48 20 5655 https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a1800d2fd1c79c41f563df1f19b9386a.jpg 6f61599f205f4505eb57ae000b7fcc6d Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 25.5 x 20.5 cm Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 black-and-white photographic copy print Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-2211 Title A name given to the resource Copy print of a photograph of Main Street in Annapolis, Maryland Description An account of the resource Copy print of a photograph of Main Street in Annapolis, Maryland. The original photograph is dated 1870 and is in the collection of the <a href="https://speccol.msa.maryland.gov/pages/speccol/collection.aspx?speccol=985">Maryland State Archives</a>. The image was used in the book, "A Complete & Generous Education" 300 Years of Liberal Arts, St. John's College, Annapolis (Annapolis: St. John's College Press, 1996), page 32. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1996 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bachrach, David, 1845-1921 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright undetermined https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/a6a5d11f00fe21470e789b5b3605d0f8.jpg 16dd97875a77ae5d604e613378d67c27 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 25.5 x 20.5 cm. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data 1 black-and-white copy print of a drawing Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-2103 Title A name given to the resource Copy print of a watercolor by Charles Cotton Milbourne of Church Circle in Annapolis, Maryland Description An account of the resource Copy print of a watercolor by Charles Cotton Milbourne of Church Circle in Annapolis, Maryland. The original watercolor is dated 1784 and is in the collection of the Hammond-Harwood House Association. The image was used in the book, "A Complete & Generous Education" 300 Years of Liberal Arts, St. John's College, Annapolis (Annapolis: St. John's College Press, 1996), page 15. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Milbourne, C. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource No known copyright. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource circa 1996 Church Circle https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/e9a4631398a06f2181a94ef9cb379ede.jpg 91e58f8d33bce33df67df93a82e3871b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 11 x 8 cm. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-1323 Title A name given to the resource Corner View of Woodward Hall Library, Annapolis, Maryland Description An account of the resource 1 photographic print : b&w Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1968 [circa] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. Woodward Hall Library https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/46239daec45bd71c1b1fedcae35c5618.jpg 209cca17c67f11146d47ff84f2f963f9 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 12.5 x 9 cm. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-0334 Title A name given to the resource Couples Swing Dancing, [St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland] Description An account of the resource 1 photographic print : b&w Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1960-1970 [circa] Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Subject The topic of the resource St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Students. Swing (Dance) Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource still image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/1e9e51b80314fb05e958aefd2ecdf7d8.mp3 2121b78de4bcae6cae7f46883020ee8a Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Description An account of the resource The Wednesday Night Lecture Series, hosted during the summer term by the Graduate Institute at St. John’s College in Annapolis, is a less-formal version of the college’s formal Friday Night Lectures. The Wednesday Night lectures are an opportunity for tutors and for graduates of the college who are pursuing academic careers to present the first fruits of their thinking to an attentive and inquisitive audience. The lectures, held in the King William Room of the Barr-Buchanan Center at 7:30 p.m., with a question period afterward in a neighboring classroom, are free and open to the public. For more information, and for a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a title="Summer lecture series" href="https://www.sjc.edu/annapolis/events/lectures/summer-wednesday-night-lecture-series" target="_blank">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=31">Items in the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data CD Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:44:45 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Courage, Insight, Sympathy, Solitude: The Genealogy of the Noble Type in Part Nine of Beyond Good and Evil. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Boxel, Lise van Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012-08-01 Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission to: Make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make a typescript copy of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation in the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online." Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Subject The topic of the resource Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900. Jenseits von Gut und Böse. English Nobility Philosophy Courage Good and evil Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, 1844-1900 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bib # 80814 Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on August 1, 2012, by Lise van Boxel as part of the Graduate Institute Summer Lecture Series. Ms. van Boxel was a tutor at St. John's College. Her talk is on Nietzsche's Geneology of Morals. In particular, her talk examines what it is that makes up a "noble type" for Nietzsche by looking at a close reading of part nine of his work. Her lecture aims to point towards a positive definition of what the noble type in Nietzsche actually constitutes. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Graduate Institute Summer lecture series Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c9ba3111c0c0794f6d130f477831117e.jpg 6b65ded143881b5d941bd3955fc152ea Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 25.5 x 20.5 cm. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Resolution Resolution of the image in dpi. 600 dpi Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-0444 Title A name given to the resource Courtyard View of Paca-Carroll House, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland Description An account of the resource 1 photographic print : b&w Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Parran, Tom Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981 (circa) Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. Type The nature or genre of the resource still image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Subject The topic of the resource Paca-Carroll House (St. John's College, Annapolis, MD) 1980-1990. Paca-Carroll House https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/ad96e7830d8d8b84cf3bd18a8359e70d.pdf 2b920a0e34d5147147da71ffabf0262d PDF Text Text Cultural Institutions, Theatre, and Humanistic Liberal Arts Education: Where Do We Go from Here? J. Scott Lee, Executive Director, Association for Core Texts and Courses Recent education conferences tend to illustrate a sense of an impending loss of liberal education within a tide of cultural crisis. The call for this conference at St. John’s College on “What Is Liberal Education For?” “recogniz[es]” that the traditions of education at liberal arts colleges “have been put on the defensive.” The call finds an “emerging consensus” that “consumerism,” “new economic challenges,” and “the fragmentation of general studies” caused by specialization were “symptomatic” of “a crisis of uncertainty and disorientation affecting every field of human endeavor.” The call asserts liberal education “can reaffirm its relevance and [humane] purposes” in response to this broad crisis. St. John’s College is not alone in formulating a crisis that liberal education faces. Phi Beta Kappa and the American Council of Academic Deans and the Working Group of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University are only some of the most notable bodies that have discussed the stress liberal education faces. The 2013 PBK/ACAD conference call was hardly less sweeping than the SJC call, stating that higher education is “undergoing … transformations” of economic necessity, and that education is being “driven by technology” or by demographic stresses on class rigidity for millions of families who aspire for a better life. The call seemed to say that the transformations have put the “structure and character of higher education” along with the entire democratic premises of American society at risk, and that these transformations not only have subjected higher education to the winds and change of fortune, but that more than any other branch of higher education, liberal arts and sciences are suffering “scrutiny” more than ever. �A recent spate of defenses of the humanities and humanism, the college, and the purpose of education -- by Martha Nussbaum, Tony Kronman, Andrew Delbanco, Patrick Deneen, and Reinhard Hütter -- adumbrate a destruction of liberal education correlated to the economic, scientific, and technological conditions under which we live. i ii Each author attempts to revive traditions of liberal education by linking it to sustaining democracy, spiritual needs of cultures, or understandings of faith. All find the soul of our students and our citizens is at stake, though, of course, the constitution of that soul and the education designed to nurture it are at issue amongst them. Collectively, they might be called ‘the whole person defense’ of liberal education. A common concern among our authors is whether our cultural assumption that we can transform almost anything, particularly through the technology of science, is good for our souls, good for liberal education, and good for our species. For Nussbaum, technology appears as the competing, attractive image of students in the lab, instead of pictures of students “thinking,” that administrators use to lure students to universities. iii Delbanco notes that the advantage that sciences have over the humanities in public evaluations is landmarks which technological advances provide, though an occasional historical or philosophic “breakthrough” be acknowledged. iv For Kronman and Deneen, technology is the differential gear which imparts varying force to science, culture, and education. Further, Kronman and Deneen come very close to each other in noting the meretricious effects upon our character, upon our sense of limits, which technological achievement unleashes in the form of pleonexia. The humanities currently fail to address it (Kronman), or education encourages it through a philosophy of transformation, of creating original knowledge and innovations through research (Deneen). v Hütter suggests that the humanities cannot address “dire” transformational issues involving both the university and �society because the kind of soul that the humanities might try to produce through education, the imaginative faculty, is inadequate to examine the whole realm of knowledge and conduct the metaphysical search for truth Hütter believes would not only ground a liberal education, but, possibly, turn the sciences toward a self-examination of ends. vi Finally, most seem to be convinced that the products of arts are essential to any revival and while they are skilled fashioners of argument in areas where no single discipline can claim accepted precedence, the discussion of fine or liberal arts and their products is not in terms of art, but in the terms of the political, cultural, or religious end sought. For example, Nussbaum devotes large portions of her book exploring arts and a whole chapter to “Cultivating the Imagination: Literature and the Arts.” In the latter, we learn that “in order to be stably linked to democratic values [the artistic cultivation of ‘capacities for play and empathy in a general way, and (the) address (of) particular cultural blind spots’] requires a normative view of how human beings ought to relate to one another… and, therefore, requires selectivity regarding the artworks used.” vii A catalog follows of the failures of artworks, of “defective forms of ‘literature,” to cultivate the sympathy that Nussbaum desires. Undoubtedly, Kronman’s understanding of the search for meaning and his discussion of civilizational “conversation” depends on art; Delbanco’s distinction between research and reading instances canonical works from ancient to modern times; and Deneen’s argument is concerned with a residium of teachings that earlier great books leave us. Aside from promoting the cultivation of the imagination, Hütter seems nearly indifferent to art works selected. Whether by disinterest, by concentration on ends mostly external to liberal education, or through contempt for ‘know-how’ wrought by real misgivings over modern technology, these discussions tend to obscure and ignore the importance of the arts – broadly, the technē -- of the liberal arts. viii In sum, all mention liberal arts education; most �defend the fine or liberal arts, but none of these authors ground their defenses of liberal arts education in art per se. Thus, in these social-moral defenses, an entire line of argument concerning the arts is, for the most part, relegated to an instrumental, supporting, or ancillary role in a discussion that might be titled: “social conditions, educational institutions, and individual capacities: wither liberal education?” ix Notwithstanding the good will of many scientists, it is largely humanists and political philosophers who have inherited the liberal education traditions of practice and defense in today’s universities and colleges. A problem exists now: as a defense of liberal education, these political/cultural arguments have not worked and there are signs that their appeal is really flagging. Robert Ferrall, Jr, former President of Beloit College, has extensively documented the actual decline in the demographics and finances of colleges in his book Liberal Arts at the Brink. He calls for ‘collective action on the part of liberal arts colleges’ in order that ‘high school seniors [counselors and parents will see] the value of a liberal arts education [because] the entire community, that is, society as a whole, will [have been so] persuaded.’ (158-160). This particular paper agrees with that view and argues that a pervasive discussion of liberal arts, beginning in the academy and extending to the public is necessary as part of that much larger effort. While I think there are challenges, the purported crisis in liberal education can be approached in a way not usually developed in current discussions at any length: I mean we could speak of an education in liberal arts. In the terms of today’s discussions, liberal arts education is always secondary, a servant to some other larger concern. Further, as far as I can tell, there has been no discussion of what a renewed interest in the arts might do in universities and colleges when set in the context of other types of institutions which employ the arts. When the �question arises about the articulation and persuasive power of a liberal arts education defense, it seems beneficial to consider similar institutions and their problems and successes with the arts. I’ll continue, then, with why we might want to discuss art, and how I’m using the term. Then, I’ll look at a cluster of institutions that employ the arts: these include orchestras, museums, churches, humanistic liberal arts education, and the theatre. We’ll examine some of the troubles four of these institutions currently face, and we will see that theatre offers a model of cooperative, public arts which humanistic liberal arts education might consider in addressing its current problems. Finally, I’ll develop a possible renewal of the liberal arts which might both address current problems in colleges and help to change public perceptions of liberal arts education. Thereby, we would enrich the ecology of our defense and, I think, make perceptible what it is our students are capable of. Forty to fifty years ago when one went to college, one chose to get a B.A. or a B.S. Notwithstanding a plethora of alternatives, the same choice is still available and nobody doubts that students graduating, today, with a B.S. possess a science. I’ve been wondering, what art or arts do those graduating with a B.A. possess? The question seems relevant, for while undoubtedly exempla of the fine arts are discussed in courses taken by bachelor-of-arts candidates, it is not at all clear that bachelor-of-arts degrees are aimed at exploration of arts. Nor is it clear that traditions of education in the liberal arts, more than two thousand years of development of the trivium, quadrivium and other arts which have staked a claim to liberal arts education, are a component part of a bachelor of arts. Finally, while most bachelor-of-science students would probably self-describe their capacities and courses of instruction in scientific terms, it seems doubtful that those educated in the humanities or, possibly, political philosophy, would self-describe in artistic terms. Maybe the term, �‘bachelor-of-arts’ should be dropped altogether, but we would simply be further reducing our argumentative ecology by eliminating a widely recognized, if not well understood, distinguishing mark of the education we support. More probingly, the word, “art,” like the word “science,” has many associations and, therefore, implies the question, “what is art?” and, thus, the question “what would a ‘bachelor-ofarts’ indicate?” The range of Aristotle’s discussion of art provides, I think, a suitable scope for viewing the problems of humanistic liberal education in this light, because the range of Aristotle’s discussions suggests the almost vast territory arts in an education could explore. For Aristotle art means the capacity to make, the activity of making, and the object made that is separated from a maker. Thereby, the generic term, “art,” comprehends these three specific, correlative relations. For Aristotle art runs from the intellectual virtue of techne, (N.E. VI, iv) which is the etymological root of our modern terms, technique and technology, through formulations of specific arts as capacities or powers (dynamis) humans exercise – particularly those concerned with thought, for example, the arts of dialectic and rhetoric (Rhet I, 2 1355b), to the objects of human production (dynamis: Poetics 1, 1447a) x such as lyrics, comedies, tragedies or epics, instrumental music, choirs, painting, sculpture, architecture, mechanical arts, medicinal treatment, indeed, almost any made thing that usually happens and is not spontaneous, a product of chance or of nature (Phys II, 5). Thus, for Aristotle, art is a cause of things coming into being in this world that, otherwise, would not exist without active human agency (N.E., VI, 4). It touches our deepest natures and desires, exercises our minds and passions to a degree of inventiveness that our imaginations struggle to keep up with, incorporates almost anything that the universe has to offer, and results in a changed world that, without art, would be barren or, at best, no more than a garden of Eden. Art partakes of the characteristics of our modern �disciplines; knowledge is an important mark of the arts for Aristotle. Indeed, at points where knowledge of arts converges with experience, Aristotle’s view on art begins to approach the modern view of the necessity of knowledge to be empirical. (Meta I i) For Aristotle, the teaching of art, as a sign of the possession of knowledge, refers not only to the ordering of experience but the causes of what exists and how it is produced – again, a position not that distant from modernity. (Meta I i) Aristotle repeatedly identifies arts as origins of invention and as often ties these origins to the development of knowledge as well as the invention of new products and capacities (Soph Encl end, Poetics 4, Meta I i). Indeed, the arts may lay the foundation for the purely speculative sciences, not only because some of the arts do not aim at utility, but because even useful arts may involve a component associated with the speculative sciences – contemplation (Rhet, def). Moreover, art, faculties, and thought are all described by Aristotle (MetaphysicsVII, 7) as producers of makings, so that when a faculty or thought itself becomes subject to reflection or theorizing about the causes of thought in respect of specific ends, it is possible to speak of an art which contemplates and artistically produces thought. This is precisely what happens in the definition of rhetoric. xi The thoughts reflected on are pistoi, persuasives, and Aristotle writes extensively in the introduction to the treatise that Dialectic and Rhetoric, as arts, are counterparts and share many, not all, of the same concerns with inference, enthymemes and examples in rhetoric, syllogisms and induction in dialectic. The prefatory matter of the Topics is much more restricted, but dialectic concerns the opinions, doxa – of all or the majority or the wise – and it aims at methodical conversations and the examination, reasonings, about the bases of the sciences and problems susceptible of address by opinion. (I. 1, 100a 18-25). So, particularly in their critical and poetic functions, the arts frequently stand outside the normative conventions of disciplinary thought while retaining an artistic character �(Parts of Animals I, 1, 639 and Poetics 25 1460a14-1461a8). The combination of criticism, poetic production, and technological development wrought by art means that art, in Aristotle, is foundational to invention and freedom; we make, for ourselves, the possibilities that we experience. Thus, artistic invention and freedom pervasively influence institutions: Aristotle’s thinking on art is adept enough to conduct something like thought experiments about institutions, not only about liberal arts education, but about public debate and critical evaluation of the arts and sciences, as well as the audience for them. All of these artistic concerns deeply affect humanistic liberal education for they situate in a paideia the four concerns of the humanities: transmission, interpretation, judgment, and invention, and they suggest, thus, what might lie behind a ‘bachelor-of-arts’ degree. While it would be a mistake, I think, for a bachelor-of-arts degree to be subsumed under or defined by any one particular artistic concern, so that it became simply another disciplinary endeavor, it is not a mistake to see whether particular arts in an institutional context might suggest some help for liberal education. Not only liberal education, but many other older cultural institutions are facing uncertain, perhaps disoriented, futures, as newer technologies and fashionable art forms seem to be supplanting them. The New Republic has noted unsuccessful attempts by orchestras, seeking to maintain support, to substitute social outreach programs, audience participation, and adoptions of more popular music forms in place of the studied appreciation of the classical repertory, an appreciation acquired more or less over a lifetime. The New York Times recently noted the decline of space allotted to contemplation within museums in favor of installations offering “experience.” xii Establishment and fundamentalist churches, a third great cultural institution, have suffered increasing disaffections of attendance regardless of denomination. xiii Humanistic, liberal arts university and college programs, since the recession, �are widely reported to be suffering cutbacks, much lower student application and humanities major rates, as well as loss of financial private giving. xiv In other words, a cluster of some of our most important cultural institutions appear unmoored from their traditional grounds of acceptance and support. The one exception is the theatre. To cut a long story short, on the whole its audiences are not disaffected, its non-profit theatres recovered well and quickly from the recession, its audience attendance is much better than comparative trends in cinema, it is filled with authors that might be considered ‘disorienting,’ but the theatre knows and goes about a relatively successful business. Why is that and what lessons are there for the humanities and liberal arts? Granted that the theatre has experimented broadly with “happenings” and “audience experiences” for the last forty to fifty years, still its mainstay – one that draws audiences – remains “classic works” or works that, at least, seem aware of the potentials of the dramatic and theatrical inheritance. The theatre is simply filled with people who are immersed in these two complementary traditions. Also, theatre people know that they are “live.” In Hume’s terms, they are vivacious. The audience, because it is assembled, is live; the actors have voices and gestures whose timbre and sweep are, by and large, authentic and inescapable. The theatre can assemble its considerable range of artists, its stage, with its focus of audience attention, and its vivid here and now-ness to achieve – what? It is, of course, true to think that theatre is entertainment. But to “entertain” is to consider and, potentially, when you go to a theatre, you could be asked to use your heart and mind for a wide range of forms stretching over the spectacle of props and choreography, the music of an orchestra to the whistle of a lonely character exiting the stage, the language of the streets or Shakespeare, arguments ranging from physics and philosophy to persuasions of a lover, human character choices and suffering that make a difference to how we �feel about those characters, and conceptual or actional frameworks where we have a minisystem, mini-world or mini-verse before us. Theatre people seem, by and large, not to conceive of accessibility to this range as a dumbing down or as too plebian to warrant attention. The problem is not Shakespeare’s because he was great in his Elizabethan vocabulary and iambs or complex in his plots, nor the audience’s because it simply isn’t expert enough or intellectually rigorous enough to appreciate technical nuance, but the production company’s – how will they make the language convey what Shakespeare was using it for? Presentation in the theatre isn’t a matter of democracy – it is a matter of availability. Presentation is a matter of welcoming in a controlled, focused manner so that those who are drawn to theatre (or any other art form) are helped to partake of what it has to offer. Availability, then, is the use of the theatrical arts to make intelligible the dramas presented. There’s an attractive orientation, here, that perhaps churches, museums, orchestras and the humanities could all take a lesson from, and the orientation’s attractiveness rests in art. Art and artistic structure is the phenomenon that is shared by museums, orchestras, to some degree churches, and certainly the humanities. We recognize this phenomenon in two different ways: obviously, so-called fine arts products and activities are central, but equally important and just as nuanced are the argumentative and symbolic arts, exemplified by the liberal arts, that are used to apprehend and appreciate the fine arts. For the humanities, whatever completion the historical draw of politics and culture (as a substitute for politics) may offer, the fact is that art is quintessential, since the humanities would cease to exist and would have no history whatsoever if art did not exist. �And the same is true of liberal education. Humanities departments and, through them, colleges are far more aligned to theatre, museums, and orchestras than they are to the physical or social science departments or research facilities. The recent, much discussed, Harvard white paper on the humanities wants the history of the humanities to begin, more or less, with the rise of universities, which, in turn, become the home of scientific and humanistic disciplines after the Enlightenment. But, before the rise of universities and, then, a humanism separated from the sciences, the arts and humanities were intertwined by the liberal arts of the Greco-Roman and, to a more limited extent, the early Christian and Middle-Ages worlds. Foundational to humanistic study is not discrete disciplinarity, but artistic capacity, scope, and performance. Put differently, liberal education without art is simply not liberal education, for, without it, liberal education’s “freedom” has little room for invention, its examinations of disciplines will be confined to stock rehearsals of accepted postulates, and, as it has, it will lose a position, largely aesthetic, from which to criticize current political debate of any stripe. In recognizing the centrality of arts, for the humanities what is at stake is what constitutes the fields of the humanities; for liberal education the claim that colleges offer a liberal arts education is at stake. The vivacity of the theatre can be captured in the humanistic classroom, but not through technological gee-whiz nor some sort of ‘theatrical’ staging effects. Nor is it likely to be captured in lectures. Notwithstanding the times all academics have marveled in remembering the lecture a professor gave, lectures are not “made to be performed” in the way dramas are. Put differently, if a professor cannot figure out how to “perform” an idea, then she or he will have to resort to other means. The seeming absence of performance instruction has important implications for focusing the thought of humanities students through pedagogy. The arts of grammar, rhetoric and logic, dialectic, interrogation and conversation, arts of interpretation, of �meaning, and of a specific artistic appreciation (e.g. knowing scales in music, perspective in the visual arts, prosody in literature, specific differentiated forms of imitative and inquiry literatures) take on enormous importance. Such arts suggest a partnership of artists in the classroom, not unlike that of playwright and performers in the theatre. Not only must the professors generally employ these arts in the (relative) absence of stage props, choreography, performed musical scores, oral interpretation, and, especially, acting, but the students themselves will have to learn to employ them because there is little or no staging that they can rely on. Some canaries in the cage of higher education are chirping loudly that no arts like these are any longer being learned on today’s campuses. Verlyn Klinkeborg, member of the editorial board of the New York Times, has taught at many top flight colleges and universities. In an essay on the “Decline and Fall of the English Major,” he notes that the “kind of writing – clear, direct, humane – and the reading on which it is based are the very root of the humanities,” but that students, today, cannot