Memorial

N.B. -- I wrote this piece for Memorial Day in 2007 and reposted it in 2008. By Memorial Day of 2009, my own father was buried in the small windswept rural cemetery of which I wrote. Things are never the same again.

RIP... memory eternal.

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First interstate, then blacktop, then gravel. The road passes through prairie grass and wildflowers and along fields where the first faint green streaks thrust up through the soil’s black surface, still moist.

To the south, bluish rimrocks and pine cling to the horizon. Winding around a high ridge clad with sparse grass and thick creeping cedar, then down, then up again to a windswept fork in the road – the small white church stands. There is a small gate in the long white fence.

One steps through, stones of granite silently greet – patient, enduring all. All small, modest. Many are flat and sunken -- hidden in the short prairie grasses, one almost walks past. Their number is few, pilgrims rare. One is compelled to visit each one. First father’s father, father’s mother. Then the others.

At the sight of a carved name, a face, a voice, appears. At another, a question. When an old one stands there too, the question is given voice, and the old one’s stories are spoken softly. Of those who are no longer here, of those whose seed is no longer here.

In a far corner lies a man who never wed. There is no-one to carry his name. One speaks the name out loud for him. The wind carries it away as it races to the east. The sky’s vaulted immensity looms like death -- the patch of granite and grass shrinks. The sun presses down, the wind is cold.

Today, there are no old ones to ask. Today there are only the wondering children asking the one who is their own old one. Speaking the stories softly, forgotten doors click open quietly. More stories, and tears.

Near the eastern fence, a small metal marker. A flag in relief, a date, a war, a ship, a name. Who he was, even the old ones do not remember.His kin vanished to the east, their hearts raw. One speaks the name out loud for him. The ground heaves like the deck of a ship, the prairie is a sea of grass, the wind’s bite is salty as it carries the name eastward.

Death in battle. True, all die in battle – we are gentle with the living, because all are fighting a great battle, unseen.

But for a land, some gave all – gratitude rises. For the dead, but also that one’s own ship of the air returned one winter night, that no battle was seen. Warm embraces, tears, small arms wrapped around each leg.The helmet bag forgotten on the tarmac as love curled around us like a growing vine. At home, a flag sat on the hearth’s mantle. “From a grateful nation,” it said. Thanks were given as we broke bread – there would be no second flag.

Looking up from the metal flag in the grass, rushing back from past to present – unnoticed, the young ones have left the old, have left the dead, have left the granite and the names. They have walked west, found flowers tucked in the prairie grass. Curious lambs are peering through the fence. Mothers call, and the names are carried in the wind.

More on Hilton Kramer

The May issue of The New Criterion was in large part dedicated to the memory of the recently departed Hilton Kramer, founder and visionary behind that influential journal of culture and the arts. Particularly worth reading are editor Roger Kimball's lead essay and the reminiscences of the legendary Joseph Epstein, long-time editor of The American Scholar, but a browse through all of the tributes is well worth the time spent.

An interesting tidbit that I hadn't read before was that when Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn finally decided to allow his reclusive privacy in Vermont to be violated long enough to allow the New York Times to interview him, one of his stipulations was that he would only speak to Hilton Kramer, then art critic for The Gray Lady. It was a request that must have seemed unusual at the time, since there were any number of literary or political editors or reporters who would have been more logical choices from the perspective of the Times. Kramer's reputation for honesty had apparently preceded him, making him someone Solzhenitsyn could depend on to tell the truth -- something Solzhenitsyn valued above all other qualities. Kramer's review of The Gulag Archipelago couldn't have hurt, in all fairness to the competition.

On another note, long-time readers of The New Criterion are so used to the fact of that periodical's unstinting championing of things like abstract expressionism in painting and the honesty of certain kinds of modernist architecture that it is easy to forget what an unusual sell this combination of modernist art and conservative culture and politics must have seemed at the time when seeking start-up funding from largely conservative foundations.

The combination made perfect sense to Kramer, for whom the two were organically woven together in his critical life. Those who may have been skeptical (present company included) but who read the journal through the years came to understand modernism in a new light, seeing its many currents,learning to separate the pretentious from the profound, the trendy from the potentially timeless. Most importantly, we discovered the that while engagement with a "canon" of proven artistic worth is an irreplaceable anchor to one's aesthetic life, life without contemporary artistic engagement with the human condition is an impoverished one, even when it involves sifting through dusty sands of trendy post-modernism to find that occasional jewel...

This issue has some interesting comments and anecdotes about Kramer making that sale (in part through the good offices of Irving Kristol.) He of course did, and the rest, as they say, is history.

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Afterthought (what would MH be without digressions and afterthoughts? -- or parenthetical filiations, for that matter): While working yesterday with one of the progeny at the ancestral homestead, planting trees for the next generation to enjoy, that phrase came up in the course of conversation. He, shovel in hand, asked the following question -- since the saying has long been "and the rest, as they say, is history," wouldn't it today be more proper to say "and as they say, 'the rest, as they say, is history?'" My reply felt feeble but I tried: besides its obvious infelicities, eventually a third "as they say" would have to be added to the phrase, and so on. True?

Musings for a weekend...

Hilton Kramer, RIP

Profound gratitude. There’s not much else to be said about the MH attitude toward the newly departed Hilton Kramer, founder of the favorite periodical of the MH household. Even the youngsters are caught reading it from time to time when they are home.

Unlike the daily Billings Gazette, which is easily divvied up each morning at breakfast (sports section for MH -- liking to start the day with the part with the highest percentage of factual truth; front section for the beloved,) the monthly New Criterion cannot be read simultaneously, not least because we would turn first to different essays (Jay Nordlinger’s music criticism for MH; lead article for the beloved.)

Fortunately, there is usually an easy solution -- the previous few issues are usually lying close to hand, and one has rarely read every word of those. So the first to the prize gets the literary Beaujolais Nouveau, while the loser gets a more aged vintage -- hardly a loss.

Readers are encouraged to browse through some initial laudatory pieces about Kramer.

And this old post from some years ago touches in passing on the deep MH respect for the New Criterion and specifically on the admiration due to Hilton Kramer. With deepest gratitude for his gift to those who care deeply about the arts and about our civilization -- rest in peace... memory eternal.