Emulation and Creativitiy

"Play, become suddenly and unexpectedly too real, confuses the emotions."
    --Algernon Blackwood, "The Wings of Horus"

J.E. Lendon's Soldiers and Ghosts (Yale, 2006) continues to haunt me four years after I first read it. There are many things there to chew over, but for the present, I want to draw attention to the sometimes literal imitation of the mythic heroes of Greece and Rome by warriors and generals. The examples that struck me most forcefully are the attempts by Julian (sometimes called the Apostate, the last formally pagan emperor of Rome) during his final, Persian campaign in 363. (Ledon details this in his evocatively titled Chapter XIII, "Julian in Persia, AD 363: Triumph of the Ghosts.") Julian literally tried to repeat various scenes from the life of Alexander and the Trojan War, even at the risk of his life and his army. He was emulating Achilles, Odysseus, and Alexander because it was the correct thing to do, just as emulation of past forms was the correct way of writing at the time. There was no real possibility of creativity or originality. Julian was reviving something essentially dead.

In a previous post ("Churchill and the Personal"), I noted Winston Churchill's tendency to emulate his father and his ancestor Marlborough. One can possibly see a similarity to Julian in this behavior, particularly his antics in instigating a cavalry charge at Omdurman in 1898, and in the defense of Antwerp in 1914. Whatever he was doing, he was certainly playing in some very deep and serious sense, but I do not get the impression he was trying to revive something. In his own creative and peculiar way, he was trying to learn as well as to lead. Had he not done these things, and many others, had he not written his way through the four volumes of Marlborough, the story of an earlier war between Britain and a power that sought world domination, could he have emerged in 1940 as the savior of his country? Could he have worked as he did with Eisenhower and FDR without having so completely internalized the ideal of coalition warfare create by Marlborough and Prince Eugene of Savoy?

The difference, I think, between Julian and Churchill is between emulation for its own sake and emulation as a creative process. The latter is a process that has shaped civilization in many times and many places. It is under appreciated today, for we have moved away from it, but it was the essence of the Renaissance and much of what emerged from it. This is something I will return to in later posts. For now, it is enough to note its existence.

Churchill and the Personal

In the past two posts I have written a bit about the importance of quirks and of offensive mindedness. This leads me to one of the most unusual, and, at least before 1918 offensive-minded political figures of the last century, Winston Churchill. Joseph Maiolo notes that in war, in politics, and in his historical writing, Churchill believed in great men and "inspired leadership" as the answer to most problems. (Joseph Maiolo, Cry Havoc. New York: Basic Books, 2010, p. 173.) This is true of Churchill at man levels, and we might extend it without exaggeration by saying that politics, war, and history were all personal for WSC to an extent rarely seen. At least until he became prime minister in 1940, everything seems to have been a great adventure for him.

A couple of examples ought to suffice to make the point. In 1914 Winston was First Lord of the Admiralty, a position roughly equivalent to the American Secretary of the Navy prior to the consolidation of the armed forces in 1947. The tradition had been that the First Lord, unless an admiral, stayed out of actual operations and planning. Churchill, in the unique position of being able to stay in contact with naval squadrons all over the world through radio and telegraph, could not help but direct operations himself. As if this were not enough, he also agreed to take over the air defenses of the United Kingdom from the Army, and also popped over to Belgium, where he ended up personally directing the British forces at Antwerp for two days, possibly saving the Belgian Army from destruction. Over-and-over in the first year of the War, he became directly involved in ways that no other politician in Britain or America ever had or would again.

This deep personal involvement is also reflected in his biographical writing. His two main subjects were his father, Randolph Churchill, and his illustrious ancestor, John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough. Not only did he research and write long biographies of both men, there is strong evidence that he consciously tried to follow, and complete his father's political career, holding the same offices and exhibiting similar patterns of political behavior (indeed many contemporaries between the Wars were afraid he had inherited his father's madness as well). The case of Marlborough is more complex, for the imitation was much less direct, but it is important to note that he spends much time justifying many of his ancestor's personal and political actions, which seemed dishonorable to the Victorians and their successors. Perhaps of more import, he seems to have used Marlborough's close association with the Imperialist general Prince Eugene, and also his handling of his Dutch allies, as a model for his own cooperation with Roosevelt and Eisenhower.  I believe that Winston was able to draw both examples and comfort from his biographical and historical work. He was clearly working with a strong belief in great men. Whether his belief was due to his own perception of himself, or whether the reverse was true is not exactly clear, but it made history and biography personal for him in a way that has rarely been true for other writers.