Speaker 3

Hello and welcome to the Penguin podcast where we talk to writers about writing.

Speaker 2

I'm Izzy Sutti and today I'm going to be talking to Sarah Bekwell, a writer who specializes in

Speaker 1

Of art, literature, history, all kinds of studies that rest on the human world rather than either the physical world of nature or the religious world. It's distinct from theology and from the physical studies. It's the study of that cultural realm in which we live so much of our lives when we create art, we tell jokes or we explain things to one another, we teach one another, we learn from one another, we speak our languages, we invent things, it's that whole creative and human realm. And that is the heart of humanism. I mean, it's right there in the words, it's human, it's human studies and human things, which isn't to exclude the material or the natural world far from it. We can't be separated from that, of course. But it is the idea of humanitas in that and the idea of human things being are concerned as human beings, especially in the realm of values and morality.

Speaker 2

But you can believe in a God and be humanist, can't you?

Speaker 2

Yes, it seems to go against the point of humanism to say, oh, you can't be in our gang. I know it's not really like it, you know, we say, I know what you mean. I think about when I've been to church and there were a lot of elderly people when I, my mum was a church organist and I grew up going to church every Sunday. And there were a couple of elderly people and that was the only time they left the house and there was such a sense of community and connection for them at church and that's exactly what it's.

Speaker 1

And that seems very humanist. Oh, absolutely. And I love going into churches and cathedrals and temples and it absolutely fascinates me. And also that sense of community, which the church has provided and other religions are exactly the same, has provided tremendous sense of community, which sometimes we kind of struggle to replace. But I think that that's almost putting things back with the important thing as community. And that comes out of our humanity in relation to each other. And the actual list of beliefs in any religion is almost likely to be secondary to that. That's how I feel about it anyway. Yes, that makes sense. I think because the emphasis is on the here and now with humanism in every way.

Speaker 1

Good question. And I would add to that, it's not just through history, but humanists are still persecuted today. It's still extremely dangerous to present yourself as a humanist in many parts of the world. What's so threatening, so dangerous about it, I think, is an excellent question. And my answer to that would be that not so much that it denies anything to do with God or to do with the beyond, but that it is sort of challenges authority, which is often embodied in religious institutions, but it can also be embodied in political institutions. And humanist of all kinds have tended to refuse that authority or work against it or challenge it. And certainly any kind of totalitarian society, you see it very much in the 20th century with fascism and communism, both deeply anti-humanist in their assumptions, because what matters is the state and the nation. And they sort of almost act as religions in that there's a central dogma which can't be questioned. And humanist of all kinds will always find themselves at odds with that.

Speaker 1

Yeah, they had a, especially in the run up to the Second World War, also the first, but it was particularly marked through the 30s when the threat was so apparent of the rise of fascism, particularly. A lot of them expressed feelings of being quite lost and uncertain, and a lot of their assumptions had been thrown into question, mainly about what humans want, because they sort of had proceeded on a much sunnier view, often of what humans really wanted, which was freedom and respect as individuals, the dignity of being an individual, the right to run their lives as they wished and to have their own relationships that they chose. And then suddenly it looked like people had an incredible attraction to an authoritarian leader and giving themselves up, giving their own personal interests up to this grand assent of the being, a national destiny or whatever. So it was a big challenge to the humanist worldview, and also, of course, it was a challenge in very real terms that a lot of humanists came personally under threat, and they had to decide what to do. Quite a lot of them went into exile from the Central European countries in Germany. But a lot of them did. They were quite active. I mean, a lot would have fought in the war as well when it broke out, but a lot they weren't necessarily pacifists by any means. But a lot of them tried to do what they could to communicate a sense of hope for the future. I think that was absolutely essential to them, was that there has to be a sense of hope in humanity. If we don't have hope, we're really lost. And somehow, you know, I find it very moving to see people like Bertrand Russell and Thomas Mann, who were very outspoken in putting forward this worldview that, yes, everything just seems completely lost, but there must be hope. We must have hope.

Speaker 1

Yes. And also one of the Thomas Mann, for example, of German novelist, who became an exile, went to live in the United States. He did this wonderful series of radio broadcasts via the BBC to Germany and the occupied countries of Europe, which was an incredible feat of organization and technology to transmit, because it wasn't enough to just transmit it on short wave, because Germans weren't allowed to have shortwave radios. So it was recorded onto a disk from Los Angeles. The disk was flown to New York. And from there, it was read out over a sort of telephone line to London, where the BBC recorded it onto another disk, which was then broadcast just on medium wave, which was easier to pick up. So this was done, you know, sort of over quite a long period at regular intervals. And again, his message in most of those was, don't think that this is all there is. Not exactly this will pass, but there is a wider world out there. Hitler can't possibly win in the end, because all of humanity will rise up against him. You know, there will be another world after this. And you really saw that sense of hope, of course, when the war did end, a lot of people put their energies into building international organizations that they hoped would make it much more difficult for such things to happen again.

