Recent events in the Middle East are shocking, but they are not novel in our history. 

We did not have to wait for Stalin, Hitler or Mao to see sheer depravity.  We saw it in the nation that thought it was the most civilised in Europe, and therefore the world, in 1792 in France, in what are called the September Massacres. 

The French were threatened from outside and inside.  Here are extracts from Carlyle, The French Revolution.

So sit these sudden Courts of Wild-Justice, with the Prison-Registers before them; unwonted wild tumult howling all round: the Prisoners in dread expectancy within.  Swift: a name is called; bolts jingle, a Prisoner is there.  A few questions are put; swiftly this sudden Jury decides: Royalist Plotter or not?  Clearly not; in that case, Let the Prisoner be enlarged With Vive la Nation. Probably yea; then still, Let the Prisoner be enlarged, but without Vive la Nation; or else it may run, Let the prisoner be conducted to La Force.  At La Force again their formula is, Let the Prisoner be conducted to the Abbaye.—‘To La Force then!’  Volunteer bailiffs seize the doomed man; he is at the outer gate; “enlarged,” or “conducted,”—not into La Force, but into a howling sea; forth, under an arch of wild sabres, axes and pikes; and sinks, hewn asunder.  And another sinks, and another; and there forms itself a piled heap of corpses, and the kennels begin to run red.  Fancy the yells of these men, their faces of sweat and blood; the crueller shrieks of these women, for there are women too; and a fellow-mortal hurled naked into it all! …….

Man after man is cut down; the sabres need sharpening, the killers refresh themselves from wine jugs.  Onward and onward goes the butchery; the loud yells wearying down into bass growls.  A sombre-faced, shifting multitude looks on; in dull approval, or dull disapproval; in dull recognition that it is Necessity.  “An Anglais in drab greatcoat” was seen, or seemed to be seen, serving liquor from his own dram-bottle;—for what purpose, “if not set on by Pitt,” Satan and himself know best!  Witty Dr. Moore grew sick on approaching, and turned into another street.—Quick enough goes this Jury-Court; and rigorous. The brave are not spared, nor the beautiful, nor the weak……

In the dim Registers of the Townhall, which are preserved to this day, men read, with a certain sickness of heart, items and entries not usual in Town Books: “To workers employed in preserving the salubrity of the air in the Prisons, and persons “who presided over these dangerous operations,” so much,—in various items, nearly seven hundred pounds sterling.  To carters employed to “the Burying-grounds of Clamart, Montrouge, and Vaugirard,” at so much a journey, per cart; this also is an entry.  Then so many francs and odd sous “for the necessary quantity of quick-lime!”  Carts go along the streets; full of stript human corpses, thrown pellmell; limbs sticking up:—seest thou that cold Hand sticking up, through the heaped embrace of brother corpses, in its yellow paleness, in its cold rigour; the palm opened towards Heaven, as if in dumb prayer, in expostulation de profundis.  Take pity on the Sons of Men!—Mercier saw it, as he walked down “the Rue Saint-Jacques from Montrouge, on the morrow of the Massacres:” but not a Hand; it was a Foot,—which he reckons still more significant, one understands not well why. Or was it as the Foot of one spurning Heaven?  Rushing, like a wild diver, in disgust and despair, towards the depths of Annihilation? Even there shall His hand find thee, and His right-hand hold thee,—surely for right not for wrong, for good not evil! “I saw that Foot,” says Mercier; “I shall know it again at the great Day of Judgment, when the Eternal, throned on his thunders, shall judge both Kings and Septembers……

But the Constituted Authorities, all this while?  The Legislative Assembly; the Six Ministers; the Townhall; Santerre with the National Guard?—It is very curious to think what a City is.  Theatres, to the number of some twenty-three, were open every night during these prodigies: while right-arms here grew weary with slaying, right-arms there are twiddledeeing on melodious catgut; at the very instant when Abbé Sicard was clambering up his second pair of shoulders, three-men high, five hundred thousand human individuals were lying horizontal, as if nothing were amiss.

But of course, the horror got so much worse when the government orchestrated the killing in what is known as the Terror – which led I think to the term ‘terrorist.’  That just about tipped Carlyle over the edge.

One other thing, or rather two other things, we will still mention; and no more: The Blond Perukes; the Tannery at Meudon. Great talk is of these Perruques blondes: O Reader, they are made from the Heads of Guillotined women!  The locks of a Duchess, in this way, may come to cover the scalp of a Cordwainer: her blond German Frankism his black Gaelic poll, if it be bald. Or they may be worn affectionately, as relics; rendering one suspect?.   Citizens use them, not without mockery; of a rather cannibal sort.

Still deeper into one’s heart goes that Tannery at Meudon; not mentioned among the other miracles of tanning! “At Meudon,” says Montgaillard with considerable calmness, “there was a Tannery of Human Skins; such of the Guillotined as seemed worth flaying: of which perfectly good wash-leather was made:” for breeches, and other uses. The skin of the men, he remarks, was superior in toughness (consistance) and quality to shamoy; that of women was good for almost nothing, being so soft in texture! —History looking back over Cannibalism, through Purchas’s Pilgrims and all early and late Records, will perhaps find no terrestrial Cannibalism of a sort on the whole so detestable. It is a manufactured, soft-feeling, quietly elegant sort; a sort perfide!   Alas then, is man’s civilisation only a wrappage, through which the savage nature of him can still burst, infernal as ever?  Nature still makes him; and has an Infernal in her as well as a Celestial.

In France the issue involved crown and caste.  In the Middle East, God and the tribe are there.  Third parties in all.

But the misery blights mankind.

You may be aware of my fondness for Tony Tanner on Shakespeare.  He was taught by Philip Brockbank.  Brockbank wrote a book Players of Shakespeare.  RSC leaders talk of some great characters.  There is a follow up. 

The book is immensely instructive.  Shakespeare was in business to entertain.  This is from the people who do the entertainment.  Why have not we seen it before?

I will leave it to the Melbourne Shakespeare Society to look at some characters in detail, but here are some morsels.

Brockbank:

The life of a part, as distinct from its significance, is the prime responsibility of the actor, and actors have traditionally been suspicious of theory or analysis, ascribing the creation of character in performance to decisions instinctively made, perceptions unconsciously arrived at, fine discriminations mysteriously achieved.  ‘Analysis,’ said Michael Redgrave, ‘does not come easily….’

So it is in my profession – and we might wonder why actors do not make more of theirs.  But suspicion of analysis dos not mean not being ruled by the text – and studying it with religious zeal.

Patrick Stewart on Shylock:

Shylock and his kind are outsiders, strangers, feared and hated for being different.  They belong to the world’s minorities.  They are, as the laws of Venice state, alien, stamped by that world to be always vulnerable and at risk; therefore survival is paramount….But however important Jewishness and antisemitism are in the play, they are secondary to the consideration of Shylock the man; unhappy, unloved, lonely, frightened and angry….Shakespeare created a portrait of an outsider who happened to be a Jew.

When Donald Sinden was offered the part of Malvolio, he said the part was tragic.  His director thanked God.  At the end of his essay, Sinden says suicide is the only option for Malvolio.  Comedy often entails cruelty.

Michael Pennington sees Hamlet as born in the wrong time and place:

…alongside the evident generosity and grace in the man, there was now a strong current of violence, particularly toward the women in his life, aggravated by a sense of betrayal , and sadly misdirected towards them rather than toward his real enemy….A deep concern for the past runs through him and he never speaks of the future.

