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Vial, gas chromatography column and syringe. A good read: www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/chandra-payi...
History
The John Rogers who bought Riverhill in 1840 was an only child, with a modest fortune, and a fine intellect. He became a classics scholar, a scientist and a friend of Charles Darwin. He was one of the first members of the Royal Horticultural Society and a patron of the plant collectors of the day.
He chose Riverhill because its sheltered situation offered an ideal lime free hillside where he could hope to establish newly introduced trees and shrubs. From his garden notebook, it can be seen that planting started in 1842. Subsequent generations, continued the planting and in 1910 Colonel John Middleton Rogers created what is now known as ‘The Wood Garden’ a fine collection of Japanese Maples, Rhododendrons and Azaleas. His wife, the infamous Muriel, created many additions including the now hidden Rock Gardens.
Until the beginning of the 2nd World War, eight full time gardeners kept Riverhill looking immaculate. Since the war years, however, a shortage of manpower and a lack of money has meant that the garden was allowed to deteriorate, with many parts of the original planting lost to everyday use and visitors.
Today, four generations of the Rogers family live at Riverhill,
The estate is managed by Edward Rogers (Great-great-great-grandson of the John Rogers who bought Riverhill in 1840) and his wife, Sarah.
Year of the Monkey
Lunar Lanterns, giant lanterns representing animal signs of the Chinese zodiac in city centre locations from 6–14 February.
Tiger
"People born in the Year of the Monkey are fun-loving, energetic and inquisitive. Their intellect allows them to adapt to any situation, they are confident, charismatic, loyal and inventive.
Sometimes, the Monkey can be a little too curious for his or her own good, as well as careless, restless, immature and arrogant."
As an intellectual object, a book is prototypically a composition of such great length that it takes a considerable investment of time to compose and still considered as an investment of time to read. In a restricted sense, a book is a self-sufficient section or part of a longer composition, a usage reflecting that, in antiquity, long works had to be written on several scrolls and each scroll had to be identified by the book it contained
In the study of the human mind, intellect refers to and identifies the ability of the mind to reach correct conclusions about what is true and what is false, and about how to solve problems. The term intellect derives from the Ancient Greek philosophy term nous, which translates to the Latin intellectus (from intelligere, “to understand”) and into the French and English languages as intelligence. Discussion of the intellect is in two areas of knowledge, wherein the terms intellect and intelligence are related terms.
Life University (LIFE) believes that in order to educate people, you have to do more than just feed their intellect or teach them critical thinking skills. Additionally, they believe that you have to teach them how to be better human beings by cultivating skills such as emotion regulation,...
www.eastcobber.com/life-universitys-innovative-approach-t...
Where foreground is not distinct from the background
Where the lines of ‘intellect’ are yet not drawn
It is the childhood days where life is still a musical
Where songs play on a loop and everting is whimsical
It feels I am at the lead
Playing chords and grooving to the beat
For these are my songs, my moments, my reasons to believe
That life surely is a musical, an album cover where I live.
Why Venice? Because Venice was uniquely beautiful, isolated, inward looking and a powerful stimulant to the senses, the intellect and the imagination.
- Lady Adventurer
Temple of Wisdom
Athena destroys ignorance…
Athena
The confrontation with her energy…
Those who are empowered by Athena search for knowledge and wisdom.
This long way finally leads to enlightenment…
HKD
Der Tempel der Athene
Wer bin ich?
Auf dem Pfad der Selbsterfahrung (Quest) wird es notwendig, sein Selbstbild infrage zu stellen. Ohne eine vollständige Erkenntnis seines Selbstbildes kann man sich nicht annehmen und (seinen Schatten) bewusst lieben.
Selbstliebe steht am Ende des Selbsterkenntnisprozesses. Dieser Erkenntnisprozess kann Jahre dauern. Zu ihm gehört das Studium einer Typenlehre, z. B. Enneagramm oder die „Schlichtungstypen“. Die Energie für diese Studien liefert der Archetyp der Weisheit – Athene.
HKD
It's a gentleman who articulates his mystery with intellect and grace, it's a beautiful mind.
My edition of 'goat unmasked' by goat transforming into a cathedral for 1pic 2souls.
Writer. Master Photographer, Videographer, Artist, Poet, Intellect, Organizer, Father, and Mentor, A true Friend with a heart of gold…
And sadly also a tragic victim of the ruthless 80's Crack Cocaine epidemic.
Last I heard about Stewart was his throat was cut ear to ear in a drug/get high incident gone bad. I pray and hope he is still alive and has rebound… I love you dearly my friend and brother.
Name: Charles Marr
Arrested for: not given
Arrested at: North Shields Police Station
Arrested on: 6 June 1906
Tyne and Wear Archives ref: DX1388-1-89-Charles Marr
For an image of his mother Mary Ann Marr see www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/27451885680/in/album-72157....
For an image of his sister Alice Maud Marr see www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/16935100722/in/album-72157....
For an image of his sister Mary Ellen Marr see www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/17084333602/in/album-72157....
The Shields Daily News for 6 June 1906 reports:
"THEFT OF A SAILOR'S BAG AT NORTH SHIELDS.
At North Shields Police Court today Charles Marr, Mary Ann Marr, Mary Ellen Marr and Chas. Marr were charged with being concerned together in stealing a sailor's bag of clothing etc, valued at £2, the property of John Partis Gibson, a seaman.
Supt. Jamieson of the BTP prosecuted. The prosecutor said that on the 7th May he joined the s.s. Camelia, which was then lying at the Commissioners’ Staithes. He was proceeding to the docks with his bag and when passing the North Shields Railway Station the defendant Chas. Marr came up to him and offered to carry his bag for 1d. He said he would give him 3d if he carried it to the docks and he agreed to do so. He gave him the bag and told him he was going to make a purchase. On reaching his vessel he failed to see the boy and gave information to the police. He went to sea the same day and had just returned. Two pawnbrokers’ assistants spoke to receiving a portion of the stolen clothing from two of the female defendants.
Sub-Inspector Leitch said that on the 8th May, from information received, he made enquiries and proceeded to the North Shields Railway Station, where he found the boy Marr and questioned him. He told witness he took the bag home, being unable to find the man who had engaged him at the dock. He went to the house occupied by the defendants and spoke to Mrs Marr with regard to the bag. She told him it was in the cupboard. He took possession of it and found that it contained only a small portion of the stolen clothing. He mentioned this circumstance to her and she said it was just the same as it was when it was brought in the previous day and that it had not been touched. He searched the house and found a portion of the property and he recovered the remainder from the pawnbrokers. He added that the boy told the truth at once and had given him every assistance in recovering the property, while the mother had given him a great deal of trouble.
Formally charged, the mother, Mary Ann Marr, said it would not have happened had it not been for need.
Charles, who made his 13th appearance, was given the option of a fine, he having assisted the police, and he was mulcted in 1s without costs. Marry Ann Marr, whom the magistrates considered was the chief instigator in the theft, was committed to prison for 14 days, while Mary Ellen Marr was sentenced to 7 days imprisonment. Because of her youth, Alice Marr was discharged."
