Kirk von Durer, Art Historian: A Memorial

These past few years I've come to notice that just about anybody and anything can be found on the Internet. Conversely, it now seems that if something or somebody can't be found on the Web, it's as if they've never existed at all.

In my post of March 8th, I reproduce a travel journal entry of late December 1988, wherein I write of being in Florence, Italy, and going to a lecture on early Renaissance art given by an American art historian and gallery owner named Kirk von Durer. I had thought it would be nice to link to something about him. But when I Googled his name, nothing came up other than a reference to a poster on his lectures tipped into a book on art in the Uffizi that some dealer has for sale.

True, I hadn't expected anything current. Maybe six or seven years ago I was reading that entry in my handwritten journal and did a Web search for Mr. von Durer. But I came up with only a remembrance written by a friend of his: he had died suddenly, of cancer or some other disease, in the early or mid-1990s.

But by now, even that webpage has disappeared.

So in my small way on my small blog, I'm going to perpetuate the memory and existence of a unique person.

I know of Kirk von Durer little more than I put in my last entry. He was an American national resident in Florence for I don't know how long. Certainly long enough to become an institution. He was thoroughly trained in the history and aesthetics of Italian Renaissance art. He pitched his lectures to the interested amateur, using humor and liveliness as his vehicle, so that, when the visitor stood in front of the actual work of art the next day, she would know and appreciate what she was looking at.

Kirk von Durer loved his subject and he loved to communicate on it. Constantly, in the best sense of the term-- with constancy. His effort and energy were astounding. As I recall, he gave his lectures on Italian Renaissance art every single night at 8:30 PM. Maybe not on weekends, but even so, every single weekday night any interested English-speaking visitor could climb the stairs to his flat at the top of No. 20 Borgo San Lorenzo and for little or no charge could drink his Chianti, admire his view of the Duomo, and partake of his slides and his knowledge.

Kirk von Durer was a fixture in Florence in the late 1980s, and could have been for many more years, had he been spared to us. I doubt he could have been older than his late 40s when I met him; I certainly was shocked when I read that he'd died.

I haven't returned to Florence these past twenty years, but if in the future I do, it will be odd knowing that Mr. von Durer is not still there giving his witty and informative lectures.

Though maybe, like so many other things that linger in the atmosphere of that ancient and storied city, in some ghostly way he still is, and he still does.

Kirk von Durer, requiescat in pacem. And if any others who knew you or your work should come across this inadequate memorial, I urge them to post their own fuller, more accurate accounts, and keep your name alive in cyberspace. Because these days, that seems to be the place it really matters.

Angry

I spent Thanksgiving at my mom's in a Big Southwestern State. Everybody there was there. Meaning all my siblings and their spouses and a certain number of their kids and one of their kid's kids and one of my step-dad's kids and his wife and his kid.

Of course, we got to talking about Uncle Elliot*, who died a week before on the 15th. Turns out, the idea of no funeral, no burial, no obit in the paper, no nuthin' except ashes to be scattered on Lake Erie next summer was his idea, not his wife's, my aunt Natalie.* Natalie would have preferred to observe the usual rites. But unlike some relatives, who figure the post-death observances are for the sake of the survivors and go ahead and do what they want (the dead person being dead, and past having an opinion on the matter), she respected her husband's wishes and has done and will do as he asked.

Talking amongst ourselves last Thursday, we wished it had been different. We wished we could have gathered in Massachusetts with all the family to mourn our uncle's passing. We made do with the stories we told each other the other day, but it wasn't the same as it would have been if we could have been there with Elliot's children our cousins and Natalie and her brothers and other friends and relations. When somebody dies, the loss is mitigated somewhat by the stories you share among yourselves. The survivors are drawn closer even as the deceased family member departs. We were sorry to miss that.

Nevertheless, Uncle Elliot's wishes were Uncle Elliot's wishes, and we have to respect them.

But this evening, it hit me that I do not respect his wishes for no wake, no funeral, no obit, no nuthin'. I may have to accept the fact of them-- it wasn't up to me to carry them out. But I don't have to like them.

