If the issue were approached in a genuinely sympathetic way, the restitution would be à magnanimous gesture of recognition of how much Greek culture has meant to Britain. Barriers have been erected to the return because it’s been treated as a game of political one-upmanship. That’s why I want to emphasise that returning the Marbles could be a win-win for both countries.
Tista Austin writes about 'Mercouri’s talent for emotive hyperbole with her vision of the Parthenon as “the soul of Greece” ...' This is not emotive hyperbole. The equivalent of the Parthenon in any other culture doesn't exist. If King Arthur, Pitt the Younger and Sir Winston Churchill jointly stole the funds of the British Empire and used them to pay Christopher Wren to build St Paul's cathedral which then as a new building formed an important part of the backdrop to the lives of Shakespeare, Milton, Locke, Hobbes and Isaac Newton contemporaneously, you might be somewhere close, but you would still come second.
Now, ok, Athens wasn't Greece, and also wasn't all it's cracked up to be. Pericles did not know when he delivered that oration what the many not the few would do to his and Aspasia's actual and then spiritual son in 406 and 399, and I suspect many admirers of the oration don't know either. But if you can't accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative when celebrating your national myth, when can you? You hear a lot more from the English about Wilberforce than about the historical background giving rise to Wilberforce.
The marbles must go back. Their extended residence in London has almost certainly been a good thing for them and for art and scholarship, but that is irrelevant to their future.
For years this argument is on-going and many a British institutions have stymied the debate and claimed the Elgin Marbles belong in the British Museum and to not be returned. Having prepared a thesis many years ago on Parthenon I never ceased to be amazed by its architectural beauty, history and significance. That it’s been looted and destroyed by Brits and Turks is just the tip of the iceberg. Nations are looted, (Cyprus, Greece, see conflicts in Middle East) all over fir their cultural and political history. The Elgin Marbles are pawns in a power game. Yes they must be returned but so much sovereignty to nations all over the world who haven’t got it. Would returning the marbles imply that real sovereignty is also returned where it’s due? Great piece on the marbles!
If your arguments against the legality of the removal rest on an Italian translation of the Firman, and some misdirection about Elgin's motives, then I have too high an opinion of your intellect not to conclude that the marbles were legally acquired, and are legally held.
It would be an interesting exercise to have the British Museum decide which acquisitions from Greece would genuinely balance out losing the marbles. Start with the antikythera mechanism, add the Olympia Praxiteles, and then keep on fillling up the shopping trolley. The swap could then be proposed, I suppose, but I would have thought doing so would be more likely to inflame opinion than lead to a resolution.
This issue is as much about sentiment as anything else, which is why my article proposed that the return of the sculptures should be seen not as a LOSS but a GAIN - in international friendship with an ally, in moral status, and in opportunities for the BM to host other objects and make an appealing display of the frieze. To insist 'they are ours, we're keeping them, better here than there' seems to me increasingly pointless and ungracious.
I understand that you and others may disagree, and that some people in the UK have strong feelings about holding on to the sculptures (though polls suggest fewer than ever) just as many in Greece do about their return. I was once on the other side of the debate; but it is interesting that conservative voices, such as those of Ed Vaizey and David Frost in the House of Lords, are now to be heard arguing for the restitution of the Parthenon sculptures.
My arguments don't rest on any opinion (dubious) of my intellect (equally dubious), nor on the question of legality or otherwise of the sculptures' acquisition. But it is hardly "misdirection" to note that Elgin was a treasure hunter, that he did not provide any original 'receipt' for the Marbles as requested by the BM, that whatever permission he acquired was not from Greeks but from Turks, and that he first removed the antiquities to his private estate, where they remained for many years (and where some major pieces still remain). Are any of those untrue?
Thousands of other objects in the BM that were extracted from Greece when it was under Ottoman rule are NOT being requested by the Greeks. The uniqueness of the Parthenon as a symbol is why I argue that other objects are not equally contestable. Last year the Antikythera Mechanism (since you mention it) was happily loaned by the Athens National Museum for an exhibition at the Science Museum, which opened with a reception at which the Greek PM gave a warm address, by which no opinions were inflamed. Such exchanges might become even more common once a resolution of the Parthenon were arranged.
