Thick snow is falling hard and heavy, muffling sounds and turning the picturesque village postcard beautiful. I am lying in bed listening to a Mozart version of ‘Ave Maria’, a heavenly soprano almost bringing tears to my eyes with the loveliness of it. This is the civilisation of our ancestors — one that gave us Mozart, Schubert and Beethoven and built cathedrals all over the most wondrous continent in the world. It is now being replaced by a higher one in which distinctions of ethnicity and religion will no longer be tolerated. The human race has a limitless capacity for self-improvement, and it shows where architecture, the arts and music are concerned, not to mention literature. You might think me jaundiced, but the Parthenon’s perfection is less impressive than the
Trump Tower’s glitz, and Cellini’s ‘Narcissus’ raises fewer eyebrows than Hirst’s shark. And what about the ‘Ode to Joy’? Can one really compare it to the rap that blasts 24/7 among those who are with it? Nah, of course not. Anyone who disagrees must be getting old.
Just as ‘Ave Maria’ was coming to an end, I opened the papers and felt proud to see Prince Charles and David Cameron kissing Saudi ass, followed by Obama a couple of days later. Oswald Spengler came to mind. What did he know that we don’t? Three thousand years of civilisation took an upward swing when TV was invented, taking drugs became de rigueur and popping pills and pop music became one and the same. Those ancient Greeks were bores, and I’m not referring to myself but to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, not to mention Aristophanes. So were the Italians — the Titians and Tiepolos — and the French. The last built a few churches that now lie empty.
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