Anthony Barnett (London, OK): So the Queen is now Britain's oldest living monarch. Imagine if she had done something lasting. If, since taking the throne, she had ordered an intelligent courtier to acquire one work by the best young artists under thirty, what a collection she would now have, or just the best sculptures. Or suppose she had sought to buy and preserve a couple of pieces of forest or woodland or wetland in different counties each year, how the royal ecology would be admired and celebrated today! Or if she had collected cars or British technology, what lines there would be at their exhibition; or hand-made jewellery or crafts, imagine the skills that would have flourished thanks to the ongoing touch of her patronage…just ANYTHING which one could introduce by saying, “Without Elizabeth II”.
Instead the country has the fading memories of garden parties and videos of investitures.
What kind of success is this? The answer can be found in the recently published Len Rix translation of Antal Szerb’s Oliver VII (hat tip Lisa Appagnanesi). In this wonderful, short, late ‘neo-frivolist’ novel, the 1933 President of Hungary’s Literary Academy, tells the story of a young king who, despairing of his situation and the exploitation of his small country, organises a coup against himself and flees for a real life abroad. He falls among international con-men in Venice. His despairing aide who follows him faithfully into exile asks why he does not become something safe like a Turkish soldier. No, Olivier VII answers (for it is he) real life is about risk and uncertainty, this is the taste of reality he craves. But, things being what they are in satire, the con-men cannot resist the opportunity offered by the international businessman who, mistakenly in their view, believes the young man they have befriended is a King! Now they have to train him in what the role means. St Germain, the master of the gang, explains:
A king isn’t required to be a human being, like everyone else. He must be the sort of human being who can inspire his contemporaries with awe and wonder. You see, in the long, hard year that is the life of the ordinary man, the king is a red-letter day. A holiday. A lifting up of eyes in adoration to the sky. There have been great kings who achieved fame by destroying enemies abroad, and great kings who cared about the sort of chickens the peasantry cooked in their saucepans. But none of that matters; it’s not the point. Deeds and good intentions don’t confer royalty. The king fulfils his duty as a great man simply by being. Anyone can win praise for his acts and achievements: the sole duty of a king is to exist in the world. Like a mountain. My young friend, plains can be cultivated, ships can be carried on the backs of rivers, but mountains are the only things that rise, tall and silent, above the plains, rivers and nations of the world. They simply stand there, and their existence directs man’s attention to his eternal values. If there were no mountains, and no kings, my young friend, people would think everything in the world was flat, something merely to be exploited. A king exists to draw his people’s attention to the pure air of the peaks and the heights of destiny. He is a legend incarnate, the one great comfort and reassurance. That alone does more good for the country than fifty military barracks. It is a greater source of strength than fifty battleships. And for him to raise a nation to the heights of destiny he needs do nothing more than to emanate that strange, merciful gift we call royalty…
