ARTS -Monday, September 11, 1989- The Mithigan Doily Page 8 0 Wisdom and Strength by Peter Walton Doubleday $19.95/hardcover Peter Walton, a British journalist and writer about art, has set out to write a "biography" of Wisdom and Strength, an allegorical painting by the Renaissance master Paolo Veronese. Commisioned in Venice in 1576 by the Hapsburg Emperor Rudolph II, the painting has been carried by war, treach- ery and wealth into and out of the greatest art collections. Since 1912 it has stood in the Frick collection in New York City. Walton's book is an attempt to use the historical movement of the painting as a vehicle for a history of art: what historical trends, intellectual, artistic and political, informed the ap- preciation of its possessors. But he is also interested in what attracted the in- dividual characters to the painting. It is an ambitious and enticing idea. Walton paints nice vignettes. He does a good job, for example, describing the fashionable decadence of 16th century Venice, demonstrating how this was reflected in Veronese's attention to material luxury in his paintings. His concern witlhtechniques and materials also gives the reader insight into how Veronese achieved the interesting light-effects in his paintings. Walton also provides quick and informed portraits of the men and women who collected the painting: Rudolph as a mentally unstable emperor who ran a court peo- pled with mystics and alchemists as well as the scientifically more sophisti- cated astronomers and mathematicians like Brahe and Kepler; Frick as an une- ducated boy from the country whose lust for art was motivated as firmly by social as by aesthetic concerns. Such details, as well as Walton's fondness for statistics and lists are interesting and entertaining. But they are also more than that. They provide hints about the complex tensions which characterize any society and which are often manifest in its preciation of art. Walton is capable of canvassing broad themes, such as w the individualism developed through humanism and the Reformation led a revised conception of the artist and artistic creation which, in turn, re- 4sed the system of patronage: for the first time collectors bought paintings 4hich already existed, giving the artist greater creative latitude. But, unfortu- 4ately, Walton lacks the historical sophistication to mold these elements into cbmpelling historical arguments. In his hands they remain vague possibili- *es. Wisdom and Strength harbors two other general kinds of fault which must T mentioned. First, Walton has a tendency to grossly overgeneralize, reduc- g the characters in his story to caricatures. For example,, after depicting {queen Christina as a sophisticated if confused woman who shared with her te and place an obsession with France and Italy, he writes: "Christina never took to Descartes because he was not physically attractive." This seems, even b1' Walton's account, an absurd statement. Finally, Walton occasionally blunders into outright contradiction. He de- spribes the ideal Renaissance artist as one who "created a beauty never before den, indeed a beauty that was by definition impossible to see... on earth." thirty-six pages later, however, he attempts to distinguish the Mannerists from the Renaissance masters: 'The Renaissance artists were seeking to un- gover a beauty that God had created but the Mannerists were intent on creat- ing their own, man-made kind." His account is clearly inconsistent, suggest- ing that he uses such vague formulations to suit the moment rather than the evidence.. Nevertheless, as an introduction to art history, Wisdom and Strength is readable, well-researched and generally accurate, if not very in- sightful. -T. Smuts The Secret Life of Saeed by Emile Habiby Readers International $1 0/hardcover History,vwrote Marx in an oft- quoted phrase, first enters on the stage as tragedy, and subsequently; appears as farce. Condemned to repe- tition, so the argument goes, His-+ tory's stories lose their initial edge so that one can only engage and fi-1 nally master their brutal meaning by laughing at how little humans seem to learn - or want to learn - about' the past's mistakes and the impulse to repeat them. But Israel's systematic oppression of the Palestinian people, including 40-plus years of illegal land seizures and forced emigrations, systematic beatings and planned murders, appar- ently defies Marx's prescription and its assumption of normalcy. "We have nothing to laugh about," pro- claims a generation of Palestinian re- sistance literature, "and there is noth- ing farcical about how our successive generations continue to suffer the fate of their ancestors." True though this may be, Emile Habiby implies in his brilliant novel The Secret Life of Saeed, that a lit- erature without irony eventually rings hollow; one can only strike a heroic note or sustain a tragic mood for so long before it loses its