Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Quotation Connections
At the risk of sounding like James Burke, the historian of science who had a program on TV with the above title back in the 1970s, I was struck by some connections between two “Quote of the Day” posts in the last few days. One was Susan Quinn’s quote from Thomas Merton; the other was Seawriter’s quote from Cicero on traitors within. How would those quotes be connected?
Petrarch, who rediscovered Cicero’s letters, is said to have initiated the Italian Renaissance with that rediscovery. Petrarch famously coined the term “Dark Ages” to describe the Medieval period. (He apparently had in mind all of it, from the fall of the Roman Empire to his day). He is also credited with creating the idea of Humanism (now a specified term, that is, “secular humanism”). The idea of the Renaissance was to look to the Ancients (Greece and Rome) for a higher level of civic virtue and esthetic sensibility (tacitly looking elsewhere than the Christian faith for virtue).
James Hankin describes this in his recent book, Virtue Politics. Petrarch lived in a time of relative chaos, including the time of the Black Death, which struck Europe in 1347. Europe was devastated. This was arguably the lowest point in the history of Christendom. Corruption was rampant. Crime was endemic. Life was dangerous and Hobbesian, long before Hobbes noticed. Petrarch’s brother died of the plague.
One of the events of Petrarch’s life, about which he wrote a famous letter, was his ascent of Mount Ventoux with his brother in 1336, 11 years before the Black Death struck Europe. He said he undertook the climb to see the view. He has been described as the first modern “tourist,” with his letter reflecting a “modern” sensibility, although the accuracy of the events described in the letter are suspect, for at least some historians, and the attribution of modern sensibility to Petrarch for the sentiments expressed in the letter seems overhyped. In his letter, to a confidante, he writes of sitting down at the 6,000-plus-foot summit and, after admiring the view of the Rhone Valley, he took out his copy of Augustine’s Confessions (given to him as a gift by the addressee of the letter) and chanced on the following passage:
And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.
Petrarch appears to have been particularly struck by this passage, and considered it to be meant specifically for him in that moment. He spent the descent from the mountain considering the state of his soul. So, he seems to anticipate Merton. His ascent of the mountain, along with the words of Augustine, compelled him to look within. From the letter, it is clear that he was not particularly pleased with the view within. He did seem to achieve something of inward enlightenment by his ascent.
There is an allegory in there somewhere. And some have interpreted the letter as figurative or allegorical more than a description of a real event. Yet the details of the letter, and the view from the top, seem to be accurate descriptions of the experience of the climb and the view one has from atop Mount Ventoux. So perhaps the historians are getting a bit carried away with themselves.
Mount Ventoux has a somewhat different significance in our time. It has been a stage on the Tour de France, one of the most difficult on the Tour, rated as one of the four most difficult cycling climbs in the sport. A premier British cyclist, Tom Simpson, collapsed and died on the Mount Ventoux stage in 1967. His death was attributed to dehydration, a bout of diarrhea prior to the race, and extreme heat, but of note is that amphetamines were found in his jersey pocket after his death.
Mount Ventoux was the penultimate stage (the last competitive stage prior to the ceremonial ride into Paris and around the Champs Elysee to complete the Tour) in 2009 when Lance Armstrong mounted his comeback at age 37, after retiring in 2005 with seven Tour de France wins under his belt. He made a dramatic climb up Ventoux, matching Contador (26), the winner of the Tour that year, and Schleck (24), who placed second in the Tour, pedal for pedal up the grueling climb. He couldn’t overtake them, but they couldn’t shake him. Armstrong took third place in the Tour that year.
His climb up Mount Ventoux was a remarkable feat, not least because of Armstrong’s history of metastatic testicular cancer in the 1990s, prior to his string of victories in the Tour. It wasn’t until several years later that Armstrong was stripped of all his titles for a long history of blood doping and use of steroids, Epoitin, and Growth Hormone. And sometime thereafter, before he finally admitted his guilt on Oprah. Of note is that Contador, the 2009 winner, was also stripped of his 2009 title in the Tour de France for failing a drug test (positive for anabolic steroid use).
So, Mount Ventoux has continued to provide cautionary tales for our time regarding the contemplation of the state of one’s soul.