Speaker 1

It's pretty clear that it didn't have any practical use. So some of the other objects that have been found from that kind of era have clearly been things like spear throwers. They've had a function. But this just seems to be an object of beauty, maybe an object with magical or religious significance. We have absolutely no idea, no way of knowing that. I saw it in an exhibition at the British Museum a few years ago. It moves me because it's incredibly beautiful, because somebody made it, somebody with incredible skill made it. And it, to me, it embodies that human desire to make an object of meaning and beauty out of the physical world around us. So this is the sense of humanity, I suppose, that I am trying to get up with the book, the feeling of as humans, we are so cultural, we are so creative as well and so bound up with our sense of meaning. And we clearly work as far as we can guess about this object. It looks like something like that was already part of us that long ago and has always been. So yes, it's an object of beauty and also great meaning. And it captures my feeling for how broad humanism can be. It really doesn't have to belong to any particular culture, it doesn't have to belong to any particular world view.

Speaker 2

It's part of its appeal that it has no function.

Speaker 1

I think so.

Speaker 1

Yeah, like a lot of people I got very much into birds observing, watching and drawing during the lockdowns, not that I didn't appreciate them before that, but I did much more. But I do think that thing about feeling this or in the size and beauty and puzzlingness and complexity of the universe, that sometimes might be presented as somehow making us feel small or making humans feel insignificant. I mean, Fenceley Blaise Pascal in the 17th century said that the silence of the infinite space is horrifies me because it makes humans feel insignificant. I have to say, for some reason, I've never felt that. The more I spend time outside on a dark night, if I can possibly manage to do it, looking at the stars or reading, I've been fascinated by the James Webb Space Telescope and the new observations that it's brought us, the more I feel a sense of humanity having a place in this, because we are the ones who are observing it, studying it and reflecting on it, this is our place in the universe. However small we are, and however remote our planet is from all we others, this is what we do. I mean, that I find astonishing. And I also just find it beautiful to contemplate. There's a sense of awe, which I think is often found in religion, but I think it can just as often be found in the scientific worldview and in all the other aspects of our experience.

Speaker 1

It gives me a sense of connection to all those other people. Something that crops up several times in the book is the Cathedral of Chart, which I visited a few years ago, spent several days around it and exploring it, incredibly beautiful, incredibly fascinating. You really see in the cathedral how it's been built up in layers of time from its really ancient foundations to the incredible work of the 12th and 13th centuries where a lot of it was built and the oldest of these stained glass windows were made, which are stunning. And then at the top, there's a kind of 19th century structure, which supports the roof. And it's based on railway station design. And I mean, all the people who have worked and still do work all the time to protect and develop and sort of keep that tradition going. I find it moving. So it's beautiful to stand in the cathedral, which is huge. And look up and think, wow, this is way beyond me. But the other half of that same coin for me is that sense of the connection to all the people who have ever worked on it. In the sense of continuity. And also how difficult it is to preserve these things with a chartre several times twice in particular has come very close to being demolished. Once after the French Revolution, when they were very keen on, they had the idea of sort of going and just smashing it up. But somebody pointed out that if they did that, the heap of rubble would block the town center of Chartre for untold years and would be almost impossible to clear. And then again, in the Second World War, where it was almost bombarded in the belief that the Germans were using it as a lookout, the US Army wanted to bombard it. And it was quite a heroic character who went in there and checked. There were no Germans there. So it was saved. So yes, it's throughout the book. I have a feeling of the fragility of things, but also the incredible efforts that people have made throughout to preserve and transmit human culture.

Speaker 2

Well, let's move on to your next object. And this is something that tells a story.

Speaker 1

Through this pass, probably sent Gautard Pass, to get it to his chosen publisher in Basel, who produced the book, and it was immediately one of the great works of printing. The publisher hung on to these blocks for many years and died. And then they were sort of passed around, they kind of disappeared at most times, and then somebody would discover them, wow, look is, you know, 279 incredible pair wood blocks of these great illustrations. People bought them, sold them, some printers decided to use them to create new additions, because you can still print from them. And they ended up in University of Ingallsstadt for a while, and then Munich, apart from a couple that actually went back to Luvan, which is where Fisheus was from. It was very unfortunate that Luvan, the library was actually destroyed twice by firebombing in first the first world war, and then the second world war, so those two were lost there. Munich was bombed in the war, as well, the library, and the pair wood blocks have gone, they vanished. So to me, it sort of represents something that wasn't extraordinary survival, but now isn't, and partly through the misfortune of war, of course, which is where we lose so many things. It also represents, I think, the great sense of hope that we have in medicine as a humanistic practice, anatomy as kind of victory of reason over, well, I guess, over religious prohibition, which is what mainly was holding it back.

