Anthony D Smith - Chosen_peoples

5/13/2018 Anthony D Smith - Chosen_peoples

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CHOSENPEOPLES

Anthony D. Smith

OXFORDUNIVERSITY PRSS


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THE GLORIOUS DEAD

Pre-Nationalist Commemorations

9The language of national celebrat ion and mourning is, of course, anintrinsic component of nationalist ideology. The self-sacrificing citi-zen, the fallen patr io t-hero or heroine, the genius who contributed hisor her work (and even life) to the nation, the mass sacrifice of thepeople, the glory of patriotic valour, the everlasting youth of thefallen, the overcoming of death through fame-these are the stock int rade of nationali st values, myth, and imagery. They have becomestandard actors and motifs in the national salvation drama, theagenrs and vehicles of the nation's deliverance and subsequenttriumph.

But this is not the whole story. If we look back to premodernages, we find many of tbe elements of that salvation drama enacted inepochs that knew nothing of nationalism and its theories of a worldof authentic self-realiz ing nations. In fact, nationalism has drawn onand used such pre-existing 'sacrifice' motifs to weave the fabric of itsown salvation myth, in its own very special manner.

Let me start with the classical legacy of premodern imagery ofsacrif ice and celebration. For the Enlightenment, the great exemplauirtutis were to be found in the city republics of ancient Greece andRome. Thus, 00 the monument of the fallen Spartans of Thermo pylae,the poet Simonides inscribed the simplest of epitaphs:

The Glorious Dead

The drama of the nation has three climactic moments, each ofthem glorious: i ts golden age, i ts ult imate national destiny, andth e sacrifice of its members . . Bur, since the ultimate destiny of thenation can never be known, though many may hope [0divine it, allwe can be sure of is that itwill come about only throughrhe commit-ment and self-sacrifice of i ts members, and that i s what the nationmust cont inually uphold, remember , and celebrate. What we mightterm 'dest iny through sacrifice', therefore, forms the final sacredfoundation of nat ional identity, at once seen and unseen, act ivelycultivated, and a silent presence.

At the outset, we must be clear that it IS not so much the actionsof those held to have made a sacrif ice that concerns US, as the memoryand report of rhoseactions.Jn this context, public memory and reportare more important than private, though the rwo often overlap andreinforce each other, a t least as far as their expression is concerned.Grief , l ike hope and defiance, may start in the privacy of individuals 'hearts, but its overt expression, outside the immediate family,becomes a form of public communication, a generalized language ofmourning and celebration whose sentiments and messages are stand-ard, if not universal , beneath the variety of national forms. Hence, inthis chapter, the linages, symbols , and rituals of commemoration andcelebration will occupy our attention, more than the actions thatcalled them forth. '

Go, stranger, tell the Spartans thatHere, obedient to their laws, welie.

His inscription on the monument to the Spartans at P!ataea was moreelaborate and revealing:

Having died, they are nor dead;For their valour, by the glory which it brings,Raises them from above our of the house of Hades.

The note of glory in self-sacrif ice, and the idea. of transcendingdeath, are even more clearly conveyed in the well-known passage inPericles' Funeral Oration to the Athenians who had died in the fir styear of the Peloponnesian War in 430 Be:

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They gave their lives, to her and to all of us, and for theirown selves they won pra ises that never grow old, the mostsplendid of sepulchres-not the sepulchre in which theirbodies are laid, bur where their glory remains eternal inmen's minds, always there on rbe fight occasion to stirothers to speech or ac tion. For famous men have the wholeearth as their memorial: it is not only the inscriptions onthe ir graves in thei r own country tba t mark them out ; no , inforeign lands also, not in any visible form but in people'shear ts , thei r memory abides and grows. I t i sfor you to t ry tobe l ike them. Make up your minds tha t happiness dependson being free, and freedom depends on being courageous,Let there be no re laxa tion in face of the peri ls of war.

(Th ucydides History of the Peloponnesian War, ii. 43,trans. Rex Warner (T959), 121)

sacrifice of their wealth by the Roman women in the campaignagainst Veu, painted by Nicolas Brenet and Jean~Baptjste Suvee, orBrutus' s terrible condemnation of his sons for acting treacherouslyagainst Rome, as depicted in the play by Voltaire and the painting byDavid. In each case, individuals acted against their personal interestsfor a greater cause, that of tbe welfare and security of the city repub-lic-e-or the nation (see Rosenblum 1967: ch. 2).'

Butthe classical legacy was only one source of the imagery ofself-sacrifice and celebration. It was reinforced, and framed, by areligious heritage, Jewish and Christian, with parallels in Islam, Thiswas, in many ways, a more 'popular' lineage, one that focused less onheroes and more on saints, sages, and the community ...While thegreatest leaders of the Israelites are not commemorated-Moses'tomb on Mount Pisgah is unknown, Elijah is carried to heaven in achariot of fire-ewe are wid of the sepulchres of the Patriarchs andkings, Of these, David's tomb on Mount Zion, and the Cave ofMacpelah in Hebron, were well known. The rornb of the Patriarchswas one of the earliest places of pilgrimage, along with the Western(Wailing) Wall, the sole remaining waH of the Temple, and pilgrimageto Jerusalem and other holy places was continuous for Jews rombibl ica l t imes (W. D. Davies 1982: 48-9).

They were soon faHawed by the holiest sites of Christianity, theChurches of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and of the Nativity inBethlehem, shortly after their location by Helena. By the end of thefourth century, they formed the heart of Egeria's devotional and bib-tical itinerary in the Holy Land (and Egypt), conceived nor as a singlesacred Land, as for the Jews, bur asa series of separate sacred placesassociated with the life of jesusand rhe saints (Hunt 2000). From thesixth century onwards such places where saints had lived and diedbecame objects of increasing pilgrimage-s-St James at Santiago deCompostela, St David in southern Wales Wenceslaus in Prague,Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, St Mark in Venice. In Islam, too,certain sites became places of pilgrimage. In addition CO Mecca,Medinah, and, later, Jerusalem, there were the holy cities of Qom,Najaf, and Karbala, the latter marking the site where Husain, theProphet's grandson, bad been killed. In all these cases.commernor-arion in a specific place and at set times had become a habitual part ofreligious practice. J

It matters little that this was an internecine Greek war. The sen-timents and imagery expressed by Pericles became models of politicalsolidarity and civic nationalism for the philosophes of the Enlighten-ment, as for their successors, the French revolutionaries. Ideas ofinscribed and unwritten monuments, of undying fame and eternalglory, the overcoming of death through posterity, the land and itsinhabitants as an immaterial sepulchre, and of emulation of the cour-age of the self-sacrificing fallen, these are messages and images thatwere readily transferred by the ideology of nationalism from the cityrepublic to the nation throughout Europe and beyond from the latereighteenth century, a transference made that much easier by Pericles'and Thucydides' contrast between 'inscriptions on monuments intheir own country' and unwritten memorials of them 'even in foreignlands'.

When they looked back to ancient Rome, too, the philosophesand the writers and artists whom tbey influenced were struck by simi-lar exempla uirtutis. Among the earliest to purvey the new doctrine ofcivic virtue and national heroism through examples from antiquitywere the painters and sculptors, especially in Britain and France.Themes nom Republican Roman history were especially popular.There was Lucretia's self-sacrifice and Brutus's oath, which in thelater eighteenth century began C O be interpreted as a political act byartists such as Gavin Hamilton and Antoine Beaufort. There was the

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THE GLORIOUS DeAD THE GLORlOUS DEAD

However, in the religious heritage, text and image were moreimportant than place. In lslam, the events of the Prophet's life, andthose of his fami ly and his Companions, became central-above al l,the Hegira tram Mecca. InJudaism and Christianity, the crossing ofthe Red Sea under Moses and the valour of joshua; David' s slaying ofGolia th; Judah the Maccabee who cleansed the Temple and defeatedAntiochus; Judith who slew Holofernes and saved her city and coun-try; above all, the crucifixion of Christ and the martyrdom of Hissaints: these were the exploi ts, recorded in the Old and New Testa-ments and the Apocrypha, that were t ransmit ted through Westernculture, co become the exemplars of faith and sacrifice. As we haveseen, some of these figures were held up for emulation by kings andpeoples throughout the Middle Ages. Others, like Judith and Davidslaying Goliarh, achieved great popularity during the Renaissance, aswitnessed In the great sculptures of these subjects by Donatello, Ver-rocchio, and Michelangelo, which echo incipient ideas of (Florentine)republicanism and resistance to tyranny.'

Not only heroes, but battles, tOO, were commemorated an d, . ..ondered, and, as one might expect, defeats more than vjctories . Wesaw this already with the annual commemoration every 2. June of theArmenian defeat at the battle of Avarayr in 45I, and the canonizationof the Armenian commander, Vardan Mamikonian=-a battle that wasinterpreted as martyrdom for both fai th and counrryjews likewisecommemorate the anniversary of the fall of Jerusalem and, in thetradition, of the First and Second Temples on the Fast of Av,when theBook of Lamentations of the prophet Jeremiah is recited. These havetheir Islamic counterparts in the Shi-ite commemorations of the battleof Karbala in 680, when Husain was slain; and their Orthodox paral-lel in the ~erbian myths and epics of the defeat of King Lazar by theOttoman armies on the field of Kosovo Polje in 1389. As Kenanremarked, defeats and, we might add, exile impose obligarions morethan victories. As important, they provide models for the interpret-at ion of later defeats and persecutions (Renan I882; A. D. SmithI98rbj .

Of COLUse,none of these examples, by themselves, demonstratesthe characteristic concerns of nationalism with authenticity, conrinu-iry, dignity , unity, identity, and autonomy. What they have providedis a host of rich cultural resources: models and styles for acts of

commemoration and celebration; sites of individual and mass rever-ence in the form of pilgrimage; ideas of self-sacrifice and martyrdom,and of everlasting renown; and ideals of sanctity and heroismembodied in exemplary individuals. Al l these resources would form aferrite field for later nationalisms.

