The Shipwreck of the Humanities, or out of our depths on the sea of history

Antoine. Hey there, Martin. It’s good to see that you made it back home. How was the trip?

Martin. Good to see you, Antoine. And it’s good to be back. The trip was a disappointment.

Antoine. How so? Didn’t you get to travel around the Mediterranean, visiting various places, giving lectures on the way? What happened?

Martin. The ship itself was very nice. It caters to your every need. It was the passengers that drove me crazy. We were on a regular ship of fools.

Antoine. Why? I know you’ve done this before.

Martin. You know the slogan for the trip was “take a voyage into the past.” I was to help them discover different cultures – Greek, Persian, Roman, Arabic – that made the Mediterranean such an unusual place.

Antoine. And?

Martin. It could have been such a great trip. But things did not go so well. First of all, it rained a few days into the trip, and you would have thought the world was coming to an end. People argued with the crew, as if the rain was their fault. They complained that the crew’s English was not good enough or that they spoke with an accent.

Antoine. Where was the crew from?

Martin. All over – I’m not sure. Many different countries: Ukraine, Slovenia, I think, Italy, Ethiopia. They also had to speak English with one another.

Antoine. Well, too bad about the weather.

Martin. It was more the people than the weather. One couple from Tennessee – he was a builder, some bigwig in construction – threatened to sue for their money back if things did not improve. As if the captain could control the weather.

Antoine. Very funny. Let the captain control the ship; let God control the weather.

Martin. You hit the nail on the head. His wife – like her husband, very large and loud – thought there were too many loose morals on the ship and that that caused the rain. God, you see, became angry over people’s behavior.

Antoine. If that were the case, we would always need umbrellas.

Martin. Exactly! But these two were downright pleasant, despite their volume, compared to others. There was a number of doctors, tech specialists, and venture capitalists from the West Coast – they had known each other by working on a new medical device – who constantly repeated how far superior our society was compared to those in the past, and how much more enlightened we are. They spent more time looking at their phones than at the sites.

Antoine. Why do you think they came on the trip?

Martin. Who knows? It seemed to me that this cruise only gave them a greater feeling of their own advanced state of knowledge. They had no sense of wonder. The cathedrals and the palaces, the temples and theaters, only served to deepen their sense of superiority. They photographed everything of course, especially themselves, and posted it to Facebook.

Antoine. I suppose that was to make their friends jealous.

Martin. Maybe so – I cannot tell for sure. But I so often see people photographing themselves in historic places. It’s as if they are trying to find their place in history as they pass through life, even as life passes them by.

Antoine. You should have told this conceited group about the superiority of Roman concrete, whose composition remains a mystery to us.

Martin. I don’t know whether that would have made a difference. It would have been too much for them. For this group, everything was about the future. The past was disposable – not even recyclable!

Antoine. You’d think they discovered their own language and didn’t know that every word had a history.

Martin. Don’t get me started. Their conversations were so filled with clichés that I could have written the script myself. They talked more about venture capital than about the cities we visited. And the money they spent on this trip to learn about the past only to ignore it! Yet they were not the worst.

Antoine. What do you mean? What could top the foolishness of these arrogant, narrow-minded people you’ve been describing?

Martin. Let me tell you. There was another professor on board, also hired by the tour company to give lectures. She was a scholar of literature, and spoke about Italy and Spain.

Antoine. This sounds very promising.

Martin. A failed promise – you have no idea. The crowd thought they were going to learn about famous authors like Boccaccio or Cervantes. Instead she droned on and on about social theory, about the ways we should understand literature as cultural commentary. They heard more about her ideas on society and politics, which were very narrow and fashionable, and very little about the writings themselves and their artistic merit. That is the way literature is taught these days. I am so glad I am an historian, since we stick to the facts and don’t lose our heads in theory!

Antoine. It seems she confirmed everyone’s assumptions about scholars: self-important and self-referential, and yet devoted to making literature appear as lifeless as possible. Instead of showing the influence, beauty, and creativity of these writings, she made them more inaccessible!

Martin. Yes, she reminded me of so many of my colleagues. Students attend their classes because they need to fulfill a requirement, not because they have want to learn what they are teaching.

Antoine. Well, my son tells me that his college no longer has a literature requirement. And how did your talks go with the group?

Martin. Not much better, I’m afraid. I just don’t know what people want to hear these days, if they want to hear anything at all. I thought they would learn something from hearing about my own work and career, whom I met here and there on my own travels through scholarship. I’ve met quite a few important people, you know, who valued my work. But they seemed uninterested, or more focused at looking out the windows. They were as bad as my students.

Antoine. Weren’t they curious about the history of the places they visited?

Martin. Yes – but only to a small degree. I told them about the size of wine exports, the changing trade routes, and gave them a list of naval battles in the region. But they shifted in their seats, and at the end I had few people in attendance, apart from some argumentative sort who was always consulting Wikipedia.

Antoine. That is a shame: another annoying time. Was there no one on the ship that you liked?

Martin. Not really. There was a group from the mid-west somewhere, perhaps Ohio. They were always laughing about something and in high spirits.

Antoine. What did they talk about?

Martin. Mostly the food, which, I must say, was pretty mediocre.

Antoine. Well then let’s get together for dinner soon!