produce clear writing. He adds, brutally, “the humanities do a bad job of teaching the humanities” largely because “writing well used to be a fundamental principle of the humanities…” [my emphasis] Of course, the problems of the humanities are more general than problems of the English major. And here is where the shoe really begins to pinch. Arum and Roksa’s Academically Adrift found in national samplings that “three semesters of college education … have a barely noticeable impact on students’ skills in critical thinking, complex reasoning, and writing.” xv Controlling for socio-economic background doesn’t improve the picture. Worse, Blaich and Pascarella found in a national study of 11 liberal arts colleges and 6 universities where the kind of practices that tend to be recommended to improve scores are employed – e.g., discussion groups, peer groups, working across disciplines, imagining an argument from someone else’s point of view – the capacities of students for moral reasoning and �critical thinking on average “increased only a small amount” over four years. xvi Positive attitude toward literacy declined in 53% of all students, two-thirds of students during four years reported declines in academic motivation, and interest in “contribut[ing]” to both the arts and sciences declined for twice as many students as those that experienced growth in interest. One might think that college can only affect such measures marginally, but, no, it turns out that practically the same measures indicated large advances by undergraduate students in the 1980s. As Arum and Roksa put it, “low gains…are…not simply an artifact of our measurement strategy, but a disconcerting reality.” (37) Let’s be clear. The data doesn’t say that no students improve significantly in moral and critical reasoning or writing ability. Some do, but not nearly enough. Upon graduation, apparently few students want to make contributions to the arts and sciences, but some do. Some are still academically motivated. Still, the data does say that by our own lights there is both a problem and an opportunity for the humanities and liberal arts education. Arum and Roksa make it very clear that, generally, time on the task of studying, and specifically far more reading and writing than is the usual practice in our colleges and universities, improves student learning (131 and 132). So what might students take time to read or artfully produce? As Executive Director of ACTC, I am a strong proponent of using classical works, but I have come to believe, especially with regard to questions of students working across disciplines or inventing arguments, that a more capacious view of what counts in classical works would reward our students. After reviewing more than 50 general education programs, including many core text, great books programs, and after having approved over 2000 paper proposals for our ACTC conferences over 20 years, I find it disturbing that philosophical or theoretical -- in the Greek sense -- discussions �of art and appreciation of some of the technical development entailed have virtually disappeared from coherent general education curricula and discussions at ACTC. There is the Platonic exception, but works of Aristotle, Isocrates, Cicero, Augustine, Priscian, or, moving forward, Bruni, Petrarch, or Erasmus, on grammar, rhetoric and logic are largely absent from core text, general liberal education programs. Nor is it better when we get to the moderns: no Saussure, Burke, Austin, Smullyan, and so forth. Sure, there are courses with these texts and authors, and there are professors who teach these arts in isolated courses, but we don’t teach across the curriculum these liberal arts texts that contain the questions and techniques that would make the liberal arts truly available to all. Great or Big Questions may be asked in general education programs, but I can assure you that “What is Art?” is rarely among these in any systematic way. xvii Since we offer bachelor-ofarts degrees, the chance meeting of this question seems particularly disturbing because it comprehends other fascinating questions that the liberal arts raise and that scholarship has pointed out. Questions of perception, aesthetics, imitation, elements of speech, separations and relations of language to the physical, psychological and conventional worlds, available modes of interpretation, the relations of the origin of language to the divine and civilizational origins of our humanity, not to mention questions of equity, justice, the nature of truth and the determination or freedom of thought are not only pointed out by scholars, but directly observable in such liberal arts texts by our undergraduate students. xviii Indeed, taken very seriously, the liberal arts question, “what is art,” will lead to examinations and reformulations of whole disciplines, as Henry Adams illustrated in The Education of Henry Adams. xix But we don’t teach across the curriculum the liberal arts texts that I indicated that contain the questions and techniques that would make the liberal arts truly available to all. xx Again, I repeat, in isolated �courses all of the arts, questions, and texts can be found. In some isolated institutions, the bachelor-of-arts degree is more artistic. But, comprehensively, in the current structural situation of the university and collegiate education, the humanities are probably our chief source of hope for an education in the arts which reaches all students systematically. The question is whether a humanistic liberal arts education is desirable. I think it is. Teaching distinguishable liberal arts are to the vivacity of human achievements as the arts of the stage are to the liveliness and intelligibility of drama. That is, what arts are used and the proportions of their use, the recognition that art in its largest sense is the object of study, is central to focusing the mind of students in the humanities. Conversely, the proper production by students from the humanistic point of view is conversation with fellow students and teachers, the essay, formal speeches and debates, video, audio, and web productions, musical performance, stage performance, oral interpretations, original translations, poems, stories, and conversational defenses or explanations of one’s work. And these artful productions suggest that the term “undergraduate research” does not necessarily point to, inculcate, require or comprehend the pedagogy or use of any of these other arts. At stake in the classroom interaction between books, essays, works of fine arts and the corresponding liberal arts students employ is the realization of the possibilities, the intellectual freedom, which humans make for themselves, not only in the past but for a future. That is, we can no more know the truth about human existence or beyond without examining the possibilities found in products and performances of art, than we can know the possibilities of human existence or beyond simply by possessing the truth. We must work out both and get better or worse in doing so. �The argument above seems to preclude the scholarly nature of book and article publishing in the humanities – the artifact of research that many humanists hold most dear. But not really. Literate audiences were small in ancient times. As literacy has spread, generally, products of art such as play scripts, and their cinematic versions, became widely distributed – think of the motivation for the publication of Shakespeare’s folio -- whereas humanistic publication has shrunk and sunk into academic libraries and tiny, specialized audiences. This is a mistake we are paying for. We need, instead, a vigorous public scholarship. If time permitted, I would elaborate three examples of public scholarship. Here, I’ll simply allude to the specifics they offer. They involve transmission, interpretation, criticism, and invention – four functions basic to liberal arts efforts to inculcate freedom. Their order marks increasingly wider freedom in liberal education. Our first example is a recent article in the New Republic by Helen Vendler. xxi She argues that the recent digitalization of Emily Dickenson manuscripts has revealed that “perhaps, for Dickinson, the principal unit of thought in poetic composition was sometimes not the stanza, not even the line, but the individual word.” Her liberal-arted, scholarly defense of Dickenson’s poetry within the traditions of grammar has real consequences, because she raises for our students the pedagogical question, “can you think of a better word, here?” She makes clear the intellectual, emotive and formal advantages of such an education in artistic making, but we can add that such repeated exercises would move in the direction of building precision in vocabulary and perception, as well as a sense of reasoned choice, while appreciatively reading a great core text author. That’s a lot of bang for your buck. The second example belongs to Roland Barthes. He originally published “The World of Wrestling” in 1957 in Espirit, a literary magazine founded in the 30’s. xxii In “Wrestling” Barthes �invokes a knowledge of Greek philosophy and drama, as well as French classical theatre. Still, this comic, ironic essay is intelligible to any student, now, because the modern, media-promoted versions of American wrestling have enough in common with the French wrestling hall of 1957 to allow for understanding that, ultimately, reaches back to earlier art forms. Barthes’ careful extraction of devices of meaning via the staging of matches -- devices such as the utterly catastrophic “forearm smash” against the chest of the opponent – indicates how the audience is led to experience a match, a “spectacle of Suffering, Defeat, and Justice,” as a “Natur[al]…understanding of things,” rather than the constructed understanding it is. Given sufficient examples in a curriculum of liberal arts texts, students would see that mark of humanistic liberal arts – recurrent use – and, thereby a range of intellectual choices open to them. For the analytic construction and deconstruction of art by critics of the 20th Century recovered that movement of Greek arts between the development of a poetics of whole works and the rhetorical handbooks of separable topics, extracted from works, designed to lead to future compositions. Finally, J. L. Austin delivered, at university and on BBC radio, lectures which became the work, How To Do Things with Words. Born out of philosophical work with descriptive sentences which could be subjected to scrutiny on questions of truth or falsity as logical statements (1-2), Austin’s concern is to distinguish and elaborate a class of utterances which are performative, not descriptive, xxiii where we can say accurately and truthfully that someone is “doing...an action” (5-7, 13). I will not state the analysis of his six conditions for recognizing performative statements that leads me to the conclusion that in his own terms to perform a play, to read a poem or any literate text is “doing an action.” xxiv But I would point out that play scripts are instructions for performance to a director, actor, and the entire company – and if those �artists don’t act as fully as they can with their own arts, you know that production has failed. In this sense, Austin’s work is germane to knowing, perhaps even assessing, when we are acting in a liberal-arted fashion, for the theatrical point is generalizable to all works of art: each of them are potentially instructions on how to read a work, but only the unusually gifted are likely to read a work well without actualizing liberal arts to guide them, any more than one is likely to sing or speak well on stage without having had phonetic and interpretive voice training. That is, in choosing to examine and use, or not use, the liberal arts, we choose performatively to read a work well, artfully, habitually, spontaneously, or badly. If our students do well, artfully, what then would persons who hold a bachelor-of-arts look like – independently from a major? First, they would have the character of an artist, a free, liberal one at that. They would think about art and be able to demonstrate such thought by exercising a capacity for generating works of the intellect and imagination, ranging between truth and possibility, which captured their own and others’ souls. They would know how to listen, look and read with an attention and respect for the work and voices of others. They would properly believe, because the belief belonged to their experience, that contributing to and making artistic productions would involve cooperation, planning, foresight, reasoned choice, and their own plain, disciplined hard work with others. They would have at their command a ready technology of production, appeals, reasoning and expression which could be put at the service of themselves, their families, corporations, non-profits and associations, governments, and international organizations, and they would also possess a technology of the mind which they could summon to think about ideas and ideals, now and in the future. They would have the experience of their own immediate culture and the reasoned possession of traditions of the West and other major cultures over a range of disciplines and formed works, and their experience and �possession of tradition would be a resource for them to draw upon in almost any contingency. They would have ways to analyze, translate, communicate, analogize, question, and invent experience for themselves and others. They would be able to examine science, art, politics, business and economic affairs, religion, culture, communities, neighborhoods, families and friends with an eye to human passions and the confidence, charity, faith and hope that belongs to those who hold the future. They would be able to discriminate when to make, to act, and to contemplate, and when each was best and when it was not. Finally, they would know how to look out upon the achievements of humanity to discover, with wonder and appreciation, not only how to bring their vision of a liberal arts education to a wider public, but what a precious thing our humanity is. No one discipline can build either such a character or offer such a degree, but a humanistic liberal arts education can. xxv The humanities have one primary job: to make available, by focusing the mind of students in and out of the university, works of art and intellect that a crafted, intellectual heritage of the West and other traditions of the world have transmitted. The liberal arts are the most substantive way by which to make these inheritances available for inquiry and examination. Philosophy, Religion, Politics, Economics, Culture, Science and everything else follows, sometimes simultaneously, after that. A core text core which includes examination of the liberal arts as such does all this. If the humanities really pay attention to art, then they will look to the artistic reasons why theatre is not failing in a world where cultural institutions seem on the verge of crumbling. If they do, not only the humanities, but liberal arts education will be better off. �i Versions of this paper have been delivered at the Transylvania Seminar (summer 2015) and at St. John’s College, Santa Fe, as part of its conference on What Are the Liberal Arts For? (fall 2015). This version incorporates, here, a modified version of the opening paragraphs of “Enriching Liberal Education’s Defense in Universities and Colleges: Liberal Arts, Innovation, and Technē,” appearing in St. John’s Review, fall 2015. ii Andrew Delbanco hardily approves of Tony Kronman’s great books curriculum for the ideas it raises, and he cites the artes liberales ideal of education that Bruce Kimball has extensively documented as a tradition of aristocratic European liberal learning that opens the mind, but America’s “attempt to democratize” that through its collegiate educations is what interests him (College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be. Princeton University Press, 2012, 33.) “Working to keep the ideal of democratic education alive,” Delbanco, in an extensive analysis of the past and present social conditions of colleges as institutions, ultimately locates the “universal value of a liberal education” in the belief, derived from the 19th Century religious college, that “no outward mark – wealth or poverty, high or low social position, credentials or lack thereof – tells anything about the inward condition of the soul” (171). He transmutes this belief, today, into a liberal education which in its “saving power… ignites in one another a sense of the possibilities of democratic community” through “the intellectual and imaginative enlargement [college] makes possible” (172). He concludes, “we owe it to posterity to preserve and protect this institution. Democracy depends on it.” Martha Nussbaum begins her “manifesto” in defense of the humanities and arts with a crisis in which “the humanities and the arts are being cut away in both primary/secondary and college/university education, in virtually every nation in the world.” This entails “discarding of skills that are needed to keep democracies alive.” In the survival of the humanities and arts within educational institutions “the future of the world’s democracies” is said to “hang in the balance” (Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Hunamanities. Princeton University Press, 2010, 1-2). Notwithstanding a very serious concern with “ideals of freedom,” Tony Kronman is less focused on the links between democracy and liberal education, than on the links between the humanities and our culture (Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life. Caravan, copyright Anthony Kronman, 2007.) He focuses particularly on the humanities’ abandonment, within colleges and universities, of a search for meaning in our individual lives and our scientific culture’s way of aggrandizing our technical powers without placing them within human limits, human finitude. The combination, he believes, yields a kind of spiritual desiccation. Oddly similar to Kronman notwithstanding published differences with him, Patrick Deneen indicates that since the Enlightenment, greatness seems to rest in transformation, whereas before the rise of the New Sciences, whose advocates wrote “modern” books battling ancient books, greatness rested in a “predominant understanding” of cultivated endurance, an acceptance of natural or created limits to human powers, knowledge, and ambitions. The modern great book program contains many scientific, political and economic works which support the idea of transformation. So Deneen asks, might there be an alternative way to think about the core texts of the ancient to medieval Western tradition, ultimately as a way of restraining our scientifically-released pleonexia in mastering, in transforming our world? He suggests great books might be justified by recovering this earlier understanding’s humility (In First Things, “Against Great Books,” January 2013, 35.) Reinhard Hütter, sharing many of Deneen’s concerns with technological (Baconian) transformations, argues for Newman’s understanding of enlargement of the mind by liberal education as an end for its own sake. The modern state has provided pseudo-ends for the university and defenses of it share the common conviction that management of the scientific enterprise toward ‘progress’ will solve political/cultural problems; the current university is that organ for management (1019). Liberal education, based on a search for ultimate truths, is set in opposition to a “techne” knowledge gained in the late modern university…” (1022). Two arguments demand reformulation via a theological search for the truth: (1) almost all of the research functions of this techne could be relocated to other institutional organs (businesses, medical labs, and military-industrial complexes; 1022) and (2) even if the machinery keeps going it threatens to subject to production the nature of humans and, possibly, the existence of the whole human species (1040). Liberal education provides, at least, a check, “a critical examination of its own operative beliefs and a vision of the whole.” “University Education, the Unity of Knowledge— and (Natural) Theology: John Henry Newman’s Provocative Vision,” in Nova et Vetera 11, 4, 2014. iii Not for Profit, 133. iv Op cit. (95). Apparently, literature does not rise to “breakthroughs.” v At one point, Kronman and Deneen come very close to saying, and meaning, the same thing. Kronman’s case for the humanities in large part rests on controlling technology through a recognition of human limits: “We have a desire for control that can never be satisfied by any degree of control we actually achieve. We always want more…. This is the human condition, which is characterized by our subjection to fateful limits that we can neither tolerate nor do without…. The most important thing about technology is not what it does but what it aspires to do. … �Technology encourages us to believe that the abolition of fate should be our goal… Technology discourages the thought that our finitude is a condition of the meaningfulness of our lives… It makes the effort to recall our limits and to reflect upon them seem less valuable and important.” (230-233) For Kronman, the research ideal is, of course, partly justified in the sciences by the “fruit” – both in discovery and in technology – that it produces: “The research ideal is today the organizing principle of work in every academic discipline…In the natural sciences, the research ideal has proved remarkably fruitful. The new discoveries that pour from our college and university laboratories every and the clear sense of progressive movement toward an objective understanding of the structure and mechanisms of the natural world testify to the productive fit between the natural sciences and the modern research ideal…” Whereas in the humanities “understanding,” not discovery or production, but not a productive technology characterizes research results: “In the humanities…the benefits of research are less uniform or certain” (130-133). “…research in the humanities has produced results of lasting value. It has added importantly to our understanding of the historical, literary, artistic, and philosophical subjects with which the humanities deal…” The demands for specialization and for teaching to that specialization ought to be less insistently felt in the humanities: “What must be resisted is the imperial sprawl of the research ideal, its expansive tendency to fill every corner of each discipline in which it takes hold and to color the expectations and judgments of teachers in these disciplines regarding what they do. Admittedly this is asking a lot…But…it is merely asking for a somewhat greater degree of humility on the part of those in the humanities who first allegiance is to this ideal…” (248-249). For Deneen, the (current) point of a philosophy of education is not to admire the world, or suffer its limits, but to change it, to transform it. That is, since the Enlightenment, greatness seems to rest in transformation. So Deneen asks, might there be an alternative way to think about and assign terms to the core texts of the Western tradition, ultimately as a way of restraining our excesses in transforming our world? Deneen begins by accepting a stasis in the political, moral, religious, and poetic inheritance of books that extends from the ancients through the first stirrings of modernity: “Great books such as Paradise Lost sought to inculcate a sense of limits,… we could look at a dominant understanding of a long succession of great books from antiquity to the Middle Ages…to conform human behavior and aspirations to the natural or created order” (35). By way of Baconian, Cartesian and Hobbesian repudiation of books, Deneen elaborates the argument which he finds undermines the “human limits” understanding by turning to discriminate two kinds of liberty. The first, associated with great books, is a “liberty …of hard-won self-control through the discipline of virtue” which, often, folds into defenses of great books as matters of preparation for citizenship. The second is a liberty with “the stress …upon the research, creative activity, scholarly inquiry and the development of new knowledge” (37). The former constrains our desires, the latter endlessly satisfies them through “the human project of mastery.” The latter pursuits were justified by the arguments of Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes, reinforced by Dewey, which depended on the idea “’that a larger number of natural forces and objects [could be or] have been transformed into instrumentalities of action’” in the West than in cultures which did not exploit the natural resources available through scientific technology (36). Deneen concludes that we do need to teach these two competing notions of liberty through the great books, but defenders should exchange the notion of “greatness” for a notion of “humility” derived from the earlier works of the intellectual tradition represented in the West (38). Humility might, then, restrain our excesses of transformation. For Hütter the humanities provides no hope since there are unbridgeable epistemic disagreements within the humanities that would forestall a move toward a unified curriculum, and with their reliance on promoting the imagination, in preference to the abstraction by the intellect, were the cultivation of the imagination to form a unified end, this would be necessary but insufficient for a full operation of the intellect. It is here that Hütter comes closest to discussing the arts in so far as these are material aids to asking “life questions.” But the consequence of such questioning is a pluralism of views with no way to reconcile them (1050-1051). A conflicted, not unified, self is all that is produced. vi Huetter’s program is based on an epistemic ‘enlargement of the mind’ as prescribed by Newman. vii Op. cit. 109. viii Delbanco, in a discussion that contrasts the sciences to the humanities, lands upon the mimicry that the humanities have had of the sciences for over 200 years in formulating the fields (e.g., ‘scientific linguistics’ or ‘searching for historical laws’) and, more recently, in adopting computerized ‘distant reading programs’ that, as research, have little to do with reasons undergraduates attend colleges. Most interesting, here, is that Delbanco offers no humanistic liberal education technē, that is techniques, as a part of the contrast. Instead, ‘preserving truth,’ denying ‘the very idea of truth,’ or answering the questions “how to shape a life or how to face death” are the contrasted to technology. If there is any elaboration of a humanistic technē or art, here, it is an attempt ‘to �state the value of such an education’ in its component abilities to ‘contract space and time’ or to ‘speak to us in a subversive whisper that makes us wonder whether the idea of progress might be a sham.” (93-101). ix Hütter, it should be acknowledged, seems to have an end in view for the university which is derived, in part, from its historical and functional search for truth. But this is still a ‘practical’ argument because (a) he wants to reform an institution and (b) he grounds his justifications (in part) on the threat that technology provides. It is the latter which provide urgency for the former, even if his solution is or appears to be epistemic or theological. x An important set of terms and argument connects technē to the equally important and differential term, mimesis, and thus power and poetics. “… a bed or a coat and anything else of that sort, qua receiving these designations – i.e. in so far as they are products of art – have no innate impulse to change” (Phys. II 1, 192b 18) And, “Where a series has a completion, all the preceding steps are for the sake of that…and generally art partly completes what nature cannot bring to a finish, and partly imitates her” (8, 199a 15). Imitation differentiates the arts, particularly as products, but so do the steps, incorporating means, materials and manner of use, anyone one of which might be natural, completing the products which don’t exist in nature as a result of these processes. This implies spectra of arts and imitation. The scope of imitation is confined to the arts in Aristotle (unlike Plato) (see R. P. McKeon, “The Concept of Imitation in Antiquity,” in R.S. Crane, Critics and Criticism, U. Chicago Press, 1952. The article, in respect of Aristotle, has long informed this writer’s thinking, but its purpose was, perhaps, informed by a concern, at the time, to differentiate the modern study of literature (and art) from historical and concurrent studies in terms of ethics, religion, civilizations. Following Aristotle, questions of particular form(s) and matter(s) become important within this section of McKeon’s article. The net effect of the section on Aristotle is to differentiate him from Plato by showing two things: how relatively restricted the concept of imitation was (essentially to things made by humans) and how Aristotelian distinctions in the arts actually made considerations of the arts, qua arts, as something that Plato could not do. Changes in critical and cultural fashion have turned the appreciative situation on its head; now, in order not to reduce art (and liberal arts education) to some other more important function, it becomes desirable to think of the range and scope of Aristotelian arts and artistic terms as a way to expand what liberal arts education can do and can articulate. xi This contemplation of thought in the Rhetoric seems to partake of the wider possibilities of the soul reflecting on its own thought that appears in the De Anima: III, 4 of his De Anima (430a2–9): “Thought is itself thinkable in exactly the same way as its objects are. For in the case of objects which involve no matter, what thinks and what is thought are identical; for speculative knowledge and its object are identical.” Cited in “University Education, the Unity of Knowledge—and (Natural) Theology: John Henry Newman’s Provocative Vision” by REINHARD HÜTTER. In Nova et Vetera, 11, 4, 2013; 1050. xii Judith H. Dobrznski, “High Culture Goes Hands-On,” New York Times, August 10, 2013. This particular article included the ‘installation’ of a slide between floors of a museum. Obviously, some installations, whether contemplative or not, are serious works of art. See for example, Darby English, How to See a Work of Art in Total Darkness. Philip Kennicott, “America’s Orchestras are in Crisis: How an effort to popularize classical music threatens to undermine what makes orchestras great.” New Republic, August 25, 2013. The latter position was rebutted in an August 30th reply by Jesse Rosen, but for purposes of this article, what mattered was the apparent agreement by these two authors that artistic works were central to recovery. Roxanna Popescu, “Letter from San Diego: Endangered Opera.” Paris Review, May 12, 2014. This article laments the closing of opera – that hybrid of theatre and orchestras – in San Diego, and Orange County, Baltimore, Cleveland and New York City and makes some of the linkages between the failure of the arts and the failure of the humanities made in this paper. xiii Laurie Goldstein, “Francis Has Changed American Catholic’s Attitudes, but Not Their Behavior, a Poll Finds.” NYTimes, 12/15/2012. “The poll showed that church attendance had not shifted in the past year, with 40 percent saying they had attended Mass at least weekly”; Ross Douthat, “Can Liberal Christianity Be Saved?” NYTimes, 7/14/2012. “Yet instead of attracting a younger more open-minded demographic..., the Episcopal Church’s dying has proceeded apace… In the last decade, average Sunday attendance dropped 23 percent, and not a single Episcopal diocese in the country saw a churchgoing increase”; http://archive.episcopalchurch.org/documents/ASA_by_ProvinceDiocese2000-2010.pdf; John S. Dickerson, “The Decline of Evangelical America.” NYTimes, 12/15/2012, “In 2011 the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life polled church leaders from around the world. Evangelical ministers from the United States reported a greater loss of influence than church leaders from any other country… Studies from established evangelical polling organizations – LifeWay Research,… and the Barna Group – have found that a majority of young people raised as evangelicals are quitting the church, and often the faith, entirely.” Self-reported attendance probably masks further disaffection: Michael Paulson, “Americans Claim to Attend Church Much More Than They Do.” NYTimes, 3/6/2014. Different polling methods, designed to detect ‘social desirability bias,’ suggest that as much as 43 percent of people “acknowledged rare attendance” at church, a higher percentage than is usually suggested by customary self-reporting methods. �Reported drops in humanities majors (see the Harvard report, below) at prominent universities, cut backs of programs at public universities, steep declines in giving to baccalaureate private institutions, and long-term declines in the number of private liberal arts colleges (see Kimball, below), have produced a question about the health of humanistic liberal arts education in the last three to four years. What might be at stake in questioning that health is the subject of this paper. Jinjoo Lee, “Concerns About Job Market Lead Students to STEM Majors,” The Cornell Daily Sun, 2/25/2014, reports that in 2011 “the percentage of students with a humanities major” dropped 10% and has only recovered 1% point since then. Gordon Hutner and Feisal G. Mohamed, “The Real Humanities Crisis Is Happening at Public Universities.” The New Republic, 9/6/2013. This article analyzes the new models of education, whether found in universities or in the federal government, that work against sustaining the humanities: “Under this new business model, humanities programs suffer in general and small departments, like classics and philosophy, find themselves perpetually under threat, no matter what their historical significance to higher learning.” Daniel de Vise, Washing Post, 5/ 13/2011, “At St. John’s, a Defender of the Liberal Arts.” Though St. John’s later successfully reversed its application totals, the economic crises saw a decline in applications “from 460 in 2008 to 357 in 2010.” Scott Jaschik, “Contributions to Colleges Drop 12%.” Inside Higher Ed, 2/3/2010. Declines in giving to private colleges were the most severe, except for community colleges (which derive a much higher percentage of their income from governments). “John Lippincott, president of the Council for Advancement and Support of Education, said he wasn't surprised that the numbers were down, but that the depth of the decline was a surprise. ‘We're in unprecedented territory,’ he said, both because of the severity of the economic difficulties and the volatility of campus conditions.” xv Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses. University of Chicago Press, 2011, 35. xvi Charles Blaich and Ernest Pascarella. http://www.liberalarts.wabash.edu/storage/4-year-change-summary-website.pdf, p. 3. These are 2006 results but the authors seem to find a continuum between Arum and Roska’s 2011 work and their original study. xvii We are dealing in generalities. Yale’s Directed Studies program has an explicit (fine) arts program; Concordia University— Irvine’s new core program does raise the question with students, “What is art?” xviii E.g., Richard P. McKeon, “Criticism and the Liberal Arts: The Chicago School of Criticism,” Profession, 1982, 1-17. