Tools of Christ Church This may be the same Darren Danylyshen who has taught at St. Stephen's SS in Bowmanville, Ontario). Following a link in the section of that school's site beneath the title "St. Stephen's Goes Hollywood," we find the following: This ties in rather neatly with the for last Friday-- St. Thomas Becket's day-- if McLuhan were a saint. (McLuhan, a Catholic, died on Dec. 31, 1980.) Related material: Posted 12/31/2006 at 8:00 PM |
From Darkness Visible:
"Ed Rinehart [sic] made a fortune painting canvases that were just
one solid color. He had his black period
in which the canvas was totally black.
And then he had a blue period
in which he was painting the canvas blue."
-- Martin Gardner interview in AMS Notices, June/July 2005 Posted 12/31/2006 at 7:15 PM |
7/14, 2004: Time Magazine, issue dated July 19, 2004 --
Movie sequels are getting raves..." Posted 12/31/2006 at 7:14 PM |
7/13, 2003: Posted 12/31/2006 at 7:13 PM |
Aesthetics of Evil vs. Christ Church "... the closing number for Spielberg's tribute and the gala itself... [is] the finale to the opera 'Candide,' 'Make Our Garden Grow.'" -- Press release from CBS on this year's Kennedy Center Honors Wallace Stevens, "Esthétique du Mal, XI"-- "We are not At the centre of a diamond." The map shows the original (pre-1846) diamond shape of the District of Columbia. For the relevance of the closing number of "Candide" to diamonds, see the previous entry. For the relevance of the closing number of the 12/3/06 DC lottery, see Theme and Variations. For the relevance of the earlier mid-day number, see the conclusion of "Esthétique du Mal" --
A search on the mid-day number in the context of metaphysics yields the following: Related material: "In 'Esthétique du Mal,' one of his later poems, Wallace Stevens
considers existence from a variety of critical and philosophical
perspectives, among them various moral, aesthetic, political,
theological, and philosophic 'epistemes' that condition how humanity
perceives and experiences the world. These epistemological 'modes'
dictate how we live and perceive the world about us, providing
preconceptions that shroud understanding and obfuscate ontological
explanation. What Stevens accomplishes in 'Esthétique du Mal' is to
create a dialogue with various historical and philosophical 'schools,'
systematically confronting and rejecting their perspectives, and
creating a movement toward Martin Heidegger's 'aletheia' to uncover the
ontological substructure that exists beneath the individual's
experience in the world. This movement of 'uncovering' and exposing the
nature of what it means 'to be in the world' is a journey to an
ontological substructure that allows Stevens to arrive at a dynamic,
ontological proof: that existence is full of 'reverberating'
possibilities, not solitary and 'univocal' statements."
-- Conversations with the Dead: The Ontological Substructure of Wallace Stevens's "Esthétique du Mal"-- a 1999 Master's thesis For further remarks on ontological substructure, see A First Class Degree (on a notable graduate of Christ Church, Oxford). Posted 12/31/2006 at 9:00 AM |
Tools
of Christ Church "For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross." -- Thomas Pynchon Click on picture for details. Today is the feast of St. Thomas Becket. In his honor, a meditation on tools and causation: "Lewis Wolpert, an eminent developmental biologist at University College London, has just published Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast,
a pleasant, though rambling, look at the biological basis of belief.
While the book focuses on our ability to form causal beliefs about
everyday matters (the wind moved the trees, for example), it spends
considerable time on the origins of religious and moral beliefs.
Wolpert defends the unusual idea that causal thinking is an adaptation
required for tool-making. Religious beliefs can thus be seen as an odd
extension of causal thinking about technology to more mysterious
matters. Only a species that can reason causally could assert that
'this storm was sent by God because we sinned.' While Wolpert's
attitude toward religion is tolerant, he's an atheist who seems to find
religion more puzzling than absorbing."