It's the "no notice in the paper" thing that galls me the most. What was he trying to say? That his life didn't matter? Was he somehow glorying in the idea that "all we are is dust in the wind"? Was life worth so little to him that he wanted it so quickly forgotten, that he didn't even want to let old friends and work colleagues know he was gone? It seems to minimize not only his life, but this transient but marvellous gift of human life in general.

And it makes me angry. D--- him!

(I'd better not say that. It might be true.)

Irony

About a half hour ago, I was on Magnatunes.com listening to J. S. Bach's cantata BMV 156, Ich Steh mit Einem Fuss im Grabe ("I stand with one foot in the grave"). At the same time, I was trying to get a fountain pen to write, and amid the whorls and loops, just for fun, I was doodling the names of my maternal grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather.

Then the phone rang. It was my mother. She said, "I have something I have to tell you," and I immediately knew it wouldn't be good.

"I'm flying up to Boston tomorrow."

"It's Uncle Elliot*, isn't it?"

"Yes."

Uncle Elliot, my mother's younger brother. The only son of my late grandfather whose name I'd just been idly scribbling. Uncle Elliot, who last year was diagnosed with lung cancer, and who refused surgery or other treatment because he felt fine at the time and didn't want to compromise his quality of life, not even for five or six more years on this earth. My mother is flying up to Boston tomorrow, because my aunt called to tell her that he is literally standing-- or lying-- with one foot in the grave.

"He's going downhill fast. I'll be there till Saturday, and help Natalie* with whatever she needs."

And so it looks as if I will never see my Uncle Elliot alive again. I may well not see him again at all.

For he and my aunt Natalie, his third wife, are in retirement extremely private people, even towards family. My mother told me that Natalie hasn't informed even Uncle Elliot's children from his first and second marriages. It clearly was a relief to my mom that she at least had let her, Elliot's only sister, know. I told my mother that if the funeral plans Elliot and Natalie had made included family, to let me know and I'd make arrangements and come.

But the way things are, I expect no such call.

I saw my uncle and aunt last about eleven years ago, and it did not go well. Uncle Elliot was amiable enough, but Aunt Natalie made it clear that my being there was trouble and interference and a disruption in general. I'd always thought there'd be plenty of time for us to get past that and try again.

But time went by, and duty and pleasure and busyness got in the way, and after all, would it actually go better another time around? So I did nothing positive about it.

You'd think I'd be sitting here now in great sadness and grief, both because my only maternal uncle is dying and because I hadn't managed to see him since Thanksgiving of 1996. The irony is, I'm not. And I can't.

I can't, because even if I had made overtures towards my aunt, it wouldn't have made any difference. Even if I'd gone to Massachusetts and attempted another visit, it wouldn't have drawn us any closer. Because that's the way my family works. We don't feud, we aren't enemies, we do keep in touch from time to time-- we just aren't close.

No, the grief and sadness that lies in wait for me runs deeper and began farther back, before I was born, when currents were set in motion that I can't fathom or explain even now. The grief and sadness are there because I can only imagine the family spirit and togetherness that others seem to enjoy. Their vibrant affection is like a foreign country to me. Most of the time, I let the happy inhabitants of that land enjoy their patrimony, and I do well enough in mine.

But at times like this, I begin to wonder why that heartfelt closeness has been infrequent at best with my kith and kin. At times like this, I wonder if somehow I've been robbed of something it would have been very good to have, something that ought to have been mine.

But robbed by whom?

By the human beings-- including myself-- that conceived and aggravated this state of affairs? Yes, of course.

But above it all, hasn't God in His permissive providence allowed it to be so? Shall I, a guilty sinner, rail at God? Shall I not rather accept my own fault in not at least trying to make things better, and be faithful and still? And know that somehow, God can and has and will take the wrongness of it and make it right?

Even if I can't do anything directly for my Uncle Elliot at his home near Boston, under hospice care, dying?

But one thing I can do: I can pray, by God's sovereign providence, that by whatever means he would reach out for the Lord and Savior he hasn't had time for all his life, and enter the next life in salvation and peace.

That would be a sublime-- and divine-- irony. Soli Deo gloria.

Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe,
Machs mit mir, Gott, nach deiner Güt,
Bald fällt der kranke Leib hinein,
Hilf mir in meinen Leiden,
Komm, lieber Gott, wenn dirs gefällt,
Was ich dich bitt, versag mir nicht.