The final essay is by David Suchet on Caliban.  Suchet was obviously ferociously bright and a keen analyst of the text.  Caliban is seen as less than human and rudely dispossessed of his native land by someone of superior force.  Empire builders saw the natives as monsters.  Suchet is guided not just by the language, but its sound.

This discovery led to my playing Caliban at times dangerous and at times childish, but at all times totally spontaneous… Caliban has learned that being obedient he will be safe.  But when anybody else should ever come to his island again, he certainly will not even try to befriend them – he will kill on sight.

Well, as Babe Ruth said, when he had knocked one into the bleachers – ‘How do you like them apples?’

The insight of this playwright into us is endless.

And it is with us here now.

Elsewhere, I said this about false dilemmas.

A dilemma occurs in an argument when one party is driven to a position of having to choose between two courses that are both unattractive. It is like having two pieces attacked by one piece in chess – being forked – or being snookered: whichever way you try to get out, you are in trouble.

A dilemma is false if it says there are only two choices when there are more. What you generally get is that if you do not do A, you will have to go with B, which will be truly awful. The truth is that there are other possibilities, but you face an attempt to induce you to believe that you have no real choice. Naturally, it is a weapon of choice among politicians.

As often as not, people say that you have to choose between two factors when you do not. In his history From Dawn to Decadence, the French–American author Jacques Barzun wrote: ‘True opera is a kind of music rather than a kind of play’. Putting to one side the question of what a false opera might look or sound like, opera is both music and drama; the joining of the music and drama defines what opera is. We do not have to make a choice about what we like more or regard as the more important. This is one occasion when you might truly say that it all depends on how it goes on the night.

When the United Nations published a report on the crisis of climate change, one notorious sceptic said the question was whether the report involved ‘science’ or ‘politics’. It of course involved both – the conclusions of science called for political action. It is simply wrong to say that the writer could only enter into one category at a time.

The footy match fallacy is different.  It says that if you go to a footy match, you must support one team over the other.  Why not just enjoy it – or shoot through if you don’t?

We see a lot of this kind of thinking, and instruction and propagandising, at the moment in the appalling suffering of humanity in the Middle East – as Europeans in their selfish imperial way are wont to describe that part of the planet that they so badly interfered with.  People who have no connection with either side – oui ce’st moi – are urged by both to join them – and then denounce the other.

Thanks, but no.

One problem – and there are many – is that such an invitation entails an obligation to make moral and political judgments that are at best left to God.  And I don’t think He’s in.  But almost all on the two competing sides think that He is in.  Except that there are at least two versions of Him.  And they are very different.  They just don’t get on.  In truth, they hate each other.  But unlike the even more fallible Roman or Greek gods, each of these Gods claims to be the only one.  And although the ancient gods took an active part in wars, they did not start any wars.

And moral and political mayhem on earth is the inevitable result.

Together with the butchering of history.

Another problem is that people take sides by reference to their faith or ancestry – or both.  And neither warrants a sensible approach to dealing with others of different ancestry or faith.  No war is good, but tribal and religious wars are the worst.

The result is that each side claims to be a victim of the West, and that the history of their suffering somehow makes them more vulnerable and more in need of protection than the other.  And what is fondly called ‘freedom of speech’ is banished to the corner of the room.

But because history has become mangled, the most distorting issue is how far back you go in assessing or apportioning blame – if that is what you have in mind.

For some time, the common law had a simple but closed view on how to deal with allegations of negligence.  The old law was that any negligence on the part of the plaintiff was a complete defence.  Then parliament intervened, and the court was required to assess the degree of negligence of either party in the case. 

That exercise in traffic accident cases at Petty Sessions was hit and miss, but these ‘crash and bash’ cases helped me to fend off the bank manager in my first few years at the Bar.  And they were instructive in revealing the limitations under which mere mortals purport to apportion blame among themselves.  Was this any more than licensed gaming? 

Well, they were nearly all over in about half an hour.  An affidavit of the repairer, two amateur witnesses cross-examined by two equally amateur barristers, $20 on the brief – to be paid months or years later, if you were lucky – and a brief summation from the bench: ‘On balance, I think his version may be a bit more likely than yours  Work out the costs.  Call the next case’.  Justice of the people by the people. 

(On one memorable day, the plaintiff and defendant could not agree on which intersection the accident occurred at – so His Worship – who was wont to bring a cut lunch with him on to the bench in a brief case – found that it took place at a third!  I wonder now if that finding would be enough to classify His Worship as an ‘activist.’)

Well, the alternative – all or nothing at all – was unthinkable.  As it should be in any assessment of conflict like that currently raging in the Middle East.  It is one thing to adjudicate upon the blame of two drivers at an intersection.  It is altogether a different to purport to adjudicate upon the blame of two peoples at war, or the justice of two competing claims to ownership of land.

We should not therefore overlook the obvious irony in the remark of the great historian Sir Lewis Namier that I referred to the other day:

The basic elements of the Imperial Problem during the American Revolution must be sought not so much in conscious opinions and professed views bearing directly on it, as in the very structure and life of the Empire; and in doing that, the words of Danton should be remembered – on ne fait pas le procès aux revolutions. 

Those who are out to apportion guilt in history have to keep to views and opinions, judge the collisions of planets by the rules of road traffic, make history into something like a column of motoring accidents, and discuss it in the atmosphere of a police court.

But one thing you soon learn in the atmosphere of ‘a police court’ – or a Court of Petty Sessions hearing a ‘crash and bash’ – is the unavoidable truth of the remark of our greatest jurist, Sir Owen Dixon.  ‘Experience of forensic contests should confirm the truth of the common saying that one story is good until another is told….’ (His Honour went on to say ‘but a testator is dead and cannot tell his.’)

Another thing you learn at the bottom of the litigious pile-on is that it is just silly to mumble platitudes that you don’t understand.  Like – ‘The witness is not allowed to say what Smith said…’  That is not a correct statement of the hearsay rule, and it suggests a fundamental lack of understanding of the law of evidence.  It’s like saying ‘You must not refer to an insurer’.  Or ‘You can’t treat with them – they are terrorists!’  Or, ‘If you criticise my government, that means you have it in for my whole tribe.’  (Very sadly, that particular fallacy now looks like being a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

We may however reflect on two aspects of our humanity.  One is that no nation or people wants to be invaded.  Another is that no nation or people wants to be dispossessed of its land.

The peaceful young advocate from Arras, Maximilien Robespierre, might be seen now as the archetypal terrorist, because of his role in implementing the policy of Terror in France in 1793.  This was the man who had resigned as a judge, because he was morally revolted when the law required him to sentence a man to death.  Some of his invocations of terror later would now curdle our blood.  But when in the triumphal dawn of the Revolution, the Assembly of the newly free French voted to go to war to export its glorious ideals, Robespierre, almost alone, opposed the aggression.  He stated what is spellbindingly obvious.  No one likes ‘armed missionaries’.  If you are being raped or bayoneted, you are not minded to inquire of the political or religious motivation of your assailant. 

You might usefully put this to the still unrepentant Messrs Bush, Blair and Howard about another Western disaster in the Middle East – the invasion of Iraq. 

It is something I saw on my only visit to the Kremlin.  ‘That’s the gate he came in by.  And that’s the gate he went out by.’  And the ageing Russian patriot guide was not referring to a second-rate Austrian corporal, but to a third-rate Corsican aristocrat – who left five million dead witnesses as testimony to the cruelty of his ego.