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies, 1983. Kathy Eden, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and Its Humanist Reception. 1997. xix On Adams: see particularly the chapters of the book which begin after 1890. It is important to note that a disguised comic reversal in Adams’ intellectual interest appears earlier in the book, when he discusses his work for his father in England during the Civil War. The period was one of great tension and it appeared as if Great Britain would side with the South. Adams discovers the real motives of the government in publications around 1890, and this changes his view of what history is. His first step (after the reversal) is to begin to consider the new technologies of science in relation to the figure of the Virgin Mary in the 12th Century. In a real liberal arts “move,” he begins to think of her as a symbol drawing human “energy” toward her. The story of his own development, then, becomes the culmination of his “Education,” a liberal arts reconsideration of history. xx Thus, most of the texts mentioned above are great, or at least, important; their conceptions and operations of art are essential to any understanding of the works, including those of science, that are read in liberal arts education or, frankly, an understanding of the way the world really operates. Yet, the smaller the liberal arts, core text program, the more direct discussion of liberal arts and their formulations are forced out, and the curricular situation resembles that described by Aristotle at the end of On Sophistical Refutations: “For the training given by paid professors…was like the treatment of the matter by Gorgias. For they used to hand out speeches to be learned by heart…supposing that [the] arguments on either side generally fell among them.” Thus, fine art works, in liberal arts programs, become not examples of art, but vehicles to questions and issues while it is supposed that students learn to read and write in this way. There is a quasi-exception to the statement above excluding teaching of liberal arts to all students. Concordia University—Irvine has a Core Philosophy I course in which “elementary statement logic” is taught. Unpublished manuscript, “The Core Logic Unit: An Imaginative Approach to Reasoning,” Susan Buchanan. ACTC 20th Annual Conference, April 11, 2014. xxi Helen Vendler, “Vision and Revision: How Emily Dickinson Actually Wrote Her Poems.” New Republic, March 24, 2014, p. 48. For a skeptical view on the value of the digital collection, see Angie Mlinko, “Infamy or Urn?” The Nation, Jan. 27, 2014, 31-32. xiv xxii Collected into his 1957 publication, Mythologies. Or, better, “constative.” xxiv (a) use of conventional procedures; (b) appropriate of persons and circumstances for invoking the procedure; (c and d) correct and complete execution of the procedure; (e) the corresponding feelings and thoughts that the convention invokes, intentionally used in the conduct indicated by the utterance; and (f) the appropriate conduct. xxv The arts have a history of being woven into the fabric of education for over 2000 years, in both the West and the East. One of the marks of arts, particularly one that came to be seen as one of the liberal arts, rhetoric, for both Plato and Aristotle was that it should be able to give an account of itself, to offer systematic reasons for its operations, both how and why they work. (Gorgias, 465d, 504d, Rhetoric 1. I, 1354. 10). An added, serious account of a liberal arts education, as an arts education rather xxiii �than a political or quasi-spiritual education, would enrich our own accounts to ourselves and to the outside world of what it is we know, do and make. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource "What is Liberal Education For?" 2014 Conference Papers Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014-10 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make these items available online. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource PDF Language A language of the resource English Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. 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Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 18 x 12.5 cm. Resolution Resolution of the image in dpi. 600 dpi Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-0720 Title A name given to the resource Curtis A. Wilson, in Academic Robe, Speaking at Podium during Commencement, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland Description An account of the resource 1 photographic print : b&w Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977-05 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. Type The nature or genre of the resource still image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Subject The topic of the resource Commencement (St. John's College, Annapolis, MD) St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Deans. St. John's College (Annapolis, Md.). -- Faculty. Baccalaureate addresses Wilson, Curtis. Commencement Deans Tutors https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/49c247870aadcaadae2b046af7369729.pdf 38b9e96ccff1883716c1ffcaae0b6674 PDF Text Text SYMBOLIC HISTORY Through Sight and Sound 2. Cycles CHARLES G. BELL ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO or 1260 CANYON ROAD SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO 87501 July 1995 Last Revised June 1996 �Charles Greenleaf Bell, 1260 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe, NM 87501 SYMBOLIC HISTORY Through Sight and Sound 2. Cycles a1) 1) California Coast, Panorama, Wall Poster (Sandra) Ocean waves under rowed clouds (Jean Coureaux) Sounds: Of the beach: waves and gulls Nature appears under the organizing image of the one-many, sequence within sequence, parts building into wholes: the trees of a forest, rowed condensations of cloud, wave on wave of the sea. The resonant necessity lies deeper than ocean, farther back than water, in the conceptual stuff of energy. The paradox roots there: that energy must be at one time the entire and continuing substratum of the world, and each embodied and failing particular — that star, this flame, this breaking wave — our referents for the whole. (fade ocean sounds) 2) 2a) Organic complex: tropical growth, Chiapas (CGB '71) Small pendulum clock from Bavaria, 1959, C.G. & D.M. Bell Sounds: Birdsong: The mockingbird And since every actual energy can only exhibit itself in the rush and consummation which is its death and manifest being, energy in the larger sense (the realm of nature), is only to be maintained by constructive incorporation and transcendence of repeated falls. This imposes on the organizing cosmos simultaneous models of the arrow and the wheel: the wheel of fatal recurrence spiraling into an arrow of transformational thrust — that being in fact the essence of time: those periodic same ticks of the clock, so numbered that the future succeeds the past. (fade birdsong) a3) 3) 7/1995 Spiral nebula: M. 83, Centaurus Group (D. F. Malin) Jean's sequence of spiral nebulae (The Universe Around Us) Cycles 1 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History As the very concept of wave implies, these groupings — which we see frozen in spatial array (stars in clusters, into galaxies, to the cosmos) — claim, with likeness of structure, likeness of temporal succession, exhibited from the least atomic parts upward in an inwrought chain or stair. 4) 4a) Forest oak from below, Mt. Huitepec, Chiapas, Mexico (Doug Hall, c. '74) Double: [A] Teilhard de Chardin, Tree of Life; and [B] Diagram of human development; both, Phenomenon of Man So it is not surprising that the biological chart of evolution with its branches of adaptive radiation, species rising, climaxing, and being replaced, narrowing to fossils living or extinct, should assume the shape of a tree; or with Teilhard de Chardin, a plant infolding at the summit to the lotus-crown Omega. In human history Hegel has most radiantly detailed, by a four-fold upward pulse, the self-realization of Spirit in time; but for those cyclical pulses he has also compellingly stated the law of decay. a5) 5) Roman stucco, c. 160 A.D., Head from the tomb of the Valerii, Vatican Roman, 2nd(?) cent. A.D., Portrait of a man, engraved glass, Mus. Civ., Arezzo Music: Greek 1st cent. A.D., Epitaph of Seikilos, J.E. Butt, priv. rec. A face, a music, from the introspective decline of the Græco-Roman world; (end Seikilos) and here is Hegel: The life of a people ripens a certain fruit; its activity aims at the complete manifestation of the principle which it embodies. But this fruit does not fall back into the bosom of the people that produced and matured it; on the contrary, it becomes a poison draught to it. That poison draught it cannot let alone, for it has an insatiable thirst for it: the taste of the draught is its annihilation, though at the same time the rise of a new principle. Thus the draught of inward-looking, a debility in this Arezzo head (Augustine's "abyssus humanae conscientiae"), would be a point of departure for the Christian private soul. October 1992 Cycles 2 �C.G. Bell 6) Symbolic History Double: [A] Magdalenian, c. 16,000 B.C., Bison, Altamira, Spain; and [B] Levant, c. 7000 B.C., Abstract hunting scenes, Cerro Felio, Spain. (Also shown singly.) All organized unfolding has its ups and downs; but the great cycles of soul which Hegel took from Vico and passed to Spengler and Toynbee — are they limited to the overreaching West, or as inescapably repetitive as Spengler's formulation? Can the masterful animal paintings from ice-age caves (Altamira, 16,000 B.C.) record lost Promethean stirrings, Cro-Magnon peaks of individual emergence? And do the cryptographic scenes of the chase from eastern Spain 9,000 years later, in their sophisticated doodling, betray late-cycle reversion to some cult of the symbol? There are too few points to establish a curve. 7) Double: [A] Aurignacian, c. 25,000 B.C., Ivory "Venus" (Lespugue), Mus. de L'homme, Paris; and [B] Laussel, c. 20,000 "Venus" with horn, Mus. d'Aquitaine From earlier still — these beginnings of magic and art — the radical ivory curves of the fertility fetish from Lespugue (about 25,000 B.C.) oppose the horn-brandishing massive stone flesh of Laussel (perhaps 5,000 years later, with abstract against representational. There is no fiercer cleavage in civilization, linked somehow to the transcendental bypass, against realistic cultivation, of the outward and physical. Who knows if all history has oscillated in that tension? We hardly understand its working in ourselves, much less in prehistoric images. 8) Double: [A] Ifê, before 13th cent., woman's head, clay, Ifê Museum, Nigeria; and [B] Contemporary Congo, Bakwele Mask, Mus. des Arts Africains, etc., Paris. [Also shown singly.] Music: Senegal Dance prelude, 21-string lamine Kora, Arion FARN 91018 What mystery of humanist rise and fall may underlie the pre-Renaissance appearance (left), in the Nigerian centers of Ifê and Benin, of those wonderful clays and bronzes of modulated touch, in an horizon which has everywhere reverted (as from the subtleties of the 21-stringed Senegal kora) (fade Senegal kora) Music: October 1992 from Witch Doctor Dance of the Baoule, Olympia Atlas 6110 Cycles 3 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History to the catalepsy of the voodoo mask, the beat of the Witch Doctor Dance? (fade Baoule Dance) Perhaps the limit of such reduction 9) 9a) Alaskan Eskimo, recent, wood and fur mask, Kukokwim River, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C. Double: [A] Tusyan mask, Upper Volta, fiber and seeds, Müller Museum, Geneva; and [B] Max Ernst, 1934-5, Bronze bird head, Gal. Beyeler, Basel Music: Yurok Basket Song (A. Figueroa), New World Records 297 (b-6) is in the conformity of placation rites Rasmussen recorded from an Eskimo shaman: …we explain nothing, we believe nothing… We fear dearth and hunger in the cold snow huts. We fear… the old woman at the bottom of the sea who rules over all the beasts of the sea… We fear sickness and evil spirits, the souls of the men and beasts we have killed …Therefore, our fathers have inherited from their fathers the old rules of life… We do not know how, we cannot say why, but we hold to the rules, that we may live untroubled. Could that be the primitive ground from which every civilization (as Oedipus plowed the mother) must arise — the ground perhaps of its modern return? Yurok song) (fade October 1992 Cycles 4 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History Yet it remains doubtful whether the Stone Age, Africa, early America, or the Far East (though that would require another study) presents such affiliation of cultural surges as strikes us in the West. a10) 10) Triple: [A] Dynasty IV, c. 2700 B.C., Boston Reserve Head; [B] Dynasty XII, c. 1850 B.C., Sesostris III Head, Cairo Museum; and [C] Dynasty XVIII, c. 1355 B.C., detail, golden coffin of King Tutankhamen, Cairo Double: [A] Egypt, 1st Dynasty, c. 3,000 B.C., King Narmer tablet; and [B] Dynasty XVIII, c. 1352 B.C., relief, King Tutankhamen's chair; both, Cairo Museum The type of cyclical progression is set by the earliest example, the Egyptian — a rise and fall where each phase seems to generate, by a kind of fugal necessity, the phase to follow; so that a whole civilization, spread over a changing population and through two thousand years, proceeds, like an animate being, through a threefold oneness of beginning, middle, and end: a pattern so right and beautiful it stands as a paradigm for later cultures. First is the unity, as clear through all style-change as that of any species or nameable grouping in nature. Everything from this First Dynasty victory tablet, of preindividual and primitive force, to the New Kingdom subjective luxury of King Tut's carved cedarwood chair (right), bears the recognizable stamp and character of Egypt. a11) 11) Triple, Egypt: [A] Old Kingdom, detail of diorite Khafre; [B] Middle Kingdom, Sphinx of Amenemhet III; [C] New Kingdom, limestone Ikhnaton, detail; all, Cairo Museum Egypt, Dynasty IV, c. 2540 B.C., Chephren, front upper half, Cairo Museum And yet this pervasive unity is broken into three distinctive parts (the Egyptians, said Vico, dividing their history into ages of gods, heroes, and men), three epochs, separated, like geological ages, by intervals of upheaval — though each, bridging the intermission, picks up the threads of the same drama. There is an Old Kingdom (third millennium) of discovery and keen individual emergence — Khafre (or Chephren) gazing with vital calm beyond death. 12) Egypt, Dynasty XII, c. 1820 B.C., Amenemhet III head, Cairo Museum October 1992 Cycles 5 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History There is a Middle Kingdom (early second millennium) of somber control, the saddened pre-Stoic fort of Amenemhet III. 13) Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, c. 1370 B.C., colossal Ikhnaton from Karnap, Cairo Museum There is a New Kingdom (later second millennium) of opulent extravagance and spiritual unrest: Ikhnaton just before he broke with the religion of the state. However these phases may relate to those of subsequent cycles — Second 11) Profile of Khafre (or Chephren), same subject as 11 the Old Kingdom youth in the shelter of belief, to the early and fifth century Greek, or the Western Gothic and Renaissance; Second 12) Again, Amenemhet III, detail of 12 the weighty responsibility under darker self-knowledge, perhaps to Republican Rome, or with us to Milton and the shadowed baroque, or perhaps to an art of communist discipline still in the course of being born; Second 13) Again, Ikhnaton, detail of 13 Second 13a) Triple, same as a10 the New Kingdom of imperial display, novelty, and mystical yearning, to any age of latecycle luxury, whether Græco-Rome, or the recent or future West — however sketchily these relations hold, the three Egyptian phases — dawn-life, embattled will, sensuous repletion with spiritual search — have a kind of inner logic and credibility. 14) Egypt, c. 3000 B.C., pre- or early dynastic lion, Berlin The logic unfolds on closer scrutiny. It is from the stone age of pre-conscious cult, with all its primitive bareness and primitive strength, that the Old Kingdom (c. 3000 B.C.) takes its origin, a tribal worship of natural powers and brute gods. 15) Egypt, Dynasty IV, 2650-2500 B.C., Pyramids of Gizeh October 1992 Cycles 6 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History In four dynasties and four hundred years, we climb to a conquest of stone and an art never to be surpassed in affirming faith. The largest pyramid, of Cheops, is behind; center is that of Chephren. We have just seen him in the severity of diorite smiling the immortal well-being of the personal awakening in the ritualistic frame. The smaller pyramid in front is of his successor Mycerinus, Va16) 16) Egypt, Dynasty IV, 2510 B.C., King Mycerinus and goddesses, slant view of whole, Cairo Museum Frontal view of same: King Mycerinus between goddesses (Video: detail only) who, touched with the same radiant command, advances through time and eternity, supported on either side by the goddesses Hathor and Parva. It seems that only the birth period of a culture, its age of tragic joy, can blend such formal strength with representational immediacy, such solemn grandeur with vernal delight. 17) V17a) Egypt, Dynasty V, c. 2400 B.C., Seated Scribe, Louvre, Paris (with detail) Same, detail of the head. By the 5th Dynasty, the individual release, shifting from the more than human to the here and now, reaches a climax of realism in the Seated Scribe, the living variety caught in the instant and actual. Like any such cresting, this shows the incipient weakness of the merely particular, against those cult figures borne through time by eternal powers. 18) 18a) 18b) Egypt, Dynasty VI, c. 2500 B.C., King Pepi, head, copper, Cairo Museum Double: [A] Egypt, Dynasty VI, c. 2280 B.C., Ur-khuui head, Cairo Museum; and [B] Roman, c. 60 A.D., head of Corbulo, Capitoline Museum King Pepi, detail of 18 (video from 18) A weakness which, in the sensuously refined copper statue of King Pepi I of the 6th Dynasty about 2300, reflects itself for the first time in history in a ripeness of nostalgic person — a relativism tied to the collapse of the Old Kingdom in wars and feudal anarchy. Telling, that 600 years of dynamic rule should close with Pepi's soft art of consciousness; prophetic also of all later fruiting of religious solace out of public disaster, that the first preserved work of Egyptian literature, the debate with his soul of a man weary of life, should be ascribed to Pepi's reign or soon after, when "The gentle man October 1992 Cycles 7 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History has perished, but the violent man has access to everybody." It is Plato's "no politician is honest," Yeats' "mere violence is loosed upon the world." But can the Old Kingdom already smack of Rome? The poem ends: Death is before me today Like the recovery of a sick man, Like going forth into a garden after sickness … Death is before me today As a man longs to see his house When he has spent years in captivity. a19) b19) 19) Egypt, Dynasty XII, 1842-1797 B.C., Sphinx of Amenemhet III, Cairo Mus. Double: [A] Egypt, Dynasty IV, 2510 B.C., Mycerinus and Consort, Boston; and [B] Egypt, Dynasty XII, 1850 B.C., Senusret (Sesostris) III, Cairo Mus. Senusret III, head, Cairo Mus. (Same as [B] of b19) That is the inherited disillusion and conscious flaw with which the Middle Kingdom has always to reckon; and it could deal with it only by an equally conscious and labored control. The least weakening, and the state yields again to war and invasion. To go from the fresh earthly joy of the Old Kingdom to this assertive Senusret III (Dryden: "Heroic virtue did his actions guide"), or the others who resurrect the Kingdom of Egypt as by an act of will from the grave — is like the shift Hegel speaks of from Greece to Rome: "The geniality and joy of soul that existed there have given place to harsh and rigorous toil." Does such heavy regimen always bind the fragments of first introspective decay, as Rome post-Alexandrian Greece? Va20) b20) c20) 20) Detail of b20, Thutmose III, profile of head Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, 1482-1450 B.C., Thutmoses III, Cairo Museum Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, c. 1450 B.C., Lotus and Papyrus, detail, Temple of Karnak Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, 1482-1450 B.C., Thutmoses III, Head, Deir al Bahari Where then is the resemblance between the New Kingdom and the empires of Alexander and Napoleon? Can parallel lines cross: an Egyptian Alexander succeed Egyptian Rome? Or must we take to Spengler's procrustean bed, where this Thutmoses October 1992 Cycles 8 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History III lies down with dark Tiberius, and in the West with whatever the next millennium is to bring? In any case, it is after a second period of anarchy (200 years, culminating in the Hyksos invasion), that the pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty, taking the war chariot from the invaders, carve out by conquest an empire and bureaucratic rule of more blatant material splendor than Egypt had known before. How different the sophisticated imperial smile, from that instinctive and eternal smiling of the Old Kingdom. Thutmoses' face is a stylized mask of display, though under its regal conformity lurk the strains of romantic flagrance. 21) Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, c. 1450-25, B.C., Userhet hunting, Tomb 56, Thebes And now for the first time we have an almost slick art of marvellous technical facility applied to imperial theatrics. Not the decorations of Brighton Pavilion (for George IV), nor of the steamship Normandy are more brilliant — while these tomb carvings have the advantage of being real. Yet their reality is as earthly-thin as the surface of the relief. a22) 22) Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, c. 1450-25 B.C., Semenkhkara and the Princess Meritaten smelling lotus, Berlin Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, c. 1370 B.C., Queen Nefertiti, Cairo Museum That life is a veil of appearance — harpers and dancing girls, nobles smelling lotus bloom; there is commerce and prosperity, the multiplication and refinement of pleasure. Under that surface mounts a hunger which produces in the busts of Nefertiti the most romantic of all depictions of woman — sensuous lips, raised chin, and wishful eyes, as if desire must always increase with the repletion on which it feeds. a23) 23) 23a) Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, c. 1370 B.C., Ikhnaton and Nefertiti, with their daughters, relief, Cairo (color) Same, detail, Ikhnaton, daughter, and sun-orb Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, c. 1370 B.C., Colossus of Ikhnaton, head, Cairo Museum Finally, in the Amarna representations of her mystical pharaoh husband Ikhnaton, the sensory longing and disillusion which undergird the whole New Kingdom, whiplash October 1992 Cycles 9 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History in a personal one-god revolution: Ikhnaton expressionistically distorted, a pentecostal priest under the inspiring rays of Aton. He wrote: I shall breathe the sweet breath Which comes from thy mouth. I shall behold thy beauty every day. It is my desire that I may hear thy sweet voice Even in the North Wind, that my limbs may rejuvenate with life Through love of thee. Give me thy hands, holding thy spirit, That I may receive it and may live by it. Call thou upon my name through all eternity, And it shall never fail. Surely this was a point of departure for the Hebrews who had entered Egypt in the Hyksos period and would leave it under Moses a century and a half after Ikhnaton. A lesson in the uses of adversity that perhaps the most crucial turn in religious history should spring from what could so easily be called the sickness and degeneracy of the revealed person of Ikhnaton. 24) 24a) Egypt, Dynasty XIX, c. 1250 B.C., Rock Temple, Abu Simbel, with colossal Rameses II statues Egypt, Dynasty XIX, c. 1250 B.C., Rameses II smites his foes, relief, columned hall, Abu Simbel Ikhnaton's immolation of romantic ego to the mystical divine, for which he would have changed the worship of Egypt, sacrificing empire, self, and all, was suppressed after his death. As Jeffers says, "protest, a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens." His successors beat back to a more fatuous imperialism, trying to shore up a demoralized kingdom — Rameses II's giant attempts to outdo the vaunts of Thutmoses III. As his Pentewere temple inscription runs: Mine is the strength of a hundred thousand. I fall upon them like a raging fire and lay waste their serried ranks: as a falcon among fowl I sweep down on them; I strike and do not weary of striking. a25) 25) 25a) '92 insert: Egypt, Dynasty XXVI, c. 600 B.C.(?), head of a Saitic King Egypt, Late Dynastic, c. 135 B.C., The Great God Bes, Louvre, Paris Faiyum, Egypt, C. 100 A.D., Portrait of a man in a blue toga, encaustic on wood, Pushkin Museum,Moscow October 1992 Cycles 10 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History From that conventional pomp we take a five century slide through the hollowness and nostalgia of the Saitic Kingdom to the reversion ("in my end is my beginning") of the beast-god Bes. Beyond are hybrid refinements — out of Egypt, by Greece and Rome. The vital course was run: "consumed with that which it was nourished by." 26) Mesopotamia, Early Dynastic (Fara phase), 2900-2685 B.C., Abihil, alabaster, Louvre, Paris Music: Ugarit, c. 1400 B.C., Hurrian cult song, University of California Through its long history, Egypt was not isolated; and the pattern of one-many, where we began, would lead us to ask if Mesopotamian Ur and Sumer, from the time of the Old Kingdom and soon after (or even the first cities of the Indus) shared in that phase of keen discovery? — 27) 27a) Babylonian, 18th cent. B.C., Stele of Hammurabi from Susa, detail, Louvre, Paris Sumerian (Babylonian), 18th cent. B.C., Hammurabi or donor, Awil-namor, from Larsa, Louvre, Paris whether Neo-Sumeria and Babylonia (Hammurabi's Stele of Laws) parallel the Middle Kingdom of duty and obligation. Was the blood–stream and nerve-net of trade (as later in Europe) sufficient to actualize so interwoven a history? Here music, too, should offer a discovered analogue; but the chordal interpretation of the Hurrian cult song from an Ugaritic cuneiform is so hypothetical, who can believe this tune the old cow died by is quite what Ezekiel would object to in the "dark Idolatries of alienated Judah?" (cut Hurrian cult song) 28) 28a) Cretan, c. 1600-1500 B.C., Palace of Minos, detail, Knossos (CGB '77) Minoan, c. 1500 B.C., Youths bearing jugs, fresco from Knossos, Mus. Herakleion, Crete Certainly the cultural web proliferates as we advance toward the New Kingdom. And suddenly from maritime Crete comes an art (c. 1500 B.C.) which seems to telescope what had gone before and to anticipate Egyptian luxury to follow. Its natural freedom and airy humanity suggest a Minoan Age of Joy; yet that brief and sensuous smile attends October 1992 Cycles 11 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History the matured and sophisticated empires — ships bearing wine and oil and spices from Egypt and Asia Minor to Greece and Troy. Here is an island peak of the submerged continent from which the Homeric poems must in part derive. a29) 29) V29a) Mycenean, c. 1225 B.C., "Tomb of Agamemnon," Mycenae, Peloponnesus (CGB '77); dig. adds vb29, domed interior Mycenean, c. 1500 B.C., The Lion Gate, Mycenae, Peloponnesus Same, detail The excavations on Crete and at Mycenae spurred a cyclical rethinking of Homer, as in Kazantzakis' new Odyssey and in Yeats: "A shudder in the loins engenders there/ The broken wall, the burning roof and tower/ And Agamemnon dead." Against the threein-one of Egypt, the pre-Hellenic seemed divided like Græco-Rome into a Minoan phase of discovery and a weightier power-phase involving a new conquering people centered in Mycenae. Here the invading Achaians, absorbing Cretan skills into a zone of ruder force, built to Aegean hegemony, reducing the island of Crete itself to a tributary. The Lion Gate of Agamemnon's city "rich in gold," carved four centuries before the Trojan War, sets a type of the "successor power." 