View allAll Photos Tagged Implicit
Castle Sinclair Girnigoe is located about 3 miles north of Wick on the east coast of Caithness, Scotland. It is considered to be one of the earliest seats of Clan Sinclair. It comprises the ruins of two castles: the 15th-century Castle Girnigoe; and the early 17th-century Castle Sinclair. They are designated as a scheduled monument.
The earlier Castle Girnigoe was built by William Sinclair, 2nd Earl of Caithness, probably sometime between 1476 and 1496, but certainly before his death at the Battle of Flodden in 1513. There is some evidence to suggest that the castle was built on the foundations of an earlier fortalice.
In 1577, George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness, imprisoned his own son John Sinclair, Master of Caithness, in Castle Girnigoe, on suspicion of rebelling against his rule. He was held there for seven years, after which his father fed him a diet of salted beef, with nothing to drink, so that he eventually died insane from thirst. The rebel Earl of Bothwell was at Girnigoe in December 1594.
Expansion occurred in 1606 when Castle Sinclair was built, comprising a gatehouse and other buildings, along with a curtain wall. These were connected to the earlier castle by a drawbridge over a ravine. The same year George Sinclair, 5th Earl of Caithness, requested the Scottish Parliament to change the name to Castle Sinclair, but because the names Castle Sinclair and Castle Girnigoe were both written down in 1700, both names have been in use since.
Robert Sinclair describes Girnigoe as "an adapted 5-storey L-plan crow-stepped gabled tower house, which sat upon a rocky promontory jutting out into Sinclair Bay. Of interest is the secret chamber in the vaulted ceiling of the kitchen."
In 1672, George Sinclair, 6th Earl of Caithness, was in heavy debt to his fourth cousin, John Campbell of Glenorchy, and transferred the castle to Campbell as payment. When Sinclair died four years later with no heir, Campbell claimed the title Earl of Caithness and married Sinclair's widow. However, Sinclair's first cousin, George Sinclair of Keiss, challenged Campbell's title. This resulted in the Battle of Altimarlach in which Campbell defeated Sinclair in 1680. Glenorchy and some of his troops remained in Caithness for some time and levied rents and taxes on the people, subjecting them to the most grievous oppression. He sent the remainder home immediately after the battle. However, George Sinclair of Keiss continued his opposition and laid siege, with firearms and artillery, to Castle Sinclair Girnigoe which he took after feeble resistance from the garrison. As a result, he and his three friends who had assisted him, Sinclair of Broynach, Sinclair of Thura and Mackay of Strathnaver were declared rebels. The political current having turned in favor of Sinclair of Keiss however, this was quashed. Having failed to regain his inheritance by force, Sinclair of Keiss then turned to the law.[9] Through the influence of the Duke of York and afterwards James II, he took his place as 7th Earl of Caithness on 15 July 1681, and his lands were restored on 23 September. Campbell of Glenorchy was made Earl of Breadalbane by way of compensation.
The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.
The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.
The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.
The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.
Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.
Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".
Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".
Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West. Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way. The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes.
Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities. Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land. In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.
In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.
When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected. This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms. Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.
The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.
Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.
According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".
The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.
For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.
In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.
A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.
Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.
The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.
Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.
There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.
Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.
The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.
These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.
The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.
Climate
The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.
Places of interest
An Teallach
Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)
Arrochar Alps
Balmoral Castle
Balquhidder
Battlefield of Culloden
Beinn Alligin
Beinn Eighe
Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station
Ben Lomond
Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Cairngorms National Park
Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore
Cairngorm Mountains
Caledonian Canal
Cape Wrath
Carrick Castle
Castle Stalker
Castle Tioram
Chanonry Point
Conic Hill
Culloden Moor
Dunadd
Duart Castle
Durness
Eilean Donan
Fingal's Cave (Staffa)
Fort George
Glen Coe
Glen Etive
Glen Kinglas
Glen Lyon
Glen Orchy
Glenshee Ski Centre
Glen Shiel
Glen Spean
Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)
Grampian Mountains
Hebrides
Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.
Highland Wildlife Park
Inveraray Castle
Inveraray Jail
Inverness Castle
Inverewe Garden
Iona Abbey
Isle of Staffa
Kilchurn Castle
Kilmartin Glen
Liathach
Lecht Ski Centre
Loch Alsh
Loch Ard
Loch Awe
Loch Assynt
Loch Earn
Loch Etive
Loch Fyne
Loch Goil
Loch Katrine
Loch Leven
Loch Linnhe
Loch Lochy
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park
Loch Lubnaig
Loch Maree
Loch Morar
Loch Morlich
Loch Ness
Loch Nevis
Loch Rannoch
Loch Tay
Lochranza
Luss
Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)
Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran
Rannoch Moor
Red Cuillin
Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83
River Carron, Wester Ross
River Spey
River Tay
Ross and Cromarty
Smoo Cave
Stob Coire a' Chàirn
Stac Polly
Strathspey Railway
Sutherland
Tor Castle
Torridon Hills
Urquhart Castle
West Highland Line (scenic railway)
West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)
Wester Ross
flickriver.com/photos/javier1949/popular-interesting/
Monumento a las víctimas del 11-M
www.monumentamadrid.es/AM_Monumentos4/AM_Monumentos4_WEB/...
Avda Ciudad de Barcelona con Pº Infanta Isabel Estación de Atocha. Madrid
Arquitectos: Esaú ACOSTA, Raquel BUJ, Pedro COLÓN DE CARVAJAL, Mauro GIL-FOURNIER y Miguel JAENYCKE. 2004-2007
Fruto del concurso internacional de ideas, convocado por el Ministerio de Fomento y el Ayuntamiento de Madrid para homenajear a las víctimas de los brutales atentados del 11 de marzo de 2004 en la línea de Cercanías de RENFE, surge este proyecto seleccionado entre un total de 289 propuestas y firmado por el equipo FAM –Fragante Aroma de Manzana-, sugerente nombre que aúna a cinco jóvenes arquitectos. De la idea a su ejecución material se multiplicó su presupuesto inicial por diez y se prolongó a lo largo de tres años, dos más de lo previsto, celebrándose su inauguración el 11 de marzo de 2007, con la asistencia de los Reyes, el presidente del gobierno, diferentes ministros y máximas autoridades del Estado, acompañadas de los familiares de las víctimas.
Su primer planteamiento era sencillo y contundente: una gran burbuja de cristal que sobresalía al exterior para llevar luz al interior de la estación de Atocha, atravesando a su paso una bóveda con los nombres inscritos de los asesinados. Su concepción es por tanto arquitectónica y su ambición urbana. No se detiene en el elemento escultórico conmemorativo que embellece a la ciudad, pues desde su génesis lleva implícita su condición de edificio semienterrado, iluminado cenitalmente. Este principio se mantuvo tras su ejecución, aun cuando tuvo que renunciar a la imagen informe de la burbuja exterior, geometrizada ahora en un cilindro translúcido, de similar altura y sección, construido con piezas especiales de vidrio, modulares, macizas y curvas. Es su seña de identidad urbana y además cumple su función protectora de la verdadera bóveda interior, una membrana plástica transparente de 50 kilogramos y 150 micras de espesor, sostenida por un anillo perimetral metálico y el propio aire. En ella, recogiendo el deseo de la Asociación de Víctimas, no se han serigrafiado finalmente nombres sino dedicatorias, explícitamente dirigidas en ese momento por un pueblo consternado. La luz solar la atraviesa, coloreándose de blanco y contrastando con el azul cobalto que se extiende por todos los paramentos de la sala enterrada, en la que se observa y reflexiona. Es este espacio de planta irregular, de aproximadamente 500 m2 y aforo para 200 personas, conectada con el vestíbulo de la estación ferroviaria, pero separada de su bullicio por una cámara estanca, la cual propicia la intimidad para este monumento del siglo XXI ya determinantemente imbricado en el futuro de la ciudad
Ryoan-ji Hojo Garden ( Historical Site/ Special Place of Scenic Beauty) . Ryoan ji temple , Kyoto city , Kyoto Prefecture ,Japan
Ryōan-ji (Shinjitai: 竜安寺, Kyūjitai: 龍安寺, The Temple of the Dragon at Peace) is a Zen temple located in northwest Kyoto, Japan. It belongs to the Myōshin-ji school of the Rinzai branch of Zen Buddhism. The Ryōan-ji garden is considered one of the finest surviving examples of kare-sansui ("dry landscape"),a refined type of Japanese Zen temple garden design generally featuring distinctive larger rock formations arranged amidst a sweep of smooth pebbles (small, carefully selected polished river rocks) raked into linear patterns that facilitate meditation. The temple and its gardens are listed as one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, and as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The site of the temple was an estate of the Fujiwara family in the 11th century. The first temple, the Daiju-in, and the still existing large pond were built in that century by Fujiwara Saneyoshi. In 1450, Hosokawa Katsumoto, another powerful warlord, acquired the land where the temple stood. He built his residence there, and founded a Zen temple, Ryōan-ji. During the Ōnin War between the clans, the temple was destroyed. Hosokawa Katsumoto died in 1473. In 1488, his son, Hosokawa Matsumoto, rebuilt the temple.
The temple served as a mausoleum for several emperors. Their tombs are grouped together in what are today known as the "Seven Imperial Tombs" at Ryōan-ji. The burial places of these emperors -- Uda, Kazan, Ichijō, Go-Suzaku, Go-Reizei, Go-Sanjō, and Horikawa—would have been comparatively humble in the period after their deaths. These tombs reached their present state as a result of the 19th century restoration of imperial sepulchers (misasagi) which were ordered by Emperor Meiji.
There is controversy over who built the garden and when. Most sources date the garden to the second half of the 15th century.[3] According to some sources, the garden was built by Hosokawa Katsumoto, the creator of the first temple of Ryōan-ji, between 1450 and 1473. Other sources say it was built by his son, Hosokawa Masamoto, in or around 1488. Some say that the garden was built by the famous landscape painter and monk, Sōami (died 1525),.but this is disputed by other authors.Some sources say the garden was built in the first half of the 16th century.[7] Other authors say the garden was probably built much later, during the Edo Period, between 1618 and 1680.[6] There is also controversy over whether the garden was built by monks, or by professional gardeners, called kawaramono, or a combination of the two. One stone in the garden has the name of two kawaramono carved into it.
The conclusive history, though, based on documentary sources, is as follows: Hosokawa Katsumoto (1430-1473), deputy to the shogun, founded in 1450 the Ryoan-ji temple, but the complex was burnt down during the Onin War. His son Masamoto rebuilt the temple at the very end of the same century. It is not clear whether any garden was constructed at that time facing the main hall. First descriptions of a garden, clearly describing one in front of the main hall, date from 1680-1682. It is described as a composition of nine big stones laid out to represent Tiger Cubs Crossing the Water. As the garden has fifteen stones at present, it was clearly different from the garden that we see today. A great fire destroyed the buildings in 1779, and rubble of the burnt buildings was dumped in the garden. Garden writer and specialist Akisato Rito (died c. 1830) redid the garden completely on top of the rubble at the end of the eighteenth century and published a picture of his garden in his Celebrated Gardens and Sights of Kyoto (Miyako rinsen meisho zue) of 1799, showing the garden as it looks today. One big stone at the back was buried partly; it has two first names carved in it, probably names of untouchable stone workers, so called kawaramono. There is no evidence of Zen monks having worked on the garden, apart from the raking of the sand,
The temple's name is synonymous with the temple's famous 'Zen garden', the karesansui (dry landscape) rock garden, thought[by whom] to have been built in the late 15th century.
The garden is a rectangle of 248 square meters. Young and Young put the size at twenty-five meters by ten meters. Placed within it are fifteen stones of different sizes, carefully composed in five groups; one group of five stones, two groups of three, and two groups of two stones. The stones are surrounded by white gravel, which is carefully raked each day by the monks. The only vegetation in the garden is some moss around the stones.
The garden is meant to be viewed from a seated position on the veranda of the hōjō, the residence of the abbot of the monastery.
The stones are placed so that the entire composition cannot be seen at once from the veranda. They are also arranged so that when looking at the garden from any angle (other than from above) only fourteen of the boulders are visible at one time. It is traditionally said that only through attaining enlightenment would one be able to view the fifteenth boulder.
The wall behind the garden is an important element of the garden. It is made of clay, which has been stained by age with subtle brown and orange tones. In 1977, the tile roof of the wall was restored with tree bark to its original appearance.
When the garden was rebuilt in 1799, it came up higher than before and a view over the wall to the mountain scenery behind came about. At present this view is blocked by trees.
The garden had particular significance for the composer John Cage, who composed a series of works and made visual art art works based on it.
Meaning of the garden
Like any work of art, the artistic garden of Ryōan-ji is also open to interpretation, or scientific research into possible meanings. Many different theories have been put forward inside and outside Japan about what the garden is supposed to represent, from islands in a stream, to swimming baby tigers to the peaks of mountains rising above to theories about secrets of geometry or of the rules of equilibrium of odd numbers. Garden historian Gunter Nitschke wrote: "The garden at Ryōan-ji does not symbolize anything, or more precisely, to avoid any misunderstanding, the garden of Ryōan-ji does not symbolize, nor does it have the value of reproducing a natural beauty that one can find in the real or mythical world. I consider it to be an abstract composition of "natural" objects in space, a composition whose function is to incite meditation.".
Scientific analysis of the garden
In an article published by the science journal Nature, Gert van Tonder and Michael Lyons analyze the rock garden by generating a model of shape analysis (medial axis) in early visual processing.
Using this model, they show that the empty space of the garden is implicitly structured, and is aligned with the temple's architecture. According to the researchers, one critical axis of symmetry passes close to the centre of the main hall, which is the traditionally preferred viewing point. In essence, viewing the placement of the stones from a sightline along this point brings a shape from nature (a dichotomously branched tree with a mean branch length decreasing monotonically from the trunk to the tertiary level) in relief.
The researchers propose that the implicit structure of the garden is designed to appeal to the viewer's unconscious visual sensitivity to axial-symmetry skeletons of stimulus shapes. In support of their findings, they found that imposing a random perturbation of the locations of individual rock features destroyed the special characteristics.
Centuries after its creation, the influences of the dry elements at Ryōan-ji continue to be reflected and re-examined in garden design — for example, in the Japangarten at the Art Museum at Wolfsburg in Germany.-wikipedia
© Zoë Murdoch. All Rights Reserved. Use without permission is illegal!
The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.
~ Alice Meynell
Explore ~ 210
To Brooklyn Bridge
How many dawns, chill from his rippling rest
The seagull’s wings shall dip and pivot him,
Shedding white rings of tumult, building high
Over the chained bay waters Liberty—
Then, with inviolate curve, forsake our eyes
As apparitional as sails that cross
Some page of figures to be filed away;
—Till elevators drop us from our day ...
I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights
With multitudes bent toward some flashing scene
Never disclosed, but hastened to again,
Foretold to other eyes on the same screen;
And Thee, across the harbor, silver paced
As though the sun took step of thee yet left
Some motion ever unspent in thy stride,—
Implicitly thy freedom staying thee!
Out of some subway scuttle, cell or loft
A bedlamite speeds to thy parapets,
Tilting there momently, shrill shirt ballooning,
A jest falls from the speechless caravan.
Down Wall, from girder into street noon leaks,
A rip-tooth of the sky’s acetylene;
All afternoon the cloud flown derricks turn ...
Thy cables breathe the North Atlantic still.
And obscure as that heaven of the Jews,
Thy guerdon ... Accolade thou dost bestow
Of anonymity time cannot raise:
Vibrant reprieve and pardon thou dost show.
O harp and altar, of the fury fused,
(How could mere toil align thy choiring strings!)
Terrific threshold of the prophet’s pledge,
Prayer of pariah, and the lover’s cry,
Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path—condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.
Under thy shadow by the piers I waited
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City’s fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year ...
O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies’ dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.
Today is Australia Day. While it is not perfect Australia it is relativity tolerant society. There are not crimes (explicit or implicit) associated with being a crossdresser. .
Hell we even our Prime Minister (US = president) is a women who is not married who lives it her male partner in the the Lodge (= the White House, in US terms)
We have had an openly gay High Court (US = Supreme Court) Judge.
Try doing this in most other countries e;g; USA, UK it would not happen.
These are the kind of things that make me proud to be an Australian.
Happy Australia Day
Love Susan
PS We even had a Prime Minster who was an atheist !
and breathe...
The "wasp" or the "sex cylinder” controls the "spark of desire magneto" which causes the “motor with quite feeble cylinders" to run. It draws the "automobiline" from the "reservoir” or tank of "love gasoline". This would equate the desire magneto with the spark plug of a car engine and the reservoir with a petrol tank.
Parentheses indicate direct quotes from Marcel Duchamp's 'Notes for the Large Glass'.
Jarry called it "Perpetual Motion Food", that thing we call desire, amongst other names ranging from 'abuse' (a variation of Hate) through 'Love', that driver.
It appears that being impaled comes with the description. Marcel describes that helplessness and ecstasy, that ambiguity and exhibitionism which might produce art (great and otherwise, but all being equal). This 'equality' might partially explain Marcel's eschewing of 'taste', implicit in the 'choosing' of 'found objects', or even the stealing of them. They were 'found' as opposed to 'chosen'.
It's quite a conundrum. What's it all about, Alfie?
'Lost' and 'Found' are perhaps equal, and neither of them are 'chosen'.
;-) Texto en castellano mas abajo ;-)
Excuse me the many mistakes that sure I have committed in the translation, I hope that it is understood regardless!
Conclusion of the trilogy blog – pride – persons.
Third and last part of this trilogy that I dedicate to explain, and to explain myself, because I use the captions (feet) of my photos as if they were my personal blog.
Always I have been a crossdresser girl, an innate tendency that thankfully did not produce many concern to me, it was there, but separated from my habitual life. It was dominating my fantasies and dreams, but was not leaving trace in the "real" life. It was appearing in the moment in which one was giving an opportunity and was vanishing without leaving trace, as if it had never happened at all. I was never planning anything, never thinking about it except in my dreams, only… was arising occasionally, sometimes with many frequency, sometimes with long periods of inactivity. Until that came one day in which I wanted more, I started having concern, started having desires and this part of me that was living in my dreams until that moment, started emerging in my reality. It was then when I started investigating the subject, in the easiest and more safe way … Internet. I was lucky, found at the first attempt the suitable sites, far from the topics and the habitual image of the "transvestite" with which I was not identifying. I found heterosexuals crossdressers who understood the subject of similar form to how I was feeling. It was good for me, I could see from out, in other persons a sort of reflection of what I was, or I wanted to be. In this reflection I saw persons and saw pride, not because they wanted to transmit it deliberately, surely they were not thinking it, but it was what I saw, and I liked it. Different and complete persons to who the crossdress factor, was not limiting them and was not determining for entire. Crossdress was alone one more characteristic and they were not left to trap for a hackneyed role that really was not reflecting their true personality, except when wanted to do it. A characteristic that they were taking of natural form, with precaution against the dangers, but with the implicit pride of the one that does not make nothing bad. Yes, I was lucky, if instead of find initially the correct persons I had found the typical image of the transvestism, surely I had stopped searching soon, convinced to be totally atypical. And surely not had changed anything, probably my path would be the same, but I had felt isolated and alone in this. Because of it I would like to contribute to put my two cents in to give the image that I received in that moment. Flickr is the temple of the image, is not the appropriate site to write, but it is, probably, one of the first sites that visits a beginner crossdress girl, or someone interested in it… almost certainly, end up passing through Youtube or Flickr, and if fortuitously find my gallery, I hope that they see a gallery that, though it belongs to a silly and ugly girl with a low level of crossdress, it transmit the values that I liked to find so much. This one is not the reason for which I upload photos and videoes, but it is the principal reason for which I try to transmit my personality in what I do, because of it, even though it is not the suitable place and be so ephemeral as to construct sandcastles, I write whatever I think in every moment, things related to the crossdress and things that not, silly things and deep issues, my tastes and interests, my culture … because it is the gallery of a person … that among other many things, is a crossdresser girl and is proud of it.
Conclusión de la trilogía blog-orgullo-personas.
Tercera y última parte de esta trilogía que dedico a explicar, y a explicarme a mi misma de paso, el porque utilizo los pies de fotos como si fueran mi blog personal.
Siempre he sido una chica crossdresser, una tendencia innata que por suerte no me produjo muchas inquietudes, estaba ahí, pero separada de mi vida habitual. Dominaba mis fantasías y sueños, pero no dejaba huella en la vida “real”. Se manifestaba en el momento en que se daba una oportunidad y se desvanecía sin dejar huella, como si nunca hubiera pasado nada. Nunca planeaba nada, nunca pensaba en ello excepto en mis sueños, solo… surgía de vez en cuando, a veces con mucha frecuencia, a veces con largos periodos de inactividad. Hasta que llegó un día en que quise más, empecé a tener inquietudes, empecé a tener deseos y esa parte de mí que vivía en mis sueños hasta ese momento, empezó a emerger en mi realidad. Fue entonces cuando empecé a investigar sobre el tema, de la manera más fácil y segura… Internet. Tuve mucha suerte, encontré a la primera los sitios adecuados, lejos de los tópicos y la imagen habitual del “travesti” con la que no me identificaba. Encontré a crossdressers heterosexuales que entendían el tema de forma parecida a la que yo sentía. Eso fue bueno para mi, pude ver desde fuera, en otras personas una especie de reflejo de lo que yo era, o quería ser. En ese reflejo veía personas y veía orgullo, no porque ellas lo quisieran transmitir expresamente así, seguramente ni lo pensaban, pero era lo que yo veía, y me gustaba. Personas distintas y completas a la que el factor crossdress, ni limitaba ni condicionaba por entero. El crossdress era solo una característica más y no se dejaban aprisionar por un rol tópico que realmente no reflejaba su verdadera personalidad, excepto en los momentos que sí que querían hacerlo. Una característica que llevaban de forma natural, con precaución ante los peligros, pero con el orgullo implícito del que no hace nada malo. Sí, tuve suerte, si en vez de dar al principio con las personas correctas, hubiera encontrado la imagen típica del travestismo, seguramente hubiera dejado pronto de buscar, convencida de ser una bicho raro totalmente atípica. Y no es que hubiera cambiado nada, probablemente mi trayectoria sería la misma, pero me hubiera sentido aislada y sola en esto. Por eso me gustaría aportar mi granito de arena en dar la imagen que yo recibí en su momento. Flickr es el templo de la imagen, no es el sitio adecuado para escribir, pero sí es, probablemente, unos de los primeros sitio que visite una chica crossdress principiante, o alguien interesado por el tema… terminas pasando por Youtube o por Flickr casi seguro, y si por casualidad dan con mi galería, espero que vean una galería que, aunque sea de una chica tonta y fea con un nivel bastante bajo de crossdress, transmita los valores que a mi tanto me gustó encontrar. Esta no es la razón por la que subo fotos y videos, pero sí es la razón principal por la que intento transmitir mi personalidad en lo que hago, por eso escribo, aunque no sea el lugar adecuado y sea tan efímero como construir castillos de arena, lo que se me ocurre en cada momento, cosas relacionadas con el crossdress y cosas que no, disparates y temas profundos, mis gustos y aficiones, mi cultura… porque es la galería de una persona… que entre otras muchas cosas, es una chica crossdresser y está orgullosa de ello.
PS. Si quieres ver videos con este look (If you want see a videos with this look) :
In Youtube (recomendado, se ve mejor / recommended, it looks better):
(black version) www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7ZCsLKcOQs
(blue version) www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lzDtTeAte4
In Flickr:
(black version) www.flickr.com/photos/61410455@N08/6884139200/in/photostream
(blue version) www.flickr.com/photos/61410455@N08/7177731536/in/photostream
PPS. También disponéis de una versión alternativa de esta foto con un estilo cómics en la siguiente dirección: / Also is available an alternate version of this photo, in a comics style, at the following link:
www.flickr.com/photos/61410455@N08/7308970340/in/photostream
Estoy muy orgullosa de esa versión, así como de la original que estáis viendo aquí. / I am very proud of that version and also the original photo you're seeing here ^_^
Museo de Madinat Al-Zahra
(Museo arqueológico y centro de interpretación del Conjunto de Madinat al-Zahra)
Ctra. de Córdoba a Palma del Río, A-431, km 5.5, Córdoba
Arquitectos: Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos: Fuensanta Nieto y Enrique Sobejano. Arquitecto de proyecto Miguel Ubarrechena. Equipo de proyecto Carlos Ballesteros, Pedro Quero y Juan Carlos Redondo. Dirección de obra: Fuensanta Nieto, Enrique Sobejano y Miguel Mesas Izquierdo. Proyecto museográfico: Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos / Frade Arquitectos, S.L. Concurso: 1999 Proyecto: 2002 Finalización: 2009
Los Arquitectos describen su proyecto:
“Los restos de la antigua ciudad hispano-musulmana sugerían un diálogo con quienes mil años antes la habían concebido y construido, pero también con el paciente trabajo de los arqueólogos y con el paisaje agrícola circundante, al que la geometría de las ruinas otorgaba una inesperada cualidad abstracta. El terreno del recinto arqueológico destinado al museo provocaba, no obstante, sentimientos encontrados.