(On our way in to Moscow from the airport, at a distance from the centre about the equivalent of Mooney Valley to the Melbourne GPO, the guide pointed a monument and said: ‘That is where we stopped the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War’.  She did not say – and probably did not know – that Stalin and Hitler had done a deal under which they would – and they did – rape Poland.)

As for being dispossessed of land that your people have held for time immemorial, look not just at our First Nations, but to the almost total dispossession of the original inhabitants of each American continent – by those acting in the name of God, or a European empire that owed fealty to God, or the British Empire, or by the greed and unlimited territorial ambition of a preppy republic that had contempt for inferior races burned into its psyche from birth.

And what enabled all that dispossession?  Military might.  And cold hearts.  And the Word of God.

And did God try to stop it?  No.  To the contrary – He was part of it.

And the problem with God is that He is so absolute, and unrepentant.  And He does have a propensity to take sides.

So, there is rather more to these vanished supremacies – another phrase of Sir Lewis Namier – than a mere footy match. 

And the horror of it all – as predictable as it is inevitable – just passes all understanding.

The footy match fallacy

Elsewhere, I said this about false dilemmas.

A dilemma occurs in an argument when one party is driven to a position of having to choose between two courses that are both unattractive. It is like having two pieces attacked by one piece in chess – being forked – or being snookered: whichever way you try to get out, you are in trouble.

A dilemma is false if it says there are only two choices when there are more. What you generally get is that if you do not do A, you will have to go with B, which will be truly awful. The truth is that there are other possibilities, but you face an attempt to induce you to believe that you have no real choice. Naturally, it is a weapon of choice among politicians.

As often as not, people say that you have to choose between two factors when you do not. In his history From Dawn to Decadence, the French–American author Jacques Barzun wrote: ‘True opera is a kind of music rather than a kind of play’. Putting to one side the question of what a false opera might look or sound like, opera is both music and drama; the joining of the music and drama defines what opera is. We do not have to make a choice about what we like more or regard as the more important. This is one occasion when you might truly say that it all depends on how it goes on the night.

When the United Nations published a report on the crisis of climate change, one notorious sceptic said the question was whether the report involved ‘science’ or ‘politics’. It of course involved both – the conclusions of science called for political action. It is simply wrong to say that the writer could only enter into one category at a time.

The footy match fallacy is different.  It says that if you go to a footy match, you must support one team over the other.  Why not just enjoy it – or shoot through if you don’t?

We see a lot of this kind of thinking, and instruction and propagandising, at the moment in the appalling suffering of humanity in the Middle East – as Europeans in their selfish imperial way are wont to describe that part of the planet that they so badly interfered with.  People who have no connection with either side – oui ce’st moi – are urged by both to join them – and then denounce the other.

Thanks, but no.

One problem – and there are many – is that such an invitation entails an obligation to make moral and political judgments that are at best left to God.  And I don’t think He’s in.  But almost all on the two competing sides think that He is in.  Except that there are at least two versions of Him.  And they are very different.  They just don’t get on.  In truth, they hate each other.  But unlike the even more fallible Roman or Greek gods, each of these Gods claims to be the only one.  And although the ancient gods took an active part in wars, they did not start any wars.

And moral and political mayhem on earth is the inevitable result.

Together with the butchering of history.

Another problem is that people take sides by reference to their faith or ancestry – or both.  And neither warrants a sensible approach to dealing with others of different ancestry or faith.  No war is good, but tribal and religious wars are the worst.

The result is that each side claims to be a victim of the West, and that the history of their suffering somehow makes them more vulnerable and more in need of protection than the other.  And what is fondly called ‘freedom of speech’ is banished to the corner of the room.

But because history has become mangled, the most distorting issue is how far back you go in assessing or apportioning blame – if that is what you have in mind.

For some time, the common law had a simple but closed view on how to deal with allegations of negligence.  The old law was that any negligence on the part of the plaintiff was a complete defence.  Then parliament intervened, and the court was required to assess the degree of negligence of either party in the case. 

That exercise in traffic accident cases at Petty Sessions was hit and miss, but these ‘crash and bash’ cases helped me to fend off the bank manager in my first few years at the Bar.  And they were instructive in revealing the limitations under which mere mortals purport to apportion blame among themselves.  Was this any more than licensed gaming? 

Well, they were nearly all over in about half an hour.  An affidavit of the repairer, two amateur witnesses cross-examined by two equally amateur barristers, $20 on the brief – to be paid months or years later, if you were lucky – and a brief summation from the bench: ‘On balance, I think his version may be a bit more likely than yours  Work out the costs.  Call the next case’.  Justice of the people by the people. 

(On one memorable day, the plaintiff and defendant could not agree on which intersection the accident occurred at – so His Worship – who was wont to bring a cut lunch with him on to the bench in a brief case – found that it took place at a third!  I wonder now if that finding would be enough to classify His Worship as an ‘activist.’)

Well, the alternative – all or nothing at all – was unthinkable.  As it should be in any assessment of conflict like that currently raging in the Middle East.  It is one thing to adjudicate upon the blame of two drivers at an intersection.  It is altogether a different to purport to adjudicate upon the blame of two peoples at war, or the justice of two competing claims to ownership of land.

We should not therefore overlook the obvious irony in the remark of the great historian Sir Lewis Namier that I referred to the other day:

The basic elements of the Imperial Problem during the American Revolution must be sought not so much in conscious opinions and professed views bearing directly on it, as in the very structure and life of the Empire; and in doing that, the words of Danton should be remembered – on ne fait pas le procès aux revolutions. 

Those who are out to apportion guilt in history have to keep to views and opinions, judge the collisions of planets by the rules of road traffic, make history into something like a column of motoring accidents, and discuss it in the atmosphere of a police court.

But one thing you soon learn in the atmosphere of ‘a police court’ – or a Court of Petty Sessions hearing a ‘crash and bash’ – is the unavoidable truth of the remark of our greatest jurist, Sir Owen Dixon.  ‘Experience of forensic contests should confirm the truth of the common saying that one story is good until another is told….’ (His Honour went on to say ‘but a testator is dead and cannot tell his.’)

Another thing you learn at the bottom of the litigious pile-on is that it is just silly to mumble platitudes that you don’t understand.  Like – ‘The witness is not allowed to say what Smith said…’  That is not a correct statement of the hearsay rule, and it suggests a fundamental lack of understanding of the law of evidence.  It’s like saying ‘You must not refer to an insurer’.  Or ‘You can’t treat with them – they are terrorists!’  Or, ‘If you criticise my government, that means you have it in for my whole tribe.’  (Very sadly, that particular fallacy now looks like being a self-fulfilling prophecy.)

We may however reflect on two aspects of our humanity.  One is that no nation or people wants to be invaded.  Another is that no nation or people wants to be dispossessed of its land.

The peaceful young advocate from Arras, Maximilien Robespierre, might be seen now as the archetypal terrorist, because of his role in implementing the policy of Terror in France in 1793.  This was the man who had resigned as a judge, because he was morally revolted when the law required him to sentence a man to death.  Some of his invocations of terror later would now curdle our blood.  But when in the triumphal dawn of the Revolution, the Assembly of the newly free French voted to go to war to export its glorious ideals, Robespierre, almost alone, opposed the aggression.  He stated what is spellbindingly obvious.  No one likes ‘armed missionaries’.  If you are being raped or bayoneted, you are not minded to inquire of the political or religious motivation of your assailant. 

You might usefully put this to the still unrepentant Messrs Bush, Blair and Howard about another Western disaster in the Middle East – the invasion of Iraq. 