The Shields Daily Gazette reported on an earlier case involving Marr on 1 October 1904:
"At North Shields Charles Marr (12), residing at 24 Camden Street, was charged with stealing on the 30th Sept. from a timber yard at the Edward Albert Dock, a quantity of timber valued at 3s, the property of Messrs Pyman and Bell. It appeared from the evidence that the prisoner, along with two small boys, had taken a barrow from a shop door and gone to the Albert Edward Dock and stolen the wood, taking it round on the barrow and selling it ... Mr Priestman School Board Inspector said that he had had the boy under him before, and he thought he had a weak intellect. he had been examined by Dr Martin but had not had his report yet".
The Shields Daily News for 1 September 1905 reports:
"Charles Marr (14), 24 Camden Street, Alexander Stephenson (14), 6 Middle Street and Joseph Stein (9), 10 North Street, Milburn Place, were remanded until Monday morning for being found begging from foot passengers on the Grand Parade at 4.30 yesterday afternoon".
These images are a selection from an album of photographs of prisoners brought before the North Shields Police Court between 1902 and 1916 in the collection of Tyne & Wear Archives (TWA ref DX1388/1).
This set contains mugshots of boys and girls under the age of 21. This reflects the fact that until 1970 that was the legal age of majority in the UK.
(Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.
I had the privilege to spend some time with Brad Litwin, a kinetic artist based in Philly. His ingenuity, mechanical intellect and artistic vision is exceptional visit his web site its a must see. www.bradlitwin.com/
"The glory of him who moves everything
Penetrates the universe and shines
In one part more and, in other, less.
I have been in the heaven which takes most of his light,
And I have seen things which cannot be told,
Possible, by anyone who comes down from up there;
Because, approaching the object of its desires,
Our intellect is so deeply absorbed
That memory cannot follow it all the way"
Paradiso I, 1-9
spotted when searching for walnuts in the yard (the shells are toxic to the dogs)
Rebirth, wisdom, fluidity, wholeness, transmutations, sexuality, look for transitions, changes and new opportunities. Creative forces are awakening with heightened intuition. Snake can teach about shedding what is not needed; perceptions, attitudes, ideals. Snake shows how to access vitality, ambitions and dreams along with intellect and personal power. What things are surfacing that you need to strike out and take advantage of? Perhaps a time to rest and reflect? Listen to your intuition and visions at this time. Contemplate the colors, striking ability and activity of the snake type to further understand what snake is saying.
Admiral Jim Ellis welcomed me into his Tiburon home with the calm presence of someone who has spent a lifetime navigating complexity. His wife, Elisabeth Pate-Cornell, was there too, her sharp intellect and quiet grace filling the room alongside his steady demeanor. Together, they form a partnership where conversations flow easily between national security, risk analysis, and the kind of everyday warmth that speaks to a life well balanced.
The house itself was modest in its reflection of their achievements. There were reminders, of course — a model ship resting on a shelf, a few framed photographs hinting at decades of service and scholarship — but nothing that spoke loudly of titles or accolades. It felt more like the home of two people who had long since understood that true accomplishment doesn’t need to be displayed.
Admiral Ellis has held responsibilities that most of us can scarcely imagine. As Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, he was entrusted with decisions that touched the edges of global stability. Yet in person, there is no trace of the theatrical. His authority feels earned and effortless, the result of years spent making impossible choices with clarity and composure.
Elisabeth Pate-Cornell is equally formidable. A renowned Stanford professor and pioneer in engineering risk analysis, she has dedicated her career to understanding how complex systems fail and how to keep them from doing so. Watching them together, it became clear that theirs is a meeting of equals. They share a deep fluency in the language of risk, responsibility, and leadership, each bringing a different lens to the same fundamental questions about uncertainty and decision-making.
Both remain active at Stanford, mentoring, advising, and lending their experience to shape future leaders. Retirement, in their world, is simply a shift in focus rather than a slowing down.
Photographing Admiral Ellis that day was less about capturing a man defined by military command and more about revealing the quiet strength that remains when uniforms are put away. It was about the bond he shares with Elisabeth, the life they’ve built around intellect, service, and a steady commitment to guiding others through complexity. In their presence, you are reminded that true leadership often speaks softly, grounded in experience, reflection, and a shared sense of duty that endures long after the official roles have changed.
"Logic and intellect can take an artist to the dance, but intuition and creativity are the dance itself."
~ Greg Packard ~
Bringing this image back to the forefront to celebrate today, the first day of Spring,
and 8 years since I've been on flickr! Below is the first image I posted, quite controversially, back in 2006, since it was more "art" than photograph! Feel free to click on it for more history!
"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven."
~ Ecclesiastes 3:1 ~
To care for only one person in the whole universe, she thought, was very different to not caring about anyone at all.
(not from the novel)
alison will become charmed by the master, but not in the way he's used to charming people. he's used to manipulating people consciously (on his part) and unnoticed (on their part)
but she's been analysing him from first interaction (she's always analysing people: why i'd bet on her being good at chess) and she stays wary. but then she keeps accidentally catching him being lovely to the doctor, when he doesn't notice he's being watched...
and the master, too, will soften towards the human companion, as he notices and respects her intellect and emotional intelligence.
they will see that they have something in common: they both feel protective of the strange, damaged, and intriguing person that is the doctor.
Sold on Etsy
The son of a notorious punk rock icon, Edgar Allan grew up listening to 'Nevermind the Bollocks' instead of Mother Goose. He prefers the Pistols to princesses and always made sure his legos were somewhere they could be stepped on. He's developing a prodigious intellect gone slightly awry, and goes around saying things like "happiness is the agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of others."
His father thinks he will become a brilliant lyricist.
4'O clock flower
Tamil :Anthi Mandhaarai ( அந்தி மந்தாரை) Telugu : Chandrakantha(చ౦దరకా౦త).
malayalam : Naalu mani poovu.
Marathi : Gulabakshi (गुलबक्षी).
Bengali : sandhyamaloti (সন্ধ্যামালতি).
SOOC except for resizing and Frame
Year of the Monkey
Lunar Lanterns, giant lanterns representing animal signs of the Chinese zodiac in city centre locations from 6–14 February.
Dragon
"People born in the Year of the Monkey are fun-loving, energetic and inquisitive. Their intellect allows them to adapt to any situation, they are confident, charismatic, loyal and inventive.
Sometimes, the Monkey can be a little too curious for his or her own good, as well as careless, restless, immature and arrogant."
Today, 9 August, is the feast of the Carmelite saint and philosopher, Teresa Benedicta of the Cross.
The youngest child of a large Jewish family, Edith Stein, as she was known before entering Carmel, was born in Breslau, Poland. She was a woman of great piety and outstanding intellect. In 1916 she was awarded a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Göttingen, and worked with Martin Heidigger before becoming a member of the faculty at the University of Freiburg. While on holiday in Göttingen in 1921 she read a biography of the Carmelite mystic and reformer St Teresa of Avila and was drawn to the Catholic Faith. She was baptized on January 1st 1922. Having read and translated into German De Veritate by St Thomas Aquinas, she abandoned her interest in phenomenology and became a Thomist.