Published in General
Fantastic article.
Man, I love Ricochet sometimes…
Nanocelt TheContrarian,
I’ve never met you and yet I can say, you’re OK, in my book.
Anyone who writes a post using the show Connections to Connect two other posts is OK in my book. Using penultimate correctly, and only correctly, is just gravy on the deep-fried turkey.
This is an excellent post. But honest question: Was anyone else really saddened to find out Armstrong was guilty?
Fun post. Thanks.
James Burke would have segwayed into how the trees stripped from Mt. Ventoux were used to build the ships that gave France naval temporary superiority …then onto something about cuisine and then finishing up with the invention of vulcanized rubber or the radio.
Segwayed! I like.
Me too. In fact, we should make this standard orthography: this spelling addresses an annoying problem in our language.
When I read the word in conventional form, I always interrupt my internal Talking Book voice and say, “Hold on! What in the Sam Hill does ‘seg-OOOO-d’ mean?”
It just goes to show that I’m better off sticking with flatland bicycling, even though my surname seems to be based on the Slavic root word for mountain: Gora. We might include a week in Slovenia on a trip to Europe later this year. Family history and DNA tests don’t show that any of my ancestry comes from there, but that’s where my surname seems to have come from.
A few days ago my wife, who had been looking at travel videos of the country before deciding that it looked interesting, found out that there is a region, Gorenjska, seemingly based on our surname or vice versa. It’s not a political subdivision, but an alpine region that borders Austria and Italy in its northwest corner. I wonder if a better place to contemplate the state of my soul, though, would be in the flat, agricultural valleys with views of snow-covered mountains in the distance. A ride from Ljubljana to Kranjska Gora, which I presume translates to something like “Edge of the Mountain” if the “Kran” part is anything like the “krain” in Ukraine, would require 3500 feet of climbing, which isn’t out of the range that I might do on a ride. Kranska Gora seems to be a popular tourist place for those who want to go hiking higher up, but I dunno. Why can’t I do my soul contemplation in flatter areas where I don’t have to huff and puff my way up the hills?
“Camp” is a surname derived from a Proto-Indo-European word (via Old Welsh, to Kanawha Valley West Virginian) meaning “camp-out”, in the sense of “camp out on the couch.” Since I learned about this, I have discovered that the best place to contemplate my soul is right here, on the couch.
I found this etymology on the Internet:
But there is no reason you can’t do games, athletic practice, and military drill on your couch.
So… I succeeded in not sounding like Burke? Great! Although I must confess (I must, I must) that I sat glued to the tv with rapt attention when I listened to him. I was completely hooked.
Ah, memories.
I doubt it. Even his great fans that I knew were unsurprised and unsympathetic to his loss of medals. To me the reason for that was the depth and breadth of his doping, his insistence on his teammates doing likewise, and his vehement denials over many years, when it was clear something was going on. It was the Tour de France, after all.
I also have difficulty imagining that he has a soul on which he can contemplate or meditate. That just doesn’t seem to fit him. To me he gives no sense that is has any inkling of inwardness. Perhaps I am wrong.
I certainly was.
My only annoyance about it was that I liked to be a namedropper and point out that I had bought a couple of bicycles from a young man (working in his father’s bicycle shop) who afterwards was a member of one of Lance Armstrong’s training teams for a few years, and who one year got to go to the Tour de France as part of his job. After Armstrong lost his medals, everytime I’d bring that up, somebody would bring up Armstrong’s doping.
I no longer use that bicycle shop but I do drive by it now and then. Last week as I drove by I was trying to think of an excuse to stop in and see if the son has taken over his dad’s bicycle shop, or what he’s doing these days. I have kept more in touch with news about what his mother is doing. (His mother was for some time the secretarial assistant to the Director at my old workplace.)
As for the doping, it wasn’t the dope alone that got those medals for Armstrong. Dope or no dope, he could do feats on his bicycle that I can barely comprehend.
I interviewed him once. You know they say you should never meet your heroes? Didn’t apply here. Charming and sharp and intellectually brisk as you’d expect, and decent, friendly, and normal. I think we even had a laugh about some of his fashion choices.