It is something I saw on my only visit to the Kremlin.  ‘That’s the gate he came in by.  And that’s the gate he went out by.’  And the ageing Russian patriot guide was not referring to a second-rate Austrian corporal, but to a third-rate Corsican aristocrat – who left five million dead witnesses as testimony to the cruelty of his ego.

(On our way in to Moscow from the airport, at a distance from the centre about the equivalent of Mooney Valley to the Melbourne GPO, the guide pointed a monument and said: ‘That is where we stopped the Nazis in the Great Patriotic War’.  She did not say – and probably did not know – that Stalin and Hitler had done a deal under which they would – and they did – rape Poland.)

As for being dispossessed of land that your people have held for time immemorial, look not just at our First Nations, but to the almost total dispossession of the original inhabitants of each American continent – by those acting in the name of God, or a European empire that owed fealty to God, or the British Empire, or by the greed and unlimited territorial ambition of a preppy republic that had contempt for inferior races burned into its psyche from birth.

And what enabled all that dispossession?  Military might.  And cold hearts.  And the Word of God.

And did God try to stop it?  No.  To the contrary – He was part of it.

And the problem with God is that He is so absolute, and unrepentant.  And He does have a propensity to take sides.

So, there is rather more to these vanished supremacies – another phrase of Sir Lewis Namier – than a mere footy match. 

And the horror of it all – as predictable as it is inevitable – just passes all understanding.

Well, I am reading Carlyle, The French Revolution, again – for the nth time. 

Naturally, I have my favourite passages.  One occurs at the end of volume 1.  A starving populace of Paris, led by the stern women of Les Halles, have marched on Versailles, and got within a room or so of massacring the whole royal family – their main target was the foreign queen.  The family is in truth forced to go to Paris as de facto prisoners by the still hostile mob.  The volume concludes as follows.

Poor Louis has Two other Paris Processions to make: one ludicrous-ignominious like this; the other not ludicrous nor ignominious, but serious, nay sublime.

The next occasion would be when he was brought back to Paris from Varennes – to what we now know would be his inevitable death by guillotine.  That would be his third and last procession.  Decent people do not speak of the unbearable cruelty that the French showed to Marie Antoinette when they beheaded her, to the shrieking adulation of the mob.  (Carlyle is big on ‘shrieking’.)

I have had occasion to refer to this link before.  In one of his early war-time speeches, Churchill referred to the resistance of the Finns to Stalin.

Only Finland – superb, nay, sublime – in the jaws of peril – Finland shows what free men can do.  The service rendered by Finland to mankind is magnificent.  They have exposed, for all the world to see, the military incapacity of the Red Army and of the Red Air Force.  Many illusions about Soviet Russia have been dispelled in these few fierce weeks of fighting in the Arctic Circle.  Everyone can see how Communism rots the soul of a nation; how it makes it abject and hungry in peace, and proves it base and abominable in war.

I do not know, but my guess is that Churchill did not realise that he was citing Carlyle when he extolled the Finns’ resistance to the Russians.  I could believe that he had drunk deeply enough of Gibbon, Macaulay and Carlyle to have them in his blood.

You might think that is just Romance.  It may well be – but in the name of God, I need something to look up to in this sea of melancholic mediocrity.  For example – ScoMo is off to Israel – most probably at my expense – to show his Pentecostal solidarity with God’s Chosen People, and do what he did best – a photo op – with Boris Johnson – a communion of the two worst prime ministers either nation has known.

And each time I come to look back to what we call the French Revolution, I wonder whether the French ever got over their descent into barbarism.  The Germans have.  Russia has not.  Nor I think has the United States.

Nor, since about a month ago, have we here in Australia come to terms with our past. 

And if I had to choose the closest we have got to the sublime, I would nominate Cathy for that win for all of us in Sydney.

Then we must look at how we thanked her.

We can go to the theatre to see a play or an opera.  We can to the MCG to see a footy or cricket match.  In either case, we are going to see some drama – and, usually, the more dramatic it is, the better. 

There is at least one major difference.  In a play or opera, people perform the parts that have been written or composed for them.  The end is already determined.  That is not the case in sport – you don’t know until it is over how it might end – who will win; or if there may be a draw.  That difference alone makes the sporting event more dramatic.  (And, sadly, it means that people may want to gamble on the outcome.)

There is usually one other difference.  Most people going to watch footy or cricket do so because they support, and want to be seen to support, one team in the contest.  There is something both tribal and communal in this – and some of the ritual some still get from religion.  This sense of belonging is usually harmless, but it can get very ugly.  Fortunately, we in Australia usually get spared the worst of the downside.

So, there are major differences in the drama that people expect to get in the theatre or at the MCG.  Their involvement is likely to be far more intensely real in one rather than the other.  And partly for that reason, many more people prefer one kind of drama to the other.

Most people are able to mix, or at least tolerate, patronage of both forms of drama.  Some cannot do so.  Some patrons of the theatre look down on those who go to the footy or cricket.  Many of the latter just have not got round to going to the theatre for any purpose.

Mixing patronage of the two has never been a problem for me.  If you are presented with a smorgasbord, you are in my view a dill if you do not at least sample the lot.  On one day I saw both the Melbourne Storm and Cosi fan tutte.  That may have struck patrons at either show as odd – that was, I think, their misfortune.

The two kinds of drama are very different, but they have something in common.  They involve tests of character – and very public tests.  For all the money and hoopla, someone has to go out and deliver all their acquired skill and magic – when failure will go very hard on all involved.

Now, partly because of age, and partly for other reasons, I will not now go to see many more kinds of either drama live. 

With theatre, as in Shakespeare, you can use three avenues – reading, listening, or watching on television or the big screen.  My preferred course is to listen with the text open in front of me.  Because I do not read music, that access is not open to me with opera.  I can listen or watch.

With twentieth century music, I need time – repeated exposure – to condition myself.  I have recently been doing just that with Britten and Janacek.  And I have been assisted in both with DVD reproductions from the stage of the highest quality. 

More than thirty years ago, Moffat Oxenbould of the AO advised me to see Britten’s Billy Budd at Covent Garden because I should hear an opera in my own language (and the piece was so modern that they had not yet spoiled it.)  That was very good advice. 

Now I have Opus Arte DVDs of Peter Grimes (La Scala), Billy Budd (Glyndebourne), and Midsummer Night’s Dream (Gran Teatre del Liceu).  And just arrived is Jenufa (Asmik Grigorian at Covent Garden). 

Each of these is just about flawless – including the acting (which you must have on this medium).  I cannot recall one person holding the whole show as does Asmik Grigorian.  Each is a play with music made specially for that script.  (And there is a bonus in Jenufa in the Scottish tenor who plays Laca.)  And the three Britten works were written in my language.

It would be silly to say that an Italian gets as much from Hamlet in Italian as I do in English.  And it would be equally silly to say that I get as much from Rigoletto in subtitles as an Italian does in his own language. 

And this issue becomes acute with Janacek, because he studied his own language and moulded the music to match it.  It is as well to remember that when we get a work in translation, we get it trusting in an intermediary – and not as its creator intended it.  It is I think notorious that Goethe and Pushkin – and Dante – do not suffer translation gladly.

Fortunately, I do not have to confront these demons in most sports.  And that is just one reason why I find the sports form of drama so much more compelling and involving than the theatrical forms.  You can savour just some of the other reasons if I reflect back on Peter Thompson at the British Open, Hoad and Rosewall in the Davis Cup, the world titles of Rose and Famechon, the America’s Cup, Cathy Freeman in Sydney – or how just the other day, Sam Kerr and the Matildas changed the world view of a whole generation.  (There was a very revealing photo.  Two hardened AFL coaches had just finished a tough match and had stopped to watch the Matildas on TV.)