In 1932 she was appointed lecturer at the Institute for Pedagogy at Münster, but anti-Semitic legislation passed by the Nazi government forced her to resign the post in 1933. In the same year she entered the Carmel at Echt, in Holland. When the Nazis invaded Holland Teresa was arrested and deported to Auschwitz. She died in the gas chamber in 1942 aged 51. In taking the religious name 'Teresa Benedicta of the Cross', this brave saint had said: "I told our Lord that I knew it was His cross that was now being placed upon the Jewish people; that most of them did not understand this, but that those who did would have to take it up willingly in the name of all. I would do that".
Her life of dedication, consecration, prayer, fasting and penance is testimony to the strength of her faith even amidst the unimaginable human suffering that surrounded her at the end. She was beatified in 1987 and canonized on October 11th 1998. In 1999 she was proclaimed one of the Patronesses of Europe.
This Crucifix, with Our Lady of Carmel above it, is in the Carmelite church in Salamanca.
Date: 11 Febr 2011 ( 11 - II - 11 )
Computer Mirror Image: "THE BLUE BUTTERFLY IS 33YO NOW"
The picture "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" made by Marcel Duchamp in 1912,
is widely regarded as a Modernist classic and has become one of the most famous of its time
Using the computer program Photoshop, we can see from the picture a face to appear.
How is it made ?
Use a Photoshop computer-program with 2 layers.
1e Layer : picture "Nude Descending a Staircase".
2e Layer : negative Mirror picture "Nude Descending a Staircase".
Use the function DIFFERENCE between the layers.
This new "Work of Art" called "THE BLUE BUTTERFLY IS 33YO NOW",
can only be made visible on a computer
~Duchamp~ Artmaking is making the invisible, visible.
~ Aristotle ~ The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
UNMOVED MOVER
Motion is therefore "the actuality of any potentiality insofar as it is still a potentiality"
Aristotle describes the "Unmoved Mover" as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: itself contemplating, the Active Intellect.
1. There exists movement in the world.
2. Things that move were set into motion by something else.
3. If everything that moves were caused to move by something else, there would be an infinite chain of causes. This can't happen.
4. Thus, there must have been something that caused the first movement.
5. From 3, this first cause cannot itself have been moved.
6. From 4, there must be an "Unmoved Mover".
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unmoved_mover
Lady ”I have no sence of art” GaGa:
"I’m not fucking Duchamp but I love pissing with you”
style.com/stylefile/2010/07/r-mutt-meet-l-gaga/
"I don't want to be a part of the machine, I want the machine to be a part of me"
~AHRIMAN has the greatest possible interest in instructing men in mathematics, but not in instructing them that mathematical-mechanistic concepts of the universe are merely illusions. . . . that they are only points of view, like photographs from one side.
~Lucifer & AHRIMAN must be regarded as two scales of a balance and its we who must hold the beam in equipoise.
~'cosmic triad' - Lucifer, Christ and AHRIMAN.
~Electricity is AHRIMANIC light.
~AHRIMANIC "elemental spirits" inhabit our artificial machines.
~In the absolute sense, nothing is good in itself, but is always good or bad according to the use to which it is put.
RIP Sri Sathya Sai Baba. Aum Shanti, shanti, shanti.
"Science must confine its inquiry only to things belonging to the human senses, while spiritualism transcends the senses. If you want to understand the nature of spiritual power you can do so only through the path of spirituality and not science. What science has been able to unravel is merely a fraction of the cosmic phenomena ..."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sathya_Sai_Baba
Date: 30 jan 2011
O(+> DEDICATED TO "science2art"
Because LOVE is Universal....
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLpHdJQdhL8
Date: 11 Jan 2011 ( 11 - 1 - 11 )
Emergency Protection Sought for Disappearing Miami Blue Butterfly
biologicaldiversity.org/news/press_releases/2011/miam...
Date: 7 Aug 2009 ( 7 - 8 - 9 )
Human Butterfly Crop Circle Mystery
youtube.com/watch?v=MhqM7hXvX6k
Damien Hirst Butterflies
www.othercriteria.com/browse/hirst/
flickr.com/photos/daydreampilot/2628127181/
Watch my internet channels:
metacafe.com/channels/Namirha/
Copyright free download:
400x200pix
i1265.photobucket.com/albums/jj508/Namirha/Butterfly400x2...
In 1912 Impressionist Marcel Duchamp exhibited a
painting entitled NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE.
The painting created a sensation. Worth millions today
it is held by the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
==========================================
The explanation of exactly why this painting
is so famous has always been a mystery.
==========================================
A number of art experts have pointed out that the painting
is similar to Edward Muybridge.
He is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion
in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture
motion in stop-action photographs
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Muybridge
This fact was even publicly acknowledged by Duchamp
himself according to the Wikipedia article:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nude_Descending_a_Staircase
Of course Duchamp's painting "impressionistically" adds
a sense of motion to the figure which is missing in
Muybridge's still-frame photos.
=========================================
HOWEVER..... the fact that Duchamp got his inspiration
from one of Muybridge's photographs IS NOT WHY
Duchamp's painting is WORLD FAMOUS.
THERE IS ANOTHER SCIENTIFIC REASON
FOR THE WORLD FAME OF
MARCEL DUCHAMP'S PAINTING---
FACT IS...... THE PAINTING IS A DIRECT
VISUAL CONFIRMATION OF THE
EXISTENCE OF GOD.................!!!!!
AND HERE I WILL EXPLAIN WHY:
=========================================
When you look at something new and unfamiliar,
your mind tries to "logically guess" what it is.... then
your mind imagines the object and tries to fit that image
to what it is seeing to see if they can be matched.
For instance, if you are out hunting and you see a
distant object which you think might be a deer, you
must check carefully before you shoot. Your mind
tries different possibilities... is it a man?.... so you try
to fit the object to the mental image of a man.... no...
it won't work.... is it a cow?.... so you try to fit the
object to a cow.... no, can't be.... is it a large dog....
so you imagine it as a large dog.... nope.... won't
work.....is it a scarecrow...so you try to imagine it as a
scarecrow..nope.... wrong again.... wait a minute.... it
could be a motorcycle parked on the side of a dirt road....
immediately you imagine a motorcycle... with a wind shield
and handle bars......... BINGO....... turns out that's
exactly what it is......... thank God you didn't pull that
trigger!
WELL.... it turns out almost all objects are "partially
invisible"..... as I have explained before, in fact about
20% of true reality is INVISIBLE to the average person
due to the Secular Trend Braingrowth Deficit... and
this is known as the "Invisible World" of Religion
(commonly called "Heaven").
What this means is that we are constantly using the
above described "GUESS AND COMPARE" method
of recognizing objects (and persons too by the way).
In fact it is this fundamental "guess and compare"
method which is what eventually leads the average person
to begin to suspect that there is an "unseen world"..
at least historically that is where Religion comes from.
