As soon as Mr Hermans comes to the real subject of his book, the wanderings of Social Darwinism, he shows both erudition and a fluent style …
Bart Leeuwenburgh, Gewina, no. 1, 2004.
Author: Cor Hermans
Mr Hermans sets out … to discover the essence of Social Darwinism. This results in an a-historic approach …. [Still] the investigation of Mr Hermans certainly is worth reading. For those who will not worry too much about the formulation of the historical problem to solve, this book offers a fine survey, nicely written, of the many variants of Social Darwinism. It’s a valiant undertaking to add a fresh contribution to the so-called ‘Darwin industry’, even venturing to come up with something novel to it.
Barbara Allart, Tijdschrift voor geschiedenis, December 2004
The historian Cor Hermans wrote a bulky, but highly readable and interesting thesis on Social Darwinism, in which he paid most attention to what connected the social Darwinists. This was, most of all, the high value they set on the concepts of selection and, joined to it, elimination: the disposal of the socially weak.
Nederlands Dagblad, 13 February, 2004
This book is ‘likely to effect an immense mental revolution’, the London publisher John Chapman prophesied in 1859 after Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species had appeared. Was he right? Yes, Cor Hermans states in his interesting thesis … Mr Hermans demonstrates in detail how thinkers like Galton (the father of eugenics), Spencer, Wallace, Haeckel and Schäffle – each in their own way – tried to shape this aspiration [to redefine sociology, social politics, and social philosophy in a Darwinist way], what emphasis they chose, and how they fitted it in with the national and socio-political context they were engaged in. But Mr Hermans does more. He shows that the efforts of the social Darwinists were not necessarily ‘faulty’, or, as has been suggested in historiography, only a vulgarisation or misleading popularisation of Darwin’s theory. Darwin himself wished for his universal theory to penetrate the humanities.
Amanda Kluveld, Historisch Nieuwsblad, March 2004
It was a motley collection, these social Darwinists, and Mr Hermans has enough on his plate to find the common denominator. The risk appears of a portrait gallery of eminent Victorians, however ably painted; therefore the author at regular intervals takes up stock to determine what can really be called social Darwinist. (…) Mr Hermans makes us notice a number of important personalities, with their theories, who for a long time have been in everyone’s black book.
Samuel de Lange, Trouw, 29 November, 2003
… the first extensive inquiry to appear in Dutch into the social influence of Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Kees Buijs, De Gelderlander, 1 November, 2003
The dissertation of Mr Hermans is a brave crusade against the pulverized idea of Social Darwinism that arose in the course of time.
Enne Koops in Historisch Tijdschrift Groniek, Groningen University, 2004
Horowitz, or the meaning of anticipation
For nearly two hours I watched Horowitz play on Arte Channel, in a documentary from 1985 (The Last Romantic) and then in a concert given in Vienna somewhat later. He played from memory, not a sheet in sight. All went well in the complex coordination between his 82-year-old brain and his magical hands, same age. The old man and the Steinway, catching Liszt, Schumann, Scriabin, a Mozart sonata, a Chopin mazurka.
Once again the maestro seemed to own sound as if it were his private property. What fascinated me most, though, were these smooth hands releasing the piano’s poetry and revealing every key’s colour. In the intimacy of his New York apartment I found the opportunity to observe the little finger of his right hand, closest to the camera. What I saw was anticipation. His entire body, his hands, his little finger, anticipated every note just about half a second before it was actually played. Look at the slight twitching in the little finger that already knows, up front, what next note it has to play. I could see it was a tiny bit nervous, in anticipation, or was it just eagerness?
The little finger, all alone, proved this was not an automaton playing: it had to prepare itself to perform its weighty task, again and again, and it knew it could fail, being human. Robots, surely able to play a piano as facile as any man – in the near future anyway – don’t have anticipating little fingers. Mr Horowitz said he detested perfection. I perfectly understood what he meant.
Aldous Huxley’s trouble
On a black and white photograph, representing a middle aged Aldous Huxley, I found an imprint of his observation on the relationship between fiction and reality:
“The trouble with fiction is that it makes too much sense, whereas reality never makes sense.”
Rilke and Apollo’s torso
Why would a sculptor, working with stone and bronze, need a secretary? Rodin was convinced he could not do without one, and in 1902 hired Rainer Maria Rilke. Sculptures were a major source of inspiration to the poet, who had, the year before, married the sculptress Clara Westhoff. In this period Rilke became convinced that his poems should directly relate to objective reality, and should be tangible, like a thing.
This being his ideal, it is perfectly understandable that, when he visited the Louvre in 1907, he was struck by a Greek torso. This was the marble torso, dating from 470 BC and representing Apollo, which had been excavated in 1872 in Miletus. It probably had decorated the local Roman theatre.
Here is, in my own translation, the poem Rilke wrote in 1907 to commemorate his encounter with this impressive shard of Apollo.
Apollo’s archaic torso
We never knew his fabled head
that held the ripening apples of his eyes. And yet
his torso still glows like a candelabrum,
in it his gaze, turned low now,
still holds and gleams. Or else the bow of his breast
would not blind you, and in the silent shifting
of the loins could not hover a smile
towards the middle, where procreation once was born.
Or else this stone would stand deformed and short
beneath the shoulders falling into transparency,
would not be glistening like the wild beast’s fur;
and would not from all its sides
radiate like a star: for there is not a spot here
that does not see you. You must change your life.
Rilke understood that, if one looked intensely at this torso, it was inevitable to also see the elements (the head, the arms, the legs) that had disappeared. Our imagination more or less forces us to fill in the vacant parts. Apollo’s eyes and gaze, though disappeared, are still there if we look at the chest or the abdomen. The whole is included in the fragment. The imagination may supplement the objective, and in doing so itself becomes objective. In the visible image of the imperfect the perfect may be seen, and the incomplete somehow represents the complete.
In front of this Apollo Rilke realized he was looking at his own imperfection. In this sense the statue looked back at him, judging him, and telling him: “You must change your life.” He knew that, given his shortcomings and his room for personal growth, he himself was a torso too. The realism of his self-image as an incomplete person and a not yet matured poet told him how he could be. Thus, what had been lost in the torso corresponded to his own possibilities that lay ahead. The imperative ‘you must change your life’ was ‘the command from the stone’, as Peter Sloterdijk called it. We all must improve ourselves. We are obliged to make use of our potential and our opportunities to better ourselves, since we are the only beings in the universe who can.
Cor Hermans 