Lewis MumfordKirja-arvosteluja

I was looking for a city-planning book, but he spends most of his time on architectural aesthetics, like complaining about the "contrast of gray concrete and yellow London brick...spoiled by the housewives' passion for pink and blue curtains".

He had some interesting ideas about designing spaces that are protected from motor vehicle traffic (pointing to Rotterdam as a good example), and "mixed neighborhoods, able to sustain more than one urban function and demanding far less vehicular transportation". He also had some ideas I didn't like, such as building small "New Towns" outside large cities to draw people away and avoid the need to build tall apartments in the big cities.

With a title like "The Highway and The City" I expected there to be more about transit, zoning, governance, and the like.

Thoughtful, reflective early.account of role of technologies in cultural development. Included speculations on how societies evolve, which have fared less well in scholarly evaluations.

Stieglitz as receiver and medium of new cultural ideas in the USA regarding photography and modern art. An odd character, but influential in artistic circles of his generation.

The hour is late for saving the human race from the possibility of wanton extermination or biological degradation; we must plan with a human purpose springing from divine inspiration.

One part of its appeal was a single black and white plate of a part of downtown Lowell, where I have lived.

A survey of the roles that urban gatherings have played in Human history. We have enjoyed the city, and of course found great dissatisfaction with it. Mumford's survey gets frequent reprints, and is full of insights. I am sure the 19 year old me was a little out of his depths with these work, but mightily impressed with it.½

Redundantly dry but informative.

[From Ten Novels and Their Authors, Heinemann, 1954, pp. 179, 199-200:]

I have read Raymond Weaver’s Herman Melville, Mariner and Mystic, Lewis Mumford’s Herman Melville, Charles Roberts Anderson’s Melville in the South Seas, William Ellery Sedgwick’s Herman Melville: The Tragedy of Mind, and Newton Arvin’s Melville. I have read them with interest, profited by most of them, and learnt from them a number of facts useful to my modest purpose; but I cannot persuade myself that I know more about Melville, the man, than I knew before.

[…]

Professor Stoll* has shown how ridiculous and contradictory are the symbolic interpretations of Moby Dick that have been hurled at the heads of an inoffensive public. He has done it so conclusively that there is no need for me to enlarge upon the topic. […] According to your proclivities, you may take a snow-clad Alpine peak, as it rises to the empyrean in radiant majesty, as a symbol of man’s aspiration to union with the Infinite; or since, if you like to believe that, a mountain range may be thrown up by some violent convulsion in the earth’s depths, you may take it as a symbol of the dark and sinister passions of man that lour to destroy him; of, if you want to be in the fashion, you may take it a phallic symbol. Newton Arvin regards Ahab’s ivory leg as “an equivocal symbol both of his impotence and of the independent male principle directed cripplingly against him”, and the white whale as “the archetypal Parent; the father, yes, but the mother also, so far as she becomes a substitute for the father”. For Ellery Sedgwick, who claims that it is its symbolism that makes the book great, Ahab is “Man – Man sentient, speculative, purposive, religious, standing his full stature against the immense mystery of creation. His antagonist, Moby Dick, is that immense mystery. He is not the author of it, but is identical with that galling impartiality in the laws and lawlessness of the universe which Isaiah devoutly fathered on the Creator.” Lewis Mumford takes Moby Dick as a symbol of evil, and Ahab’s conflict with him as the conflict of good and evil in which good is finally vanquished. There is a certain plausibility in this, and it accords well with Melville’s moody pessimism.

But allegories are awkward animals to handle; you can take them by the head or by the tail, and it seems to me that an interpretation quite contrary is equally possible. Why should it be assumed that Moby Dick is a symbol of evil? It is true that Melville causes Ishmael, the narrator, to adopt Ahab’s crazy passion to revenge himself on the dumb beast that had maimed him; but that is a literary artifice which he had to make use of, first, because there was Starbuck already there to represent common sense, and second, because he needed someone to share, and to an extent sympathize with, Ahab’s tenacious purpose, and so induce the reader to accept it as not quite unreasonable. Now, the “empty malice” of which Professor Mumford speaks consists in Moby Dick defending himself when he is attacked.

“Cet animal est très méchant,
Quand on l’attaque, il se défend.”**

Why should the White Whale not represent goodness rather than evil? Splendid in beauty, vast in size, great in strength, he swims the seas in freedom. Ahab, with his insane pride, is pitiless, harsh, cruel and vindictive; he is evil; and when the final encounter comes and Ahab and his crew of “mongrel renegades, castaways and cannibals” is destroyed, and the White Whale, imperturbable, justice having been done, goes his mysterious way, evil has been vanquished and good at last triumphed. This seems to me as plausible an interpretation as any other; for let us not forget that Typee is a glorification of the noble savage, uncorrupted by the vices of civilization, and that Melville looked upon the natural man as good.

Fortunately Moby Dick may be read, and read with intense interest, without a thought of what allegorical or symbolic significance it may or may not have.

________________________________________________________
*Elmer E. Stoll, “Symbolism in Moby-Dick”, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Jun., 1951), pp. 440-465. Ed.
**“This animal is very malicious; when attacked it defends itself.” Ed.

Influential writing. Highly thought provoking.