Now... in fact.... the human visual system does this
automatically and very rapidly... trying in some
cases 3, 4 or half a dozen "guesses" before it
recognizes an unfamiliar object or person.
This (subconscious) process looks very much
like one of Muybridges "freeze motion" photos...
or like Duchamp's Nude Descending the Staircase
for that matter.
AND THAT IS EXACTLY WHY
the average person gets an overwhelming
sense of DEJA VUE the minute he first see's
Marcel Duchamp's famous painting.... he says to
himself... "hey..I've see that somewhere before.."
... and guess what.... he has.. in his subconscious mind,
and what it is is :
TWO PICTURES... ONE OF HEAVEN
(an extrapolated possibility) AND ONE OF
EARTH (a known reality).... BEING
QUICLY ALTERNATED FOR COMPARISON
BACK AND FORTH IN THE MIND !!!!
........... and that is
EXACTLY HOW
THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS DISCOVERED
NOT ONLY HISTORICALLY,
BUT BY AVERAGE PEOPLE
EVERY SINGLE DAY !
Of course Duchamp is also a pop psychologist and
that is why the figure is "descending a staircase"
because the vision of God is all about ascending
and descending (perceptually) and "stairs" are
a well known historical symbology (ladders too).
also... a "nude" is used to involve the basic
"perceptual ascension" involved in sexual
desire and attraction.
However... the "movie film sequence"
of the jittery "glimpses of heaven" that
we undergoe daily when perceiving
unfamiliar objects or scenes is BRILLIANTLY
captured by Duchamp's famous painting.
and that is why Marcel Duchamp's
painting is world famous !
Now George Hammond has proved all of this using
the Fusion Frequency of movie films to
prove the existence of the invisible world,
and has confirmed the proof to two decimal point
accuracy using 100 years of published Psychometry
data and showing that it is IDENTICAL to
Linearized Gravity and thus that the "invisible world"
is a simple classical Einsteinian Time and Space
dilation which makes as much as 20% of reality
INVISIBLE to the average person, thus explaining
both "God" and the "Invisible World" (Heaven).
HOWEVER..... a GENIUS like Marcel Duchamp
doesn't need theoretical Physics to explain God...
he can "paint God with a paint brush" and the
opinion of world has now confirmed the enduring
validity of his "1912 portrait of God
www.archivum.info/sci.psychology.theory/2006-09/00000/GOD...
Thomas argued that God, while perfectly united, also is perfectly described by Three Interrelated Persons. These three persons (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are constituted by their relations within the essence of God. Thomas wrote that the term "Trinity" "does not mean the relations themselves of the Persons, but rather the number of persons related to each other; and hence it is that the word in itself does not express regard to another."[88] The Father generates the Son (or the Word) by the relation of self-awareness. This eternal generation then produces an eternal Spirit "who enjoys the divine nature as the Love of God, the Love of the Father for the Word."
This Trinity exists independently from the world. It transcends the created world, but the Trinity also decided to give grace to human beings. This takes place through the Incarnation of the Word in the person of Jesus Christ and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within those who have experienced salvation by God; according to Aidan Nichols.
(Nature of the Trinity)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas#Nature_of_the_Trinity
Substantial form (the human soul) configures prime matter (the physical body) and is the form by which a material composite belongs to that species it does; in the case of human beings, that species is rational animal. So, a human being is a matter-form composite that is organized to be a rational animal. Matter cannot exist without being configured by form, but form can exist without matter—which allows for the separation of soul from body. Aquinas says that the soul shares in the material and spiritual worlds, and so has some features of matter and other, immaterial, features (such as access to universals). The human soul is different from other material and spiritual things; it is created by God, but also only comes into existence in the material body.
Aquinas’s account of the soul focuses on epistemology and metaphysics, and because of this he believes it gives a clear account of the immaterial nature of the soul.
(The afterlife and resurrection)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Aquinas#The_afterlife_and_re...
In recent years, the cognitive neuroscientist Walter Freeman proposes that Thomism is the philosophical system explaining cognition that is most compatible with neurodynamics, in a 2008 article in the journal Mind and Matter entitled "Nonlinear Brain Dynamics and Intention According to Aquinas."
(Impact of Thomism)
youtu.be/KcPcJ9ycEu4?t=2m22s Full Feature
Paving for the way for later occult classics like Rosemary’s Baby and The Wicker Man, Night of the Demon is a spooky tale of witchcraft in modern Britain. With Jacques Tourneur’s film opening the BFI’s Monster Weekend, curator Vic Pratt explains why it’s a masterpiece of fright.
Vic Pratt
Wednesday, 21 August 2013
Night of the Demon (1957)
Night of the Demon screens on 29 August as part of the BFI’s Monster Weekend at the British Museum.
Gothic: The Dark Heart of Film is a major four-month film season at BFI Southbank and across the UK from October 2013 to January 2014.
I’ve loved Night of the Demon (1957) since I first watched it on telly many moons ago with my Dad. I was just a kid at the time, and yes, it may have been past my bedtime, so the thrill of staying up late to see it might have meant I enjoyed it all the more. But ever since then, it’s been a firm favourite of mine.
Looking back at it with an adult eye, you can see that it’s a film that belongs on any decent foundation course in cinematic horror. Beautifully constructed and ingeniously fashioned by master film-craftsmen, it remains a haunting, chillingly plausible tale of witchcraft and the occult, and the conflict between rationality and superstition.
But back when I was a fresh-faced child, I didn’t care about that. I was far more interested in the creepy demon of the title. That writhing, nasty-faced, woodcut-like creature – his arrival heralded by strange squealing strains, unsettling jangling noises, smoky footprints, and bizarre star-spangled puffs of smoke – captured my youthful imagination.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the film was directed by a master of spooky, suspenseful, atmospheric cinema, the great Jacques Tourneur. I found out about him later on, as a teenager. Tourneur’s shadowy, moody films – which seemed to mix Gothic themes with film noir-ish imagery – had an immediate appeal.
French born, but later active in the USA, he shot a string of low-budget classics in the 1940s for Val Lewton’s B-picture unit at RKO. If that had been that, and he’d packed it in then, his reputation would already have been assured. The man who’d made Cat People (1942) and I Walked with a Zombie (1943) certainly had nothing to prove. But Tourneur was not a man to rest on his laurels. He carried on, moved into bigger budget productions, and, some years later, shot a Gothic chiller about modern-day witchcraft in England. It was called Night of the Demon. And it might even be the best of the bunch.
The film was adapted from M.R. James’s short story ‘Casting the Runes’ by Hitchcock collaborator Charles Bennett, and it grips from the very beginning. Dana Andrews, playing sceptical American psychologist Holden, scoffs when he’s passed a cursed piece of parchment in the British Museum reading room by genial occultist Dr Karswell (masterfully played by Niall MacGinnis). It means that he’s scheduled to die at the demon’s hand within four days. Holden doesn’t believe it. But – having spotted that monster in the first reel – we viewers know better than the sometimes irritatingly sure-of-himself scientist. And so Holden is dragged ever further into a web of devilry, while perceptive Joanna (the wonderful Peggy Cummins) races against time to convince him that it’s not all just flim-flam.