Celebrating National HeroesFrom the eighteenth century the new idea of the nation as a sacredcommunion 0f the people began to emerge i n th e shad ow of the abso-luti~t monarchy, requiring different modes of representation and new! u t Jnational symbols to attract and envelop the newly emancipated popu-lations. This imagery and symbolism centred on the ideal of noble ~self-sacrif ice, both individual and collective. The entry of the middleclasses into politics and the advent of secular, charismatic leadership,which ushered in the epoch of mass polit ics, was signalled by a needto identify with great men and women whose virtues and heroismembodied the authentic spiri t of a new type of community, the nation.The result was a very public imagery of national communion,designed to encourage reflection and emulation, one that was suitedto the publ ic ceremonies of celebration and commemoration withwhich the ci tizenry could ident ify and in which they could, eventu-ally, participate. This imagery was increasingly permeated by the keyassumptions and practices of nationalism-including such notions asnational unity, autonomy, identity, authenticity, and the homeland.

At the outset, we need to distinguish between two phases ofnat ionalism, which very roughly correspond to two kinds of mediaand imagery, at least within Europe. The first we may term an elitenationalism of the middle classes, for it focused primarily on repre-sentations of the virtuous actions of charismatic individuals andgroups, both past and present. The second reflected, and pro-pounded, a mass nationalism, in which the national community tookthe place of heroes and heroines, or rather in which it came toregard it sel f as the exemplar of heroism and leadership. In the fir stphase, the role of great men and women was purveyed in forms ofart music, and li terature, which created a middle-class public, andwhich emphasized the exemplary qualities of heroes and heroines.

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In the second phase and type, the focus shifts to rites and cere-monies performed in an orchestra red mass choreography at specificsites , purveyed in monumental sculpture an d architecture an d bymeans of secular liturgies and sacred emblems (see Mosse I994:ch5)We can best gauge the national, and later increasingly national-ist, elements of the cults of genius and heroism by considering thedevelopment of one of their characteris tic art forms: history painting(and to some extent, sculpture). There had, as I intimated, been asurge of heroic imagery during the Italian Renaissance, with itsrenewed interest in certain figures from the Bible and [he classicalworld. Such imagery persisted, though with lessmoral force, into thesucceeding epoch of Counrer-Reformation and absolutism, with itsdramatic Baroque allegories of saints and heroes, whose ecstasies andapotheoses were celebrated in great altarpieces and on grandiose ceil-ings. But only in French art was the drama of moral heroism of theearly Renaissance fully cultivated, notably in the historical andreligious works of Poussin and Le Sueur,'

By the early eighteenth century, theelement of mora] heroismhad been largely absorbed into the decorative aura of royal apothe-osis, and, with a few exceptions, even overt historical or mythologicalsubjects by art ists like de Troy, Fragonard, or Tiepolo had lost anydidactic message of stern resolve and noble sell-sacrif ice. But, afterthe middle of the eighteenth century, a new, more severe neoclassicalstyle, inspired by the recent discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneumand the rediscovery of Poussin, began to replace the dominantRococo decoration, as painters, sculptors , and architects returned toclassical Roman and Hellenistic, and later Greek, exemplars toexpress a graver and more austere vision of stoic virtue. Subjects likethe continence of Scipio, the death of Socrates, the wretched fare ofBelisarius, and the patriotic oaths of Brutus the consul and of theHorarii replaced the allegories of love and luxury of a Boucher orFragonard-as Gluck' s puri fied drama superseded the often eroticmythologies of Italian and French opera of the period (see HonourI968; Arts Council of Great Brita in I97Z).

The breakthrough in paint ing came around ]_760 wi th the so-caUed Iliadic revival-and, more particularly, the tragic encounter ofHector, defender of Troy, and Achilles, in line with the literary

rediscovery of Homer. Gavin Hamilton's great series of paintings onthese themes in the I76os, only some of which have survived, literallyset the stage. They reflected the new interest in ancient Greece and theNear East, and are characterized by a new seriousness and purity,which owes much to Poussin, Hamilton is interested both in thepsychology of Homer's heroes, and in the moral conflict in theirencounters. As a result, his figures appear like protagonists in atheatrical drama (Waterhouse 19)4; Irwin 1966: 31-8).6

Hamilton's large-scale Oath of Brutus (I764) also depicts char-acters from a scene, as it were, in a Roman morality play. The por-trayal of the lifesize protagonists pushed up against the picture planein a horizontal format broke with the depth and diagonal thrust ofBaroque conventions and the usual swirling mass of small figurescharacteris tic of the Rococo, but preserved the Baroque sense of emo-tional involvement, to which it added a strong didactic message.Moreover, where the Rococo treatments of this episode from earlyRoman history had focused on the tragedy of Lucretia's rape by Tar -quin and her suicide, Hamilton's interest was on the subsequent oathof Brutus and Collat inus, and thei r decision to drive out the tyrantsand instal l a republ ican government , suggest ing a shift of concernfrom the private to a public , and decidedly male, domain (Rosenblum1961; Macmillan 1986: 41-2.).

Masculine, and increasingly martial , themes were favoLUed byhistory painters and sculptors of the next few decades-the Ameri-cans Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley, British artists such asJ ames Barry and Thomas Banks, the Swiss He ill rich Fiissli, the Italia nAntonio Canova, and the Frenchmen Nicolas Brener, Jean-Baptis tePeyron, and Jacques-Louis David. Such themes lent themselves to anationalist ideology centred on authentic ity and sacrifice , in oppos-irian to worldly corruption and alien tyranny. Indeed, the contribu-tion of sacrifice to the general good in its various forms became acentral preoccupat ion of neoclassical and early Romantic arti sts.Here I shall consider three of irs aspects: the sacri fice of a Hieo f easefor a higher cause, the sacri fice of things dear to the individual , andthe ultimate sacrifice, ofWe itself.


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Sacrifice for a higher causeIn 1778, Heinrich Fussli, on his return from Italy, was commissionedby the Zurich council to paint The Oath Ott the Riitli, an eventthat bythat time had become established as the cornerstone of the myth ofSwiss unity and independence. Fiissli 's conception is both abstractand elemental. It speaks of defiance, struggle, unification, and sacri-ficefor freedom. Three huge and muscular Michelangelesqae figures,representing the forest cantons of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden,swear with arms held alof t towards an upl ifted sword to unite andresist the encroachments on their ancient freedoms by the Habsburgsand their governor, Gessler. As we saw, the event in question, dated bythe Bundesbrief to 1291,. was the first of a series of oaths of resistancethat cemented the Swiss Eidgenossenschaft, which in tum, over thecenturies, formed the basis of the subsequent Swiss nation. ByFiissli'stime, a Swiss revival was taking place with the foundation of theHelveric society by the intelligentsia and professionals, and thewri r ings an d speeches of Bodmer, Breiti nger, Pestalozzi, and others,foreshadowing the unification of the cantons in 1798 in the French-imposed Helvetic Republic. Fussli 's paint ing owes much to chisZeitgeist and to the new ideas of republican liberty and national unitythat were percolating through the intelligentsias of Western Europe.I ts thrusting, defiant male figures embody the ideal of readiness to diefor the freedom of the nation, which was to reach its artistic con-summation in David's icon of the Oath of the Horatii (I784) a fewyears later (see Antal :956:7I-4; Klemm 1986: no. IX, p. 34).7

Nearly a century later , Ingres 's depiction of Joan of Arc at theCoronation of Charles VII in Rbeims Cathedral (I8H) also conveysthe ideal of self-sacrif ice as struggle in the service of a higher cause.Ingres here responds both to the growing relig ious medievalism thatswept France jn the mid-nineteenth century, and to the portrait of aspiritual patriot painted by Michelet, He places Joan in a richlyecclesiastical setting at the cathedral altar, taking meticulous care inthe depiction of vestments and altar panels , the gold reliquaries , cen-ser , and candlestick, the jewel-encrusted crown with the fleur-de-lysresting on a velvet cushion, and Joan's medieval armour over herpatterned robe, Joan hersel f is shown as a piOUS, bur militant femalewarrior-saint, clad in armour and holding the two-pointed oriflamme

aloft, and adored by a kneeling monk, an equerry, and three pages.Her heavenward gaze, oblivious to the mundane affairs of everydaylife, reveals her at the moment of her supreme triumph yet alone inthe purity of her faith . A t her feet, below her helmet, is a tablet withthe inscription 'et son bucher se change en trone dans les cieux' ( 'andinheaven her stake istransformed into a throne'). Robert Rosenblumcomments on the 'uncanny realism' created by the shimmering Lightand the 'visual splendour' of Ingres's treatment, by comparison withthe more routine descriptive paintings ofJoan during this period, andpoints out that Ingres's painting 'is crammed with precise archaeo-logical details that would reconstruct the pious yet sensuous glories ofa Christian past' (Rosenblum 985: 160-3).

And , we may add, of a quintessentia lly French past . Perhaps thiswas the very moment later captured by Bernard Shaw, in hi s St Joan(191..0)., in the memorable scene when Joan confronts those who areabout to betray her, in the ambulatory of Rheims Cathedral after thecoronation:

France is alone; God is alone; and what is my lonelinessbefore the loneliness of mycountry and myGod? r see nowthat the lonelinesso f G o d is H is strength: what w ould H e b eif He listened to your jealous little counsels?Well, my lone-linessshall be my strength, too; it is better robe alone withGod; His friendship will not fail me, nor His counsel, norHJs love. In His strength, I will dare, and dare, and dare,until I die. I will go our now to the common people, and letthe love in their eyescomfort mefor the hate inyours. Youwill beglad to see me burnt; but if I go through th e f ire Ishall go through it [0their hearts for ever and ever.And so,God bewith me!