And that’s before I get to cricket and footy played by people in my colours.  Then, I am afraid, even Shakespeare and David Williamson have to give way.

Well, these are matters of impression – or taste, perhaps.  But I suspect that Plato would have been with me – he thought that all art was inferior as being just imitation – art as we experience it, was for Plato an illusion, a collection of mere appearances, like reflections in a mirror or like shadows on the wall of a cave.

Tell that to the opener who has just been decked by the first ball of the match – or to the full back who did not adhere to the advice of the Plugger about holding his jersey – and waking up in a very different place indeed. 

Or the Demon supporter on that night in Perth in 2021. 

Or the young Australian barrister who saw Lillee trap that little Knott dead in front to end the Centenary Test.  And watched Thommo put the fear of God into the rest of them.

There are downsides to being Australian – but there up many and great upsides.

Whether the promisor is Almighty God, or His Majesty King George III, promising land to a select few is at best problematic if other people are in settled occupation and enjoyment of the land.  Where do they go now?

But it gets worse when God and ethnic distinctions are involved.  Where one group sees its members as different to those of another, they rarely think they come out of it as the worse off.

So much is clear from the history of Canaan, Australia, and Palestine. 

Since the discussion of any of these is fraught in Australia just now, I will pass over it in silence, and leave it to others.

The following texts command varying assent depending on where in the world the reader is standing.

But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive.  But you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God. 

Deuteronomy 20:16-18

And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.

And the other issued out of the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.

And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua.

And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.

And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.

For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.

Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the Lord which he commanded Joshua.

And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day.

Joshua 8:24-30

When the posterity of Abraham had multiplied like the sands of the sea, the Deity, from whose mouth they received a system of laws and ceremonies, declared himself the proper and, as it were, the national God of Israel; and with the most jealous care separated his most favourite people from the rest of mankind.  The conquest of the land of Canaan with so many wonderful and so many bloody circumstances, that the victorious Jews were left in a state of irreconcilable hostility with all their neighbours.  They had been commanded to extirpate some of the most idolatrous tribes, and the execution of the Divine will had seldom been retarded by the weakness of humanity.

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Fight against those who have been given the Scripture and believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid that which Allah hath forbidden by his messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.

And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah.  And the Christians say: their Messiah is the son of Allah.  That is their saying with their mouths.  They imitate the sayings of whose who disbelieve of old.  Allah himself fighteth against them.  How perverse are they?

They have as lords beside Allah their rabbis and their monks and the Messiah son of Mary, when they were forbidden to worship only one god.

Koran, Surah IX: 29 -31

Long before the rise of Babylon and Athens, the early Australians had impressive achievements.  They were the only people in the world’s history to sail across the seas and to discover an inhabitable continent.  They bred a brave procession of coastal and inland explorers; they were brown Columbuses, Major Mitchells, and even Dr Livingstones, I presume.  The aboriginals who occupied Australia also found, over a long stretch of time, many edible plants, valuable mines which they worked, new medicines and drugs, manufacturing techniques, and a miscellany of resources ranging from the raw materials of their cosmetics to the hidden pools of water in deserts.  They succeeded in adapting their ways of life to harsh as well as kind environments; and several large regions of Australia supported more people in ancient times than they have supported in recent times….

Europeans were now about to enter Australia.  The contrast between the ways of life of the British Isles and the Aborigines was almost the most dramatic contrast in the world.  The British brought so many ideas and goods which Aborigines could not begin to imagine.  They brought all the results of the 10,000-year-old neolithic revolution and they also brought the first results of the new industrial and scientific revolutions.  They brought sheep and shears, horses and harnesses, cattle and pigs, and a variety of dogs and cats.  They brought fruit trees, and tropical and temperate vegetables unknown to Aborigines.  They brought fences and carts and large permanent houses and ocean-going ships.  They brought an ability to distil spirits, brew beer, and make wine, hazardous activities in a continent where alcohol was virtually unknown.  They brought skills in weaving wool, in making linen and leather.  They brought the art of writing and printing, of keeping accounts, of hoarding information in books and food in barrels, kegs and sacks.  They brought thousands of laws, all devised more than 20,000 kilometres away.  They brought firearms, not of high accuracy, but demoralising when first seen and felt……Here was an utter contrast in peoples, for they spoke very different languages, had very different histories, religions, and contrasting attitudes to property plants and livestock.  In their use of the land and technology they were ages apart: in short, even with goodwill on both sides they were incompatible.

Geoffrey Blainey, The Triumph of the Nomad

The basic elements of the Imperial Problem during the American Revolution must be sought not so much in conscious opinions and professed views bearing directly on it, as in the very structure and life of the Empire; and in doing that, the words of Danton should be remembered – on ne fait pas le procès aux revolutions.  Those who are out to apportion guilt in history have to keep to views and opinions, judge the collisions of planets by the rules of road traffic, make history into something like a column of motoring accidents, and discuss it in the atmosphere of a police court.

Sir Lewis Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution

The God has not been invented who could even dream that any of such issues can be solved by mortals, and many would be happy if we had never invented any God at all.

The Promised Land

Whether the promisor is Almighty God, or His Majesty King George III, promising land to a select few is at best problematic if other people are in settled occupation and enjoyment of the land.  Where do they go now?

But it gets worse when God and ethnic distinctions are involved.  Where one group sees its members as different to those of another, they rarely think they come out of it as the worse off.

So much is clear from the history of Canaan, Australia, and Palestine. 

Since the discussion of any of these is fraught in Australia just now, I will pass over it in silence, and leave it to others.

The following texts command varying assent depending on where in the world the reader is standing.

But of the cities of these peoples which the Lord your God gives you as an inheritance, you shall let nothing that breathes remain alive.  But you shall utterly destroy them: the Hittite and the Amorite and the Canaanite and the Perizzite and the Hivite and the Jebusite, just as the Lord your God has commanded you, lest they teach you to do according to all their abominations which they have done for their gods, and you sin against the Lord your God. 

Deuteronomy 20:16-18

And when Joshua and all Israel saw that the ambush had taken the city, and that the smoke of the city ascended, then they turned again, and slew the men of Ai.

And the other issued out of the city against them; so they were in the midst of Israel, some on this side, and some on that side: and they smote them, so that they let none of them remain or escape.

And the king of Ai they took alive, and brought him to Joshua.

And it came to pass, when Israel had made an end of slaying all the inhabitants of Ai in the field, in the wilderness wherein they chased them, and when they were all fallen on the edge of the sword, until they were consumed, that all the Israelites returned unto Ai, and smote it with the edge of the sword.

And so it was, that all that fell that day, both of men and women, were twelve thousand, even all the men of Ai.

For Joshua drew not his hand back, wherewith he stretched out the spear, until he had utterly destroyed all the inhabitants of Ai.

Only the cattle and the spoil of that city Israel took for a prey unto themselves, according unto the word of the Lord which he commanded Joshua.

And Joshua burnt Ai, and made it an heap for ever, even a desolation unto this day.

Joshua 8:24-30

When the posterity of Abraham had multiplied like the sands of the sea, the Deity, from whose mouth they received a system of laws and ceremonies, declared himself the proper and, as it were, the national God of Israel; and with the most jealous care separated his most favourite people from the rest of mankind.  The conquest of the land of Canaan with so many wonderful and so many bloody circumstances, that the victorious Jews were left in a state of irreconcilable hostility with all their neighbours.  They had been commanded to extirpate some of the most idolatrous tribes, and the execution of the Divine will had seldom been retarded by the weakness of humanity.

Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Fight against those who have been given the Scripture and believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid that which Allah hath forbidden by his messenger, and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.

And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah.  And the Christians say: their Messiah is the son of Allah.  That is their saying with their mouths.  They imitate the sayings of whose who disbelieve of old.  Allah himself fighteth against them.  How perverse are they?

They have as lords beside Allah their rabbis and their monks and the Messiah son of Mary, when they were forbidden to worship only one god.

Koran, Surah IX: 29 -31

Long before the rise of Babylon and Athens, the early Australians had impressive achievements.  They were the only people in the world’s history to sail across the seas and to discover an inhabitable continent.  They bred a brave procession of coastal and inland explorers; they were brown Columbuses, Major Mitchells, and even Dr Livingstones, I presume.  The aboriginals who occupied Australia also found, over a long stretch of time, many edible plants, valuable mines which they worked, new medicines and drugs, manufacturing techniques, and a miscellany of resources ranging from the raw materials of their cosmetics to the hidden pools of water in deserts.  They succeeded in adapting their ways of life to harsh as well as kind environments; and several large regions of Australia supported more people in ancient times than they have supported in recent times….

Europeans were now about to enter Australia.  The contrast between the ways of life of the British Isles and the Aborigines was almost the most dramatic contrast in the world.  The British brought so many ideas and goods which Aborigines could not begin to imagine.  They brought all the results of the 10,000-year-old neolithic revolution and they also brought the first results of the new industrial and scientific revolutions.  They brought sheep and shears, horses and harnesses, cattle and pigs, and a variety of dogs and cats.  They brought fruit trees, and tropical and temperate vegetables unknown to Aborigines.  They brought fences and carts and large permanent houses and ocean-going ships.  They brought an ability to distil spirits, brew beer, and make wine, hazardous activities in a continent where alcohol was virtually unknown.  They brought skills in weaving wool, in making linen and leather.  They brought the art of writing and printing, of keeping accounts, of hoarding information in books and food in barrels, kegs and sacks.  They brought thousands of laws, all devised more than 20,000 kilometres away.  They brought firearms, not of high accuracy, but demoralising when first seen and felt……Here was an utter contrast in peoples, for they spoke very different languages, had very different histories, religions, and contrasting attitudes to property plants and livestock.  In their use of the land and technology they were ages apart: in short, even with goodwill on both sides they were incompatible.

Geoffrey Blainey, The Triumph of the Nomad

The basic elements of the Imperial Problem during the American Revolution must be sought not so much in conscious opinions and professed views bearing directly on it, as in the very structure and life of the Empire; and in doing that, the words of Danton should be remembered – on ne fait pas le procès aux revolutions.  Those who are out to apportion guilt in history have to keep to views and opinions, judge the collisions of planets by the rules of road traffic, make history into something like a column of motoring accidents, and discuss it in the atmosphere of a police court.

Sir Lewis Namier, England in the Age of the American Revolution

The God has not been invented who could even dream that any of such issues can be solved by mortals, and many would be happy if we had never invented any God at all.

Caravaggio was an Italian Renaissance painter.  It was therefore more likely than not that he would run into the Church of Rome.  He was preoccupied with the chiaroscuro in his painting – as Caruso’s voice would be in his singing.  (The painterly word would be tenebrous.)  His love life was all over the place, and he had a God given capacity to get into serious trouble – with authority, or people of either sex.  But especially with the Thought Police.

All this is on show in the film Caravaggio’s Shadow.  It is preternaturally dark, and troubled – to an extent that I once thought of leaving early.  (Perhaps in part because for two hours the night before I had wrestled with a stark RSC version of the most violent play in the lexicon – Titus Andronicus.)

The artist was frighteningly original.  That was enough to get him into trouble.  And he painted straight from the flesh – and he used people from what the Church would call the gutter as his models.  Saints could be based on sluts.  (He was certainly not alone in that – my recollection is that El Greco  – he of the Counter-Reformation – modelled the madonna on his mistress.)  And this was the time when the Reformation ran into the Renaissance.

Then the artist is convicted of murder after killing an opponent in a brawl.  He asks the pope for a pardon.  The pope assigns a ‘shadow’ to investigate.  That investigation is the subject of the film. 

The painter is hot and bothered.  The shadow is coldness made flesh – with the morals of Vladimir Putin.  Both leads are well played and the drama is engaging – wounding even.  But it stays dark and wounding.

It was for me held together by the incomparable Isabelle Huppert.  She is speaking in French, but she oozes her austere authority whenever she is on the screen.  And for someone past what the French call ‘a certain age,’ she has a remarkable capacity to lead us to believe that seriously heavy breathing – to use a phrase used by Walter Matthau – is never entirely out of the question.  But it will be her call.  She is just regnal.

Although the artist is hostile to the Church, he is addicted to the missionary position to the extent that some in the audience – well, at least one – got sick of the sight of his bum.

And if you want to know why Rome never recovered from its decline and fall, and why Italy is not now and never has been well governed, you need not look any further than the Church of Rome.  They are the bad guys in this movie.  The shadow is just their venomous distillation, and the artist just their inevitable victim. 

I don’t think the Church keeps the Index now, at least on the table, but if it did, this movie would claim top billing.

‘Eyeless in Gaza’ is the term applied by Milton to Samson in a work that could well be banned from many campuses today for its unholy exultation of bloody violence, including suicidal terrorism, and its loathing of women.  Taking out eyes may have been the worst form of mutilation.  It is the shrieking low point of the violence in King Lear.  The victim, and the audience, are left with the lament of Samson: ‘Light, the prime work of God, is to me extinct.’

With this exception – God had not been discovered in the time of the action in King Lear.  Or of Titus Andronicus.  The former is set in Albion in some preternaturally dark age.  The latter is set in Rome, when the Goths had arrived on the scene, but God, had not – and the Sermon on the Mount had not been heard either.  (This may have involved the author in some date juggling, but he never minded that.  The date of the action in each play is deliberately obscure.) 

The play Titus comes to us early in the oeuvre of Shakespeare.  He would return to its themes later – in a different and more practised manner.  But we don’t decline to enjoy the symphonies of Mozart before he really made his mark in number 27 – just as it would be both silly and unhelpful not to enjoy the early comedies and English history plays of Shakespeare.

The violence in Titus verges on the lustful.  It is the ultimate revenge play – seething, soaking, bloody revenge.  (The word occurs 25 times in the play.)  Consequently, it went down well with audiences when it first came out.  England tolerated and inflicted the most gruesome kinds of mutilation until the Declaration of Rights in 1689 (and, in times of state emergency, ignored the common law prohibition of torture).  But then the national mood changed, and Titus was on the nose. 

That was so until Gallipoli, Auschwitz, Hiroshima, My Lai, Srebrenica, and Mariupol.  All evil beyond our comprehension, and beyond the imagination of even Shakespeare.

And now Gaza – for which we should look again at this early play of the greatest playwright of them all. 

Dr Johnson thought that Titus was spurious. He loathed it.  ‘The barbarity of the spectacles and the general massacre which are here exhibited can scarcely be conceived tolerable to any audience, yet we were told by Jonson that they were not only borne but praised.’ 

Perhaps the audiences in Shakespeare’s time were more worn or worldly – public mutilation then was still a free spectacle – like hanging, drawing, and quartering. 

