{"id":442,"date":"2005-01-25T07:48:28","date_gmt":"2005-01-25T12:48:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=442"},"modified":"2007-03-31T07:04:53","modified_gmt":"2007-03-31T12:04:53","slug":"my-city-of-ruins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/my-city-of-ruins","title":{"rendered":"My City of Ruins"},"content":{"rendered":"

Theodore Dalrymple has a very thoughtful essay about Dresden<\/a> in the new City Journal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nowhere in the world (except, perhaps, in Israel or Russia) does history weigh as heavily, as palpably, upon ordinary people as in Germany. Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the disaster of Nazism is still unmistakably and inescapably inscribed upon almost every town and cityscape, in whichever direction you look. The urban environment of Germany, whose towns and cities were once among the most beautiful in the world, second only to Italy’s, is now a wasteland of functional yet discordant modern architecture, soulless and incapable of inspiring anything but a vague existential unease, with a sense of impermanence and unreality that mere prosperity can do nothing to dispel. Well-stocked shops do not supply meaning or purpose. Beauty, at least in its man-made form, has left the land for good; and such remnants of past glories as remain serve only as a constant, nagging reminder of what has been lost, destroyed, utterly and irretrievably smashed up.Nor are the comforts of victimhood available to the Germans as they survey the devastation of their homeland. Walking with the widow of a banker through the one small square in Frankfurt that has been restored to its medieval splendor, I remarked how beautiful a city Frankfurt must once have been, and how terrible it was that such beauty should have been lost forever.<\/p>\n

“We started it,” she said. “We got what we deserved.”<\/p>\n

But who was this ‘we’ of whom she spoke?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Who<\/a>, indeed? Dalrymple explores that notion of culpability, that almost Greek tragic sense of a cursed house, nation-wide Atreides<\/a>, shame that pre-emptively annihilates the possibility of pride.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I’ll give Sebald’s On the Natural History of Destruction<\/a> a read this week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Theodore Dalrymple has a very thoughtful essay about Dresden in the new City Journal. Nowhere in the world (except, perhaps, in Israel or Russia) does history weigh as heavily, as palpably, upon ordinary people as in Germany. Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, the disaster of Nazism is still unmistakably and … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “My City of Ruins”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-implicit","category-urban-issues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-78","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1991,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-apr-11-2008","url_meta":{"origin":442,"position":0},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Apr. 11, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"April 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Co' rockin' the links, dear reader! Enjoy! Water-heater rocket was one of the greatest things I've ever seen on TV. (video here) * * * William F. Buckley: Captain Crunch. * * * I think I'm on the outer cusp of the generation that Michael Blowhard is damning\/referring to in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13664,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-383-everett-glenn","url_meta":{"origin":442,"position":1},"title":"Episode 383 – Everett Glenn","author":"Gil","date":"July 14, 2020","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 383: Everett Glenn \"My motivation? Kinda cookie-cutter: Desperate person doesn't want to die of alcoholism, writes instead. That's the blurb.\" Artist, cartoonist, and clotheshorse Everett Glenn joins the show from Berlin to talk about how narrating his life as a story helped him make (some) sense of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/everettglenncomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C549&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/everettglenncomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C549&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/everettglenncomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C549&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/everettglenncomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C549&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/everettglenncomp.jpg?fit=1200%2C549&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5675,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-october-22-2010","url_meta":{"origin":442,"position":2},"title":"Unrequired Reading: October 22, 2010","author":"Gil","date":"October 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Time for another roundup of links, dear readers! Enjoy! The Human Dunkapede. * * * The mudballs of New Jersey. * * * Simon Doonan on Liberace (as it were). * * * Speaking of: worst men's fashion trends of the decade. * * * But much abides, right? *\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Architecture"","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":925,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/death-life-of-great-american-urban-theorists","url_meta":{"origin":442,"position":3},"title":"Death & Life of Great American Urban Theorists","author":"Gil","date":"April 25, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Jane Jacobs died today. Which means that the next book I start will be Robert Caro's mammoth biography of Robert Moses, Power Broker. You've been warned.","rel":"","context":"In "Urban issues"","block_context":{"text":"Urban issues","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/urban-issues"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1901,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-feb-15-2008","url_meta":{"origin":442,"position":4},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Feb. 15, 2008","author":"Gil","date":"February 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Linkus maximus: Just click \"More\". I like Underworld and I like Amsterdam, so this seems like a good fit. * * * Robert Novak is optimistic about New Orleans' ability to support his agenda. * * * In October 2006, Times Picayune columnist Chris Rose documented his own post-Katrina collapse.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Amsterdam"","block_context":{"text":"Amsterdam","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/travel\/amsterdam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12894,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-362-richard-kadrey","url_meta":{"origin":442,"position":5},"title":"Episode 362 – Richard Kadrey","author":"Gil","date":"February 15, 2020","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 362: Richard Kadrey \u201cI try to tell young writers, \u2018Do not fetishize your world-building.\u2019 I\u2019ve seen writers think they have to be Tolkien, they have to invent Elvish, before they can start the first page of their book.\u201d With his new novel, The Grand Dark (Harper Voyager),\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/kadrey2020comp.jpg?fit=1168%2C800&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/kadrey2020comp.jpg?fit=1168%2C800&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/kadrey2020comp.jpg?fit=1168%2C800&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/kadrey2020comp.jpg?fit=1168%2C800&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/kadrey2020comp.jpg?fit=1168%2C800&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}