The ivory tower has always been metaphoric its symbolic value has shifted over the centuries and scientists are supposed to be ensconced in that separates them from and keeps them out-of-touch with the “real world” How did this figure of speech become a pejorative for elitist artistic and/or intellectual seclusion—something to be gotten out of or pulled down for the good of the cause Historian of science Seven Shapin explores the changing meaning of the phrase from antiquity to the present as part of the age-old debate between the active and the contemplative life, between civic engagement and disengagement, and notes that what was a “finely poised classical conversation has turned into a monologue, even a rant” against the idea of an ivory tower “There never was an Ivory Tower,” Shapin states It has always been metaphoric: ivory was entirely too rare and costly to be anything approaching a construction material “Ivory seems classically to have been associated with the notion of fantasy, illusion, if not delusion,” writes Shapin. “The Greek word for ivory (elephas) played upon the word meaning to cheat or deceive (elephairo).” Penelope in the Odyssey says that dreams that pass through the gate of ivory are deceptive while those that pass through the gate of horn are real the Song of Songs’s catalogue of sexual desire includes this line: “thy neck is as a tower of ivory.” Perhaps drawing on this Old Testament usage the Virgin Mary became closely associated with ivory from the twelfth century she was a “Tower of Ivory” as well as a “House of Gold.” The secularization of the phrase can be dated to 1837 when Charles Augustine Sainte-Beuve criticized another French poet for being too aloof: Vigny “more discreet/As if in his ivory tower retired before noon.” Vigny did in fact abandon the literary rat race for his country estate and quit publishing while continuing to write for himself Shapin writes that “every educated person in the French- and English-speaking worlds appears to have been familiar with” Sainte-Beuve’s line Artistic retreat or disengagement might be good or bad, but by the 1930s, it was generally thought bad. In that politically fraught decade, both anti-Fascists and Fascists decried the ivory tower Americans “appropriated the tag in the first part of the twentieth century as and when it became an understood way of expressing anti-elitist sentiments.” The year 1939 marks the “first twentieth-century pictorial representation of an Ivory Tower,” as far as Shapin could find; it appeared on the cover of Direction the magazine of the Communist Party-affiliated American Writers’ Congress wrote that the tower at the Alamogordo test site that held the first atomic bomb was definitely “not made of ivory.” The Thatcher-Reagan neoliberal counterrevolution combined with reactionary populist anti-intellectualism to seemingly seal the ivory tower’s fate—and to attack universities as bastions of campus revolt and as alternative centers of civil society Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_2" ).setAttribute( "value" You can’t find anybody saying much good about ivory towers these days, although the idea once had notable defenders as a necessary retreat from convention and conformity, a place to think and create away from the noise of society. In 1872, Gustav Flaubert wrote to Ivan Turgenev “I have always tried to live in an ivory tower but a tide of shit is beating at its walls threatening to undermine it.” In his 1938 argument for the necessity of ivory towers Forster cited tower inhabitants Marcus Aurelius The title of Henry James’s The Ivory Tower—an unfinished novel published posthumously in 1917—refers to a “an expensive tchotchke,” but a character does wonder if “living in an ivory tower just mean[s] the most distinguished retirement I don’t want yet awhile to settle in one myself—though I’ve always thought it a thing I should like to come to…” Support JSTOR Daily! Join our membership program on Patreon today. Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_3" ).setAttribute( "value" Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value" Much of Tuscany’s appeal is its timelessness like 2021’s Uffizi Diffusi (Scattered Uffizi) project along with visitors who would typically flock to Florence to some of the region’s ancient towns ­beginning with the hilltop villages of Poppi and ­Montespertoli ­Tuscany’s famous thermal waters will get new attention with the summer reopening of the Grotta Giusti Thermal Spa Resort (now a Marriott property) just outside Monsummano Terme and the opening of the Sense Experience Resort in the southern coastal Maremma area surrounded by just over 12 acres of private park and pine forest and providing access to a private beach Contact us at letters@time.com the blog on which Paz started posting collector’s photos and stories Paz found and photographed collectors in states outside New York The project is not only a documentation of the world’s biggest vinyl collections but also a documentation of a genuine passion for music Paz takes the photos in these collectors’ intimate environments and so the photos are always the outcome of a special bond between them and Paz The world of people collecting vinyl disks is surprisingly diverse Some are completists while others gather special collections Or like Alessandro Benedetti from Monsummano Terme in Italy who holds the Guinness World Record for the largest collection of colored vinyl records Alessandro Benedetti – Monsummano Terme Miriam Lina & Billy Miller – Norton Records writer and music journalist – Los Angeles