30) Cretan (Knossos), c. 1500 B.C., "La Parisienne," fresco, Mus. Herakleion, Crete; + V detail Against which the art of waning Knossos has the sophisticated elegance of the Hellenistic or recent European — indeed, this precious lady has been called "La Parisienne." Assume she also lived in Troy; since by the 12th century of the Trojan upheaval, all over the Aegean, such refinements must have been on the point of yielding to inner violence and barbarian vigor. 31) 31a) Peloponnesian, early 7th cent. B.C., Palladion, detail, Museum, Olympia Attic, 740 B.C., Geometric krater from Dipylon Gate of the Kerameikos, Nat. Mus., Athens (CGB '77); v. upper part; dig. whole and detail October 1992 Cycles 12 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History Soon after the Trojan War — in that time of troubles when Egyptian scribes recorded, "the islands of the sea are restless" — Achaian Mycenae fell before fresh Greek tribes from the north, culminating in the Dorians. So we reach the Dark Age birthplace of Homeric myth; as Yeats says in A Vision: "I imagine the annunciation that founded Greece as made to Leda … And that from one of her eggs came Love and from the other War." I had not read Yeats when I went to Crete and Greece in 1939; but when I saw the 8th century Greek Geometric — purpose renewed in the cleansing reversion to primitive force — For 2nd 30) Minoan, gold ring, 15th cent., B.C., ritual scene, from Knossos, Mus. Herakleion, Crete For 2nd 31) Greek, Geometric, c. 700 B.C., warrior from Thessaly, Nat. Mus., Athens For 3rd 30) Aegean (Thera), near 1500 B.C., full-breasted woman, fresco, detail, Nat. Mus., Athens For 3rd 31) Double: [A] 3rd 30: full-breasted woman; and [B] 2nd 31: Greek geometric warrior 3rd 31a) Greek (Delos), 7th cent. B.C., Terrace of Lions, detail (CGB '77) after the almost cloying sweets of Knossos (thinking of our own time and of late Rome), I began unconsciously where Yeats had left off, with a poem affirming "The Geometric Style": Penance is, to pay for trespass, only The path to pardon, and pardon's fullness not Built but on hunger, wherefore Rome fell And Cretan softness. Mournful stood many, As when the whip strikes, self-wielded. Well May the lash be longed for and lamented. What Sage can affix our blessing, of pain or gladness? Who gives his life finds it; paradox, such Is our wisdom, and ends with grasping, lifeless In conquest, as who runs and drops dead. Touch No string of sorrow; the sweet sound rots To the core. What is lost? Death. And ahead penitence, Pain, crudeness, desert earth or worse, bare plots Of stone, now known our last defendence. October 1992 Cycles 13 �C.G. Bell 32) 32a) Symbolic History Greek (Spartan), c. 600 B.C., colossal head of Hera, Museum, Olympia Ionian (of the islands), c. 550 B.C., attributed to Archermos of Chios, Nikê from Delos, marble, National Museum, Athens (CGB '77) By 600 (this colossal Hera at Olympia), the smiling keenness of the archaic leavens the monumental bareness. As Simonides says: "Pray to the gods; with the gods is power." What is individual and earthly is just nascent in what is common and divine; yet the more alive for that containment. Of this force which in politics and thought was already remaking the inner and outer worlds, Hölderlin writes: So the gods of heaven come in, with such deep trembling Down through the shadows their day-spring breaks among (translation: CGB) Denn so kehren die Himmlischen ein, tiefschütternd Aus den Schatten herab unter die Menschen ihr Tag. 33) men. gelangt so Attic-Ionian, c. 520-10 B.C., Korê 675, + detail, Acropolis Museum, Athens No sequence could illustrate as richly as the Greek the refinement, out of the style of force, of a lyrically sensuous art of joy. The driving sharpness slowly slacks the string; so pointed peaks wear to an alluvial plain. The blend of primitive ground and individual emergence gives 6th century Ionic korai a Sapphic poignance of delight, with which only the Western Gothic can be compared, though in another flight of spirit. 34) Greek, c. 450 B.C., Poseidon Temple; and c. 550 B.C., Hera Temple (behind), Paestum (CGB '85); + dig. closer Poseidon Temple But since the triumph, tragedy, and inner deepening of Greek culture, expressed in the resonances of thought, poetry, and the arts, requires at least a separate study, we trim to the fewest cyclical hints: how vibrant, against the later consolidation of Rome, that exploratory wave which sent Greek colonies over the Mediterranean, raising temples on the headlands of Sicily, Africa, Italy, France, and Spain. 35) Attic, c. 460-50 B.C., Poseidon (or Zeus), bronze, National Museum, Athens Thus we reach the acme, the mid-5th century of Pericles. In the perfection of the representational and humanistic, every personal emotion and feature is still borne on the October 1992 Cycles 14 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History cresting of common faith and inherited laws. Like the great tragedies, especially of Aeschylus, this Panhellenic and Olympian art is a reasoned vindication of the gods. 36) V36a) Praxiteles, c. 340 B.C., Hermes with the infant Dionysos, Olympia; first, V detail Double of full-length 35 and 36 There is almost no parallel for the swiftness of Greek fruition. Music: Euripides, 408 B.C., chromatic fragment from Orestes, Therriault and Lynch, St. John's College, Santa Fe What reared free city-states led them to the value-rending Peloponnesian War; the first shoots of philosophy flowered in a sophistic questioning of everything; speculative tragedy, which celebrated the gods in Aeschylus, in Euripides doubts and complains (here the chromatic fragment which survives from his Orestes). From the fifth century B.C. to the fourth is from the strength of the Periclean Zeus-Poseidon to the softness of this Praxitelean Hermes. (end Euripides) a37) b37) 37) Detail of 35, Poseidon (or Zeus): head Detail of 36, Hermes: head Double: [A] a37, head of Poseidon, and [B] b37, head of Hermes From the paean of the civic man-god — as Sophocles wrote in the Antigone: "Many a wonder lives and breathes, but the wonder of all is man" — "Πολλα τα δεινα, κουδεν ανθρωπου δεινοτερον πελει;" — to the relativizing mellowness of an art so sensuously ideal that the strength of stone seems to dissolve in a dreaming mist. What Arnold called "the dialogue of mind with itself" has begun. Against the fifth century of tragic drama, the fourth seems a century of thought. In Plato, the subjective search — a civic weakness — is also the first fruit of a meditative detachment of soul which would open catacombs of inwardness under outward Greece and Rome. 38) Hellenistic, mid-3rd cent. B.C., Barberini Faun, Munich The Barberini Faun, mid-3rd century, drunk and lechered out, shows one drift of Hellenistic art, the conspicuous, even ugly exploitation of sensate variety. It is the sort of October 1992 Cycles 15 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History license moralists would later deplore when it came flooding from Greece into the sink of imperial Rome. But if we ask: what is that spraddled faun dreaming of? 39) 39a) Hellenistic, 1st half of 2nd cent. B.C., female head, Alexandria Double: [A] Egypt, late Dynasty V, Mathythy, Chief of Royal Farmers, Brooklyn Museum; and [B] Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, c. 1362-52 B.C., goddess head from tomb of Tutankhamen, Cairo Museum it might (as in Mallarmé: "Ces Nymphes, je veux les perpetuer") reveal a complementary aspect of the Hellenistic — a sensuous feminine form of romantic, almost spiritual idealization. Between the titillation of appetite and the increasingly soulful search beyond, the late Greek is strung. Does this art of conscious extravagance and nostalgia correspond to the first Egyptian decay at the end of the Old Kingdom, under Pepi, or to the more phthisic novelties of the New Kingdom? It is the genius of cyclical history not to resolve questions so precisely phrased. a40) 40) Double: [A] Late Hellenistic (copy of c. 300 B.C. original), Alexander, Pella Mus.; and [B] Etrusco-Roman 3rd-2nd cent. B.C., called Junius Brutus, Conservatori, Rome Single, Brutus from a40 And yet in the same centuries, more to the center of the Mediterranean, a nation was rising to power which would enact, if any would, the Middle Kingdom part of disciplined control. When the Greek second century historian Polybius set himself to explain how the Greeks and Carthaginians had fallen into such debility, while Rome had conquered the world, not all his reasoned analysis of constitutions would serve; he had to invoke crescive morality, that where the Greeks were corrupt, the Romans of the time of Scipio (or of this portrait, often called the elder Brutus) were at a peak of communal dedication. Yet what we read in the portrait is that the dedication is post-conscious. Rome, as successor-state, has not begun at the primitive ground of the pre-individual. Greek awareness has been taken over, with all its liabilities, but in the hardening grip of stoical self-rule. October 1992 Cycles 16 �C.G. Bell 41) Symbolic History Double: [A] Egypt, Dynasty XII, c. 1860 B.C., Senusret (Sesostris) III, Met., New York; and [B] Roman, c. 60 B.C., unknown republican, Glyptothek, Munich How desperately that grasp would be needed, would be put to the test, patrician portraits of the late Republic (right), under the temptations of power and in the throes of civil war, make no doubt of. But the stress in which they are formed testifies not only to the trials and vices of empire, but to the fighting strength of Rome through moral crisis. If we have reached here a point of parallel with the Middle Kingdom (left), it will teach us how radically, in the spiral of personality, the Roman, with its realistic (and legal) establishment of a responsible private citizen, is from the brooding, still masklike record of Egyptian consciousness in Sesostris III. 42) Roman, c. 10 B.C., Augustus as Pontifex Maximus, head, Mus. Naz., Rome Curious, how the torment and force of the late Republic seems ironed out by the proclamation of Augustus — the smooth Virgilian statement of a golden age. Yet even through its most pious idealization, the sensuous and weighty consciousness makes an almost Napoleonic advance. Has our Middle Kingdom of Republican Rome become, with the Principate, a New Kingdom? October 1992 Cycles 17 �C.G. Bell 43) Symbolic History Roman, c. 14 A.D., Pont-du-Gard, near Nîmes, Provence In what Pliny called "the boundless majesty of the Roman peace" (to which the German chieftain: "The Romans make a desert and call it peace"), Augustus' proclamation spread, in public buildings, roads, and aqueducts, from Britain and Gaul to Africa and Asia — after the temples of Greece, engineering feats of a utilitarian civilization. Yet that whole outward empire, like the arched city itself, level upon level and vault opening under vault, encloses what Greece and Rome had ripened: a44) 44) Roman, c. 66-68 A.D., Bust of Nero, Capitoline Museum, Rome Roman, 66-67 A.D., Nero, obverse of coin, American Numismatic Society the abyss of conscious personality, which, as the Classical fall looms, becomes a dæmonic battleground, as if the world, polarized, had produced at one birth the Christian faith and the Nero of this Roman coin, climaxing the outward rule and inner crisis of the Julio-Claudian line. Though what Suetonius writes of Caligula caps Nero's bloodier angling in the lake of darkness: Finally seized with a mania for feeling the touch of money, he would often pour out huge piles of goldpieces in some open place, walk over them barefooted, and wallow in them for a long time with his whole body. 45) Roman Egypt, 1st-2nd cent. A.D., portrait of Eirena, Alexandria; + V detail And now from all over the Hellenized empire, especially from Egypt and the East (here Alexandria), under the façade of order which so impressed Gibbon: "the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous" — we catch the private citizen, in the tenderness of lonely withdrawal, the old late-kingdom syndrome of sensory repletion and super-sensory desire, gazing from banqueting halls, peristyles, tombs, wide-eyed, beyond time and space. Music: 46) 46a) Greek, 1st cent. A.D., Hymn to Calliopeia, J.E. Butt, priv. rec. Roman, c. 50 A.D. (Herculaneum), Egyptian cult scene, Museum, Naples Same, detail (video from 46) October 1992 (end Hymn to Calliopeia) Cycles 18 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History While from the first century on, little scenes testify to the coming in of mystery cults from the East — as Eliot says: When there is distress of nations and perplexity, Whether on the shores of Asia, or in the Edgeware Road — Isis from Egypt, Mithras from Asia Minor, in that labyrinth, a twine of immortality. 47) Roman, 260-68, portrait of Gallienus, Museo Nazionale, Rome By the third century, imperial power (here Gallienus) is assuming the stylized mask of symbolic and superhuman sanction, the features hardening and thinning to an illusionistic surface, through which the lost soulfulness and almost satanic search records its pain. a48) b48) 48) Roman Christian, c. 3rd cent. A.D., catacomb tombs Roman Christian, c. 250 A.D., fresco, room of the Velatio, Catacomb of Priscilla, Rome detail of b48, mother and child Music: Gregorian, Sanctus IV° from Mass XI (Solesmes) London 5632 And now, from the catacombs beneath that power-vault, taking the earthly darkness as the medium of its life, comes the Christian transformation of temporal estrangement, the burial cave become a place of birth. Yet this art, like early chant or the Meditations of Augustine, still wears the crepuscular softness and personality of the Classical world. (fade Gregorian Sanctus) October 1992 Cycles 19 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History The direction of soul has changed; but body is not yet stripped; the wheel has not come full circle 49) Roman, 3rd cent., funeral stele in Barbarian style, Museum, Varna to the ground of radical force. Though everywhere on the borders of the empire the cleansing, savage bath waited for what Vico would first formulate: barbarian renewal by sanctified violence, the cyclical return of "the pure and pious wars of the heroic peoples." 50) Græco-Roman, c. 50 A.D. copy of 2nd cent. B.C., Aphrodite Kallipyge, Mus. Naz., Naples; + V detail Here, on the verge of the Christian West, let us note that the West also is a one among many, itself part of an evolving world context, into which, in our day, it is fatefully reabsorbed. Strange, that late Classical luxury — such art as this Aphrodite Kallipyge, Venus of the Sweet Arse, from Nero's Golden House — spread through the conquests of Alexander as far as the Ganges — Music: 51) 51a) 52) Indian Classical Pahadi (Dhun), sarangi with tabla, V-LM 6057 Indian 8th-10th cent., Tree Goddess from Madhya Pradesh, Gwalior Double: [A] 51; and [B] 52 (video doubles wholes, slide show details) Rheims, c. 820, Gospel Book of Ebbo, St. John, Epernay; video: detail only would inspire an Indian culture of rejuvenated vitality and religious joy (this 8th century tree goddess from Madhya Pradesh). As if from the Greek source two civilizations had diverged, both centered in the sacred, but one sanctifying the Eros of nature and sex; (fade Indian raga) Music: Gregorian, c. 1000, from Easter Alleluia, (de Van) AS 81-B the other repudiating body and world, time, space and touch (or trying to, though it worshipped an incarnate saviour) — in its Dark Age strength (this Gospel book of Ebbo, from Rheims just after Charlemagne) dissolving all sensory forms into symbolic calligraphs — both arts of energy, both mystical, but the Western of ascetic denial, the October 1992 Cycles 20 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History Indian affirming the godhead of flesh. Of these, we turn to the more dæmonic release of the cyclical West. 53) German, c. 1060, Werden Crucifix (bronze), head, Werden a.d. Ruhr The West, which by the year 1000, pared by the folk-wanderings of the Dark Ages to the abstract acerbities of spirit (this angular Werden Christ), is again at the upswing of the wheel of individuation. As Vico says: "We have observed the marvelous correspondence between the first and the returned barbarian times." (fade de Van Gregorian) 54) 54a) Bœotian, c. 600(?) B.C., large archaic head, Nat. Mus. Athens (CGB '77) Double: [A] 54; and [B] 53 And yet a Greek almost geometric head from the start of Classical culture, against the Western, attests again to the Hegelian transformation over sixteen centuries. The clean and impersonal, the Homeric energy of the Greek, is replaced in the Germanic — for all its reductive stylization and automatic surrender of person to faith — with the most intense and paradoxical core of mystical person, a selfless selfhood of god-bearing spirit. It is the reshaping of man himself. 55) For 1st 56) Amiens, West Front, c. 1236 ff., photographed in the rain (CGB '74) Church at Assy, c. 1940-45, altar tapestry, Apocalypse, (J. Lurçat), French Alps If 1000 was the Dark Age base of the cycle, in 200 years and all over Europe the great cathedrals (here Amiens) are looming up into the rain and fog, witnesses to the buttressing and incorporating theology of stone. From then until now (say, 750 years), the Christian and post-Christian West has gone on. We mean to study it, century by century, in some detail. Here we pose three cyclical questions: 57) 2nd 56) Phidias, c. 435 B.C., Parthenon Frieze XLII, youth holding a horse, British Museum, London; + V detail (to follow 2nd 56) Rheims, c. 1240, statues from the West front, France (CGB '74) Remembering the Greek, can we locate the Western peak of man in his pride? When does the dialogue of mind with itself begin? And third: Where are we now? October 1992 Cycles 21 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History Fauré thought to compare the Parthenon age in Greece with that of the cathedrals in France. But the mastery over stone, inherited from the Classical, seems to have fruited early in the West. And what of personality? The saints of Rheims, in their timeless stance, are far from the Phidian ripening where individuation goes over into softening consciousness. 2nd 55) French Gothic, 12th-13th cent., Notre Dame from Southeast, Paris (CGB '53) 2nd 55a) French Gothic, 1240-60, Bourges, W Portal, Last Judgment (CGB '84) 2nd 55b) French Gothic, 1194-1225, Chartres, N. Transept, interior (CGB '59) V3rd 56) Detail of Rheims, W. Front, statues (or video from 2nd 56) For 2nd 57) Double: [A] Parthenon detail, and [B] 56, Rheims statues, detail Thirteenth century literature, scholastic philosophy, the organa of the school of Perotin — those bare-fifths chords sounding the mystery of faith — hint how structural, severe, and transhuman the cathedrals are. Music: Perotin, c. 1220(?), four-voice Sederunt, last quadruplum, close (Cape) Archive 14068 (end Perotin) This force is sacred and hierarchical; beside the Phidian touchstone, we sense it as barely resident in the articulations of space, time, and cause. 58) 58a) Giotto, 1304-6, Resurrection, Arena Chapel, Padua; + V detail Same, detail of Christ At the start of the next century, Giotto speeds the recovery of space and human drama in painting. The glory of the art is beyond question; but the olive-eyed enigma, the haunting blend of smiling and grief, hint how far the moods and modalities still hang in the eternal frame. a59) 59) 59a) 59b) Jan van Eyck, c. 1430, Annunciation, National Gallery, Washington, D.C. (CGB '60); Same, detail (video uses this detail only) Jan van Eyck, 1437, Madonna and Child, middle panel of triptych, Dresden Gallery Hubert and Jan van Eyck, 1427-9, Altar of the Lamb, angel playing organ, St. Bavon, Ghent, Belgium; dig. adds angels playing instruments October 1992 Cycles 22 �C.G. Bell 59c) Symbolic History Same, choir of angels, detail only Another hundred years: van Eyck, 1430; and the representational achievement is almost complete: space and earthly things, jewels, robes, flesh; yet the smiling korai of the 6th century B.C. seem nearer than Phidias. Is not the charm of this art the tentative grace with which it accepts a Medieval sanction rather than assert its own? So with Dunstable (or the Flemish musicians who follow him) — equally unassuming, though as humanized in melody and chord. Music: Dunstable, 1435, Ave Maria, opening, (Syntagma) Seraphim SIC 6052 a60 ) Piero della Francesca, c. 1455, Death of Adam, Legend of the True Cross, S. Francesco, Arezzo (cropped) 60) Detail from left side of a60 (fade Dunstable) By the mid-fifteenth century in Italy (Piero della Francesca), partly through classical revival, partly through the growth of native awareness, we sense a first resonance with earlier peaks of emergence — individual ripening framed in the solemnities of common faith. 61) Egypt, Old Kingdom, Dynasty IV, c. 2700 B.C., reserve head, Kunsthistorisches Mus., Vienna We look back to the sure serenities of Fourth Dynasty Egypt, searching through all that has changed — that purity against the cross-currents and paradox of the West — for signs of resemblance, dim as faces traced in clouds. 62) 62a) Ionian of Magna Graecia, c. 460 B.C., Birth of Aphrodite, Ludovisi Throne, Thermae, Rome; + V detail (or Va62, whole, and V62a, head) 1992 insert: Double: [A] Detail of 62; and [B] Botticelli, 1477, head of Flora from the Spring, Uffizi, Florence Or to the ecstasy of the first Classical Greek, about 460 B.C., the Birth of Aphrodite from the foam, the archaic smile softened and humanized, carried over into a rich fruiting of joy: like the early Renaissance blend of Botticelli, but in a world of how unflawed an immediacy. October 1992 Cycles 23 �C.G. Bell 63) 63a) Symbolic History Leonardo da Vinci, 1503-5, Mona Lisa, Louvre, Paris Same, detail (video may take this detail from 63) Place it for a moment, as Pater did, beside the most famous Western smile, of 1503-5 (also softened from our archaic, the angel smile of Gothic), and let Pater emphasize how far we are from mere recurrence. How would those white Greek goddesses, he says be troubled by this beauty, into which the soul with all its maladies has passed! All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there … the animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the middle age with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the pagan world, the sins of the Borgias … 64) Raphael, 1509-10, Leonardo as Plato, School of Athens, detail, Vatican Music: Archadelt 1539 and Ortiz 1553, viol setting of "O felici occhi," (Wenzinger) Archive 14075 Though Leonardo, here shown as Plato in Raphael's "School of Athens," must mark as nearly as anyone the first conscious Western peak of a man of infinite possibility, believing in himself and his power to comprehend the all. Yet how long that visionary hope would continue. Shakespeare's Prospero is a hundred years later than this 1510 philosopher. a65) 65) 65a) 65b) School of Athens, central figures School of Athens, whole School of Athens, architecture of the hall English, c. 1600, anonymous portrait of Shakespeare, National Portrait Gallery, London Even more perhaps than with the "Leonardo" head (center), the grandeur of a new order permeates the whole. That Renaissance dream of a vaulted heroic space, in which the utopian life of man would be conducted, stands as a compelling symbol for the Baroque, the 18th century, down to the Age of Revolution. While the airy basilica sounds with the music of noble chords, which flowed from Renaissance Italy over Europe — here an Ortiz ricercare on Archadelt's "O fellici occhi." October 1992 Cycles 24 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History How far after 1500 is the Periclean height to be plotted? If great tragedy is made the clue — life affirmed in destruction itself — the focus shifts to 1600 England; or if the reasoned justification of the ways of God to men, to the century after, of Milton and Leibniz — though even in its formulation, the method of reason would precipitate Pascalian doubt. (end Ortiz) a66) 66) 66a) [Not Video] J.B. Neumann, 1743-8, lower stair, from the side, Schloß Brühl, near Cologne Same, from under the stair 1992 insert: Same, facing the stair Music: J.S. Bach, c 1720, Cello Suite #6, Allemande, close, (Casals) Angel COLH 18 Precision escapes us. Yet one thing is clear: as long as the heroic baroque maintained itself in Europe — and in Germany it kept up a rearguard action well into the rococo of the 18th century — human life (however limited to the few and eroded by convention) was still conceived as treading such vastly vaulted halls. (close Allemande) Music: Bach, c. 1720, cont. Cello Suite #6, start Courante, (Casals) Angel COLH 18 Yet if we search that palace of Clemens Augustus in Brühl for the portrait of its builder-owner, seeking as it were an inhabitant for such luminous spaces, 67) Georges Desmarées, c. 1750, Clemens August, Schloß Brühl, with frame we find his wigged and robed exsufflicance already an object of Lilliputian ridicule. If there was a Western summit, Bach must have fortified its verge. Under the thrust of 18th century satire a new search was beginning, Revolutionary and Romantic. (fade Bach) 68) Aelbert Cuyp, 1660-4, Horsemen and Herdsmen, National Gallery, Washington, D.C. (CGB '75); + 68a, same, detail (CGB '75) Music: October 1992 Rosenmüller, pub. 1670, Sonata #2, 2nd movement, close, (S. Marlowe, etc.) Esoteric 517 Cycles 25 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History To gauge that introspective shift, set (with the tensile harmonics of Rosenmüller) this 1660 landscape by Cuyp — a baroque celebration of Cartesian space, a space like God's sensorium, irradiated by the divine attribute of light, a world where men live and move in the ceremonies of will and cause — (end Rosenmüller) 69) C.D. Friedrich, 1808-9, Monk by the Sea, Schloß Charlottenburg, Berlin; + V detail; +69a, same, detail of sky Music: Beethoven, 1825-7, A Minor Quartet, Opus 132, Adagio, close, (Budapest) Columbia M5S 677 against the space of Goethean Sehnsucht, "Allein und abgetrent / Von aller Freude/ Seh' ich ans Firmament / Nach jener Seite," which Friedrich visualized in 1808-9 — a solitary monk by the misty sea, the phenomenal infinite become, as in Kant, as in Beethoven's "Heilige Dankgesang," an alienating barrier, a veil of Maya, through which spirit reaches, in loneliness, beyond space and time. For Noumena. (end Beethoven) 70) 70a) Gustave Courbet, 1845-6, Man with a Pipe (self), Museum, Montpellier Same, detail (video has detail only) 1845, Courbet Self, and the now familiar features of romantic sickness strike home: the sensuous Narcissus, hanging over the watery mirror in self-love and despair. Nor is the job of drawing the cyclical parallels left to us. We have only to quote Flaubert's famous letter of 1860: I am turning to a kind of aesthetic mysticism. When there is no encouragement to be derived from one's fellows, when the exterior world is disgusting, enervating, corruptive and brutalizing, honest and sensitive people are forced to seek somewhere within themselves a more suitable place to live. 71) Byzantine (Ephesus), 5th cent., Eutropius head, Kunshistorisches, Vienna (Fifth century Byzantine) If society continues on its present path, I believe we shall see the return of such mystics as have existed in all the dark ages of the world. The soul, unable to overflow, will be concentrated on itself. We shall see a October 1992 Cycles 26 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History return of world-sickness, beliefs in the Last Day, expectations of a Messiah … 72) Roman, late 1st cent., Flavian youth, British Museum, London; + V details (A Flavian youth, first century A.D.) But all this enthusiasm will be ignorant of its own nature, and the age being what it is, what will be its basis? Some will seek it in the flesh, others in ancient religions, others in art; humanity, like the Jewish tribes in the desert, will adore all kinds of idols. 73) 73a) Van Gogh, 1889, Self with bandaged ear, Block Collection, Chicago 1992 insert: Van Gogh, 1889-90, Last Self Portrait, detail, Jeu de Paume, Paris; video returns to 73, detail (V73b) We were born a little too early; in twenty-five years the points of intersection of these quests will provide subjects for masters. Then prose (prose especially, the youngest form) will be able to play a magnificent humanitarian symphony. Books like the Satyricon and the Golden Ass will be written once more, containing on the psychical plane all the lush excesses which those books have on the sensual. "Twenty-five years" — to the fin de siecle of Rimbaud, or of this Van Gogh. What began then was an art, a thought, a politics of rupture, fiercely breaking with earlier canons and norms. 