Is Zadie Smith right on Trajan's column?

Should authors reply to wrong-headed reviews? Is it a good idea to write in to the offending paper and point out that, despite the sweeping claims of their reviewer, you did in fact mention Pompey the Great (indeed devoted most of chapter 12 to him)/ that you didn’t mis-spell Caesar throughout/ that you are not nor ever have been a member of UKIP . . . or whatever?

In one way, of course it is. If reviews are part of a dialogue, then why silence the poor old author? Needless to say, reviewers on the TLS are not the sort to make crass errors – and, in any case, there is team of hawk-eyed editors who try to run to ground any mistakes that may have slipped through. But there are still a good many readers (myself included sometimes) who head straight for Letters page. There’s nothing like it for a ring-side seat at someone else’s literary row.

All the same, my advice to a friend about to pen an outraged letter would always be to think twice. It can often be more sensible to write the reply in your head, or even on the screen, but not to press the “send” button.

The truth is that no one ever scrutinises a review with quite the obsessive intensity as the book’s author. The chances are that your self-defence will actually draw attention to your alleged inadequacies. And there’s a high risk too that you’ll come across as more miffed than traduced. Unless the allegations are career threatening (plagiarism and the like) or your letter is drop-dead clever and witty, it may be better to hold your horses, to wait and see if anyone writes in on your behalf, and claim the dignified high ground .

What goes for the author also goes, even more so, for the criticized reviewer. So all this preamble is by way of saying that this post is about to (half-)break my own rule.

In last week’s TLS Letters, the excellent Zadie Smith commented on a review I had just published of a new book on the Roman “art of war”. I had said that one of the problems about interpreting the sculpture on Trajan’s and Marcus Aurelius’ columns in Rome was that their “visual narratives were virtually invisible from the ground”.

Zadie Smith objects – in the case of Trajan’s column – that it “originally stood in the middle of a courtyard surrounded by galleries from which viewing was possible.”

Is she right?

At the risk of sounding miffed, my answer is “probably not”. Or at least -- although the existence these galleries are often assumed – there isn’t actually any evidence for them at all.

It is true than in antiquity the column didn’t stand in the glorious isolation that it now does. It was in the middle of a large building complex which included a vast hall, libraries and a temple to the deified emperor Trajan, whose ashes rested in the base of the column. (Don’t belief  maps, like this one, that confidently mark the position of this temple (on the far left), recent excavations have put all that up in the air again).

The column (just to the right of the "temple" on the plan) was indeed in a courtyard flanked by Trajan’s libraries. But there is no evidence whatsoever for the form of their upper floors. These “viewing galleries” are entirely unattested. They are an archaeological invention designed precisely to get round the problem that I raised: namely that it seems so odd to have sculpted an intricate narrative that was to all intent and purposes invisible.

Of course, they might have existed. Archaeological inventions sometime strike lucky. But it is equally, if not more, likely that the sculptural remain effectively out of eye’s way. After all, there is no suggestion that the column of Marcus Aurelius was ever made visible like this.

So I think I am sticking to my guns.

Comments

[Mary]

FH: yes, noticed.
Parts of the column were certainly painted, picking out some details. That would have helped visibility a bit, I'm sure -- but I don't think it solves the problem.

[FH]

Late addition -- don't know whether it will get noticed.

I have just been reading about the colouring detected on Greek statuary, and it was suggested that this helped to make detail more visible from the ground. Would Trajan's column have been painted too?

[Xjy]

All's well that ends well!

JJ the phallocratic putter-down has been deflated, Zadie S and Mary B are the best of buddies (again?) and Alexander's granite column in St Pete has thrust its dark red eminence into our faces to give us a sense of proportion back. So now I don't think even Alex D-F's plea for textual wholesomeness will be able to turn our pristine sprinklings of bloggy dew into bloggy bloggy doo...

[Alex D-F]

While i couldn't agree more with the content of your remarks addressed to jones of the guardian, & you have found some eminently sensible advocates there, it seems to me there are a series of etiquette-hierarchy issues here.
as a blog-writer, you live off response to what you write. that seems to me the point of the genre. not that the flippant thrusts of us layabouts are particularly noteworthy in comparison to your infinitely superior pronouncements, but that an effect of debate & reaction is somehow produced. that provides some kind of interest, pseudo-conversationality (a virtue Addison himself prized), and, as has been remarked upon, a measure or clue for advertisers.
so why as a reviewer (& reviewing is itself essentially a reactive mode) do you take the high-horse & say 'the leukodontosophic brentographer may be a Cambridge graduate & celebrity but i'm going to be really arsey about even deigning to nod to her epistolary curiosity, however erroneous.')
of course any serious student of grub street understands the value of textual wholesomeness & not letting a discourse break up into parts like a spoilt mayonnaise or pub brawl or macaronic verse. Arachnophobia, a cultural fear of the annotative, fair enough. But surely Zadie probably just wants to say hi mary look at me in Rome. Couldn't you just let her and say hi back?

