Lanark_ a life in 4 books - Alasdair Gray [277]
“It grows because it is a living body, its arteries are the rivers and canals, its limbs are the trade routes grappling goods and men into its stomach, the market. We, whose state is an organization linking the cities of many lands, cannot know what sacred places the first cities seemed. Luckily the librarian of Babylon has described how they looked to a visiting tribesman:
He sees something he has never seen, or has not seen … in such plenitude. He sees the day and cypresses and marble. He sees a whole that is complex and yet without disorder; he sees a city, an organism composed of statues, temples, gardens, dwellings, stairways, urns, capitals, of regular and open spaces. None of these artifacts im presses him (I know) as beautiful; they move him as we might be moved today by a complex machine of whose purpose we are ignorant but in whose design we intuit an immortal intelligence.
“Immortal intelligence, yes. That undying intelligence lives in the great house which is the brain of the city, which is the first home of institutional knowledge and modern government. In a few centuries it will divide into law court, university, temple, treasury, stock exchange and arsenal.”
“Here here!” shouted Weems unexpectedly, and there was some scattered applause.
“Bugger this,” muttered Odin. “He’s talked for ten minutes and only just reached the topic.”
“I find these large vague statements very soothing,” said Powys.
“Like being in school again.”
“But all tribesmen are not servile adorers of wealth [said Monboddo]. Many have skill and greed of their own. The lords of the first cities may have fallen before nomads driving the first wheeled chariots. No matter! The new masters of the grain may only keep it with help from the clever ones who rule land and time by rod and calendar, and can count and tax what others make. The great riverine cultures (soon there are five of them) absorb wave after wave of conquerors, who add to the power of the managers by giving them horsemen for companions. So the growth of cities speeds up. Their trade routes interlock and grapple, they compete with each other. Iron swords and ploughshares are forged, metals command the wealth of the grain. The seaside cities arise with their merchant and pirate navies.”
“He’s getting faster,” whispered Powys. “He’s covered twelve civilizations in six sentences.”
“Men increase. Wealth increases. War increases. Nowadays, when strong governments agree there must not be another big war, we can still applaud the old battles and invasions which blended the skills of conquerors and conquered. The are no villains in history. Pessimists point to Attila and Tamerlane, but these active men liquidated unprofitable states which needed a destroyer to release their assets. Wherever wealth has been used for mere self-maintenance it has always inspired vigorous people to grasp and fling it into the service of that onrushing history which the modern state commands. Pale pink people like myself have least reason to point the scorning finger. Poets tell us that for two millennia Europe was boisterous with energies released by the liquidation of Asiatic Troy. I quote the famous Lancastrian epic:
“Since the siege and assault was ceaséd
at Troy,
The burgh broken and burned to
brands and ashes,
It was Aeneas the Able and his high
kind
That since despoiled provinces and
patrons became
Wellnigh of all the wealth in the West
Isles;
For rich Romulus to Rome riches he
swipes,
With great bobbaunce that burgh he
builds upon first,
And names with his own name as now
it hath;
Ticius in Tuscany townships founds, Langbeard in Lombardy lifts up homes, And far over the French flood Felix
Brutus,
On many banks full broad Britain he
builds with his winnings,
Where war and wreck and wonder By turns have waxed therein, And oft both bliss and blunder Have had their