show too much presumption when I say to one of your upbringing that, and so on), or they’re speaking in a mid-England dialect. Young people reading a novel look to quotation marks for relief; they won’t be happy when that punctuation introduces language actually more complex than that of the narration.

The problems with the language make it difficult for the average young reader of today. But not for me. The feature that bothers me most is that Hard Times is just so dreary! While others keep an eye out for quotation marks, I journey through the sad, bitter parts of a Dickens novel in anticipation of the happy home (Aunt Betsey’s, for instance) or the lovable clown (Captain Cuttle or Dick Swiveller). An element such as these serves as a pole star, centering the story as it whirls around in seeming chaos and providing the moral compass for the reader trying to find the way to rest and resolution. Hard Times has Sissy Jupe, but we hardly get to know her as we do Oliver or David or Pip or Nell in other novels. Sissy has a happy ending, but the narration only reports it rather than portraying it, and we don’t learn any of the important details. Dickens was just too focused in Hard Times, as perhaps the short form allowed him to be, on the villains and the conflicts and the social dysfunctions to give the reader a periodic haven of rest.

I will say, though, that, at least in the chapters before Stephen Blackpool shows up, I read the novel this time with a new enjoyment as I imagined the mind-above-heart father and the ludicrously utilitarian schoolmaster being played by Eric Idle and Graham Chapman. The first fifty pages or so, read in this way, struck me as darkly comic, and I actually laughed several times. I would declare these passages deliciously biting satire, except that the introduction in my Oxford edition assures me that many schools at the time were run in this very way and that Dickens is here doing more recounting than exaggerating.

I still feel sorry for any student who is required to read Hard Times, but at least I’ve found a strategy for myself.

In Jeopardy!

I generally don’t expect people to know that the author of Gargantua is Rabelais. If I were to eat out for lunch today and then go to the Visitor Center in Great Smoky Mountain NP and then to the grocery store, I would guess that not one person out of the hundreds I see would know this information. I wouldn’t expect my neighbors to know it. I wouldn’t have expected any of my students to know it.

But I expect Jeopardy! contestants to know it. And yet in an episode a couple of weeks ago, one clue sought the author of Gargantua, and not one buzzer sounded. I’ll lower my expectations even lower: I don’t expect any Jeopardy! contestants to have read this comic masterpiece. But I expect them to be able to come up with, for instance, any author and title in my Britannica Great Books set. At Father Guido Sarducci’s university, “I say ‘economics,’ you say-a ‘supply and-a demand.’ ” Shouldn’t the traditional canon be in the heads of national-class quizzers and trivia enthusiasts at that level at least? I say ‘Gargantua’ and you say ‘Rabelais’?

It gets even worse. This past week brought the clue that went something like this: “So-and-so tried founding an ideal community based on this work by Plato.”

Crickets.

Honestly?! If you’re going to know about one ancient classic other than the Bible, isn’t it going to be Plato’s Republic? Okay, maybe the Odyssey, but you get my point. The next day, players were asked to identify the literary character who said something about Mr Darcy. Total silence again. Isn’t Pride and Prejudice our culture’s favorite nineteenth-century novel?

Jeopardy! contestants also don’t seem to know the Beatles or Carole King. But that’s a rant for a different blog.