-- Review by H. Allen Orr in The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, No. 1, January 11, 2007 "An odd extension"-- Wolpert's title is, of course, from Lewis Carroll. Related material: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards." -- Through the Looking-Glass An event at the Kennedy Center broadcast on December 26, 2006 (St. Steven's Day): "Conductor John Williams, a 2004
Honoree, says, 'Steven, sharing our 34-year collaboration has been a
great privilege for me. It's been an inspiration to watch you dream
your dreams, nurture them and make them grow. And, in the process,
entertain and edify billions of people around the world. Tonight we'd
like to salute you, musically, with a piece that expresses that spirit
beautifully ... It was written by Leonard Bernstein, a 1980 Kennedy
Center Honoree who was, incidentally, the first composer to be
performed in this hall.' Backed by The United States Army Chorus and
The Choral Arts Society, soprano Harolyn Blackwell and tenor Gregory
Turay sing the closing number for Spielberg's tribute and the gala
itself. It's the finale to the opera 'Candide,' 'Make Our Garden Grow,'
and Williams conducts."
-- CBS press release See also the following,
from the conclusion to "Mathematics and Narrative" (Log24, Aug. 22, 2005): "At times, bullshit can only be countered with superior bullshit." -- Norman Mailer Many Worlds and Possible Worlds in Literature and Art, in Wikipedia:
"Il faut cultiver notre jardin.""The concept of possible worlds dates back to at least Leibniz who in his Théodicée tries to justify the apparent imperfections of the world by claiming that it is optimal among all possible worlds. Voltaire satirized this view in his picaresque novel Candide.... Borges' seminal short story El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan ("The Garden of Forking Paths") is an early example of many worlds in fiction." -- Voltaire "We symbolize logical necessity with the box and logical possibility with the diamond -- Keith Allen Korcz "The possibilia that exist, and out of which the Universe arose, are located in a necessary being...." -- Michael Sudduth, Notes on God, Chance, and Necessity by Keith Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity, Christ Church College, Oxford (the home of Lewis Carroll) For further details, click on the Christ Church diamond. Posted 12/29/2006 at 11:01 AM |
Posted 12/27/2006 at 7:14 AM |
Posted 12/26/2006 at 8:00 AM |
Today in History by The Associated Press: Today is Tuesday, Dec. 26, the 360th day of 2006. There are five days left in the year. The seven-day African-American holiday Kwanzaa begins today. This is Boxing Day. Posted 12/26/2006 at 7:59 AM |
James Brown,
"In one way or another, all
of the work we publish navigates what essayist Guy Davenport called
the 'Geography of the Imagination.' ('The imagination
has a history, as yet unwritten, and it has a geography, as yet only
dimly seen.')" --Ibis Editions"the Godfather of Soul," died at about 1:45 AM EST today, Christmas Day, 2006. A picture from a set of five Log24 entries ending, at 2:56 AM on Sept. 18, 2004, with an entry on Brown titled "Soul at Harvard"-- Posted 12/25/2006 at 8:00 AM |
x Posted 12/25/2006 at 7:29 AM |
Posted 12/24/2006 at 7:15 AM |
The Edge of Eternity
(in memory of George Latshaw,
"At Home in Landscape:
|
Black Mark Bernard Holland in The New York Times on Monday, May 20, 1996: "Philosophers ponder the idea of identity: what it is to give something a name on Monday and have it respond to that name on Friday...."
Analysis of the structure of a 2x2x2 cube via trinities of
projective points in a Fano plane. 7/15, 2005:
"Art history was very personal through the eyes of Ad Reinhardt." -- Robert Morris, Smithsonian Archives of American Art Also on 7/15, 2005, a quotation on Usenet: "A set having three members is a single thing wholly constituted by its members but distinct from them. After this, the theological doctrine of the Trinity as 'three in one' should be child's play." -- Max Black, Caveats and Critiques: Philosophical Essays in Language, Logic, and Art Posted 12/23/2006 at 9:00 AM |
Strings Attached
From a New York Times review on Monday, Dec. 18, 2006, of the play "Strings"--
The three main characters "spend much of the play discussing quantum mechanics, string theory and Schrödinger’s Cat experiment.... Ms. Buggé's frequently clever script makes the audience feel smart by offering up fairly recognizable literary references (from, among other things, T. S. Eliot's 'Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' and William Wordsworth's 'Tintern Abbey'). But the play suffers from abrupt, sometimes motivation-free exits and entrances." As does life itself.