Whatever may have been the case in those times, the barbarities of the spectacles in the play are mild compared to what we have in and around Gaza now.  And real people are there being raped and slaughtered.  In the war against the Ukraine, we have seen rape deployed as a weapon of war by a nation that has a history for such war crimes, but which still claims to be civilised.

And before you conclude that Rome was incapable of that degree of cruelty, consider what Professor John Burrow describes as ‘the appalling ruthlessness of Roman political atrocity.’

The general rage against Sejanus was now subsiding, appeased by the executions already carried out.  Yet retribution was now decreed against his remaining children.  They were taken to prison.  The boy understood what lay ahead of him.  But the girl uncomprehendingly repeated: ‘What have I done?  Where are you taking me?  I will not do it again!’  She could be punished with a beating, she said, like other children.  Contemporary writers report that because capital punishment of a virgin was unprecedented, she was violated by the executioner, with the noose beside her.  Then both were strangled, and their young bodies were thrown on to the Gemonian Steps. 

The Gemonian Steps were next to the prison.  They were called ‘the Stair of Sighs’.  After execution, dead prisoners were thrown on to these steps, and then dragged to the Tiber.  The steps may have been close to the present Via di San Pietro in Carcere.  An alternative was to fling people alive from the Tarpeian rock.  (  The threat of which caused Coriolanus to leave town.)

The play Titus Andronicus poses two questions.  Can revenge ever be righteous?  Can we reasonably describe ancient Athens or Rome as civilised?

Titus is an aged and trusted soldier in a very war-like state.  After a successful campaign against the Goths (in which he has lost sons), he allows the human sacrifice of a son of Tamora, the queen of the Goths.  Then he declines the purple and allows it to go to a very weak and nasty piece of work.  Who then marries Tamora, after Lavinia, the daughter of Titus, declines the offer.  This enables Tamora to exact revenge.  She does so when her sons violate Lavinia and mutilate her to prevent her accusing the brothers.  Further outrages are perpetuated on Titus by a Moor who impregnates Tamora, and who is the personification of evil – the ‘motiveless malignity’ that one critic used for the later edition of such a character (Iago – a character that makes his whole play frankly intolerable for me).  Titus feigns madness and gets his revenge by literally serving up to Tamora her dead sons on a platter.  After deadly mayhem, the world can start afresh.

You will struggle to find a more graphic plot in any play or opera.  But it is wonderfully put together by Julie Taymor in her film TITUS.  It is for me by far the best film of any of the plays of Shakespeare.

Violence begets violence.  The Greeks looked at this in the Oresteia.  The first object of what would become the common law was to end the vendetta.  The great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes said that ‘the Roman law started from the blood feud, and all the authorities agree that the German law [the origin of our common law] began in that way.’

Before that, God had had His say.  ‘Vengeance is mine.  I will repay.’  Then a Jewish hasid stood on the side of a mountain and said: ‘Turn the other cheek.’

Well – we know all that, but we also know the impulse of revenge is so often irresistible.  Righteous?  No.  Inevitable?  Just about.  It was and is utterly inevitable now in Gaza, and all the moonshine in the world will not soften that revenge.

What about the Oxbridge dream of the civilisation of ancient Athens and Rome?  They buggered their boys; treated their women like doormats; and they lived off slavery and empire.  But most of all, they had no conception of the dignity seen by Kant as inherent in each of us just because we are human.

And as it happens, Titus opens, and closes, with a process for choosing an emperor.  The Romans never secured the process of succession.  It was as orderly as a Mallee footy club chook raffle.  On that failure of governance alone, Rome was decidedly uncivilised – as Gibbon saw and documented so clearly.  He was right to be revolted.

Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same.  A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led to an untimely grave; and almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder.

How you apply such notions to affairs in Gaza now is a matter for you.  Australia has a diaspora from each side, and naturally their views are opposed. 

We have canvassed some moral and political views.  Now for the tin tacks.  We go to the theatre to watch ourselves in the mirror of the stage.  And in Titus we see these issues writ large – almost as large as in commedia dell’arte.  It comes at us at first as grotesque – our reaction to King Lear.  Then we pass through the theatre of the absurd.  I fondly recall the groaning apprehension of the cinema audience in South Yarra when Anthony Hopkins lit up the screen answering the stage direction ‘Enter Titus as a cook.’  Then there is a kind of peace as we reconcile ourselves to the truth that all this is beyond words. 

Dr Johnson was right – the barbarity on the stage is ‘barely tolerable’.  But what does that say about our place in the world?  Does it say that we turn away from suffering inflicted on others by evil people – and that in so doing we condone such evil, and stand diminished in ourselves?  Are we then complicit in a general decline in our community? 

This inquiry into what Conrad saw as the ‘horror’ in Heart of Darkness comes not from charts and graphs, but from the charge of drama on the stage.  We see that a people without pity leads to a wilderness of tigers that can never find peace.  And that bears directly on the horrors confronting us in the world right now.

We are left to ask with the brother of Titus:

O, why should nature build so foul a den

Unless the gods delight in tragedies?

That was the question in King Lear, and what we askafter any act of mass murder.

In that play, the lament was that the gods treat us like wanton boys treat flies.  The passage in Titus that stays with me is:

MARCUS
 Alas, my lord, I have but killed a fly.
TITUS 
But? How if that fly had a father and mother?
 How would he hang his slender gilded wings
 And buzz lamenting doings in the air!
 Poor harmless fly,
 That, with his pretty buzzing melody,
Came here to make us merry! And thou hast killed him.

One reason that some voted against the Voice was that the constitution was so important that changing it was like marriage.  It should not be entered into lightly or ill advisedly.  It was like the Ark of the Covenant.  Or, if that was too ethereal or presumptuous, Americans venerated their constitution, and so should we.

In the result, one of the worst suggestions I heard was that it may be in order to legislate for a voice, but not to change the constitution for it.  It is hard to imagine anything more insulting to the First Nations.

The whole of that state of mind looks to me to be misplaced.

Let us consider three different constitutions.  Two grew out of the first.

The English version is not contained in one document.  It arose out of and is supported by what we call the common law – together with a number of documents.  They include Magna Carta, legislation about habeas corpus, the Act of Supremacy and other statutes about the standing of the Church of England, the Declaration of Rights, the Act of Union, and the Act of Settlement. 

It is common ground among English historians that the fundamentals of the English constitution were settled in 1689 by the Declaration of Rights.  The fundamentals include what the common law – but not the Roman Law or civil law in Europe – knows as the rule of law, and the supremacy of parliament. 

What does that mean?  Parliament can alter or abolish the parts I have referred to.  Nothing is entrenched – as is the case in the U S or here.

The U S Constitution is entrenched in a union of states in one document.  Importantly, the amendments make the civil rights referred to in the Declaration of Rights part of the constitution.  They can only be altered to the extent and in the manner referred to in that document.  In the result, there is no supremacy of the legislature, the voice of the people.  To the contrary.  What we now see is the Supremacy of the Supreme Court.  And we certainly do not wish to go down that path.

Our constitution is altogether more prosaic.  It is in a schedule to an act of the Imperial Parliament that received the assent of the Queen of England and the Empress of India – after whom my state was named.  And it can only be changed by referendum. 

What does our constitution do?  It establishes the Commonwealth parliament, executive and judiciary, and allocates powers and rights between the federal and state entities.

Now, the three polities share the same broad aims of governance.  The US model has this.

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

This may be motherhood, but the objective is similar here, and in the UK.

But, when it comes to looking at what might be called the ‘rights’ of the people against government, the difference between the US on the one hand, and us and the UK on the other, is deeper than the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans.

