John Maynard Keynes

Magical mystery tour de force

*“Time of the Magicians”, by Wolfram Eilenberger, trans. Shaun Whiteside*

Whilst in the midst of reading Wolfram Eilenberger’s book Zeit der Zauberer (2018) in German, I was interested to see that now a couple of years later an English translation has been published by Penguin Press. Not that many German non-fiction works get that far. And not that many as well reviewed – a very good review indeed by Jennifer Szalai at the NYT that hopefully encourages some good sales and thoughtful reading on that side of the Atlantic.

Certainly, I enjoyed the book immensely, and Eilenberger’s interwoven portrait of four extraordinary men – Martin Heidegger, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Cassirer, Ludwig Wittgenstein – formulating their ideas into interconnecting but individual philosophies amidst the ruins, so to speak, of the First World War and the disintegrating Weimar Republic, is told in a very winning and readable way; some German critics found it to be too so. (Enough of the Feuilletonisten here have a tendency I think to want to keep “high” culture just that!) Believe me, an awful lot of German writers struggle with what one may call ‘accessibility’ – that is, not just informing and hoping for the best, but presenting difficult subject matter such that it reads as a narrative thereby capturing the attentive reader. This, then, foremost is an immensely readable book.

Cover “Zeit der Zauberer” by Wolfram Eilenberger

There is no denying that some of the stuff is indeed difficult, or as difficult as one wants to make it; one could go barmy trying to extricate the precise and nuanced meaning, especially in terms of the references to primary sources, and the stringency of formulation and terminology is a hurdle for those without a pertinent academic background (like, guess who!). My reading, then, concentrated on the living in the time, and I conquered my irritations at just how many ways these guys came up with of saying approximately the same thing and all in the interest of justifying their (to be fair, ‘our’) existence. When I was really irritated I would mumble something along the lines of: What hocus-pocus! But they were, after all, magicians of a special sort; all occupied with their own very special brand of magical thinking!

Amongst the great lives, one very great life

Most people take the economical way to Keynes! Not so me – rather, beyond name recognition, my introduction to one of the greatest economists of the 20th century came via the Woolfs, in whose lives and amongst the other brilliant players in “Bloomsbury”, Maynard Keynes played a significant role. Love it that the young British playwright, James Graham, should choose him as a “great life” in the BBC Radio 4 “Great Lives” series. I hope he retains his enthusiasm, for what great stuff there is in this life – for theatre or for film!

So much more than an economical life

“Economics” as a discipline may ring dry and so,well… economical; that which remains once the human is removed from capital – a once succulent fruit; peeled, shredded, cut to the core. And the practitioners? The stars of any day seem often to be forgot, the theoretical paths taken rarely crossing and the enmity great. I actually do read some here and there, that is, somewhat economically – for instance, Krugman (because he is cranky and often says what I like) and other pieces of NY Times reporting and opinion, and Duflo & Banerjee. The Economist, I rather loathe – but it sometimes comes my way and I attempt to take what I can from stuff written by god knows who (they don’t tell you!), and in a language decipherable to but a few. Fairly regularly I browse the “Wirtschaft” pages of German media; the Suddeutsche Zeitung and sometimes the Frankfurter Allgemeine which is big on business (thankfully, not only) in a big way.

This is all to say, whilst I am not an absolute duffer, economics, and especially the business side, is not my thing. But John Maynard Keynes I do know, and I know him by way of the company he kept, and a piece by Jonathan Kirshner in The New York Times last December reminding of the publication one hundred years before of Keynes’ seminal work written in the aftermath of the Versailles peace conference, brings this back to mind.

…The book, “The Economic Consequences of the Peace,” turned out to be a phenomenon. It swiftly went through six printings, was translated into a dozen languages, sold over 100,000 copies, and brought world fame to its 36-year-old author, John Maynard Keynes…
…“Economic Consequences” is majestically written — Keynes was close to the iconoclastic Bloomsbury cohort of artists and writers, and his incisive, candid portrayals of the peacemakers (Georges Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson) reflected the no-holds-barred influence of Lytton Strachey’s recently celebrated “Eminent Victorians.” The book was also wildly controversial for its assessments of the capacity of Germany to pay the reparations demanded by the victorious Allied powers…
Opinion, The New York Times, Dec. 7 2019

Bertrand Russell; John Maynard Keynes, Baron Keynes; Lytton Strachey
by Lady Ottoline Morrell, vintage snapshot print, 1915 NPG Ax140438
© National Portrait Gallery, London

Without having (yet) read the book, it seems clear Keynes prophesied that which would later be agreed by many in hindsight; the aggravating role the Treaty would play in creating an economic and social environment that would lead, and alone in the interests of satisfying extreme French reparation demands, to very bad places. And they did; a brief period of recovery was followed by political uncertainties, the market crash, a worldwide depression with all the accompanying societal and personal catastrophes, and which would ultimately facilitate the rise of tyranny and fascism in Germany and elsewhere.

I have just been writing a little about Lytton Strachey in my meanderings through Virginia Woolf’s daily life, as recorded by herself, and as it happens I am in the midst of a time (July, 1919) in which Eminent Victorians (various copies available at the Internet Archive) is being lauded as a resounding success, so Kirshner’s observation in respect to this book attracts my attention. Whether this attraction will run to reading either or both only time will tell, but in terms of the preoccupations of this extraordinary group of friends, where the lines are often blurred between (auto)biography and literature, and memoir-writing practiced with fervor as the true repository of truth, that, beyond the situational, theoretical and factual world of politics and finance, Keynes application of colorful brush strokes to his portraits of the movers and shakers of the time would hardly surprise. More determinedly then I now say: yes, two works, both a century old, that should be read.