“The Radetzky March” by Joseph Roth (translated by Joachim Neugroschel)

This novel’s plot spans the lives of three generations of the Trotta family, from its ennobling rise to its tragic fall. The family’s destiny in many ways mimics the arc of the Hapsburg Empire in general. The book was written by Roth in Austria during the inter-war years, but the story’s plot ends just before the First World War concludes. Roth’s characters very much inhabit the multitude and expansive breath of the Empire. “The German Austrians were waltzers and boozy crooners, the Hungarians stank, the Czechs were born bootlickers, the Ruthenians were treacherous Russians in disguise, the Croats and Slovenes, whom he called Cravats and Slobbers, were brushmakers and chestnut roasters, and the Poles, of whom he himself was one after all, were skirt chasers, hairdressers and fashion photographers.” Roth’s story deals with big themes, including military honor, duty to country, family and friends, political conservatism, and the meaning of life, death, and posterity. Women are almost totally left out of the picture, aside from the occasional romantic dalliance.

The grandfather Trotta saved the Kaiser’s life at the Battle of Solferino, earning the family its title. “His unshakable simplicity viewed death in the field as a necessary consequence of warrior fame.” He was later to become disillusioned with the propaganda and lies of the military and so retired to country life on his family farm, with his pension and the beneficence of the Kaiser assured. “Though a man in the prime of his life, he appeared to be aging swiftly. He had been driven from the paradise of simple faith in Emperor and Virtue, Truth, and Justice, and, now fettered in silence and endurance, he may have realized that the stability of the world, the power of laws, and the glory of majesties were all based on deviousness.”

The eldest Trotta made sure that his only son served the Kaiser in a civilian capacity, never to join the ranks of the army. “Fate has turned our family of frontier peasants into an Austrian dynasty. That is what we shall remain.” The son was industrious and spartan- loyal to his work, his family, and the empire. “Herr von Trotta und Sipolje ate very swiftly, sometimes fiercely. He virtually destroyed one course after another with a noiseless, aristocratic, and rapid malice; he was wiping them out.” This younger Trotta lived at the empire’s peak and was proud of the Hapsburg’s success and his small part in making sure the empire ran smoothly as a district captain far from Vienna. “Herr von Trotta had always made a point of appearing richer than he was. He had the instincts of a true gentleman. And in those days (and perhaps our day too) no instincts were more expensive than those. People favored with such curses do not know how much they possess or how much they spend. They draw from an invisible source. They never keep accounts. They assume that their wealth cannot lag behind their generosity.”

This middle Trotta named his only son Carl Joseph and bred him to be the success in the army that his own father had forbade of him. “Other officers talked about their orderlies with meticulous expertise, the way they talked about girls, clothes, favorite dishes, and horses. But whenever conversation turned to servants, Carl Joseph thought about old Jacques at home—old Jacques, who had even served Carl Joseph’s grandfather. Aside from old Jacques, there was no other servant in the world!” But with each generation of the Trotta family there was a foreboding sense that life could not go on as it was, despite each generation’s wishes to keep time and the Empire standing still. “And the world was no longer the old world. It was about to end. And it was quite in order that an hour before its end the valleys should prove the mountains wrong, the young the old, the stupid the sensible…. The world worth living in was doomed. The world that would follow it deserved no decent inhabitants.”

With the family’s fortunes so went the Empire’s. “Vienna already stinks of the sweat of the Democrats; I can’t stand being on the Ringstrasse anymore. The workers wave red flags and don’t care to work. The mayor of Vienna is a pious janitor. The padres are already going with the people; their sermons are in Czech…. This era wants to create independent nation-states! People no longer believe in God. The new religion is nationalism. Nations no longer go to church. They go to national associations. Monarchy, our monarchy, is founded on piety, on the faith that God chose the Hapsburgs to rule over so and so many Christian nations. Our Kaiser is a secular brother of the Pope, he is His Imperial and Royal Apostolic Majesty…. The Emperor of Austria-Hungary must not be abandoned by God. But God has abandoned him!”