Five years ago
on this date: There is one story and one story only That will prove worth your telling.... -- Robert Graves, "To Juan at the Winter Solstice" Exits and Entrances: Halmos exited on Yom Kippur. He may or may not achieve re-entry. For details, see Log24 entries of Oct. 1-15: Ticket Home Related material: The Unity of Mathematics, Heisenberg on Beauty, and Theme and Variations. Posted 12/21/2006 at 10:02 AM |
Spike
"For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross." -- Thomas Pynchon "Also on the card is Adrien Brody ('The Thin Red Line') as a poseur proto-punk who lives in his parents' converted garage and strips at an underground gay club. He takes heat from his former friends-- the aforementioned neighborhood toughs-- for affecting an English accent and wearing a mohawk...." -- Rob Blackwelder review of Spike Lee's "Summer of Sam" (1999) "With its white community focus, Summer of Sam is something of a departure for Lee. But with its immaculate script, faultless acting and Lee's own cameo performance, it is a typical Spike Lee film. Plenty of rapid-fire, wise-cracking dialogue and hectic crowd scenes make it fraught with tension from beginning to end. Hectic, inventive, gritty, witty, edgy and provocative, no detail is too small to escape Lee's attention and no issue too large as the film's perceptive dissection of human nature moves effortlessly between humour and horror." -- Andrea Henry review "At another end of the sexual confusion spectrum, there's Vinny's childhood friend, now turned spiky-haired punk rocker, Ritchie (Adrien Brody). Recently he's started dating Ruby (Jennifer Esposito), erstwhile neighborhood tramp. They are both redeemed by their relationship, which at least at first, involves no sex, technically. Where Vinny struggles with his culturally instilled madonna-whore complex, Ritchie's just back from a stint living in the Village, looking for an identity that's distinct from his Italian gotta-be-macho upbringing. Eventually, he gets a gig at CBGB's ('How do you spell that?' wonders Vinny), but in order to make ends meet (and pay for his new guitar), he's dancing and turning tricks at Male World, a decrepit gay club where he performs fellatio with a life-sized dummy on stage, and, you assume, with clients offscreen." -- Cynthia Fuchs revew (title: "Sex and the City") "I watched Halle Berry wipe her mouth off after Adrien Brody, in the heat of his excitement, laid the lip-lock on her for five full excruciating seconds. She was stunned, and seemed to have no idea what had happened to her. I'll tell you what happened, Halle: it's called sexual assault." The Kiss...
Where's the Oscar for the mouth-wipe? Posted 12/20/2006 at 9:26 AM |
Joseph Barbera at the Apollo Click on picture for related symbolism. "This is the garden of Apollo, the field of Reason...." John Outram, architect I need a photo-opportunity I want a shot at redemption Don't want to end up a cartoon In a cartoon graveyard -- Paul Simon In memory of Joseph Barbera-- co-creator ot the Flintstones-- who died yesterday, a photo from today's Washington Post: Playing the role of recording angel -- Halle Berry as Rosetta Stone: Related material: "Citizen Stone" and "Putting the X in Xmas." Posted 12/19/2006 at 9:00 AM |
Citizen Stone Allan Stone, art dealer and collector, died at 74 on Friday, Dec. 15, 2006. From his obituary in yesterday's New York Times: "Sometimes jokingly referred to as 'Citizen Stone' after Orson Welles's
outsize film character, Mr. Stone was attracted to formal density and
flamboyance. He was associated with the rise of the junk aesthetic and
with realist painters whose canvases bristled with paint and details." --Roberta Smith
Though not bristlingThe Log24 entry for the date of Stone's death, titled "Putting the X in Xmas," suggests the following picture as a memorial: with paint, the picture is, in a sense, realistic. It should be noted of the obituary by Roberta Smith that "This is the exact opposite of what echthroi do in their X-ing or un-naming." -- Wikipedia on A Wind in the Door Posted 12/19/2006 at 8:00 AM |
x Posted 12/19/2006 at 7:59 AM |
Fade to Black: Mathematics and Narrative continued Martin Gardner in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society, June/July 2005 (pdf): "I did a column in Scientific American on minimal art, and I reproduced one of Ed Rinehart's [sic] black paintings. Of course, it was just a solid square of pure black." The Notices of the American Mathematical Society, January 2007 (pdf):
Posted 12/18/2006 at 7:20 AM |
Posted 12/16/2006 at 8:48 PM |
Cubism1 as Multispeech2
A quotation omitted from the above excerpt:In Ulysses, there is "... the same quality of simultaneity as in cubist collage. Thus, for example, Bloom surveys the tombstones at Paddy Dignam's funeral and, in the midst of platitudinous and humorous thoughts, remembers Molly 'wanting to do it at the window'...." Related material from quotations at the poetry journal eratio:
Related material on See also the following part of the eratio quotations: Quotations arranged by Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino Posted 12/16/2006 at 10:31 AM |
Putting the -- C. S. Lewis Apparently they teach them nihilism, empty rhetoric, and despair,
as reflected in Borges, Baudrillard, and Benjamin, according to the art review below from today's New York Times. Let us hope
that the late Peter Boyle, who died on Tuesday, Dec. 12, has moved
beyond these now-- singing "Heaven, I'm in Heaven," rather than
"Puttin' on the Ritz."