74) Egypt, Dynasty XVIII, c. 1370 B.C., Ikhnaton, profile relief, Berlin Perhaps only once in history has a cleavage gone so deep into the fabric of a civilization. The Amarna sculptures of Ikhnaton with their twisted outcry, the cultivation of some superhuman stigmata, point to such a crisis in the soul. Yet what was there recorded must have been isolated and mild 75) 75a) Picasso, 1937, Weeping Woman, Collection Penrose, London Picasso, 1937, Weeping Woman, Fogg Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts beside the awareness of total and global catastrophe which has racked the World War West — Picasso, with Carillo October 1992 Cycles 27 �C.G. Bell Music: Symbolic History Carillo, c. 1925(?), from Cristobal Colon, 1/4, 1/8, etc. tones; old 78 Columbia 7357-M As we have said, all this must be studied in detail hereafter. But in the midst of a stress which has presented itself alternately (or even simultaneously) as an explosion into Nietzschean light or into Spenglerian dark, it remains to ask: where are we? which way will the anguish move? (fade Carillo.) October 1992 Cycles 28 �C.G. Bell 76) 76a) a77) 77) Symbolic History Double: [A] Roman Christian, late 4th cent., Christ with Apostles, Catacomb of Peter and Marcellinus, Rome, and [B] Roman, c. 50 A.D., Claudius as Jupiter, Vatican Salvador Dali, 1955, The Sacrament of the Last Supper, National Gallery, Washington, D.C. Double: [A] Hellenistic, 3rd cent. B.C., Alexandrian bronze, head of a boxer, Collection Dutuit; and [B] Rome, 69 A.D., Emperor Vitellius, Uffizi, Florence Claudius as Jupiter (same as B of 76; video shows detail only) Toward the frenzy of catacomb religion? Or to a world ordered in the blatancy of deified power? Or are these, as with Rome and Christianity, always complementary motions? The answer attends a prior question which the looseness of our parallels has left unresolved: whether what we have been living through is the first seizure, as in Old Kingdom Egypt or sophistic Greece (Rome being still to follow), or is the hollow agony of that self-wounding empire? Yet how could it be the latter when so far no successor state has asserted the discipline of world-rule? We have been following the West and forgotten the world. 78) 78a) V.I. Mukhina, Russian 1937, Worker and Woman, Exhibition Ground, Moscow Same, detail (video may take this detail from 78) There was a republic in the 'twenties and 'thirties which gave a Polybian interpretation of the cycle (or sickle) — one half of civilization falling while the other rose. Music: Shostakovich, 1927, 2nd Symphony, close, (Moscow) MHS 824958Z And many looked, in liking or dread, for a future Pax Slavica. But in the more than Faustian frenzy of that time, that art, with the war which followed and the coming of the atomic age, it began to appear that the whole cyclical investigation had come too late, when cyclical possibility had ended — or had shifted its entropic predictions to the globe. (end Shostakovich) October 1992 Cycles 29 �C.G. Bell 79) Symbolic History Triple, but first singly: [A] Chinese ceramics, 1st-2nd cent., jar with dragon shapes; [B] Sung 12th(?) cent., Celadon, Kuan ware; [C] c. 18th cent., under Emperor Ch'ien Lung, porcelain objects Any art or craft admits of the cyclical. In the shapes and glazes of Chinese ceramics, we might trace a maturation, from the severe strength of a first or second century jar with dragon whorls, through the serene perfection of Sung celadon, and so to the eclectic novelties produced for export under the 18th-century emperor Ch'ien Lung. To describe such a sequence, from pre-personal strength, through individuation, to refined unrest, might seem to relate it to the great Western cycles of consciousness; though the drama here is more of technique, than of soul's art-mirrored self-search. 80) 80a) Chinese (Ming), 1506, Shen Chou, self at 80, Peking Museum; + V detail Sojono, 1954, self, Museo de Arte Orientale, Rome; + V detail Since the very individuations of the Orient — Taoist, Confuscian, Buddhist (this 1506 self-portrait of Shen Chou at the age of 80) — held the distance and reserve of figures on a mystic scroll. No doubt each temporal thing carries the stamp of its period; yet in some sense that old East was, as Hegel insisted, a-historical. How fateful then — from Communist posters to this 1954 self-portrait by Sojono, Indonesian trained in Rome — how fateful to trace the contagion of Western ego — the whole world seeded with that conscious fever, come up from the Sphinx of Egypt, through Promethean Greece and Incarnate Christianity, to the power and risk of today. If this was already the hatching-ground of an earth-cycle, what had the cycles taught but their own impermanence? Sound: Waves and gulls 80+1) Again, ocean waves under rowed clouds [See 1]; or CA coast, (CGB '83) 80+1a) Again, California coast [See a1] For where were the barbarians in whose clean force we could bathe? Would they not also have ecological destruction and nuclear bombs? Or could we afford those continuing Trojan Wars? It was make or bust for the world, and one could only hope Gertrude Stein was right when she wrote: "We cannot bust. Thank you." October 1992 Cycles 30 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History Though how to avoid it has become no clearer than when, in a poem from the end of the last war, I saw the whole race: (fade sound) at the cliff's cornice, leaning into space. Yet the breath-furrowed ocean of time remains indeterminate, the searching paradox, for which no cyclical history can extrapolate tomorrow's Now. October 1992 Cycles 31 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Charles G. Bell's Symbolic History: Through Sight and Sound Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Description An account of the resource Scripts of Mr. Charles G. Bell's Symbolic History series. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 32 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Cycles, Symbolic History, Part 2 Description An account of the resource Script of Part 2 of the Symbolic History series by Charles G. Bell. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bell, Charles G. (Charles Greenleaf), 1916-2010 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1988-1990] Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_BellC_Symbolic_History_Script_02_Cycles Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/7b595753a250d9bf7b0b7572dd8e42df.jpg dd1e20f823b1a990433a69362486bd16 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 25.5 x 20.5 cm. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-0955 Title A name given to the resource Dale B. Cummings and Classmates Reading by the Liberty Tree Description An account of the resource 1 photographic print : b&w Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Subject The topic of the resource Cummings, Dale B. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. Alumni https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/5b1f4eab474a83867ffabb1d8f2a87ee.jpg 03e352f7abcf767615244eaf6c0c8b17 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 11.5 x 16.5 cm. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-0678 Title A name given to the resource Damaged Interior of McDowell Hall after the Fire of 1951, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland Description An account of the resource 1 photographic print : b&w Subject The topic of the resource McDowell Hall (St. John's College, Annapolis, MD) 1951. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1951 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource still image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg McDowell Hall https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/cc41bf12008e3fe1465ca40b9a91acd4.jpg e07304470ff861fef2db208e69d23ae4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 11.5 x 16.5 cm. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-0679 Title A name given to the resource Damaged Interior of McDowell Hall after the Fire of 1951, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland Description An account of the resource 1 photographic print : b&w Subject The topic of the resource McDowell Hall (St. John's College, Annapolis, MD) 1951. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1951 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource still image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg McDowell Hall https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/dbd13151c7506ccfe6d74ddcaa0f33b4.jpg 54444d5089338aeb148e1b53d3c23050 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 16.5 x 13 cm. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-0680 Title A name given to the resource Damaged Interior of the Great Hall in McDowell Hall after the Fire of 1951, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland Description An account of the resource 1 photographic print : b&w Subject The topic of the resource McDowell Hall (St. John's College, Annapolis, MD) -- Great Hall -- 1951. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1952-11-25 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource still image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg McDowell Hall https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/c290295cfd0b028f4b1f96ada2100473.jpg 95c3a292ad5e394f827319db7bce7b98 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 20.5 x 25.5 Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-2422 Title A name given to the resource Dance Cards from the 1908 Rat-Tat, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland Description An account of the resource 1 photographic copy from the 1908 Rat-Tat : b&w Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1908 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/b2e69381e1d673f079997071187e0462.jpg d4778e5a85d092a26571ca174841ba0b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 12.5 x 9 cm. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-2323 Title A name given to the resource Daniel E. Igbeare and John D. Lynch Studying at a Table, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland Description An account of the resource 1 photographic print : b&w Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Subject The topic of the resource Igbeare, Daniel E. Lynch, John D. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. Alumni https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/f2dba4e6fd4131ca064450971c3790c4.jpg b3a86eb5e21c9acbd59a18dc2675ce5b Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 20.5 x 25.5 cm. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-1095 Title A name given to the resource Daniel O'Flynn and Theodore Wolfe Seated on the Steps of McDowell Hall Description An account of the resource 1 photographic print : b&w Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974-05 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Unknown Subject The topic of the resource O'Flynn, Daniel Wolfe, Theodore Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. Alumni McDowell Hall https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/fd6d0195c37a6df6e9108669d0836bca.jpg f7ab49c95411797d33654d80d3694008 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Image Collection—Annapolis Description An account of the resource The Greenfield Library Image Collection houses over 5,000 photographs, postcards, drawings, and other graphic materials. The images in the collection document the history, academic, and community life of St. John’s College. To learn more about the Greenfield Library's archives use policy or to obtain high-resolution images, please see the <a title="Image Collection Use Policy" href="http://www.sjc.edu/academic-programs/libraries/greenfield-library/policies/#photographicarchivepolicy" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Library’s Image Collection Use Policy</a>. Click on <a title="Photographic Archives" href="http://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=7">Items in the Image Collection—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context imagecollectionannapolis Still Image A static visual representation. Examples include paintings, drawings, graphic designs, plans and maps. Recommended best practice is to assign the type Text to images of textual materials. Physical Dimensions The actual physical size of the original image 17.5 x 13 cm. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Photograph Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SJC-P-2358 Title A name given to the resource Daniel Van Doren (A81) with Family at Commencement, St. John's College, Annapolis, Maryland Description An account of the resource 1 photographic print : b&w ; Pictured left to right: Dorothy Van Doren, Adam Van Doren, Mira Van Doren, Daniel Van Doren, and Lydia Jedwabnik. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1981 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Parran, Thomas Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Type The nature or genre of the resource Still Image Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource jpeg Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College owns the rights to this photograph. Alumni Commencement https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8f351f398a97711d984cc349cf747630.pdf ae6cda809a8568043f2bb01838f367d8 PDF Text Text SYMBOLIC HISTORY Through Sight and Sound 11. Dante: Threshold of 1300 CHARLES G. BELL ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO or 1260 CANYON ROAD SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO 87501 June 1993 Last Revised June ‘96 �Charles Greenleaf Bell, 1260 Canyon Rd., Santa Fe, NM 87501 SYMBOLIC HISTORY Through Sight and Sound 11. Dante: Threshold of 1300 a1) 1) Double: [A] Chartres, 1210-20, North Portal, Simeon (head); and [B] Giovanni Pisano, c. 1290, Simeon (head), Cathedral Museum, Siena Pisano, Simeon, head and shoulders (CGB '86); + V detail Over the 13th-century horizon of France, England, Germany, Spain — Italy brings a dawn of human possibility: "It was the start of morning and the sun was rising up" — "Temp'era dal principio del mattino,/ e'l sol montava 'n su..." Giovanni Pisano's Simeon, about 1290, hails the temporal incarnation: "For mine eyes have seen... the glory of thy people." Thus Virgil to Dante at the summit of Purgatory [Dante translations in this program are by CGB]: Your will is upright, free and whole; It would be a fault not to do its bidding; Therefore I crown and mitre you lord of your own Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio... Per ch'io te sovra te corono e mitrio. How far the spatial attack has moved toward Michelangelo, 2) 2a) Simeon, Chartres French Gothic, 1200-40, North Portal, Prophets, Chartres (CGB '59) we measure against the Chartres Simeon of about 1220, looming into time but not temporal, transforming time, flesh, stone, to the substance of things unseen: Not in casque nor yet in cowl, Not in battle nor in Bull, But on the road from Jericho I come with a wounded man. (Waddell) June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 1 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History That Northern waking held the leanness of sacred surrender — nec in bysso nec in cuculla, nec in bello nec in bulla; de Jericho sum veniens...-- For 2nd 1) Pisano 1301, The Pulpit of Pistoia, Jeremiah, head V2nd 1a) Double: [A] Chartres c. 1210, North Portal, S. Modeste (head); and [B] Pisano ,1297, Miriam or a Sibyl, Cathedral Museum, Siena V2nd 1b) Double: [A] Chartres, c. 1210-20, South Portal, S. Theodore (head); and [B] Pisano, c. 1290, Habakkuk (head), Cathedral Museum, Siena beside the pentameter weight of Dante: Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio. If the Divine Comedy is the Gothic cathedral of literature, it is a signed cathedral of prophetic self-awareness. Beatrice calls its author by name, "Dante"; while he says of his book: "the sacred poem, to which both heaven and earth have set their hand, so that for many years it has made me lean." For 2nd 2) Double: [A] Chartres c. 1210, North Portal, Melchisedech (head); and [B] Pisano 1297 ff., Moses, Pisa, Baptistery The powers this Gothic synthesis incorporates have crossed a threshold of personality a3) 3) 3a) View over Florence from Piazzale Michelangelo (CGB '59) Arnolfo di Cambio & Brunelleschi 1300 ff. & 1420 ff., Pal. Vecchio & Duomo, Florence; first, video detail Giotto and after 1337-87, Campanile, Florence (CGB '48) toward the free claim of life, love, and self-rule. Music: Gherardellus c. 1350, Caccia, AS-59, music up, then faint Florence, 1300: Jubilee year of Dante's passage through an eternal place, "per luogo eterno" — to be told thereafter in the exile which taught him "how much the bread of others tastes of salt, and how hard is the going up and down of another's stairs." He June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 2 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History begins: "Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita" — "In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood, where the true way was lost." What dispensation does this prophet bring, to pair him, as he says, with Aeneas founder of Rome and Paul founder of the Church, to whom it was also granted to descend and return — if not the poesis of blessing, fulfillment of Joachim de Floris' indwelling spirit: "Liberta va cercando" — "he goes searching liberty.” (music up) That age a portal also in music, though this Gherardellus "Caccia", like much of what survives, is of the next generation. (end 1st canon) Va4) French Gothic 12th & 13th cents., View of Apse, Notre Dame, Paris (CGB '59) 4) French Gothic 1200-40, West Front, Notre Dame, Paris (CGB '80); video: detail only 4a) French Gothic 1163, Ambulatory, Notre Dame, Paris (CGB '59); video: detail only Music: Perotin c. 1220?, 4v. Conductus, Deus Misertus, de Van, AS-99 There was as much force, as much ambition, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, but a force differently disposed to the individual and secular. (music up) Such the frame of the Thomistic Summa, in which Dante's poem shapes new heaven and earth. Or the barer solemnities of Perotin's Ars Antiqua (fade Perotin) — a5) 5) 5a) Arnolfo di Cambio 14th cent. & Brunelleschi 1420-36, Apse and Dome of the Cathedral, Florence (CGB '84); + V detail Florence 14th-15th cents., Nave of the Cathedral (CGB '86) Same, choir (CGB '86) whereas, in the Ars Nova Caccia, spaced canonic entries fill, over a trombone ground, fifths and triads of massive chords. Music: June 1996 Again, Gherardellus, Caccia, closing Ritornello (end) Dante: Threshold of 1300 3 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History In 1296, when Arnolfo di Cambio took on the construction of the Cathedral, whose magnified arcades would not be domed for more than a century, the city fathers proclaimed: The Florentine Republic, soaring ever above the conception of the most competent judges, desires that an edifice should be constructed so magnificent... that it shall surpass anything of the kind produced in the time of their greatest power by the Greeks and Romans. So Dante's Ulysses stirs his followers to sail the globe: "O brothers," I told them, "who through all chances, A thousand perils have come to the west, For this small remnant of the senses' vigil Our fate allows us, let us here resolve Not to deny the experience of knowledge, Beyond the sunset to the unpeopled world. Consider your race, the seed of your generation: You were not made to pass your time as beasts, But to hold the way of courage and of wisdom... a6) French Gothic, c. 1270, North Rose Window, Notre Dame, Paris; first, video detail 6 or V6) French Gothic, c. 1270, South Rose Window, Notre Dame, Paris (slide show, detail; video, whole rose) It is in mystical transparency that the old Gothic most fulfills its abstract vision, Music: French, c. 1260, Descendi-Gaude-Alma, Lum. 32027, close a geometry of light Dante applies in his last canto to the Trinity: O luce etterna che sola in te sidi — Eternal light that always self-abiding. Self-understanding and self-understood, Alone and three-in-one burns love and smiling (te ami e arridi) — June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 4 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History That circle which as light in light appeared, As a reflected light of light begotten, Under the circumspection of my stare, Within itself and of its own pure color, Assumed the human likeness which we bear, So that my eyes were wholly fixed upon it... For that symbolic kaleidoscope, a7) Arnolfo di Cambio, 1294 ff., & Giotto, 1320-25, Santa Croce, Peruzzi & Bardi Chapels with frescoes, Florence Vb7) Giotto 1325?, Death of St. Francis, Santa Croce, Florence (pre-war, whole) 7) Same, Death of St. Francis (post-war, fragment); + V return to Vb7 V7a) Pisano 1302-11, Pulpit, Pisa Cathedral, Judgment: whole relief 7b) Same, Judgment, relief, detail the church of Dante's Florence keeps the frescoed walls of Romanesque; but what Giotto paints there summons to impassioned drama. So in Dante all rungs of the eternal ladder flex with life and dying — del Cassero stabbed: I ran to the marsh and the reeds and mire So tangled me that I fell, and there I saw A lake form on the earth from my own veins. The fate of Pia in a single line, which Eliot cribbed: Siena mi fe; disfecemi Maremma. So too the descriptive caccias of Giovanni da Cascia, Florentine composer born five years after Dante. Music: Giovanni da Cascia, c. 1325? from Con bracchi assai, 2nd stanza, (Munrow) Argo ZRG 642 But the intensity of the Italian awakening, its life, loves and hates, is preserved as nowhere else in the Divine Comedy. Here, tightened in the Catholic structure, is the ferment of Guelf and Ghibelline, nobles, merchants — boldness as always straitened in rigor. June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 5 �C.G. Bell a8) b8) 8) 8a) Symbolic History Pisano, 1301, Atlas, Pistoia, S. Andrea, Pulpit (video: Va8) Pisano, 1284-96, Habakkuk (detail), Cathedral Museum, Siena Attr. Arnolfo di Cambio, 1298 ff., Palazzo Vecchio, Florence (CGB '48); + V return to a3, View over Florence Dante Death Mask, c. 1321?, profile, Palazzo Vecchio Into those timeless realms the great Florentines surge with a defiance which is their grandeur and their sin. So Farinata rises from his burning tomb: "Vedi 1à Farinata che s'è dritto" — Look there, Farinata, who has raised himself up; From the girdle to the crown you see him clearly. Already I had fixed my eyes upon him; He heightened his chest and lifted up his forehead, Like one who had the whole of hell in scorn, And asked me proudly: "Who were your ancestors?" As Dante meditated these words, over the Tuscan town from which he was exiled, bore up the sunlit height of the Signoria's tower, breaking the inner silence like a clarion at dawn — the chivalric strength of the French castle in a new and assertively civic form. At this turn of the century, Florence, of all Italian cities most vigorous in economic and public life, becomes the center of advance for all Europe. The leadership of Paris is broken; we are swept forward, as by an eager crowd, into the forehall of Renaissance: "O mente che scrivesti ciò ch'io vidi" — O Thought that wrote all that I saw, Here let your nobility be shown. (end Giovanni da Cascia) What are the elements of that alchemy? Va9) Pietro Cavallini 1293, Last Judgment, Three Figures, Santa Cecilia, Rome 9) Same, Single Figure (video: detail only, from V9) A time x-ray might read them like layers of paint from the robed figures of Cavallini's Judgment, 1293 — Cavallini, a Roman who seems to have influenced Giotto June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 6 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History and been swayed in turn by the younger genius; they are Classical, Early Christian, Byzantine, Northern Gothic, Italian Rebirth. First, Classical: 10) Roman (Augustan), 13-9 BC, Ara Pacis from north, Frieze, Magistrates and Priests, Rome (CGB '86); + V detail Trying to climb the mountain "which is the beginning and end of joy," Dante meets the shade of Virgil, who "lived at Rome under the good Augustus, in the time of false and lying gods" — "al tempo degli dei falsi e bugiardi". That meeting, that guidance, herald a new art. Aquinas' scholastic use and subordination of his classical master, Aristotle, turns to a drama of love, in which Dante weeps at the very coming of Beatrice — 11) Roman Christian (Carthage?), c. 400, Sarcophagus of Orantes, Tarragona, Spain of Revelation — since it is then that Virgil, "sweet father," must return to the noble castle of bondage — pagan virtues being only magnificent vices — Augustine: "a happiness in this life based on a virtue as deceitful as it is proud." And what the angels chant is the saddest phrase from the Aeneid, on the death of Marcellus, at which it is said Octavia and Augustus broke into passionate weeping: 12) V12a) Giotto 1306-10, Madonna and Angels, detail of an angel, Uffizi, Florence (CGB '59) Giotto 1306-10, Madonna Enthroned, Uffizi, Florence; first, video detail [for copy of CGB '59 original, Ars Nova 32, see 2nd 12, below] "Manibus date lilia plenis" — "Give us lilies with full hands" — a lament lifted in Dante by an exclamatory "O" into a mystery beyond grief or joy: "Manibus O date lilia plenis." Again with Giovanni da Cascia. Music: V2nd 11) June 1996 Giovanni da Cascia c. 1325, from Nel mezzo a sei paon, verse 4 a, (Cape) RCA VLM-6016 (fade) Sarcophagus of Orantes, detail Dante: Threshold of 1300 7 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History We have been lured by Dante's synthesis through Early Christianity, For 2nd 10) Roman (Augustan), 13-9 BC, Augustus leads sacrificial procession, detail, south side, Ara Pacis again to the Roman Peace, under which the institutions of his world, Empire and Church, took form. And as he was driven by those beasts of sin down through hell-center before he could climb again, history was forced from Augustus' Virgilian altar and its human claim to virtue, 3rd 11)Again Sarcophagus of Orantes, detail down the spiral of denial (this Christian sarcophagus sent from Augustine's Carthage to Spain) to the ground Virgil himself must voice in Dante (Purgtorio. III): "State contenti, umana gente, al quia" — Let man rest content with how, not why; Could he have seen the whole, there was no need For Mary to give birth; and you have witnessed Such whose longing is their grief. I speak Of Plato, Aristotle, many more..." At this he bowed his head, dispirited. 2nd 12) Again, Giotto Madonna of V12a [of which the video shows only the angels below] Yet for three centuries before Dante, before this Giotto, speculative soul had been pushing up, bold as the Faustian vine described in Paradise IV, while Beatrice smiles: And therefore questioning at the root of truth Always puts up a living sprout, Whose nature drives us on from height to height. This sprouting (with the Divine Comedy, as with Giotto), gives Gothic an enfleshment so ideal and sensuous, 13) Fra Angelico 1434, Death and Assumption of the Virgin, Gardner Museum, Boston; + four video details Music: June 1996 Dufay, 1426?, from Vergine Bella (Petrarch), (Cape), ARC 3003 Dante: Threshold of 1300 8 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History that the Florentine refinements of the next century, here Fra Angelico, seem kindled. Thus the early work of Dufay (this setting of Petrarch's "Vergine Bella") ripens from Italian Ars Nova. In Angelico's symbolic Death and Assumption, the Apostles (below) close the post-and-lintel space of Mary's dying. But Christ in the center receives her infant soul — "figlia del tuo figlio"; while to the right, the raised palm of eternal life points through horizontal closure to the spire of such a Flamboyance as everywhere turns the Paradiso into living flame. 14) 14a) V14b) 14c) Botticelli, c. 1492-7, Divine Comedy drawings, Paradiso I, Kupferstichkabinet, East Berlin Same, Inferno XV, The Violent Against Nature, Vatican Library Same, Paradiso VI; again, Berlin Same, Paradiso XXXII; again, Berlin Botticelli would treasure that aesthetic mysticism to the end of the Quattrocento — nowhere more poignantly than in the drawings for the Commedia — witness the ascent with Beatrice from the garden that crowns Purgatory. In the context of the other designs, this initiates a leap from the busy crowding of the circles of punishment, toward the unfinished blankness which would more and more attest the empyrean. Had not Dante scaled those heights by the extrapolation of inadequacy? — "My sight greater than our speech"; "So snow in the sun dissolves the imprint; so with wind on the light leaves, the Sibyl's oracle was lost": Così la neve al sol si disigilla; così al vento nelle foglie levi si perdea la sentenza di Sibilla. Va15) 15) V15a) (close Dufay) German Romanesque & Transitional, 1004-1185 ff., Bamberg Cathedral Same, a closer view (CGB '86), from which video takes a detail S. German (Bavaria), 12th-14th cents., Michaelsberg, Bamberg (CGB '86) In the Gothic charge skyward, we have distinguished, around the French center, two layers. With the 12th century, that burgeoning stretches the Romanesque, as the Ottonian Kaiserdom is stretched at Bamberg — or the archaic empire by Barbarossa, Henry VI, Frederick II, who loom still in Dante: June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 9 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History This is the light of the great Constance, Who from the second blast of Swabia Conceived the third and ultimate energy. (Par. III) 16) German Gothic 13th-19th cents., Spires of Köln in mist (CGB '74); which video turns to details, below and above; digital adds to 16 a detail of 14 While in the 13th century, which at Cologne spills into the 19th, the high Gothic wave from the Ile de France points trellises of stone — such defiance of gravity as when Dante fixes his eyes on Beatrice (hers on the spheres) and his live body, lighter than air and fire, targets upward toward its happy mark: "Have you not known that each of us is a worm/ Born to form the angelic butterfly" — "a formar 1'angelica farfalla?" 17) 17a) V17b) French Gothic, 1243-48 (Pierre de Montreuil), Sainte-Chapelle, Paris (video takes horizontals, below and above) Same, apse windows; video, above, from vertical slide (CGB '59) Same, window detail from another vertical (CGB '48) What had intervened was mid-century Paris, an ultimate Lux Nova, earth, in the May morning and Gothic smile, transparent with heavenly sheen. Did Dante recall the Sainte-Chapelle (still fresh, still unrestored) when he saw paradise, first in its shadowy presages — "son di lor vero umbriferi prefazii" — a stream of sparks flowing between flowers? And I saw light in the form of a river, A river of fire between two shores Painted with spring's miraculous colors; And from that river fountained living sparks And poured across the banks, and in those flowers Immersed themselves, like rubies set in gold. He dips his eyes. That flow of God through time gathers to a timeless round: Nel giallo della rosa sempiterna, Che si dilata ed ingrata e redole Odor di lode al sol che sempre verna Into the yellow of the eternal rose That dilates and breathes the gracious odor Of praise, in waves, to the sun that always makes It spring, hushed and full of speech, I was drawn. June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 10 �C.G. Bell Va18) 18) Symbolic History Sainte-Chapelle, cont. Chancel and Apse-glass; video first shows detail, below Sainte-Chapelle, cont. Statue with window behind (CGB '59); + V detail As in all Gothic, the relation to earth is ambiguous. Judgment goes on sounding, from Helinant's "Vers de la Mort" to the English "Earth out of earth is wonderfully wrought." Yet earth and heaven brighten together. Sacred motets dance like virelais; virelais smile angel innocence; in both, triple runs melt with piercing delight into perfect chords. Here from Adam de la Halle's "Li dous regars de ma Dame": June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 11 �C.G. Bell Music: 19) Symbolic History Adam de la Halle (1230-88), Li dous regars, Cape etc. EMS-201 (end) Sainte-Chapelle, cont., Chancel Canopy with Angels (CGB '59) Compare an Alleluya where the Alle and the luya are pulled apart and stuffed with psallite cum: "Alle psallite cum luya": Music: French (or English?), mid 13th cent., Alle psallite cum luya, Lumen 32027 20) 21) 22) Sainte-Chapelle, cont. right window-wall and apse (CGB '59) Sainte-Chapelle, cont. detail from glass, one scene (CGB '48) Sainte-Chapelle, cont. window-wall, looking up (CGB '48) 23) French Gothic late 12th - 16th cent., Chartres, West rose and towers (CGB '59) Same, whole West front, with the towers V23a) (end Alle) Before the infection of high-rise, the town-dwarfing French cathedrals — a Flamboyant tower perhaps, Renaissance angel or cupola, crowning Romanesque and Gothic — spoke how small a post-Columbian age fulfilled the living Medieval. No wonder building slacked off at the center, physical and spiritual space preempted. 