Por una parte, la añoranza de un pasado remoto aún por descubrir impregnaba el paisaje que se extendía hacia la sierra de Córdoba. Por otra parte, el desordenado avance de las construcciones recientes se cernía inquietante sobre el entorno de lo que un día fue la ciudad palatina. Nuestra primera reacción al llegar al lugar habría de marcar, desde el primer momento, la futura propuesta: no debíamos edificar en aquel paisaje.
Ante una extensión de tal amplitud, que aún espera ser excavada, decidimos actuar como lo haría un arqueólogo: no construyendo un nuevo edificio, sino encontrándolo bajo tierra, como si el paso del tiempo lo hubiera ocultado hasta el día de hoy. De esta forma, el proyecto descubre la planta de un museo subterráneo, que articula sus espacios en torno a una secuencia de llenos y vacíos, áreas cubiertas y patios que guían al visitante en su recorrido. A partir del vestíbulo principal se extiende un amplio patio de planta cuadrada que, como un claustro, organiza en torno suyo los espacios públicos principales: salón de actos, cafetería, tienda, biblioteca, y salas de exposición. Un patio profundo y longitudinal articula las zonas de uso privado: administración, talleres de conservación e investigación. Un último patio constituye la prolongación al exterior de las áreas expositivas del museo. Las zonas de almacenamiento, concebidas como grandes espacios visitables iluminados cenitalmente, se funden en los recorridos del edificio con las áreas públicas de exposición y difusión. La propia concepción del proyecto lleva implícito un posible futuro crecimiento, pudiéndose agregar nuevos pabellones como si de nuevas excavaciones se tratase.
El nuevo museo establece casi imperceptiblemente un permanente diálogo con la arquitectura y el paisaje de la antigua medina árabe. La planta de doble cuadrado del museo se hace homotética con la de la ciudad, los jardines evocan la geometría abandonada de una excavación, los muros de hormigón y las cubiertas de acero cortén reflejan en el blanco y el rojo los colores con que originalmente estuvieron estucados los muros de la ciudad califal. La luz, la sombra, la textura, el material, abstraen la riqueza perceptiva que transmiten las ruinas arqueológicas.
El museo de Madinat al-Zahra aparece en el paisaje silenciosamente, como si hubiera sido encontrado bajo tierra, del mismo modo que a lo largo de los años continuará ocurriendo con los restos de la antigua ciudad de los califas omeyas.”
En “Museos de Andalucía” podemos leer:
El Museo, abierto al público en octubre de 2009, es un complejo edificio que contiene los espacios propios de un museo moderno, así como toda la infraestructura dedicada a la gestión patrimonial que demanda un conjunto arqueológico de la magnitud de la ciudad califal. El edificio está concebido como el punto de partida para la visita al yacimiento, con una presentación y exposición museográfica sobre Madinat al-Zahra.
La creación del Museo resuelve varios problemas planteados desde el comienzo de la recuperación del yacimiento en 1911. El primer edificio construido para dar apoyo a la excavación quedó pronto obsoleto por la ingente cantidad de material arqueológico que se fue almacenando en sus instalaciones y por la insuficiencia de espacios expositivos.
El Museo viene a resolver, además, varias demandas del Conjunto, referidas tanto a la difusión y función didáctica de la institución, como a la tarea de custodia y conservación que esta institución tiene encomendada.
Destaca en el edificio su ubicación exterior a la ciudad, aprovechando uno de sus caminos originales de acceso, de forma que no condiciona ni las excavaciones futuras ni el crecimiento en extensión de las mismas. Este compromiso de la nueva infraestructura con el yacimiento se extiende también al paisaje, pues el proyecto planteado por el estudio de arquitectura Nieto y Sobejano la concibe como una edificación que se oculta parcialmente en el territorio, para no interferir ni en la contemplación del paisaje ni en el fundamental protagonismo de la ciudad califal.
Se trata, en definitiva, de una infraestructura, ideada para facilitar la comprensión del yacimiento y desarrollar a todos los niveles sus potencialidades. Se concibe como una infraestructura para impulsar nuevos proyectos de investigación, conservación y difusión de la ciudad de Madinat al-Zahra y toda la ordenación territorial que constituye su entorno. Cuenta con los siguientes servicios:
Área cultural, expositiva y didáctica: Auditorio, Exposición permanente, Biblioteca Especializada "Manuel Ocaña", Aula didáctica y Sala de seminarios. Área de conservación, investigación y Administración: Almacenes, Talleres de restauración, Centro de documentación, Oficinas y despachos. Otros servicios: Tienda con librería y Cafetería-restaurante.
Premios:
2009: Finalista Premio Intervención en Patrimonio Arquitectónico Español. The International Architecture Award. The Chicago Athenaeum Museum.
2010: Aga Khan Award for Architecture.
2011: Piranesi Prix de Rome. Obra Seleccionada Premio de Arquitectura Contemporánea de la Unión Europea – Premio Mies van der Rohe. Finalista Premio Arquitectura Española. Finalista Premios FAD
2012: European Museum of the Year Award
www.nietosobejano.com/project.aspx?i=1&t=MADINAT_ALZA...
www.metalocus.es/es/noticias/nieto-sobejano-arquitectos-m...
www.museosdeandalucia.es/cultura/museos/CAMA/?lng=es
NietoSobejano Arquitectos
"Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2008, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. And without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee. By accepting these greetings you are accepting these terms. This greeting is subject to clarification or withdrawal. It is freely transferable with no alteration to the original greeting. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement any of the wishes for himself or others, and is void where prohibited by law and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wisher. This wish is warranted to perform as expected within the usual application of good tidings for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first, and warranty is limited to replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wisher."
The great and good docman has issued an (implicit) challenge to me regarding the unique nature of the American girl. Since any red-blooded American male venerates American girl(hood) in all her pulchritudinous splendor, I have taken up the gauntlet. Each of these photos is from an album, or otherwise identifiable as being photographed here, on American soil. If any sly Canadian girls slip in by mistake, we confer honorary citizenship on them, believing that 99% of them will vote Democratic.
location : Ryoan-ji Rock Garden (Historical Site/ Special Place of Scenic Beauty) . Ryoanji temple , Kyoto city , Kyoto Prefecture ,Japan
京都 龍安寺 石庭
I feel like I've been waiting for the moment like this..,
now ..the glint of pale winter lights are on snow in a real zen world..
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ryōan-ji (Shinjitai: 竜安寺, Kyūjitai: 龍安寺, The Temple of the Dragon at Peace) is a Zen temple located in northwest Kyoto, Japan. It belongs to the Myōshin-ji school of the Rinzai branch of Zen Buddhism. The Ryōan-ji garden is considered one of the finest surviving examples of kare-sansui ("dry landscape"),a refined type of Japanese Zen temple garden design generally featuring distinctive larger rock formations arranged amidst a sweep of smooth pebbles (small, carefully selected polished river rocks) raked into linear patterns that facilitate meditation. The temple and its gardens are listed as one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, and as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The site of the temple was an estate of the Fujiwara family in the 11th century. The first temple, the Daiju-in, and the still existing large pond were built in that century by Fujiwara Saneyoshi. In 1450, Hosokawa Katsumoto, another powerful warlord, acquired the land where the temple stood. He built his residence there, and founded a Zen temple, Ryōan-ji. During the Ōnin War between the clans, the temple was destroyed. Hosokawa Katsumoto died in 1473. In 1488, his son, Hosokawa Matsumoto, rebuilt the temple.
The temple served as a mausoleum for several emperors. Their tombs are grouped together in what are today known as the "Seven Imperial Tombs" at Ryōan-ji. The burial places of these emperors -- Uda, Kazan, Ichijō, Go-Suzaku, Go-Reizei, Go-Sanjō, and Horikawa—would have been comparatively humble in the period after their deaths. These tombs reached their present state as a result of the 19th century restoration of imperial sepulchers (misasagi) which were ordered by Emperor Meiji.
There is controversy over who built the garden and when. Most sources date the garden to the second half of the 15th century.[3] According to some sources, the garden was built by Hosokawa Katsumoto, the creator of the first temple of Ryōan-ji, between 1450 and 1473. Other sources say it was built by his son, Hosokawa Masamoto, in or around 1488. Some say that the garden was built by the famous landscape painter and monk, Sōami (died 1525),.but this is disputed by other authors.Some sources say the garden was built in the first half of the 16th century.[7] Other authors say the garden was probably built much later, during the Edo Period, between 1618 and 1680.[6] There is also controversy over whether the garden was built by monks, or by professional gardeners, called kawaramono, or a combination of the two. One stone in the garden has the name of two kawaramono carved into it.
The conclusive history, though, based on documentary sources, is as follows: Hosokawa Katsumoto (1430-1473), deputy to the shogun, founded in 1450 the Ryoan-ji temple, but the complex was burnt down during the Onin War. His son Masamoto rebuilt the temple at the very end of the same century. It is not clear whether any garden was constructed at that time facing the main hall. First descriptions of a garden, clearly describing one in front of the main hall, date from 1680-1682. It is described as a composition of nine big stones laid out to represent Tiger Cubs Crossing the Water. As the garden has fifteen stones at present, it was clearly different from the garden that we see today. A great fire destroyed the buildings in 1779, and rubble of the burnt buildings was dumped in the garden. Garden writer and specialist Akisato Rito (died c. 1830) redid the garden completely on top of the rubble at the end of the eighteenth century and published a picture of his garden in his Celebrated Gardens and Sights of Kyoto (Miyako rinsen meisho zue) of 1799, showing the garden as it looks today. One big stone at the back was buried partly; it has two first names carved in it, probably names of untouchable stone workers, so called kawaramono. There is no evidence of Zen monks having worked on the garden, apart from the raking of the sand,
The temple's name is synonymous with the temple's famous 'Zen garden', the karesansui (dry landscape) rock garden, thought[by whom] to have been built in the late 15th century.
The garden is a rectangle of 248 square meters. Young and Young put the size at twenty-five meters by ten meters. Placed within it are fifteen stones of different sizes, carefully composed in five groups; one group of five stones, two groups of three, and two groups of two stones. The stones are surrounded by white gravel, which is carefully raked each day by the monks. The only vegetation in the garden is some moss around the stones.
The garden is meant to be viewed from a seated position on the veranda of the hōjō, the residence of the abbot of the monastery.
The stones are placed so that the entire composition cannot be seen at once from the veranda. They are also arranged so that when looking at the garden from any angle (other than from above) only fourteen of the boulders are visible at one time. It is traditionally said that only through attaining enlightenment would one be able to view the fifteenth boulder.
The wall behind the garden is an important element of the garden. It is made of clay, which has been stained by age with subtle brown and orange tones. In 1977, the tile roof of the wall was restored with tree bark to its original appearance.
When the garden was rebuilt in 1799, it came up higher than before and a view over the wall to the mountain scenery behind came about. At present this view is blocked by trees.
The garden had particular significance for the composer John Cage, who composed a series of works and made visual art art works based on it.
Meaning of the garden
Like any work of art, the artistic garden of Ryōan-ji is also open to interpretation, or scientific research into possible meanings. Many different theories have been put forward inside and outside Japan about what the garden is supposed to represent, from islands in a stream, to swimming baby tigers to the peaks of mountains rising above to theories about secrets of geometry or of the rules of equilibrium of odd numbers. Garden historian Gunter Nitschke wrote: "The garden at Ryōan-ji does not symbolize anything, or more precisely, to avoid any misunderstanding, the garden of Ryōan-ji does not symbolize, nor does it have the value of reproducing a natural beauty that one can find in the real or mythical world. I consider it to be an abstract composition of "natural" objects in space, a composition whose function is to incite meditation.".
Scientific analysis of the garden
In an article published by the science journal Nature, Gert van Tonder and Michael Lyons analyze the rock garden by generating a model of shape analysis (medial axis) in early visual processing.
Using this model, they show that the empty space of the garden is implicitly structured, and is aligned with the temple's architecture. According to the researchers, one critical axis of symmetry passes close to the centre of the main hall, which is the traditionally preferred viewing point. In essence, viewing the placement of the stones from a sightline along this point brings a shape from nature (a dichotomously branched tree with a mean branch length decreasing monotonically from the trunk to the tertiary level) in relief.
The researchers propose that the implicit structure of the garden is designed to appeal to the viewer's unconscious visual sensitivity to axial-symmetry skeletons of stimulus shapes. In support of their findings, they found that imposing a random perturbation of the locations of individual rock features destroyed the special characteristics.
Centuries after its creation, the influences of the dry elements at Ryōan-ji continue to be reflected and re-examined in garden design — for example, in the Japangarten at the Art Museum at Wolfsburg in Germany.
Ryōan-ji (jap. 龍安寺, dt. „Tempel des zur Ruhe gekommenen Drachen“) ist ein 1499 gegründeter Zen-Tempel im Nordwesten der japanischen Stadt Kyōto in deren Stadtbezirk Ukyō.
Erbaut wurde er 1450 von Hosokawa Katsumoto, einem hohen Staatsbeamten der Muromachi-Zeit, auf einem Grundstück, das ursprünglich der Fujiwara-Familie als Landsitz diente. Seit 1994 gehört er zusammen mit anderen Stätten zum UNESCO-Weltkulturerbe Historisches Kyōto (Kyōto, Uji und Ōtsu). Der Tempel gehört zur größten Schule des Rinzai-Zen mit dem Muttertempel Myōshin-ji.
Hauptattraktion des Tempels ist der hier befindliche und wohl berühmteste Zen-Garten Japans, der Hojo-Teien im Kare-san-sui-Stil aus der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts. Der Garten besteht aus einer Fläche (30 mal 10 Meter) aus fein gerechtem Kies mit 15 scheinbar zufällig platzierten Steinen in 5 bemoosten Gruppen. Aus keinem Blickwinkel sind alle 15 Steine sichtbar. Die südliche und westliche Seite des Gartens ist von einer rötlichen Mauer gesäumt, über welcher der Blick auf die Bäume und Sträucher des begehbaren Gartens fällt. Auf der nördlichen Seite befindet sich das Tempelgebäude mit der Sitzterrasse, von der aus man den Steingarten überschaut. Die umgebende Mauer ist mit ölgetränktem Mörtel erbaut worden. Im Laufe der Jahrhunderte ist das Öl aus dem Stein ausgetreten und hat so das charakteristische Muster auf dem Stein hinterlassen.
Zur Tempelanlage gehört auch ein großer Teich, der auf eine allererste Tempelgründung an dieser Stelle im 10. Jahrhundert zurückgeht. In der Mitte des Teiches befindet sich eine kleine, begehbare Insel mit einem Schrein, der der Gottheit Benzaiten gewidmet ist.
Ryōan-ji (龍安寺 o 竜安寺 El templo del dragón tranquilo y pacífico) es un templo Zen situado en Kioto, Japón. Forma parte del conjunto de Monumentos históricos de la antigua Kioto (ciudades de Kioto, Uji y Otsu) declarados Patrimonio de la Humanidad por la Unesco en el año 1994. El templo fue creado por la escuela Myoshinji de los Rinzai, pertenecientes al Budismo Zen.
Dentro de este templo existe uno de los karesansui (jardines secos) más famosos del mundo, construido a finales del siglo XV, en torno al 1488. El creador de este jardín no dejó ninguna explicación sobre su significado, por lo que durante siglos ha sido un misterio descubrir el verdadero sentido o el porqué de su gran belleza.
Se trata de un jardín rectangular construido frente al edificio principal. La composición utiliza arena rastrillada, musgo, y rocas. Existe un predominio de formas alargadas colocadas en paralelo a la posición del edificio.
Los tres lados restantes están cerrados por muros, lo que junto a la línea inferior de la plataforma desde la que se debe contemplar el edificio, permite acotar la visión del jardín en un marco longitudinal
El jardín se ubica frente al salón Hojo, en el extremo sur, como una extensión del salón perteneciente al abad.
En total hay 15 piedras dispuestas en 3 grandes grupos. El primero comprende las 3 rocas de más a la derecha. El segundo, las 5 siguientes, y el tercero, las 7 restantes. En cada grupo destaca una piedra mayor que las demás. El musgo se utiliza como base de algunos grupos para dar unidad.
Existe una idea de movimiento, según miramos los grupos de derecha a izquierda, se van volviendo cada vez más dispersos, hasta llegar a las últimas dos piedras que no tienen musgo. No se puede ver todo de un sólo vistazo, hay que ir moviendo la vista.
El árbol oculto
Durante muchos años se pensó que la mejor interpretación del sentido de la disposición de las piedras en el jardín era el de una especie de Tigre cruzando un río. En el 2002, unos científicos de la Universidad de Kioto utilizaron ordenadores para buscar formas usando la disposición de las zonas vacías del jardín en vez de la disposición de las piedras. El resultado es que encontraron el patrón de un árbol escondido dentro de la estructura del jardín. Dicen que por eso es tan placentero presenciar el jardín, nuestro subconsiciente capta el patrón del árbol sin que lo notemos.
El mismo equipo de investigación probó moviendo algunas piedras de forma aleatoria y vieron que enseguida se perdía la armonía de la configuración inicial. Por ello creen que la construcción del jardín está muy bien pensada y no es un acto de la casualidad.
Ryōan-ji (竜安寺 / 龍安寺, littéralement « Temple du repos du dragon ») est un monastère zen situé dans le Nord-Ouest de Kyōto, construit au xvie siècle, à l'époque de Muromachi. Il fait partie du Patrimoine mondial de l'UNESCO, étant l'un des monuments historiques de l'ancienne Kyoto. Le temple appartient à l'école Myōshin-ji de la branche rinzai du bouddhisme zen. Le site du temple appartenait à l’origine au clan Fujiwara.
Le monastère a été fondé en 1450 par Hosokawa Katsumoto. Détruit lors de la guerre d'Onin par un incendie, il est rebâti par son fils, Hosokawa Masamoto, à partir de 1488. Après un nouvel incendie en 1797, le monastère est profondément remanié.
Pour beaucoup, le nom du temple évoque son célèbre jardin de pierres, de style karesansui, qui est considéré comme l’un des chefs-d’œuvre de la culture zen japonaise.
Le jardin a été construit à la fin du XVe siècle ou au début du xvie siècle, entre 1499 et 1507. Sa superficie est d'environ 200 mètres carrés. Il est entouré au sud et à l'ouest d'un muret couvert d'un toit de tuile, à l'est d'un autre muret, et au nord d'une véranda en bois derrière laquelle se trouve le hōjō (les appartements du supérieur du monastère). À l'extérieur se trouvent des érables et des pins rouges qui n'étaient sans doute pas présents à l'origine. La construction sur un terrain plat est une nouveauté à l'époque. Quinze pierres, entourées de mousse, y sont disposées en groupes, d'est en ouest, de cinq, de deux, de trois, de deux puis de trois. Le petit nombre de pierres est aussi une nouveauté par rapport aux autres jardins secs de la même période : celui du Daisen-in par exemple en compte plus de cents, sur une surface deux fois plus petite. Le jardin de pierres du Ryoanji appartient à la catégorie des « jardins de néant » (mutei).
La paternité du jardin a été attribuée diversement à Hosokawa Katsumoto ou au peintre Sōami. Ces attributions sont probablement légendaires. Sur l'une des pierres du jardin sont gravés les noms de deux kawaromono (ja) (une sorte d'intouchables japonais) : Kotarō et Hiko jirō. On sait par ailleurs qu'un Kotarō et un Hikojirō ont travaillé au jardin du Shōsenken (au monastère Shōkokuji) dans les années 1490-1491. Aussi ces deux personnes pourraient bien être les véritables auteurs du jardin de pierres du Ryoanji.
Les pierres ont été disposées de telle sorte qu’il ne soit pas possible de voir les quinze pierres à la fois, d’où que se trouve l’observateur5.
Le jardin se compose simplement d’un lit de fins graviers de kaolin harmonieusement ratissés. Le kaolin ratissé symbolise l’océan, les rochers les montagnes.
- wikipedia
Serenity is to keep oneself so to speak above the clouds, in the calm and coolness of emptiness and far from all the dissonances of this lower world; it is never to allow the soul to immerse itself in impasses of disturbances, bitterness, or secret revolt, for it is necessary to beware of implicitly accusing Being when accusing some phenomenon.
Serenity is resignation, at once intellectual and moral, to the nature of things: it is patience in relation to All-Possibility insofar as the latter requires, by its very limitlessness, the existence of negative possibilities, those that deny Being and the qualities manifesting It.
Serenity consists in resigning oneself to that destiny, at once unique and permanent, which is the present moment: to this itinerant “now” that no one can avoid and that in its substance pertains to the Eternal.
The man who is conscious of the nature of pure Being willingly remains in the moment that Heaven has assigned him; he is not feverishly straining towards the future nor lovingly or sadly bent over the past. The pure present is the moment of the Absolute: it is now — neither yesterday nor tomorrow — that we stand before God.
----
excerpts from Roots of the Human Condition by Frithjof Schuon
Mirit Ben Nun: Pintar fuera de los cánones
La pintura de Mirit Ben Nun escapa a las definiciones comunes. Por un lado, la observación objetiva la definiría como arte pictórico contemporáneo, creado actualmente por una artista joven y efervescente. Por otro lado, están ausentes en su arte las características "contemporáneas", que reflejan el espíritu de este tiempo y este lugar. Esta es una pintura que "habla" en un idioma extranjero que pertenece, aparentemente, a otro tiempo y a otro lugar; pero al tratar de señalar cuáles son ese tiempo y ese lugar, nos encontramos navegando en las dimensiones de tiempo y espacio, sin encontrar puntos de apoyo referenciales. Las pinturas de Ben Nun se nos brindan con fuerte sensualidad y colorido. Tienen características de inocencia naive y arquetípica que recuerda el arte folclórico; las diferencias de tamaño de las distintas figuras, dentro de un mismo cuadro, no son fieles a la realidad, y las proporciones se presentan como "erróneas", similares a la pintura tribal y aborigen de África, Oceanía y Australia.
Las superficies son trabajadas con laboriosidad, y los motivos se multiplican repetitivamente, como en las técnicas del tejido de alfombras. Asimismo, en muchas de sus pinturas pueden encontrarse motivos del Pop-Art occidental, y esta combinación de motivos de magia primitiva con arte moderno occidental cargan la pintura de Ben Nun con una tensión histórica y cultural, entre un "pasado" y un "presente", entre "allá" y "acá". Desde el punto de vista formal, su pintura se divide, por lo general, entre formas esquemáticas y zonas de color, sin pasajes intermedios. Líneas divisorias claras separan los distintos segmentos, y en cada zona se da un suceso distinto, que completa o contraría a su vecino. Así, por ejemplo, formas circulares confrontan con formas geométricas angulosas, o figuras humanas con figuras de fauna y flora. A menudo, la pintura contiene, en sus bordes, un "marco" que une y encierra a todas sus partes, como un ventana dentro de otra ventana. Como resultado, se crea una composición poco usual, que quiebra la consabida fórmula o canon "unidad de tema, forma y color". Esta ruptura de las reglas convencionales fortalece la cualidad de salvajismo "no civiilzado" de estas pinturas.