But you can see why Holden takes some convincing. While Karswell really is the possessor of strange powers, he acts like a show-off schoolboy conjuror spoiling the summer fete. A petulant, overgrown rich-kid know-all who lives with his mother, occasionally dabbling as a children’s entertainer, he’s a modern-day sorcerer who really doesn’t understand the seriousness of the dark forces at his command – and doesn’t much care either.
In one splendid scene, set at his grand country house, merely to demonstrate his powers to the resolutely sceptical Holden, Karswell conjures up a whirlwind out of nowhere, and smiles smugly as terrified children – whom he entertained, dressed as a clown, moments earlier – run screaming across the grounds of his stately pile. “A medieval witch’s speciality: a wind storm,” he gloats. He’s ruined their party.
Shot in broad daylight, this eerie, darkly humorous scene demonstrates that good Gothic doesn’t need to take place at night, or even in a creepy castle; and that Tourneur is a master of mood, whatever the setting. And something tells me our old friend Alfred Hitchcock watched it closely: it foreshadows a somewhat similar silly-sinister sequence in The Birds (1963) where a flap of feathered beasts suddenly dive bomb the children to spoil yet another tea-party on the lawn.
A disrupted children’s party was a million miles away from the censor-shocking, blood-spattered Hammer horrors that were poised to take the world by storm at the end of the 1950s; but this film, though perhaps harking back to an earlier era, was no less brilliant than those.
Despite the monster, Night of the Demon is a cerebral piece: it chills viewers intelligently, slowly, and fills them with an ominous sense of impending dread and looming, inevitable disaster, leavened with dark, dry dashes of humour and irony – tactics that, once again, bring to mind a certain Mr Hitchcock. And what’s more, it makes witchcraft creepily contemporary. Modern-day malevolence of this kind would be the centrepiece of numerous films still to come, such as Night of the Eagle (1962), Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Wicker Man (1973), to name but a few.
Night of the Demon has now been remastered by the BFI National Archive, and the full-length British version now stands ready to be unleashed on cinema screens once more. If you haven’t seen it before, you should. And while that old demon lurking in the shadows at the centre of it all has had some bad press over the years – many critics think we meet him too early, or even that we shouldn’t meet him at all – my childhood self would beg to differ. He had quite an effect on me in my formative years, and my adult self will hear nothing bad said about him. He belongs exactly where he is, forever swirling malevolently in the smoke, at the heart of Night of the Demon.
Curse of the Demon / Night of the Demon
Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment
1957/58 / B&W / 1:78 anamorphic 16:9 / 82, 95 min. / Street Date August 13, 2002 / $24.95
Starring Dana Andrews, Peggy Cummins, Niall MacGinnis, Maurice Denham, Athene Seyler
Cinematography Ted Scaife
Production Designer Ken Adam
Special Effects George Blackwell, S.D. Onions, Wally Veevers
Film Editor Michael Gordon
Original Music Clifton Parker
Written by Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester from the story Casting the Runes by Montague R. James
Produced by Frank Bevis, Hal E. Chester
Directed by Jacques Tourneur
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Savant champions a lot of genre movies but only infrequently does one appear like Jacques Tourneur's superlative Curse of the Demon. It's simply better than the rest -- an intelligent horror film with some very good scares. It occupies a stylistic space that sums up what's best in ghost stories and can hold its own with most any supernatural film ever made. Oh, it's also a great entertainment that never fails to put audiences at the edge of their seats.
What's more, Columbia TriStar has shown uncommon respect for their genre output by including both versions of Curse of the Demon on one disc. Savant has full coverage on the versions and their restoration below, following his thorough and analytical (read: long-winded and anal) coverage of the film itself.
Synopsis:
Dr. John Holden (Dana Andrews), a scientist and professional debunker of superstitious charlatans, arrives in England to help Professor Henry Harrington (Maurice Denham) assault the phony cult surrounding Dr. Julian Karswell (Niall McGinnis). But Harrington has mysteriously died and Holden becomes involved with his niece Joanna (Peggy Cummins), who thinks Karswell had something to do with it. Karswell's 'tricks' confuse the skeptical Holden, but he stubbornly holds on to his conviction that he's " ... not a sucker, like 90% of the human race." That is, until the evidence mounts that Harrington was indeed killed by a demon summoned from Hell, and that Holden is the next intended victim!
The majority of horror films are fantasies in which we accept supernatural ghosts, demons and monsters as part of a deal we've made with the authors: they dress the fantasy in an attractive guise and arrange the variables into an interesting pattern, and we agree to play along for the sake of enjoyment. When it works the movies can resonate with personal meaning. Even though Dracula and Frankenstein are unreal, they are relevant because they're aligned with ideas and themes in our subconscious.
Horror films that seriously confront the no-man's land between rational reality and supernatural belief have a tough time of it. Everyone who believes in God knows that the tug o' war between rationality and faith in our culture has become so clogged with insane belief systems it's considered impolite to dismiss people who believe in flying saucers or the powers of crystals or little glass pyramids. One of Dana Andrews' key lines in Curse of the Demon, defending his dogged skepticism against those urging him to have an open mind, is his retort, "If the world is a dark place ruled by Devils and Demons, we all might as well give up right now." Curse of the Demon balances itself between skepticism and belief with polite English manners, letting us have our fun as it lays its trap. We watch Andrews roll his eyes and scoff at the feeble séance hucksters and the dire warnings of a foolish-looking necromancer. Meanwhile, a whole dark world of horror sneaks up on him. The film's intelligent is such that we're not offended by its advocacy of dark forces or even its literal, in-your-face demon.