Speaker 1

Definitely. And history, as soon as you start reading in any of these fields, these conflicts between people just throw themselves up in your face. You know, you don't have to hunt very far to find them. And quite a lot of the humanists in the book, you know, maybe you think of humanists, I mean, I have this tendency, I've always sort of thought of humanists as a gentle breeze, sure, you know, the kind of vegetarian sandal wearing nice people would be the stereotype that was often put around in the 20th century. But actually, a lot of the humanists in the book spend an inordinate amount of time on feuds and quarrels and there were a few cases of it actually coming to physical fisticuffs, particularly in the Renaissance, particularly in Florence, which was, you know, pretty high powered intellectually place. And people had some pretty big egos sometimes. But on the other hand, they often had quite a lot to be agitistical about, because they were achieving a lot.

Speaker 2

And also it was at a different stage, wasn't it?

Speaker 1

It was like they had to fight harder almost to keep it, maybe because they were being, I don't know, society was so different than that was a period when there were tremendous changes of political instability, tremendous changes of, you know, you might be in with one influential patron and everything was going well, and then there'd be a change of regime and you would be in trouble. But it was also there was a culture of intellectual debate, which is a positive thing. But of course, sometimes it could get a bit overheating.

Speaker 2

And well, let's move to your next object. This is something to drink, which I presume you won't ever drink, because you don't know.

Speaker 1

But also he's fascinated by diversity, the incredible diversity of cultures that were available to him at the time. And of attitudes and ideas and habits and ways of presenting ourselves is even fascinated by different kinds of haircuts or how we behave. So, you know, I've always been very fond of him. So this bottle, when I visited the estate, which I was very keen to see, I bought a couple of bottles there, they still sell their wine. And I gave some away. And I kept one. And of course, I drank it because it's very good wine. And then quite a few, so that was it. I had no more bottles. And quite a few years later, a friend of mine saw in a charity shop this 1999 bottle of the wine, selling for like a pound. And she bought it for me. So I've had it ever since. And it still sits there in my kitchen. I haven't stored it properly or anything. So I don't dare to open it, partly because I don't want to lose it. And partly because I just have the feeling that something is going to have gone wrong with that wine in that period of time. It's probably not very drinkable because I haven't been kept it in a cellar or anything. But I just, it's a very treasured object, partly because of the random way in which it happened to come up. Because also you were bought it as a gift by someone who knew you would love it. Yeah, it's a very old friend, a very old and dear friend that I've known for since my university days. So yeah, that really makes it more special.

Speaker 1

We want to stop it. And this seems to be a part of the human experience from the vast majority of us. So I inclined to think that it probably does, but I would be reluctant to sort of state it as a fact, because it is actually, you know, there are those who try and investigate that. I think that George Eliot knew what she was talking about, because her novels have a huge cast of characters who we really enter into their feelings and experiences in this complex tapestry of life. This is the novel. This is what the novel has mostly done, is to show us more than one human being, feeling different things in relation to each other and in relation to their situation. And as a reader, I think of it as kind of hitching a ride inside somebody else's head so that you feel some of what they feel through the skill of the novelist who's presenting it. There's a connection, I think, back to the montane, what's been called the montane-esque tradition in literature, because although he sort of does that, but there's only one character, it's himself, but that self is so multitudinous, multifarious and complex and constantly changing his mind about things and constantly writing about other people. Those others come in through his reading and his social life. So he gives us this rich tapestry of human experience.

Speaker 2

What do you read before bed? Do you tend to read books about humanism or, I suppose, more philosophical books?

Speaker 1

So yes, it's absolutely vital that diversity of experience and perspective is also a part of how we structure society and how we interpret society, so that we have perhaps a society, this is Dan Goodley's argument, that is more based on a sense of our connections to each other, and for some things we do need to rely on each other rather than all being atoms on our own completely self-reliant and independent. So the general sort of diversity and universality thing, the way I always think of it, because sometimes almost it sounds as though they're set as opposites against each other, but I think the really giveaway thing is that when recognition or respect for one goes missing in a society, the other one often goes as well. So a society that has no respect for diversity is likely to be a society that doesn't recognize the universally human, the universal rights of all human beings, regardless of gender and race and everything else, but a society that loses respect for that is also not likely to have any respect for diversity. So that shows, I think, how the two are absolutely intertwined with each other. And you're right near the end of the book about post-humanists, and they look forward to a time when humans kind of died out really, and then transhumanists who want us to accelerate towards technology and fascinated by those groups of people.