En el centro de la obra de Ben Nun se encuentran la imagen de la mujer y la mutua relación entre los sexos. Las mujeres son presentadas como seductoras, acentuando sus formas redondeadas, con frecuencia en movimientos danzantes. La danza funciona como metáfora de cortejo y seducción; los labios gruesos y rojos, muchas veces en forma de corazón, simbolizan deseo pasional y amor. Cuando parece que la tentación implícita no es suficiente, la imagen femenina es dibujada de frente con las piernas abiertas, en una composición que recuerda la letra W, pero cuando se encuentran juntas la imagen femenina y la masculina, la unificación es completa; los personajes se fusionan el uno con el otro, los perfiles se superponen. Cuando están en posición sentada, la forma de la letra W y la forma de la letra M se intercambian una con otra, con una táctica que acentúa que son opuestos que se complementan.
Los protagonistas – mujer y hombre – son acompañados por personajes secundarios: Imágenes simbólicas, principalmente peces, manos (con forma de "Hamsa") y ojos. Estos símbolos son prevalentes en las culturas del Medio Oriente, y representan fertilidad, fortuna y defensa contra el "mal de ojo". Su presencia, al lado de los amantes, sugiere que el tema aquí no trata de una erótica estéril y deseo carnal, sino del amor verdadero, que aspira a vivir bajo un mismo techo, crear una familia, y tener descendencia.
Sobre todo, estas imágenes proporcionan al espectador el punto de apoyo referente deseado, ya que resumen la totalidad de la obra, que a primera vista parecía estar moviéndose entre mundos históricos y culturales diferentes, y la ubica en nuestro lugar, aquí y ahora.
Mirit Ben Nun es una flor silvestre que no creció en la avenida principal del arte israelí, sino a ambos lados del camino. Ella tiene su propio camino lateral, desde el cual desafía al mundo del arte institucional establecido. Al igual que Cupido, con una sonrisa pícara ella dispara flechas de amor, y cuando las flechas dan en el blanco, en un transeúnte u otro, el enamoramiento es instantáneo. Sus pinturas están llenas de magia y humor. Su exotismo tiene una atracción inexplicable, tal como el encanto que ejerce el "noble salvaje" sobre las personas de cultura occidental.
Del mar de sonidos que nos envuelven, placenteros en mayor o menor medida, se eleva la voz de Mirit Ben Nun desde las profundidades; una voz pura, enigmática y especial, que vaga por el mundo y reclama su propio lugar: "La flauta eleva su voz. / ¿Cuáles son sus temas? / Canta al amor, al compañerismo y a la amistad. / Canta al bien y a las cosas buenas. / ¿Sobre qué no canta? Canta sobre todo y sobre todos, sobre todo asunto y tema, en toda su totalidad". (Natán Alterman, "Fiesta de verano").
Ilan Wizgan
Now, after that heavy discourse surrounding my previous photograph, we come to a link that I believe the curators of the NGV have made implicitly between Roger Kemp's modernist vision and the Aboriginal Dreaming. There is a well known proverb, "The person who loses their dreaming is lost!"
In these last two photos in my series I would like the viewer to see the parallels. As we entered a world of Kemp's Mystery, so we enter this space celebrating some of the oldest art known to humanity, we are again confronted by The Mystery. Moderns may think they've outgrown the Spiritual, but the witness of the ancients and the mystics is that they are wrong. They are lost!
So we move by invitation through this portal to the past that we might confront the Truth in the Present.
[Post-modern ironists won't like me capitalizing the key words here. I don't care! Until we are confronted by our Eternity, that we are truly creatures born "out of time and for all times" then we have lost our Dreaming.]
Causewayed enclosures
In this illustration, we see a foreground of sedentary locals (settled protagonists in the Neolithic revolution) gathering to watch and listen to the arrivals of Transport Dragons (vestige clans and groups, each of which retain movement within their distinct and logically contradictory collective mythologies). The local crofters listen to the songs, and perhaps see shadows of dancing. They will visit the circle over the coming week to either watch theatre, dance, song, technical demonstration or speech; to trade and even to witness to local judgements, as these 'ancients' attempt to retain hierarchy over the landscape that they have travelled and learned through great ages. Some have become saltimbanque, others trade raw or finished goods, some trade wisdom, some trade promise of protection from bandits or simply heavy lifting, and one gathering may differ qualitatively from another.
There are no shocks or surprises, and this is not an image of misunderstanding, implicit distrust and incomprehension – just two ways of being which probably had an significant amount of blur between. For example, Transport Dragons that made summer camps for several months (as was common in the Mesolithic) and sedentary crofters that retained a ritual memory of a past Transport Dragon and its qualities. Many new populations without a Transport Dragon mythology must also have existed.
Both 'styles' of being are in regular contact, synergy and, at times dispute. At a time when permanent fixtures and markers were increasingly impressed onto the landscape, the Transport Dragons joined the spirit of the age and turned many of their regular meeting spots into a series of concentric ripples in the Earth's surface. Today we term the category of British site a 'Causewayed Enclosure'.
Causeways tend to be raised and go from an A to a B, and I have never understood why the mounds should not be the 'causeways', rather than the breaches for which it is said. In this illustration the earthworks are projected as 'Pedestal Rings', reminding all that even when the 'Transport Dragon' was not locally present their undulation on the landscape would not forget, and I will continue to use my descriptive term for this earthwork style.
The covered frame structures I term 'Transport Dragons' (features of Homo Sapiens that were so important in helping him navigate through extremes - for example Ice Age and mega predator) had become increasingly meaningless as the Neolithic package tied man to a fixed pastoral landscape. Despite the incongruity of just such a protective carry device in increasingly mild conditions, and without great predators, a mix of inertia, stubbornness and applied speciality will have kept a vivid percentage of their number in movement - in movement and aside today's archaeological record. Nodes where the new generation of pastoral crofters could meet these applied residuals from man's deep past being a way for the new and the old to retain dialogue and mutual support.
In central Europe, variants of Causewayed Enclosures can be called 'Rondels' (70-110m in diameter) and we can easily put forward a hypothesis. Between 4900 and the limits of 4800 BC, mutually beneficial fixed points on the landscape were recognised for meetings between sedentary populations and residual Transport Drangons, and these areas were carved and built into the landscape as 'Pedestal Circles'. In central Europe, sedentary Neolithic populations finally arrived with speed, and took over prime spots on riverbanks and aside lakes. As these new locals, with their striking wooden 'long houses' and 'linear band keramik' (LBK) turned clan allotment into local power, they would dispute the importance of the decisions taken by the Transport Dragon collectives, and as the free passage aside the rivers stuttered to a close, with the rapidly increasing number of LBK homesteads and fences, the Transport Dragons failed to witness mutual trust, exchange or benefit. By 4700 BC, the peoples of the Rondels were categorically rejecting token LBK advances. LBK were seen to be clearly undermining the greater laws of 'mythical' people, and landscape, and they could even be seen seeking trade and ideas from the river's flow rather than from its littoral, the inland flux and detailed landscape knowledge. The bounce and chatter from the now decimated littoral highways had all but gone from central Europe and beyond. A rupture of confidence and goodwill had occurred. To resolve the rupture, the Rondels became 'military'; the Transport Dragons were converted into fighting 'machines', and the long house LBK culture was purged. The Transport Dragons had fire power, defence, combined raw power and otherworldly surprise. Some evidence of fire is always to be expected, as things can burn, but some of the evidence of burn from this period may be from warfare as this became the period of Kilianstadten, Herxheim and Talheim, known today as perhaps the first real evidence of war between man.
Currently theories try to believe that the LBK auto-destructed, with hypothetical arguments that seem to require an a priori that there was a sudden loss of both IQ and common sense. Not easy to imagine in a society still dominated by seasons. The auto destruction was said to have been powered by younger brothers moving on to find new land, and that the point of saturation 'auto exploded' the whole social network, unthreading the LBK's sense of social stability, function and 'culture'. This same principle of younger male sibling expansion can be seen to have pushed farmsteads to well above the 1000m altitude in mountain ranges such as the Pyrenees. This example includes descriptions from living memories and helps account for some of the derelict high altitude farms. Severe weather, every few years, caused rupture and failure - real local level problems, but no auto destruction of the whole rural lifestyle: and land opportunities were still fertile back during the latter LBK periods, certainly for minds open to a little imagination within demographics that were still very low for the species - so this hypothesis of a population saturation tipping point that fed into a total auto-destruction seems to carry a great weight on very thin ice. The argument is explained on a Youtube by Stefan Milo: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF664B27aBo
Returning to the Causewayed Enclosures of Britain, and we see again that they were a feature of early Neolithic interface, which for this geography corresponded to a building frenzy within the slot of time from 3700-3625 BC (precise dates from Professor Alasdair Whittle, of Cardiff University) so perhaps just 400 years after the arrival of the Neolithic package, and at the very least 100 examples of earthwork being built over a period of just 75 years. Here in Britain, turning flat meeting-grounds into varietal 'Rondels' might have been seen as a way of communicating that either 'we' get to keep littorals free, movement free, trade and respect for our mythical Dragons, or, our earthwork loci will turn against you. People told each other the stories of life, and in the ages prior to writing, stories could last - including stories of a first 'war'! It might be that from 3625 BC, more neutral gathering sites were favoured, with a sudden agreed change opening curtains on the rise of the cursus (see drawing linked below), henge, stone circle, and long barrow. For stability, it may have been that the standing stones of later circles had a preferred flexibility to represent both new leaderships of sedentary arrivals, new leaderships of new Transport Dragons, and older leaderships from traditional Transport Dragons and post Mesolithic neo-sedentarism.
With today's internet there are plenty of ways of bathing in visions of Prehistory, and one statement offered as a 'given fact' can be juxtaposed here to see if slots into our hypothesis and puzzle:
“The Stone Age was a series of tiny city states run by oppressive class of totalitarian priests” Historia Civilis.
"?!" AJ
A few words on details and form: one circle could gain new outer circles of 'pedestals', with this increase in size over time simple showing how success breeds success. The site at Whitehawk in Sussex appears to have finished with four concentric rings of pedestals that seem to be tailored for different sizes of Transport Dragon: from the self referential neo one-man Medjed-esque/Bosch-esque/ jester-esque, all the way up to long walking trains of linked 'wagon' sections. The ditches (key to making the pedestal), may also have served a formal taboo. Anyone approaching from a ditch (the exterior side) might put themselves in danger, with the two ends guarded by hospitality and protocol, and the inner side of the Transport Dragon rolled up with attention facing inwards for interaction. With some late Transport Dragons dedicated to trade of goods, just such a taboo would make sense. There is evidence of year to year upkeep of the pedestal and ditch. In good order, rain would run away from the base of the Transport Dragon, and in conditions of high wind, the transport dragons could be walked to the centre for mutual protection. Some examples (especially Rondels) may have had wooden central palisades, and functions from stopping song from being 'blown away' to providing a sense of dedicated space. Occasionally ditches had stone walls reinforcing their structure (French examples) and some of these were in use for such a long time that phase changes may have occurred. As might be expected, a general detritus of life was found in the ditches.
If we were to criticise my drawing, the tree pole is too large and some of the gaps are a little large and the exterior ditches are not greatly obvious. The mix of late Transport Dragons also seems to be too varied, with a Sphinx-like formal mythological example aside a Trojan-horse like 'pro domestication' wicker and stretch model, some phantasmagorical examples and some more measured and functional examples perhaps closer to early bronze age carts.
With Causewayed Enclosures predating by decades the long barrows (for example West Kennet), and by over 1000 years Woodhenge, they are important early earthworks for an Isle that went on to deliver a festival of diverse henges, circles, cursus, mound and enclosure.
AJM 07.12.21
Hablaba el otro día mi “colega” Juan Enrique Acevedo de la ausencia de color o B/W en la fotografía de paisaje en un interesante artículo de su blog. Yo no suelo utilizar mucho este tipo de virados pues creo que el paisaje se merece todo el esplendor de los colores de un amanecer o atardecer pero hay en ocasiones donde nos encontramos escenas donde el color no destaca bien sea por el momento de luz o por tener unas condiciones adversas. Es en esas ocasiones donde busco una salida a través del B/W para transformar una foto anodina en algo que pueda llegar a tener interés. Es más un recurso que un claro objetivo estético cuando realizo la foto, lo admito, pero aun así me gusta rescatar estas fotos descafeinadas de color para darles una oportunidad a través de la fuerza de la composición y el dramatismo implícito en el blanco y negro.
Blog y articulo de Juan Enrique Acevedo: www.jeacevedo.com/fotos-de-paisajes-en-blanco-y-negro/
Ubicación: Cala del Xarco (Villajoyosa)
Equipo utilizado: D7000, Sigma 10-20, filtro degradado inverso, trípode y cable disparador
Técnica utilizada: Prioridad a la velocidad para conseguir la exposición correcta con tan poca luz natural y el efecto seda en el agua. Diafragma abierto para aumentar la luz en el sensor sin necesidad de subir el ISO.
Postprocesado: Aumento de negros, virado a blanco y negro con Photoshop CS6, aumento del contraste y redimensionar para web
Even if Somaliland is not an official country, they have their own currency: Somaliland shilling. 1 us dollar = 6000 shillings. The biggest note is 500 shillings. So, do not forget your bags when you make change!
As security is really good in Somaliland, the money changer are in the street, with hills of notes in front of them!
Formerly a British colony, Somaliland briefly reached its independence in 1960. It is one of the three Territories, with Puntland and former Italian Somalia that compose the current State of Somalia.
Somaliland proclaimed its independence in 1991, adopting its own currency, a fully independent government, working institutions and police. The authorities organized a referendum in 2001, advocating once again for full independence. However, to date, it is not internationally recognized.
Ethiopian Prime minister Meles Zenawi is the only one to speak about a Somalilander president, recognizing implicitly the existence of an independent State. Indeed the economy of neighboring Ethiopia dramatically depends on Somaliland stability, since the landlocked country’s main trade route passes through the Somalilander port of Berbera… And vice-versa, the economy of Somaliland largely depends on the taxes and duties it charges Ethiopia. Besides that, the principal economic activity of Somaliland is livestock exportation to the Arabian Peninsula. Most people are Sunni Muslims and speak Arabic, as well as some Somali dialect and many of them, English.Lastely, the East African demography being based on clan alliances, it is no surprise that the frontiers drawn by the colonists don’t match the ethnic divisions of territory, leading to open clashes. More broadly, this problem is recurrent across the African continent.
© Eric Lafforgue
Oh how I wish I were naturally given to early rising! Perhaps it flows from having been born in a high-latitude country where it only got light at eight-thirty in the morning dead of winter; but I do my best, particularly later in the year when dawn comes in a more civilized set of hours. Here, Point Traverse, an atmospheric September; and no, this doesn’t happen every day because this place is my regular recourse for dawn images and I’ve never seen it the same twice. The lake water is viscid and promising of evolving life, the sun and its UV light implicit in the catalysis. And it all lasts about five minutes.
The Workers Center for Racial Justice led Chicagoans to the Fraternal Order of Police HQ, an organization which regularly justifies the killings by police officers, regardless of circumstances.
Black communities have had a difficult relationship with the police going back generations. The combination of anti-Black racism, both at an implicit and explicit level, the militarization of police departments, and the virtually unchecked level of power by police officers, has resulted in systemic profiling, incarceration, and killing of black people by law enforcement.
Historically, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was started as a response to state-sanctioned violence against Black people at the hands of the police.
(Text adapted from a Workers Center for Justice statement)
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, dit Francisco de Goya, né le 30 mars 1746 à Fuendetodos, près de Saragosse, et mort le 16 avril 1828 à Bordeaux, en France, est un peintre et graveur espagnol. Son œuvre inclut des peintures de chevalet, des peintures murales, des gravures et des dessins.
Portrait de Ferdinand Guillemardet (1765-1809), ambassadeur de France en Espagne
Huile sur Toile
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Website : GALERIE JUGUET
© All rights reserved ®
Website : MÉMOIRE DES PIERRES
© All rights reserved ®
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Contexte historique et politique
Ferdinand Guillemardet (1765-1809) : médecin de formation, proche des Jacobins, il devient diplomate et est nommé ambassadeur de France en Espagne en 1798 par le Directoire.
Sa mission : maintenir de bonnes relations avec la monarchie espagnole (Charles IV et la reine Marie-Louise), alors que les tensions politiques en Europe étaient très fortes (révolution française, guerres napoléoniennes, monarchies méfiantes).
En 1799, Goya, alors peintre de cour et figure majeure de l’art espagnol, réalise ce portrait officiel. Il s’agit donc d’un portrait diplomatique, autant politique que personnel.
Composition et iconographie
Posture : Guillemardet est représenté debout, légèrement tourné, dans une attitude d’autorité et de dignité. Le geste du bras ouvert peut être interprété comme une attitude oratoire ou diplomatique, marquant son rôle de représentant officiel.
Vêtements : il porte un uniforme élégant, richement orné, qui souligne son rang et sa fonction. Goya insiste sur les détails des décorations militaires et diplomatiques (signe de légitimité et de prestige).
Contexte spatial : le fond est assez neutre, sombre, ce qui met en valeur la figure. Le décor n’est pas surchargé : Goya concentre l’attention sur la personnalité plutôt que sur un cadre pompeux.
Couleur et style
Palette chromatique : Goya utilise des tons contrastés, avec la lumière concentrée sur le visage et le costume. Les rouges et les ors des décorations ressortent vivement sur le fond sombre.
Lumière : typique de Goya, le clair-obscur met en avant l’expression du visage et l’intensité psychologique.
Pinceau : la touche est souple, énergique, parfois presque esquissée, en particulier dans le traitement du tissu et du décor, anticipant déjà une esthétique moderne qui influencera les Romantiques.
Signification politique et psychologique
Portrait officiel : il projette l’image d’un diplomate fort, sûr de lui, représentant la France révolutionnaire au sein d’une cour monarchique.
Image de la République française : par ce portrait, Goya met en valeur non seulement l’homme, mais aussi la puissance de la nation qu’il incarne.
Tension implicite : Guillemardet est un républicain dans une Espagne monarchique et conservatrice. Le portrait reflète cette ambivalence : la grandeur du rôle, mais aussi une certaine austérité, une rigidité qui peut traduire l’isolement politique.
Dimension psychologique : fidèle à son style, Goya ne se contente pas de flatter son modèle : il suggère une personnalité énergique mais aussi marquée par le poids de sa mission, presque une fatigue intérieure.
En résumé : ce portrait conjugue représentation officielle et profondeur psychologique. Goya, en bon observateur, dépasse le simple rôle de peintre de cour pour donner une image où transparaît la complexité de l’époque : diplomatie, Révolution, fragilité des équilibres politiques en Europe.
CES PHOTOS NE SONT PAS À VENDRE ET NE PEUVENT PAS ÊTRE REPRODUITES, MODIFIÉES, REDIFFUSÉES, EXPLOITÉES COMMERCIALEMENT OU RÉUTILISÉES DE QUELQUE MANIÈRE QUE CE SOIT.
UNIQUEMENT POUR LE PLAISIR DES YEUX.
Walking on Calle de Durango in Roma Norte we passed a city EcoParq parking inspector with his load of yellow wheel clamps paused for a cellphone check.
Some Mexico City colonias have transformed from parking hell to pedestrian heaven - read on dear viewer.
Few transportation policies have been more controversial in Mexico City than ecoParq, the city's name for Parking Benefit Districts (PBDs) where the city charges for on-street parking and uses the revenue to improve local public space.
In 2011, the government of Mexico City explored the concept of Parking Benefit Districts (PBDs) with the understanding that a different strategy was needed to produce the desired results.
The collective benefits of PBDs have proved to be bigger than the individual benefits of free parking.
In addition to reducing congestion and emissions, PBDs generate more than $16 million annually for public space improvements, benefiting the majority of the population, not only motorists.
in 2012 the city implemented Ecoparq, Mexico City’s on-street parking enforcement and pricing program. Before Ecoparq, loosely regulated parking resulted in chaotic streets with illegal parking, cruising, and a perceived scarcity of parking availability.
Neighborhoods that used Ecoparq saw the positive results of regulated parking, and the program has since expanded.
Ecoparq helped prove the city’s parking saturation was, in fact, simply a demand management problem—more free parking was encouraging more needless driving. This was the key that opened the door to the conversation about reforming off-street parking laws.
The policy shift is a huge win for Mexico City, placing it in the vanguard of sustainable and equitable urban development.
The parking meters are a threat to franeleros, informal valets who for the previous 20 years parked, washed, and watched over cars in exchange for an expected donation. As meters continue to crop up, more franeleros are disappearing.
EcoParq sought to replace the previously unregulated trade of unofficial parking attendants, or franeleros, extracting fees from motorists in return for guarding their car, with the implicit threat that the car might be damaged should they refuse to pay.
Franeleros tended to compound congestion problems by encouraging double-or triple-parking, which obstructed traffic flow.
The franeleros didn’t care about the walkability of the streets. They were parking cars on the sidewalks, impeding movement of pedestrians and people with wheelchairs. It was chaotic.
Today Mexico City is very pedestrian friendly attributed to the EcoParq program.
Proof, Tim Lowly © 1998, 35" x 24", tempera on panel. Private collection Michigan.
This is another of the paintings with a vertical horizontal format that I have been posting this week. Part of what interests me at the moment is the narrative character of these paintings. The protagonist of these paintings–and the principle subject of much of my work–is my daughter Temma. Significantly Temma is profoundly disabled and has little agency.
This painting was prompted by the first time I heard my wife Sherrie preach. She was working as a counselor at that time and the pastor of the church we were attending invited her to preach. That first sermon was related to the text of "doubting" Thomas, the disciple of Jesus who said he would only believe Jesus had risen from the dead if had proof: that is, if he could put his hand in Jesus' side where there was a wound from a centurion's spear. Here Temma's hand hangs over the edge of a crypt-like space. A space where–perhaps–we (the viewer of the painting) implicitly reside. Incidentally that space is a nod to the similar space in the Bellini painting of the (dead?) Christ standing in a tomb that you can see if you swipe.
At the top of the painting are four children whose stances suggest that they are perhaps flying kites. But there are no kites to be seen in the sky. However, if you swipe you can see that a “Bahng-Pae”( Korean for 'shield') kite is lying on the ground behind Temma’s head. It’s state suggests that it has more to do with the earth than the sky.
AKU
( Original )
Kalau sampai waktuku
Kumau tak seorang 'kan merayu
Tidak juga kau
Tak perlu sedu sedan itu!
Aku ini binatang jalang
Dari kumpulannya terbuang
Biar peluru menembus kulitku
Aku tetap meradang menerjang
Luka dan bisa kubawa berlari
Berlari
Hingga hilang pedih peri
Dan aku akan lebih tidak peduli
Aku mau hidup seribu tahun lagi!
Maret 1943
Translation – Chairil Anwar: I (Aku)
by indonotes
As well as my own comments, I am also aiming to post a range of my translations of Indonesian works of historical, political or cultural significance.
I thought I’d start off with a poem by Chairil Anwar (1922-49). Aku (meaning ‘I’ or ‘me’) is one of his most famous poems and has been translated many times before. However, I wanted to give my own interpretation, and translating is a good language learning exercise too.
My translation of Aku uses simple language to try and capture something of the tone and flow of the poem. It is impossible to convey more than a little of the power of the original’s rhyme scheme and somewhat staccato rhythm – when I re-read my version I am struck by how flat it sounds in comparison to the Indonesian.
A caveat should be made about the first and last lines of my translation. In the first line I have translated kalau as ‘when’ where it could also be translated as ‘if’. In the last line I have translated mau as ‘want to’, but it could be translated as ‘will’. For me the meaning of the translation hinges to a significant extent on these choices, as they determine the extent of certainty conveyed. How far is Aku a statement of defiance, or how far does death and uncertainty creep in? Part of the enduring interest in Chairil Anwar is due to the possibility of such alternative readings.
Note on copyright: Chairil Anwar’s poems are in the public domain under Indonesian law as more than 50 years have passed since his death.
"Me"
When my time come
No one's going to cry for me,
And you won't, either
The hell with all those tears!
I'm a wild beast
Driven out of the herd
Bullets may pierce my skin
I shall still strike and march forth,
Wounds and poison shall I take aflee
Aflee
'Til the pain and pang should disappear
And I won't give a damn
I want to live another thousand years
(mixed of translation by Burton Raffel & some other)
Chairil Anwar - Maret 1943
Chairil Anwar was one of the famed figures of the “1945 Generation,” that group of luminaries who brought heat and light to Indonesian literature in the formative years of the new nation.