The Work: Pennsylvania Lottery
Click on numbers Borges and Benjamin are referenced directly in the commentary. For Baudrillard, see Richard Hanley on Baudrillard and The Matrix: "There is nothing new under the sun. With the death of the real, or rather with its (re)surrection, hyperreality both emerges and is already always reproducing itself." --Jean Baudrillard Related material: Posted 12/15/2006 at 2:02 AM |
Hamlet's Transformation, continued from Sept. 6: Posted 12/14/2006 at 6:06 AM |
Best Wishes for a Update of 4:23 PM: Storyboard Based on Xanga footprints of Dec. 13, 2006 from m759's site-visitor "United States" (possibly a robot; if so, a robot with strange tastes). TIME OF DATE OF PAGE VISITED VISIT PAGE VISITED 1217 040520 Parable 1218 060606 The Omen 1220 051205 Don't Know Much About History 1225 030822 Mr. Holland's Week (And in Three Days...) 1233 030114 Remarks on Day 14 (What is Truth?) 1238 040818 Train of Thought (Oh, My Lolita) 1244 020929 Angel Night (Ellis Larkins) 1249 040715 Identity Crisis (Bourne and Treadstone) 1252 050322 Make a Differance (Lacan, Derrida, Reba) 1255 050221 Quarter to Three on Night of HST's death 1256 040408 Triple Crown on Holy Thursday 1258 040714 Welcome to Mr. Motley's Neighborhood 1258 030221 All About Lilith 0103 040808 Quartet (for Alexander Hammid) 0104 030106 Dead Poet in the City of Angels 0109 030914 Skewed Mirrors (Readings on Aesthetics) 0110 050126 A Theorem in Musical Form 0125 021007 Music for R. D. Laing 0138 020806 Butterflies & Popes (Transfiguration) 0140 060606 The Omen (again) 0156 030313 ART WARS: Perennial Tutti-Frutti 0202 030112 Ask Not (A Bee Gees Requiem) 0202 050527 Drama of the Diagonal, Part Deux 0202 060514 STAR WARS continued (Eclipse and Venus) 0207 030112 Ask Not (again... Victory of the Goddess) 0207 030221 All About Lilith (again... Roll credits.) -- George Balanchine Posted 12/13/2006 at 9:29 AM |
The State of Grace,
Author of Hamlet Today's Harvard Crimson: The texts in question are said to be manuscripts of "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote," and "The Library of Babel." The latter deals (like "The Mountains of Pi") with literature that can be seen as the result of a random process-- such as the lottery in another story by Borges. A less sinister lottery is that of Pennsylvania-- known to some as "the Keystone State." I prefer to think of it as "the State of Grace." Click on picture for details.
