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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 July 2010
Voltaire tells this story about change and decline:
When the two travellers [a French councill or and a Brahmin] arrived in Asia Minor the councillor said to the Brahmin: “Would you believe that a republic was once established in a corner of Italy that lasted 500 years, and that possessed this Asia Minor, Asia, Africa, Greece, Spain and the whole of Italy?” “So it quickly turned into a monarchy?” said the Brahmin. “You're right,” said the other, “but that monarchy fell, and every day we publish fine dissertations to discover the causes of its decline and fall.” “You take too much trouble,” said the Indian; “this empire fell because it existed.”
Art is self destructive, at least under contemporary conditions, because artists often reject the past to create something new. It can be said that culture and cultural styles – abstract expressionism, punk rock, ragtime – eventually do fail and the explanation may be (in the spirit of Voltaire's account) that cultural producers and the public become bored with something that has existed too long. Nevertheless, some cultural forms persist longer and are more resilient than others.
Resiliency and persistence are themselves problematic. When a cultural form becomes universally accepted – such as Levi jeans, a song from a Broadway musical, or the current widespread revival of Chaplin films by third world countries and by IBM – should we not conclude that such a form has become a meaningless component of the cultural life of a period, rather than a distinctive cultural product that carries original social and symbolic meaning?
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