Through his poetry, Chairil Anwar succeeded in infusing Indonesian verse with a new spirit and bringing a new enthusiasm to Indonesia’s cultural arena. He also provided friends and acquaintances with never-ending tales to tell of his personal eccentricities, including his hobby of stealing books from the shops, his tendency to plagiarize from foreign poets, his many lovers, his numerous ailments, and his bohemian lifestyle.
Born on July 22, 1922 in Medan, North Sumatera, Chairil attended the Hollands Inlandsche School (HIS), a Dutch elementary school for “natives.” He then continued his education at the Meer Uitgebreid Lager Onderwijs, a Dutch junior high school, but he dropped out before graduating. At the age of nineteen, after the divorce of his parents, Chairil moved with his mother to Jakarta where he came in contact with the literary world. Despite his unfinished education, Chairil had an active command of English, Dutch and German, and he filled his hours by reading an international selection of authors, including Rainer M. Rilke, W.H. Auden, Archibald MacLeish, H. Marsman, J. Slaurhoff and Edgar du Perron. These writers became his references, directly influencing his own poetry and later helping him shift the gaze of Indonesian literature to fall upon Europe.
This westward turn was one of the major differences between Chairil’s “1945 Generation” peers and the previous cohort of Indonesian writers, the “New Authors Generation” of the 1930s, who were more oriented toward traditional verse forms. Chairil’s poetry was not only topically fresh, it struggled with individual and existential issues, in contrast to the writers of the “New Authors Generation” who were more concerned with giving voice to nationalist enthusiasm.
Chairil began to gain recognition as a poet with the publication of “Nisan” (“Gravestone”) in 1942. At that time, he was only twenty years old. He had apparently been shocked by the death of his grandmother, which awakened him to the fact that death could at any moment tear one away from life. Most of the poems he wrote after this point referred, at least implicitly, to this awareness of death. All of his poems—the originals, the adaptations and those suspected of being plagiarisms—have been collected in three books: Deru Campur Debu (“Roar Mixed with Dust,” 1949); Kerikil Tajam Yang Terampas dan Yang Putus (“Sharp Pebbles The Seized and the Severed,” 1949); and Tiga Menguak Takdir (“Three Tear Open Fate,” 1950, a collection of poems with Asrul Sani and Rivai Apin).
Chairil’s poetic vitality was never in balance with his physical condition, which grew weaker as a result of his chaotic lifestyle. Before he could turn twenty-seven, he had already contracted a number of illnesses. On April 28, 1949, Chairil Anwar passed away at the CBZ Hospital (now R.S. Ciptomangunkusomo) in Jakarta. And indeed, he was buried at Karet Cemetery the next day. In memory of the words he left behind, April 28th is now celebrated as Literature Day in Indonesia
It was only later readers of Milton, says Appelbaum, who thought of "apple" as "apple" and not any seed-bearing fruit. For them, the forbidden fruit became synonymous with the malus pumila. As a widely read canonical work, Paradise Lost was influential in cementing the role of apple in the Fall story.
This month marks 350 years since John Milton sold his publisher the copyright of Paradise Lost for the sum of five pounds.
His great work dramatizes the oldest story in the Bible, whose principal characters we know only too well: God, Adam, Eve, Satan in the form of a talking snake — and an apple.
Except, of course, that Genesis never names the apple but simply refers to "the fruit." To quote from the King James Bible:
And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'"
"Fruit" is also the word Milton employs in the poem's sonorous opening lines:
Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit
Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste
Brought Death into the World, and all our woe
But in the course of his over-10,000-line poem, Milton names the fruit twice, explicitly calling it an apple. So how did the apple become the guilty fruit that brought death into this world and all our woe?
Article continues after sponsor message
The short and unexpected answer is: a Latin pun.
In order to explain, we have to go all the way back to the fourth century A.D., when Pope Damasus ordered his leading scholar of scripture, Jerome, to translate the Hebrew Bible into Latin. Jerome's path-breaking, 15-year project, which resulted in the canonical Vulgate, used the Latin spoken by the common man. As it turned out, the Latin words for evil and apple are the same: malus.
In the Hebrew Bible, a generic term, peri, is used for the fruit hanging from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, explains Robert Appelbaum, who discusses the biblical provenance of the apple in his book Aguecheek's Beef, Belch's Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections.
"Peri could be absolutely any fruit," he says. "Rabbinic commentators variously characterized it as a fig, a pomegranate, a grape, an apricot, a citron, or even wheat. Some commentators even thought of the forbidden fruit as a kind of wine, intoxicating to drink."
A detail of Michelangelo's fresco in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel depicting the Fall of Man and expulsion from the Garden of Eden
Wikipedia
When Jerome was translating the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil," the word malus snaked in. A brilliant but controversial theologian, Jerome was known for his hot temper, but he obviously also had a rather cool sense of humor.
"Jerome had several options," says Appelbaum, a professor of English literature at Sweden's Uppsala University. "But he hit upon the idea of translating peri as malus, which in Latin has two very different meanings. As an adjective, malus means bad or evil. As a noun it seems to mean an apple, in our own sense of the word, coming from the very common tree now known officially as the Malus pumila. So Jerome came up with a very good pun."
The story doesn't end there. "To complicate things even more," says Appelbaum, "the word malus in Jerome's time, and for a long time after, could refer to any fleshy seed-bearing fruit. A pear was a kind of malus. So was the fig, the peach, and so forth."
Which explains why Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel fresco features a serpent coiled around a fig tree. But the apple began to dominate Fall artworks in Europe after the German artist Albrecht Dürer's famous 1504 engraving depicted the First Couple counterpoised beside an apple tree. It became a template for future artists such as Lucas Cranach the Elder, whose luminous Adam and Eve painting is hung with apples that glow like rubies.
Enlarge this image
Eve giving Adam the forbidden fruit, by Lucas Cranach the Elder.
Wikipedia
Milton, then, was only following cultural tradition. But he was a renowned Cambridge intellectual fluent in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, who served as secretary for foreign tongues to Oliver Cromwell during the Commonwealth. If anyone was aware of the malus pun, it would be him. And yet he chose to run it with it. Why?
Appelbaum says that Milton's use of the term "apple" was ambiguous. "Even in Milton's time the word had two meanings: either what was our common apple, or, again, any fleshy seed-bearing fruit. Milton probably had in mind an ambiguously named object with a variety of connotations as well as denotations, most but not all of them associating the idea of the apple with a kind of innocence, though also with a kind of intoxication, since hard apple cider was a common English drink."
It was only later readers of Milton, says Appelbaum, who thought of "apple" as "apple" and not any seed-bearing fruit. For them, the forbidden fruit became synonymous with the malus pumila. As a widely read canonical work, Paradise Lost was influential in cementing the role of apple in the Fall story.
But whether the forbidden fruit was an apple, fig, peach, pomegranate or something completely different, it is worth revisiting the temptation scene in Book 9 of Paradise Lost, both as an homage to Milton (who composed his masterpiece when he was blind, impoverished and in the doghouse for his regicidal politics) and simply to savor the sublime beauty of the language. Thomas Jefferson loved this poem. With its superfood dietary advice, celebration of the 'self-help is the best help' ideal, and presence of a snake-oil salesman, Paradise Lost is a quintessentially American story, although composed more than a century before the United States was founded.
What makes the temptation scene so absorbing and enjoyable is that, although written in archaic English, it is speckled with mundane details that make the reader stop in surprise.
Take, for instance, the serpent's impeccably timed gustatory seduction. It takes place not at any old time of the day but at lunchtime:
"Mean while the hour of Noon drew on, and wak'd/ An eager appetite."
What a canny and charmingly human detail. Milton builds on it by lingeringly conjuring the aroma of apples, knowing full well that an "ambrosial smell" can madden an empty stomach to action. The fruit's "savorie odour," rhapsodizes the snake, is more pleasing to the senses than the scent of the teats of an ewe or goat dropping with unsuckled milk at evening. Today's Food Network impresarios, with their overblown praise and frantic similes, couldn't dream up anything close to that peculiarly sensuous comparison.
It is easy to imagine the scene. Eve, curious, credulous and peckish, gazes longingly at the contraband "Ruddie and Gold" fruit while the unctuous snake-oil salesman murmurs his encouragement. Initially, she hangs back, suspicious of his "overpraising." But soon she begins to cave: How can a fruit so "Fair to the Eye, inviting to the Taste," be evil? Surely it is the opposite, its "sciental sap" must be the source of divine knowledge. The serpent must speak true.
So saying, her rash hand in evil hour
Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she eat:
Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.
But Eve is insensible to the cosmic disappointment her lunch has caused. Sated and intoxicated as if with wine, she bows low before "O Sovran, vertuous, precious of all Trees," and hurries forth with "a bough of fairest fruit" to her beloved Adam, that he too might eat and aspire to godhead. Their shared meal, foreshadowed as it is by expulsion and doom, is a moving and poignant tableau of marital bliss.
Meanwhile, the serpent, its mission accomplished, slinks into the gloom. Satan heads eagerly toward a gathering of fellow devils, where he boasts that the Fall of Man has been wrought by something as ridiculous as "an apple."
Except that it was a fig or a peach or a pear. An ancient Roman punned – and the apple myth was born.
The first tale in the Bible tells of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden. This was in consequence for having tasted the “forbidden fruit” of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Christian iconography and popular culture represent the fruit as an apple. But a careful reading of the passage leads one to the conclusion that, in fact, the actual fruit is never mentioned in the book. How, then, did the apple become this symbol of temptation and sin?
A standard version of Genesis 3:3-5 says:
But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
According to Robert Appelbaum’s book Aguecheek’s Beef, Belch’s Hiccup, and Other Gastronomic Interjections, the confusion may be due to a sort of joke of St. Jerome, who first translated the Bible into the vulgar Latin. (This version is still known as “The Vulgate” even today.) It turns out that the Latin words for apple, and for evil, are the same: malus. According to Appelbaum, the Hebrew word, peri, which was used to refer to the fruit in the Bible, can refer to any type of fruit, a fig, a pomegranate, a grape, or even a peach or a lemon. Some Bible commentators even believe that the forbidden fruit may have been a drink that produced an intoxication in those who drank it. Hence they gained “knowledge of good and evil.”
St. Jerome translated “peri” with the word “malus.” It’s an adjective meaning “evil,” though as a noun, it means “apple,” from trees known even today as Malus pumila. However, as Appelbaum points out, malus may refer not only to the apple, but to any fruit with seeds: pears are a species of malus, as are figs, peaches, and others.In religious iconography, there was no clear consensus for several centuries on exactly what type of fruit it was from this tree of which humanity’s first parents couldn’t eat. Michelangelo painted a fig tree in the Sistine Chapel. Durer depicted an apple tree, as did Lucas Cranach, the Elder. But another Appelbaum hypothesis in explaining the apple’s preeminence over other seeded fruits comes from the English poet, John Milton. His Paradise Lost was published in 1667. For Milton, the semantic ambiguity of the malus should not have been a mystery, versed as he was in ancient languages like Latin and Hebrew. Appelbaum notes that it’s possible Milton appreciated St. Jerome’s joke as a reference to intoxication or drunkenness from apple cider, popular in his own time. Paradise Lost refers on a couple of occasions to the fruit of this problematic tree and refers to it as an apple.
Another possible explanation may come from the Golden Apple of Discord. In Greek mythology, this was the work of the goddess Eris, (a temptress, as Satan had been for the Hebrews). According to the myth, Eris was angry at having not been invited to the wedding of Peleus and Tetis (parents of the great warrior Achilles). She presented the wedding guests with a golden apple which would reveal who among them was “the most beautiful of all.” Three goddesses fought amongst themselves: Aphrodite, the goddess of love and beauty; Hera, the guardian of the home and childbearing and wife of the great Zeus; and Aphrodite, daughter of Zeus and goddess of wisdom. To settle the dispute, Zeus consulted a Trojan shepherd and mortal, Paris, to choose from among the three goddesses which was the most beautiful. The three goddesses tried to bribe him in turn with new gifts. Finally, Paris decided for Aphrodite, who had promised him the love of the most beautiful woman of all. This was none other than Helena. Helena’s abduction by Paris is the mythical origin of the Trojan War. And thus the apple is also at the center of the most epic dispute in Greek civilization.
The Apple and the Heart
16
Romanesque iconography more frequently used the apple as the forbidden fruit. The lengthy list of images in the three studied countries represents a significant part of our corpus. Among them, one can cite in Spain, Amandi, Añes, Avilés, the Bible of Burgos, the Bible of San Isidoro, Covet, Estany, Estibaliz, Frómista, Loarre, Mahamud, Peralada (figure 6), Porqueras, Rebolledo de la Torre, San Pablo del Campo, Sangüesa, Santillana del Mar, and Uncastillo. In France, Airvault, Andlau, Arles, Aulnay, the Bible of Corbie, the Bible of Marchiennes, the Bible of Souvigny, Cahors, Chalon-sur-Saône, Chauvigny (Figure 3), Cluny, Courpiac, Esclottes, Guarbecque, Hastingues-Arthous, the Hortus Deliciarum, Lescure, Mauriac (in the Auvergne), Melay, Moirax, Montpezat, Neuilly-en-Donjon, Nîmes, Poitiers (Sainte-Radegonde Church), Provins, Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire, Saint-Gaudens, the Sauve-Majeure, Targon, Tavant, Thuret, Toirac, Varax, Verdun, and Vézelay. In Italy, Galliano, Modena (figure 4), Parma, Pisa, Sant’Angelo in Formis, and Sovana.
17
Over subsequent centuries, the apple was continually present in the iconography of the original sin. [45] For illustrative purposes, note that in the Gothic...[45] It was frequently used as the forbidden fruit in literature, particularly in the twelfth century by Marie de France, [46] Marie de France, Yonec, v. 152, in Les Lais de Marie...[46] in the thirteenth century by Robert de Boron, [47] Le Roman du Graal: manuscrit de Modène, ed. Bernard...[47] and in the fifteenth century by Sebastian Brandt. [48] Sebastian Brandt, La Nef des fous [Das Narrenschiff],...[48] In paroemiology, this seems to be the meaning of a proverb from the beginning of the thirteenth century: “mieux vaut pomme donnée que mangée” (better an apple given than eaten). [49] Joseph Morawski, ed., Proverbes français antérieurs...[49] In hagiography, the apple is the forbidden fruit in, for example, the Cantigas de Santa María. [50] Alfonso X of Castile, Cantigas de Santa María, 353,...[50] An interesting case also appears in the breviary: the Hail Mary—appearing in the twelfth century from a passage in the New Testament [51] Luke, I, 28, 42. Henri Leclercq, “Marie, mère de Dieu,”...[51]—refers only to a “fruit,” but an anonymous commentator from Northern France specifies at the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century that it concerns the “fruit of the apple tree.” [52] Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod. Gall. 34,...[52] Anchored in Western imaginations ever since, the apple has even replaced the fig among modern scholars, in parallel to the cultural process that saw the heart where previously there had been the liver. [53] See Hasenohr, Prier au Moyen Âge: n. 38. Regarding...[53]
Figure 3. - Capital at the entranceway to the choir of the church
18
The reasons behind this almost unanimous choice are unclear, however. We may allude to the more or less widespread presence of the apple throughout all of Western Europe. We may observe the old Celtic symbolism of the apple as the fruit of knowledge. We may recall its symbolic capital as a sign of power, wealth, lies, lust, discord, and transgression. [54] Michel Pastoureau, “Bonum, malum, pomum. Une histoire...[54] We may suppose that just as the garden of Hesperides recalls the Garden of Eden (both sheltering a snake that defends the sacred tree), the apple tree “with fruits of gold” in the Greek myth influenced the medieval interpretation of the biblical account. We may thus argue the ancient association between this tree and Eden, which led to naming the carob the “apple of Paradise” in Hebrew. [55] L. Ginzberg, Les Légendes des juifs, 219, n. 70.[55] We may also consider the authority of Saint Augustine, who hesitantly accepted the possibility of the apple being the fruit of sin, perhaps influenced by the existence of thirty different varieties of apples in the Roman world at the time. [56] Augustine, La Genèse au sens littéral en douze livres...[56] We may wonder especially whether in popular medieval etymology there was not certain confusion between the words malum “badly” and malum “apple” as well as between malus “malicious” and malus “apple tree;” these phonetic identities may have had semantic implications indicating the evil character of the fruit. [57] Among the transformations affecting the Roman world...[57]
19
The increasing popularity of the apple in this role was perhaps also related to its round shape and red color, which drew it closer to the heart, being the organ that was linked to the blood of Christ and that Christianity and its doctrine perceived as the center of the human being. In this sense, the precedents were strong; the doubt surrounding the identity of the forbidden fruit reflected another, more ancient doubt regarding the central organ of the body in the diverse cultures that, in a more or less direct way, provided the foundations for medieval Christian culture. Whereas the Egyptians perceived the heart as the center of the human being, [58] The Book of the Dead, ed. and trans. E. A. Wallis Budge,...[58] the Hebrews attributed sacred powers to the liver, while regarding the heart as the seat of feelings and wisdom, and the source of life. [59] See, for example, Genesis, 20:5; Job, 9:4; Proverbs,...[59] The two organs fought for the role of the principle of life among the Babylonians [60] Alexandre Piankoff, Le “Cœur” dans les textes égyptiens...[60] and Greeks. [61] In mythology, the liver is the central element in the...[61]
20
In the third century BC, the medical school in Alexandria established the physiological model that went on to prevail throughout the following two millennia: the brain was attributed with neurological sensitivity, movement, and functions, the heart with enthusiasm and the vital spirit. [62] Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of...[62]
21
Isidore of Seville affirmed that in the heart “lies all concern and the source of knowledge, [as] with the heart we understand, and with the liver we love.” [63] Isidore of Seville, Seville’s Etymologies: The complete...[63] Sharing his opinion, more than five centuries later, Hildegard of Bingen considered the attribute of the heart to be knowledge and that of the liver to be sensitivity. [64] Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae, II, 1–12, ed....[64] For her, the heart was the point of contact between the body and the soul, the terrestrial and the divine; it was “almost the essence of the body [since it] governs it,” being the residence of the soul. [65] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, I, 4, 16, ed. A. Führkötten...[65] It is thus not by chance that she imagined the forbidden fruit to be an apple. [66] Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, III, 2, 21, ed. Führkötten...[66] For Saint Bernard, the heart was the seat of faith. [67] Bernard of Clairvaux, In Nativitate Beatae Mariae,...[67] For his adversary, Pierre Abélard, when God wants to examine the feelings of men, he probes their hearts. [68] Pierre Abélard, Ethics, ed. and trans. D. E. Luscombe...[68] Chrétien de Troyes considered the heart to be the place where mystical union occurs with our purest self, [69] Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès, vv. 708–716, trans. Micha,...[69] since this organ is the seat of love, [70] Chrétien de Troyes, vv. 4302–4306, trans. Micha, 1...[70] memory, [71] Chrétien de Troyes, Le Conte du Graal ou le Roman de...[71] and life. [72] Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès, vv. 3668–3673, trans. Micha,...[72] Vincent of Beauvais regarded the heart as the principal “spiritual organ.” [73] Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum historiale, I, 32 (Graz:...[73] The evolution in the hierarchy of meanings did not affect the importance attributed to the heart: while troubadours and courtly love previously spoke of “the hearing of the heart,” the eye and the heart were later associated. [74] Guy Paoli, “La relation œil-cœur. Recherches sur la...[74] At the start of the thirteenth century, a poem established the relationship between the heart and the phallus, between feeling and sexuality, by telling the story of a character killed by the husbands of his mistresses, who tore off these two organs and gave them to their adulterous wives to eat. [75] Lai d’Ignauré, trans. Danielle Régnier-Bohler, in Le...[75]
22
The new collective feeling in relation to the heart was present in the idioms that were forming. From the Classical Latin cor, synonymous with “memory” (also with “thought,” “intelligence,” and “heart” [76] This is still the meaning of the word for Saint Augustine...[76]) were derived “recorder” in French, ricordari in Italian, and recordar in Castilian and Portuguese. Although the heart as the center of memory appears in the root of the Castilian and Portuguese words decorar, this link is even more explicit in the phrases par cœur in French (appearing in around 1200), de cor in Portuguese (dating to the thirteenth century), and by heart in English (attested around 1374 and based on the acceptance of herte as “memory,” which existed from the start of the twelfth century [77] Rey, Dictionnaire historique, 1:442; José Pedro Machado,...[77]). However, the heart was not only regarded as the seat of memory. In English, it was associated with courage (towards 825), emotions (1050), love (about 1175), and character (1225). [78] The Oxford English Dictionary, 5:159.[78] In medieval Italian, the heart (core prior to 1250, then cuore) was reputed as being the center of feelings, emotions, and thoughts. [79] Manlio Cortelazzo and Paolo Zolli, Dizionario etimologico...[79]
23
Most often, the association occurred between the organ and a feeling, thought to derive from it directly, as attested in various Western languages: curage in French (appearing in 1080, then written as courage and used as a synonym of cœur “heart” until the seventeenth century), coraggio (prior to 1257) in Italian, coraje in Castilian and coragem in Portuguese (both from the fourteenth century), herzhaftigleit in German (from the fifteenth century derived from herz “heart,” written herza in the eighth century), and courage in English (around 1500, written as corage in around 1300). English presents an interesting case, showing the psychocultural hesitation between the liver and heart as the seat of positive feelings: the compound liver-heartedness, literally “without liver or heart,” designates the idea of “cowardly.” Further evidence of the moral importance attached to this organ is found in the word cordial, which initially carried the neutral meaning of “relative to the heart” and later acquired the positive sense of “nice” and “pleasant,” not only in French, English, Castilian, and Portuguese, but also in Italian (cordial) and in German (herzlich).
24
The symbolic value of the heart in the twelfth century was also seen in Jewish culture. Whereas the Pirkei Rabbi Nathan, a text predating the tenth century, establishes several comparisons between the parts of the universe and parts of the human body without even citing the heart, in the second half of the twelfth century, Maimonides considered it the center of the human body. [80] Samuel S. Kottek, “Microcosm and Macrocosm According...[80] He was probably influenced by Aristotle, for whom the human body developed from the heart, which was a very influential idea after the Christian rediscovery of the Stagirite. Thus, some Romanesque representations of the creation of Adam depict him coming to life not by a “breath on the face” (in faciem eius spiraculum vitae) as the Bible states, [81] Genesis, 2:7.[81] but by the hand of God touching his heart. This is the case, for example, in a manuscript from the abbey of Saint-Martial de Limoges, [82] Breviarium ad usum S. Martialis Lemovicensis (Paris:...[82] which was illuminated in around the year 1100, as well as in a relief carved a few years later on the northern facade of the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.
25
The importance of the heart in Romanesque culture also transpires in its growing metaphorical use. On the political level, it became the “king” of the human body in the same way as the king is the “heart” of the social body. [83] Jacques Le Goff, “Head or Heart? The Political Use...[83] On the literary level, the rhetorical figure of the heart spread like a book in which an ordinary individual, saint, or even Christ could write their amorous (including erotic) and spiritual emotions. [84] On the evolution of this metaphor, see Ernst Robert...[84] On the architectural level, the cruciform design of churches situated the altar—the place where the mystery of the incarnation was reproduced—in the position occupied by the heart. [85] It is no coincidence that in Medieval French, the same...[85] On the liturgical level, the Christianization of the Holy Grail rendered it the receptacle holding the blood of Christ, symbolically transforming it into a heart. [86] Begoña Aguiriano, “Le cœur dans Chrétien,” Senefiance...[86] On the geographical level, in the same way as the heart was the center of the human body, the sepulcher of the Lord was the heart of the world, according to a sermon by Peter the Venerable. [87] Peter the Venerable, In laudem sepulcri Domini, PL,...[87] On the linguistic level, from the thirteenth century, the word designated the center of something in French and Italian, as it did later in English (beginning of the fourteenth century) and Castilian (sixteenth century). [88] This meaning was applied to the city by Aristotle in...[88] In this cultural context, when the Abbess of Bingen declared that Adam made of clay was merely an empty body before being filled with a heart, liver, lungs, stomach, and internal organs by God, [89] Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae, II, 20, ed. Kaiser,...[89] she seemingly established a hierarchy of organs. Thus, the growing importance of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in spirituality from the twelfth century seems to have been the conclusion of a long process in which this organ gained in medical and symbolic value. [90] Jean-Vincent Bainvel, “Cœur sacré de Jésus (dévotion...[90]
Exegetical Doubt
26
An interesting example of the rivalry between the fig and the apple in terms of the symbolic function of forbidden fruit is seen in the sculptures on the western facade of the small rural Castilian church of San Quirce, close to Burgos, which was completed in 1147. Here, eleven modillions illustrate several episodes of the myth of Adam, from the creation of protoplasm to the judgment of Cain, while in between them, ten metopes depict scenes that are sometimes difficult to relate to those of the modillions, although each stage of the cycle is identified by inscriptions. [91] These inscriptions are now almost illegible, but they...[91] The ensemble forms an iconographic discourse with two aspects: the subject is evil, as much at its origin (original sin) as in some of its manifestations (sex, death, and bodily impurity).