This (and yesterday's "DAY" number 133)
suggests we consult page 133 of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations of 1919. At the top of this page we find... "O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!" -- Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5 Another figure from 1/08, St. Mary Magdalene, might, adapting the words of Borges, offer the following observation: "Shakespeare's text and the lottery's are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer. (More ambiguous, detractors will say, but ambiguity is richness.)" Related material: 11/22. Posted 12/12/2006 at 11:22 AM |
Geometry and Death
J. G. Ballard on "the architecture of death": "... a huge system of German fortifications that included the Siegfried line, submarine pens and huge flak towers that threatened the surrounding land like lines of Teutonic knights. Almost all had survived the war and seemed to be waiting for the next one, left behind by a race of warrior scientists obsessed with geometry and death." -- The Guardian, March 20, 2006 Edward Hirsch on Lorca: "For him, writing is a struggle both with geometry and death." -- "The Duende," American Poetry Review, July/August 1999 "Rosenblum writes with
absolute intellectual honesty, and the effect is sheer liberation.... The disposition of the material is a model of logic and clarity." -- Harper's Magazine review quoted on back cover of Cubism and Twentieth-Century Art, by Robert Rosenblum (Abrams paperback, 2001) SINGER, ISAAC: "Are Children the Ultimate Literary Critics?" -- Top of the News 29 (Nov. 1972): 32-36. "Sets forth his own aims in writing for children and laments 'slice of life' and chaos in children's literature. Maintains that children like good plots, logic, and clarity, and that they have a concern for 'so-called eternal questions.'" -- An Annotated Listing of Criticism by Linnea Hendrickson "She returned the smile, then looked across the room to her youngest brother, Charles Wallace, and to their father, who were deep in concentration, bent over the model they were building of a tesseract: the square squared, and squared again: a construction of the dimension of time." -- A Swiftly Tilting Planet, by Madeleine L'Engle For "the dimension of time," see A Fold in Time, Time Fold, and Diamond Theory in 1937. A Swiftly Tilting Planet is a fantasy for children set partly in Vespugia, a fictional country bordered by Chile and Argentina.
For a more adult audience -- In memory of General Augusto Pinochet, who died yesterday in Santiago, Chile, a quotation from Federico Garcia Lorca's lecture on "the Duende" (Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1933): "... Philip of Austria... longing
to discover the Muse and the Angel in theology, found himself imprisoned
by the Duende of cold ardors in that masterwork of the Escorial,
where geometry abuts with a dream and the Duende wears the mask of
the Muse for the eternal chastisement of the great king."
Perhaps. Or perhaps Philip, "the lonely hermit of the Escorial," is less lonely now. Posted 12/11/2006 at 7:20 AM |
The Librarian on Nobel Prize Day "Time and chance happeneth to them all." -- Ecclesiastes Timeline Index: The number 048 may be interpreted as referring to... A Miniature Rosetta Stone: "Function defined form, expressed in a pure geometry that the eye could easily grasp in its entirety." -- J. G. Ballard on Modernism (The Guardian, March 20, 2006) "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance -- it is the illusion of knowledge." -- Daniel J. Boorstin, Librarian of Congress, quoted in Beyond Geometry Posted 12/10/2006 at 9:00 PM |
On This Date
"... in 1896 Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite and founder of the Nobel prizes, died in San Remo, Italy, at age 63." -- "Today in History," by The Associated Press
... And the Nobel Prize
for Bullshit goes to... First Runner-up -- A Piece of Justice. From a summary of the novel: The
story deals with "one Gideon Summerfield, deceased." Summerfield, a
former tutor at (the fictional) St. Agatha's College, Cambridge
University, "is about to become the recipient of the Waymark prize.
This prize is awarded in Mathematics and has the same prestige as the
Nobel...."
Posted 12/10/2006 at 12:00 PM |
The Librarian "Like all men of the Library, I have traveled in my youth." -- Jorge Luis Borges, The Library of Babel "Papá me mandó un artículo de J. G. Ballard en el que se refiere a cómo el lugar de la muerte es central en nuestra cultura contemporánea." -- Sonya Walger, interview dated September 14 (Feast of the Triumph of the Cross), Anno Domini 2006 from Argentina. She "studied English Literature at Christ Church College, Oxford, where she received a First Class degree.... " --Wikipedia "... un artículo de J. G. Ballard...."-- A Handful of Dust, by J. G. Ballard (The Guardian, March 20, 2006): "...