The Trustees of the BM have themselves claimed that a deal is only 10% from completion. There will be sticking points, but with goodwill that 10% needn't constitute an unbridgeable gulf. Perhaps it sounds naive to ask for goodwill, but this is not a battlefield, and in my view it need not be a question of victory and defeat.
If William the Conqueror had moved half of Stonehenge to Normandy no-one would much have minded for several centuries, just as they didn't in our timeline during those same centuries as the stones sat in a field doing not very much and attracting almost zero attention. As in our timeline attention would only have been paid from the 19th century, and then only by the sort of people who decide to have always been spiritual descendents of the Druids and wave twigs around on the solstices because Christianity is like, really oppressive, man. Except in the alternate universe they'd be even more insufferable because they'd have a story about how Stonehenge was really the first Parliament which is why the king destroyed it.
Principles be damned, let history take its course. They came to Britain because Elgin could get them here; they've stayed in Britain because Greeks haven't yet been able to compel their return. The dick-measuring is the point. Purely on that basis I would like to see them stay in Britain. But of course, if they do end up going back, that will be another historically significant development that they're at the heart of. Which will be interesting, even if lamentable.
It’s easy enough to take an unsympathetic and cynical view on the issue - that has long been the case in Britain. We’ve got them, we’ll keep them. Might is right. Possession is nine tenths of the law. There might be room for a different approach. To think about real feelings on both sides of the debate, and see if something positive might emerge to assuage the apparent hurt and anger expressed on both sides.
It’s a plea for goodwill and friendship rather than sneering and cynicism. That sometimes works in human relations, if not often in politics. Perhaps this issue should be an exception from ‘politics as usual’?
If there's one thing guaranteed to set off my cynicism it's an argument for X on the basis that X would constitute goodwill and friendship, whereas not-X would be unsympathetic and cynical. I'm not sure that genuinely held feelings are exempt from cynicism-as-usual. (Of course, I'm exactly the sort of person who wouldn't be).
Your suggestion isn't a bad one, if mutual wins could be found in a return to Athens that's certainly far better than an acrimonious return. Maybe even better than an acrimonious status quo. But I don't think the arguments for return are as straightforwardly on the side of the angels as you do.
Thanks for that parallel! St Paul’s is good too.
If the issue were approached in a genuinely sympathetic way, the restitution would be à magnanimous gesture of recognition of how much Greek culture has meant to Britain. Barriers have been erected to the return because it’s been treated as a game of political one-upmanship. That’s why I want to emphasise that returning the Marbles could be a win-win for both countries.
Tista Austin writes about 'Mercouri’s talent for emotive hyperbole with her vision of the Parthenon as “the soul of Greece” ...' This is not emotive hyperbole. The equivalent of the Parthenon in any other culture doesn't exist. If King Arthur, Pitt the Younger and Sir Winston Churchill jointly stole the funds of the British Empire and used them to pay Christopher Wren to build St Paul's cathedral which then as a new building formed an important part of the backdrop to the lives of Shakespeare, Milton, Locke, Hobbes and Isaac Newton contemporaneously, you might be somewhere close, but you would still come second.
Now, ok, Athens wasn't Greece, and also wasn't all it's cracked up to be. Pericles did not know when he delivered that oration what the many not the few would do to his and Aspasia's actual and then spiritual son in 406 and 399, and I suspect many admirers of the oration don't know either. But if you can't accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative when celebrating your national myth, when can you? You hear a lot more from the English about Wilberforce than about the historical background giving rise to Wilberforce.
The marbles must go back. Their extended residence in London has almost certainly been a good thing for them and for art and scholarship, but that is irrelevant to their future.
For years this argument is on-going and many a British institutions have stymied the debate and claimed the Elgin Marbles belong in the British Museum and to not be returned. Having prepared a thesis many years ago on Parthenon I never ceased to be amazed by its architectural beauty, history and significance. That it’s been looted and destroyed by Brits and Turks is just the tip of the iceberg. Nations are looted, (Cyprus, Greece, see conflicts in Middle East) all over fir their cultural and political history. The Elgin Marbles are pawns in a power game. Yes they must be returned but so much sovereignty to nations all over the world who haven’t got it. Would returning the marbles imply that real sovereignty is also returned where it’s due? Great piece on the marbles!