27
This latter topic is visible on the two metopes at each end, where the artist depicts a man defecating. This was not a simple curiosity or obscenity, as the placement of these scenes is significant: the first being compared with the sin of Adam and the second with that of Cain. In fact, an inscription close to the representation of the original sin illuminates the link between the events depicted on the metope and modillion: MALA CAGO. No doubt, the man who speaks and acts in this way is both the paradisiacal Adam who has just eaten the forbidden fruits as well as the symbol of all human beings, his “posthumous sons,” as defined in a contemporaneous sermon. [92] Julien of Vézelay, Sermons, XV, ed. and trans. Damien...[92] However, the exact interpretation of the inscription poses an important problem.
28
A few decades ago, historiography considered this a pun, as the individual excretes both “apples” and “evils.” [93] Pérez de Urbel and Whitehill, “La iglesia románica...[93] This interpretation is based on three elements: the facade’s inscription, a capital inside the church on the same subject that undoubtedly depicts an apple, and finally, the ancient roots of the tradition perceiving the forbidden food of Paradise in this fruit. However, on the modillion’s scene, the forbidden fruits rather resemble figs, an impression reinforced by a nonformalistic reasoning. Indeed, the fig traditionally had an explicitly sexual character, while the apple, though related to Aphrodite, the goddess of love, had a more sensual, rather than explicitly sexual connotation. This is shown, for example, in an Icelandic saga from the thirteenth century in which the love philter is an apple, or even in some mythologies, where the rejuvenating and beautifying virtues attributed to the fruit remain in the etymology of “pomade,” a scented, cosmetic, and curative substance with apple. [94] See Pastoureau, “Bonum, malum, pomum;” Rey, Dictionnaire...[94]
29
The fig’s association with sexuality is seemingly expressed during the third quarter of the twelfth century in the iconographic design of the doorway of Barret Church in Poitou. Here, the three capitals on each side establish a spatial and symbolic relationship, which was very common in the Romanesque imagination. Looking at them, starting with the capital closest to the entry on the left-hand side, the first represents the original sin with the fig as the fruit, the second depicts a character in a very obscene pose, and the third, which is double, shows an eagle on one side and a monster devouring a sheep on the other. Symmetrically, on the right-hand side, the first capital depicts lions leaning against each other, the second, two doves embracing, and the final one, a centaur and a dove. The message seems rather evident: sin (that is to say, the fig and sex) leads to unnatural and erotic acts, thus to the death of the soul, which is devoured by the demon (eagle and monster); on the other hand, those who join Christ (the lion) will be innocent (doves), embracing peace and purity, thus calming the animal that exists in every human being (centaurs).
30
Indeed, the sexual meaning of the fig was accepted within traditional culture and did not disappear with its Christianization. Throughout the centuries, the fig tree was associated with Dionysus, and, at least in its Roman version, Bacchus. The image of the god was always carved in the wood of the fig tree, with a basket of figs being the most sacred object at the festivals that celebrated him, the Bacchanalia. As the protector of orchards, particularly of the fig tree, Dionysus was confused with his son, Priapus, born of Aphrodite. In the processions paying homage to this god of fertility, who was endowed with a disproportionately large penis, there was a large phallus carved in the wood of the fig tree, the leaves of which were also seen as an ithyphallic symbol. [95] Brosse, Mythologie des arbres, 290–291. The fig’s sexual...[95] This notion of sexual exuberance is also found in a version of an episode of the Dionysus myth by the Christian apologist Clement of Alexandria (around 150–250). [96] Clement of Alexandria, Protreptique, II, 34, 3–4, ed....[96] In a similar manner, although he calls the liver iecur and not ficatum, Isidore of Seville implicitly makes this link by affirming that in this organ “lies pleasure and concupiscence. [97] Isidore of Seville, Seville’s Etymologies, XI, I, 125,...[97]
31
The popular gesture of “making the fig” should also be mentioned here, associated with the fruit through its name and shape. This association is observed in Castilian, in which two words (higo/higa) appeared at the same time, in around 1140. [98] Joan Corominas, Diccionario critico etimológico de...[98] This gesture assumed “an obvious sexual connotation” [99] Jean-Claude Schmitt, La Raison des gestes dans l’Occident...[99] in the popular tradition of several societies, and even in the medieval West, where it can either denote the female sex organ (predominant meaning), its state of excitation (in this case, the tip of the thumb between the index and middle fingers imitates a swollen clitoris), copulation (the thumb is the penis between the vaginal lips), or a phallus (rarer meaning). [100] Desmond Morris et al., Os gestos: suas origens e significado...[100] It is probably with this latter meaning that formerly, in Bavaria, a young man confirmed his intention to marry by sending a silver or gold fig to his lover, who could refuse the demand by returning the gift or accept it by returning a silver heart. [101] José Leite de Vasconcelos, A figa (Porto: Araújo e...[101] The far la fica was an aggressive and derogatory gesture frequently used by Italians in the Middle Ages, not only on a daily basis, but also in emotionally charged situations. In 1162, angry with the Milanese who had forced his wife to mount a mule backwards, thus facing the tail of the animal—a very ancient position signifying contempt—Frederick I Barbarossa seized the city and, on penalty of death, forced the prisoners to remove a fig from the anus of a mule with their teeth. [102] Quoted by Leite de Vasconcelos, A figa, 80; by Jerome...[102] The inhabitants of Pistoia had carved into their castle of Carmignano two large arms with hands making the sign of the fig towards the enemy city of Florence—which, humiliated, went on to conquer the place in 1228. [103] Giovanni Villani, Cronica, VI, 5, ed. Ignazio Moutier...[103] In Dante, a robber condemned to Hell makes the sign of the fig against God Himself. [104] Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia, Inferno, XXV, 1–3,...[104] The gesture and expression ficha facere are found, with the same derisory meaning, in all Romanesque cultures, and even outside of them. [105] Leite de Vasconcelos, A figa, 42–56, 72, 76–81, and...[105] Although this gesture has a talismanic function, that of casting off the evil eye and other dangers, this seems to be precisely due to its sexual connotation, that of warding off sterility in life. [106] Leite de Vasconcelos, A figa, 27–41, 57–59, and 91...[106]
32
In this sense, the scene of the paramount sin depicted on the third modillion at San Quirce, in addition to adopting the ancient interpretation of the original sin as a sexual sin, [107] See Martin Elze, Tatian und seine Theologie (Göttingen:...[107] prepared the observer to encounter, three metopes along and just after the expulsion from Paradise, a representation of the carnal relationship of protoplasm. [108] Pérez de Urbel and Whitehill (“La iglesia románica...[108] Thus, according to our hypothesis, the word malum would not have been used here with its specific meaning of “apple,” but rather in the broader sense of “fruit with pulp” (as opposed to nux, “fruit with hard skin”), [109] Although the former meaning was eventually enforced...[109] so that the pun of the inscription would signify “to expel evils and fruits.” Whether conscious or not of the inscription’s ambiguity, the sculptor at San Quirce thus revealed the interesting coexistence of two exegetical traditions, that of the apple, present in the representation of the original sin inside the church, and that of the fig, visible on its facade. An even more meaningful coexistence if it is accepted that a single artist carved both the capital and the modillion. [110] A situation that de Lojendio (Castilla 1) regards as...[110]
33
This exegetical doubt is not an isolated case appearing in a monastic community in the center of Castile. The formation of the French word “pomme” provides an interesting indication in this context. Although, from the beginning of the fifth century, the Latin word pomum (“fruit” in a generic sense) gained the specific meaning of “fruit of the apple tree” in Northern Italy and the majority of the Ibero-Romance area—a meaning preserved in the Provençal and Catalan poma—Italian, Castilian, Portuguese, and Galician eventually favored the traditional form malum, from which they derived mela, manzana, maçã and mazá, respectively. [111] Both the Spanish word manzana (attested in 1112 as...[111] Pomum preserved its broad sense in these four languages in the form pomo (poma in the case of Galician). By the same evolution, the collective forms pomario in Italian and pomar in Castilian, Portuguese, Provençal, and Galician derived from the Classical Latin pomarium.
34
In contrast, the medieval Latin of Gaul had used, from the end of the eighth century, the word pomarius to denote the apple tree, from which derived the vernacular name of this specific fruit (pume) from the generic term (pomum) in 1080. [112] The word appeared in the Chanson de Roland as pume;...[112] At the same date appeared the French word verger (orchard), denoting land planted with various fruit trees, taken from the Latin viridiarum (from viridis, “green”). Faced with these facts, it is not absurd to assume that the French linguistic evolution unconsciously avoided the supposedly negative character of this fruit, as expressed through the word malum. Furthermore, the apple is a positive symbol in Celtic culture, [113] Françoise Le Roux and Christian-Joseph Guyonvarc’h,...[113] which was heavily present in the territory of the future France, particularly in the context of the “folkloric reaction” of the twelfth century. [114] Jacques Le Goff, “Culture cléricale et traditions folkloriques...[114]
35
In accordance with its archetypical character as the fruit par excellence, the word was used in the formation of many syntagms, and even, around 1256, in the curious expression “pomme de paradis” (apple of paradise) denoting the banana. [115] Rey, Dictionnaire historique. It is interesting to...[115] Although in terms of vocabulary, we note a French resistance to the association of the apple with the fruit of sin, in terms of iconography, as seen above, such identification was established without problem. This was also the case in popular literary works, such as the first French theatrical text from the middle of the twelfth century or a sermon from the same time. [116] Respectively Le Mystère Adam: Ordo representationis...[116] Similarly, in this and the subsequent century, there were various love stories generally beginning with a betrayal (hearts metaphorically devoured) and ending with the death of the two protagonists (one of them literally devouring the other’s heart without realizing it [117] Accounts collected in Régnier-Bohler, ed., Le Cœur...[117]). To a certain extent, these stories consciously or unconsciously rewrote the drama of the original demise: betraying the confidence of the Creator (“from the tree . . . you will not eat”) by eating the apple/heart (“the knowledge of good and evil”), the human being was the cause of his own perdition (“the day you eat of it, you will surely die”), as Adam and Eve had hearts full of arrogance (“you will be like gods” [118] Genesis, 2:17; 3:5. On the close relationship between...[118]).
The Tree and Androgyny
36
This search for the identity of the Romanesque forbidden fruit must still consider the tree in relation to the primordial couple. The position of these three elements provides some important information. One of the symbolic and physical solutions used was to portray the primi parentes on the same side of the tree, with Eve always being closer to it (figure 4). The most common composition placed the tree between Adam and Eve, as already found on the sarcophagus of San Justo de la Vega in Leon, dated to the end of third century or the beginning of the fourth century and currently held in the archaeological museum of Madrid. It would be simplistic to think that this position on both sides of the tree simply responded to the desire for symmetry in Romanesque art, [119] As considered Guerra, Simbología románica, 107.[119] because the form is almost always a fragment of the contents that emerged. [120] Gerardus Van Der Leeuw, La Religion dans son essence...[120] In the eleventh to thirteenth centuries, this scheme probably referred to two very pressing questions related to the contemporary phenomenon of the sacralization of marriage.
Figure 4. - Relief on the western façade of Modena Cathedral (Emilia-Romagna), circa 1100.
37
On the one hand, by placing Adam and Eve at an equal distance from the tree, the iconography referred to a certain social egalitarianism and moral leveling between man and woman, even if the snake is almost always turned towards the woman. The side occupied by each character varied. We have already considered the position of Eve on the right-hand side of the tree as an “iconographic tradition,” a scheme with only three exceptions, in Saint-Antonin, Bruniquel, and Lescure. [121] Jean-Claude Fau, “Découverte à Saint-Antonin (Tarn-et-Garonne)...[121] In fact, the woman appears on the left in several other cases: for example on the sculptures in Anzy-le-Duc, Airvault, Butrera, Cergy, Cervatos, Covet, Embrun, Gémil, Girona, Lavaudieu, Lescar, Loarre, Luc-de-Béarn, Mahamud, Manresa, Moirax, Montcaret, Peralada (figure 6), Saint-Étienne-de-Grès, Saint-Gaudens, Sangüesa, San Juan de la Peña, Toirac, Verona, and Vézelay. Similarly, on the frescos in Aimé, Fossa, and San Justo in Segovia, on the illuminations of the Bible of Burgos, the Exultet 3 of Troia, and the Hortus Deliciarum, on a metal medallion from the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran, and on the mosaics in Monreale and Trani.
38
In addition, the central position of the tree, separating Adam and Eve, insinuated a rupture of the initial unity, at least on the psychological level. The tree, that is to say knowledge, revealed the existence of contradictory traits in human beings, made in the image and resemblance of God, the androgyne par excellence. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female created he them:” [122] Genesis, 1:27.[122] this is why the human being was initially double, and thus, inherently complete and microcosmic. [123] There were several types of microcosmic man in the...[123] Removing Eve from the rib of Adam was a surgery of separation, because they were formed from the same bones, they were “one flesh.” [124] Genesis, 2:23–24.[124] In this manner, the sacred text was interpreted from first half of the first century, initially by the Jew, Philo of Alexandria, and subsequently by Ambroise, Augustine, Gregory the Great, Isidore, the pseudo-Remigius of Auxerre, Guibert of Nogent, Pierre Lombard, Bernard, and others, who all regarded Eve as the image of the woman from within man. [125] Michel Planque, “Ève,” in Dictionnaire de spiritualité...[125]
39
Augustine, in particular, implicitly recognized the androgyny of the first man when he said that the devil “cannot tempt us only by the means of this animal part, which appears in a single man as an image or a model of woman.” [126] Augustine, Del Genesis contra los maniqueos [De Genesi...[126] Following a reasoning based on that of Saint Paul, he saw Adam-Eve as the complementarity of spirit and flesh, a comparison that was adopted by many thinkers in the Romanesque period. Since in the Bible, “Adam” was originally the generic name denoting a human being (Genesis, 1:19) and only later became the name of a person (Genesis, 3:17), Augustine interpreted the word “man” (Genesis, 1:26) as “human nature.” [127] Augustine, De Trinitate, I, 7, PL, vol. 42, col. 8...[127] Saint Anselme, who was very influential in the twelfth century, agreed that “Adam” should initially include Adam and Eve. [128] Anselm of Canterbury, La Conception virginale et le...[128] While trying to explain how Adam’s prohibition of the fruit also implied Eve, Petrus Comestor stated that it was transmitted to the woman through man; [129] Petrus Comestor, Historia scholastica, 15, PL, vol....[129] thus implicitly suggesting the unity of the two individuals, and the androgyny of the being to whom it was forbidden to eat the fruit.
40
While the medieval Church did not formally accept the divine and the androgyny of Adam, it was still familiar with it. It is thus found in a text from the New Testament: “There is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Jesus Christ.” [130] Galatians, 3:28.[130] This appeared in an apocryphal text: “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor female . . . then will you enter the kingdom [of God].” [131] Il Vangelo di Tommaso, 22, trans. Mario Erbetta (Casale...[131] This was a noncontemptible part of the thought of Clement of Alexandria [132] In a piece of literature that is today lost, Hypotyposes,...[132] (around 150–215), Origen [133] According to him, based on Luke, 20:36, there will...[133] (185–254), Gregory of Nyssa [134] Gregory of Nyssa, La Création de l’homme [De opificio...[134] (around 330–390) and, through them, of Johannes Scotus Eriugena [135] Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon, IV, PL, vol....[135] (around 810–870). It undoubtedly belonged to the cultural and psychological milieu of the first Christian centuries. [136] Wayne A. Meeks, “The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses...[136]
41
While the androgyne of Eden had disappeared, it was because of sin. For some thinkers, the human being henceforth became aware of its duplicity, since that time it was broken and characterized by the genitals, which was visible proof of the original sin: sexus comes from sectio (“cut,” “separation”), a term derived from secare “to cross,” which only assumed a specifically sexual meaning in the Middle Ages. [137] Du Cange, Glossarium mediae et infimae latinitatis,...[137] It is thus not by chance that Adam said “me” for the first time after the sin. [138] “Mulier, quam dedisti mihi sociam, dedit mihi de ligno,...[138] Although, undeniably, the original sin and sex were closely linked, the way in which events had transpired was the subject of debate. [139] Emmanuele Testa, Il peccato di Adamo nella Patristica...[139] One stream of thought interpreted the sin as a sexual offence: for example, the Jew Philon and some Church fathers, including Clement of Alexandria and Saint Ambrose. [140] Philo of Alexandria, De opificio mundi, 151–152, trans....[140] In the Romance period, the majority of theologists from the school of William of Champeaux (1070–1121) also considered that this sin involved concupiscence, although Guillaume himself saw it as an act of disobedience in which sensualitas managed to dominate ratio. [141] Odon Lottin, “Les théories du péché originel au XIIe...[141]
42
Another group reversed the question, seeing sex rather as a consequence of the sin. The Physiologus, an influential allegorical, zoological treatise translated into Latin in the fifth century, stated that the elephant and its partner, which “personified” Adam and Eve, were unaware of intercourse until the female had eaten the fruit of the Mandragora officinarum and given it to the male: “because of that, they had to leave Paradise.” [142] El Fisiólogo: bestiário medieval, 20, ed. Francis J....[142] The main proponent of this train of thought was Saint Augustine, according to whom the human being before the sin practiced sex without concupiscence. [143] Augustine, La Genèse au sens littéral [De Genesi ad...[143] The error of the first couple would then have been one of pride, which led to the error of disobedience and then to carnal error. [144] In the first part of his interpretation, Augustine...[144] Another proponent of this idea was Johannes Scotus Eriugena in the eighth century, who considered that before the sin, the human being was only one, and that the resulting division of the sexes would cease in the eternal life. [145] Johannes Scotus Eriugena, Periphyseon, V, 20, PL, vol....[145] His thought continued to exert a certain influence; in the fourteenth century, it led Meister Eckhart to regard “any division” to be “bad as such,” thus perceiving the number two as the sign of the fall. [146] Meister Eckhart, Commentaire de la Genèse, 88 and 90,...[146] The Romanesque representations of the initial sin hesitated in choosing between these theological positions. Showing a preference for the second, several images accorded sexual attributes to Adam and Eve just after the ingestion of the fruit: for Adam, generally a beard [147] For Hildegard of Bingen, Causae et curae, II, 5–7,...[147] (figures 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), seldom a penis (figure 5), and for Eve, usually breasts (figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6). A minority of images seem to attribute the initial sin to a sexual act, an iconographic and theological concept that was perhaps expressed for the first time on the bronze door of Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany between 1011 and 1015. [148] William Tronzo, “The Hildesheim Doors: An Iconographic...[148] Here, Adam appears to the left of the tree and behind him is another tree on which a small dragon is standing. Eve is to the right, close to another tree with the snake. The fruit is the apple, one in right hand of Adam and the other in the right hand of Eve, being stretched out towards Adam. There is another apple in the left hand of Eve, whose folded arm merges with her vagina. A similar illustration was used in Rebolledo de la Torre in 1186. In the Alardus Bible, the snake that gives the fruit to Eve is at the height of her vagina, recalling a male sexual organ about to penetrate her. The southernmost façade of the Church of Santa María in Sangüesa in Navarre, which dates from the second half of the twelfth century, seems to portray the same design. Here, the scene of sin is situated immediately below the personification of Lust, showing a woman whose naked breasts are attacked by toads and snakes. [149] Despite the great diversity of iconographical material...[149] This association between lust and the original sin was not uncommon; as Sangüesa was on St. James’s Way, the most travelled road by Occitans and Italians, we may hypothesize that its iconographic message expressed the opinion of many pilgrims on the subject. In this sense, this image from Navarre ratified at least two other images known to these pilgrims.
43
The first image from Provence, dated to the second quarter of the twelfth century, is located a few kilometers from Tarascon in Saint-Etienne-du-Grès, on the tympanum of Saint-Gabriel’s chapel, where Daniel appears next to the original sin (prefiguration of Christ, the new Adam) with lions (a common symbol of lust): an opposition of scenes suggesting the sexual signification of the sin. As already mentioned, it is true that the contrast between the two scenes did not necessarily mean that the artist interpreted the sin “as a vulgar sin of lust, but its consequence was to introduce turmoil and even shame into a domain that had emerged wholly pure from the hands of the Creator.” [150] Gérard de Champeaux and Sébastien Sterckx, Introduction...[150] However, the authors of this comment—a longstanding phenomenon in medieval art studies—seem inclined towards adapting the intentions of the Romanesque artist to the theologically correct reading, rather than considering other interpretative possibilities beyond the domain of ecclesiastical culture. It is significant, for example, that on the same area of the tympanum, the two scenes are chronologically inversed, first portraying Daniel and then the sin.
44
The second image from Italy figures on the mosaic of Otranto (1163–1165). The branches of the forbidden tree pass between the legs of the characters, insinuating the sexual nature of the sin. This seems all the more evident given that Adam and Eve are each situated in a circle, rendering the characters isolated, separated, and autonomous entities in their respective domains, domains most certainly resulting from the primordial androgyne being cut in two. This assumption is reinforced by the fact that the forbidden fruit is represented as the fig (with its strong sexual connotation, as already seen) and illustrated in a suggestive way by the mosaic artist, the priest Pantaleon: the thinner part of the fig held by Eve is facing downwards and placed between her breasts, as though forming a third breast; the fig in Adam’s hand is in the inverse position, reminding us of the male genitals. [151] The same sexual presentation appeared towards the end...[151]
Figure 5. - Illumination from the in Troia (Puglia), Archivio Capitulario, middle of the eleventh century.
Figure 6. - Capital in the western gallery of the monastery cloister
45
Taking the geographical distribution of the Romanesque images into account, we see that the function attributed to the fig as the forbidden fruit was mainly expressed in the cultural milieu related to the Greco-Judaic world, while the apple appeared in association with the Romano-Christian world. This is perhaps due the specific links established in these cultural areas between each fruit and a bodily organ. In the images where the fig is used, Eve is often portrayed with the fruit on the right-hand side of the tree, like the liver in the human body. [152] In this regard, I evidently mean a statistical trend,...[152] In the images with the apple, the tendency is for Eve and the fruit to appear on the left-hand side, just like the heart in the body (figures 3 and 6). In both instances, the forbidden fruit was the symbol of the rupture of the unity of Eden and the birth of the disjointed humanity that characterizes history.
Notes
[1]
On the methodological issues affecting the construction and analysis of an iconographic corpus, some good comments have been made by Jérôme Baschet in “Inventivité et sérialité des images médiévales. Pour une approche iconographique élargie,” Annales HSS 51 (1996): 93–133.
[2]
Genesis, 2:16–17; 3:1–12.
[3]
Jeremiah, 1:14. Jerome, Expositio quattuor Evangeliorum, Patrologia Latina (PL), vol. 30, col. 549d–550a.
[4]
Midrash Rabbah, Genesis, XV, 7, trans. Bernard Maruani and Albert Cohen-Arazi (Paris: Verdier, 1987), 1:183 [Midrash Rabbah, Genesis trans. Harry Freedman and Maurice Simon, 2 vols. (London: Soncino Press, 1939)]; Genesis Rabbah I (Genesis 1–11), trans. Luis Vegas Montaner (Estella: Verbo Divino, 1994), 188–189 [Genesis Rabbah I, trans. Samuel Rapaport (London: Routledge, 1907)].