Of course, rival groups in French society and polit ics sought toappropriate joan's memory, a task made easier by the fact that shepresented such different facets: Catholic saint , warrior maiden, spir-i tual leader, royalis t supporter, s imple peasant gir l, but, above all , an'authentic' nat ionali st-especially during and after the Great War:For the many wbo adopted her cult , and particularly for right-wingCatholic nationalists (but also for some left-wing Catholics like

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Peguy), Joan came to represent the 'real' France, a heroine of thesacred communion of the people, transcending class divisions andparty discord in her strenuous st ruggle to achieve French unity andreveal France's underlying 'goodness' (see Gildea I994: I54-65)8

With academic rhetoric, the artist indicates Manlius' dread-ful but successful struggle to maintain legal impartiality andthe state 's welfare over personal interests; for his right handis publicly outstretched in the preservation of justice,whereas his Lefthand clutches privately at a father's agon-ized heart.

Sacrifice of things held dearSelf-sacrifice may also involve painful loss: above all , the loss of thatwhich we hold most dear, after our own lives. One of the earliest neo-classical moralities m this vein isNathaniel Dance's Death of Virgil'1ia(I76I). Based on Graveloc's.earlier neoclassical engraving of 1739 forRollin's popular Roman History, ie already reveals the taut , sparestyle of David in i ts desire to port ray the violent grief and resolve ofVirginia'S father, who, rather than see her dishonoured, kills hisdaughter after the decemvir Appius Claudius had tried to take her ashis slave. For this chilling morality tale, Dance has chosen themoment, recounted by Livy, when the anguished father holds aloft abutcher's knife, after plunging it into his daughter'S chest, to the ter-ror and consternation of the spectators. The effect of horror isenhanced by the rigorous mapping of the frenzied action onto arecti linear grid, despite the persistence of such Baroque elementsas the bil lowing crowd and the diagonal thrust (Rosenblum I967:65-6).

Even more dreadful was the grim determination of Romanfathers in authority to execute those who had flouted the state'sdecrees, even i f they were their own children, As one might expect,such themes became popular in the revolutionary decades. In I7 85,Jean-Simon Berehelemy exhibited at the Paris Salon his ManliusTorquatus Condemning his Son to Death, for disobeying his ordernot to engage the enemy, [he Latins, in combat-another Romanrepublican episode from Livy (and Valerius Maximus), retold byRollin. The consul is seated on a high podium, surrounded by licrorsand soldiers, in front oj the camp. Though torn by the clash of thedemands of State and family, Torquatus overcomes his paternalfeelings and refuses to l is ten to his son 's appeal, despite fervent pleasfor clemency from friends and family. As Robert Rosenblumremarks:

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[0 the same Salon, Anne-Louis Girodee-Trioson exhibited TheDeath o f C ami ll a, slain at the Porta Capena before the eyes of adisbel ieving crowd of Romans by her own brother in a fit of righteousindignation, the only one of the Horatii (whose Oath had been somemorably depicted by David the year before) to survive theencounter with the Curatii enemy; her sin was openly to havemourned her fiance, who was one of the Curatii brothers (Rosenblum1967: 67-8).

But undoubtedly the most celebrated of these stern moralit ieswas the painting of Lictors Returning to Brutus the Bodies of HisSons, exhibited at the Salon of n89 byJacques-Louis David. This isascene ofDavid's own invention, as headmitted. Rather than the usualepisode of the condemnation, David chose the moment when ananguished Brutus, who has returned home after the execution of hiscwo sons, hears the cries of his wife and the swooning of his eldestdaughter as the bodies of his sons are returned to his house. Brutus' sanguish is the result not so much of the conflict between fami ly tiesand republican laws as of the tearing apart of his own family. Havingdriven om the Tarquins and helped to insti tute the Republic, Brutuswas elected consul in 508 Be , only to discover (according to Livy,Valerius Maxirnus, and Plutarch) a monarchical plot fostered by hiswife's family and supported by his two sons, Titus and Tiberius. As apatriot and liberator of Rome, he saw it as his duty to suppress allenemies of the Republic, including, if need be, his own sons. Though itisunlikely that David's concern with civic vir tue was allied to an anti-monarchical form of nationalism at this stage, there is no doubt thatearly republicans and later revolutionaries down to Plekhanov soconstrued his painting (Herbert 1972.; Crow 1985: ch. .7),

For David, it i s the sacri fice that Brutus is cal led upon to make,and the ensuing conflict in his own soul and in his fami ly, that are the


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centre of his interest and the pivot of the action. What struck con-temporary critics was the radical separation of the two part s of thepainting, with an ang-uished Brutus seated in darkness at the leftbeneath the statue of Rome, and on the right in bright l ight his wifeand daughters distraught in their grief. The Salon crit ics were dividedin their judgement of the morality of Brutus's action, but one ofthem, Pithou, proclaimed:

The third kind of self-sacrifice for national destiny, that of life itself,achieved the fairest report and the greatest fame, because, as theultimate sacrifice , i t c lraws upon and radiates a variety of powerfulideas and emot ions. These included the long-term exemplary char -acter of the fallen pat riot-hero or -heroine; the abili ty of fame andglory to conquer death; the importance of posterity and immortali tyfor the individual and society; the idea of ennobling suf fering; thehealing afforded by mourning and commemoration, and the belief inresurrection and r-egeneration, both individual and collective.

Already in the eighteenth century, many of these ideas, whichhad, as we saw, premodern antecedents, were ref lected in didactichistory paintings and sculptures. Greece and Rome once again pro-vided an array of heroic death scenes, from philosophers such as

Socrates and Seneca to generals such as Leonidas, Epaminondas, andGermanicus. Thomas Banks 's marble relief of 1774 of {he Death ofGermanicus, [he Roman general whom Tacitus implies was poisonedin Syria in AD 19 by [he governor of that province at the behest of theEmperor Tiberius, shows the dying nude hero surrounded by his sol-diers beneath a Roman temple decorated with an eagle, coins, andfasces, symbols of Roman power. This is an elegy for a hero, in themanner of a frieze on a Roman sarcophagus, and has the same flowinglines, rhythmic grace, and concern for authentic details in the Romanarmour and dress (seeWhinney 1964: 176).

The aftermath of Gerrnanicus's death had already been paintedby Benjamin West, with his Agrippina Landing at Brundisium withthe Ashes of Germanicus (1768). Here, aga in, the classical heritage isnot confined to the theme of public mourning. The composition isagain arranged horizontally like a classical frieze as Cermanicus'swidow bearing her husband's ashes leads her party of children andattendants from the ship along the landing stage beneath the templeand the city, on her homeward journey. The lower rear of the pictureshows a view of Brundisium based on a plate in Robert Adam's Ruinsof the Palace of the Emperor Diocletianat Spalatro (1764), and thefigures o f h is protagonists are based on antique sculptures. West is aprecocious example of that trend towards 'archaeological verisimili-tude', which, over the next century, will be taken to extremes inpaintings by Gerome, Delaroche, [ogres, Alma-Taderna, and the Pre-Raphaelires, However, West's interest is not in historical accuracy perse, but rather with authenticity in the sense of a convincing epictreatment to match the heroic nature ofthe events . To this end, histor-ical scholarship is only a means; it may help to authenticate the por-trayal, but only in so far as it serves to convince the spectator of theinner truth of the events and the 'rightness' of their depiction (seeErffa and Staley 1986: 44-8, I79-80).

West was in the forefront of artists choosing themes of nobleself-sacrifice. His next work, The Departure of Regulus (1769), wasalso concerned with an act of martyrdom. In 2.55 Be, Regulus, aRoman consul illthe first Punic war, persuaded his countrymen not toaccept the Carthaginian peace terms, but to send him back toCarthage, where he would meet a cruel death; and in this aim hesucceeded, despite the many Roman senators who inWest's crowded

Brutus, your virtue COSt you dearly, but you owe rhis terrify-ing example to your fellow citizens . .. . Rome pities you, burRome will inscribe these words in Marble: 'To Brutus, whosacrificed his children to his grateful Fatherland.'(Pithou, Le Plaisir proionge, leretour du Salon (CollectionDeloynes 17, no. 437, Paris, 1791), cited in Herbert 1972:

app., pp. I2.9-30)

However, the crit ics seem to have been agreed on Brutus's char-acter , s tressing his 'severity' and grandeur, a figure at once ambitiousand suffering, aware of 'a bad act ion' =-even though Voltai re, in hisplay, has him proudly say: 'Rome est libre, il suff it; r endons gracesaux Dieux!' (Lettre de graueur de Paris (Collection Deloynes 16, no.26), cited in Herbert 1972: app. ; see also A. D. Smith 198]: 217-33).'

Self-sacrifice: The fallen patriot-hero

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These themes of homage rendered to courage and virtuerepresented for painting, at that time, an entirely new direc-tion, in direct opposition to the gracious and gallant style ofFrancois Boucher .. .. The Death of DII Guesclin is mostrepresentative of this effort, and displays a new conceptionof the treatment of history painting. The artist strove torecreate the scene with utmost fidelity in matters of setting,costume, and accessories; in this painting, [he fortifiedstronghold in the background, the armor, the arms and [hepennons constitute a new medieval archaeology ...

]n fact, this work displa ysthe elaboration of a new lan-guage' served by precise and effective descriptive means, inten-ded [Qproduce strong, yet exalted emotions in the viewer.