24) French Gothic 1220-80, Cathedral of Amiens, Apse airview V24a) Same, Apse (CGB '74); video shows upper spread only 24b) Same, whole West front Yet the rational buttressing of faith which had reared Amiens and the Summa could not rest there. Reason, in Siger and the Averroists, must stake out its own realm: "The world is eternal; the will acts from necessity; happiness is in this life, and only philosophers are wise" — theses twice condemned at Paris. Yet Dante, Thomistic synthesizer, is so attuned to birth, that he places Siger, condemned by the Inquisition in 1277, among the brightnesses of Paradise; it is even St. Thomas, his bitterest accuser, who is made to introduce him: "This is the eternal light of Siger, who lecturing in the street of straw, demonstrated enviable truths." June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 12 �C.G. Bell a25) 25) 25a) 25b) Symbolic History Naumburger Master, c. 1260, Adelhied, Wife of Otto I, detail, Meissen Naumburger Master, c. 1260, St. John the Evangelist, detail, Meissen German Romanesque-Gothic, c. 1190-1208, Mother & Child from Liebfrauenkirche, Halberstadt Again, St. John, detail; + V return to 25a, detail of Mary Music: Hildegard of Bingen, c. 1150, from O Jerusalem, Hyperion A66039 Also Joachim de Floris; Dante could hardly omit so arch-especial a spirit — though his Everlasting Gospel had been variously charged. It had inspired century of radical mysticism, unorthodox as Siger's radical reason. Its richest art sign is the prophecy of the smile: the Master of Naumburg's Evangelist wreathes the Coming in the warmth of now. So the German deepening of God-with-us, from the hymns of Joachim's contemporary, 12th-century Hildegard of Bingen, through Berthold of Regensburg, to Meister Eckhardt in the time of Dante: ...there is an agent in the soul, untouched by time and flesh, which proceeds out of the Spirit and which remains forever in the spirit and is completely spiritual. In this agent, God is perpetually verdant and flowering with all the joy and glory that is in him ... For the Nowmoment in which God made the first man and the Now-moment in which I speak, are in God the one and only Now … (close Hildegard) V25c) Giotto, 1304-6, Angel of the Annunciation, detail, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua; Digital: Giotto 1325-30, St. John's ascension, detail, S. Croce, Florence A fusion Dante gives the aesthetic clarity of Florence. 26) 26a) 26b) German, c. 1300, "Self Portrait", West Towers, Cathedral, Freiburg Giovanni Pisano, 1312-14, Madonna della Cintola, Prato Cathedral German (Rhine), 1329, Head from Rood Judgment, Cathedral, Mainz (while video details 26, Freiburg "Self") Duns Scotus taught at Oxford, Paris, and Cologne around the time of this 1300 Freiburg "Self-portrait". In him the Scholastic instrument sharpens to a pre-Kantian critique: the God Anselm found in reason is only cause of causes. His other attributes, as Trinity, mercy, goodness, stand in contradiction and rest on faith alone: "We cannot June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 13 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History know God, but we can love Him, and that is better than knowing." Only against the remembered conscious might of Giovanni Pisano and Dante do these northern harbingers pipe thin: Long is ay and long is ho, Long is wy and long is wo... The late century shift in poetry a27) 27) V27a) 27b) Rheims, c 1240, Statues from West Front (copy of CGB ‘74, Cycles ‘56); + V detail Same, head of Maidservant, West Front, Rheims Rheims, 1245, Smiling Angel, Guardian of St. Denis Rheims, Interior, West Rose and Carvings (CGB '74) is always exemplified by the Romance of the Rose. Music: French c. 1230? Chanson de toile, Bele Doette, Cape etc., EMS 201 Guillaume de Lorris' 1235 opening has the chivalric mystery which smiles even on the face of this Rheims maidservant, or in the songs of the loom, Bele Doette: And now the wicket of that entry A maid of grace unlatched for me — Roses enwreathed her gold tiara; In her hand she bore a gay mirror. "My name," she said, "is Idleness; I have no care but to live in bliss, To gather garlands, and comb and dress." She made me welcome to that place Which was an earthly paradise. (CGB) Va28 and Vb28) June 1996 (fade Bele Doette) Angel and Mary of the Giotto Annunciation, from 28 Dante: Threshold of 1300 14 �C.G. Bell 28) 28a) 28b) Symbolic History Double: Giotto 1306, Annunciation, [A] Angel and [B] Mary; Scrovegni Chapel, Padua, Giotto, 1304-6, Resurrection, detail, Noli me tangere, Scrovegni Chapel, Padua Correggio, 1518, Noli me tangere, Prado, Madrid Music: Giovanni da Cascia (?) c. 1230, Io son un pellegrin, Meili, AS-l With what sensuous immediacy French romance ripens to Dante, Giotto, the music of da Cascia: "I am a pilgrim who goes crying for alms." Loris' Idleness becomes the Leah of whom Dante dreams, gathering flowers to adorn herself at the mirror of contemplation. And then he sees her in Earthly Paradise, Matilda, across the stream: "You make me remember where and what Proserpina was, that time her mother lost her and she lost the spring" — (music) Tu mi fai rimembrar dove e qual era Proserpina nel tempo che perdette la madre lei, ed ella primavera. A Gothic yearning in delight which Milton could only wonder at, and be raised above himself: Not that faire field Of Enna where Proserpin gathring flours Her self a fairer Floure by gloomie Dis Was gatherd ... (end lo son un pellegrin) 29) 29a) 29b) Jean Strasbourg Master, c. 1300, St. Louis and his Wife, Dahlem Museum, Berlin; + V detail French Gothic, mid 14th cent., Personification of Lust, South Transept, Auxerre Cathedral Orcagna c. 1360, The Blind and Halt appeal to Death, Santa Croce Museo, Florence In the Romance of the Rose two generations lead from that aristocratic source to de Meun's bourgeois continuation — such June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 15 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History a compendium of realism and sense as feeds two centuries of late-Gothic — as in art, this Strasbourg St. Louis and his wife: The praise of my beauty was everywhere; There were night knockings at my door. Brawls, when I ditched one for another, Lopped off limbs and lives together... My body was so strong and supple, It could have minted coins in double; But I was foolish, young, and chary And had no schooling in love's theory. Experience has made me sage, In which I have spent the flower of my age. Wise too late; the day has waned; The door that swung cleaves to the jamb. Unvisited I wait alone, No loving touch from any one. Youths untiring of me once Pass me by without a glance; Or if they see what they adored, "Wrinkled hag" is their best word. (CGB) 30) 30a) 30b) French, c. 1390, Charles V and Jeanne Bourbon as St. Louis and his wife; Louvre Same, detail of Jeanne Bourbon Arnolfo di Cambio c. 1281, Thirsty Old Woman, from a fountain, Perugia Realism a century later reflects that 1280 shift: Charles the Wise of France (as St. Louis) with his wife — or Chaucer's Wife of Bath, enfleshed out of Jean de Meun: Experience, though noon auctoritee Were in this world, is right ynogh for me To speke of wo that is in mariage... Of which I am expert in al myn age... But age, allas! that al wole envenyme, Hath me biraft my beautee and my pith... The human miracle, mediated by the age of Dante. But Lord Crist! whan that it remembreth me Upon my yowthe, and on my jolitee, It tikleth me aboute myn herte roote... June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 16 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History That I have had my world as in my tyme. a31) 31) Pol de Limbourg & Brothers, 1413-16, The Astrological Man, Tres Riches Heures of Jean Duc de Berry, Mus. Condé, Chantilly Donatello, c. 1455, Mary Magdalen, waist up, Duomo Mus., Florence Even Villon's phallic helmeter, who sees her mirror image young and old, is of the same mine, though the Renaissance of body ("Petiz tetins, hanches charnues" — "round little breasts, fleshy haunches") intensifies, as in Donatello's Magdalen, a dance of death: The shoulders humped and ruinous, Breasts, alas, quite fallen in; Haunches like the breasts gone lean... (CGB) Les espaulles toutes bossues, Mamelles, quoy? toutes retraites, Telles les hanches que les tetes... 32) 32a) Franco-German c. 1300, Tempter & Virgins, West Portal, Strasbourg (CGB '59); + V detail Original Strasbourg Tempter, Cathedral Museum, detail (CGB '59) Music: Pierre de la Croix, end of 13th cent. S'amours — Au renouveller, Secular Motet, Blanchard, Duc.Tom. 320c107 The realism of Strasbourg is a century and a half before Villon's claim and cry of flesh — an eruptive vitality on a cathedral door, where the Prince of this World offers the foolish gay virgins an apple in which he grins at the worm, Dante's "vermo reo che il mondo fora". Though this humor of damnation is closer to Aucassin's "I want to go to hell with the fine ladies and noble lords"; or to Chaucer's nest of friars under the devil's tail: "Sathanas... Shewe forth thyn ers, and let the frere see/ Wher is the nest of freres in this place!" 33) 33a) Strasbourg Portal, cont., A Virtue Strasbourg Portal, cont., A Young King The 1300 shift is from sacred incorporation to the release of individual and secular energies in the loosening faith-frame. At Strasbourg, Virtues sharp-browed as holy virgin satyrs, kings keen as falcons, explore a drama of capricious force. While June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 17 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History music, in the more complex time divisions of Pierre de la Croix, seems another such heraldic lion, reared against residual bonds. It is the northern transition to Ars Nova, the new art. (cut de la Croix) 34) Pisano c. 1295, Miriam (or a Sibyl?) detail, Duomo Mus., Siena (CGB '86); + V detail [video and digital use V34, a wider horizontal — plus a detail] Facing which, Giovanni Pisano reminds us again of the full dynamic of love in Dante — seed of virtue and vice: Amor, sementa in voi d'ogni virtute e d'ogni operazion che merta pene. So Paolo and Francesca, borne on the dark wind, like doves to the sweet nest: "O living creature, gracious and benign," che visitando vai per l'aere perso noi che tignemmo il mondo di sanguigno... "Love took him... love took me... love brought us to one death." "Amor... amor... amor... That day we read in it no further." 35) 35a) English Gothic, 1180-1330, Wells, view from the northeast (CGB '66) English (Wells), c. 1293-1306, Decorated Chapter House, especially Vault (CGB '84) Music: English c. 1310, Rosa fragrans, roundelay, from V-LM 6015 In England a quieter harmony, in the Lady Chapel and Chapter House of Wells, 1300 and after, balances, within Gothic, an enlightenment of ease. So with the "Rosa Fragrans", a roundelay to Mary. (music continuing) 36) English Norman to Decorated esp. 14th c., Chaddsley Corbett Church (CGB '65) June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 18 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History Typical, the perfection of the small, wooden-roofed church, the comfort of every parish, where in France small churches mostly ape the large. Chaddsley Corbett already implies the well-being and liberal autonomy of the middle which made Shakespeare's island "this blessed plot, this realm, this England". 37) English c. 1300-20?, Queen Margaret, half length, Lincoln Cathedral [video starts with a half-length from V37b, of the whole] Same, detail of the face Same, whole statue in its niche V37a) V37b) The Lincoln Queen Margaret is perhaps of the early 1300's. Its human naturalness suggests the music of the third and sixth, intervals which the English theorist Odington, of the same time, first justifies, and on grounds of appeal: "Voices lead them forth into a Rosa sweet mixture." (end fragrans) Yet this filling in of the human context accepts the old containment. What it would take to break that limitation a38) Giovanni Pisano, 1302-11, The Theological Virtues, (Faith?), detail; Pisa Cathedral Pulpit G. Pisano, c. 1312, Margaret of Luxembourg Tomb, whole G. Pisano 1301, detail of a Sibyl, Pistoia Pulpit 38) V38a) was a Promethean thrust. Music: Lorenzo da Firenze, c. 1340?, Sanctus, Syntagma, Seraphim 6052 Giovanni Pisano's last work, the now fragmentary tomb of Margaret of Luxembourg (c. 1312), shapes the flesh and person of some soul rising on the slopes of Purgatory. It is there that the composer Casella sings Dante's Canzona, "Amor, che nella mente mi ragiona," which, if it survived, might complete a cognate trio. Having nothing of Casella's, we settle for a "Second Generation" Sanctus by Lorenzo of Florence. It claims, for all the chordal advance of the English, another realm of consciousness. a39) 39) G. Pisano, 1301, detail of another Sibyl, Pistoia Pulpit G. Pisano, c. 1312, head of Margaret of Luxembourg June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 19 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History In the Vita Nuova, or New Life of 1294, Dante tells of his first meeting at the age of nine with the eight year old Beatrice: She appeared clothed in a most noble color, the humble and becoming crimson of the blood, cinctured and adorned in a style suited to her youthful age. At that instant I say truly that the spirit of life which dwells in the most secret chambers of the heart began to tremble with such violence that it appeared fearfully in the remotest pulses, and trembling spoke these words: "Ecce deus fortior me, qui veniens dominabitur mihi." ("Here is a god stronger than I, who coming shall rule over me.") (end Sanctus, skipping 1st Hosanna) 40) French, early 12th cent., Lust and Despair, Church of Tavant (Indre-et-Loire) Go back a century and a half to Abelard's no less personal History of my Calamity: And now, my friend, I am going to expose to you all my weakness... There was in Paris a young creature... formed in the prodigality of nature... Heloise... I saw her... I loved her... We were united first in the dwelling that sheltered our love and then in the hearts that burned within us. That earlier love was broken on the rack and wheel of medieval contempt of the world, appearing as profane, self-condeming fire. 2nd 39) Again Margaret of Luxembourg Tomb, detail of Margaret Whereas in Dante, personal love is sacredly affirmed. As he promised in the Vita Nuova, Beatrice is glorified as no other woman: both Holy Wisdom and the smiling actuality of a remembered love: Garlanded with olive over a white veil, My lady appeared to me, a brightness clothed, Under a green mantle, in the color of living flame; And my spirit which for a long time now Had not been overcome with such an awe, Trembling and speechless as before in her presence... Of its first love again felt all the power. June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 20 �C.G. Bell 2nd 40) Symbolic History Again, Tavant, Lust and Despair, detail Where Abelard (if the letters are his) wrote to Heloise: I satisfied my wretched desires in thee... Weep for thy Saviour, not for thy seducer; for thy Redeemer, not for thy defiler... 41) Spanish Romanesque, c. 1125?, Annunciation, San Vicente, Avila; + V detail Of course, the incorporation of earthly beauty had already begun in the 12th century and would be the flame of Gothic. It is Peter the Venerable who, taking Abelard's body to Heloise, opens paradise to their love: Thus, dear and venerable sister in God, him to whom you were united, after your tie in the flesh, by the better and stronger bond of divine love... the Lord now takes in your stead, or as another you, and warms in his bosom, for the day of His coming... to restore him to you by His grace. 42) Upper Rhine, c. 1320, Konrad v. Altstetten, Manessa Minnesinger MS, Heidelberg; first, V detail Music: Jehannot de l'Escurel, d. 1303: A vous, douce debonaire; Cape, VLM-6016 How the brief delight of flesh has flowered since then: Upper-Rhine, time of Dante, with the "Douce debonaire" of Escurel, executed in Paris, 1303. (cut Music) a43) 43) Duccio, 1308-11, The Annunciation, National Gallery, London Duccio, 1308-11, Maesta, Christ and Magdalen, Duomo Mus., Siena Most of all in Italy, beauty was sanctified — as by Guido Guinicelli, who, in the Canzone Dante echoes, "Al cor gentil ripara sempre amore", when demanded of the old God, "by what idolatry did you take vain love for Me?" answers: "No fault of mine if you gave love your semblance." What had prepared for that tender enactment? In this "Noli me tangere" by Duccio (1308-11) the flame of Gothic line penetrates the Byzantine. June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 21 �C.G. Bell 44) Symbolic History Byzantine, 12th cent., St. John from Deesis Mosaic, Hagia Sophia, Constantinople; first, V detail That Byzantine which — spread from its Eastern revival over Italy — gives the New Art an immediate Dark Age ground, an unleavened weight two centuries in France had almost smiled away, ascetic base for the "high seriousness" Arnold praised in Dante: I saw this threshing-floor that frets our hearts Stretched from the high hills to the river's mouth... a45) Vb45) 45) June 1996 Tuscan, 12th Cent., Badia Fiesolana, Florence Baptistery, 11th cent., whole; Florence (CGB '84) Same, closer detail (CGB '84) Dante: Threshold of 1300 22 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History While from the 11th century down, the Romanesque birth in Pisa and Florence had reached for the proportions of Renaissance, as if to arrive there without Gothic intervention. So the Badia of Fiesole, or San Miniato al Monte, or the Baptistery where Dante says he broke a font to save one drowning, "nel mio bel San Giovanni" — from the Florence of his great-grandfather, Cacciaguida, when the wealthy (Paradiso XV) "were content with bare leather, and their womenfolk with spindle and thread." a46) 46) Cimabue, 1278-80, St. Francis, detail of Fresco, Madonna and Angels, Lower Church, Assisi Giotto, 1297-99, St. Francis frescoes, Dream of Innocent III, Assisi But the French tutelage had already begun. It was from Abelard that Arnold of Brescia took the passion which roused Rome; and St. Francis had, as it were, St. Bernard for stern father and for romance mother, troubador song. That so individual a love should have been chartered by the church rather than being pushed, like his followers, into heresy, was a miracle requiring the explanation of Innocent III's dream — as Giotto would paint it a century later — of Francis holding up the tottering Church. 47) Antelami, 1204-11, David among the Blessed, Baptistery, Parma In the art of St. Francis' own time, Antelami, also swayed from Provence, shows such worship of the natural as Francis in his far-reaching free-verse hymn: Altissimu, omnipotente, bon Signore... Be praised, O Lord, with all of these thy creatures: 48) Antelami, cont., Reaper (June from the Seasons), Parma First of all for our noble brother the sun, Who lightens the day here about us; He is fair and bright with rare splendor And stands for a sign — Most High — of thy dominion. Be praised, O Lord, for sister moon and the stars... ...for our brother the cool wind, And airs moist and serene and all weathers, The sustenance and nurture of thy creatures. June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 23 �C.G. Bell 49) Symbolic History Antelami circle(?), c. 1210, Grape Harvest, Month of September, Ferrara, Cathedral; + V detail Be praised, O Lord, in gentle sister water, Who is helpful and kind and very clean and comely. Be praised, O Lord, in swift brother fire, By whom the night is beautified and brightened, And he is lusty and red and strong and jocund. Be praised, O Lord, in our sister mother earth, Who bears nourishing fruits and colored flowers and simples... 1st 50) Giotto, 1297-99, St. Francis Preaching to the Birds, Assisi, detail Be praised, O Lord, for our sister the death of the body... And may we serve Thee in the bonds of meekness. (CGB) a51) Apulian, mid-13th cent., Bust of Emperor Frederick II, detail, Civic Mus., Barletta (video details from 2nd 51a, the whole) 1st 51) Apulian, 1239, Head of Pier delle Vigne, from Arch of Frederick II, Capua The rebirth counterpole was Frederick II's revival of Rome, which founded the modern state. Here is his answer to Papal calumny: Let those who shrink from my support have the shame as well as the galling burden of slavery. Before this generation and the generations to come, I will have the glory of resisting this tyranny. This bust from his destroyed Triumphal Arch is probably of Piero delle Vigne, who appears among the suicides in Dante's Hell: "I... held both keys of Frederick's heart." But the whole attempt was hounded into hell by the winds of a bleak season, such as blow even in the statuary — no direct road to antique recovery. 2nd 50) Again, Giotto, St. Francis Preaching to the Birds, whole The Mirror of Perfection tells us that Francis wished to supplicate Frederick for the love of God and me, to make a special law that no man should take or kill our sisters the larks, nor do them any harm; likewise that all the podestas or mayors of towns and the lords of castles and villages should require men every year on Christmas Day to throw grain June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 24 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History outside the cities and castles, that our sisters the larks and other birds may have something to eat. Va2nd 51) Frederick II bust, whole, preview of 2nd 51a For 2nd 51) Bonaventura Berlinghieri 1235, Stigmatization, from St. Francis Panel, Church of S. Francesco, Pescia 2nd 51a) Again, Frederick II bust, whole Curious if the supplicant had come a few years later when Frederick was lopping the hands and feet off certain papal messengers. In the faith-grip gentle Francis, emaciated with fever and fasting, is stigmatized on the rock hill by the seraph of fire; while enlightened Frederick, accused antichrist, rages at the clergy: "slaves to the world, drunk with self-indulgence." 52 or V52) Nicola Pisano, 1260, Pulpit, Baptistery, Pisa; + V detail Yet it was from Frederick's court in Apulia that poetic currents flowed to Tuscany, and that Nicola Pisano brought the massive Roman sarcophagus style of the 1260 Pisa pulpit — another premature and perhaps abortive lunge at Renaissance. RomanesqueByzantine and revived Classic are here; the missing element 53) Master of Naumburg, c. 1260, Last Supper, West Choir Screen, Naumburg Cathedral June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 25 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History is Gothic. All over northern Europe that quest was finding its way: in the Master of Naumburg about the same year, by the German genius for observation. 54) Nicola Pisano, 1260, Nativity, from the Pisa Pulpit While the marble forms of Nicola Pisano reach for the stateliness of an unknown future, to fall back in mannered grandeur to the unthawed weight of Dark Age Rome — nobly still-born. 55) French Gothic, mid-13th Cent., Nativity, old Choir Screen, Chartres (CGB '81) France burned with the art that could thaw, the love that could give them life. In the immediate grace of this melting, the smile runs through cheek, arms, hand, every fold of the robe. 2nd 54) Again, Nicola Pisano, Nativity, detail Imagine a chemistry by which that spark could be poured through the hollow fullness of the father, Nicola; 2nd 55) Again, Chartres Nativity, variant photo (V details the CGB 1st 55) see it slide, gleaming, into solution there; the shapes stretch themselves, swirl, 56) 56a) 56b) Giovanni Pisano, 1302-11, Nativity, det. Pulpit, Cathedral, Pisa Giovanni Pisano, 1312-14, Madonna della Cintola, detail, Altar of Chapel of Holy Girdle, Prato, Cathedral Giovanni Pisano, c. 1312, Head of Temperance, fragment, Margaret of Luxemburg Tomb, private collection, Switzerland and become those of the son, Giovanni, in the other pulpit, of 1302-11, where the smile wreathes the body in sensuous flame. It is the smile which runs through all grades of Dante's Heaven: "il riso del universo" — "the smile of the universe"; "lo splendor degli occhi suoi ridenti" — "the splendor of her laughing eyes", a smile that can make paradise itself: "For in her eyes burned such a smile, I thought I plumbed with mine the depth of my grace and paradise." It crowns Purgatory with the coming of Beatrice; it hovers with yearning tenderness, "the desired smile" of romance, over the shadows of hell. By some June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 26 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History inexplicable transmutation, that Dark-Age "flying world", for all its violence and the brunt of timeless rewards, grows benign and glad: "nell' aere dolce che dal sol s'allegra." 57 or wider V57) Nicola Pisano, 1260, Sampson, from the Pulpit, Baptistery, Pisa In both pulpits Sampson is the heroic nude. In Dante it is Ulysses who turns the classical to infinite search. Nicola's Sampson has the frame but lacks the force — the will and desire that drove Me on, to discover the ultimate secrets Of man, both of the evil and the good. So I put out upon the high sea's peril... 58) 58a) 58b) 58c) Giovanni Pisano, 1302-11, Sampson, from Pulpit, Cathedral, Pisa; + V detail Andrea da Firenze, c. 1365, Sailboat, from Peter Walking the Waves, ceiling of Spanish Chapel, Florence Again, G. Pisano, Sampson, detail (video: closer detail, with return to whole) Ambrogio Lorenzetti, 1337-9, Good Government in the Country, detail; Palazzo Publico, Siena We set our vessel's stern against the morning And of our oars made wings for the mad flight, Always a little on the left hand gaining. Already night saw all the stars that circle The other pole, and our own dropped so low It did not rise above the ocean floor. Five times the light that waxes under the moon Was kindled and was quenched since first we entered The ocean guarded by the pillared pass, When there appeared before our eyes a mountain, Brown with the distance, and it seemed so high That I had never witnessed such another. And we were glad, but gladness turned to grief; For out of the new land came a great whirlwind And on the fore part of the vessel beat. Three times it made it whirl with all the water; The fourth, the poop went up, the prow went down; And the sea closed over us as it pleased Another. Hemmed in the allegory where that mountain is Purgatory, not open but to Grace, what sweeps through the passage like wind in the sails is a paean to the reckless voyage, June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 27 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History "il folle volo". And Giovanni's Sampson-Hercules, for all his Gothic rib-cage, has the torque Michelangelo was to learn from. Though what art can loom like the "nova terra" over the round of water: "Una montagna, bruna per la distanza ..."? 59) V59a) Giunta Pisano, c. 1250, Crucifix, detail S. Domenico, Bologna, Cimabue, 1277-80, Crucifixion fresco, S. Francesco, Assisi (video returns to a closer detail of 59) As Byzantine broke to Gothic passion, there arose in Umbria, 1259, a frenzy of penitential flagellants, a mania of atonement, in which Jacopone da Todi, a lawyer whose wife had been crushed under a scaffold, went smeared with tar and feathers, like a beast on all fours, lived to compose the "Stabat mater dolorosa/ juxta crucem lacrimosa," "The Mother of Sorrows stood under the cross in tears," and, in Italian, the angular, savage tenderness of "The Crucifixion": Now the Mother and John One grief has thrown down; Arm in arm they are found At the cross of the Son. (CGB) Or his cry for the lash of disease, his punishment for God's death: Che me creasti en tua diletta Ed io t'ho morto a villania. 60) S. Italian Miniature, c. 1280-90, Chivalric Scene, Petrarch's Livy, Bibl. Nat., Paris Against which the lighter fancies of Gallic illumination enter with the play of Folgore di San Giminiano's sonnets on the seasons: Horses are galloping, coursers of Spain; And men, clothed all in the fashion of France, Sing and dance in the manner of Provence... (CGB) 61) Coppo di Marcovaldo, c. 1266-8, Madonna and Child, S. Martino ai Servi, Orvieto (video: upper part only) June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 28 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History The Italian feat is to blend in two generations those three style currents: Romanesque-Byzantine, the Gothic wave, classical revival; and the resulting leap, as by Trotsky's law of combined development, is from Coppo di Marcovaldo (c. 1266), 62) Cimabue, c. 1280(?), Madonna Enthroned, fresco, Lower Church, Assisi (video: upper part only) to his pupil, Cimabue (c. 1280) who, as Dante says, bore the cry, until he was displaced in turn by his own pupil, a63) b63) 63) 63a) Giotto, 1304-6, Adoration of the Magi, Scrovegni Chapel, Padova (detail); + V closer detail Giotto, 1304-6, Flight to Egypt, Padova Giotto, 1304-6, Nativity, Padova (video shows 63a first) Same, upper detail, angels (V after 63a shows 63, center; cf. V63) Giotto (after 1300) in whose style of epic observation the three currents meet. As in Giovanni Pisano, but with more calm, the very fabric of longing smiles: "lassu di sopra in la vita serena" — "up there in the serene life". In Dante, it is the skipping four-stress line which, varying the pentameter, as much as anything suspends joy in mystery: Beatrice's voys of aungel, "Con angelica voce in sua favella" — like dawn in Purgatory, earth brightening through its veil: "Dolce color d'oriental zaffiro" — The sweet color of oriental sapphire That gathered in the serene face of the skies Pure from the center even to the first circle, Restored forgotten gladness to my eyes, As soon as I had come from the dead vapor That had afflicted both my sight and heart. The beautiful planet that gives love comfort, Veiling the Fishes that came in her train, Was shimmering all the east with laughter... I looked where dawn was vanquishing the gray Breath of morning, and as it fled before her, I took far off the trembling of the sea... (Though art again hardly parallels that mystic reach of nature: "si che di lontano/ conobbi il tremolar della marina." ) June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 29 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History In music that Italian half century offers (before Giovanni da Cascia) two collections of monodic "Laude Spirituale", songs of the Penitentes. 