[Mary]

Over at the Guardian Jonathan Jones is blogging about Beard and Smith on the column:
blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/2007/03/trajans_column_row_spirals_off.html

And I confess that (breaking my rule again) I posted a comment. It was when I saw myself being accused of pedantry that I tipped over the line. Why go on about these trifling details when the real point about the column is is massive dominance of the Roman skyline etc? Answer, Jonathan, is that I was reviewing a book that was ABOUT such trifling details!

[alex d-f]

Thanks Das, I'll pass on the compliment. They'll be well chuffed as most foreign scholars simply sneer at Romania's 'nationalist myth-making', without seeing that sneering at other people's histories is itself a form of self-consoling narrative.

[Das]

Thanks Alex D-F for the link to the Romanian site. They feature a plaster reproduction of T's Col; and, wonderfully, a panel by panel exhibit of the same. I've been looking for something like this for a long time on the web. Teachers! Look alive - a great resource here...cheers.

[Lord Truth]

The idea that somehow the sculptures on these columns (or the Elgin marbles etc) should be visible or clear enough for individuals (private persons ) to "see" them shows the error of transfering modern ideas of public relationships to other cultures.
Many great works of art etc have been created to show the glory of a phenomenon ,religious or material and reflect the achievement of actually being able to DO the thing itself in the first place That the paintings ,frescoes, sculptures etc are not clearly visible to the naked eye once in place is totaly irrelevant
All that matters is the fact of their creation.Indeed the fact that these sculptures in question cannot be seen or interpreted clearly -yet are clearly there, would have made them even more impressive and charismatic to the ordinary citizen of the past-as in a sense they still are to our modern eye.
The idea of there being a building specially constructed for their viewing is puerile nonsense. A Roman would have said simply -if we had wanted the public to view them we would have put them on a wall round the Coliseum...

[alex d-f]

Thanks xjy, for returning to the question of reception. There is work in medieval cultural history (Huizinga, Eco) that talks about 'reading' of monuments, gargoyles &c. in non-narrative, non-paideutic ways. I don't know anything similar for the Roman world. But as you point out all this is not much use for history of mentalities if the menu peuple couldn't get a proper butcher's at it. All the same, the column does create the impression of a populated ecumene or firmament, even if we can't see their faces.
This is my attempt to found a new discipline, 'colonial-post studies', which pushes discussion of evidence on posts about columns (as opposed to columns about posts) beyond the empirical.

[postblogger]

At the risk of shattering people's faith in the infallibility of the internet, if a professional classicist has trouble getting the column right, I'm not sure if the people who cut and paste photos onto websites are going to be much better...

But I second Monica's idea. Surely one of us could write a grant explaining why it's very important to study the depth of carving on both columns, and ask for, ooo, say a round dozen research assistants to come along to help with the measurements?

[Xjy]

Please, people!

Now we know that the two columns are practically interchangeable, how about returning to the question of who the strip cartoon stories were intended for and how they were intended to be read?

Zadie S presupposed a concrete human readership. I mentioned the Parthenon art as an example where maybe close human eyeballing was not the main concern.

Perhaps it was enough that us lowly mortals knew the stories were there, and that a more exalted readership would be able to enjoy the detail.

Same goes for novels actually - Zadie writes for an immaterial imagined audience (like Goethe's "schöne Seele") and is in the happy position of being read by a multitude of ground level admirers who get the general gist while the esoterically initiated can float up and around the loftier regions of her monumental erection, ho:s epos epein.

[Eileen]

go here: the building on the right hand side of this photo of Trajan's column at B Ulpia is the same one as in the background of your photo

http://wings.buffalo.edu/AandL/Maecenas/rome/col_forum_trajan/ac660902.html

[Francesca]

Hrm. In looking at the photo from about.com, I'm starting to be convinced that Dr. Beard was correct in the first place.

As my students would say, "Whoops. My bad."

[FH]

I reckon this is the same background building, on a page about the Piazza Venezia with Trajan's Column:
http://cruises.about.com/library/pictures/rivieras/blrome08.htm

There is a similar building in pictures of the C of M A,
http://www.romaviva.com/Pantheon/piazza_colonna_eng.htm
but I think the original author got it correct -- the detail at the right hand end of the building labelled Piazza Venezia is right.

[Eileen]

It is most definitely Trajan's column: Trajan's column is located at the Basilica Ulpia. Looking thru my collection of books on roman art and also online I can easily see that the palace in the background is located at the Basilica Ulpia

[Alex Smith]

I think that is a picture of the column of Marcus Aurelius, from looking at the photos I took last time I went to Rome. The buildings in the background match it more closely than those behind Trajan's (and a Google search for MA's column brings up images with similar buildings in the background). Also, it could be a trick of the eye, but it appears that the saint on the top is in a pose akin to St. Paul's.