(Rosenberg et al. 1975: 338 1 0

and receive similar treatment. Once again, the British, or, moreaccurately, the Americans in England, pioneered what amounted to anew form of modern reportage. John Singleton Copley undertook torecord The Death of the Earl of Chatham (1781) in the House ofLords, and then painted with even greater fidelity C O the personsinvolved the monumental Death o f M ajo r P iers on (1784), who felldefending Jersey in what was a minor skirmish against a Frenchassault in 178.1. But he was only following in the footsteps of hisfellow-American, Benjamin West, who, already in 1770, bad chosento paint The Death of Wol fe, the British general who was mortallywounded at the height of victory over the French at Quebec in 1759.This was a lready a popular theme in English art, and West resolved totreat it in the epic manner, but with a vital difference-in modemdress. Answering the reproof of Reynolds and Drummond, whothought that 'the classic costume of antiquity' more became 'theinherent greatness of .... [the] subject than the modem garb of war',West is reponed to have replied that

but grandiose scene implored him to stay and live. For later Romans,Regulus's conduct was not only an exemplum virtutis, ir was the epi t-ome of beroic Roman self-sacrilice-an act that had obvious appealfor King George illand William Drummond, Archbishop of York,who commissioned the painting from West (Erffa and Staley i986:47-5i,168).9

Rome was not alone in providing didactic materials, nor wasBri tain the so le locus of the ir art is tic interpretat ion. In France, Nico-las Brener chose a medieval counterpart in his Hommagesrendus auConnetable Du Guesclin par le ville de Rondon of i777. Thisrecounted the mourning of the French nobles and soldiery at thedeath as a result of illness of the Constable of France, Bertrand DuGuescl in, during the siege of Chatea uneuf-de- Randon in I3 80, dur-ing the Hundred Years' War. Du Guesdin's courage was greatlyadmired, so much so that the English were moved to hold to theirpromise and, in the person of their commander kneeling at the foot ofthe bed, to surrender the keys to me city. Though Rosenblum regardsthis as another classical deathbed scene in the manner pioneered byPoussin, but simply transposed tache Middle Ages.jean-Pierre Cuzincomments Oil the new type of medieval archaeology:

the event intended to be commemorated took place on the13th September 1758 [in facr, 1759] ina region of the worldunknown to the Greeks and Romans, and at a period oftime, when no such nations, nor heroes in their costume,any longer existed, The subject J have to represent is theconquest of a grea t province of Amer ica by British troops.The same truth tha t guides the pen of the histor ian shouldgovern the pencil of the artist.

I consider myself as undertaking to tell this great eventto the eye of the world; but if, instead of the facts of thetransaction, I represenr classical fictions, how shall I beunderstood by posterity!(John Galt, The Life, Studies, and Works ofBen;amin

West, Esquire (London, rho), ii,46-50,. cited inAbrams 1985: I4)"

232

This passage is important for three reasons. The first is West'sinsistence on historical authenticity: the 'facts of the transaction' mustbe not just accurate, but convincing, and that means that they must beplaced in their proper place and time. Classical fictions will not con-vince people, not only because the Greeks and Romans, and their

This new quest for archaeologica l verisimi li tude (even if not infac t always accurate) was not conf ined to past exempla uirtutis ..Quiterecent episodes of noble sel f-sacri fice could evoke iden tical sent iments


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heroes, no longer existed, but because British troops and their heroesformed the subject of the ' transaction', and i ts locus was Amer ica, aregion unknown to Greeks and Romans. Chronology and geographyhave become al l-Important for the location of peoples, heroes, andevents, providing the framework or grid of historical understanding.

Bur, whose understanding requires rhe&amework of chron-ology and geography? Not just the immediate spectator of his work,nor even the 'eye of the world'. West takes a longer view: we arejudged at the bar of posterity, and posterity requires of us historical'[ruth'. Not God the judge of a J J , not Nature the mother of all, onlyHistory that links the generations across time can reward aurhen-tic ity with immortali ty. Byrepresenting truth , as opposed to fiction,our work can be judged worthy for all time by the only true judges,those who come after us. Though this appeal to the judgement ofposteri ty is not new-it was familiar in the classical world-it has anew urgency about it in the eighteenth ceo tu ry , which isclosely linkedto the spread of ideas of national destiny.

Finally, West cla ims that modern events and heroes are every bitas importan t and worthy as those of classica1antiq illty, and that theytherefore mer it the same epic treatment, The 'conquest of a greatprovince of America by British troops' had just as much significanceas a Greek victory over the Persians or a Roman victory over Carthag-inians or Gauls. Tile event der ived its real meaning f rom the heroicactions of the combatants, and inparticular of the noble general whoexpired at the moment when his commanders reported that theFrench enemy had lost the battle. Wolfe, according to the reports , wasa hero, because he had ri sked all for victory in a daring feat of ascentof the Heights of Abraham, and had perished at the moment of vic-tory. This was a true exemplum uirtutis, a noble act of self-sacrifice,worthy of the heroes of classical antiquity.

And this is just what tbe painting conveys. For al l his protest-ations, West's painting fails the test of historical accuracy, in order toreveal the inner truth of the event. That truth is 3 moral t ruth, theideal of noble self-sacrif ice for one's nation. The response that Westsought in his audience was one of reverence, induced by heroicpathos. West's work was not just a report of the moment of expiry. I tsought to authenticate and commemorate Wolfe's sel f-sacri fice bycreating an icon of the fallen patriot-hero engaged in a sacred rite, the

action of dying nobly. To this end, West has contrived a symmetricalcomposit ion of three groups of figures around the dying Wolfe in thecentre, with Wolfe himself in the pose of a dying Christ, or Pieta,while, to the left, a running soldier with a captured French standardbears the news of victory. Moreover, in the centre left, West has aseated Mohawk Indian contemplating the scene, reinforcing the mes-sage of solemn meditat ion upon the meaning of patriot ic sacri fice.This return to seventeenth-century Lamentations over the body ofChrist underlines both the sacred nature of the act ion and the Chris-t ian legacy of mourning and commemoration (see Abrams I98 5. ch.8; Erffa and Staley I98G: 55-65, 2II-q).

The Cults of Genius and the PeopleI have concentrated on just a few of the many images of self-sacrificing heroes and heroines produced in the later eighteenth cen-tury. To these we could add many others: Martathias and Eleazar,Cyrus, Leonidas, Socrates, Eparninondas, Hannibal, Scaevola, Scipio,Cornelia, Portia, Cleopatra, Seneca, Tell, Bayard, Sydney, and,among the moderns, Cabs, Nelson, Bara, Le Peletier , and, of course,Marat, For all their differences in period costume and accessories,they expressed the same didactic ideal of heroic self- sacrifice, andwere repeated and supplemented well into the nineteenth century, aswe saw with the cult and death of Arthur,"

But the commemoration of heroic death was accompanied by agrowing interest in other kinds of greatness, notably genius, whetherin philosophy, science, history , or the arts. The culrs of Volta ire andRousseau during the French Revolution were only the most dramaticexamples of the novel appreciat ion of the nat ional contribution of'great men'. From rhe late eighteenth century onwards, we havepaintings of Virgil's tomb by Joseph Wright of Derby (r779), ofLeonardo's death in the arms of Francis I by Francois Menageot(I78I), of Goethe in the Roman Campagna by Wilhelm Tischbein(1786-7), of the death of Raphael by Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret(:r8oG), and of tbe Apotheosis of Homer by Ingres (I827)"

But the French Revolution marks a new departure: the cult ofgenius is allied to that of the people .. Not only do they take the

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THE GLORIOUS DEAD THE GLORiOUS DEAD

national genius to their hearts ; they recognize in him or her their ownpeculiar genius as ci tizens of this or that nat ion. Something of thisnew symbiosis of genius and nation can be seen in the celebration ofthe transfer in July I791 of Voltaire' s remains from Sellieres to menewly converted and renamed French Pantheon, J. J. Lagrenee'swarercolour of The Burial of Vol taire (I79I) shows twelve whitehorses pulling a 'chariot '; this was, in effect, a wheeled platform withblue draperies sprinkled with gold stars and bordered with the tri-color , carrying tbe sarcophagus with four candelabra on which restedan antique bed with an image of the recumbent Volta ire, with, at hishead, a figure of wi.ngedImmortali ty holding a crown of stars over hishead. Lagrenee's record faithfully reproduces the 'chariot' withRoman and French flags and standards behind, but adds a romanticnocturnal note, with stars, si lhouettes, and an exaggeratedly hugePantheon dome echoing the tomb designs of Boullee and therebyhighlighting the soaring genius of Voltai re (see A. D. Smith 1987:327-8; Schama 1989: 561-6)..

This commemorative event became a model for the many sub-sequent mass celebrat ions of the Revolut ion, the kind of patrioticfestival around a monument that Rousseau had recommended to thePoles. Many of these Revolutionary fetes were designed by David, tomusic by Gossec and poetry by Andre Chenier, and they sought tooffer a religion of Reason (and, in .1794, a benign deism of theSupreme Being) inplace of Catholic beliefs and rituals (Herbert I972;Mosse 1:975: 73-4).'~

So did the commemorations for the martyrs of the Revolution,l ike Le Peletier and Bara. On the occasion of Marat's murder in July1793, art and ritual proceeded hand in hand. Marat's friend Davidwas immediately urged by tbe Assembly to paint ills portrait. TheresuIt , his Marat assassine (179 J . ) . , shows with great veracity theFriend of the People dying in his bathtub, with a Christ like wound inhis right lung, beneath a stark blank wall (David had visited his friendthe day before and noted his surroundings). I ts s ilent, meditative sim-plic ity is underlined by the laconic inscription 'A Marat-David' andbelow 'L'An Deux' on the wooden packing case, which served as adesk for his inkweU, quill, and paper: Despite the fervent anti-Chris tian stance of David 's jacobinism, it is hard not to regardMarat 's accessories as holy relics, or the huge void above, suggesting

The French Revolution marked the transi tion to mass celebra-tion and commemoration in more ways than one. The Pantheon itself .I~rIbecame, after its conversion, not just a resting place for famousFrench men and geniuses, b.ut the special property of the Frenchpeople , a mausoleum temple in which the cit izens could reflect uponthe vir tues and greatness of France itself. On its pediment, the inscrip-rionbrings together the people and tbeir heroes: 'Aux Grands Hom-mes La Pat rie Reconnaissante'. The tall si lhouette of its great dome

the final iry a f death, as having some sam bre reIigious significance ...Burit is not that of the Christian after-life, rather of a this-worldly mar-tyrdom for the people whom Marat so often and so rabidly defended,and whose noble martyrdom we are called upon to commemorate andemulate. Anita Brookner suggests that, in this innovative painting, 'artand Life have become indistinguishable', and that is why Baudelaire'sreact ion of religious awe before this triumph of spiri tuali ty ('cruelcomme la nature, ce tableau a tout le parfum de l 'ideal ') is the correctone (Brookner I980: II5~]_6;d. Rosenblum I967: 82;-4)

