30 March 2017
Enlightenment City
Washington DC, March 2017
by Neil Tidmarsh
Europe in the 18th century – the age of Enlightenment – the age of Haydn and Mozart, of David Hume and Adam Smith, of Voltaire’s Candide and Diderot’s Encyclopédie, of man’s recognition of himself as a rational being, his realisation that he could make a new world for himself – a just, free, egalitarian world – if he lived a moderate, balanced life governed by reason. There he goes, striding purposefully and optimistically along a wide and sun-lit avenue lined with elegant classical architecture, straight towards a perfect future. If there was ever a moment in history when you could believe he’d make it, this would be it, this Augustan, neo-Classical, Enlightened moment, Europe’s finest hour.
But of course he didn’t make it. He started running, the fool. He ran too fast, lost control, fell over his own feet, found himself drowning in the blood of failed revolutions, blinded by the darkness of all-too-successful counter-revolutions. The wide and sun-lit avenue turned into an airless and sunless labyrinth of Gothic ruins leading to the Terror, the guillotine, the firing-squad, the purge, the gas-chamber. Mozart died young; Beethoven went deaf; Goya went deaf and mad, proclaiming “the sleep of reason produces monsters”, monsters which he painted all too vividly, the worst of them drawn from life rather than from the imagination.
Meanwhile, however, on the other side of the Atlantic…
In Washington DC, it’s easy to believe that the USA was the last and greatest product of the Enlightenment, that enlightened ideas still sustain it and are still sustained by it. Those classic Enlightenment texts – the Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Constitution (1787) – are on display in the National Archives for all to see, but Americans would insist that the words are still alive, outside the glass cases which contain them. And the city itself (founded in 1800), its layout and architecture, feels like the Enlightenment built in brick and stone. It’s all so rational – the strict grid pattern of the streets, the horizontal ones identified alphabetically from bottom to top on the map, the vertical ones identified numerically from left to right, the avenues running diagonally across them to link the Capitol to the White House. You can’t get lost walking along them; and walking is a pleasure, the streets and avenues are so wide and long and straight, so airy and (yes) sunlit, and lined with elegant architecture, big and grand enough to be inspiring but not intimidating, the whole being so well scaled and proportioned. There’s greenery – trees and squares and parks and the long, wide Mall. The traffic flows so smoothly that you barely notice it, the system still fit for purpose after two hundred years and the invention of the internal combustion engine. The city is stuffed full of museums and art galleries like no other, celebrating mankind’s achievements throughout time and around the globe. And there’s the white dome of the Capitol, gleaming and shining in the distance at the end of every long street and straight avenue, so it seems, a vision of that Enlightenment promise of a perfect political system – rational, balanced, moderate, egalitarian. Yes, you think, this is exactly what a city should be like, what every city would be like if it was designed by man at his best and starting from scratch with a completely blank page. What amazing luck, what wonderful synchronicity, what incredible happenstance, that the men who built this new world came over from Europe just at the right time, just when Europe was at its best and ready to equip them with the best of ideas and ideals to do the job.
Then you remember the Watergate buildings pointed out by the taxi-driver as you came in over the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge from Virginia. You notice the homeless beggars. You read in the guidebook about the areas beyond the centre where you’re not recommended to go at night, and the accounts of violent crime in the newspapers. You know that House of Cards is probably more true to life than The West Wing. You’re puzzled by the fact that the huge statue of Freedom on top of the Capitol dome was cast by slaves. You think about the name of that big river, the Potomac, and wonder what that means in what language and where its speakers are now. And you realise that perfection here, as everywhere else, is just a target, something to aim at, something to guide you, not something that can necessarily be attained.
But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try, Washington also tells you. Two generations after the founding of the city, Lincoln spoke at a place not far away to remind his fellow citizens of the unfinished work to which they must remain dedicated, speaking “of the great task remaining before us”. He was referring to the work-in-progress of building a free and equal nation, which was at that moment a matter of terrible civil war, a war which would finally put an end to slavery. The words of his Gettysburg Address are engraved on the south wall of the Lincoln Memorial to remind the nation that the work is still in progress, even today. The latest addition to the Smithsonian museums lining the Mall opened last year – the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It’s a beautiful, stunning building – modern and original, brilliantly reflecting its subject, complementing and enhancing its surrounding city-scape – the twenty-first century’s contribution to the wide, sun-lit avenue along which an enlightened mankind can walk towards a perfect future.
Two months ago, the world watched the ceremony which takes place in the heart of Washington every four years, and was worried and puzzled by the tone of a speech which referred to rusted-out factories, tomb-stones, gangs and drugs. It didn’t seem to fit the bright and optimistic vision of this city. Neither did the dark and irrational character of the campaign which had preceded it. That voice seemed to be challenging Washington to a fight. How would Washington respond?
Last week, the world found out. President Trump was defeated here in his very first attempt to pass a major piece of legislation. A vote in the House of Representatives on his proposed healthcare reforms, his replacement of Obama’s Affordable Care Act, was scrapped at the very last moment. His reforms would have deprived an estimated 24 million Americans of their healthcare. The Republican administration couldn’t muster enough support for it even among its own party.
Was that why Washington was wearing its spring best last week? The sun shone, the sky was a clear blue, trees were bursting into leaf and blossom. Was it smiling in victory? I was there, a tourist strolling its wide streets and straight avenues, marvelling at the wonders in its museums and art galleries, and cheering on the Washington Wizards against the Atlanta Hawks in the Verizon Centre (the Wizards won 104-100). And whenever I looked up, there was the bright dome of the Capitol. Presidents come and go, but the Capitol will always be there, gleaming white on the distant horizon.
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