“The Betrothed (I Promessi Sposi)” by Alessandro Manzoni (translated by Bruce Penman)

This epic novel, set in seventeenth century Lombardy, has many twists, turns, and historic digressions. The main story revolves around a young peasant couple thwarted in marriage by an unscrupulous nobleman with his own eye on the girl. Capuchin friars, silk weavers, snooping inn keepers, Milanese bakers, timorous village priests, smuggling fishermen, country lawyers, unbefitting nuns, blackguard bravoes, and nosy noblewomen all make appearances. The saintly historic figure, Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, plays a pivotal role in the story. There is even a character, based on a real-life noble, named “the Unnamed,” who is so sinister that his identity has been concealed by Manzoni for posterity. The narrator of the tale purports to have discovered and translated the original Milanese manuscript by an anonymous author and is retelling the story, with his own additional comments, historical asides, and certain embellishments. In reality, Manzoni wrote the novel from scratch in his native Tuscan tongue, with a light sprinkling of Latin, in the early nineteenth century.

The novel telescopes in and out between the travails of a core group of characters with ties to the betrothed couple and the larger historical events engulfing northern Italy in the seventeenth century. The quasi-war for control of Milan, between Spanish and French interests, fueled by German mercenaries and the Venetian Republic’s meddling, sets the background. The countryside was full of “Spanish soldiers, who gave lessons in modest deportment to the girls and women of the area, and who tickled the backs of the odd husband or father with a stick from time to time. They also never failed, at the end of summer, to spread out across the vineyards and thin out the grapes, so as to lighten the labours of the peasants at harvest-time.” The Spanish nobility, ensconced in their fortress palaces around Milan, make themselves equally reviled by the peasants, behaving haughtily above the law. “‘Yes, sir, it was worthy of a gentleman,’ shouted the count, ‘and let me tell you so, because I ought to know what befits a gentleman and what doesn’t. If it had been a matter of fists, now that would be quite different; but a cudgel doesn’t dirty your hands. What I don’t understand is why a couple of weals on a ruffian’s back should upset you so much.’” In these seasons of poor harvests and famine, the Spanish governors in charge also made matters even worse by issuing price controls and flour rationing edicts, which enflamed the Milanese locals, leading to bread riots. “Ferrer saw, as anyone could see, that it is highly desirable that there should be a fair price for bread. He also thought — and this was where he went wrong — that an order from him could do the trick…. Ferrer was behaving like a lady of a certain age, who thinks she can regain her youth by altering the date on her birth certificate.” Furthermore, as the novel culminates, black plague spreads from village to village and into the gates of Milan, to devastating effect. Faith and trust in God, as well as the honor of the clergy and the humbleness of the peasants are all recurring themes. “Troubles very often come because we have asked for them; but that the most prudent and innocent of conduct is not necessarily enough to keep them away; also that when they come, through our fault or otherwise, trust in God goes far to take away their sting, and makes them a useful preparation for a better life.”

“Theaetetus” by Plato (translated by M.J. Levett & Myles Burnyeat)

This is another dialogue on the nature of epistemology. It does not end with a satisfactory definition of knowledge. Or, at least, a neat and tidy one. Socrates lays out the purpose, speaking to Theaetetus early on. “You were not asked to say what one may have knowledge of, or how many branches of knowledge there are. It was not with any idea of counting these up that the question was asked; we wanted to know what knowledge itself is.” From there Socrates, Theaetetus, and Theodorus try to work out a satisfactory theory of knowledge.