David also had to supervise th e lying in state and funeral of hisfriend. His compromise (given the swift decomposit ion of the body)reveals the 're ligious' symbiosis of genius and nation, and the orches-trated appropriation of the national hero by the people. Maras'scorpse was exhibi ted on a high dais in the Cordeliers Church, abovethe bath and the packing case, with a smoking incense burner as theonly light. Brookner continues:

The funera l, which lasted six hours, took place at fiveo'clock ill the evening of r6 July to the accompaniment ofmuffled drum-beat and cannon. The body was laid 00a b ier draw n b y tw elve men. Girls in white with branchesof cypress surrounded it, and they were followed by theentire Convention, the municipal authorities , and thepeople of Paris. There was a full panoply of cardboard treesand mountains , but an eerie innovation was the improvisedcant ic1e-'O cor de Jesus, cor de Marar=cbanted by thecrowd. Marat was buried in the garden of the Cordeliersclub; his heart, placed in a porphyry urn, was suspendedfrom the club's ceiling.

(Brookner 1980: TI4)

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v

THE. GLORIOUS DEAD THE GLORIOUS DEAD

new sculpture was commissioned that harked back to the earlyRevolutionary fervour for freedom and cit izenship: Francois Rude'smassive panel, The Departure of the Volunteers of Z792 (1B33-6), adramatic al legory of warriors in primordial 'Gal lic' armour goinginto battle, urged on by the powerful, screaming winged figure ofLiberty with her outstre tched sword. During the Second Empire, thisidentification with national military gloire was expressed in a Bona-partist tradition that saw the return of Napoleon's remains and theconstruction of a national shrine to bis memory, and ilia t of the army,in the Invalides.


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THE GLORrOUS DEAD THE GLORJOlJS DEAD

rites, designed by Germans in the German t radit ion (Masse 1975:76).'7

I t was not until I832. chat the nation celebrated itself again . Thiswas at the first mass festival held at Hambach on the Rhine during the'German May', the month when ancient Germanic tribes had heldtheir meetings or Thing. I t turned out C O be a motley affair. The onlycoherent part was the procession to the castle ruins, in which every-one sang pat riotic songs and wore red, black, and gold emblems andancient Germanic dress, waving many lags displaying fasci andwreaths of oak leaves. Again, there were speeches, f ires on the hil ls,and a noonday meal, but there was lit tle sense of unity among so largea crowd and the symbols were now more secular and revolutionary,less national (Masse 1975: 83-5).

What was required was an organized choreography in a sacredspace for the masses, such as had been achieved in the Revolution onthe Champs de Mars, and which the Swiss were to achieve on asmal ler scale in their festival commemorat ing the six-hundredthanniversary of the Oath on the Rutli and the foundation of theEidgenossenscbaft in I29I. Although it was initiated from below, thiscommemorative festival was soon taken over by the Federal SwissState, which welcomed delegates from aU over the country to Schwyzon I August 1891. The next day, after the national anthem and achurch service, they listened to speeches about Switzerland's past andits place among the nations. In the afternoon, they watched a three-hour Festspiel fu r die Eidgenossische Bundesfeier, with 960 actors,400 singers, and 120musicians enacting the history of the Swiss Con-federation on a classical-style stage. In the evening, there was a ban-quet to the accompaniment of church bells and bonfires. The nextday saw the festival play re-enacted, and then the delegates sailedacross Lake Lucerne to the meadow of the Rucli , where they heard 600voices singing the festival cantata to the text of Schi ller's WilhelmTell. After further speeches and a boatride, the delegates landed atBrunnen at nightfall, while round about the shores were lit up withbonfires (see Zimmer 2003: 163-5).'8

The cult of great men and heroes continued well into the twen-tieth century, with memorials to Jefferson and Lincoln in Washing-ton, Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square, the monument to VittoreEmmanuele in Rome, as well as commemorative statues to Wil liam

Wallace near Stir ling, Nelson in London, St Joan in Rauen and Paris ,WiJliam Tell in Altdorf, Peter tbe Great in St Petersburg, and, on amore collective level, to the Magyar horsemen who founded Hungaryin the Millennial Monument of 1896 in Budapest. Then there werethe tombs of the illustrious, in Santa Croce in Florence, in Wawe1Cathedral in Cracow, in Westminster Abbey, in the cemetery of PereLachaise, which have become, in varying degrees, national shrines ofexemplary 'national ' individuals, though not of the national dead. Inmusic, roo, the celebration of great men stretched from the tornsuperscription of Beethoven'S 'Eroica' Symphony (I 804., originallydedicated to Napoleon, until he crowned himself Emperor), toVerdi's Requiem (187'1), inhonour of the great author Manzoni, butwas most fully developed in operas and tone-poems evoking theheroic exploit s of historic nat ional heroes such as Bor is Godunov,Prince [gar, Siegfried, Don Carlos, Mazeppa, and Lernrninkainen.'

But, alongside the multiplication of statues and tombs of thefamous, the later nineteenth century saw greater efforts to invite the'people' into the sacred communion of the nation through mass cele-bration of the nation. This began wi th the songs of the volunteers forthe armies of the French Revolution (it was a volunteer regiment thatfirst sang the 'Song for the Army of the Rhine', later known as the'Marseillaise ') and with the volunteer poets and writers l ike TheodorKorner, Max von Schenkendorf , and Ernst Moritz Arndt who joinedthe Free Corps in the German War of Liberation of I8n againstNapoleon. For Korner this war was a people's crusade that had noplace for kings; indeed, some inscriptions on the tombs of soldiersread 'for freedom and fatherland' , as opposed to the more usual 'forking and fatherland' (Mosse I990: I6-2I) ..

The rise of the popular element, and the desire for popular par-t icipation, can also be traced in the national monuments and festivalsof the nineteenth century, whose analysis George Masse has pion-eered particularly in Germany. The huge statue to Arminius or 1t!Hermannsdenkmal (184r-75) initiated and constructed by rnstfttllll-i ..... .JO~von Bandel on a hill in the Teuroberg Forest , where Arrninius slaugh- r/lKf'\A Lcered Varus 's Roman legions in 9 AD, and built by popular subscrip-tion, is a case Inpoinr, It was sculpted in Gothic style as a 'symbol ofGermany 's eternal youthful force '; Arminius isdepicted as a knight inarmour on a massive pedestal, which symbolizes his barbarian


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strength. Within tbe pedestal is a Gothic Hall of Fame, like a cath-edral, wbich was never completed and remains empty. But once

~G1""""~~1II o Ii. more, though it set a precedent in the popular ceremonies marking its.......{ commencement and completion, it lacked a defini te 'sacred space ' for

the 'people', and was instead fued with its surrounding r_omantic;I~dscape (Mosse :1975: 59-60).

More promising in this respect were two later monuments, also.d escribed by Masse: the so-called N ie de ru /a l d de nk ma I (I 874-85) by__'uohannes Schilling on the banks of the Rhine, WIth its huge classicalstatue oJ Germania, the symbol of German unity; and its ultimatelyunsuccessful rival in the competition to create a worthy sett ing fort ruly national fest iva ls , the Kyffhauser Monument (1896) of BrunoSchmitz, shaped _l ik~a fQ__rt r~ssround the statue of Emperor WilliamIon the holy mountain where the Emperor Barbarossa was said tosleep unt il the day of the restoration of the medieval Reich . Bothpresented @f!ed ~reas in front of the monument for the movement,singing, and dancing of masses of people-the war veterans, gym-nasts , and male choir societ ies, the student fraterni ties , sharpshoot ingsocieties, and high-school children. That, tOO, was the purposebehind the most massive of these national monuments, the Vjilker-schlacbtdenhma] (1894-19I3.), also designed by Bruno Schmitz c ocommemorate theceotenary of the Battle of Leipzig .. T his huge,undecorated monument combines classical forms with a pyramidalconstruction, creating an impression of simple, solid mass. Within is acrypt for the fallen and various halls-the Hall of Fame being filledwith statues of those who led the war against the French. A sacredspace was created for German youth to stage gymnast ic compet it ions,the aim being CO demonstrate the v igour and manl iness of the nation.But then the War intervened, and no competitions were held (Masse1975: 62.-6).

Yet, as Masse points out, though none of these monuments suc-ceeded in creating the mass national festivals for which they had beenprimarily designed, they proved influential for rhe growing massnational cult, and for its later use by the Nazis. The aim of the archi-tects was to lift human beings above their daily routine and inducefeelings of awe, as in a sacred temple, uniting the mystical andelemental through monumental forms to create a higher, cosmiccommunity. But it was really only after the First World War,. in a


monument like the Tannenberg Memorial (.1927) by the brothers 14.....1 " " C r t : : c .Walter and Johannes Kruger, with its great space enclosed by eightmassive towers joined by walls, that this feeling of organic corn-munity could perhaps be evoked. Just as it was only after the FirstWorld War that there was a decisive shift away from the individualexemplary dead to the mass dead who fell in wars fought in the nameof thei r countries (Mosse 1975: 67-9; see also Masse 1.99097) .

The Glorious Deadill fact, just such a monument and collective festival was created,successfully for a time, in another continent, in South Africa. InCha pter 4 we saw how the voortre k her ce le b r a ti ons of I9 3 8 re-enacted the progress of the ox wagons of the Great Trek from theCape to the Orange Free State and the Transvaal. There the partici-pants laid the first stone of the Yoortrehker Monument; it wascompleted amidst similar mass rituals in I949, by which time theAfrikaner Nationalist Party had formed the government of SouthAfr ica , which organized subsequent ce lebrat ions there .