The disastrous policy of pursuing the nuclear arms race, and the Cold War, is laid out as a complete moral breakdown and madness. The only way out is to be human, to be moral and open. Despite the soundness of his point, I cannot recommend this wordy pamphlet.

CrÍitica de la organization económica que sacrifica el progreso de la Humanidad en las Maquinas de Desarrollo. El autor tiene preocupación del pasado público y en busca del equilibrio ecológico y social .

After one false start three or four years ago, I picked this up again early last year. I'll admit, it was pretty rough going for me, but that's largely because the first half of the book doesn't concern the "megamachine"--my main interest in Mumford's thought. His roundabout phrasing structure also makes for reading that sometimes feels something like a maze and can be difficult to settle into. There were still enough significant insights to justify reading it. Some standouts below.

Mumford on the historical origin of the problem of death: "The desire for life without limits was part of the general lifting of limits which the first great assemblage of power by means of the megamachine brought about. Human weaknesses, above all the weakness of mortality, were both contested and defied.
"But if the biological inevitability of death and disintegration mock (sic) the infantile fantasy of absolute power, which the human machine promised to actualize, life mocks it even more. The notion of 'eternal life,' with neither conception, growth, fruition, nor decay--an existence as fixed, as sterilized, as loveless, as purposeless, as unchanging as that of a royal mummy--is only death in another form....(T)his assertion of absolute power was a confession of psychological immaturity--a radical failure to understand the natural processes of birth and growth, of maturation and death." (203) Deny that, Ernest Becker!

On the workers of the megamachine: "Each standardized component, below the top level of command, was only part of a man (sic), condemned to work at only part of a job and live only part of a life. Adam Smith's belated analysis of the division of labor, explaining changes that were taking place in the eighteenth century toward a more inflexible and dehumanized system, with greater productive efficiency, illuminates equally the earliest 'industrial revolution.'" (212)

On the burgeoning scientific/capitalist mind and its eventual costs: "These technical premises seemed so simple, their aim so rational, their methods so open to general imitation, that Leonardo never saw the need to put the question we must now ask: Is the intelligence alone, however purified and decontaminated, an adequate agent for doing justice to the needs and purposes of life?" (288)

In 1922 right after the war, Lewis Mumford wrote his first book, The story of utopias, covering the state of the field up until that time. When the book was reissued in 1962 with a new preface by Mumford, the text was not changed in any way and the new literature on utopia was not added. Yes, things changed in those forty years and in the next forty, but the underlying message remains – in spite of differing world events, man still strives for a perfect world, whether in escape or in reconstructing what is desired.

The book opens with a discussion of utopia, either the eutopia or good place, or the outopia or no place. (Later he discusses kakotopia or bad place, what we might call today dystopia although he never uses that term.) He then discusses the merits of several utopias, among them Plato’s Republic, Andreae’s Christopolis, More’s Utopia, on to Bellamy’s Looking backward and many more. From the beginning simplicity of reconstructing the world order to escape from life’s problems to complex solutions, each has roots in the society for which it was written. He also covers utopian communities in Europe and America, national utopias, and a thoughtful essay on the country house, a theme to which he will return in his later work. In addition to a bibliography, there is also an annotated list of utopias that he has discussed.

It is odd today not to see the two most famous works on utopia, Brave new world and 1984, but we see the precursors in other utopian novels. Yes, there are many more up to date books on the history of utopias but this one has a charm that makes reading it well worth the time.½

No doubt considered the classic history of the city. Too subjective and rather dated for my tastes. Dense, bleak.

This book is both dystopian an disturbing. As a history it is more a catalogue of mistakes and processes gone wrong than a simple history. The book is erudite and scholarly but hardly optimistic.

The only kind of urban center that gets the faintest nod of praise is the medieval village and its very few modern successors. The modern city is pictured as a vast growth that through technology is crushing the human spirit. Only Rotterdam escapes complete disdain.

For all the pessimism of the book it contains many important ideas that mankind will be forced to consider. How the computer and the cellphone would have effected his ideas I don't know and I think he is flat wrong in his perception of space exploration and the reasons for it.

Nevertheless the book is well worth reading with many ideas and problems that must be considered by the human race. Take a few hours or days to check it out.

An analysis well ahead of its time. Chapters 9 and 10 are particularly important.½

Politics

The City is a pioneering short documentary film from 1939 that contrasts the problems of the contemporary urban environment with the superior social and physical conditions that can be provided in a planned community. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_(1939_film) See also http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0031160/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nuvcpnysjU
Initial release: May 26, 1939

PHP #97

Una collana in tre volumi: 1°Dal santuario alla Polis (Santuario, villaggio e fortezza-La cristallizzazionedella città- Forme e modelli ancestrali-La natura della città antica-La comparsa della polis-Il cittadino contro la città ideale...); 2° Dal chiostro al Barocco (Chiostro e comunità-la vita quotidiana nella città medievale-Dissolvimento del Medio Evo, avvisaglie del mondo moderno...); 3° Dalla corte alla città invisibile (Corte, esibizione, capitale-Espanzione commerciale e dissoluzioneurbana.....).

Artist Arts

FG3

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Middle Ages Chapters 17-24