The remarkable Curse of the Demon was made in England for Columbia but is gloriously unaffected by that company's zero-zero track record with horror films. Producer Hal E. Chester would seem an odd choice to make a horror classic after producing Joe Palooka films and acting as a criminal punk in dozens of teen crime movies. The obvious strong cards are writer Charles Bennett, the brains behind several classic English Hitchcock pictures (who 'retired' into meaningless bliss writing for schlockmeister Irwin Allen) and Jacques Tourneur, a master stylist who put Val Lewton on the map with Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie. Tourneur made interesting Westerns (Canyon Passage, Great Day in the Morning) and perhaps the most romantic film noir, Out of the Past. By the late '50s he was on what Andrew Sarris in his American Film called 'a commercial downgrade'. The critic lumped Curse of the Demon with low budget American turkeys like The Fearmakers. 1
Put Tourneur with an intelligent script, a decent cameraman and more than a minimal budget and great things could happen. We're used to watching Corman Poe films, English Hammer films and Italian Bavas and Fredas, all the while making excuses for the shortcomings that keep them in the genre ghetto (where they all do quite well, thank you). There's even a veiled resentment against upscale shockers like The Innocents that have resources (money, time, great actors) denied our favorite toilers in the genre realm. Curse of the Demon is above all those considerations. It has name actors past their prime and reasonable production values. Its own studio (at least in America) released it like a genre quickie, double-billed with dreck like The Night the World Exploded and The Giant Claw. They cut it by 13 minutes, changed its title (to ape The Curse of Frankenstein?) and released a poster featuring a huge, slavering demon monster that some believe was originally meant to be barely glimpsed in the film itself. 2
Horror movies can work on more than one level but Curse of the Demon handles several levels and then some. The narrative sets up John Holden as a professional skeptic who raises a smirking eyebrow to the open minds of his colleagues. Unlike most second-banana scientists in horror films, they express divergent points of view. Holden just sees himself as having common sense but his peers are impressed by the consistency of demonological beliefs through history. Maybe they all saw Christensen's Witchcraft through the Ages, which might have served as a primer for author Charles Bennett. Smart dialogue allows Holden to score points by scoffing at the then-current "regression to past lives" scam popularized by the Bridey Murphy craze. 3 While Holden stays firmly rooted to his position, coining smart phrases and sarcastic put-downs of believers, the other scientists are at least willing to consider alternate possibilities. Indian colleague K.T. Kumar (Peter Elliott) keeps his opinion to himself. But when asked, he politely states that he believes entirely in the world of demons! 4
Holden may think he has the truth by the tail but it takes Kindergarten teacher Joanna Harrington (Peggy Cummins of Gun Crazy fame) to show him that being a skeptic doesn't mean ignoring facts in front of one's face. Always ready for a drink (a detail added to tailor the part to Andrews?), Holden spends the first couple of reels as interested in pursuing Miss Harrington, as he is the devil-worshippers. The details and coincidences pile up with alarming speed -- the disappearing ink untraceable by the lab, the visual distortions that might be induced by hypnosis, the pages torn from his date book and the parchment of runic symbols. Holden believes them to be props in a conspiracy to draw him into a vortex of doubt and fear. Is he being set up the way a Voodoo master cons his victim, by being told he will die, with fabricated clues to make it all appear real? Holden even gets a bar of sinister music stuck in his head. It's the title theme -- is this a wicked joke on movie soundtracks?
Speak of the Devil...
This brings us to the wonderful character of Julian Karswell, the kiddie-clown turned multi-millionaire cult leader. The man who launched Alfred Hitchcock as a maker of sophisticated thrillers here creates one of the most interesting villains ever written, one surely as good as any of Hitchcock's. In the short American cut Karswell is a shrewd games-player who shows Holden too many of his cards and finally outsmarts himself. The longer UK cut retains the full depth of his character.
Karswell has tapped into the secrets of demonology to gain riches and power, yet he tragically recognizes that he is as vulnerable to the forces of Hell as are the cowering minions he controls through fear. Karswell's coven means business. It's an entirely different conception from the aesthetic salon coffee klatch of The Seventh Victim, where nothing really supernatural happens and the only menace comes from a secret society committing new crimes to hide old ones.
Karswell keeps his vast following living in fear, and supporting his extravagant lifestyle under the idea that Evil is Good, and Good Evil. At first the Hobart Farm seems to harbor religious Christian fundamentalists who have turned their backs on their son. Then we find out that they're Karswell followers, living blighted lives on cursed acreage and bled dry by their cultist "leader." Karswell's mum (Athene Seyler) is an inversion of the usual insane Hitchcock mother. She lovingly resists her son's philosophy and actively tries to help the heroes. That's in the Night version, of course. In the shorter American cut she only makes silly attempts to interest Joanna in her available son and arranges for a séance. Concerned by his "negativity", Mother confronts Julian on the stairs. He has no friends, no wife, no family. He may be a mass extortionist but he's still her baby. Karswell explains that by exploiting his occult knowledge, he's immersed himself forever in Evil. "You get nothing for nothing"
Karswell is like the Devil on Earth, a force with very limited powers that he can't always control. By definition he cannot trust any of his own minions. They're unreliable, weak and prone to double-cross each other, and they attract publicity that makes a secret society difficult to conceal. He can't just kill Holden, as he hasn't a single henchman on the payroll. He instead summons the demon, a magic trick he's only recently mastered. When Karswell turns Harrington away in the first scene we can sense his loneliness. The only person who can possibly understand is right before him, finally willing to admit his power and perhaps even tolerate him. Karswell has no choice but to surrender Harrington over to the un-recallable Demon. In his dealings with the cult-debunker Holden, Karswell defends his turf but is also attempting to justify himself to a peer, another man who might be a potential equal. It's more than a duel of egos between a James Bond and a Goldfinger, with arrogance and aggression masking a mutual respect; Karswell knows he's taken Lewton's "wrong turning in life," and will have to pay for it eventually.
Karswell eventually earns Holden's respect, especially after the fearful testimony of Rand Hobart. It's taken an extreme demonstration to do it, but Holden budges from his smug position. He may not buy all of the demonology hocus-pocus but it's plain enough that Karswell or his "demon" is going to somehow rub him out. Seeking to sneak the parchment back into Karswell's possession, Holden becomes a worthy hero because he's found the maturity to question his own preconceptions. Armed with his rational, cool head, he's a force that makes Karswell -- without his demon, of course -- a relative weakling. Curse of the Demon ends in a classic ghost story twist, with just desserts dished out and balance recovered. The good characters are less sure of their world than when they started, but they're still able to cope. Evil has been defeated not by love or faith, but by intellect.
Curse of the Demon has the Val Lewton sensibility as has often been cited in Tourneur's frequent (and very effective) use of the device called the Lewton "Bus" -- a wholly artificial jolt of fast motion and noise interrupting a tense scene. There's an ultimate "bus" at the end when a train blasts in and sets us up for the end title. It "erases" the embracing actors behind it and I've always thought it had to be an inspiration for the last shot of North by NorthWest. The ever-playful Hitchcock was reportedly a big viewer of fantastic films, from which he seems to have gotten many ideas. He's said to have dined with Lewton on more than one occasion (makes sense, they were at one time both Selznick contractees) and carried on a covert competition with William Castle, of all people.
Visually, Tourneur's film is marvelous, effortlessly conjuring menacing forests lit in the fantastic Mario Bava mode by Ted Scaife, who was not known as a genre stylist. There are more than a few perfunctory sets, with some unflattering mattes used for airport interiors, etc.. Elsewhere we see beautiful designs by Ken Adam in one of his earliest outings. Karswell's ornate floor and central staircase evoke an Escher print, especially when visible/invisible hands appear on the banister. A hypnotic, maze-like set for a hotel corridor is also tainted by Escher and evokes a sense of the uncanny even better than the horrid sounds Holden hears. The build-up of terror is so effective that one rather unconvincing episode (a fight with a Cat People - like transforming cat) does no harm. Other effects, such as the demon footprints appearing in the forest, work beautifully.
In his Encyclopedia of Horror Movies Phil Hardy very rightly relates Curse of the Demon's emphasis on the visual to the then just-beginning Euro-horror subgenre. The works of Bava, Margheriti and Freda would make the photographic texture of the screen the prime element of their films, sometimes above acting and story logic.