The Atlantic wall was only part of a huge system of German
fortifications that included the Siegfried line, submarine pens and
huge flak towers that threatened the surrounding land like lines of
Teutonic knights. Almost all had survived the war and seemed to be
waiting for the next one, left behind by a race of warrior scientists
obsessed with geometry and death. Death was what the Atlantic wall and Siegfried line were all about.... ... modernism of the heroic period, from 1920 to 1939, is dead, and it died first in the blockhouses of Utah beach and the Siegfried line... Modernism's
attempt to build a better world with the aid of science and technology
now seems almost heroic. Bertolt Brecht, no fan of modernism, remarked
that the mud, blood and carnage of the first world war trenches left
its survivors longing for a future that resembled a white-tiled
bathroom. Architects were in the vanguard of the new movement,
led by Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus design school. The old models were
thrown out. Function defined form, expressed in a pure geometry that the eye could easily grasp in its entirety." "This is the garden of Apollo, the field of Reason...." -- John Outram, architect (Click on picture for details.) Posted 12/10/2006 at 9:00 AM |
Posted 12/10/2006 at 6:00 AM |
Death on the Feast of Saint Nicholas Quotation from Log24 on September 14, 2003-- Skewed Mirrors: "We're not here to stick a mirror on you. Anybody can do that, We're here to give you a more cubist or skewed mirror, where you get to see yourself with fresh eyes. That's what an artist does. When you paint the Crucifixion, you're not painting an exact reproduction." -- Julie Taymor on "Frida" (AP, 10/22/02)
Rosenblum died at 79 Posted 12/9/2006 at 4:00 AM |
An Instance of the Fingerpost "CRUCIAL (from Lat. crux, a cross), that which has the form of a cross... From Francis Bacon's expression instantia crucis (taken, as he says, from the finger-post or crux at cross-roads)" "For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross." -- Gravity's Rainbow There is such a thing as a tesseract. Related material: The tesseract on the cover of The Gameplayers of Zan (All Hallows' Eve, 2005), and "Appropriating the Button-molder's Posted 12/8/2006 at 9:00 AM |
In his honor, "one brief shining moment"-- namely, "3:30:30," the time of this entry. 30 The ImageThat which is bright rises twice: The image of Fire. Posted 12/7/2006 at 3:30 AM |
Mathematical Imagery From the current American Mathematical Society "Mathematical Imagery" page: From today's New York Times: "Rosie Lee Tompkins, a renowned African-American quiltmaker whose use of dazzling color and vivid geometric forms made her work internationally acclaimed despite her vehement efforts to remain completely unknown, was found dead on Friday at her home in Richmond, Calif. She was 70." --Margalit Fox, NY Times 12/6/06 Tompkins was found dead on December 1, 2006. From Log24 on that date: "What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief of The New York Times saying: In looking at a painting today, 'to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial.' I read it again. It didn’t say 'something helpful' or 'enriching' or even 'extremely valuable.' No, the word was crucial...." Related material: Diamond Theory and a politically correct 1995 feminist detective novel about quilts, A Piece of Justice. From a summary of the novel: The
story deals with "one Gideon Summerfield, deceased." Summerfield, a
former tutor at (the fictional) St. Agatha's College, Cambridge University, "is about to become the recipient of the
Waymark prize. This prize is awarded in Mathematics and has the same
prestige as the Nobel. Summerfield had a rather lackluster career at
St. Agatha's, with the exception of one remarkable result that he
obtained. It is for this result that he is being awarded the prize,
albeit posthumously." Someone is apparently trying to prevent a
biography of Summerfield from being published. The following page contains a critical part of the solution to the mystery: Meanwhile, back in real life... It is said that the late Ms. Tompkins liked to work while listening to the soundtrack of "Saturday Night Fever." "It's just your jive talkin' you're telling me lies, yeah Jive talkin' you wear a disguise Jive talkin' so misunderstood, yeah Jive talkin' You really no good" These lyrics may also serve to summarize reviews of Diamond Theory written in the summer of 2005. For further details, see Mathematics and Narrative. Posted 12/6/2006 at 3:15 AM |
Today in History (via The Associated Press)
An Alternate History "A FAMOUS HISTORIAN:
A Story That
Works -- Fritz Leiber in "The Button Molder" Posted 12/5/2006 at 5:01 AM |
Descent of the God Related material: All Hallows' Eve, 2005: Multispeech as well as C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, Chapter 15, "The Descent of the Gods," and Charles Williams, "The Carol of Amen House": Beauty arose of old And dreamed of a perfect thing, Where none shall be angry or cold Or armed with an evil sting; Where the world shall be made anew, For the gods shall breathe its air, And Phoebus Apollo there-through Shall move on a golden stair. (For the musical score, see The Masques of Amen House.) See also A Mass for Lucero. Posted 12/4/2006 at 11:01 AM |
180, 932 - The Musical! "You gotta be true to your code." -- Sinatra NY Lottery, 2006: Dec. 3 Mid-day - 180 Dec. 3 Evening - 932 Yesterday's entry suggested that the date, December 3, might be appropriate for some sort of Broadway production. Yesterday evening's NY lottery number, 932, suggests* (via Google) that a visit to the castle Wildeck is in order. This castle is now the home of the Buchdruck-Museum honoring Johannes Gutenberg. For an appropriate Broadway production, see today's New York Times: Gutenberg! The Musical! Yesterday's mid-day NY lottery number, 180, suggests, in the above context, the German term Umkehrung. A casual web search on this term (+ "reversal," then, refining the search, + "Theocritus") leads to the following material, which I personally find of much greater interest than the above Broadway production. (Such web searches are made possible by a technological revolution comparable to that of Gutenberg... Broadway may perhaps look forward to... "Google! The Musical!")
