Elizabeth Costello полностью

'If the Church as a whole had been able to acknowledge that its teachings and its whole system of beliefs were based on texts, and that those texts were susceptible on the one hand to scribal corruption and so forth, on the other to flaws of translation, because translation is always an imperfect process, and if the Church had also been able to concede that the interpretation of texts is a complex matter, vastly complex, instead of claiming for itself a monopoly of interpretation, then we would not be having this argument today.'

'But,' says the Dean, 'how have we come to know how vastly difficult the business of interpretation can be except by experiencing certain lessons of history, lessons that the Church of the fifteenth century could hardly have foreseen?'

'Such as?'

'Such as contact with hundreds of other cultures, each with its own language and history and mythology and unique way of seeing the world.'

'Then my point would be,' says the young man, 'that it is the humanities and the humanities alone, and the training that the humanities provide, that will allow us to steer our way through this new multicultural world, and precisely, precisely' – he almost hammers the table, so excited has he grown – 'because the humanities are about reading and interpretation. The humanities begin, as our lecturer said, in textual scholarship, and develop as a body of disciplines devoted to interpretation.'

'In fact, the human sciences,' says the Dean.

The young man pulls a face. 'That is a red herring, Mr Dean. If you don't mind, I will remain with either studia or disciplines.'

So young, she thinks, and so sure of himself. He will remain with studia.

'What about Winckelmann?' says her sister.

Winckelmann? The young man looks back at her uncompre-hendingly.

'Would Winckelmann have recognized himself in the picture you paint of the humanist as a technician of textual interpretation?'

'I don't know. Winckelmann was a great scholar. Perhaps he would have.'

'Or Schelling,' pursues her sister. 'Or any of those who believed, more or less openly, that Greece provided a better civilizational ideal than Judaeo-Christianity Or, for that matter, those who believed that mankind had lost its way and should go back to its primitive roots and make a fresh start. In other words, the anthropologists. Lorenzo Valla – since you mention Lorenzo Valla – was an anthropologist. His starting point was human society. You say the first humanists were not crypto-atheists. No, they were not. But they were crypto-relativists. Jesus, in their eyes, was embedded in his own world, or as we would call it today his own culture. It was their task as scholars to understand that world and interpret it to their times. Just as it would in due course become their task to interpret the world of Homer. And so on down to Winckelmann.'

She terminates abruptly, glances at the Dean. Has he perhaps given her some signal? Has he, unbelievably, beneath the table, tapped Sister Bridget on the knee?

'Yes,' says the Dean, 'fascinating. We should have brought you down for a whole lecture series, Sister. But unfortunately, some of us have engagements. Perhaps at some time in the future…' He leaves the possibility hanging in the air; graciously Sister Bridget inclines her head.

They are back at the hotel. She is tired, she must take something for her continuing nausea, she must lie down. But the question still nags at her: why this hostility on Blanche's part towards the humanities? I do not need to consult novels, said Blanche. Is the hostility, in some tangled way, aimed at her? Though she has religiously sent Blanche her books as they have come off the press, she can see no sign that Blanche has read any of them. Has she been summoned to Africa as a representative of the humanities, or of the novel, or of both, to be taught a last lesson before they both descend into the grave? Is that really how Blanche sees her? The truth – and she ought to impress this on Blanche – is that she has never been an aficionado of the humanities. Something too complacently masculine about the whole enterprise, too self-regarding. She must set Blanche straight.

'Winckelmann,' she says to Blanche. 'What did you mean by bringing up Winckelmann?'

'I wanted to remind them of what the study of the classics would lead to. To Hellenism as an alternative religion. An alternative to Christianity.'

'That is what I thought. As an alternative for a few aesthetes, a few highly educated products of the European educational system. But surely not as a popular alternative.'