If your arguments against the legality of the removal rest on an Italian translation of the Firman, and some misdirection about Elgin's motives, then I have too high an opinion of your intellect not to conclude that the marbles were legally acquired, and are legally held.
It would be an interesting exercise to have the British Museum decide which acquisitions from Greece would genuinely balance out losing the marbles. Start with the antikythera mechanism, add the Olympia Praxiteles, and then keep on fillling up the shopping trolley. The swap could then be proposed, I suppose, but I would have thought doing so would be more likely to inflame opinion than lead to a resolution.
This issue is as much about sentiment as anything else, which is why my article proposed that the return of the sculptures should be seen not as a LOSS but a GAIN - in international friendship with an ally, in moral status, and in opportunities for the BM to host other objects and make an appealing display of the frieze. To insist 'they are ours, we're keeping them, better here than there' seems to me increasingly pointless and ungracious.
I understand that you and others may disagree, and that some people in the UK have strong feelings about holding on to the sculptures (though polls suggest fewer than ever) just as many in Greece do about their return. I was once on the other side of the debate; but it is interesting that conservative voices, such as those of Ed Vaizey and David Frost in the House of Lords, are now to be heard arguing for the restitution of the Parthenon sculptures.
My arguments don't rest on any opinion (dubious) of my intellect (equally dubious), nor on the question of legality or otherwise of the sculptures' acquisition. But it is hardly "misdirection" to note that Elgin was a treasure hunter, that he did not provide any original 'receipt' for the Marbles as requested by the BM, that whatever permission he acquired was not from Greeks but from Turks, and that he first removed the antiquities to his private estate, where they remained for many years (and where some major pieces still remain). Are any of those untrue?
Thousands of other objects in the BM that were extracted from Greece when it was under Ottoman rule are NOT being requested by the Greeks. The uniqueness of the Parthenon as a symbol is why I argue that other objects are not equally contestable. Last year the Antikythera Mechanism (since you mention it) was happily loaned by the Athens National Museum for an exhibition at the Science Museum, which opened with a reception at which the Greek PM gave a warm address, by which no opinions were inflamed. Such exchanges might become even more common once a resolution of the Parthenon were arranged.
The Trustees of the BM have themselves claimed that a deal is only 10% from completion. There will be sticking points, but with goodwill that 10% needn't constitute an unbridgeable gulf. Perhaps it sounds naive to ask for goodwill, but this is not a battlefield, and in my view it need not be a question of victory and defeat.
If William the Conqueror had moved half of Stonehenge to Normandy no-one would much have minded for several centuries, just as they didn't in our timeline during those same centuries as the stones sat in a field doing not very much and attracting almost zero attention. As in our timeline attention would only have been paid from the 19th century, and then only by the sort of people who decide to have always been spiritual descendents of the Druids and wave twigs around on the solstices because Christianity is like, really oppressive, man. Except in the alternate universe they'd be even more insufferable because they'd have a story about how Stonehenge was really the first Parliament which is why the king destroyed it.
Principles be damned, let history take its course. They came to Britain because Elgin could get them here; they've stayed in Britain because Greeks haven't yet been able to compel their return. The dick-measuring is the point. Purely on that basis I would like to see them stay in Britain. But of course, if they do end up going back, that will be another historically significant development that they're at the heart of. Which will be interesting, even if lamentable.
It’s easy enough to take an unsympathetic and cynical view on the issue - that has long been the case in Britain. We’ve got them, we’ll keep them. Might is right. Possession is nine tenths of the law. There might be room for a different approach. To think about real feelings on both sides of the debate, and see if something positive might emerge to assuage the apparent hurt and anger expressed on both sides.
It’s a plea for goodwill and friendship rather than sneering and cynicism. That sometimes works in human relations, if not often in politics. Perhaps this issue should be an exception from ‘politics as usual’?
If there's one thing guaranteed to set off my cynicism it's an argument for X on the basis that X would constitute goodwill and friendship, whereas not-X would be unsympathetic and cynical. I'm not sure that genuinely held feelings are exempt from cynicism-as-usual. (Of course, I'm exactly the sort of person who wouldn't be).
Your suggestion isn't a bad one, if mutual wins could be found in a return to Athens that's certainly far better than an acrimonious return. Maybe even better than an acrimonious status quo. But I don't think the arguments for return are as straightforwardly on the side of the angels as you do.