2nd 61) Music: Coppo di Marcovaldo, Madonna, detail (video: V2nd 61) closer detail from Italian, 13th cent., Laud to San Lorenzo, Tinayre, Lumen 32018 Curious that the earliest recorded, called 13th century, "Saint Laurence, martyr of love," is rendered by Tinayre, 2nd 62) Cimabue, Madonna, detail (video: closer detail) as with Byzantine and early Gothic affinities. 2nd 63) 2nd 63a) Music: (fade Music) Giotto, Nativity, Padova (close detail) Giotto, 1304-6, Head of Christ, from Noli me tangere, Padua Italian, c. 1300, Lauda, Gloria in cielo (close), Meili, AS-l While to the "Gloria in Cielo" called about 1300, Max Meili gives a Troubador richness affined to the clarified passion of Giotto. (end Music) a64) 64) Italian Gothic, 1228-53, View of the Upper Church of S. Francesco, Assisi (CGB '84) Italian Gothic, 1228-53 (frescoes c.1280-1300), Upper Church, interior, Assisi (CGB '84) Assisi was the crucible of the Giotto elixer. This upper church, vaulted by the mid-13th century, witnessed one of the great creative ferments of history. Cimabue was in charge. Artists came from all over Italy. Attributions remain in doubt. 65) Circle of Cimabue, c. 1280-90, Abraham and Isaac, Upper Church, Assisi This Abraham and Isaac has been called Cimabue, Roman, Sienese. But no one could dispute the force with which Gothic penetrates the symbol-world of Byzantine, wrenching it from the timeless to the enormous drama of time. June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 30 �C.G. Bell 66) Symbolic History Early Duccio(?), under Cimabue, c. 1280-90, Abraham and Angels, detail, Upper Church, Assisi In that circle of Cimabue, the painters of the rising generation were formed. It is likely that Duccio was there, and this Abraham and the Angels (detail) has been called his earliest work. As in his last, he stresses two elements of the alchemy, refining Gothic line in a solemnity of Byzantine. 67) Cavallini, 1291, Birth of the Virgin Mosaic, S. Maria in Trastevere, Rome The third, Classical revival, Cavallini may have brought from Rome. How consciously his Birth of the Virgin there has absorbed the quiet space of the antique. Unfortunately, his earlier works are lost, and nobody knows how this Trastevere mosaic of 1291 68) Giotto(?) or School of Cavallini(?), 1291-2, Esau and Isaac, Upper Church, Assisi relates to the Assisi Esau and Isaac of the same time. This has been called Cavallini, or school, and taken as a point of departure for Giotto. Others have been as certain that here the youthful Giotto opened the space Cavallini took back to Rome. 2nd 67) Again, Cavallini mosaic (detail) Whatever the dates, such Roman geometry, where a servant-girl as river goddess harmoniously pours into a classical urn, must have helped a Tuscan prodigy to what he required. Though retrospective Cavallini 2nd 68) Again, Easu and Isaac (detail) at once yields, robe, space and gesture, to what is surely here the genius of Giotto. In the melt of Byzantine, French and classical, the magister forms — as much or more than Giovanni Pisano, a cognate for Dante — cognate for the Ars Nova that would peak in Landini. Music: 69) Landini c. 1360(?), Nessun ponga sperança (Cape), ARC 3003 Detail of 68, head of Isaac (so video; slide show uses a black & white photo) June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 31 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History In this face of the blind Isaac, the trans-realities of earth and spirit corruscate like that dawn on the shore of Purgatory for which we had no parallel. In such light Cato had just appeared: Long his beard and streaked with white and his hair The same... And the rays of the four holy stars Glowed on his face, as if the sun were before him. At Cato's direction Dante goes to bathe his face, "where dawn stills the morning breeze", and he knows, "far off, the trembling of the sea." (end Landini after 1st stanza) 70) Giotto, 1303-6, view from chancel, Arena Chapel (degli Scrovegni), Padova; + V details (using V70a, b, & c) Giotto's masterpiece is the Arena Chapel in Padua, from the time of Dante's first banished wanderings. Like the Divine Comedy, it is a numbered Gothic synthesis, three within three: above, an empyrean of stars, with gold-medallion saints and Mary; below in monochrome, Virtues and Vices, allegorical powers of this world; between, three rows of the Coming: Christ's ancestry; his Incarnation and life to the Betrayal; his Passion and Resurrection, to the Descent of the Holy Spirit. On the end wall, opposite the altar, Judgment turns time to eternity. 71) 71a) Giotto, c. 1306, Justice and Injustice, Scrovegni Chapel, Padova Same, detail, scene of injustice Small scenes under Justice and Injustice carve their actuality in the life of man, the bad as always stronger, that raped Italy of Dante's Sordello — "hostel of sorrows" — Ahi serva Italia, di dolore ostello... 72) From same, Marriage at Cana, and Pieta, with four Correspondences; + V details In such a plan, the life of Christ requires its Old Testament Correspondences. They occupy small windows between the large. Upper left, Moses strikes water from the rock, prototype of Cana, where Christ turns water into wine. While the creation of Adam looks to the next scene (not shown) of Lazarus raised from the dead. Below, Jonah into June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 32 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History the whale, marks Christ's death; the Lion of Judah breathing life into the cubs, his harrowing of Hell. As in Dante, tragic energies are gripped in the theological frame. a73) 73) Carolingian, c. 880, Second cover of Lindau Gospels, Crucifixion, J. Pierpont Morgan Lib, NY Post-Carolingian, later 9th cent., Crucifixion, Gospel of Francis II, Bibl. Nat., Paris; + V detail Music: Abbot Columban, 814, Planctus Caroli (Deller), Everest 3452 The 9th century stripped field of the blind world and faith in God did not give earth the dignity for tragic pain — even in the lament for Charlemange. When Dante's Fortune, "beyond the intervention of human intelligence... turns her wheel and rejoices in bliss," we do not question; we accept. As Beatrice says: "For our justice to appear injustice to mortal eyes is an argument of faith and not of heresy." But against that Dark Age resignation comes the surge of giant characters, whose pride and pain are no longer to be chanted over with the rest of a universe of fallen vanity. (fade Planctus) 74) Giovanni Pisano, 1301, Slaughter of the Innocents, detail, Pulpit, Cathedral, Pistoia Music: Guillaume de Machault, c.1377, from Ploures Dames, Columbia M. 413(3) This is the vortex in which Western tragedy is born; and it is born in Giovanni Pisano's Pulpits (here from Pistoia), as in Dante, 75) V75a) Giotto, 1304-6, Deposition (Pieta), Scrovegni Chapel, Padova Same, detail of John or in Giotto; it is born in Ars Nova — Guillaume de Machault — though in germ, suspended in the bare fifths of resolving creed. (fade Machault) Yet by that very suspension, the stripped pocket-tragedies of Dante burn with fiercer outrage than Shakespeare, reaching for human containment, could afford. a2nd 74) Giovanni Pisano, c. 1297, Haggai detail of head; Victoria and Albert Museum, London June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 33 �C.G. Bell 2nd 74) Symbolic History Again, G. Pisano, Pistoia Innocents, another detail In the thirty-third canto of Hell, Count Ugolino, gnawing the skull of Ruggiero, who had imprisoned him with his children, speaks: There is a narrow opening in the tower Called since we were there by hunger's name, In which it seems that other men must suffer; Through that crevice I had seen wax and wane More moons than few, before the veil of the future Was rifted for me in a terrible dream ... When I awoke in the dark before the dawn, I heard those of my sons who were with me there Crying out in their sleep, calling for bread. You are hard indeed if you do not shudder Seeing what I foresaw; if you cannot weep At this, how will you ever weep for another? 2nd 75) Again, Giotto, from Pieta, central group, Padova 2nd 75a) Giovanni Pisano, 1301, detail of Crucifixion, Pulpit, Pistoia We were all awake now, and the hour drew near At which our food was brought us by the jailor; And by his dream each was inclined to fear. And then I heard them nailing up the issue Of the horrible tower, and without a word I sat and looked into my children's faces. I did not weep; no, I had turned to stone; They wept, and little Anselm said: "Father, Why do you look so, what is it they have done?" 76) 76a) 76b) Again, Giotto, Pieta, close detail of Mary and Christ, Padova Same, another detail, mourning women Same, another detail, grieving angels above And still that day and all the night following I did not weep nor answer them at all, Until the sun brought earth another dawning. Now when the first dull rays entered the gloom Of that lamentable prison, and I beholding Saw four faces the image of my own — I gnawed my hands for grief. And they believing June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 34 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History From this that I was driven by the wish Of eating, suddenly raised themselves, speaking: "Father, believe our suffering would be less If you fed here; what you have put upon us You may strip off, this miserable flesh." I calmed myself, not to give them more sadness. Through that day and another we sat mute — Earth, hard-hearted, why did you not open? a77) 77) Again, Padua Frescoes, from Kiss of Judas, lower spread (or Va77, whole) Same, detail of Christ and Judas; + V closer detail (V77a) June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 35 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History When we had come to the fourth day, Gaddo spoke, And crying: "Father, why do you not help me?" He threw himself face downward at my feet. And there he died; and even as you see me I saw them one by one fall down all three, The fifth day and the sixth; and over them I Already blind, confirming what I knew Groped two days calling the dead. Then finally Fasting did what anguish could not do. He turned his eyes in when this speech was done And fastened his teeth again on the torn skull That were strong as a dog's, ravening at the bone. Giotto's Gaze of Christ, enfolded in the jealous robe, against that of Judas, a peak of concentration in all art: "Would you betray the son of man with a kiss?" (pause) 78) Erwin von Steinbach, d. 1318, West Front, Strasbourg One can no more neglect in Dante the grip of the faith-frame than the vast humanity released there. By that humanity indeed, the frame itself is daringly transformed. Two facades, two late-Gothic containments, both centered about 1300. In the north, Strasbourg, the energized ascent of Erwin von Steinbach. 79) Italian, esp. 1290-1380, Giovanni Pisano and school, upper Façade, with Dome and Tower, Siena (CGB '86; or V variants, CGB ‘48) Here, Siena, where Gothic went down into the sun-wreathed slopes of the South to elaborate, as a conscious work of art, its temporal relations. From those facade-designs, contrasting heads: a80) Vb80) 80) June 1996 Franco-German, end of the 13th cent., Prophet with a scroll, waist up; West Portal, Strasbourg Same, a different view of the Prophet's head From the same Portal, another prophet Dante: Threshold of 1300 36 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History A Strasbourg prophet, as if the Medieval had gathered its new life for some preLutheran warning — about 1300, the Strawberry Song: "Hie vor dô wir kinder wâren ... Picking berries on that ground We were marred with stains like wounds ... A child walked deep in the grass; In fear we heard his cry of loss: Children, beware, the snake is here; He has bit our own playfere; That wound they say will never heal; He is accursed and will be still ... Did you know five virgins delayed So long in the meadow where they played That the bridegroom closed the hall? For all their plaint and call, The bailiff stripped them of their bright gowns, And left them naked to their wounds. (CGB) 80+1) 80+1a) 80+1b) Again, G. Pisano, Simeon (CGB '86) Variant of 2nd 75a) G. Pisano, Christ's head, Crucifixion, Pistoia G. Pisano, Simeon, closer detail From Siena, the Giovanni Pisano Simeon, where we began. So Dante humanized the way of salvation. It is from the great Image of Man in Crete that the stream of hellsuffering flows, which — Felix Culpa, the snake reared in the desert, the new Adam from the old — becomes the pilgrim's road to the highest good, in the flesh to see God, that ring of light which bears the image of a Man. As Langland follows Dante: "I never saw Christ in truth but as myself in a mirror." There is the incarnate mystery. To be God and Man is not to be half and half but absolutely both, each validated by its opposite. So with the Dante of faith and reason, humility and daring. The venture of indwelling spirit, by which Virgil commands (with Joachim de Floris) "Be your own pope and king!" — is not impaired by the purging discipline at the summit of which it stands: Libero, dritto e sano è tuo arbitrio ... Per ch' io te sovra te corono e mitrio. Your will now is upright, free and whole — June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 37 �C.G. Bell Symbolic History I crown and miter you lord of your own. June 1996 Dante: Threshold of 1300 38 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Charles G. Bell's Symbolic History: Through Sight and Sound Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Meem Library Description An account of the resource Scripts of Mr. Charles G. Bell's Symbolic History series. Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 39 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dante : Threshold of 1300, Symbolic History, Part 11 Description An account of the resource Script of Part 11 of the Symbolic History series by Charles G. Bell. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bell, Charles G. (Charles Greenleaf), 1916-2010 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Santa Fe, NM Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource [1988-1990] Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SF_BellC_Symbolic_History_Script_11_Dante--Threshold_of_1300 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Meem Library has been given permission to make this item available online. https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/8328da4088ea650921343f9d358b9b13.pdf 16029ff8fa292404c2559956e1b15f94 PDF Text Text Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 Dante and the Hero’s Quest for Healing I want to talk about a very old kind of story. Or rather, I should say, the only kind of story – the hero’s quest. Tonight we will discuss the hero’s quest in ancient and modern literature using examples from mythology, Homer’s Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, Dante’s Inferno, and finally my own novel, The End of Healing. My lecture will consider how each of these stories—and for that matter every good story—involves a process of healing, both for the broken world in which the hero finds himself and for the hero personally. These stories all resonate for us because we all identify with the hero and we are all on a quest for healing. By way of apology, first let me first make clear that throughout this lecture, despite my use of mostly masculine examples of heroes, I use the word hero without reference to gender. Although some hero archetypes are most commonly associated with male gender and some with female gender—the Oedipus complex has its corollary in the Electra complex—all of the hero archetypes we will discuss tonight can manifest in either gender. Second, let me acknowledge that my observations today are derivative. I give thanks to my tutors of ancient and modern times who have authored me and my work. Among my authors I particularly give thanks to the departed St. John’s College tutors Chaninah Maschler who gave me her love of biology and the old testament, Michael Littleton whose Purgatorio preceptorial I attended over 30 years ago, and Jacob Klein; to the very present Joe Sachs, whose Don Quixote preceptorial was one of the best of all time; to all my great tutors at St. John’s College, especially Jon Tuck, Marilyn Higuera, John White, Peter Kalkavage, Elliott Zuckerman, Jon Lenkowski, Eva Brann, Ed Sparrow, and Winfree Smith; and to all the authors of the great books we will discuss tonight that still serve as some of our greatest guides through the world’s darkness. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk with you about some of my favorite stories. This lecture will have 4 main parts. First, I will give an overview of the framework for the archetypal hero’s journey as described by Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and others. Second, I will apply that framework to Dante’s Commedia to help us understand how the hero’s journey involves a process of healing. Third, we will delve deeper into the past to examine some of the earlier hero myths that influenced Dante’s work, focusing especially on the Odyssey and Aeneid, to see what these works tell us about the hero’s healing journey. Lastly, we will move to the future to examine what all this has to do with health care and the quest for healing in today’s world. Part 1: The Hero’s Journey The ancient pattern of the hero’s quest was well described by Joseph Campbell in his seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces in 1949.1 He revealed that this ancient story pattern resonates because it draws on ancient unconscious archetypes described by Carl Jung and others. Campbell and Jung described how the outward journey of the hero reflects a parallel inner journey. In great stories, both the outward and inward journeys occur simultaneously and complement and reinforce one another. The diagram below 1 Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Pantheon Books, 1949 �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 provides an overview of the typical components and order of a hero’s journey story. In a famous memo to executives at Walt Disney Pictures in 1985, Christopher Vogler described how this classical hero myth lies behind all great stories, screenplays and movies. Christopher Vogler, http://www.thewritersjourney.com/hero's_journey.htm By way of example, let’s briefly consider one of my favorite woman-‐child heroes, Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Dorothy begins her story in the ordinary world. She is called to adventure when Miss Gulch attempts to kidnap her beloved Toto. But when she meets Professor Marvel she begins to realize that the ordinary world may not be exactly as it appears. Even though Professor Marvel serves as a good mentor to Dorothy, in the beginning we are left to wonder whether he is a true healer, or is he, as she later claims, just “…a very bad man!” She attempts to refuse the call and run back to her Auntie Em’s house in Kansas but ends up crossing the threshold into another world where she encounters difficult tests, discovers three wonderful allies, and faces dangerous enemies. Then Dorothy faces the seemingly impossible task of killing the Wicked Witch of the West. She and her friends approach the Witch’s castle, the place they most dread, and she undergoes an agonizing ordeal in which she is captured and condemned to death, only to be saved in the very last instant before the hourglass runs out. She then seizes the sword, �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 or in this case a bucket of water, kills the witch and then begins on the road back to Kansas. When she finally reawakens there she has a new perspective and power that allows her to truly see and understand the ordinary world in a way she never could have imagined before. That in a nutshell is a description of the hero’s journey and it has been well described. What has been less well described is how this classic hero’s myth always involves a process of healing or movement toward wholeness for both the hero and the broken world he inhabits. This is what we are going to talk about today, and we will use as our primary guide, Dante Alighieri, and his divine hero myth, La Commedia. Part 2: La Divina Commedia If hero journey stories are the stories that resonate most with humans, it goes to follow that these stories portray the most important spiritual steps for humans in their path to wholeness, in their work to grow. These stories teach us that the greatest growth for humans comes from discovering a healing path through agony and despair. So it is fitting that Dante’s comedy begins in a dark wood. Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita Mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, ché la diritta via era smarrita. Inferno, I, 1-‐3 “In the middle of the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark wood where the straight way was lost.” In the Commedia, we are not told how Dante became lost, yet every one of his readers in his time knew his story. Dante’s early dream was to play a major role in the government of his city-‐state of Florence, at that time, perhaps the greatest republic in world. In fact, strong lines of evidence suggest that he became a physician and member of the “Arte dei medici e speziali" (The Guild of Physicians and Apothecaries) in Florence in 1296 because of Florentine law requiring enrollment in one of the guilds as a prerequisite for election to local government office. From Dante’s early writings we know that he dreamed of helping to create in Florence a new Jerusalem. And in 1301, 700 years ago, his dream appeared to be realized. He was elected as one of the six magistrates, the highest office, of his beloved city of Florence. He had already served his fair city for some five years as a devoted statesman, and had finally reached what he thought was the pinnacle of his career. As a city magistrate he had the opportunity to make a real difference for good, to foster peace and justice, and support a Renaissance in Florence such as the world had never known. But he became embroiled in unforeseen political intrigue. After only a year as magistrate, he was exiled from his home, never to return again. At age 37, he suddenly found himself despised and homeless, notwithstanding his devotion to the city of Florence and his non-‐partisan efforts on its behalf. And that is where the Divine Comedy begins–in his unfathomable despair. His dark wood is the ordinary world and the entire Commedia is devoted to his finding his way out. �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 For that he requires a mentor and guide and everyone knows that Dante is led by Virgil, just as Virgil was guided by Homer; as Aeneas was guided by Venus the goddess of love; as Homer’s Odysseus was guided by Pallas Athena. When Virgil first introduces himself to Dante he immediately challenges him with a call to adventure. Poeta fui, e cantai di quell giusto figliuol d’Anchise che venne di Troia, poi che ‘l superbo Ilïón fu combusto. Ma tu perché ritorni a tanta noia? Inferno, I, 73-‐76 He says: “Poet I was, and I sang of the just son of Anchises that came from Troy, after proud Ilium was burnt to the ground. But why are you turning back to all that misery [or boredom]?” Virgil appears, as all mentors do, in just the right moment to guide Dante not back into the misery, the “dark wood,” of the ordinary world, but rather to guide him into an extraordinary world of forms and meaning that undergird and ultimately can help restore the ordinary world. Dante is overwhelmed by this meeting, and responds: O de li altri poeti onore e lume, Vagliami ‘l lungo studio e ‘l grande amore Che m’ha fatto cercar lo luo volume. Tu se’ lo mio maestro e ‘l mio autore, Inferno, I, 82-‐85 “O of the other poets our honor and light, value my long study and the great love that has made me search your volume. You are my teacher and my author.” Regarding the meeting of Dante with the author of The Aeneid let me state the obvious. The reason that Virgil is able to serve as Dante’s guide is because he has been there before. Virgil has seen and understands every type of sin or misstep that Dante will encounter in the Inferno. For he has taken his Aeneas there before and provides the description of the underworld that is the foundation of Dante the author’s description. Furthermore, Dante recognizes Virgil as his author—that Virgil made him what he is. Dante recognizes that his love of Virgil’s work has also made him an author and has prepared him to tell his own story. And Dante’s protagonist must be guided by Virgil because Virgil’s Aeneid was Dante’s guide to the underworld. What Dante has come to understand about the underworld, has largely come through Virgil’s instruction. Still, Dante must screw up his courage when it is his turn to crossing the threshold into hell. This most famous of all cantos begins with the famous words: “Per me si va ne la città dolente, per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, per me si va tra la perduta gente. Giustizia mosse il mio alto fattore; fecemi la divina podestate, la somma sapïenza e 'l primo amore. �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 Dinanzi a me non fuor cose create se non etterne, e io etterno duro. Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate." THROUGH ME THE WAY TO THE CITY OF WOE, THROUGH ME THE WAY TO EVERLASTING PAIN, THROUGH ME THE WAY AMONG THE LOST. JUSTICE MOVED MY MAKER ON HIGH. DIVINE POWER MADE ME, WISDOM SUPREME, AND PRIMAL LOVE. BEFORE ME NOTHING WAS BUT THINGS ETERNAL, AND ETERNAL I ENDURE. ABANDON ALL HOPE, YOU WHO ENTER HERE. Inferno, 3, 1-‐9 These are the horrifying words Dante sees inscribed over the entrance to hell. Of note, he is one of the few, including Jesus of Nazareth whose hero myth is well known to all, who is able to pass through this gate without abandoning all hope. After passing through the gates of hell, Dante’s instruction begins in earnest. He explores every inch of the nine levels of hell that Virgil describes only in passing in his Aeneid. In Dante’s hell, just as in Virgil’s Tartarus, every punishment is perfectly suited to the crime. For Dante, exploring the levels of hell involves a process of diagnosis. He is able to fully understand the reasons for the brokenness of the world by uncovering the sources of human suffering and understanding the nature and types of human missteps, or sins, that have led to this brokenness. As shown in the schematic of Dante’s hell by Mandelbaum below, he places mistakes of over-‐indulgence at the highest levels, errors of violence in the middle, and fraud in the bottom. Dante saw the misuse of the intellect or the mind to deceive others as the very worst kind of human error. At the bottom of his hell he places treachery—first treason against family, then country, and last of all treason against our natural lord and master, against God. In Dante’s Inferno all the types of human missteps are catalogued—every single one. His catalogue of sin is comprehensive. Every type of mistake or temptation is considered, so at some level, there is no completely new story that can be told after the Commedia. Every story deals with one or another of these human mistakes or near mistakes. For Dante, encountering each type of mistake and seeing its consequence is a harsh and bitter reminder of his own missteps and the consequences of those missteps for others. So, his descent is an ever worsening trial of pain and suffering as Dante discovers the consequences of misguided action in the afterlife. Like much of the first half of the Odyssey and of the Aeneid, much of the Inferno is filled with the protagonist’s tears and internal suffering. For Dante, this process is one of diagnosis (understanding the condition) that is his first step toward healing. Let me also note, that after his exile from his beloved homeland, it does his heart good to see many of his worst enemies in life, finally paying for their crimes. For him, seeing justice done in the afterlife begins the process of healing. �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 Mandelbaum Diagram of the Inferno2 Dante’s rebirth occurs when he passes through the very bottom of hell, the poles of the world are reversed, and Dante thinks “they are heading back to hell” (Inferno 34, 81). It is only then that he and his beloved guide Virgil are able to “ascend...to see again the stars” (Inferno 34, 136-‐139). 