Anal fire

Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart, Codex bibl. fol 23: folio 94v

I had been puzzling for some weeks over this picture in the Stuttgart Psalter (Paris, 820-830 CE) which illustrates Psalm 77, Verse 66:

Et percussit inimicos suos in posteriora: obprobrium sempiternum dedit illos. (Vulgata)

And he smote his enemies in the hinder parts: he put them to a perpetual reproach. ((KJV) 

Were these butt-rockets dispensed by the Lord for sodomitical transgressions committed by the victims? What other anal improprieties could have incurred the Lord's displeasure?

The answer came to me immediately from the opening pages of Jeffrey Cohen's Medieval Identity Machines, which reference King Alfred the Great's problems with hemorrhoids. These hellish afflictions may have been more common in the Early Middle Ages than we have supposed. Or perhaps the artist, similarly afflicted and lacking Preparation H, postulated an act of divine retribution.

In modern times, piles of course were the subject of a very popular Johnny Cash song entitled "Ring of Fire."

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The corpse flower

Amorphophallus titanum, Indonesia, 2003

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In the cave of forgotten dreams

Chauvet Caves:  Four horses with fighting rhinos

Acting on an enthusiastic recommendation from Francesca Rosa I went with Bruce Boone to see the excellent Werner Herzog film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, a remarkable excursion through the Chauvet Caves in Southern France, which contain the oldest pictures in human history. The 3-D presentation was flawless and in fact completely necessary to show how the rock art images merged plastically into the shifting planes of the limestone walls of the cave. Herzog also left plenty of time for the viewer to simply gaze at the works themselves without acoustic intervention, returning to the same images from time to time seen from different perspectives.

The film was in every sense of the word an anabasis into the collective unconscious of humankind, down to the ancient-most layer of our own species-memory that we can access. Why did these cave artists portray animals and not trees and flowers, or geographical features like mountains and rivers, or other humans? Were they interested only in imaging the food supply in motion, or did they understand themselves as part of an animal spirit-world, and the creatures as fellow beings in the commonly-shared ancestral environment?

Assuming that the human population in the Upper Paleolithic in Europe was tiny, and the variety and number of animals running around as dense apparently as on the plains of Africa, the engagement with them must have been extremely intense. Perhaps the fact that the animals are almost always pictured in profile from their sides, in the way we would photograph grazing animals today, demonstrates the angle at which they were also able to be hunted—you don’t see their faces shown head-on, which would permit you to make eye-contact and get personal with them.

A brief excursus was made into the well-known, chubby Paleolithic female figures categorized as “Venuses” and given the common interpretation that these symbolize fecundity. I remain skeptical, remembering that Hawaiian and Polynesian royalty were once esteemed according to their body-weight, and that obesity functioned socially as a Schönheitsideal. Perhaps when food is scarce or difficult to obtain, body fat becomes desirable.

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More pictures of the Chauvet caves at the Bradford Foundation website. 

Chengdu, P.R. China, 1986

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ΝΕΑΝΙΑΣ

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Kanellopoulos Museum, Athens -- Boetian, 5th-6th c.BCE

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Ladegast organ in Schwerin

I'm not a fan of 19th century organs or of those composers who wrote for them, but a huge exception for me is the Ladegast organ (1871) in Schwerin (capital of the northern German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern).

The instrument itself is a masterpiece of romantic neo-Gothic design popular throughout the 19th century in Germany, and looks like it would be equally at home in a Caspar David Friedrich painting or a Hermann Hesse novel. It has a huge sound, and if you have a few moments, have a listen to it right here.

This performance of Liszt's Prelude and Fugue on B-A-C-H by Hans-Jürgen Kaiser is terrific; he is wisely concerned less about displaying his own virtuosity than managing the darkly brooding energies and the continually modulating harmonies within an abolutely gargantuan acoustic space. Surprisingly, the effect is audible through even the crappiest of computer loudspeakers.

Just imagine being there and hearing it in person, or indeed in any of these ancient and massively buillt North German cathedral churches (Lüneburg, Lübeck, Rostock, Stralsund), all of which are equipped with towering organs.

Schwerin Cathedral in winter, thanks Wiki Commons

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Joy of the soprano recorder

Nathaniel Hone, The piping boy, 1768.

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O father, my father

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This tombstone from a colonial cemetery in Boston has interested me more than all others. The barely legible inscription reads:

W.P. 

O MY FATHER, MY FATHER, 

THE CHARIOTS OF ISRAEL, 

THE HORSEMEN THEREOF. 

1658

I think it unlikely I shall discover the identity of W.P., but since Boston was founded in 1630, he must have been in the first or second generation of English settlers in Massachusetts. (It's difficult for many folks to understand there were things that went on in America between 1492 and 1776, but poking around Boston gives you a certain cognitive edge.)

The inscription puzzled me for years -- obviously a verse from the Old Testament, but from where, and what was the context? Not until Google was invented in the late 90's was I able to find the correct citation in 2 Kings 13:14:

Now Elisha was fallen sick of his sickness whereof  he died. And Joash the king of Israel came down unto him and wept over his face, and said, O my father, my father, the chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof (KJV).

What was this all about? Several Bible commentaries I looked at are hardly in agreement, but the idea seems to be that when Joash the king of Israel learned that the prophet Elisha was dying, he appeared and had some kind of  future vision, or perhaps past memory, of Israel's military victories.

A bit later the chronicle continues:

20 Elisha died, and they buried him. Now the bands of the Moabites would invade the land in the spring of the year. 21 As they were burying a man, behold, they saw a marauding band; and they cast the man into the grave of Elisha. And when the man touched the bones of Elisha he revived and stood up on his feet (New American Standard Bible).

OK so now maybe we have a Jewish, pre-Christian resurrection parable on our hands? Is this why these words, more than 2000 years old, are inscribed on a colonial gravestone in Boston? Or is it rather that W.P. enjoyed a successful career as a belligerent or a military hero of some sort?

What an appropriate mystery for 17th century Boston, cloaked in patriarchal imagery and advertising itself as the city set upon the hill* to be approved by all, like Gilgamesh looking out from the walls of Ur.

The motto on the seal of the City of Boston is from 1 Kings 8:57 and is no less patriarchal: Sicut patribus sit Deus nobis -- "The LORD our God be with us, as he was with our fathers."

* John Winthrop, 1630, "...for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us." See also my paper Political Themes in the Reformation of John Calvin.


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Other times, other lives

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King's Chapel Burying Ground, Boston

Capt. Thomas Lake aged 61 yeeres an eminently faithfull servant of God & one of a publick spirit was perfidiously slain by Indians at Kennibeck August 14 1676 & here interred the 13 of March following.

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