Columbia TriStar's DVD of Curse of the Demon / Night of the Demon presents both versions of this classic in one package. American viewers saw an effective but abbreviated cut-down. If you've seen Curse of the Demon on cable TV or rented a VHS or a laser anytime after 1987, you're not going to see anything different in the film. In 1987 Columbia happened to pull out the English cut when it went to re-master. When the title came up as Night of the Demon, they just slugged in the Curse main title card and let it go.
From such a happy accident (believe me, nobody in charge at Columbia at the time would have purposely given a film like this a second glance) came a restoration at least as wonderful as the earlier reversion of The Fearless Vampire Killers to its original form. Genre fans were taken by surprise and the Laserdisc became a hot item that often traded for hundreds of dollars. 6
Back in film school Savant had been convinced that ever seeing the long, original Night cut was a lost cause. An excellent article in the old Photon magazine in the early '70s 5, before such analytical work was common, accurately laid out the differences between the two versions, something Savant needs to do sometime with The Damned and These Are the Damned. The Photon article very accurately describes the cut scenes and what the film lost without them, and certainly inspired many of the ideas here.
Being able to see the two versions back-to-back shows exactly how they differ. Curse omits some scenes and rearranges others. Gone is some narration from the title sequence, most of the airplane ride, some dialogue on the ground with the newsmen and several scenes with Karswell talking to his mother. Most crucially missing are Karswell's mother showing Joanna the cabalistic book everyone talks so much about and Holden's entire visit to the Hobart farm to secure a release for his examination of Rand Hobart. Of course the cut film still works (we loved the cut Curse at UCLA screenings and there are people who actually think it's better) but it's nowhere near as involving as the complete UK version. Curse also reshuffles some events, moving Holden's phantom encounter in the hallway nearer the beginning, which may have been to get a spooky scene in the middle section or to better disguise the loss of whole scenes later. The chop-job should have been obvious. The newly imposed fades and dissolves look awkward. One cut very sloppily happens right in the middle of a previous dissolve.
Night places both Andrews and Cummins' credits above the title and gives McGinnis an "also starring" credit immediately afterwards. Oddly, Curse sticks Cummins afterwards and relegates McGinnis to the top of the "also with" cast list. Maybe with his role chopped down, some Columbia executive thought he didn't deserve the billing?
Technically, both versions look just fine, very sharp and free of digital funk that would spoil the film's spooky visual texture. Night of the Demon is the version to watch for both content and quality. It's not perfect but has better contrast and less dirt than the American version. Curse has more emulsion scratches and flecking white dandruff in its dark scenes, yet looks fine until one sees the improvement of Night. Both shows are widescreen enhanced (hosanna), framing the action at its original tighter aspect ratio.
It's terrific that Columbia TriStar has brought out this film so thoughtfully, even though some viewers are going to be confused when their "double feature" disc appears to be two copies of the same movie. Let 'em stew. This is Savant's favorite release so far this year.
On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor, Curse of the Demon / Night of the Demon rates:
Movie: Excellent
Footnotes:
Made very close to Curse of the Demon and starring Dana Andrews, The Fearmakers (great title) was a Savant must-see until he caught up with it in the UA collection at MGM. It's a pitiful no-budgeter that claims Madison Avenue was providing public relations for foreign subversives, and is negligible even in the lists of '50s anti-Commie films.
Return
Curse of the Demon's Demon has been the subject of debate ever since the heyday of Famous Monsters of Filmland. From what's on record it's clear that producer Chester added or maximized the shots of the creature, a literal visualization of a fiery, brimstone-smoking classical woodcut demon that some viewers think looks ridiculous. Bennett and Tourneur's original idea was to never show a demon but the producer changed that. Tourneur probably directed most of the shots, only to have Chester over-use them. To Savant's thinking, the demon looks great. It is first perceived as an ominous sound, a less strident version of the disturbing noise made by Them! Then it manifests itself visually as a strange disturbance in the sky (bubbles? sparks? early slit-scan?) followed by a billowing cloud of sulphurous smoke (a dandy effect not exploited again until Close Encounters of the Third Kind). The long-shot demon is sometimes called the bicycle demon because he's a rod puppet with legs that move on a wheel-rig. Smoke belches from all over his scaly body. Close-ups are provided by a wonderfully sculpted head 'n' shoulders demon with articulated eyes and lips, a full decade or so before Carlo Rambaldi started engineering such devices.
Most of the debate centers on how much Demon should have been shown with the general consensus that less would have been better. People who dote on Lewton-esque ambivalence say that the film's slow buildup of rationality-versus demonology is destroyed by the very real Demon's appearance in the first scene, and that's where they'd like it removed or radically reduced. The Demon is so nicely integrated into the cutting (the giant foot in the first scene is a real jolt) that it's likely that Tourneur himself filmed it all, perhaps expecting the shots to be shorter or more obscured. It is also possible that the giant head was a post-Tourneur addition - it doesn't tie in with the other shots as well (especially when it rolls forward rather stiffly) and is rather blunt. Detractors lump it in with the gawd-awful head of The Black Scorpion, which is filmed the same way and almost certainly was an afterthought - and also became a key poster image. This demon head matches the surrounding action a lot better than did the drooling Scorpion.
Savant wouldn't change Curse of the Demon but if you put a gun to my head I'd shorten most of the shots in its first appearance, perhaps eliminating all close-ups except for the final, superb shot of the the giant claw reaching for Harrington / us.
Kumar, played (I assume) by an Anglo actor, immediately evokes all those Indian and other Third World characters in Hammer films whose indigenous cultures invariably hold all manner of black magic and insidious horror. When Hammer films are repetitious it's because they take eighty minutes or so to convince the imagination-challenged English heroes to even consider the premise of the film as being real. In Curse of the Demon, Holden's smart-tongued dismissal of outside viewpoints seems much more pigheaded now than it did in 1957, when heroes confidently defended conformist values without being challenged. Kumar is a scientist but also probably a Hindu or a Sikh. He has no difficulty reconciling his faith with his scientific detachment. Holden is far too tactful to call Kumar a crazy third-world guru but that's probably what he's thinking. He instead politely ignores him. Good old Kumar then saves Holden's hide with some timely information. I hope Holden remembered to thank him.
There's an unstated conclusion in Curse of the Demon: Holden's rigid disbelief of the supernatural means he also does not believe in a Christian God with its fundamentally spiritual faith system of Good and Evil, saints and devils, angels and demons. Horror movies that deal directly with religious symbolism and "real faith" can be hypocritical in their exploitation and brutal in their cheap toying with what are for many people sacred personal concepts. I'm thinking of course of The Exorcist here. That movie has all the grace of a reporter who shows a serial killer's atrocity photos to a mother whose child has just been kidnapped. Curse of the Demon hasn't The Exorcist's ruthless commercial instincts but instead has the modesty not to pretend to be profound, or even "real." Yet it expresses our basic human conflict between rationality and faith very nicely.