Ich habe schon mein Haus bestellt,
Wenn sich mein Seel soll scheiden,
So nimm sie, Herr, in deine Händ.
Nur lass mein Ende selig sein!
Ist alles gut, wenn gut das End.

"The Beasts That Perish"

The thing is done. My friend Brenda came over this evening and, with a little help from George my next-door neighbor, we buried my dog Magdalen in the back garden at dusk. Goodbye, my sweet, faithful friend. You were a very good dog indeed, confounding all the idiots at the city animal shelter five years ago who said you were "aggressive, feral, and unadoptable."

This weekend I have been coffin-maker, undertaker, grave-digger, officiating pastor, and chief mourner. All I have to add to it now is monument-maker. Gratifying to think what a versatile, talented person I am, but I'd rather have my dog back.

Tant pis. That's not how things work in this fallen world. I'm not even going to comfort myself with the sentimental absurdity that "all dogs go to heaven." If there is a doggie "heaven," it exists only in our imaginations, not in any real spiritual realm created by God. Without the new life won for us by Jesus Christ, even we human beings would have no hope for immortality; we'd be just like "the beasts that perish." And Jesus didn't die to give eternal life to the beasts; He died and rose again to give His imperishable life to us, who are made in the image of God. The animals, no matter how beloved, aren't in it.

But have I left something out here? Maybe I have. Because in Isaiah 11 where the Lord speaks of how it's going to be in the day when He makes all things new, He describes how various animal species will be getting along with one another. You could say that's only a metaphor, but why bring in the beasts at all if they'll be alien to the New Creation?

And in Romans 8 it says "For the creation [including the animals, domestic and wild] was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God." So it can be said that we are redeemed in Christ and somehow, in God's good purpose, the rest of creation is redeemed through us, the redeemed!

Whether that means that we will be reunited with specific beloved pets, I can't say. I can be sure that if that's necessary for us to be happy in eternity, the Lord God will make it so. In the meantime, Maddie gave me five good years and I, I believe, gave her five good years. And for that, may the Lord's name be praised.

"The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away . . . "

My sweet dog Maddie died this morning at 8:40 at the hospital over in Ohio. And in the end the vets were still baffled over what caused the bleeding that started in her nose and eventually spread to her whole system. They considered auto-immune diseases, they looked again at the possibility of cancer, but the presenting symptoms and the test results all militated against these diagnoses. What it really looked like was rat poisoning. Like she'd got into some Warfarin. But I don't have any rat poison around my place. I don't know anybody in the neighborhood who keeps rat poison around his place. And Maddie, with her bad back two weeks ago, wasn't in a position to go walking round the neighborhood to pick any up along the way.

So what was it? What killed my little dog so quickly? I suppose this is one of those "If-God-wants-me-to-know-the-answer-to-that-He'll-let-me-know" questions. There's no question, though, that I'm glad one of the late shift vets called me at 12:30 AM last night and told me that if I wanted to see Maddie alive, I'd better come right away. I arrived there around 2:00 AM. She was lying on her side and couldn't get up. But she wagged her tail when she saw me-- the last she did-- and after awhile pulled herself out of her kennel to lay her head on my lap. We remained like that till 8:00 AM, when the staff moved us to an examination room, to await the morning shift attending vet. But it was all over long before the vet arrived.

I've brought Maddie home and built her a little pine plank coffin with a brass plate with her name and dates on it on the lid. Tomorrow evening a friend will come and help me bury her in the back garden. I'd like to mark the spot with a rose bush-- a dog rose (rosa canina) if someone would sell me one.

But in the meantime I'm having to get used to the idea she's gone. I keep wanting to call her and expect that she'll come. Then I simply want to swear when I remember how things are. Not at God; just at the fearful and obnoxious unfairness of the last enemy, Death. And I think that if this is how I feel when I've merely lost a beloved pet, how truly terrible the onslaught must be when it's launched against one bereaved of a beloved child, parent, sibling, or spouse. Life seems so tenuous and fragile-- a statement I probably should reflect on theologically, but not now. Not tonight. I've had no sleep since Friday morning, and now that everything's done that needed to be done, the adrenalin that has kept me going is as spent and defunct as my poor little dog.