One fundamental difference is that in the US, the Bill of Rights is part of the Constitution.  But, like any other part of the constitution, those rights are what the judges say they are.  That is, the relevant law is stated by the judges, not the Congress.  Sir Owen Dixon made a remark to the effect that we regard that result us undemocratic.

What ‘rights’ do Australians expect to see honoured by federal and state parliaments, governments, and judges?

They are of two kinds.  The government must not do some things.  It must not go against me except by due process of law.  It must treat me as equal to all other Australians in the eye of the law.  Noone is above the law and all are under it.  These rights have become part of our juristic dispensation by a process of accretion since 1215.  The English constitution derives from the common law.  The English concepts were unique to it and the common law.  The constitution is not so much the source, as the consequence, of rights of individuals.  As I said, the other model – Roman – was very different.

Next, government must do some things for us.  In addition to education, it must provide for our health, unemployment, and the aged.

The first may be called juristic rights.  The second are political expectations.

But you see immediately how different the U S is to us and England on each count.  The rule of law is not entrenched in the constitution here, but is subject to the supremacy of parliament.  The U S has never embraced the Welfare State.  It does not sit with their Puritan origin or capitalist dogma – both of which we find repellent.

So, it is very unlikely that our High Court, or the English Supreme Court, will give too many rulings which affect their people on the fundamental ‘rights’ referred to above.  The recent decision on excise will excite some in academe, and vex some in Treasury, but may mean less to ordinary people here than the due allocation of Grand Final tickets.

So, if you voted against amending the Constitution to allow the Voice for our First Nations on the ground that that document is so dear to us that we should not in any way flirt with its dispensations, you were I fear misled.

You had plenty of company.

Both here and in England.

Meanwhile, the disintegration of the U S proceeds apace. 

Thank Heaven we did not go down their path.

Now that I have spent time living with issues arising from apartment subdivisions and common ownership, I am meeting people with similar problems. Those problems were to be expected, but that does not make them any less annoying. People on the receiving end need to seek comfort and support from others similarly placed. To that end, I set out a draft legal document that may crystallize a common area of dispute.

Betty Smith

Applicant

and

The Manager Pty Ltd

Respondent

Statement of Dispute

1. The applicant (Smith) is the owner of a unit at 1White St, Whoop Whoop (the unit), and she has been registered as the proprietor of that unit since A/B/2022.
2. The unit is in a subdivision (the subdivision), for which the owners corporation under the Owners Corporation Act 2006 (the act) is Body Corporate Pty Ltd (the corporation).
3. The respondent is and was at all times material a company incorporated in Victoria (the manager), and the manager of the subdivision, within the meaning of that term in the act, pursuant to an instrument executed by the corporation and the manager on A/B/2022.
4. X,Y and Z are and were at all times material the members of the committee of the corporation.
5. Under and pursuant to the provisions of ss 4,5, 6 and 23 of the act, the corporation has the function and power to levy annual fees to lot owners in the subdivision.
6. In carrying out that function or exercising that power, the corporation must act honestly and in good faith, and must exercise due care and diligence.
7. The corporation owes such duties to the lot owners in the subdivision.  (S 10 (1) and s 11 of the act are predicated on the assumption that lot owners are members of an owners corporation.)
8. Under and pursuant to s 117 of the act, the members of the committee must act honestly and in good faith; they must exercise due care and diligence; and they must act in the interests of the owners corporation.
9. Under the general law and s 122 of the act, the manager must act honestly and in good faith in the performance of its functions; and it must exercise due care and diligence in the performance of those functions.  (The statutory duties are express in the act.  They also arise from the general law of agency and of fiduciary obligations owed by people who hold positions of both trust and confidence.)
10. Further, the instrument of appointment of the manager stipulates that the manager must ‘generally implement the decisions and instructions of the Owners Corporation with respect to its duties and functions as set out in this clause.’
11. The manager owes those duties to both the corporation and to the lot owners, including Smith.
12. Further, or alternatively, by virtue of s 162 (c) and s 163 (1A) of the act, Smith is able to apply to VCAT on behalf of the corporation and as against the manager in order to resolve the dispute below.
13. To the extent that the instrument of delegation of functions or powers from the corporation to the manager purports to avoid, vary, or nullify the statutory duties alleged above, it is (a) beyond the power of the grantors of the purported delegation to do so; and (b) contrary to public policy; and it is therefore void on each such ground.
14. Smith is involved in a dispute with the corporation and the manager(the dispute.) (It is contained in or evidenced by correspondence common to the three parties from A/B/2023 and continuing.)
15. The dispute relates to: (a) the amount of a levy alleged to be owed by Smith to the corporation in respect of a liability for a levy alleged to have been incurred by the previous owner of the unit; (b) the adequacy of the accounts kept by or on behalf of the corporation as required by s 33 of the act; and (c) the functions and obligations of the corporation and the manager in dealing with the dispute, and seeking to resolve it without litigation.
16. On A/B/2023, Smith met with A of the committee to seek to resolve the dispute, and in the course of that meeting, Smith suggested a mode of compromise of the dispute.
17. On the following day, the manager told both Smith and the corporation that the dispute was ‘private’ and that the corporation should not deal directly with Smith in relation to the dispute, but leave everything to it.
18. The corporation by its committee has accepted that contention of the agent and has refused to engage in any further discussion with Smith about the dispute.
19. On the same day, the principal of the manager informed Smith that he would instruct solicitors to prepare proceedings against Smith, presumably in the name of the corporation, in respect of the debt alleged in the course of the dispute.
20. In order to determine whether it was in the interests of the corporation as a whole for the corporation to bring an action at law, either in a court or this tribunal, to recover the alleged debt, the corporation would by its committee have to determine the cost and benefits of such litigation, and the possible impact of that litigation and a public airing of other matters arising in the dispute. 
21. The corporation would by its committee have to consider the possible impact of such litigation on the reputation of the subdivision as whole and the investment values of the lot owners including Smith.
22. The corporation and the manager have different interests in dealing with a dispute such as this dispute.  While both are subject to similar obligations to lot owners, the manager is engaged to make a profit in the ordinary course of its business.  That is not so for the corporation, or the members of the committee, who are appointed on an honorary basis, and who have the necessary knowledge of the lot owners and their interests.  S 13 of the act expressly forbids an owners corporation to carry on a business. Smith also refers to s 120 (2) of the act requiring the manager to report to the committee as required by the committee.
23. Smith contends that in order properly to discharge its obligations to lot owners, the corporation must retain control of its interests in the dispute and exhaust discussions with Smith aimed at trying to resolve the dispute.  (S 11 of the act provides that an owners corporation is to be managed  by or under the direction of the lot owners.  Smith here refers to the requirements in the act of a resolution before an owners corporation embarks on litigation and to the provisions of s 167 (1) (c) of the act requiring VCAT to consider the impact of a proposed resolution on the lot owners as a whole.  Under the general law, Smith contends that it is wrong for an agent to dictate to its principal how it should deal with its counterparty, and it is not appropriate for a committee of management of a corporation to be seen to giving such powers in a dispute to the manager.)
24. On the grounds of those allegations, Smith contends that the manager has breached the obligations owed to her and the corporation to act in good faith and with due diligence.
25. As a result, Smith is aggrieved and asks for the remedy below.

AND the applicant claims: an order under s 165 of the act requiring the manager to refrain from advising or instructing the corporation not to deal directly with Smith in this or any similar dispute.

AND such further remedy or relief as to VCAT seems fair.