JSTOR: Theocritus
JSTOR: A Theophany
|
A THEOPHANY IN THEOCRITUS IN a masterly study of the language and motifs of ... epithet I The completeness and precision of the Umkehrung (for this term cf. ... |
Washington hosts
|
Brothers:
Divine Intervention Puts the "X" in Sex Steven Rosen in The Boston Globe, Sunday, Nov. 26, 2006: "Emilio Estevez still doesn't know why, but one day in 2000 he and his brother Charlie Sheen found themselves doing a photo shoot at this city's long-closed but still infamous Ambassador Hotel. It was where Senator Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot the night he won California's crucial Democratic presidential primary in 1968. The site made little sense for the film they were promoting, 'Rated X,' a feature about the real-life San Francisco pornographers Jim and Artie Mitchell.... he [Estevez] and Sheen co-starred as the Mitchell brothers. 'It wasn't something I had requested,' Estevez says today of the photo shoot's location. 'It was perhaps the photographer. I never got to the bottom of it, but there I was.' To him, it was one in a series of 'divine interventions' that gave
him the inspiration to write and direct the new film 'Bobby,' which
opened Thursday [Nov. 23, Thanksgiving Day 2006]."
Brothers
Brothers "We keep coming back -- Wallace Stevens (See previous entry.) For an account of the Kennedy film in the style of the "West Wing" liberals, see Larry King tonight. For some deeper political background from a more authentic voice of the left, see The Myth of the Kennedys. Posted 12/2/2006 at 12:00 PM |
Venus at St. Anne's, continued In honor of Symbol of Venus Related symbols: "The best theology today, We keep coming back (From 'An Ordinary Evening ... Not grim/ (Ibid.)" -- "The Church's "All the truth in the world Posted 12/2/2006 at 1:29 AM |
Day Without Art From the Online Etymology Dictionary: crucial - 1706, from Fr. crucial... from L. crux (gen. crucis) "cross." The meaning "decisive, critical" is extended from a logical term, Instantias Crucis, adopted by Francis Bacon (1620); the notion is of cross fingerboard signposts* at forking roads, thus a requirement to choose. "... given the nature of our intellectual commerce with works of art, to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial-- the means by which our experience of individual works is joined to our understanding of the values they signify." -- Hilton Kramer in The New York Times, April 28, 1974 What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief of The New York Times saying: In looking at a painting today, 'to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial.' I read it again. It didn’t say 'something helpful' or 'enriching' or even 'extremely valuable.' No, the word was crucial.... The more industrious scholars will derive considerable pleasure from describing how the art-history professors and journalists of the period 1945-75, along with so many students, intellectuals, and art tourists of every sort, actually struggled to see the paintings directly, in the old pre-World War II way, like Plato's cave dwellers watching the shadows, without knowing what had projected them, which was the Word." -- Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word For some related material from the next 30 years, 1976-2006, see Art Wars. * "Note that in the original Latin, the term is not by any means
'fingerpost' but simply 'cross' (Latin Crux, crucis) - a root term
giving deeper meaning to the 'crucial' decision as to which if any of
the narratives are 'true,' and echoing the decisive 'crucifixion'
revealed in the story." -- Wikipedia on An Instance of the Fingerpost. Posted 12/1/2006 at 4:07 AM |