Herbert's Siena

Herbert is said to be a great poet. I cannot say. (Herbert wrote the new poetry, the sort which doesn’t seem quite so poetical as conceptual, and I seem somehow impervious to concepts). But I can say something interesting (I think) about this cultural trilogy (on Holland, Italy, and Greece respectively): the volumes on Holland and Greece read well to me; but his volume on Italy seems shallow, woefully insufficient. The reason why is this: in Siena, in which Herbert spent 3 days, I have spent a month; in Rome where he was a week, I have lived four months. My interests were very much like his, my intensity of research as intense as his. The result: I know more about Italy than Herbert ever could write. What he writes – bores me (and sometimes irritates me with its shallowness). But I know nothing about Holland or Greece; so however little Herbert had written about them, however shallow, however guidebook and tourist office in scope, I cannot know; and even that little is interesting to me, to me who knows nothing.

The people who discuss Herbert’s essay on Siena on the Sunday literary program, and the various callers in, all think the essay is great; none of them has been to Siena longer than Herbert; most have not been there at all. From which evidence it follows that the horizon of our knowledge, by its very existence, has a distorting effect on our perception of quality. The stuff we don’t know, seems surprising, fresh, and breathtaking, however in fact trivial; the stuff we do know – however obscure – is just old hat.