The Voortrekker Monument itself stands on a hill overlookingPretoria, a fortress-like squarish granite museum building with sallyports and ambushrnenrs (Thompson 1985: 187-8; Akenson I992.: 3,295-6). In its basement is a granite cenotaph, designed so that on I6December a sun ray will fall onto it at noon through an opening in thedome. Leonard Thompson records thar in his opening speech Malanexplained that this was

a symbol of that godly truth, so saliently affirmed by rh eVoortrekkers, that no great ideal can beachieved without itssacrifices, that it isalong the way of the cross that victory iswon, and that it i s the dead from whom lifeappears ..

(M . C. Borha (ed.), Die Hu ldej aar .949 (Johannesburg,19520) , cited in Thompson 1985: IS?}

Above the basement is the Hail of Heroes, surrounded by a mar-ble bas-relief frieze. Its twenty-seven panels depict the history of theVo0rtrekkers , including at its climax [he oath proclaimed by SarelCilliers from his gun carriage, his arms outstretched to heaven.

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THE GLOR10US DEAD

This panel of'Tbe Taking of the Vow', reproduced in LeonardThompson 's book, isexplained in the words of the official guide:

Sarel Ci ll ier s has mounted Old Grierjie, the Voorrrekkergun, and repeats the Vow that if the Lord gave them victoryover [he enemy, they would consecrate that day and keep i tboly as a Sabbath in each yea .. and that they would bu ild achurch to the glory of God.(The Voortrekker Monument: Official Guide (Preroria, n.d.

[c.1960]), 49, cited in Thompson 1985: 187-8)These, then were the heroic dead to be revered and whose

exploits were held up foremulation, as a key part of the 'sacredhistory' of Afrikaner nationalism. And it was here, at its centralshrine, that the ri tuals of Afrikaner national commemorat ion andcelebration were to bere-enacted for the next forty years inan annualfestival of remembrance and thanksgiving. >0

A much more poignanr 'festival of the dead' in yet another con-tinent is the commemoration of ANZAC Day in Australia. The ritualsof this day, whose significance has been illuminatingly analysed byBruce Kapferer , are fairly uniform, though they are moreelaborare inthe major cities. They cent re on services held at the various warmemorial s bui lt in the inter-war years. The main War Memorial inCanberra was erected between 1928 and 1941, but since then wingshave been added, so that it appears like a cross when seenfrom above. Though it is often described as 'Byzantine revival'architecture, Kapferer claims that

The imposing War memor ia l in the national capi tal of Can-berra approaches the manner ofa Mesopotamian tomb,and this sense continues in the icoaography jnside theMemorial, which encircles the central pool of Reflection.This Mesopotamian aspect of the war memorial underlinesthe originary, primeval quality of ANZAC symbolism andtraditions discussed earlier.

(Kapferer 1988: 137)"

Kapferer relates the building 's hybrid aspect to its function as the siteof a polit ical relig ion, which makes it symbolically appropriate ' to a

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THE GlOIHOUS DEAD

religious-political form, emergent from deep religious and ontologicalfoundations, yet itself encompassing, universal, and not subordinateto any of the religious forms from which the nationalist politicalreligion sprang' (Kapferer 1988: 139).

The ANZAC symbolism and traditions displayed in thememorial are summed up in the ideal of Australian egal itarian man-hood, as retailed by C. E .. W . Bean, who was the offic ia l chronicler ofthe landings of tbe Australian and New Zealand Army Corps on 25April 915 at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles. The landings proved aghastly failure: ro.ooo were kil led and 20,000 wounded before themain ANZAC withdrawal in mid-December T915. Why fight onagainst such odds? According to Bean, it was the 'mettle of the menthemselves', their refusal to give way, their endurance and trust intheir mates, that carried them througb:

Life was very dear , but l ife was not worth living unless theycou ld be true to their idea of Au sr ra l ia n manhood. Stand ingupon rhar alone, when help failed and hope faded, when theend loomed clear in front of rhem, when the whole worldseemed to crumble and the heaven fa ll in, they faced its ruinundismayed.(c.E . W . B ea n, The Officia.l History of Australia ill the Waro f 1914-1918 (6 vols.. St Lucia, Brisbane: University

of Queensland Press, 198I) , i .607, c ited in Kapferer1988: 123)

The qualities that these Australian 'mates' demonstrated arewel l portrayed in the East Window of the Hall of Memory in the WarMemorial. The figures in the tall l ancet windows f rom lef t to rightshow the qualities of Coolness (in action, especially in crisis), Control(of self and others), Audacity, Endurance, and Decision. These are theleadership qualit ies of Australian manhood in times of war, and theyunderline the self-reliant individualism and egalitarianism that marksout Australian nationalism (Kapferer 1988: 138).

As might be expected in such a version of nationalism, the ritesand ceremonies of ANZAC Day (25 April) are simple, egalitarian,and mass participatory. Each town has its own memorial at wh ich it sservice of remembrance isconducted, to be followed by social gather-ings and much drinking in clubs and hotels. The major cities have

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dawn services along Christian lines ending with tbe Last Post,reveille, a short prayer, 'They shall grow not old as we that are leftgrow old ', followed by a silence and wreath-laying ceremonies. Thisis followed by the march tothe central memorial area, and the mainmid-day service of commemoration along the same lines, a ll of whichis organized by the main Australian voluntary association, theReturned Services League. The message of the day is clear: horror atthe suffering and waste ofwar, recognition of the great sacrifice, and asense of comradeship and rebir th (Kapferer r988: 149-50).If the Napoleonic Wars had begun the process of cementing asense of national identity among the European partic ipants, the twoworld wars completed that process, and on a global scale. In theWest, the First World War was decisive in the insti tutionalization ofcollective identi ty through tbe rites of death and commemoration.This was symbol ized by the Tomb of the Unknown Warrio~ The idea; choosing, returning, and solemnly burying the body of anunknown soldier who had died on the battlefield seems to haveemerged simul taneously in France and Bri tain at the end of the War,although it had been broached even before the War inFrance. Early inthe War,.France, Brita in , and Germany began to create separate mili-racy cemeteries under the supervision of special organizations, withthe British pioneering well-designed cemeteries with uniform head-stones centred on Reginald Blornfield' s Cross of Sacri fice (with a

) sword wi thin the cross) and Lutyens's Stone of Remembrance, heavyand solid l ike an al tar-dearly expressing a Christian symbol ism,though Lutyens himself saw the stone as a pantheistic symbol. Here,as in France and Germany, ordinary (profane) bourgeois cemeterieswere now distinguished from sacred nat ional military cemeteries,reserved solely for the fallen of one's nation, as in the newly con-structed ossuary at the cemetery of Douaumont, near the bat tlefield" ( ..)Aof Verdun (Mosse I990: 80-93; Winter 1995: 92,107).11; I 1 ~!L

The Tomb of the Unknown Warrior served the important func-tion of providing a national centre for the cult of the fallen, whichwould remind the living of their , and the nation's, mission. InFranceit came into being the year after a catafalque was erected beneath the

j Arc de Triomphe for the victory parade of 1919. This was a logicalplace, given i ts association with Napoleon's victories. The way inwhich the anonymous exhumed soldier was chosen in the Verdun

fortress and accorded the highest honours inParis contrasted with thenames of the French generals inscribed on the Arc de Triornphe, Itsymbolized, according to Mosse, 'the ideal of the national communityas the camaraderie among members of equal sta tus'(Mosse 1990:95)

Similar sentiments were expressed by the Briti sh choice of anunnamed soldier exhumed from a French or Flanders battlef ie ld andhis transport to London, to be interred in Westminster Abbey with atrench helmet and khaki belt, and a Crusader sword, on the sameday in 192.0 as his French counterpart. At the same time, Luryens' sCenotaph in Whitehall was unvei led, part ly to channel public dis-content , and by popular acclaim it became a permanent monumentto the fallen. Given the space of the surrounding broad avenue, theCenotaph rather than the enclosed tomb in the Abbey became thefocus for national remembrance, especially at the annual ArmisticeDay ceremony. Many nations followed suit with thei r own Tomb ofthe Unknown Warrior. In Italy, the tomb was placed on the VittoreEmrnanuele Monument in Rome, and has a classical altar and aChristian chapel, and in Germany i.n 1931 Prussia at length desig-nated the graceful neoclassical Guard House, rhe Neue Wache, inBerlin for this purpose (Masse I990: 95-8).

The importance of broadly sacred themes in the monuments andceremonies of the nat ion in war is evident even in the more abst ract,'civic' monuments to the fallen. A case in point is Lutyens's hugememorial for the missing soldiers at Thiepval, in memory of 73,000Allied dead in the Battle of the Somme whose bodies were neverfound, and whose names are lis ted on its internal walls . .The architectappears co have used geometric forms to reduce the Roman triumphal 'arch to an expression of what he called an ['elemental_' response tomass death and suffering in the war (Winter 1995: Io6).~'

This same 'elemental mode' also dist inguishes Lutyens's mostfamous war memorial, the Whitehall Cenotaph. This austere , white'empty tomb', a tomb of 00 one and so of everyone, is abstract andgeometrical in design, and was intended to be ecumenical in spiri t;and it bears the simple inscription 'The Glorious Dead'. The sheersimplicity and harmony of the monumental form seemed to evoketharcomrnunion of spiri t that alone could reflect the commonality ofgrief across the nat ion; and it served to bring together [he mil lions of

~.

I

24 7


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THE. GLORIOUS DEAD THE GLORJOUS DEAD

bereaved to a focal point and help them by its calm silence to respondto their deep personal loss through an act of public reflection andcommemoration. The Cenotaph is in no way a Christian, or anovertly patriotic, monument, bu t reflects something of the theosoph-ical pantheism of its creator, expressing through its subtle geometricalforms, with surfaces and planes that are parts of parallel spheres (a sLutyens himself explained), the timeless nature- of dei In war(Winter 1995: 103).