[5]
Following the interpretation of Marcel Durliat, Pyrénées romanes (La-Pierre-Qui-Vire: Zodiaque, 1978), 42.
[6]
Vita Adae, 36–42: “The ‘Vita Adae’,” ed. J. H. Mozley, The Journal of Theological Studies (1929): 121–149 (English manuscripts); “La Vie latine d’Adam et Ève,” ed. Jean-Pierre Pettorelli, Archivum latinitatis Medii Aevi (1998): 5–104 (German manuscripts); 2 Henoc 22:8: Slavonic Apocalypse of Enoch, trans. Francis I. Andersen, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, ed. James H. Charlesworth, 2 vols. (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1983–1985), 1:92–221; L’Évangile de Nicodème, 19, ed. André Vaillant (Geneva, Paris: Droz, 1968), 59–61.
[7]
In this instance, the capital over the door of Miègeville, dated to around 1100–1118, does not depict the scene of the sin, but rather that of the expulsion from Paradise, where the fruit behind Adam and Eve (the couple being situated between God on one side and an angel on the other) is the grapevine.
[8]
Midrash Rabbah, Genesis, XV, 7 and XIX, 5, trans. Maruani and Cohen-Arazi, [trans. Freedman and Simon], 184 and 217; Genesis Rabbah I, trans. Vegas Montaner, 190–225. Ethiopic Apocalypse of Enoch, XXXII, 3–6, trans. Ephraim Isaac, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:28. Greek Apocalypse of Baruch, 4–8, trans. Harry E. Gaylord, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:667; Apocalypse of Abraham, XXXIII, 7, trans. Ryszard Rubinkiewicz and Horace G. Lunt, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:700. In the first century AD, Eliezer ben Hurcanus’s Chapters only specifies that “Noah found a grapevine coming from the Garden of Eden:” Los Capítulos de Rabbí Eliezer, XXIII, 4, trans. Miguel Pérez Fernandez, (Valencia: Institución San Jerónimo, 1984), 174. Louis Ginzberg nevertheless believes that this text probably alludes to a fragment from the tree of knowledge: Les Légendes des juifs [1909], trans. Gabrielle Sed-Rajna (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1997), 1:302, n. 59. According to the same author (Les Légendes des juifs, 219, n. 70), “the oldest and widespread opinion identifies the forbidden fruit with the grape, which traces back to an ancient mythological idea considering wine to be the beverage of the gods.”
[9]
David Romano, “Jueus a la Catalunya carolingia i dels primers comtes (876–1100),” in Exposiciò dins la formació de l’Europa medieval (Girona: Ajuntament de Girona, 1985), 113–119. Hilário Franco Júnior, “Le pouvoir de la parole: Adam et les animaux dans la tapisserie de Gérone,” Médiévales 25 (1993): 113–128.
[10]
Arturo Graf, Il Mito del Paradiso terrestre (1892; reprint, Rome: Edizioni del Graal, 1982), 65; Gioacchino Volpe, Movimenti religiosi e sette ereticali nella società medievale italiana: secoli XI–XIV fourth ed. (Florence: Sansoni, 1972), 17–40; Cinzio Violante, La Società milanese nell’età precomunale (Bari: Laterza, 1974), 220–231. Priests in Spain in the seventh century offered a bunch of grapes to believers during the Eucharist, which could also be a reaction against the idea of the grapevine as the forbidden fruit (third Council of Braga [675], prologue and canon 1: Concílios visigóticos e hispano-romanos, ed. and trans. José Vives (Barcelona and Madrid: CSIC, Instituto Enrique Florez, 1963), 371–373).
[11]
Michel Tardieu, Trois Mythes gnostiques: Adam, Éros et les animaux d’Égypte dans un écrit de Nag Hammadi (II, 5) (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1974), particularly 88–89, 142–144, and 166–169.
[12]
Paul Deschamps, “Notes sur la sculpture romane en Bourgogne,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts (1922): 61–80.
[13]
Deschamps, “Notes sur la sculpture.”
[14]
Joseph de Ghellinck, “L’eucharistie au XIIe siècle en Occident,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1913), vol. 5, col. 1233–1302. Iconography was also influenced by the phenomenon in which the Crucified was depicted as a bunch of grapes, as seen on the thirteenth-century metal relief on the door of the Church of Sion in Switzerland. This was reproduced by Erich Neumann, The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, trans. Ralph Mannheim (1955; reprint, Princeton (N. J.): Princeton University Press, 1972), pl. 114.
[15]
Roger Dion, Histoire de la vigne et du vin en France des origines au XIXe siècle (Paris: author publication, 1959), 245–247.
[16]
Auguste Gaudel, “Péché originel,” in Dictionnaire de théologie catholique, vol. XII-1, col. 441 [quotation back-translated from the French].
[17]
Jacques Brosse, Mythologie des arbres (Paris: Plon, 1989), 299–300. The purity attributed to the olive rendered the olive tree the tree of life par excellence, as seen above, n.5.
[18]
Robert Saint-Jean and Jean Nougaret, Vivarais-Gévaudan romans (La Pierre-Qui-Vire: Zodiaque, 1991), 157–158. La Nuit des temps, 75.
[19]
Genesis, 3:7.
[20]
John, 1:48. This relationship between the fig and knowledge can be traced back to classical paganism: Plato, for example, called this fruit “the friend of philosophers,” according to Éloïse Mozzani, Le Livre des superstitions: mythes, croyances et légendes (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1995), 746.
[21]
Matthew, 21:19. Paul Sébillot, Le Folklore de France, vol. 6, La Flore (1906; reprint, Paris: Imago, 1985), 21; Mozzani, Le Livre des superstitions, 746.
[22]
Stuttgart Psalter, around 810 (Stuttgart: Württembergische Landes-bibliothek, Cod. Bibl. 172o 23, fol. 8).
[23]
Midrash Rabbah, Genesis XV, 7, trans. Maruani and Cohen-Arazi, 185; Génesis Rabbah I, trans. Vegas Montaner, 190–191.
[24]
Life of Adam and Eve (Apocalypse), xx, 4–5, trans. M. D. Johnson, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 2:281; Apocalisse di Mosè, trans. Liliana Rosso Ubigli, in Apocrifi dell’Antico Testa-mento, ed. Paolo Sacchi (Turin: UTET, 1989), 2:429; Vida de Adán y Eva (Apocalipsis de Moises), trans. Natalio Fernández Marcos, in Apocrifos del Antiguo Testamento, ed. Alejandro Diez Macho (Madrid: Cristiandad, 1982), 2:330.
[25]
Testament of Adam 3c, trans. Stephen E. Robinson, in The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, 1:994; Testamento de Adán III, 4 (R II), trans. F. J. Martínez Fernández, in Apocrifos del Antiguo Testamento, 5:433.
[26]
Il Combattimento di Adamo, 40, ed. and trans. A. Battista and B. Bagatti (Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press, 1982), 110.
[27]
Theodoret of Cyrus, Quaestiones in Genesim, II, 28, Patrologia Graeca (PG), vol. LXXX, col. 125 c.
[28]
Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, I, 2, 2, ed. Ernst Kroymann (Turnhout: Brepols, 1954), 443. Corpus christianorum. Series latina, 1; Hugh of Saint Victor, Adnotationes elucidatoriae in Pentateuchon, Patrologia Latina (PL), vol. CLXXV, col. 42 a-b; Pierre Comestor, Historia scholastica, 23, PL, vol. CXCVIII, col. 1073 b-c. Even at the end of the Middles Ages, several authors still thought in this manner: Meister Eckhart, Commentaire de la Genèse, 97 and 205, ed. and trans. Fernand Brunner et al. (Paris: Éd. du Cerf, 1984), 360 and 518. L’Œuvre latine de Maître Eckhart, 1.
[29]
Das Tristan-Epos Gottfrieds von Strassburg, v. 17944, ed. Wolfgang Spiewok (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1989), 251. Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters, 75.
[30]
Beryl Smalley, “Andrew of Saint-Victor, Abbot of Wigmore: A Twelfth-Century Hebraist,” Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale 10 (1938): 358–373; Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), 149–172 and 179–180; Esra Shereshevsky, “Hebrew Traditions in Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica,” The Jewish Quarterly Review 59 (1968–1969): 268–289.
[31]
Brosse, Mythologie des arbres, 285–286.
[32]
Jean Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, 125, ed. Herbert Douteil (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), 239–241; Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia: Recreation for an Emperor, trans. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). In the thirteenth century, the theme appeared in several well-known texts, such as La Queste del Saint Graal, ed. Albert Pauphilet (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1980), 210ff. and Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend: Legenda aurea, vulgo Historia Lombardica dicta, LXVIII, ed. Theodor Graesse (1846; reprint, Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1969), 303–304.
[33]
Exodus, 29:13, 22; Leviticus, 3:4, 10, 15; 4:9; 7:4; 8:16, 25; 9:10, 19.
[34]
Tobit, VI, 7.
[35]
Hesiod, Théogonie, v. 524, ed. and trans. Paul Mazon, thirteenth reprint (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1996), 51. Coll. des Universités de France [Theogony, trans Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classics, 1914)].
[36]
Anacreon, “Fragment 33,” vv. 28, 32, in Carmina Anacreontea, ed. Martin L. West (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1984), 25.
[37]
Horace, Odes, IV, 1, 12, ed. and trans. François Villeneuve (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1927), 152 [The Complete Odes and Satires of Horace, trans. Sidney Alexander (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999)].
[38]
Plato, Timée, 71 a, d, ed. and trans. Albert Rivaud (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1985), 198 [Timaeus and Critias, ed. Thomas K. Johansen, trans. Desmond Lee (London: Penguin, 1977)].
[39]
In the Romanesque period, there was at least one allusion to the Latin Cupid (called only Amores) sending an arrow to the heart: Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès, v. 455, trans. Alexandre Micha (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1982) [Cliges, trans. W. W. Comfort (London: Everyman’s Library, 1914)]. A medieval collection of classical mythology, written between 875 and 1075, says that the gods sent an eagle to punish Prometheus by attacking his heart (not the liver, as Hesiod declared): Premier Mythographe du Vatican, I, 1, 3, ed. Nevio Zorzetti, trans. Jacques Berlioz (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1995), 2. The transposition of the symbolic role of the liver to the heart became so ingrained that modern scholars have more than once taken one for the other, as, for example, the translator of Horace, Odes, ed. and trans. Villeneuve, n.36 or that of Anacreon, Odes, trans. Frédéric Matthews (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1927), 91.
[40]
Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, XXV, ed. Graesse, 120. Eve
An Ode To Pessimism
88/365
Many of us respond to troubled times with a feeling of injured self-pity, as though something that is supposed to have gone right, has gone wrong. I would like to reverse the equation. Nothing was entirely supposed to go right and so nothing has particularly gone wrong. We have simply returned to a state of crisis which is the norm in human history.
It’s sometimes the principle of the media that murder, disease, crisis and death are the exception - it makes the news. But in fact, this is the news. This is all that ever happens.
Think about our keys -we start shouting when lose the house keys. Or how we behave when we are stuck in traffic. Now essentially that is because we believe implicitly in a world where keys don’t go astray and the roads are always mysteriously traffic free. That’s a very very odd starting point for life. - Alain De Boton
Today I woke up feeling meh, and then proceeded to watch a fantastic youtube lecture on Pessimism (link in the comments!). Needless to say, it brightened my entire mindset, and forced me to succumb to the beautiful and essential notion of humour, and to notice just how bloody serious I can get sometimes! So instead of moping today, I threw my best pessimistic coat on, ruined my mascara, and devoted myself to being a little ray of pitch black. And I smiled to myself the whole way through it :-)
Painting Outside the Box' by Ilan Vizgan
The flute raises it's voice / what is it's story? / is it bad news or good ones or what? / It's about everything and all A poem by Nathan Alterman/ summer celebration
Mirit Ben-Nun’s paintings escape common description. An objective observation might describe it as contemporary art, though created by an upbeat young female artist, it is far from contemporary. This art possesses no “present day” defining elements. Mirit's paintings speak in a distant dialect seemingly of another era and location. By trying to pinpoint this time and place, we find ourselves wandering about without a solid grasping point. Her paintings are laced with a fire-like sensuality and striking colors. The naive and archetypal characteristics remind us of folk art. Reality is lost within the ‘erroneous’ size ratio of the numerous imagery, similarly to tribal and native art in Africa, Oceania and Australia. The surface is laboriously worked and replicated similarly to rug weaving techniques. Motifs of Western Pop can be found in many of the paintings. This combination of Primeval motifs and Western Modern Art creates cultural and historical tensions between here and there, then and now. Formatively speaking the paintings are schematically divided into colorful segments with no intermediate transitions. Strong and clear boundaries outline the different areas, each is populated with a happening, opposing or complementing the one next to it. In this fashion, for example, round shapes are confronted with geometric ones or human images with those of animals and plants. Often the paintings are outlined with a ‘frame' thereby uniting the parts and creating an enclosure, like a window within a window. As a result, unconventional compositions are created and shatter the conventional formula of the "Uniformity of subject, shape & color". The rule breaking strengthens the untamed quality of these ‘uncivilized’ paintings.
In the center of Ben-Nun's paintings stands the image of the woman and the relationship between the sexes. Women are displayed as curvaceous, seductive images often in dancing poses. The dance is used as a metaphor for courting and seduction; the thick red lips, at times heart- shaped, symbolize passion and love. When it seems that the implicit allure isn't sufficient, the female image is portrayed in a frontal wide stance, in a composition that reminds us of the letter W. But when the two images meet, the feminine and the masculine, the unification is complete; melding into each other, the images' side view completely overlaps. When in a seated position the whole shape converts into the letter M emphasizing the complimenting opposites. The protagonists - women and men - are accompanied by secondary characters; symbolic images of especially fish, hands (the Hamsa) and eyes. Those are prevalent in Middle East cultures and represent fertility, luck and protection from the evil eye. Their presence in the paintings, alongside the lovers, implies that the matter at hand is not barren erotica and carnal passion, but genuine love that yearns for a home, family and the raising of offsprings.
Peaceful, passionate, energised, noisy, good humoured musical and there was some break dance too.
A big, turnout, predominantly of the young. This is galvanising a generation. 99.9% wore masks throughout.
#blacklivesmattersheffield #blacklivesmatter
Album: www.flickr.com/photos/shefftim/albums/72157714608760502
Painting Outside the Box' by Ilan Vizgan
The flute raises it's voice / what is it's story? / is it bad news or good ones or what? / It's about everything and all A poem by Nathan Alterman/ summer celebration
Mirit Ben-Nun’s paintings escape common description. An objective observation might describe it as contemporary art, though created by an upbeat young female artist, it is far from contemporary. This art possesses no “present day” defining elements. Mirit's paintings speak in a distant dialect seemingly of another era and location. By trying to pinpoint this time and place, we find ourselves wandering about without a solid grasping point. Her paintings are laced with a fire-like sensuality and striking colors. The naive and archetypal characteristics remind us of folk art. Reality is lost within the ‘erroneous’ size ratio of the numerous imagery, similarly to tribal and native art in Africa, Oceania and Australia. The surface is laboriously worked and replicated similarly to rug weaving techniques. Motifs of Western Pop can be found in many of the paintings. This combination of Primeval motifs and Western Modern Art creates cultural and historical tensions between here and there, then and now. Formatively speaking the paintings are schematically divided into colorful segments with no intermediate transitions. Strong and clear boundaries outline the different areas, each is populated with a happening, opposing or complementing the one next to it. In this fashion, for example, round shapes are confronted with geometric ones or human images with those of animals and plants. Often the paintings are outlined with a ‘frame' thereby uniting the parts and creating an enclosure, like a window within a window. As a result, unconventional compositions are created and shatter the conventional formula of the "Uniformity of subject, shape & color". The rule breaking strengthens the untamed quality of these ‘uncivilized’ paintings.
In the center of Ben-Nun's paintings stands the image of the woman and the relationship between the sexes. Women are displayed as curvaceous, seductive images often in dancing poses. The dance is used as a metaphor for courting and seduction; the thick red lips, at times heart- shaped, symbolize passion and love. When it seems that the implicit allure isn't sufficient, the female image is portrayed in a frontal wide stance, in a composition that reminds us of the letter W. But when the two images meet, the feminine and the masculine, the unification is complete; melding into each other, the images' side view completely overlaps. When in a seated position the whole shape converts into the letter M emphasizing the complimenting opposites. The protagonists - women and men - are accompanied by secondary characters; symbolic images of especially fish, hands (the Hamsa) and eyes. Those are prevalent in Middle East cultures and represent fertility, luck and protection from the evil eye. Their presence in the paintings, alongside the lovers, implies that the matter at hand is not barren erotica and carnal passion, but genuine love that yearns for a home, family and the raising of offsprings.
Ryōan-ji (龍安寺 o 竜安寺 El templo del dragón tranquilo y pacífico) es un templo Zen situado en Kioto, Japón. Forma parte del conjunto de Monumentos históricos de la antigua Kioto (ciudades de Kioto, Uji y Otsu) declarados Patrimonio de la Humanidad por la Unesco en el año 1994. El templo fue creado por la escuela Myoshinji de los Rinzai, pertenecientes al Budismo Zen.
Dentro de este templo existe uno de los karesansui (jardines secos) más famosos del mundo, construido a finales del siglo XV, en torno al 1488. El creador de este jardín no dejó ninguna explicación sobre su significado, por lo que durante siglos ha sido un misterio descubrir el verdadero sentido o el porqué de su gran belleza.
Se trata de un jardín rectangular construido frente al edificio principal. La composición utiliza arena rastrillada, musgo y rocas. Existe un predominio de formas alargadas colocadas en paralelo a la posición del edificio.
Los tres lados restantes están cerrados por muros, lo que -junto a la línea inferior de la plataforma desde la que se debe contemplar el edificio- permite acotar la visión del jardín en un marco longitudinal.
Durante muchos años se pensó que la mejor interpretación del sentido de la disposición de las piedras en el jardín era el de una especie de "Tigre cruzando un río". En el 2002, unos científicos de la Universidad de Kioto utilizaron ordenadores para buscar formas usando la disposición de las zonas vacías del jardín en vez de la disposición de las piedras y encontraron el patrón de un árbol escondido dentro de la estructura del jardín. Dicen que por eso es tan placentero presenciar el jardín, nuestro subconsiciente capta el patrón del árbol sin que lo notemos.
El mismo equipo de investigación probó moviendo algunas piedras de forma aleatoria y vieron que enseguida se perdía la armonía de la configuración inicial. Por ello creen que la construcción del jardín está muy bien pensada y no es un acto de la casualidad.
Aunque el jardín de rocas es el más conocido de Ryōan-ji, el templo también tiene un jardín acuático; el estanque Kyoyochi, construido en el siglo XII como parte de la finca Fujiwara. Recientemente se han plantado cerezos al noroeste del estanque.
es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%8Dan-ji
japonismo.com/blog/viajar-japon-el-templo-ryoanji-de-kioto
Ryōan-ji (Shinjitai: 竜安寺, Kyūjitai: 龍安寺, The Temple of the Dragon at Peace) is a Zen temple located in northwest Kyoto, Japan. It belongs to the Myōshin-ji school of the Rinzai branch of Zen Buddhism. The Ryōan-ji garden is considered one of the finest surviving examples of kare-sansui ("dry landscape"), a refined type of Japanese Zen temple garden design generally featuring distinctive larger rock formations arranged amidst a sweep of smooth pebbles (small, carefully selected polished river rocks) raked into linear patterns that facilitate meditation. The temple and its gardens are listed as one of the Historic Monuments of Ancient Kyoto, and as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
There is controversy over who built the garden and when. Most sources date it to the second half of the 15th century. The conclusive history, though, based on documentary sources, is as follows: Hosokawa Katsumoto (1430–1473), deputy to the shōgun, founded in 1450 the Ryōan-ji temple, but the complex was burnt down during the Ōnin War. His son Masamoto rebuilt the temple at the very end of the same century. It is not clear whether any garden was constructed at that time facing the main hall. First descriptions of a garden, clearly describing one in front of the main hall, date from 1680–1682. It is described as a composition of nine big stones laid out to represent Tiger Cubs Crossing the Water. As the garden has fifteen stones at present, it was clearly different from the garden that we see today. A great fire destroyed the buildings in 1779, and rubble of the burnt buildings was dumped in the garden. Garden writer and specialist Akisato Rito (died c. 1830) redid the garden completely on top of the rubble at the end of the eighteenth century and published a picture of his garden in his Celebrated Gardens and Sights of Kyoto (Miyako rinsen meisho zue) of 1799, showing the garden as it looks today. One big stone at the back was buried partly; it has two first names carved in it, probably names of untouchable stone workers, so called kawaramono. There is no evidence of Zen monks having worked on the garden, apart from the raking of the sand.
The temple's name is synonymous with the temple's famous Zen garden, the karesansui (dry landscape) rock garden, thought to have been built in the late 15th century.
The garden is a rectangle of 248 square meters (2,670 square feet), twenty-five meters by ten meters. Placed within it are fifteen stones of different sizes, carefully composed in five groups; one group of five stones, two groups of three, and two groups of two stones. The stones are surrounded by white gravel, which is carefully raked each day by the monks. The only vegetation in the garden is some moss around the stones.
The garden is meant to be viewed from a seated position on the veranda of the hōjō, the residence of the abbot of the monastery. The stones are placed so that the entire composition cannot be seen at once from the veranda. They are also arranged so that when looking at the garden from any angle (other than from above) only fourteen of the boulders are visible at one time. It is traditionally said that only through attaining enlightenment would one be able to view the fifteenth boulder.
The wall behind the garden is an important element of the garden. It is made of clay, which has been stained by age with subtle brown and orange tones. In 1977, the tile roof of the wall was restored with tree bark to its original appearance. When the garden was rebuilt in 1799, it came up higher than before and a view over the wall to the mountain scenery behind came about. At present this view is blocked by trees.
Like any work of art, the artistic garden of Ryōan-ji is also open to interpretation or research into possible meanings. Many different theories have been put forward inside and outside Japan about what the garden is supposed to represent, from islands in a stream, a tiger family crossing a river, mountain peaks, to theories about secrets of geometry or the rules of equilibrium of odd numbers. Garden historian Gunter Nitschke wrote: "The garden at Ryōan-ji does not symbolize anything, or more precisely, to avoid any misunderstanding, the garden of Ryōan-ji does not symbolize, nor does it have the value of reproducing a natural beauty that one can find in the real or mythical world. I consider it to be an abstract composition of 'natural' objects in space, a composition whose function is to incite meditation."
In an article published by the science journal Nature, Gert van Tonder and Michael Lyons analyze the rock garden by generating a model of shape analysis (medial axis) in early visual processing.
Using this model, they show that the empty space of the garden is implicitly structured, and is aligned with the temple's architecture. According to the researchers, one critical axis of symmetry passes close to the centre of the main hall, which is the traditionally preferred viewing point. In essence, viewing the placement of the stones from a sightline along this point brings a shape from nature (a dichotomously branched tree with a mean branch length decreasing monotonically from the trunk to the tertiary level) in relief.
The researchers propose that the implicit structure of the garden is designed to appeal to the viewer's unconscious visual sensitivity to axial-symmetry skeletons of stimulus shapes. In support of their findings, they found that imposing a random perturbation of the locations of individual rock features destroyed the special characteristics.
While the rock garden is the best-known garden of Ryōan-ji, the temple also has a water garden; the Kyoyochi Pond, built in the 12th century as part of the Fujiwara estate. Cherry trees have recently been planted northwest of the pond.
Nueva versión de una imagen previa, revisada por una sugerencia implícita en el comentario de una querida amiga.
New version of a previous image, revised by a suggestion implicit in a dear friend's comment.
(Thanks Marjan, I like this version better!)
Gracias por vuestras visitas, comentarios y favoritos!
Thanks for your visits, comments and faves!
A Faithful Dog Will Play With You
And Laugh With You -Or Cry-
He'll Gladly Starve To Stay With You
Nor Ever Reason Why,
And When You're Feeling Out Of Sorts
Somehow He'll Understand
He'll Watch You With His Shining Eyes
And Try To Lick Your Hand.
His Blind, Implicit Faith In You
Is Matched By His Great Love -
The Kind That All Of Us Should Have
In The Master, Up Above.
