Wednesday, September 6, 2017

summer news 2017

It has already been two months since I've noted the news here. But that's because that's been terrible. The fires and floods overtake the imminent and exacting wars by so much, that the stories of massacres and refugees become whispers, interrupted by disaster bulletins.

Backing up to when people talked like they wanted to do something in the US Gov. the media had spent much of June and July talking about a repeal and replacement of the American HealthcareAct (ACA) known as Obamacare. But Congress could not find enough votes to pass something that only a few were allowed to see or discuss, and that in fits and starts.
There was no direction (but a few simple commands and reprimands, by tweet) from the new White House of Trump, so, the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R) KY, brought out the worst possible bill they could muster. John McCain voted against the resolution coming before the floor and that was it. No more talk about repeal and replace, for now. And after seven years that had been a primary goal as a party. The Republican party wanted power to 'repeal Obama's agenda' and then when they got it, found a way it can't use it to do what they said they wanted, when eventually they've found at last that they don't want to do it. At the very least, not a recognizable form of leadership. But they're not the only branch vying for the award for 'Least Viable'.

White Nationalists in the US decided that the year of Trump would be a good time for them to recruit. The country recoiled in horror.
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Career government officials have been retiring and quitting in droves because they can't or won't work with the new administration and its collective maladroit flailings. And frequent self-lacerating lungings.
It's bad when it takes this sort of thing to bring a smile to the face.
Meanwhile, North Korea is terrorizing everyone with its multiple successfull missile launches - one of which flew over the Japanese island of Hokkaido - and this week, a major underground explosion which was called a hydrogen bomb detonation.

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Besides the major fires out west (especially in L.A. and Oregon), Hurricane season is battering the US and the Caribbean now, with Irma, one of the largest hurricanes ever recorded. But for the last couple weeks the news has swirled around the destruction and effects of what's been called a 500 year flood, in the wake of Hurricane Harvey that made landfall on the west coast of Texas August 25.

Behind all the disasters in Washington looms another waiting to make landfall. In July, the Wall Street Journal asked the President of the United States to come clean on what it knew about the involvement of Russia in last year's campaigns. This week, the presdient;s son, Don Jr is supposed to testify before Congress on Thursday.

There's so much more, but time feels wasted on news in such terrible times. Yet that is also so troubling since it is during disasters that other criminals elsewhere can get away with much worse. The reports out of Myanmar are few but horrifying as well, as ethnic Royhinga and others flee that country.

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Friday, September 1, 2017

Francesco Filelfo Ponders Exile As A Dialogue

Scattered across the introduction, notable quotes enunciate topical areas of focus in Francesco Filelfo's Commentationem Florentinarum De Exilio. Our Editor and Translator tell us his

"... fictional dialogue is a remarkable text, an idealized projection of cultural life at a high-water mark in Western history." [xxiiii]
And, "... contributing to an important humanistic topic of ... the debate on true nobility: was "nobility" a characteristic that was inherited, or could it be earned by meritorious acts that displayed noble values?" [xvii]
The author Filelfo was almost a kind of exile himself. He still has a long standing bad reputation of being greedy, lustful and vain but could read ancient Greek as well as any humanist and had lived in and gotten to know most of the important cities across Italy. Learned as well as travelled, he had argued with and studied under many of the great thinkers and doers of the Italian Renaissance.  So it is and, it seems almost apt that such a fictional dialogue among some of these people answering the question, 'What to do about Exile', should appear in those days, especially when written by one who might see himself in such a circumstance. Already in reading the barest beginnings of this book I wonder, if there had not been this book, then there would still be a greater need for it.

The town these people spoke about concerning exile was Florence. At the time non-noble families had begun ruling even prominent cities, and at that time she was ruled by those forces led and influenced by Cosimo de' Medici. Writing a dozen or more years after the events of Cosimo's grand return to Florence in 1434, Filelfo thereafter found himself outside of Florence having left for Siena, and then again, looking for a patron or, more patrons, he'd at last found one in the last Visconti to rule Milan.

Written likely in the late 1440's and among those in the court around Milan, Filelfo dedicated the work to a Milanese financer Vitaliano Borromeo. The text seems to not be completed at three books, as there are textual refernces to a fourth book. But as it stands, in this fine current translation for English, with Filelfo's latin text lain aside it, perhaps Francesco Filelfo and his world may come alive again for some. When Duke Visconti died, Filelfo turned his attentions at last to Francesco Sforza, another 'new man'.

Another question that Renaissance humanists tried to reconcile was in finding the right balance for Franciscan and other austere Observant Orders and their spiritual desires for a specific form of poverty (not 'owning' land and property), while simultaneously living in the middle of thriving urban living situations. The complications arising from such disorder brought forth many ruptures in civic order not just across Italy, but in time, the whole of Europe. These sorts of issues created other issues as various solutions were attempted and failed. The point here is that the idea of wealth in a church and wealth in society, like the banking families had, were different things and effected society in different ways. One seemingly leading to the other.

E.g., from the introduction again:
"In such communities the accumulation of wealth was often rapid, and the patronage of social elites depended on the large fortunes, often from banking, of families like the Medici and the Strozzi. It was these large fortunes that enabled a remarkable improvement in the quality of life for members of the elite and contributed to the enormous cultural achievements of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries." [xx]

Here, Filelfo has Leonardo Bruni once a teacher of Filelfo join the stage along with Poggio Bracciolini and Palla Strozzi and Francesco Soderini and they talk about economics as it relates to exile. Bruni is there to 'show his disgust at the way the Medici use their money for political ends.' While Bruni thought himself that 'wealth was acceptable to virtue' this virtue then depended on how the wealth was used. But then, this shows how Filelfo himself contrasts Bruni's notion, critical of Cosimo, with the more effective and potentially generous patron, Vitaliano Borromeo. To point this out isn't very flattering for Filelfo but speaks of the necessities of his own milieu in finding someone to pay him for his work. [xxi]

Despite his reputation or the exigencies of work in those days Filelfo was an interesting guy in interesting times. He outlived many who had crossed paths with him. Far from a monolithic sermonizer he collected all manner of interesting topics simply looking at what he had found the ancients thought about exile. There should be lots of these here.
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Filelfo, Francesco: On Exile,  Edited by Jeroen de Keyser and translated by W. Scott Blanchard, for The I Tatti Renaissance Library (ITRI); by The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2013



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