Perhaps for that reason the Cenotaph has succeeded whereso many other more grandiose and rhetorical monuments havefailed. Speaking of its minimalist simplicity at the heart of govern-ment in London, a silent witness of the vanity of power and theall-encompassing nature of mass death inwar, Jay Winter writes:

arch and royal f~m_jlytake their assigned places in a square aroundthe Cenotaph. This is followed by a two-minute silence at theeleventh hour, broken by gun salutes and the sounding of the lastpost. Wreaths are then laid on the steps of the Cenotaph on behalf ofthe whole nation, and a shorr and solemn Anglican service of com-memoration is held, followed by reveille.

When the offic ia l parties have left, the mood changes abruptly.To the accompaniment of popular marches and songs, regiments ofex-servicemen and -wornen In . their dress and colours march brisklyand proudly past the Cenotaph, saluting; the many different regi-ments and organizations recall the camaraderie and equality in deathof the men and women who served their country and risked all, somany of their comrades never to return. This part of the ceremony ismore personal. It focuses on families, regiments, and small groups offriends, their contributions, experiences, and memories. Here love forfriends and family 1S felt to be part of the loyalty to the community ofthe nation, and, conversely , national devotion and loyalty are seen asextensions of the sol idari ty fel t by family and friends. Fami ly andnation are also linked by the bitterness at the senseless waste of warand, perhaps, a t the excesses of sta te patr iotism; the sense of personalbereavement becomes an expression of a wider national grief. Themarch past evokes conflic ting emotions: personal memories of fallencomrades; honor at the enormi ty of the slaughter; but al so the desi reto remember them, and a pride in the courage displayed and thesacrifice made by so many young men, which serves to inspire thesurvivors to work for a happier and more peaceful destiny forthe nation, so that these dead 'shall not have died in vain'.~

The sense of loss displayed on this occasion isboth personal andcollective, and the reverence isdirected to both the individual and thenation, Jfl what amounts to a reflexive act of national self-worship. Inthis moment, with flags flying, bands playing, men and womenmarching and laying wreaths, the nation is revealed as a sacredcommunion of the people, a union of the prematurely dead, the livingand the yet unborn, its 'true self' lodged in the innate virtue ofthe Unknown Warrior and symbolized by the empty tomb .. This 1 ~ T (Jexample reveals how the polit ical religion of nationalism draws upon 1 : ~Christian traditions but uses them for national ends, in order to evoke [ " J' < >( " . . .. .. . . J"a sense of sacred communion with the 'glorious dead' and their ~~e,}~e-4.

.. J ; 7\! . A J 7),., r:

Itsays so much because ir says so l itt le . It i sa form on whichanyone could inscribe his or her own thoughts, reveries,sadnesses. It became a place of pilgrimage, and managed totransform the commemorative landscape by making all of'official ' London into an imagined cemetery.

(Winter I995: 104)

Yet, even so minimalist a monument draws on and evokes thedual heritage, classical and Christian , that underpins so many mod-em expressions of self-sacrifice, Architecturally, i. t drew on a long-standing tradition of classical f~nerary art, with its l!sepf ancientGreek curved surfaces to create the illusion of linearity. Cerernoni-~ .-a lly, i t presides over a mode of commemoration [hat is suffused withChr istian symbolism, in the annual Remembrance Day ceremonyheld on the Sunday nearest to IINovember, Armistice Day. This is awell-orchestrated and choreographed event, with parades of militaryregiments, massed bands, flags, and solemn music-a liturgyappropriate to the civic religion of nationalism. As the publicassembles, the massed bands play martial and funereal music- 'Menof Harlech ', 'Rule, Britannia' , Dido's haunting lament from Purcell 'sDido and Aeneas, Beethoven's Funeral March, Nimrod from Elgar'sEnigma Variations, among others-all of which evoke grief atuntimely death, and reverence for the sacrifice of lost generations.

~ Then the civil , military, and relig ious dignitaries headed by tbe rnon-~


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posterity, and to encourage a profound desire to work for self-renewal and national regeneration."

Just such a desire and hope. are revealed in the private setting ofSandham Chapel at Burghclere, which was painted by Stanley Spen-cer in I927-32. to commemorate the death of a friend's brother as aresult of wounds received in Macedonia during the First World War.[0 this masterpiece, Spencer has given usa very personal tribute to thesacrifices of war, based on his own experiences and seen throughthe prism of his mystical form of Christianity. Spencer bad served onthe Macedonian front as a volunteer orderly, and the side wallsdepict his experiences there-Map-Reading, Filling Water-Bottles,Dug-out, Reveille-the last two with explicit references to the Resur-rection. Dominating the east waH isthe huge Resurrection in a Mace-donian landscape, but this is the resurrection not of Christ, but ofthe soldiers with whom Spencer had served. The soldiers rise fromthe dead, with their mules, and they pile up the white crosses thatmark their graves or hand them in to a diminutive Christ , who sits inthe field near the top of the painting. An early study shows thatSpencer was thinking in terms of a f inal reveille of the dead, such asforms the climax of the Cenotaph ceremony. For Spencer, realism indepicting the war was a vehicle for hopes of redemption in which hefirmly bel ieved-a physical resurrection of each and every soldierwho bad made the supreme sacrifice . Spencer was undoubtedly a pat-riot-he had volunteered for war service. He was also a Christian,though of indeterminate denomination. But his beliefs in fraternityyouthful joy, and redemption were, in the end, entirely personal. Heshows no scenes of violence, preferring only the busy activities ofthe soldiers between bouts of fight ing. Perhaps, then, the SandhamResurrection suggests that the immense sacrifice may not, af ter all,have been in vain, and that on the Last Day the common soldiereverywhere will f ind peace and joy (seeK. Bell I980: 96-II3i Causey1980: 27-8).

After the Second World War

emphasize the sober realism of those who entered that war, in markedcontrast to the volunteers of previous great wars. For Jay Wime[, too,'Af ter 1945, older forms of the language of the sacred faded, and sohad opt imism, the faith in human nature on which it rested' (Winter1995: 22.8). The enormity of Auschwi tz and Hiroshima appeared torender traditional forms irrelevant, and the tum to an abstract artcould no longer provide the healing that the traditional rites andmonuments had made possible for large numbers of the bereaved. It istrue that the belief in redemption through sacrifice that revolutionaryRomanticism or Stanley Spencer 's Christian optimism had encour-aged no longer answered to the anxietses and the sense of futil ity thatso many in the West had come to feel, in a world of nuclear and otherterrors.

Bur this isnot the whole picture . For the Soviet Union, the SecondWorld War was the Great Patr iotic War, .commemorated in giganticmonuments at Stalingrad, Leningrad, and elsewhere, in the Tomb ofthe Unknown Soldier inMoscow, and ill the vast military parades ofthe October Revolution. Typical of this monumental art is the block-ade cemetery at Piskarevskoe, outside Sr Petersburg ..Here, a giantMother Russia with a stone garland in her arms looks down all thesolid, marble, geometrical and symmetrical cemetery, suggesting, inthe words of Catherine Merridale, 'colossal sacrifice without evokingagony or disorder'. In the 1970s, parades and public meetings wereheld there, with banners, and boys and girl s marching and singingheroic songs. The main cemetery inscription concludes with thewords 'No one is forgotten, nothing is forgotten'. As Merridale'smoving accounr of the terrible hardships and sacrifice of the Lenin-grad siege and the Great Patriotic War makes abundantly clear, agreat deal was forgotten, or rather suppressed, by the regime until thelate I980s-rhe lies , the personal agonies, the extreme sufferings, andthe millions of deaths inflicted under Stalin and by the Nazis , on bothRussians and non-Russians. Yet , despi te their bitterness and theenforced privatization and secrecy of their memories, for many Rus-sians the war and' its commemoration continue to be a source ofpatr iotic pride and dignity (Merridale 200I: 2 .99; see also Merridale2.000).

In other societies, too, war memorials and ceremonies continueto have a national, as well as personal, s ignif icance . .We have only to

For many commentators, the collective signi ficance of sacri fice inwar has declined since the Second World War. Some, like Mosse,


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recall [he debate over the political uses of the Yasukuni shrine inTokyo, which commemorates all those soldiers of Japan who fell inbatt le for emperor and country, and which, in the eyes of criti cs, wasclosely linked to the aggressive military policies of the national-fascistregime during the WaL1.6

In Israel, too, not only are there separate military cemeteries forthe fallen soldier s whose deaths are st ill regarded as more ' sacred'than those of civilians, but there is a separate solemn RemembranceDay for soldiers and mil itary ceremonies on Mount Herzl, outsideJerusalem. Such ceremonies coexist wi th the more private Yizkor(Remembrance) Books put together by families, friends, and fellow-soldiers for many of the (especially native-born) fallen. soldiers ofIsrael 's successive wars, with all kinds of mementoes, photos, andtributes. These books have reinvented a much older tradit ion of pog-rom and Holocaust remembrance books, often in memory of wholecommunities annihilated by the Nazis . Of course, the modern IsraeliYizkor books are quite different in tone and content: sober, realistic,activist, often angry and ironic, and usually completely secular(except, of course, for those produced by the relig ious nationalis ts).This reflects a new, anti-heroic attitude to sacrifice, a silent reflectionon the horrors and waste of war, whose counterpart is the Washing~ton Vietnam War Mem:orial, with its long, black, low-lying wall ofinscribed names of the fallen, emphasizing the equali ty and the acces-sibility of all the Americans who fell in that war (Gil lis 1994: 13;Sivan .1999: .177-204).2.7

Mention of the Holocaust is a reminder of that other, novel kindof memorial: to the victims of genocide. Sometimes, there isa specificmonument , for example the Armenian Tzitzemakaberd GenocideMonument buil t in the 1960s in Yerevan in memory of the more thana million Armenian civil ians who were massacred in the First WorldWar, or the various khachkar (the classical carved-in-stone crosses) incities such as Sydney, Paris, and London, which emphasize themartyrdom of the murdered (Panossian 2000: 217 n. 5.12, 3I 5-16).