[Monica]

It looks more like Trajan's from the picture I took of Trajan's column (I could e-mail you this picture if you want) and several pictures of both columns I've found online. I base my analysis on the windows and the fact that most pictures of Marcus Aurelius' column have more shadow around the figures (which isn't very conclusive, considering lighting differences, cameras, etc).

I think if you're at the correct angle, you can manage to take a picture of Trajan's column without the domes.

Of course, I think the best course of action would be to go to Rome and take pictures ourselves to see if we can duplicate this angle at either of the columns!

[Francesca]

I recognized this as the C. of Marcus Aurelius from the width of the spiral bands, the depth of the carving, and of course the building in the background (the Palazzo Chigi, I believe).

This illustration might help: http://www.romeartlover.it/Vasi22ws.jpg

[Mary]

I have a feeling Aaron Bronson may be correct. I had identified the building from memory as that at the back of the piazza around MA. But a careful check shows, I think, that the fenestration is different.
Any other bids?

For Oliver Nicholson...to my knowledge the ashes aren't there; but I'm beginning to feel a bit iffy about this damn column!

[Aaron Bronson]

I might be wrong but is this building next to the first google searchable image of Trajan's column the same as the one in your picture? I'm not sure if the angles can work out though. I have looked through pics of M Aur's column but cannot find any building that look the same

[Alex D-F]

Obviously a heated debate & one verging on the columnious. But as you are a blogger & not a columnist, presumably we can't take your word for it. For my part, having read your title, I presumed that was Zadie Smith on the top.
But - lest I be accused of favouring obloquy over obliquity, although I admit I do sometimes - there are cultural history reasons in support of your case. Ms. Smith is a novelist & subsribes I suppose to notion of reading as narrative, consecutive, edifying, going somewhere. Reading as a happy street like an epistolary novel with a post office at one end and a church at the other. This presupposes a beginning-to-end type of reading not only of texts but also of this column, so often cited as an antecedent to the cartoon strip or even the novel.
But was consecutivity the makers' intention? & even if it were, would this be best served by a series of viewing platforms? Probably easier to get 100 Irishmen to turn the column round for you, as in the light-bulb joke. I leave it up to your learned readership to adjudicate, but isn't this narrative, outcome-oriented mode of cultural consumption a modern thing?
Incidentally if you do like the close up look there is a plaster cast in the National History Museum of Romania, which goes through several floors. On the history of its making:
http://www.mnir.ro/ro/colectii/columna/columna-traian-copia.html

[Oliver Nicholson]

Are Trajan's ashes still there ? Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay....
OPN

[postblogger]

I'd just like to wade in to support Mary's last comment. I read Francesca's comment, laughed like a drain and looked both columns up on Google. Frankly, I'm buggered if I can see the difference. How CAN you tell?

[Mary]

Curiouser and curiouser. I've just had an email from a learned friend who says that this column is, he thinks, really Trajan's.
So let me tell you the whole story. I posted this blog this morning, and last of all searched the web for a good plain picture of Trajan's column to go with it. I found one, looked just right, labelled "Trajan's column" and popped it in. Then as I previewed the post, I thought "Damn -- that's Marcus Aurelius not Trajan". (It was the building next to it that looked like the modern piazza in which Marcus' column stands.) Never believe the web I thought.
Anyway -- and this is really to fess up -- though I've got better at the technology of blogging since I started, I still don't now how to remove a pic once I've put it in, short of starting over again.
After a moment's gloom, I decided to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. Since this was a blog about mistakes and misinterpreting columns, it would be fun to go ahead and make a joke out of it.
And just as I predicted, Francesca steps in to confirm my suspicions.
But now...?
Not only are my protestations about infallibly knowing which column is which proved rather shallow, I would really like to know which this is. Does anyone have a clinching diagnostic. (Is that Peter or Paul on the top, for example?)

[Candadai Tirumalai]

I think it entirely fitting that the scuptures on the Column of the philosophical and stoical Marcus Aurelius do not allow eye-level visual inspection.
Incidentally, President Harry Truman nearly always followed the advice you give aggrieved authors: he wrote many angry letters but locked them up in his desk.

[Mary]

Congratulations francesca...within two hours!
On this occasion, bloggers, the joke WAS mine. I wondered how long it would take anyone to get it/notice..

i may inadvertently muddle my agrippinas but only advertently my columns!

[Francesca]

I wonder if it's prudent to point out that it's an illustration of the C. of Marcus Aurelius you have at the top of your post.

[Xjy]

And just how visible were the friezes and metopes of the Parthenon?