2 From THE DIVINE COMEDY OF DANTE ALIGHIERI: INFERNO by Allen Mandelbaum, , Illustration by Barry Moser, copyright © 1980 by Allen Mandelbaum, Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 So you notice that Dante in the Inferno has not yet “seized the sword.” Indeed, he has only barely passed through his own rebirth when the first story ends. Of course the story does not end here. Dante’s healing is just begun. When Purgatorio begins diagnosis is no longer the focus, but rather purification. Once hell is abandoned, the Purgatorio lays out the disciplined path that Dante suggests that our souls require for healing. As Dante and Virgil climb the mountain of purgatory, Dante learns how practice of good habits can lead to virtue and health. On each level of purgatory the same errors encountered in hell are met one by one. The only difference is that the people in purgatory work to overcome them. In purgatory, Dante is to undergo a stepwise process of purification and rebirth when he arrives at the top of mount purgatory in the earthly paradise or Eden. Near the bottom of purgatory, seven “P”s are traced on Dante’s forehead, standing for the deadly peccata [sins] that weigh him down and keep him from paradise. As Dante struggles up the mountain, the marks are cleansed from his forehead one by one. The following texts from the Purgatorio describe this cleansing process as a kind of healing. “Seek only that the five wounds healed by being painful soon may be closed up, as the other two already are.” (XV, 79-‐81) “But, to soothe you and to grant your wish, here is Statius. I call on him, I beg him, to be the healer of your wounds.” (XXV, 28-‐30) “With such treatment and with just such diet must the last of all the wounds be healed.” (XXV, 138-‐139) “Keep your munificence alive in me, so that my soul, which you have healed, may please you when it leaves its mortal frame.” (XXXI, 88-‐90) As a result of this process of being freed from the burden of these wounds, Dante “feels so light as to be able to soar into the heavens.” In his last words of the Purgatorio he exclaims: “I came forth…renovated, even as new trees renewed with new foliage, pure and ready to rise to the stars.” (XXXIII, 143-‐145) Dante’s conclusion to the Purgatorio reminds us that the ancient Greek word “phusis”, from which the word physician is derived, means growth. The true physician is the one who stimulates growth. And in purgatory growth is stimulated through the practice of healthy habits, confronting and overcoming the temptations and errors of our lives. It seems natural to ask at this point whether Dante’s poetry doesn’t stimulate growth in precisely the way of a good physician. Surely this is Dante’s aim. �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 Part 3: Resonance of the Inferno with earlier hero stories Let me now turn to the earlier hero myths that influenced Dante’s work, focusing especially on the Odyssey and Aeneid, to see what these works tell us about the hero’s healing journey. These hero stories particularly resonate with Dante and show some of the many ways to tell the story of the hero’s quest. The Aeneid is an homage to the Odyssey as La Commedia is an homage to The Aeneid. Both stories feature a journey to the underworld in their centers and each hero has a sibyl guide, and in the underworld each hero seeks to come to terms with their past and gain vision of their path into the future. As it is for Dante in the Commedia, rebirth and enlightenment occur for both Odysseus and Aeneas in the underworld, in the most desperate place of all. Healing occurs through their contact with the hidden Cthonic underworld, and both involve a seer, Sibyl, oracle helper, who serves as a guide to the navel of the world, the place of their rebirth. For both Odysseus and Aeneas, like Dante, the ordinary world is a broken world from which they would prefer to hide and escape. Both Odysseus and Aeneas seek to escape their broken world, Odysseus with the divine Kalypso, and Aeneas with his beloved Dido, but both find themselves unable to forget their past and fated future. Like the Athenians in the time of Theseus who didn’t want to admit that it was wrong for their children to be sacrificed to the Minotaur, none of our heroes want to face the horror embedded in the ordinary world, but they are compelled to do so. All of three of these hero myths involve reluctant heroes who are forced to confront the pain in their ordinary world. Dante is accused of graft and exiled from his beloved world of Florence forever. Odysseus, the wounded warrior, must confront and recover from the horrors of war and his guilt over abandoning his family and losing all of his crew one by one. Aeneas’ ordinary world is burnt to the ground and destroyed forever. So we can rightly wonder on this day of 9–11 as we ponder the place where the twin towers once stood. How can such wastelands provide grounds for healing and lead to rebirth? Dante clearly has more regard for pious Aeneas, led by the goddess of love Venus who serves as his mentor, than he has for Odysseus, whom he punishes as a smooth-‐tongued false counselor or rhetorician in the realm of fraud. Yet even though Virgil’s Aeneid is more directly related to Dante’s story, please give me leave to reverse courses and turn to the older story of Odysseus first, as it will help us better interpret The Aeneid. Odysseus’ homecoming story begins not with Odysseus—we are only are told that he is stranded on Kalypso’s isle, despondent, unfit, and without hope of ever returning home again. The Odyssey begins with Athena’s plan to save him, and the call to adventure of his son Telemachus. Athena recognizes Odysseus’ critical need for his family to help him achieve his homecoming. And it is Pallas Athena, the goddess of wisdom who serves as Odysseus’ mentor. For the first four books of the Odyssey Odysseus himself is strangely absent. Instead we are occupied with Athena disguising herself as Odysseus’ wise old friend Mentor and the early books primarily deal with her serving as a guide and mentor to his son, not to Odysseus himself. Meanwhile Odysseus’ ordinary world is living with the immortal Kalypso in indolence and pleasure. And yet we learn that he spends most of his days in mourning, homesickness, and grief. His world on a fantasy island with Kalypso is a perfect world, but it is a world he cannot accept. �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 Finally in Book V, Odysseus leaves the island of Kalypso where he has lived 8 years in the company of the immortal goddess. After 18 days at sea on his raft he is finally within sight of Phaiákian land. But Poseidon conjurs a storm that completely destroys his raft. The storm strips him of his clothes and for two days and nights he is cast about the sea holding on to the single beam remaining from his raft. On the dawn of the third day the sea calms and he swims for the shore. With the help of the gods avoids the crashing breakers of the rocky coast of the island of Skeria and finds a river inlet where he can make his way ashore. He drags himself between twin bushes of olive from one stem—one wild and one cultivated—where he falls into an exhausted sleep. As Kathryn Davis notes,3 the twin olive bush has two meanings. First, it serves as a sign of Athena, evoking the myth that she brought the cultivated olive to Greece but that it had to be grafted onto wild stock to thrive. Second, the olive prefigures Odysseus’ homecoming (for both him and us) and it allows him the opportunity to remake his olive tree bed as part of his work of recovery. The next day, the naked Odysseus is discovered by the king’s daughter Nausikaa who has gone to the river with her handmaids to wash clothes. There on the shore, Odysseus appears reborn like a naked babe and he is clothed and fed and brought back to the Phaiákian king and queen. Thus, within the first story of the Odyssey, Odysseus experiences his rebirth on the shores of the land of the Phaiákians. But closer reading suggests that his death and rebirth begin, are centered on, and derive from his experience in the underworld. Odysseus’ journey to the underworld is told as a story within a story, in his Homeric telling of his own story to the Phaiákian people. He tells the story of his death soon after his rebirth on the beach, after he has barely survived another near death experience, his near drowning on his desperate attempt to return home. With the Phaiákian’s he becomes a storyteller and his healing, recovery, growth (Gr. Phusis) rapidly progresses. The middle half of the Odyssey consists not of an impartial story of Odysseus’ return, but rather of Odysseus’ telling of his own story. Odysseus –must tell his story to heal. This is reminiscent of the primary healing modality employed by the wounded warrior’s project for American soldiers with post-‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) returning from the Middle East. For those who can heal, sharing their story is a key part of healing for those returning home from the horrors of war. Odysseus is able to return to the ordinary world by helping to change it, by sharing his accumulated wisdom, by telling his story. The reader has to wonder, along with the king and queen, whether or not he is a reliable historian, or whether he is simply pitching the story for his own gain. Regardless, there can be no doubt that it is in telling his story that Odysseus begins to regain his health. Within this story within the story of the Odyssey, in the very center and crux of the poem, his death and the beginning of his rebirth is revealed. His journey to the underworld occurs some 10 years after Odysseus has left home, when he is most desperate to return. The witch-‐healer or goddess φαρμακεία (Gr.) Kirke finally gives him leave, but informs him that 3 Kathryn Davis, The Olive Tree and “the idea of order” in the Odyssey, Accessed July 8, 2015 at http://www.udallas.edu/documents/pdf/braniff/kathryndavis.pdf. �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 he first must perform one more task. Here is their conversation, as related by Odysseus, when he begs to leave and receives the darkest news imaginable: “Son of Laertes and the gods of old, Odysseus, master mariner and soldier, you shall not stay here longer in my house against your will; but home you may not go unless you take a strange way round and come to the cold bones of Death and pale Persephone. You shall hear prophecy from the rapt shade of blind Teiresias of Thebes, forever charged with reason even among the dead…” At this I felt a weight like a stone within me, and moaning, pressed my length against the bed, with no desire to see the daylight more. But when I had wept and tossed and had my fill of despair, at last I answered her: “Kirke, who pilots me on this journey? No man has ever sailed to the land of Death.” Odyssey, Book X Her answer is that the spirit of Teiresias will be his guide. And thus, following Kirke’s instructions he is met by Teiresias in Hades who gives him a dark prophecy regarding his most difficult return. Odysseus is told that “anguish lies ahead” and that he can only hope for a rapid return through “denial of yourself, restraint of shipmates.” And of course in this latter goal we know that Odysseus fails and as prophesied all his shipmates are then lost. Then in the depths of Hades Odysseus sees his mother who has died in his absence . She asks him painful questions about his absence and all that he has left behind, and then finally she tells him the cause of her own death while he was gone: “So I too pined away, so doom befell me,… not that illness overtook me–no true illness wasting the body to undo the spirit; only my loneliness for you, Odysseus, for your kind heart and counsel, gentle Odysseus, took my life away.” This is when he seeks to embrace her, three times, and is unable, her shadow sifting through his hands. Not only is he responsible for her death, she evokes a past that he can never recover. And at this point he doubts that he can ever recover his past kindness and gentleness that only his mother seems to remember. This recognition of the depth of his loss is both his greatest point of pain and the true beginning of his rebirth and his process of healing. �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 Let me now turn briefly to Aeneas. As we discussed, Aeneas’ mentor is Venus, the goddess of love, and he also has a very similar excursion into the underworld in the very center of The Aeneid. Similarly, this journey to the underworld serves as perhaps the most moving part of his story. Like Odysseus, he is similarly guided by a seer, the Cumaean Sibyl. In Hades Aeneas also seeks to embrace his ancestor three times, but in this case it is his father, Anchises that he seeks to embrace. As Jacob Klein notes, the story runs both reverse and inverse—father, not mother, guided by love, not wisdom—yet still it is at heart a hero’s quest, and follows the basic pattern we previously described. Here Virgil describes their emotional meeting: “And have you come at last, and has the pious love that your father waited for defeated the difficulty of the journey? Son, can I look at your face, hear, and return familiar accents?...” Then he: “My father, it was your sad image, so often come, that urged me to these thresholds. My ships are moored on the Tyrrhenian. O father, let me hold your right hand fast, do not withdraw from my embrace.” His face was wet with weeping as he spoke. Three times he tried to throw his arms around Anchises’ neck; and three times the Shade escaped from that vain clasp—like light winds, or most like swift dreams. The Aeneid, Book VI, 908-‐927 He similarly has to let go of his past, and toward that end, his father shows him not the heroes of the past in Hades, but rather his hero warrior descendants of the future who will found the city of Rome. With this bright but difficult future in mind, Aeneas leaves Hades with a new hope for a path to a better future. And many of you will remember, after seeing this vision of the future, he and the Sibyl pass through the polished ivory gate of Sleep which Virgil calls the “way the Spirits send false dreams”—the same gate of “dreams of glimmering illusion, [and] fantasies” (Odyssey, Book 19, 532-‐533) from which Penelope suspected her dream of Odysseus’ return most likely came. Virgil leaves all to wonder whether Aeneas’ hope for a great and just Rome is a false hope that will never come to pass. As Jacob Klein the late Annapolis tutor and Dean so elegantly has shown in his essay “The Myth of Virgil’s Aeneid,4 Virgil’s story of Aeneas is a retelling of The Odyssey, written as the reverse and inverse of Homer’s story of Odysseus. The Aeneid mirrors The Iliad and The Odyssey together, told in reverse. Like The Odyssey, The Aeneid is a homecoming/recovery story, but it ends with the wrath of Aeneas just as The Iliad begins with the wrath of Achilles. As Jacob Klein points out, The Aeneid ends with a Trojan war raging in reverse 4 Jacob Klein, The Myth of Virgil’s Aeneid, from Jacob Klein: Lectures and Essays, Ed. R Williamson and E. Zuckerman, St. John’s College Press, Annapolis, MD: 1985 �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 order and “This time it will end with the victory of Aeneas, the new Hector, over Turnus, the new Achilles.” And after this victory there will be a final reconciliation between the Trojans and Latins and all the warring gods that represent them. Thus, The Aeneid ends with the dawn of a new golden age in which Rome is born and through war brings the dream of new golden age of peace. Aeneas story is a story of the recovery of Aeneas and the restoration of his world, of a better and just world, of Troy reborn as Rome. Part 4: 9–11 and “The Waste Land” of modern healthcare So what does all this have to do with healthcare and our modern quest for healing? Through these stories we have seen that the hero’s quest always begins with the discovery by the hero that the world is upside down and needs to be restored. So my novel, The End of Healing, begins with its protagonist, the young Dr. Don Newman, discovering himself in a very dark place. In the first part of our new millennium, precisely 700 years after Dante Alighieri painful awakening, Dr. Newman finds himself in a broken world. The End of Healing begins when Dr. Newman is awoken in the middle of a night on call to put an intravenous line in the neck of a dying woman who can’t talk because a recent massive stroke from which she will never recover. He knows his patient doesn’t want an intravenous line and that it won’t really help her get better. Here is a bit of their encounter after Dr. Newman has prepped and draped Mrs. Bellamy before putting in the unwanted IV: For a quiet moment she was just a neck. He numbed the skin with a bee sting of lidocaine, studied the anatomical landmarks to find the right spot, and stabbed her neck with the three-‐inch needle. She screamed beneath the drape. Dark blood shot from the hub of the hypodermic. He passed a long stiff wire through the needle into the jugular vein and deep into her body. The pager started screeching again but he couldn’t reach under his gown to turn it off. A voice in his head whispered the oath he had taken at the beginning and again at the end of medical school: and at least I will do no harm. Bullshit! Harm is my business. How could any good ever come out of what I’m doing here to Sibyl Bellamy? His bloody gloved fingers worked to thread the Silastic tubing over the wire, through her soft skin, and down to the first chamber of her heart. Sibyl Bellamy began to whimper. Out of nowhere, water filled his eyes and blurred his vision. What was this? It wasn’t like him to become emotional while dealing with a patient, and he bristled with irritation at the sudden unprofessional display. He blinked hard, hoping the nurse didn’t notice the single drop that spilled from the corner of his eye and trailed across his cheek and around his mouth to balance on the tip of his chin. Mrs. Bellamy had once been a beautiful woman. Something about her reminded him of his own mother. Momma was gone now, and he had done nothing to help her, either. As he struggled to suture the line into place, the tear dropped off his chin. It landed on the sterile blue drape and spread into a dark circle over Sibyl Bellamy’s heart. The End of Healing, Chapter 1, The Dark Ward �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 A patient helps him to see to his horror that far from following his oath to “at least do no harm” that “harm has become his business.” This is a near universal experience among young would-‐be healers, that at some point early in their career they realize that they have entered a powerful industry that does not always place the interest of the patient first, and that they themselves have participated in the business of harm. Then he meets his mentor, Dr. Gil Sampson, who encourages him to cross a threshold, to forsake plans for a lucrative career in cardiology, and instead embark on a dubious quest to “Follow the money” to better understand the true ends of the healthcare industry today. Dr. Sampson and Dr. Newman’s fellow students in his Oxford style graduate program in Health System change assist him in this quest and force him to see things he finds horrifying and which challenge his cherished identity as a healer. Soon after beginning his Ivy League graduate program he is sorely tested. On September 11, 2001 Don and his fellow students are sitting in their college’s coffee shop, a place that looks a lot like the St. John’s College coffee shop beneath McDowell Hall, when the planes hit: Don had been drinking coffee in The Down Under, one eye on the morning news and the other on his seminar reading, when the television showed the first plane slamming into the side of the South Tower. He assumed the pilot had veered off course or had mechanical problems—a terrible freak accident—and went back to his reading. Just after nine o’clock, a student in the coffee shop screamed, “Oh, my God!” The panic in her voice caused Don to look at the screen just as a second jet slammed into the North Tower. Boiling orange flames exploded from all four sides of several floors. Glittering glass and metal showered the streets below, and billowing black smoke poured out of the jagged, gaping holes in the gleaming towers. Everything changed in that moment. The concern in the room turned to palpable fear and everyone was now riveted to the news. Some were crying; others were desperately dialing their cell phones….The South Tower crumbled first, just before ten o’clock. The giant building collapsed in slow motion. It started with a barely noticeable shudder and a slight sagging that warped the skyscraper’s straight lines. The people up on the roof hoping in vain for a helicopter rescue must have felt the steel beams give up beneath them as the floors began to collapse, accelerating to a machine gun staccato. Puffs of smoke shot out from between the floors with each percussion, and gray-‐brown clouds of dust began to rise and swell. The interminable fall ended with a huge belch as the floors slammed to the ground. The building exhaled its last breath—a thick, rolling cloud of dust and debris that advanced from the heap and engulfed everything in its path. The fall of the North Tower thirty minutes later was predictable and right on time. In spite of that, a steady stream of fearless firemen filed into the building right up to the very end. The End of Healing, Chapter 7, The Waste Land He quickly discovers what anyone who has eyes to see, can see—that as horrible as the attack on the Twin Towers was—the world of modern healthcare is far worse. To his dismay he learns that over 100,000 Americans are killed by medical mistakes in hospitals every year— the equivalent of a jumbo jet crashing every day! That makes healthcare far �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 and away the number one cause of accidental death in the U.S. And he discovers that healthcare providers generally get paid more when they make mistakes. That some 100 million people worldwide are killed, maimed, or seriously injured by medical mistakes every 10 years, more than have ever been killed in any war in the history of time in a similar period. And as he “follows the money” with his professor’s guidance, he realizes that the costs of the American high-‐tech, hospital-‐focused healthcare approach are unsupportable. He sees that healthcare is already consuming 20% of the American economy and it is hungry for more. Even when the novel is set, in 2001, he sees that the average family of four is spending (or is having spent on their behalf) over $20,000 per year and the average Medicare age family of two is spending over $40,000 per year, amounts that most American families can ill afford. As he searches to understand how and why this untenable situation—this broken world—has developed, he discovers, beneath the surface of his ordinary medical world, a powerful healthcare industrial complex seemingly bent on trading people’s health for profit. Don and his fellow students begin a comprehensive investigation of each of the major healthcare industries and the organizations and individuals that collude with them in the quest for profit. As young Dr. Newman struggles to find a framework to help him understand the broken world of modern healthcare he turns to Dante. As Virgil look to Homer and Dante looked to Virgil, so Dr. Newman looks to Dante for guidance. His Italian mother had introduced him to La Divina Commedia as a boy and he inherited her treasured antique copy. He turns to that book as a graduate student in his search for answers. And his inherited facsimile edition of the Commedia contains the earliest known illustrations of the Comedy drawn by the famous Renaissance artist Botticelli. Here is Botticelli’s depiction of the levels of Dante’s Inferno. �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 In The End of Healing, Dr. Newman discovers that Dante’s representation of the moral organization of the universe is a perfect ethical framework for understanding modern medicine. In a flash of inspiration, Don realizes that the levels of healthcare hell he has been exploring with Dr. Sampson in their seminar correspond perfectly with the levels in Dante’s Inferno. He discovers that for every ethical misstep, mistake, or error that Dante catalogued there is a corresponding mistake in modern healthcare. He discovers that the way humans can go wrong really have not changed that much in the last 700 years. So like Dante, he begins to catalog the errors in modern healthcare and to use Botticelli’s drawing as his guide. He realizes that these errors in health system organization have consequences in terms of money spent, lives saved, and lives lost and he begins to record these consequences in his own version of Botticelli’s diagram in his journal. He works night after night reviewing the literature, calculating and filling in the money spent, lives saved and lives lost in every sector of the healthcare industry. And here is what he discovers. Diagram of Healthcare Hell5 5 From The End of Healing by Jim Bailey, Illustration by Joel Hilgenberg, copyright © 2014 by The Healthy City. �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 In his journey into the hell of the ordinary medical world Don discovers that the priorities of our healthcare system are completely upside down–and that this has horrible consequences for the people who depend on and need good health care for themselves and their families. In The End of Healing, Don and his colleagues see the victims of disorganized healthcare up close, they share the stories of the unnecessary suffering they have witnessed, and they understand the reasons for the diseases and premature deaths of these innocent people. What Don discovers through his journey is that where Americans spend the most—on hyped care, procedures, and hospital care—they get the least, the fewest lives are saved, and the most lives are lost from medical errors, adverse events, and complications. And where Americans spend the least is where the true high-‐value care lies, care that has the potential to not only save far more lives but also to help bring abundant life to the people of America. This is the reality of modern medicine in the United States, where it is currently estimated that $800 billion or one-‐third of the total $2.4 trillion U.S. healthcare budget is wasted on potentially harmful activities activities that do little or nothing to promote health.6,7 So tonight I have shared the beginning of the story of a new hero who perhaps can help us confront one of the greatest social ills of our time, the unconscionable waste of lives and resources on a broken healthcare system. Perhaps Dr. Don Newman’s search, like Dante’s, Aeneas’, and Odysseus’ before him can guide us to the nature of true healing and help us discover true healing for ourselves and our families. His work and our work is simple—to reclaim and restore our upside-‐down healthcare system. All we have to do is to turn the system right-‐side up—right-‐side health care and reclaim the well. All that is required is to move the money from wasteful sectors and industries where it does harm to where it can do good through primary care and prevention. This task would be easy if only every bit of that waste were not someone’s profit. So this process of transformation will require heroes. Through Dr. Newman’s story we learn that high-‐value health care starts with each of us and our values. Before we can hope to demand high-‐value health care we have to know what high-‐value health care is and how we can find it. We must ask ourselves what health care is truly most valuable and discern the answer. Through The End of Healing the reader can accompany Dr. Don Newman and participate in that process of painful discernment. That is the healing journey that young Dr. Don Newman bids us to join in—a quest to seek the path through our broken healthcare system to reclaim the well and the narrow path to true healing. 6 Orzag PR, Statement to the Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives, Increasing the Value of Federal Spending on Health Care, July 16, 2008. Available at: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/41717; Accessed 9/10/15. 7 Kelly R, Where can $700 billion in waste be cut annually from the U.S. healthcare system? Thomson Reuters, October 2009, Available at: http://www.ncrponline.org/PDFs/2009/Thomson_Reuters_White_Paper_on_Healthcare_ Waste.pdf; Accessed 9/10/15. �Jim Bailey St. John’s College, Annapolis, MD Friday Night Lecture, September 11, 2015 This call to adventure issued by The End of Healing is not unlike the call issued by Dante through his Divine Comedy to examine our ordinary world and reclaim it, or the call of Virgil through his Aeneid to look for and help build a true and just Pax Romana. Nor is it far from Homer’s call to Odysseus to remember what is truly important and to strive for a new homecoming and restore his broken household. Let us look for Odysseus’s reclaimed homeland, Aeneas’ reborn Trojan empire, Dante’s hoped for new Jerusalem, and accept the call to adventure to go with young Dr. Newman and find the path to the healthy city of our dreams. 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Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data paper Page numeration Number of pages in the original item. 16 pages Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dante and the hero's quest for healing Description An account of the resource Typescript of a lecture delivered on September 11, 2015 by Jim Bailey as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bailey, James E. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available St. John's College Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015-09-11 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource A signed permission form has been received stating, "I hereby grant St. John's College permission make an audio recording of my lecture, and retain copies for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make an audio recording of my lecture available online. Make typescript copies of my lecture available for circulation and archival preservation at the St. John's College Greenfield Library. Make a copy of my typescript available online." Type The nature or genre of the resource text Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource pdf Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context Bib # 82891 Friday night lecture https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/sjcdigitalarchives/original/5e18dd954571a73627d3a66a52b81c27.mp3 e96dc6a97fe49551e764d9a9376a4cd7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Items in this collection are part of a series of lectures given every year at St. John's College. During the Fall and Spring semesters, lectures are given on Friday nights. Items include audio and video recordings and typescripts. For more information, and a schedule of upcoming lectures, please visit the <a href="http://www.sjc.edu/programs-and-events/annapolis/formal-lecture-series/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">St. John's College website</a>. Click on <a title="Formal Lecture Series" href="https://digitalarchives.sjc.edu/items/browse?collection=5&sort_field=Dublin+Core%2CDate&sort_dir=d">Items in the St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Collection</a> to view and sort all items in the collection. A growing number of lecture recordings are also available on the St. John's College (Annapolis) Lectures podcast. Visit <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/st-johns-college-annapolis-lectures/id1695157772">Apple Podcasts</a> or <a href="https://open.spotify.com/show/6GDsIRqC8SWZ28AY72BsYM?si=f2ecfa9e247a456f" title="Spotify">Spotify</a> to listen and subscribe. Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource St. John's College Greenfield Library Title A name given to the resource St. John's College Formal Lecture Series—Annapolis Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context formallectureseriesannapolis Sound A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data audiocassette Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 00:59:23 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dante and Ulysses: A Reading of Inferno XXVI Description An account of the resource Audio recording of a lecture delivered on January 27, 1989, by Peter Kalkavage as part of the Formal Lecture Series. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kalkavage, Peter Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Annapolis, MD Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989-01-27 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource St. John's College has been given permission to make this item available online. Type The nature or genre of the resource sound Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource mp3 Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context LEC_Kalkavage_Peter_1989-01-27_ac Subject The topic of the resource Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Inferno. Canto 26 Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321. Characters. Odysseus (Greek mythology) Friday night lecture Tutors