CIVILIZATION MAGAZINE : PREMIERE ISSUE (1994)
_____________________________________ PART 1 of 10
It’s clear there will never be an agreement on what constitutes the essence of civilization. Carlyle thought it was gunpowder, printing and the Protestant religion. Kenneth Clark thought it was confidence. For the purposes of this magazine, Trevelyan’s definition seems most apt: “Disinterested intellectual curiosity is the lifeblood of real civilization.” Curiosity, we hope, will be the lifeblood of CIVILIZATION as well.
We at CIVILIZATION are mainly interested in the life of the mind: literature, history, culture and social issues. The magazine will mix seriousness of purpose with the easy (and occasionally uneasy) sound of laughter. In this issue you’ll read why Thomas Jefferson is the most malleable of our national icons; how filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl has covered up her cozy relationships with Hitler and the Nazis; how Diana Trilling copes with the loss of a writer’s most critical tool, her eyesight. We bring you as well a set of meticulous instructions on how to bleed a patient (please don’t try this at home); an account, by columnist Anne Fadiman, of the domestic comedy that takes place when a husband and wife marry their libraries; and a record of the regrettable eating habits of the emperor Vitellius.
We hope you find us pleasing to the eye. In designing CIVILIZATION, Art Director David Herbick sought a balance between simplicity and elegance. Our commitment to things visual extends to two regular features: Portfolio, a gallery of photographs, posters or other images, and Caption, in which leading writers reflect on pictures that have captured their imaginations. In this issue, we present photographs by Toni Frissell, and Ann Beattie looks through the lens of Jacques-Henri Lartigue.
We are not a political journal; we are neither Democratic nor Republican, though we hope to be both democratic and republican. At the same time, we will encourage strong opinions, as long as they are presented with clarity, rigor and style. We will not shy away from humor and irony. We mean to challenge readers, not bore them to death.
When we turn to the past, our aim will be to provide context for the present. If we ever sound stuffy or academic, write us and tell us so. Challenge our editorial judgements, debate our writers, match wits with our puzzle masters. We want to be “interactive” in an off-line sort of way.
We are the only magazine that takes its inspiration from that incomparable repository of civilization, the Library of Congress. Librarian James H. Billington and his superb staff have been patient and helpful whenever we plied them with questions. They deserve much of the credit for anything good in CIVILIZATION, but we are an independent magazine (published under a licensing agreement with the Library), and we take full responsibility for what we print. Don’t blame the Library for our flaws, blame us.
Putting out a new magazine is a heady experience, akin to inventing the wheel while rolling down a steep hill, and it’s easy to develop an exalted sense in what you’re doing. Not long after our business office opened in New York, the daughter of the publisher dropped by for a visit. She struggled in vain to find the suite number on the lobby’s electronic directory. A security guard finally took pity and asked the name of the business. “Civilization,” she said. “O.K.,” he said. “So just push S.”
It was a powerful jolt of humility — and a reminder that we’ve got our work cut out for us.
(If you enjoyed Part 1, please LIKE this page. If more than ten people are into it, CIVILIZATION will live on. Not to dangle the carrot, but the next section from this issue is called, “CURIOSITIES: From the Stacks of the Library of Congress.”)