Speaker 1

What is it to be a human being? Transhumanism tends to see a kind of disembodied mind as being the future when we've merged with some sort of non-biological technology, or we've become so intertwined with it, that's really the sort of the pure consciousness, purely disembodied consciousness that can somehow still be human and or transhuman maybe, but it's something that is in some sense us that we can look forward to perhaps traveling the universe, but without needing a body, which of course makes us mortal and limited if we have a body. I have always enjoyed reading science fiction and love the way that science fiction helps us to imagine these very remote futures, possible futures, these very different ways of looking at ourselves, but I also have found myself becoming more and more aware of how much is lost in that vision of what it is to be a human being, because what it is to be a human being is not to be a disembodied mind. None of us have had that experience, it's to be embodied, mortal, subject to all kinds of limitations, but also connected to other people that are connected to our particular time and place, and living in a very rich cultural environment, as well as a rich natural environment, and I feel a great sense of loss if those things are imagined as having been somehow jettisoned as no longer important.

Speaker 2

It feels like you wouldn't necessarily listen to the birds singing like

Speaker 1

He just wrote beautifully, I think, about life, but what he's mainly remembered for, or the thing that has been most lasting of all the many things that he wrote and said, is something that has become known as the happiness creed, and he does say creed is kind of, it's not a word that comes naturally to him because, you know, he's not a believer in the religious sense, but his creed is, and he reads it on that recording and it goes like this, while I am opposed to all orthodox creeds, I have a creed myself and my creed is this, happiness is the only good, the time to be happy is now, the place to be happy is here, the way to be happy is to make others so, and he goes on to say this creed is somewhat short, but it's long enough for this Life, strong enough for this world, if there's another world when we get there, we can make another creed, but this creed certainly will do for this life, and I can't think of a better statement of the humanist worldview than that, especially the emphasis on making others so, I mean, it's not a selfish pursuit of happiness, or rather if you did that, you wouldn't attain it, I mean, the way to be happy is to make others so, I love, there's a quote from him, he was very funny as well, wasn't he?

Speaker 1

A sharp comment, yeah, he was very funny, and also, very sort of just full of energy, you know, very vigorous sort of manner, but he could also lay on the, I don't know, sort of flashing thunderstorms and lightning, if he wanted to lay on the grand green yon, he could, but he would say, no, he would say things like, you know, and now, as he sees religion receding, now we can see the ghouls withdraw, you know, their empty eye sockets that sort of withdraw from view, and so he could, he could sort of have fun with rhetoric, make people laugh, make people shiver with the horror imagery, all of which is also a very humanistic tradition that of the fascination with rhetoric, persuasive speech, vivid speech, vivid writing as well, it's a tradition that fascinated the Renaissance humanists how to speak elegantly or powerfully, and Of course it comes from the classical world, where there was this great discipline of studying how you speak well in public life, and how you write well, and you definitely see it with him, I mean, he was, he honed a lot of it in his life as a lawyer, where he was renowned for his really rousing deliveries, but also even before that as a school teacher, and he was quite very funny there too, he actually lost his job as a school teacher in one place, when he said that he thought baptism was a very good thing, as long as it was done

Speaker 1

Well, it's very much an up and down process, because that isn't that long ago. I mean, that was, you know, that was in the 20th century, and that was just one viewpoint, not everybody agreed with him, but interestingly, I mean, one of the things that he said, it was this thing that became known as kind of new humanism, which was based on his views and his supporters, and it was a very elite, it was very much about going back to the classical authors, especially ancient Greek and the Athenian ideal, but particularly with the continuing the thing that was the case then, that it was only for an elite, really, because the vast majority of people, for one reason or another, were excluded from it. And one of the things that he said was that, because there's this famous line, which appears in a play by the Roman African author, Terrence, which is often quoted, which basically translates as, I am human, nothing human is alien to me. And that's exactly that montane thing about recognizing ourselves in each other. And Babit said, well, the problem with that, you know, nothing human is alien to me is that it's not discriminating enough. So it's like, I mean, that's one approach to humanism. It's slightly left a bad image in some circles of humanism. It's sometimes thought of as being elitist, as being confined to a Eurocentric, and particularly a Greek and Roman centric, view of what culture is, and of being something that you have to sort of study, and of being something a bit retrograde and not critical enough of other aspects of the human condition. But I think that really is a misrepresentation of what the vast majority of humanism has been about, certainly, in recent centuries, where, as I say, the more open and all embracing and welcoming humanism is, the happier I am. I mean, that's very much how I'd like to see it. But yes, I think that particular strand of humanism has given humanism a bad image, which I think is a great shame because that's completely against the spirit of what the vast majority of these humanists that I cover in the book are all about.

Speaker 2

And my last question, what's the most exciting stage of writing view?