25.10.2018

Is High Culture a Pleasure of the Elite, or a Necessity for a Gentleman?

From Renaissance art to classical music, enjoying high culture has largely been seen as a culture for the ruling class & elites– but Raja argues it's an essential element of gentleman's everyday life.

By Raja Izz

Among the abundant sophistication available in our cities today, none is more richly pleasing to the addict or more cheaply obtained than culture. Take our city Kuala Lumpur. At the National Visual Gallery or Galeri PETRONAS you can stand — without paying a Ringgit — before some of the most beautiful works of international art ever created (Italian, Argentinian, to name a few). At Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, for less than RM 100 and a bit of queuing, you can listen to the greatest orchestras from all over the world. At Istana Budaya you can attend, for a fraction of the real cost, the most extravagant productions of the operatic masterpieces, emerging with your senses so saturated that Netflix programmes tastes of nothing.

A matter of taste

But what exactly is high culture? Those for whom culture has been a long-term emotional investment feel they know what high culture is, and know that it is a thing of supreme value, and highly regarded by the society. From classical music to operas, from marble statues to illustrations in chapels, these are all considered high culture because they are associated with intelligence, finery, class.

We cannot lay down a law for popular taste or forbid gentleman to enjoy what appeals to them — not unless we can find some serious moral argument that would justify that. But there are certain general principles that every gentleman can assent to. For example, we all recognise the difference between dress codes. We know that we choose to wear smart casual, but also that we choose how we gonna wear it. How do we learn to do that? The answer is culture — both the culture of everyday life and the 'high' culture, as it is sometimes called, in which life becomes fully conscious of itself as an object of judgment. The intellect forms the core of high culture: it is why we teach them, and why we encourage people to take an interest in them. They are doors into the examined life and, as Socrates famously said, 'the unexamined life is not a life for a human being'.

Not your everyday…

By everyday culture I mean the customs, interests and ways of behaving that we spontaneously share — manners, meal-times, ways of dressing; Netflix show, popular youtube songs, Raya festival and holidays. These form the web of society, the many threads of which we hardly notice in peace-time, though they pull together in crisis, which is why so many of those who experienced the last crisis look back on it with nostalgia, as a time of togetherness and trust.

High culture is not like that: it is an elaborate artefact. It depends upon leisure — both the leisure of those who produce it and the leisure of those who enjoy it. Great artists, writers and composers are people with an urge to create. And they make sacrifices in order to do so. But, in every period of history, patrons have stepped in to make those sacrifices possible.

The masterpieces work of Tan Sri P. Ramlee, were largely made possible by the patronage of Shaw Brothers Singapore. In Italy, the Florence's cathedral dome signed designed by Filippo Brunelleschi, was made possible by the patronage of Cosimo de Medici, the Ruler of Florence. Aristocrats & monarchs not only take an interest in poets and painters but also employ them or offer them pensions, as King of France offered a pension to Leonardo Da Vinci. To think that a high culture could really exist without patronage of that kind is to ignore the hard work and dedication required by any serious work of art. Of course, there are artists and writers who subsidise themselves, but they are the exceptions.

Were the ability to understand high culture to be forgotten, I know that the gentleman's world would be a much poorer place. We would have lost one avenue to the culture of refinement. Those that have this knowledge will do whatever they can to perpetuate it. They will teach it to their children; they will embrace it as the way of live (dressing, manner, perspective, etc).

Raja Izz

Picture: Tom Claeren

'The Anger of Achilles' by Jacques-Louis David.

Could this artwork have been possible without patronage?

Seeing through Shakespeare

Still, what does high culture do for us? We can see the point of scientific and medical advances, since they offer knowledge that will benefit us all, even if we do not understand it. But how does the person with no ear benefit from an expensive symphony orchestra, or a person with no feeling for verse benefit from a poetry festival? Why is it good that such things exist, even for those who are not interested in them?

Scientific and technological innovation may confer collective mastery over the means to our ends. But it will not bring us any nearer to the ends themselves. It will not tell us which goals to pursue or which things to value. Shakespeare portrays, in the character of King Lear, the slow crumbling of a vain old man as he discovers the difference between real and fake devotion. Shakespeare does not merely awaken our sympathy. He shows how the fault and its remedy lie deep within ourselves. He is helping us to know our own emotions, and to distinguish the ones that raise us up from those that drag us down.

Similar things can be said about all great works of art, and those who are moved by them have a beauty and completion in their lives that is hard to obtain in any other way. Art makes us conscious of what we are and what we can hope to be, and it does so through moments of revelation in which all our being is aroused. Surely, we are tempted to think, it is better that the world contains people who are in that way alert to their condition. Certainly Shakespeare thought so:

The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus.
Let no such man be trusted.

(from The Merchant of Venice)

Lasting impressions

I grew up in an early exposure to the books of the ancient Greece & Rome, through my father's collections. It was only by chance that we acquired what high culture & refined civilization are all about.

Early this year, quite by accident, I discovered the soul of the classical music while I was on vacation in Athens. It was soon obvious to me that the high culture contained a kind of sophistication that could never be obtained from a textbook, prestigious university or sacred text. I captured this knowledge through gentleman's journal on this website — even though I could not tell you what it is, and what would lead me next. But this knowledge guides me through life.

Wordsworth wrote that 'getting and spending, we lay waste our powers'. But when we stand back from the mill of consumption and look on the turbulent waters with the eye of an artist, we are rested in our hearts and our powers are restored.

What is that necessary thing? We can take a lesson here from how the European gentleman's way of life - put aside a day in the week when we rest from our labours and stop being merely busy about our purposes, but learn to reflect on them and judge between them. If we do not do this then our life remains one of means without meaning, endless technological mastery, but without a goal beyond the technique.

High culture is the meditation of busy people, the moment of sitting down and listening, seeing, thinking, so that meaning can dawn. As long as places and times exist where this can be done there is hope in the world. Wordsworth wrote that 'getting and spending, we lay waste our powers'. But when we stand back from the mill of consumption and look on the turbulent waters with the eye of an artist, we are rested in our hearts and our powers are restored. People who do this are the friends of order in a world of entropy, for they see, in the depths of the swirling pool, the still point where meaning lies. They cannot describe what they see, and that is why the highest forms of art exist — not to describe the meaning, but to reveal it, as the loveliness of the world was revealed.

So culture — which at first sight may seem to be a pleasure of the elite — turns out, after all, to be an all-time necessity for a gentleman.

Picture: Tan Sri P Ramlee for Seniman Bujang Lapok

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Is High Culture a Pleasure of the Elite, or a Necessity for a Gentleman?

From Renaissance art to classical music, enjoying high culture has largely been seen as a culture for the ruling class & elites– but Raja argues it's an essential element of gentleman's everyday life.

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