Theaetetus begins by agreeing with Protagoras, who tried to equate knowledge with perception. Socrates summarizes the tenets of Protagoras’ pupils. They “maintain (a) that all things are in motion and (b) that for each person and each city, things are what they seem to them to be. And upon this basis you will inquire whether knowledge and perception are the same thing or different things.” Socrates responds with his own thoughts, “my perception is true for me—because it is always a perception of that being which is peculiarly mine; and I am judge, as Protagoras said, of things that are, that they are, for me; and of things that are not, that they are not…. If whatever the individual judges by means of perception is true for him; if no man can assess another’s experience better than he, or can claim authority to examine another man’s judgment and see if it be right or wrong; if, as we repeatedly said, only the individual himself can judge of his own world, and what he judges is always true and correct: how could it ever be, my friend, that Protagoras was a wise man, so wise as to think himself fit to be the teacher of other men.” Socrates is saying that if all men’s perceptions were equally judged as correct knowledge, then there would be no need for wise teachers to school ignorant pupils on the truth. Instead, everyone’s perceptions would be equally true. Socrates continues, “if all things are in motion, every answer, on whatever subject, is equally correct, both ‘it is thus’ and ‘it is not thus’—or if you like ‘becomes’, as we don’t want to use any expressions which will bring our friends to a standstill…. One must not even use the word ‘thus’; for this ‘thus’ would no longer be in motion; nor yet ‘not thus’ for here again there is no motion. The exponents of this theory need to establish some other language; as it is, they have no words that are consistent with their hypothesis—unless it would perhaps suit them best to use ‘not at all thus’ in a quite indefinite sense…. We do not yet concede to [Protagoras] that every man is the measure of all things, if he be not a man of understanding. And we are not going to grant that knowledge is perception, not at any rate on the line of inquiry which supposes that all things are in motion.”

Socrates and Theaetetus continue trying to hammer out a definition of knowledge, but it is elusive. Whenever they get close, a refutation is found and the answer escapes them. Socrates states, “we have determined that to ‘possess’ knowledge is one thing and to ‘have’ it is another; accordingly we maintain that it is impossible for anyone not to possess that which he has possession of, and thus, it never happens that he does not know something he knows. But he may yet make a false judgment about it. This is because it is possible for him to ‘have’, not the knowledge of this thing, but another piece of knowledge instead. When he is hunting for one piece of knowledge, it may happen, as they fly about, that he makes a mistake and gets hold of one instead of another…. It follows that a man who has knowledge of something is ignorant of this very thing not through want of knowledge but actually in virtue of his knowledge.” Socrates goes on to state the difference between judgement and knowledge. “Now when a man gets a true judgment about something without an account, his soul is in a state of truth as regards that thing, but he does not know it; for someone who cannot give and take an account of a thing is ignorant about it. But when he has also got an account of it, he is capable of all this and is made perfect in knowledge.” Having built up this definition of knowledge, Socrates, himself, appears intent on once again knocking it down. He states, “We said that the man who defines knowledge as correct judgment together with an account would choose one of three meanings for ‘account’.” Theaetetus responds, “The first was, a kind of vocal image of thought; the one we have just discussed was the way to the whole through the elements” which have both been discredited. Socrates reveals the third and final meaning, “What the majority of people would say—namely, being able to tell some mark by which the object you are asked about differs from all other things.” Socrates addresses this final meaning of ‘account’, “if ‘adding an account’ means that we are required to get to know the differentness, not merely judge it, this most splendid of our accounts of knowledge turns out to be a very amusing affair. For getting to know of course is acquiring knowledge, isn’t it?… So, it seems, the answer to the question ‘What is knowledge?’ will be ‘Correct judgment accompanied by knowledge of the differentness’—for this is what we are asked to understand by the ‘addition of an account.’… And it is surely just silly to tell us, when we are trying to discover what knowledge is, that it is correct judgment accompanied by knowledge, whether of differentness or of anything else? And so, Theaetetus, knowledge is neither perception nor true judgment, nor an account added to true judgment.” It seems that defining knowledge properly has all of us going around in circles. But the journey itself has, perhaps, been worth the effort.

“Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution” by Carlo Rovelli

Rovelli is a quantum physicist, who specializes in quantum gravity. On the side, he writes pop-science books. This one is in his wheelhouse. His preferred quantum model is not the Copenhagen Interpretation favored by Bohr and Heisenberg, though they were on the right track focussing on measurement. Bohr wrote, “Whereas in classical physics the interaction between an object and the measuring apparatus can be overlooked—or if necessary can be taken into account and compensated for—in quantum physics this interaction is an inseparable part of the phenomenon.” Rovelli’s model is not Everett’s Many-Worlds or David Bohm’s Pilot Waves, though he helpfully explains and extracts from both, as well. Rovelli’s conception is strange, beautiful, and mystical, while being, obviously, still grounded in hard science. “The keystone of the ideas in this book, is the simple observation that scientists, and their measuring instruments as well, are all part of nature. What quantum theory describes, then, is the way in which one part of nature manifests itself to any other single part of nature…. To understand nature, we must focus on these interactions rather than on isolated objects.” Rovelli is blunt about how his conception of quantum physics necessarily modifies his view of reality, “The discovery of quantum theory, I believe, is the discovery that the properties of any entity are nothing other than the way in which that entity influences others. It exists only through its interactions.”

Rovelli begins, “Quantum theory predicts granularity, quantum leaps, photons and all the rest, on the basis of adding a single equation of eight characters to classical physics. An equation which says that to multiply position by speed is different from multiplying speed by position. The opaqueness is complete.” Rovelli’s world is one that is fundamentally based on interaction and subjectivity. Quantum mechanics “describes the elementary and universal grammar of physical reality underlying not just laboratory observations but every type and instance of interaction…. Any interaction between two physical objects can be seen as an observation.” This requires a new way of conceptualizing reality. “The properties of an object are the way in which it acts upon other objects; reality is this web of interactions. Instead of seeing the physical world as a collection of objects with definite properties, quantum theory invites us to see the physical world as a net of relations. Objects are its nodes…. There are no properties outside of interactions…. If the electron is not interacting, there are no properties. This is a radical leap. It is equivalent to saying that everything consists solely of the way in which it affects something else. When the electron does not interact with anything, it has no physical properties. It has no position; it has no velocity.”

The relational nature of reality has consequences. Objectivity is dispensed with. Everything is subjective. “No universal set of facts exist…. Facts relative to one observer are not facts relative to another. It is a shining example of the relativity of reality…. The joint properties of two objects exist only in relation to a third. To say that two objects are correlated means to articulate something with regard to a third object: the correlation manifests itself when the two correlated objects both interact with this third object…. The existence of a third object that interacts with both the systems is necessary to give reality to the correlations. Everything that manifests itself does so in relation to something…. Entanglement is not a dance for two partners, it is a dance for three…. Entanglement is therefore far from being a rare phenomenon that occurs only in particular situations: it is what happens, generically, in an interaction when this interaction is considered in relation to a system external to it.”

The inescapability of the subjectivity of nature is hard to fully wrap one’s head around. “If the world consists of relations, then no description is from outside it. The descriptions of the world are, in the ultimate analysis, all from inside. They are all in the first person…. If we imagine the totality of things, we are imagining being outside the universe, looking at it from out there. But there is no “outside” to the totality of things. The external point of view is a point of view that does not exist…. The world is this reciprocal reflection of perspectives…. The relational perspective shows that physics is always a first-person description of reality, from one perspective.”

In conclusion, Rovelli dips his head into dualism and consciousness, considering mind and matter. For Rovelli, everything is relative. “If we think in terms of processes, events, in terms of relative properties, of a world of relations, the hiatus between physical phenomena and mental phenomena is much less dramatic. It becomes possible to see both as natural phenomena generated by complex structures of interactions…. At the physical level, the world can be seen as a web of reciprocal information.” The subjective nature of reality is, once again, fundamental. “The best description of reality that we have found is in terms of events that weave a web of interactions. “Entities” are nothing other than ephemeral nodes in this web. Their properties are not determined until the moment of these interactions; they exist only in relation to something else…. Every vision is partial. There is no way of seeing reality that is not dependent on perspective—no point of view that is absolute and universal.”