When Everything Is Said And Done
I Guess This Isn't Odd
For When You Spell "Dog" Backwards
You Get The Name Of God. (author unknown)
# # #
Buddy went back to California today.....t'was heaven when he was here.
Giraffe have the loosest social structure in the animal kingdom with the groups changing in size constantly as individuals move from one place to another. Despite this loose social structure male Giraffe tussle for dominance for it is the stronger that gets the females when they are in heat.
Giraffes prefer acacia, a very broad genus of thorny trees and shrubs that grow abundantly in Africa and Australia. Besides the implicit nutrition, the leaves of this genus of plants provide them with large amounts of water, which is why they can spend a lot of time without drinking. They dedicate much of their day to feeding since they chew slowly and must cover with their saliva the large spines of the acacias to avoid any damage in their organism.
For greater detail, please click on the image.
NOTE: Flickr unfortunately only allows 3 mins of video. My film is over 7 mins long so this version is cut-off very brutally. If you want to see the whole, unbutchered film, please hop on to Vimeo. Here's the link: vimeo.com/91702619
‘Beyond’ presents poetry in colorful motion and music. In 3 distinct movements, its enchanting tour of Beno's audiovisual craftsmanship lifts you from the electrifying buzz of the present to vistas of near-future tomorrows: Sparks of Inception; The pulse of the Organism; From Here to Beyond.
‘Beyond’ relates the seemingly limitless power of human imagination to create and transform on a scale far beyond our own. It is a tall tale of inspiration, courage, determination, tenacity and perseverance through adversity. Shot at locations throughout Abu Dhabi and Dubai, ‘Beyond’s implicit story is about much more than the success of the UAE. What is unfolding in the UAE is a shining, symbolic example of the towering achievements of mankind as a whole.
Showing off the best of 2 years worth of shooting, 'Beyond' doubles as Beno's ‘out-of-the-box’ showreel of client-commissioned time-lapse photography work between 2011 and 2012.
The musical score was composed expressly for 'Beyond' by the immensely talented, award winning composer Vladimir Persan. His gift for music seems to have no limits and having heard most of his past work, it can be said with certainty that his score for 'Beyond' is among his finest.
It's an incredibly cinematic, rich, multi-layered and complex piece of work.
Do yourself a favor; listen only with proper speakers or headphones. You'd be missing out any other way.
You can purchase Vlad’s score from Amazon and iTunes:
itunes.apple.com/us/album/beyond-suite-single/id860223996
Website: vladimirpersan.com
Gear employed in the filming of my time lapses:
•Canon DSLR cameras
•Canon and Nikon lenses
•CamBLOCK motion control system
•Genie Syrp portable motion control system
•Gitzo & Manfrotto tripods
•Really Right Stuff ballheads and clamps
•LEE and Heliopan filters
•Promote Remote Control intervalometer by Promote Systems
Software:
•LR Timelapse (secret weapon of every self-respecting time lapser)
•GB Timelapse
•Adobe Lightroom
•Adobe Photoshop
•Adobe After Effects
•Adobe Premiere
For location permits and access, help, inspiration and invaluable wisdom, I would like to thank: Fredi Devas, Chadden Hunter, Dan Rees, Ali Zaigham, Majed Taifur, Simon McCarthy, Denise Keller, Mohammed El Habech, Dhruv Bahri, Anas Saleh, Sanjay Tripathi, Wolfgang Wagner, Sebastian Opitz, Sami Eid, Arab Ameerah, Zaineb Al-Hassani, Daniel Cheong, Colby Brown, Elia Locardi, Karim Nafatni, Richard James Bentley, Ben Wiggins, Tom Lowe, Vikram Verma, Sandeep Nair, Jasem Almeraikhi, Riki Butland, Artyom Kamshilin, Stew Mayer, Barak Epstein, Chris Thomson, Ben Ryan, Timur Gafrov, Marco Famà, Subodh Shetty, and of course, Vladimir Persan.
For all of the above and beyond, thank you Muriel Farah. You are the center of my universe.
Copyright Disclaimer ATTENTION:
All of the scenes in 'Beyond' were client commissioned. I do not own any of the copyrights, my clients do. None of the scenes featured in this film are available for licensing directly from me, so please don't ask, don't download and don't use the footage in any way, shape or form. DO NOT re-upload the film on Vimeo, Youtube, Facebook, Instagra or any other video sharing or social platform. It's only going to get you in trouble.
You can follow me here:
facebook.com/Benosaradzicphotography
plus.google.com/+BenoSaradzic/posts
twitter.com/Beno_Saradzic
flickr.com/photos/benosaradzic/
instagram.com/benosaradzic
email: benosar@gmail.com
Near the center of the park is a concrete, saddle-shaped monument that covers a cenotaph holding the names of all of the people killed by the bomb. The monument is aligned to frame the Peace Flame and the A-Bomb Dome. The Memorial Cenotaph was one of the first memorial monuments built on open field on August 6, 1952. The arch shape represents a shelter for the souls of the victims.
The cenotaph carries the epitaph 安らかに眠って下さい 過ちは 繰返しませぬから, which means "please rest in peace, for [we/they] shall not repeat the error." In Japanese, the sentence's subject is omitted, thus it could be interpreted as either "[we] shall not repeat the error" or as "[they] shall not repeat the error". This was intended to memorialize the victims of Hiroshima without politicizing the issue, taking advantage of the fact that polite Japanese speech typically demands lexical ambiguity in the first place. The epitaph was written by Tadayoshi Saika, Professor of English Literature at Hiroshima University. He also provided the English translation, "Let all the souls here rest in peace for we shall not repeat the evil." On November 3, 1983, an explanation plaque in English was added in order to convey Professor Saika's intent that "we" refers to "all humanity", not specifically the Japanese or Americans, and that the "error" is the "evil of war":
The inscription on the front panel offers a prayer for the peaceful repose of the victims and a pledge on behalf of all humanity never to repeat the evil of war. It expresses the spirit of Hiroshima — enduring grief, transcending hatred, pursuing harmony and prosperity for all, and yearning for genuine, lasting world peace.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ambiguity of the phrase has the potential to offend; some right-wing circles in Japan have interpreted the words as an admission of guilt—implicitly reading it as "we (the Japanese people) shall not repeat the error"—and they criticize the epitaph as a self-accusation by the Japanese empire. In July 2005, the cenotaph was vandalized by a Japanese man affiliated with the Japanese right.
www.buzzfeed.com/gabrielsanchez/photographs-of-candid-rom...
The places where I usually share my photographs - Flickr or 500px - are photo sharing communities where comment and discussion, when they do happen, tend to centre around purely photographic elements such as light, colour and cameras. And so it's been pleasing to read some of the more widely contextualised thoughts and criticisms of my work and the way it has been presented by BuzzFeed, which yesterday published a series of my photographs. Although I know that it's one of the world's top 100 websites by traffic, it didn't really occur to me that the series would be seen by so many people (almost 300,000 in the twelve hours from being posted to the time of writing). Or, if it did, I didn't think through fully the consequences of exposure of that kind.
Given that I know what the comments section of the internet can be like, it's refreshing that discussion has largely been civil, mature and occasionally insightful. Stephen Fry once said - as I'm sure others before him have - that if you believe good reviews of your work, then you must also believe the bad ones. I'm not sure that I fully agree, but I've enjoyed reading both the compliments and the criticisms for more than just narcissistic or masochistic indulgence: it forces me to engage with my work in ways I might not have previously. Occasionally my consciousness is raised to some moral or ethical implications I hadn't considered; occasionally I'm forced to admit that it simply isn't very good.
Discussion of the series has been along three main lines: veracity; appropriateness of the title; diversity. I'd like to - and am glad I'm able to - deal with the first two very quickly, because it's the third one that has given me most pause.
1. Veracity. The claim that "his subjects are unaware and unposed" is one that I made and which BuzzFeed have quoted. To the person who responded to this with the snide "RIIIIIGGGGGGHHHHHT!" I can only say: believe what you want, but it's true in 24 of the 25 images. The exception is of the couple standing before St Paul's Cathedral. I had been commissioned to capture the projection of words onto the dome and, as I was setting up that evening, I saw a couple hugging in front of it. By the time was ready to shoot, they had finished and were walking away, but I approached them and asked them if they would re-stage the moment I had just missed. That is the only time. In the other 24 cases, the subjects might have been aware of my presence because of the confined or empty space in which the image was taken, but none were ever asked to pose, and none ever acknowledged - even implicitly or indirectly - that they were being photographed.
2. Appropriateness of the Title ("25 Pictures That Prove Love Is Real"). As many journalists and photographers know, titles, headings, headlines and subheadlines are often the remit of editors and not the producers or creators of the work contained within. So, while it has been interesting to read about whether or not the photographs depict people who are genuinely in love (whatever that means) or merely the preludes to one night stands, I make no claim either way. Many of these photographs are of strangers, of people whose stories I don't know but for one moment I photographed because I saw something I thought beautiful or real (even if just real lust or real drunken passion). I engaged with their story at that moment, and if by looking at these photographs others do the same, then I'm pleased.
3. Diversity. This criticism is the one that warrants the most consideration on my part because it's true: this series of photographs lacks diversity. "Seeing some girls that weren't only size 5 and under would be nice"; "...all young, thin, white and conventionally attractive"; "Whiter than a damn Klan rally."; "All around the globe? Really?" These are all fair statements ("All around the globe" are the words of an editor, but it's true that a few countries are pictured here.) My explanation for the lack of diversity is that, while they are not representative of the world, or of love, they are representative of my experience. I should be even more specific: they are not representative of my experience as a human being, but they are representative of my experience as a sometime photographer of strangers.
These photographs depict scenes and situations that I did not seek out, but that I happened to see. And while I see minority ethnic and elderly couples together, the occasions on which that coincided with a time when my camera was at the ready and when the photograph I took was considered by me to be good enough to be included in this series appears to be very small. In this series, there is one Chinese woman, admittedly thin and conventionally attractive ( although I suspect older than most of the subjects here) and one Chinese boy, again conventionally attractive. There are also Greek and Italian people depicted here, although less obviously, and a couple of others who I don't think are white but I'm not sure. Then there is the fact that, while I do see older couples and minority ethnic couples, I see them a lot less. The reason for this is that the majority of these photographs were taken while I was in my early to mid 20s, and the majority of them were taken in Scotland, where I live. I spent much of my early mid 20s in bars and nightclubs (still do, I suppose...) and the minority ethnic population of Scotland is a mere 4%. I sit typing this in a fairly busy cafe on a fairly busy street. I look around me, inside the cafe and out, and I count 35 people: 34 are white, 1 is East Asian. In the reflection of my laptop screen, I add one more person to the count: a half-Chinese man.
Intimacy of the kind depicted here - call it love, call it drunken lust, whatever - is far more often seen in bars and nightclubs than on the street, and those who frequent bars and nightclubs tend to be young. Moreover, young people are more comfortable being photographed candidly: the majority of "please remove this photograph" requests I receive are from older people. This is also the case - or I've worried that it's the case - not ethnically but culturally in many of the places I've visited where the majority population is non-white. For example, in my travels to Morocco, Thailand, India or Pakistan, I would be less willing (whether through cultural sensitivity or cultural ignorance) to point my camera at strangers being intimate.
I hope the reasons I've given explain why this series lacks diversity, and writing them has left me with a question for myself: do I have a RESPONSIBILITY to reflect the diversity of the world/ country/city when documenting it? I suspect the answer, as usual, is "it depends". This compilation of images was drawn from my archive: I did not set out to document "lovers from around the globe", which if I had then I believe I would have had a responsibility to reflect the different kinds of people who love (which is every kind of people). But perhaps in compiling the series, it's something I should have borne in mind.
This series of images makes no claims, but I realise now that perhaps it should carry a disclaimer of sorts: these images were taken, by happenstance rather than by design, by a young man who is largely surrounded in his existence by young, middle-class white people.
Thanks for making me think about this.
Glasgow, 2014.
Cairngorms National Park is a national park in northeast Scotland, established in 2003. It was the second of two national parks established by the Scottish Parliament, after Loch Lomond and The Trossachs National Park, which was set up in 2002. The park covers the Cairngorms range of mountains, and surrounding hills. Already the largest national park in the United Kingdom, in 2010 it was expanded into Perth and Kinross.
Roughly 18,000 people reside within the 4,528 square kilometre national park. The largest communities are Aviemore, Ballater, Braemar, Grantown-on-Spey, Kingussie, Newtonmore, and Tomintoul. Tourism makes up about 80% of the economy. In 2018, 1.9 million tourism visits were recorded. The majority of visitors are domestic, with 25 per cent coming from elsewhere in the UK, and 21 per cent being from other countries.
The Cairngorms National Park covers an area of 4,528 km2 (1,748 sq mi) in the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Moray, Highland, Angus and Perth and Kinross. The mountain range of the Cairngorms lies at the heart of the national park, but forms only one part of it, alongside other hill ranges such as the Angus Glens and the Monadhliath, and lower areas like Strathspey and upper Deeside. Three major rivers rise in the park: the Spey, the Dee, and the Don. The Spey, which is the second longest river in Scotland, rises in the Monadhliath, whilst the Dee and the Don both rise in the Cairngorms themselves.
The Cairngorms themselves are a spectacular landscape, similar in appearance to the Hardangervidda National Park of Norway in having a large area of upland plateau.[citation needed] The range consists of three main plateaux at about 1000–1200 m above sea level, above which domed summits (the eroded stumps of once much higher mountains)[8] rise to around 1300 m. Many of the summits have tors, free-standing rock outcrops that stand on top of the boulder-strewn landscape.[9] The edges of the plateaux are in places steep cliffs of granite and they are excellent for skiing, rock climbing and ice climbing. The Cairngorms form an arctic-alpine mountain environment, with tundra-like characteristics and long-lasting snow patches.
The Monadhliath mountains lie to the north of Strathspey, and comprise a bleak, wide plateau rising to between 700 and 950 m.
Two major transport routes run through the park, with both the A9 road and the Highland Main Line crossing over the Pass of Drumochter and running along Strathspey, providing links between the western and northern parts of the park and the cities of Perth and Inverness. The Highland Main Line is the only mainline rail route through the park, however there are several other major roads, including the A86, which links Strathspey to Fort William, and the A93, which links the Deeside area of the park to both Perth and Aberdeen.
The idea that parts of Scotland of wild or remote character should be designated to protect the environment and encourage public access grew in popularity throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1931 a commission headed by Christopher Addison proposed the creation of a national park in the Cairngorms, alongside proposals for parks in England and Wales. Following the Second World War ten national parks were established in England and Wales, and a committee was established to consider the issue of national parks in Scotland. The report, published in 1945, proposed national parks in five areas, one of which was the Cairngorms. The government designated these five areas as "National Park Direction Areas", giving powers for planning decisions taken by local authorities to be reviewed by central government, however the areas were not given full national park status. In 1981 the direction areas were replaced by national scenic areas, of which there are now 40. In 1990 the Countryside Commission for Scotland (CCS) produced a report into protection of the landscape of Scotland, which recommended that four areas were under such pressure that they ought to be designated as national parks, each with an independent planning board, in order to retain their heritage value. The four areas identified were similar to those proposed in 1945, and thus again included the Cairngorms.
Despite this long history of recommendations that national parks be established in Scotland, no action was taken until the establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999. The two current parks were designated as such under the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000, which was one of the first pieces of legislation to be passed by the Parliament. Before the national park was established in 2003, Scottish Natural Heritage conducted a consultation exercise, considering the boundary and the powers and structure of the new park authority.
Following the establishment of the park many groups and local communities felt that a large area of highland Perth and Kinross should form part of the park and carried out a sustained campaign. On 13 March 2008 Michael Russell announced that the national park would be extended to take in Blair Atholl and Spittal of Glenshee, and the park was duly extended on 4 October 2010.
In 2015, 53 km (33 mi) of the 132 kV power line in the middle of the park was taken down, while another section along the edge of the park was upgraded to 400 kV.
Tourism accounts for much of the economy and 43% of employment within the park area. In 2018, 1.9 million tourism visits were recorded. The park's mandate is sustainable tourism "that builds on, conserves and enhances [its] special qualities". The Cairngorms Business Partnership includes 350 private sector member businesses. In early 2017, the park was voted by Hundredrooms as one of the top seven eco-tourism destinations in Europe and discussed as a "mecca for outdoor enthusiasts". The Visit Scotland web site discusses the amenities and indicates that this park "has more mountains, forest paths, rivers, lochs, wildlife hotspots, friendly villages and distilleries than you can possibly imagine".
The park is popular for activities such as walking, cycling, mountain biking, climbing and canoeing: for hillwalkers there are 55 Munros (mountains above 3,000 feet (910 m) in height) in the park.[6] Two of Scotland's Great Trails pass through the park: the Speyside Way and the Cateran Trail.
A skiing and winter sports industry is concentrated in the Cairngoms, with three of Scotland's five resorts situated here. They are the Cairn Gorm Ski Centre, Glenshee Ski Centre and The Lecht Ski Centre. There was controversy surrounding the construction of the Cairngorm Mountain Railway at the Cairn Gorm Ski Centre, a scheme supported by the national park authority. Supporters of the scheme claimed that it would bring in valuable tourist income, whilst opponents argued that such a development was unsuitable for a protected area. To reduce erosion, the railway operates a "closed scheme" and only allows skiers (in season) out of the upper Ptarmigan station: other visitors may not access the mountain from the railway unless on a guided walk.
The Cairngorm Mountain Railway funicular was closed in October 2018 "due to health and safety concerns", or "structural problems" according to reports in summer 2019. At the time, an investigation was still underway to determine whether modifications would be "achievable and affordable". (The same situation was reported in December 2019.) This railway first opened in 2001 and connects the base station with a restaurant on Cairn Gorm mountain.
Aviemore is a busy and popular holiday destination, located close to Glenmore Forest Park and the Cairn Gorm Ski Centre. The Strathspey Railway is preserved railway running steam and heritage diesel services between Aviemore railway station and Broomhill via Boat of Garten, along part of the former Highland Railway.
The Highland Wildlife Park also lies within the national park, and the Frank Bruce Sculpture Trail is located near Feshiebridge. This short trail through the woods features a sculptures created by Frank Bruce between 1965 and 2009.
In addition to the Cairngorm Brewery, six distilleries are located within the Park area: Dalwhinnie distillery, The Glenlivet distillery, Tomintoul distillery, Royal Lochnagar distillery, Balmenach distillery and The Speyside distillery. Royal Lochnagar, Dalwhinnie, Cairngorm Brewery and Glenlivet are set up to receive visitors on a regular basis. Tomintoul, Balmenach and Speyside can be visited but require an appointment made in advance.
The Highlands is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots language replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. The term is also used for the area north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd literally means "the place of the Gaels" and traditionally, from a Gaelic-speaking point of view, includes both the Western Isles and the Highlands.
The area is very sparsely populated, with many mountain ranges dominating the region, and includes the highest mountain in the British Isles, Ben Nevis. During the 18th and early 19th centuries the population of the Highlands rose to around 300,000, but from c. 1841 and for the next 160 years, the natural increase in population was exceeded by emigration (mostly to Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and migration to the industrial cities of Scotland and England.) and passim The area is now one of the most sparsely populated in Europe. At 9.1/km2 (24/sq mi) in 2012, the population density in the Highlands and Islands is less than one seventh of Scotland's as a whole.
The Highland Council is the administrative body for much of the Highlands, with its administrative centre at Inverness. However, the Highlands also includes parts of the council areas of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Argyll and Bute, Moray, North Ayrshire, Perth and Kinross, Stirling and West Dunbartonshire.
The Scottish Highlands is the only area in the British Isles to have the taiga biome as it features concentrated populations of Scots pine forest: see Caledonian Forest. It is the most mountainous part of the United Kingdom.
Between the 15th century and the mid-20th century, the area differed from most of the Lowlands in terms of language. In Scottish Gaelic, the region is known as the Gàidhealtachd, because it was traditionally the Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland, although the language is now largely confined to The Hebrides. The terms are sometimes used interchangeably but have different meanings in their respective languages. Scottish English (in its Highland form) is the predominant language of the area today, though Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic speech to a significant extent. Historically, the "Highland line" distinguished the two Scottish cultures. While the Highland line broadly followed the geography of the Grampians in the south, it continued in the north, cutting off the north-eastern areas, that is Eastern Caithness, Orkney and Shetland, from the more Gaelic Highlands and Hebrides.
Historically, the major social unit of the Highlands was the clan. Scottish kings, particularly James VI, saw clans as a challenge to their authority; the Highlands was seen by many as a lawless region. The Scots of the Lowlands viewed the Highlanders as backward and more "Irish". The Highlands were seen as the overspill of Gaelic Ireland. They made this distinction by separating Germanic "Scots" English and the Gaelic by renaming it "Erse" a play on Eire. Following the Union of the Crowns, James VI had the military strength to back up any attempts to impose some control. The result was, in 1609, the Statutes of Iona which started the process of integrating clan leaders into Scottish society. The gradual changes continued into the 19th century, as clan chiefs thought of themselves less as patriarchal leaders of their people and more as commercial landlords. The first effect on the clansmen who were their tenants was the change to rents being payable in money rather than in kind. Later, rents were increased as Highland landowners sought to increase their income. This was followed, mostly in the period 1760–1850, by agricultural improvement that often (particularly in the Western Highlands) involved clearance of the population to make way for large scale sheep farms. Displaced tenants were set up in crofting communities in the process. The crofts were intended not to provide all the needs of their occupiers; they were expected to work in other industries such as kelping and fishing. Crofters came to rely substantially on seasonal migrant work, particularly in the Lowlands. This gave impetus to the learning of English, which was seen by many rural Gaelic speakers to be the essential "language of work".
Older historiography attributes the collapse of the clan system to the aftermath of the Jacobite risings. This is now thought less influential by historians. Following the Jacobite rising of 1745 the British government enacted a series of laws to try to suppress the clan system, including bans on the bearing of arms and the wearing of tartan, and limitations on the activities of the Scottish Episcopal Church. Most of this legislation was repealed by the end of the 18th century as the Jacobite threat subsided. There was soon a rehabilitation of Highland culture. Tartan was adopted for Highland regiments in the British Army, which poor Highlanders joined in large numbers in the era of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1790–1815). Tartan had largely been abandoned by the ordinary people of the region, but in the 1820s, tartan and the kilt were adopted by members of the social elite, not just in Scotland, but across Europe. The international craze for tartan, and for idealising a romanticised Highlands, was set off by the Ossian cycle, and further popularised by the works of Walter Scott. His "staging" of the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822 and the king's wearing of tartan resulted in a massive upsurge in demand for kilts and tartans that could not be met by the Scottish woollen industry. Individual clan tartans were largely designated in this period and they became a major symbol of Scottish identity. This "Highlandism", by which all of Scotland was identified with the culture of the Highlands, was cemented by Queen Victoria's interest in the country, her adoption of Balmoral as a major royal retreat, and her interest in "tartenry".
Recurrent famine affected the Highlands for much of its history, with significant instances as late as 1817 in the Eastern Highlands and the early 1850s in the West. Over the 18th century, the region had developed a trade of black cattle into Lowland markets, and this was balanced by imports of meal into the area. There was a critical reliance on this trade to provide sufficient food, and it is seen as an essential prerequisite for the population growth that started in the 18th century. Most of the Highlands, particularly in the North and West was short of the arable land that was essential for the mixed, run rig based, communal farming that existed before agricultural improvement was introduced into the region.[a] Between the 1760s and the 1830s there was a substantial trade in unlicensed whisky that had been distilled in the Highlands. Lowland distillers (who were not able to avoid the heavy taxation of this product) complained that Highland whisky made up more than half the market. The development of the cattle trade is taken as evidence that the pre-improvement Highlands was not an immutable system, but did exploit the economic opportunities that came its way. The illicit whisky trade demonstrates the entrepreneurial ability of the peasant classes.