ability to convey those very horrors it screams of so often. Written as a farce which fully recognizes how humorous the incongruities of daily life in Palestine can be, Habiby's novel is paradoxically more success- ful in sketching the horror of that life than the ostensibly more "tragic" po- etry of Mahmoud Darwish and Ghas- san Khanifani, two of the most ac- claimed Palestinian writers. Habiby's protagonist Saeed is hence not your typical resistance hero. Rather, as a Palestinian collab- orator more concerned with survival than struggle, he bungles his way from episode to episode marked by craven cowardice and a stunning in- ability to accomplish the tasks out- lined for him by his Israeli superiors. Certain that "the moon is closer to us now than are the fig trees of our departed village," he accepts apparent strokes of fate - watching the Is- raelis murder his father and deport his first and only love in the War of 1948 and, subsequently, watching them kill his wife and radical son in the ominous year preceding the Six Day War. Neither surprised nor, conse- quently, particularly incapacitated by such happenings, Saeed is able to train his perceptive glance on the Is- raeli Occupation without letting his emotions get in the way - usually. The exceptions make for a beauti- fully tight dialogue between Saeed's bitingly cool wit - almost invari- ably exercised at the expense of the Israeli state - and those poignant moments when the horror he experi- ences and the rage he represses over- whelm his pretense of distant invul- nerability. The tension produced by this dialogue, always present beneath the surface, eventually precipitates the long delayed explosion through which Saced - and by implication the long-quiescent Palestinian people - are forced to wake from the nightmare of History within which they sleep and which "will reach them nevertheless, generation after generation," unless they confront it. Saced's epiphanic moment takes place in prison, where, his longtime service to the state notwithstanding, he eventually finds himself thrown for a crime he did not commit. Hav- ing been beaten brutally, he awakens to find another tortured prisoner be- side him who not only bears his name but who, he discovers, is the son of his first love, long exiled in Lebanon. When the younger Saeed, assuming that his elder counterpart is in jail, like himself, for fighting the Israeli state, praises him, it restores to the older Saced a dignity he had forgotten - literally and figuratively a younger self - and allows him to see more clearly than ever before that the Palestinians' condition "con- tradicted the laws of nature and the rules of logic." Still, old habits die hard, and while Saeed refuses thereafter to work with the Israelis, he fails miserably in his efforts to become a hero as 'We have nothing to laugh about,' proclaims a gen- eration of Palestinian resistance literature, 'and there is nothing farcical about how our successive generations continue to suffer the fate of their ancestors.' well. As the narrative draws toward a close, one re-encounters the Saeed of the early pages - with a significant difference. For Saeed has been trans- formed by his experiences, and even if he will not pick up a gun, he is more than ready to break the obses- sive secrecy and frightened silences which had accompanied his earlier dictum to "walk on four feet... if true caution demands it." Now, remembering his son Walaa's final scornful proclamation before he was shot, he throws that caution to the winds, deciding that "just once, I want to be careless about what I say." The result is Habiby's text, as Saeed looks bacl and recounts his experiences througI a series of letters. If, as one of Saeed's friends argues, "many adopt literature because they lack power for anything more," Habiby makes surd that his audience nevertheless appre, ciates the courage in resistance litera' ture's quiet desperation. For whil words alone cannot deliver a better future, they are integral in providing inspiration for the fighters who can; Habiby's novel is so stunning bet, cause its author understands this, and is secure enough to accept the limited albeit important role he has to play in the Palestinian struggle. F -Mike Fischer World Na ona Ca"6 I WHAT HAPPENED? You don't know ...? the DAIL Y does! Read the Daily and find out. Ads Coupons Cartoons etc. Hemingway, Morrison, Rushdie, Kingston, Steinbeck, Jong, Janowitz, Dante, Garcia Marquez, Groening, Woodward Seuss, Milton, Didion, Berra, Walker, Dick Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Jung, Hawking Schembechler, Waterson, Proust, Joyce. Do any of these names mean anything to you? Call Daily Aris at 703-0379 and ask for Mark. Or stop by 420 Maynard St. MICHGANINDIAI EMPLOYMENT TRAINING 4 SERVICES, INC. If you or someone you know is 1/ Native American, then our program is for you! 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