Supping with the devil?

If anyone is following my Lenten abstinence, I must confess that yesterday I deemed the Irish Embassy (which was hosting a friend’s  book launch) to be foreign soil and I allowed myself a couple of whiskies. It was the first alcohol that I have knowingly consumed in several weeks, unless you count some sherry sauce on a bowl of ice cream.

I’m not a regular at embassy parties, but – alcohol or not – this little piece of Ireland seemed an unusually jolly place, from the welcoming doorman to the cloakroom attendant and the generous barmen. The consequence, I suspect, of being a small nation which is doing very nicely thank you, and which (unlike us) no-one hates.

By and large, though, abstinence has changed my party habits. I haven’t been the last to leave for a whole month. Instead I’ve tended to enjoy (sic?) one glass of orange juice, graze on the nibbles -- and slip away after half an hour or so, before too much temptation has been waved under my nose.

This is exactly what I did on Wednesday at the party to re-launch the Campaign for the Restitution of the Elgin Marbles (“Marbles Reunited”), and so I missed the speeches – by one of my Cambridge colleagues and by the President of the Organizing Committee for the new Acropolis Museum, which is due to open this year. (The brochure we were given made it look extremely attractive, rather more so than in this picture – though whether a glass building in sunny Athens is a good idea for visitor comfort or the environment remains to be seen.)

The event was held at the House of Commons, which is decidedly less welcoming to its citizens than the Irish Embassy is to its guests. Some of the security staff and police try their best to look friendly, but the Gulag-style body search at the entrance is as off-putting as it is humourless.

The party spirit thrived nonetheless. In fact, most surprising of all (given the sometimes bad tempered conduct of this long standing cultural squabble) was the fact that both “sides” – the British Museum and the Restitutionists -- were happily quaffing together.

Or to be strictly accurate there were at least two senior members of the British Museum staff in evidence and apparently enjoying themselves.

You might think that this was a bit like Goering turning up at Churchill's planning party for the Normandy landings. But I took it as a sign that the struggle for return was become a rather more gentlemanly and academic affair. Good news for someone like me who is a fence-sitter on this issue.

What was striking was that the Campaign felt able to invite them and that they felt able to accept. Credit all round, I thought – and perhaps especially to Neil MacGregor, the Director of the British Museum, who has tried hard to move away the yah boos, insults and the supercilious sneers about the Greeks’ unfitness to look after their cultural property (without just lying down and sending the Marbles back).

May be the next thing we can look forward to is some new information panels in the BM Parthenon gallery, on which the Restitution campaign can lay out their case to the visiting public alongside the Museum’s own.

How about it Neil?

Comments

[Fred O'Hanlon]

Dear Mary

With regard to XJY, an object belongs to its owner, and this is a question of the use of English words. Ownership is a legal entitlement to possession, and of course the law is changed on a fairly regular basis. So possession and belonging are not separate issues.

Whether or not contemporary Greece has either ethnic or linguistic continuity with Classical Hellas is highly debatable. Homeric references to the complexion of the Hellenes seem to accord only with the complexion of the small minority of modern Greeks who live in remote mountainous areas and the language of modern Greece was reintroduced after independence in the early 19th century. Continuity of cultural identity during the Turkish hegemony centred around continuity of allegiance to the Greek Orthodox Church.

With regard to your Lenten abstinence, a visit to a foreign country without visceral enemies, save perhaps in its northernmost reaches, was indeed ample justification for a temporary dispensation from your vows, not to mention a question of common courtesy to your hosts. As is well known, in the Irish use of English words a teetotaller is someone who drinks in secret, or by extension abroad.

Further to the question of cultural continuity, it was, I believe, the ancient Celtic geometer Harry O’Nassis, who first defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two pints.

Fred O’Hanlon

[Xjy]

Judging by some of the ignorant and racist comments made by pro-Britishers here, it'd be a hard job to make a case that the Greeks don't deserve the marbles cos they're less civilized. The problem is not one of jingoism, though, which is a great relief to me at least. It's a question of who the marbles, the Parthenon, the classical Greek heritage etc belong to. Continuity of language exists in Hellas, but not continuity of culture. Continuity of ethnic composition, for what that's worth in questions of ideology. No continuity of state or polity.

So it boils down to possession and power. Like ownership of the land. If we decide to restore cultural monuments to their original home, then we should in the name of consistency do the same regarding all such disputes - art, land, resources, people. Taking the land off currently occupying usurpers however would be frowned on by a lot of powerful, well-armed people and governments. Seeing justice is done in relation to stolen or unfairly appropriated resources (and how far back should we go? To the time of Classical Athens, say??) would create even more of a stink probably (affecting not just landowners but the capitalist bourgeoisie too).

I wonder less now about Mary's sitting on the fence over this issue.

[Cliff Pooley]

I'm sorry to hear that Mary Beard's reception at the British Houses of Parliament was less convivial than that at the Irish Embassy. Perhaps this is because, while the British have been victims of scores of Irish terrorist attacks on their democracy, the Irish have never had to deal with any British attempts to murder them on their premises.

[Steve Whether]

As the Parthenon was damaged in fairly recent times (and wartime at that), would it not be practicable to restore it properly? (the Mariakirche in Dresden was in much worse shape). Granted new pollution-proof marbles would need to be produced, but the 3d technology is readily available now. Then, wherever the originals get stored becomes much less of a vexed issue.

[jon livesey]

I happen to have a very good book on the Parthenon marbles, which has side by side photographs of those in the BM and those remaining in Athens. The Athens marbles are in pathetic shape; in fact they are so badly corroded that they look as if they have been melted.

I am confident that the bien pensant can in time hector and guilt-trip the British public to the point where the BM loses the argument, but I fear it will be an act of PC-motivated vandalism.

[Candadai Tirumalai]

I saw the Elgin Marbles in the 1970s, when it was possible to emerge from the great Reading Room, haunted by the presence of so many illustrious writers, and pore over those unique Marbles. Perhaps one had just read one of the speeches of Pericles in Thucydides. The Reading Room and the exhibits seemed of a piece.