Agricultural improvement reached the Highlands mostly over the period 1760 to 1850. Agricultural advisors, factors, land surveyors and others educated in the thinking of Adam Smith were keen to put into practice the new ideas taught in Scottish universities. Highland landowners, many of whom were burdened with chronic debts, were generally receptive to the advice they offered and keen to increase the income from their land. In the East and South the resulting change was similar to that in the Lowlands, with the creation of larger farms with single tenants, enclosure of the old run rig fields, introduction of new crops (such as turnips), land drainage and, as a consequence of all this, eviction, as part of the Highland clearances, of many tenants and cottars. Some of those cleared found employment on the new, larger farms, others moved to the accessible towns of the Lowlands.
In the West and North, evicted tenants were usually given tenancies in newly created crofting communities, while their former holdings were converted into large sheep farms. Sheep farmers could pay substantially higher rents than the run rig farmers and were much less prone to falling into arrears. Each croft was limited in size so that the tenants would have to find work elsewhere. The major alternatives were fishing and the kelp industry. Landlords took control of the kelp shores, deducting the wages earned by their tenants from the rent due and retaining the large profits that could be earned at the high prices paid for the processed product during the Napoleonic wars.
When the Napoleonic wars finished in 1815, the Highland industries were affected by the return to a peacetime economy. The price of black cattle fell, nearly halving between 1810 and the 1830s. Kelp prices had peaked in 1810, but reduced from £9 a ton in 1823 to £3 13s 4d a ton in 1828. Wool prices were also badly affected. This worsened the financial problems of debt-encumbered landlords. Then, in 1846, potato blight arrived in the Highlands, wiping out the essential subsistence crop for the overcrowded crofting communities. As the famine struck, the government made clear to landlords that it was their responsibility to provide famine relief for their tenants. The result of the economic downturn had been that a large proportion of Highland estates were sold in the first half of the 19th century. T M Devine points out that in the region most affected by the potato famine, by 1846, 70 per cent of the landowners were new purchasers who had not owned Highland property before 1800. More landlords were obliged to sell due to the cost of famine relief. Those who were protected from the worst of the crisis were those with extensive rental income from sheep farms. Government loans were made available for drainage works, road building and other improvements and many crofters became temporary migrants – taking work in the Lowlands. When the potato famine ceased in 1856, this established a pattern of more extensive working away from the Highlands.
The unequal concentration of land ownership remained an emotional and controversial subject, of enormous importance to the Highland economy, and eventually became a cornerstone of liberal radicalism. The poor crofters were politically powerless, and many of them turned to religion. They embraced the popularly oriented, fervently evangelical Presbyterian revival after 1800. Most joined the breakaway "Free Church" after 1843. This evangelical movement was led by lay preachers who themselves came from the lower strata, and whose preaching was implicitly critical of the established order. The religious change energised the crofters and separated them from the landlords; it helped prepare them for their successful and violent challenge to the landlords in the 1880s through the Highland Land League. Violence erupted, starting on the Isle of Skye, when Highland landlords cleared their lands for sheep and deer parks. It was quietened when the government stepped in, passing the Crofters' Holdings (Scotland) Act, 1886 to reduce rents, guarantee fixity of tenure, and break up large estates to provide crofts for the homeless. This contrasted with the Irish Land War underway at the same time, where the Irish were intensely politicised through roots in Irish nationalism, while political dimensions were limited. In 1885 three Independent Crofter candidates were elected to Parliament, which listened to their pleas. The results included explicit security for the Scottish smallholders in the "crofting counties"; the legal right to bequeath tenancies to descendants; and the creation of a Crofting Commission. The Crofters as a political movement faded away by 1892, and the Liberal Party gained their votes.
Today, the Highlands are the largest of Scotland's whisky producing regions; the relevant area runs from Orkney to the Isle of Arran in the south and includes the northern isles and much of Inner and Outer Hebrides, Argyll, Stirlingshire, Arran, as well as sections of Perthshire and Aberdeenshire. (Other sources treat The Islands, except Islay, as a separate whisky producing region.) This massive area has over 30 distilleries, or 47 when the Islands sub-region is included in the count. According to one source, the top five are The Macallan, Glenfiddich, Aberlour, Glenfarclas and Balvenie. While Speyside is geographically within the Highlands, that region is specified as distinct in terms of whisky productions. Speyside single malt whiskies are produced by about 50 distilleries.
According to Visit Scotland, Highlands whisky is "fruity, sweet, spicy, malty". Another review states that Northern Highlands single malt is "sweet and full-bodied", the Eastern Highlands and Southern Highlands whiskies tend to be "lighter in texture" while the distilleries in the Western Highlands produce single malts with a "much peatier influence".
The Scottish Reformation achieved partial success in the Highlands. Roman Catholicism remained strong in some areas, owing to remote locations and the efforts of Franciscan missionaries from Ireland, who regularly came to celebrate Mass. There remain significant Catholic strongholds within the Highlands and Islands such as Moidart and Morar on the mainland and South Uist and Barra in the southern Outer Hebrides. The remoteness of the region and the lack of a Gaelic-speaking clergy undermined the missionary efforts of the established church. The later 18th century saw somewhat greater success, owing to the efforts of the SSPCK missionaries and to the disruption of traditional society after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. In the 19th century, the evangelical Free Churches, which were more accepting of Gaelic language and culture, grew rapidly, appealing much more strongly than did the established church.
For the most part, however, the Highlands are considered predominantly Protestant, belonging to the Church of Scotland. In contrast to the Catholic southern islands, the northern Outer Hebrides islands (Lewis, Harris and North Uist) have an exceptionally high proportion of their population belonging to the Protestant Free Church of Scotland or the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The Outer Hebrides have been described as the last bastion of Calvinism in Britain and the Sabbath remains widely observed. Inverness and the surrounding area has a majority Protestant population, with most locals belonging to either The Kirk or the Free Church of Scotland. The church maintains a noticeable presence within the area, with church attendance notably higher than in other parts of Scotland. Religion continues to play an important role in Highland culture, with Sabbath observance still widely practised, particularly in the Hebrides.
In traditional Scottish geography, the Highlands refers to that part of Scotland north-west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which crosses mainland Scotland in a near-straight line from Helensburgh to Stonehaven. However the flat coastal lands that occupy parts of the counties of Nairnshire, Morayshire, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire are often excluded as they do not share the distinctive geographical and cultural features of the rest of the Highlands. The north-east of Caithness, as well as Orkney and Shetland, are also often excluded from the Highlands, although the Hebrides are usually included. The Highland area, as so defined, differed from the Lowlands in language and tradition, having preserved Gaelic speech and customs centuries after the anglicisation of the latter; this led to a growing perception of a divide, with the cultural distinction between Highlander and Lowlander first noted towards the end of the 14th century. In Aberdeenshire, the boundary between the Highlands and the Lowlands is not well defined. There is a stone beside the A93 road near the village of Dinnet on Royal Deeside which states 'You are now in the Highlands', although there are areas of Highland character to the east of this point.
A much wider definition of the Highlands is that used by the Scotch whisky industry. Highland single malts are produced at distilleries north of an imaginary line between Dundee and Greenock, thus including all of Aberdeenshire and Angus.
Inverness is regarded as the Capital of the Highlands, although less so in the Highland parts of Aberdeenshire, Angus, Perthshire and Stirlingshire which look more to Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and Stirling as their commercial centres.
The Highland Council area, created as one of the local government regions of Scotland, has been a unitary council area since 1996. The council area excludes a large area of the southern and eastern Highlands, and the Western Isles, but includes Caithness. Highlands is sometimes used, however, as a name for the council area, as in the former Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern is also used to refer to the area, as in the former Northern Constabulary. These former bodies both covered the Highland council area and the island council areas of Orkney, Shetland and the Western Isles.
Much of the Highlands area overlaps the Highlands and Islands area. An electoral region called Highlands and Islands is used in elections to the Scottish Parliament: this area includes Orkney and Shetland, as well as the Highland Council local government area, the Western Isles and most of the Argyll and Bute and Moray local government areas. Highlands and Islands has, however, different meanings in different contexts. It means Highland (the local government area), Orkney, Shetland, and the Western Isles in Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service. Northern, as in Northern Constabulary, refers to the same area as that covered by the fire and rescue service.
There have been trackways from the Lowlands to the Highlands since prehistoric times. Many traverse the Mounth, a spur of mountainous land that extends from the higher inland range to the North Sea slightly north of Stonehaven. The most well-known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Elsick Mounth, Cryne Corse Mounth and Cairnamounth.
Although most of the Highlands is geographically on the British mainland, it is somewhat less accessible than the rest of Britain; thus most UK couriers categorise it separately, alongside Northern Ireland, the Isle of Man, and other offshore islands. They thus charge additional fees for delivery to the Highlands, or exclude the area entirely. While the physical remoteness from the largest population centres inevitably leads to higher transit cost, there is confusion and consternation over the scale of the fees charged and the effectiveness of their communication, and the use of the word Mainland in their justification. Since the charges are often based on postcode areas, many far less remote areas, including some which are traditionally considered part of the lowlands, are also subject to these charges. Royal Mail is the only delivery network bound by a Universal Service Obligation to charge a uniform tariff across the UK. This, however, applies only to mail items and not larger packages which are dealt with by its Parcelforce division.
The Highlands lie to the north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, which runs from Arran to Stonehaven. This part of Scotland is largely composed of ancient rocks from the Cambrian and Precambrian periods which were uplifted during the later Caledonian Orogeny. Smaller formations of Lewisian gneiss in the northwest are up to 3 billion years old. The overlying rocks of the Torridon Sandstone form mountains in the Torridon Hills such as Liathach and Beinn Eighe in Wester Ross.
These foundations are interspersed with many igneous intrusions of a more recent age, the remnants of which have formed mountain massifs such as the Cairngorms and the Cuillin of Skye. A significant exception to the above are the fossil-bearing beds of Old Red Sandstone found principally along the Moray Firth coast and partially down the Highland Boundary Fault. The Jurassic beds found in isolated locations on Skye and Applecross reflect the complex underlying geology. They are the original source of much North Sea oil. The Great Glen is formed along a transform fault which divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands.
The entire region was covered by ice sheets during the Pleistocene ice ages, save perhaps for a few nunataks. The complex geomorphology includes incised valleys and lochs carved by the action of mountain streams and ice, and a topography of irregularly distributed mountains whose summits have similar heights above sea-level, but whose bases depend upon the amount of denudation to which the plateau has been subjected in various places.
Climate
The region is much warmer than other areas at similar latitudes (such as Kamchatka in Russia, or Labrador in Canada) because of the Gulf Stream making it cool, damp and temperate. The Köppen climate classification is "Cfb" at low altitudes, then becoming "Cfc", "Dfc" and "ET" at higher altitudes.
Places of interest
An Teallach
Aonach Mòr (Nevis Range ski centre)
Arrochar Alps
Balmoral Castle
Balquhidder
Battlefield of Culloden
Beinn Alligin
Beinn Eighe
Ben Cruachan hydro-electric power station
Ben Lomond
Ben Macdui (second highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Ben Nevis (highest mountain in Scotland and UK)
Cairngorms National Park
Cairngorm Ski centre near Aviemore
Cairngorm Mountains
Caledonian Canal
Cape Wrath
Carrick Castle
Castle Stalker
Castle Tioram
Chanonry Point
Conic Hill
Culloden Moor
Dunadd
Duart Castle
Durness
Eilean Donan
Fingal's Cave (Staffa)
Fort George
Glen Coe
Glen Etive
Glen Kinglas
Glen Lyon
Glen Orchy
Glenshee Ski Centre
Glen Shiel
Glen Spean
Glenfinnan (and its railway station and viaduct)
Grampian Mountains
Hebrides
Highland Folk Museum – The first open-air museum in the UK.
Highland Wildlife Park
Inveraray Castle
Inveraray Jail
Inverness Castle
Inverewe Garden
Iona Abbey
Isle of Staffa
Kilchurn Castle
Kilmartin Glen
Liathach
Lecht Ski Centre
Loch Alsh
Loch Ard
Loch Awe
Loch Assynt
Loch Earn
Loch Etive
Loch Fyne
Loch Goil
Loch Katrine
Loch Leven
Loch Linnhe
Loch Lochy
Loch Lomond
Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park
Loch Lubnaig
Loch Maree
Loch Morar
Loch Morlich
Loch Ness
Loch Nevis
Loch Rannoch
Loch Tay
Lochranza
Luss
Meall a' Bhuiridh (Glencoe Ski Centre)
Scottish Sea Life Sanctuary at Loch Creran
Rannoch Moor
Red Cuillin
Rest and Be Thankful stretch of A83
River Carron, Wester Ross
River Spey
River Tay
Ross and Cromarty
Smoo Cave
Stob Coire a' Chàirn
Stac Polly
Strathspey Railway
Sutherland
Tor Castle
Torridon Hills
Urquhart Castle
West Highland Line (scenic railway)
West Highland Way (Long-distance footpath)
Wester Ross
Court of Customs and Patent Appeals Reports (Patent Cases) in a large DC law library.
Blogged:
dcist.com/2009/07/sunday_photo_july_26_2009.php
www.makeuseof.com/tag/4-great-sites-to-do-a-book-search-b...
ahtim.com/the-most-expensive-iphone-app-that-worth/
www.samanage.com/blog/2010/03/what-is-itil/
www.princeofpetworth.com/2010/03/message-from-chief-judge...
dcist.com/2010/04/seven_dc_students_win_scholastic_eq.php
www.jasnwilsn.com/2010/06/04/the-fate-of-nontextual-eleme...
criminaljustice.change.org/blog/view/in_virginia_a_jailho...
blog.radvision.com/voipsurvivor/2010/09/23/how-do-you-lik...
bizzthemes.com/demo/law-firm/ (slide 2)
studentblog.worldcampus.psu.edu/index.php/2011/05/five-re...
dcist.com/2011/05/law-making_takes_a_summer_break.php
blogs.lawlib.widener.edu/delaware/2011/06/28/summer-readi...
blogs.abc.net.au/nsw/2011/07/self-improvement-wednesday-a...
www.princeofpetworth.com/2011/08/mpd-chief-cathy-lanier-c...
chircu.blogspot.com/2011/09/economic-future-patent-law.html
rflx-s.blogspot.com/2011/10/consejos-para-blogueros-cuand...
www.badmummy.com.au/family-life/there-goes-my-brilliant-c...
dcist.com/2011/10/attention_dc_politics_geeks_lots_mo.php
dcist.com/2011/11/ahead_of_ethics_debate_disagreement.php
dcist.com/2011/12/ethics_meet_elections_1.php
dcist.com/2011/12/ethics_bill_moves_forward_though_pr.php
dcist.com/2012/01/toughest_provisions_of_ethics_bill.php
aprettybook.com/2011/11/30/the-law-in-books/
penneyfox.wordpress.com/2012/03/30/mommy-whats-a-lawyer-y...
socyberty.com/law/frequently-asked-questions-about-no-win...
www.princeofpetworth.com/2012/04/the-5pm-post-twitter-q-a...
whatisacriminallawyer.com/14-articles/8-criminal-self-rep...
www.princeofpetworth.com/2012/06/dc-superior-court-resond...
arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/judge-blasts-colleagu...
www.projectcasting.com/2012/07/25/usa-suits-casting-infor...
www.marilynstowe.co.uk/2012/09/24/for-the-public-good/
www.princeofpetworth.com/2012/11/dear-popville-has-anyone...
www.popville.com/2013/09/dear-popville-charged-1500-to-ch...
dcist.com/2015/02/overheard_in_dc_law_school.php
www.popville.com/2015/02/dear-popville-looking-for-a-lawy...
dcist.com/2015/02/overheard_in_dc_law_school.php
greatergreaterwashington.org/post/27295/breakfast-links-n...
www.popville.com/2015/08/from-the-forum-looking-to-set-up...
www.popville.com/2015/10/but-you-know-what-we-dont-see-pr...
www.popville.com/2015/11/lawyer-for-friend-who-was-hit-by...
www.facebook.com/viralvo/videos/1708518502753087/
www.popville.com/2018/07/id-be-so-grateful-for-any-help-t...
www.popville.com/2018/08/friday-question-of-the-day-do-yo...
www.popville.com/2018/10/pot-smoke-baby-tenant-laws/
www.popville.com/2019/05/does-anyone-know-of-a-good-emplo...
www.popville.com/2019/08/it-may-be-time-to-form-a-tenants...
www.popville.com/2020/01/lease-language-question/
dcist.com/story/20/06/16/d-c-residents-with-felony-convic...
dcist.com/story/21/11/04/dc-council-rewrite-criminal-code/
dcist.com/story/21/11/04/dc-council-rewrite-criminal-code/
dcist.com/story/21/11/04/dc-council-rewrite-criminal-code/
dcist.com/story/22/11/15/dc-council-will-vote-overhaul-cr...
dcist.com/story/23/01/03/mayor-bowser-dc-criminal-code-veto/
dcist.com/story/23/01/17/dc-council-override-bowser-veto-...
No tourists, just local people amazed to see a foreign guy wandering in the streets, and calling you to be on the pictures. Somaliland is far from what you imagine!
Formerly a British colony, Somaliland briefly reached its independence in 1960. It is one of the three Territories, with Puntland and former Italian Somalia that compose the current State of Somalia.
Somaliland proclaimed its independence in 1991, adopting its own currency, a fully independent government, working institutions and police. The authorities organized a referendum in 2001, advocating once again for full independence. However, to date, it is not internationally recognized.
Ethiopian Prime minister Meles Zenawi is the only one to speak about a Somalilander president, recognizing implicitly the existence of an independent State. Indeed the economy of neighboring Ethiopia dramatically depends on Somaliland stability, since the landlocked country’s main trade route passes through the Somalilander port of Berbera… And vice-versa, the economy of Somaliland largely depends on the taxes and duties it charges Ethiopia. Besides that, the principal economic activity of Somaliland is livestock exportation to the Arabian Peninsula. Most people are Sunni Muslims and speak Arabic, as well as some Somali dialect and many of them, English.Lastely, the East African demography being based on clan alliances, it is no surprise that the frontiers drawn by the colonists don’t match the ethnic divisions of territory, leading to open clashes. More broadly, this problem is recurrent across the African continent.
© Eric Lafforgue
Mirit Ben Nun: Pintar fuera de los cánones
La pintura de Mirit Ben Nun escapa a las definiciones comunes. Por un lado, la observación objetiva la definiría como arte pictórico contemporáneo, creado actualmente por una artista joven y efervescente. Por otro lado, están ausentes en su arte las características "contemporáneas", que reflejan el espíritu de este tiempo y este lugar. Esta es una pintura que "habla" en un idioma extranjero que pertenece, aparentemente, a otro tiempo y a otro lugar; pero al tratar de señalar cuáles son ese tiempo y ese lugar, nos encontramos navegando en las dimensiones de tiempo y espacio, sin encontrar puntos de apoyo referenciales. Las pinturas de Ben Nun se nos brindan con fuerte sensualidad y colorido. Tienen características de inocencia naive y arquetípica que recuerda el arte folclórico; las diferencias de tamaño de las distintas figuras, dentro de un mismo cuadro, no son fieles a la realidad, y las proporciones se presentan como "erróneas", similares a la pintura tribal y aborigen de África, Oceanía y Australia.
Las superficies son trabajadas con laboriosidad, y los motivos se multiplican repetitivamente, como en las técnicas del tejido de alfombras. Asimismo, en muchas de sus pinturas pueden encontrarse motivos del Pop-Art occidental, y esta combinación de motivos de magia primitiva con arte moderno occidental cargan la pintura de Ben Nun con una tensión histórica y cultural, entre un "pasado" y un "presente", entre "allá" y "acá". Desde el punto de vista formal, su pintura se divide, por lo general, entre formas esquemáticas y zonas de color, sin pasajes intermedios. Líneas divisorias claras separan los distintos segmentos, y en cada zona se da un suceso distinto, que completa o contraría a su vecino. Así, por ejemplo, formas circulares confrontan con formas geométricas angulosas, o figuras humanas con figuras de fauna y flora. A menudo, la pintura contiene, en sus bordes, un "marco" que une y encierra a todas sus partes, como un ventana dentro de otra ventana. Como resultado, se crea una composición poco usual, que quiebra la consabida fórmula o canon "unidad de tema, forma y color". Esta ruptura de las reglas convencionales fortalece la cualidad de salvajismo "no civiilzado" de estas pinturas.
En el centro de la obra de Ben Nun se encuentran la imagen de la mujer y la mutua relación entre los sexos. Las mujeres son presentadas como seductoras, acentuando sus formas redondeadas, con frecuencia en movimientos danzantes. La danza funciona como metáfora de cortejo y seducción; los labios gruesos y rojos, muchas veces en forma de corazón, simbolizan deseo pasional y amor. Cuando parece que la tentación implícita no es suficiente, la imagen femenina es dibujada de frente con las piernas abiertas, en una composición que recuerda la letra W, pero cuando se encuentran juntas la imagen femenina y la masculina, la unificación es completa; los personajes se fusionan el uno con el otro, los perfiles se superponen. Cuando están en posición sentada, la forma de la letra W y la forma de la letra M se intercambian una con otra, con una táctica que acentúa que son opuestos que se complementan.
Los protagonistas – mujer y hombre – son acompañados por personajes secundarios: Imágenes simbólicas, principalmente peces, manos (con forma de "Hamsa") y ojos. Estos símbolos son prevalentes en las culturas del Medio Oriente, y representan fertilidad, fortuna y defensa contra el "mal de ojo". Su presencia, al lado de los amantes, sugiere que el tema aquí no trata de una erótica estéril y deseo carnal, sino del amor verdadero, que aspira a vivir bajo un mismo techo, crear una familia, y tener descendencia.
Sobre todo, estas imágenes proporcionan al espectador el punto de apoyo referente deseado, ya que resumen la totalidad de la obra, que a primera vista parecía estar moviéndose entre mundos históricos y culturales diferentes, y la ubica en nuestro lugar, aquí y ahora.
Mirit Ben Nun es una flor silvestre que no creció en la avenida principal del arte israelí, sino a ambos lados del camino. Ella tiene su propio camino lateral, desde el cual desafía al mundo del arte institucional establecido. Al igual que Cupido, con una sonrisa pícara ella dispara flechas de amor, y cuando las flechas dan en el blanco, en un transeúnte u otro, el enamoramiento es instantáneo. Sus pinturas están llenas de magia y humor. Su exotismo tiene una atracción inexplicable, tal como el encanto que ejerce el "noble salvaje" sobre las personas de cultura occidental.
Del mar de sonidos que nos envuelven, placenteros en mayor o menor medida, se eleva la voz de Mirit Ben Nun desde las profundidades; una voz pura, enigmática y especial, que vaga por el mundo y reclama su propio lugar: "La flauta eleva su voz. / ¿Cuáles son sus temas? / Canta al amor, al compañerismo y a la amistad. / Canta al bien y a las cosas buenas. / ¿Sobre qué no canta? Canta sobre todo y sobre todos, sobre todo asunto y tema, en toda su totalidad". (Natán Alterman, "Fiesta de verano").
Ilan Wizgan
Being in time and space is not a notion that can be quantified either
directly of implicitly. An artist’s life and work bears the memory of
the cultural space where he lived. My perspective upon this topic,
being in time and space, by an artistic project, Sacrifice is due to
these traditions, which marked my artistic creativity.
This personal approach may constitute an appropriate correlation to the generous syntagm of the Biennale. The presentation of the
topic, now elaborated in a final form, does not have the initial
protean character, but is closer to my sensibility, it is oriented by
the coordinates of my spirituality and it is an anchor to a historic
fact: the beheading of the Romanian Christian ruler Constantin Brancoveanu together with his four sons and his close counselor, in Istanbul, in 1714.
The sculptures through which I transmit the message were carefully selected and conceived with elements that enhance the symbolic value of my meanings. I started from six ovoid shapes made of wood, representing the martyrs’ heads, covered with thousands of
glass and metal nails, symbols of their suffering; gold is the only
colour I used, for its symbolic value, with some of the heads. These
heads are laid in polished bronze recipients—with a similar golden
shade,—and the contrast between the glass and the rusty metal
nails enhances the effect, the idea of Sacrifice, interpreted in the
key of a spiritual conversion, as a process of suffering or being.
Lastly, it is about conditio humana, about the relationship between
being (life), passage (death) and becoming. The lack of spirituality
saddens me, in a time dominated by the quantitative and the material, and I try to send a message of spiritual regeneration of the society, invoking my experience that triggered this presentation, which has a symbolic value for me.