More often, we are confronted with an archive and a museum,of which that in Washington to the Holocaust victims has becomethe most familiar, But the latter are not sites for collective cere-monies, only for private anguish an d reflection. They have no spacesfor public festivals of the innocent dead. Only in Yad VaShem,

outside Jerusalem, is there a sacred space, in addition to the Holo-caust museum: a courtyard for Mazkir, rhe service of remembrancefor the dead, and a hall in which bums an eternal.flame for the mil-l ions who perished in the major concentration camps listed by nameon the marble floor.

But, for whom does the flame bum and for what is the spaceconsecrated? Does it burn solely for the Jewish victims and com-memorate their suffering, or does i t perhaps signal a new and urgentwarning to a world of nations capable of such horrors? We seem tohave come fuiJ circle. IIIDavid's great paint ing of The Oath of theHoratii of I784, the martial heroism of the nat ion is glorified, butacross the courtyard, the women mourn the inevi table sacrifice andloss. In the sites and rites of genocide, i t is, by definition, the martyrsof the nation who are commemorated and mourned, and hence thebereaved nation itself. But perhaps they also offer another lesson, anda hope, that such acts of commemorat ion, repeated the world over,wi ll reveal the futi lity of national wars and of the martial heroism onwhich they have fed so long.

253


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SACRED HOM.EI.ANDS

tradition are dear enough. The American case isinstructive here, andI shall confine myself to the link between religion and landscape.Str ictly speaking, America was not a promised land in the bibl icalsense, but i t very soon became one for the Puri tan settlers, who, hav-ing experienced a perilous exodus across the seas, were disposed tocreate in their minds' eye, at least, an ideal 'American Israel' and a'New English Jerusalem' in a vast and fertile country, fa r superior tothe land and social order of England. especiaIly after the Restora tion.Though condit ions were, at fi rst, hard and depressing for the earlysettlers, the scale and abundance of the continent afforded ampleopportu nities, In I654 Edward] ohn son, refer ring to the year 1642.,told how the 'remote, rocky, barren, bushy, wild-woody wilderness... [that] through the mercy of Christ becorn a second England forIertil aess ... [and] that nor only equal ized England in food, but goesbeyond it in some places' made America 'the wonder of the world'(Edward Johnson, History of New England, o r WOI 1 . de r -Worki ngProvidence of Sions Sauiour; I6 28-I.652, ed. j. Franklin Jameson(New York: Scribner 1952), 209-10, cited in Greenfeld [992: 407).

The American Puritans' ideal of the 'city on the hill' and theirsense of providential guidance, though or iginally confined to theinner l ife and social organizat ion of small settlementsand towns,came from the early nineteenth century to embrace the vast expansesof the continent (see E. Kaufmann 2002). As the western frontierexpanded and indigenous populations died from disease or were dis-placed, t h e. be l ie f in a providential and manifest destiny was extendedf rom the chosen people to the land and landscapes of America. In1846,William Gilpin, the first governor of Colorado. declared that

the untransacred destiny of the American people is to sub-due the Continent-to rush over this vast field [Q the PacificOcean-to animate the many hundred millions of itspeople, and then cheer them upward .. . to carry the careerof mankind to its peak.(Patricia Hills, The American Frontier: images and Myths(New York. Whitney Museum of Art, 1978), 7-8, cited in

Daniels 1993: 180)Nowhere is this better exemplif ied than in rhe vast canvasses of

Thomas Cole, Edwin Church, Sanford Gifford, and Albert Bierstadt,

13 8

t, T he D ea th o f L uc re ti a ( O at h o f BrUins),Gavin Hamil ton ( .' 763-7)A well-known early example of rhcn eo cl as si ca l r ev iv al a nd the passionf or r epub li ca n oat hs , Gav in Hamilton'Spninring c ap tu re s t he m om ent inc.)1o Be when the future first consulof Rome .. Brutus, and his friends swearro avenge Lucretia, drive out the ryranrTarquins, an d aholi sh the monarchy.(ABOVE)

2. The Q,11h on the Rljlli,Heinr ich Fus sl i] r 7 80 )Thi s c el eb ra te d image o f Swi ss l ib er tyand u nit y b y Heinr ic h F ii ss li was cor n-rnissioned by Zurich town council in]778 to commemora te rhe fcundar ionof [he Swiss Confederation in r29. Itdepicts the towering Michclangelesquefigures who represent rhe three origina Iforest ca n rons swearing the 0.'1 th ofEverlasting Alliance o n th e R ii rl imeadow. Lake Lucerne . (I.EFr)


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3 [oan of Arc at tbe Corolla/hili o( Charles V1/ ill Rheilils Catbedra),Jean A uguste D um in ique lngrcs ( !H5 4 )Ingres's striki ng lCOI] 'JI rite vrctor o f O rlean s l in d fu ture sain t is a m em or ab le c on rr i b ur io nH) r he m e di ev a l ist religio us rcviva I a nd rh e b urge on iug cu l r o f J oan . lr s ho ws h er in R he ir nsCached ra I a s a pi n us b ut m il i [3tH C h r is ti an w a rr jo r ' 1 J 1 d n ation al heroine ar rhe m oment ofhe r greatest t riumph in !.419, the coronat ion of the dauphi n as C ha de s VII.

4. The Death o(DIIGuesclin,N ic ho la s- Gu y B re ne r I,7 7 7 )A l l e a rl y example o f th e medievalrevival, which ming le s c l as s ic a lw it h C h ri st ia n r no ri ls , N ic ho la s-G uy B re ne r's s ol em n d ea th -b edscene is draw n from an episo de inthe H und red Y ears W ar in !380.H e s ho ws rhe E ngl is h h o nou ri ngtheir prom ise to hand over th e k ey sof the cty ou t or respect ror t he i rg re at e ne my a nd French hero, theConstable of France, Bertrand DuGuesclin, (LEFT)

5. The Death n( General l ' V o l { e ,Benjamin West (1770)Although modelled o n e ar l ie rdepictions of the C h ristia n P ie ti i,this is o ne o f the earliest examplesof p a tr i o ti sm 'in m od er n d re ss ',B en jam in W est's great trib ute to th ehe ro ism o f W olfe sho ws him d yin gin the arm s o f h is co m p an ion s atth e moment of t he B r it is h v ic to r yover the F ren ch on the H eights o fA braham o utsid e Q uebec in 17 59,his n ob le ex pl oit co nte mp la ted b ya Mohawk Indian. (BJ'LO\X/)


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6 . The Lic tors Retu rni ng 10 Brutus the Bodies of His Sons,j ac ques -Lou is Dav id ( 1789)Pai nt ed i n 178~t,David's powerful drama of republican parrior is rn shows the anguishu f B ru tu s. R om e's fir sr c on su l,


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8. The Arc de Triomphe,J e an C h a lg ri n (IHo6-y,jChalgriu's grea t 'Roman' triu mph al ar ch , d es ig ned in IHo 6 to c om me mo ra te rh c victo rie s o fNapoleon and h is a rm ies , w as tra ns fo rm ed a fter th e I!Jo Revolut ion to in cl ud e a ll w ho h ads er ve d a nd died fo r the F ar be rl an d. T his m es sa ge w as reinforced by F ra nc oi s R ud e's h er oics cu lp tu re s, a nd much l at er ( in T919) by the placin g o f rhe Tomb o f th e U nk no wn W ar rio rb en ea th it s vall IL

9, The Walhalla, Regensburg ;Leo von Klenze (r 830-41.)This was huilr for Ludw ig I of Bava r ia in r 8 30-4l on 11hill o ve rl oo kin g rh e D an u b e, ..representing Odin's p al ac e fo r the fal le n h ero es u f Nordic mythology recently popular izedb)' [he Roman ti cs . Leo vo n Klcnzc's Creek temple was designed as

!Q A I/ st ra li an W!t / M e ll !0ria J. CanberraIt9l/!-4 I\T he P oo l of Re fl e ct io n i n t he ' M e so p o tam ia n -s ty l e' Australian W ar M em orial in C an be rr ai s su r rounded by ANZAC ico no gra phy o f e ga lita ria n 'm ar es hip ', T his is also evident inrhe figures in the ra ll E ast W indow of the Hall of Memory, commemorating the heroicq ua litie s a nd sa cr ifice o f r hr A ustra lian a nd N ew Z eal an d fo rc es in r he d is astr ous l an din gso n G al lipo li in '9 '5.


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11. The Cenotaph, Whitehall,E dw in L ur ye n (1919)E ve n so IIIin i rn a Iisr a rnonumenr asLuryens's austere, white, ' empty tomb'of 1919, i n h is a bs rr ac r ' el er ne nr a! ' 01;'0-metric mode , draws on class ical for~san d C hri d an as so ciatio ns . It c on tin uesto serve as the ~ocus of nationwideceremonie on rhe annual RemembranceD ay c om me mo ra ti ng 'T he G lo rio usD ead ' w ho fell in the tWO World Wa rslind in many others. i.IIIOVIlj

r z., The Resurrection. S an d h amCh a p el , B u rg h cl e re ,tanley Spencer (192.7-32)I n a p ri va te c ha pe l in B ur gh cl er eStanley Spencer painted scenes frornhis e xp er ie nc es o f r he F irs t W orld W arin Macedonia where he erved as avolunreer orderly. i nc lu di ng t hi s v astResurrection on the Easr W all. It is are su rr ec tio n o f so ld ie rs w ho pile 11p0 rhand over the w hite ro ses tha t mark[ h ei r g r av e s to a d im in ur iv e C h ri or , inw hat is

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Anthony D Smith - Chosen_peoples