Savant called Jim Wyrnoski, who was associated with Photon, in an effort to find out more about the article, namely who wrote it. It was very well done and I've never forgotten it; I unfortunately loaned my copy out to good old Jim Ursini and it disappeared. Obviously, a lot of the ideas here, I first read there. Perhaps a reader who knows better how to take care of their belongings can help me with the info? Ursini and Alain Silvers' More Things than are Dreamt Of Limelight, 1994, analyzes Curse of the Demon (and many other horror movies) in the context of its source story.
This is a true story: Cut to 2000. Columbia goes to re-master Curse of the Demon and finds that the fine-grain original of the English version is missing. The original long version of the movie may be lost forever. A few months later a collector appears who says he bought it from another unnamed collector and offers to trade it for a print copy of the American version, which he prefers. Luckily, an intermediary helps the collector follow up on his offer and the authorities are not contacted about what some would certainly call stolen property. The long version is now once again safe. Studios clearly need to defend their property but many collectors have "items" they personally have acquired legally. More often than you might think, such finds come about because studios throw away important elements. If the studios threaten prosecution, they will find that collectors will never approach them. They'd probably prefer to destroy irreplaceable film to avoid being criminalized.
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Searching for Thoughts
A poem by Peter S. Quinn
Searching for thoughts goes on from start to end,
Quickened with passion that gives each calling;
Like a blank page where fingers move and bend,
Passion and pain from the footsteps falling.
Again now and now the movements go on,
Deeper within darkness enter a step;
Ignite corners in blaze millimicron,
Starting to grow and becoming more help.
All from the searching from within the brain,
Play with what you know in bitter and sweet;
Narrow each law by reshaping the rein,
Each of its way becomes clear in its beat.
Across clearings a mind searches all through,
Symbols of play know how to continue.
-------------
Poem's source: www.poemhunter.com/peter-s-quinn
Zeyon: One of the last Great Beings Know as the Ventrillions. Zeyon is One of if Not the most powerful being in the Multiverse Capable of taking on Huge armies Single handily, His Super speed ,Strength, time Manipulation , strategic Capabilities , And Genius intellect Make him A match for anyone!
In the Swiss Alps near the Italian border is a small valley town called Lostallo. For the 5th summer in a row Shankra festival made this place its home for a goa-psytrance festival.
Video from 2017 youtu.be/sGJAhJp605k
Downloads on Flickr are free for fiends & followers but do tell the people where you got the picture.
The Rolls Royce Spirit of Ecstasy "Flying Lady" concealed a hidden passion. This marvellous mascot was modelled after a woman who had bewitching beauty, intellect and esprit - but not the social status which might have permitted her to marry the man with whom she had fallen in love.
This is the story of Eleanor Velasco Thornton, whose liaison with JohnWalter Edward-Scott-Montagu (second Lord Montagu of Beaulieu) was to remain a secret for a decade or more, principally because both partners acted with the utmost discretion. From 1902 he was editor of an illustrated magazine. Eleanor V Thornton was employed as his secretary. Friends of the pair knew of their close relationship but they were sufficiently understanding as to overlook it.
A member of this circle of friends was the sculptor Charles S Sykes. To Lord Montagu's order he created a special mascot for his Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost.
The small statue illustrated a young woman in fluttering robes having placed one forefinger to her lips. The sculptor had chosen Eleanor Thornton as model for this figurine. Since 1911, this sensuous lady has adorned the radiators of Rolls-Royce motor cars.
Mary's foot among Christians, can at any time by the false light (the temptations of this world) bite it "mortally" to keep it in the entropic cyclicity of the times. He is mortal, literally and figuratively, by an Achilles' heel that expresses his fatal weakness despite a great general strength, which can lead him to his loss. This is what the creeping serpent - the Luciferic energy - reminds us, which in the absence of being firmly contained by the sacred feminine. Transmutation is about making the form disappear or changing its nature. Alchemy is not a science, it is a Great Art, its phenomena are inexplicable for our intellect.
"If we turn to the light, there is no more shadow." All initiatory quests consist in letting the light in, not seeking it. While the chemist works on shadows (matter), the alchemist works on the obstacles that prevent light from passing through and create shadows. The alchemist's goal is therefore to transmute matter into light by removing its shadows (and if a body is able to no longer resist true light, then it no longer has any weight...!)
The alchemist who only polishes his mirror to become transparent to himself. It will thus avoid the weight of light that
would prevent out of body experience, very useful to its transcendence. It is this alignment (the inner straightness) that is symbolized by this image of the half-disappeared virgin. A process of individuation will free the individuality of the collective psyche through a deliberate act of no longer stopping the light, thus the absence of shadow allows this transmutation into the fifth dimension.. Brandemarked as the irrefutable sacred text by its more or less faithful followers, Biblical Genesis (1:3) says: "Let there be Light! And the Light was...". We can logically deduce from this that if the Light was, it is not eternal, and if it is not eternal, it was created... Also, if it was created, it was not created by the Light! By who, then? This Luciferic lesson tells us that we cannot understand Genesis, because human beings think with thoughts that come from elsewhere, instead of creating thoughts that come from the energy of Intelligence, the One who gives Light, and the devotees assimilate to God, the Creator Father, who detached a small part of His Holy Light from His divine Sphere! Only the clarity of our mind adjusted to the universal Spirit indicates the path of our evolution.
The word Light is a danger, because it forces us to have a certain notion of luminosity. And as soon as we have any notion of luminosity, we tend to be attracted by our ego-mental source of emotions, the manifestation of the soul aspiring to be liberated, to be attracted by this luminosity! That is why when we die, we are drawn to luminosity, that is, the Astral vitiated by our unclarified civilizational memories... A human being who dies must never go to the Light, source of illusions revealing his inflammatory neuroses and psychoses!
The word Light "simply" makes the human being understand that there is an Absolute Energy in the Cosmos. By radiation, It creates the atomic burst, which is the Light. In other words, Light is always an illusion projected into the Cosmos by the radiation of the Original Absolute Energy. Light is a creation, not an absolute, never to be conceived or considered as the Absolute, Which Is. In What Is, there is no Light, only clarity, Clarity. And as we know it in our transitional state, it is not very luminous... If the clarity is too luminous to our limited mystical mind, we must be careful, because we can very easily be attracted by it. And that's what happens in the Death World *!
The immortals, when they change the Plan for having successfully transmuted the material body, when they leave their material body, they do not go into the Light. They are themselves Light! Being themselves Light, they approach the more perfected Lights with which they have a vibratory relationship, and it is They who lead them to be on the planes that suit them. It is necessary to be unconscious, human and spiritual to be limited to it, to be attracted by the Light! It is one of the greatest dangers of esotericism, that of religious groups or sects, New Age, and secret societies, Freemasonry in the first place. Because in esotericism, we talk about the Light all the time, to be attracted by the Light for its wonderful promises. The day when human beings understand that Light is a creation of Universal Energy, they no longer have to go to the Light. He is the bearer of Light! Lumen Dei, the light proceeding from the unmanifest Godhead, the other is Lumen Naturae, the light hidden in matter and the forces of nature. While the Divine Light may be discerned and appreciated in revelation and in the mystery of the Incarnation, the Light of Nature needs to be released through alchemy before it can become fully operative. God redeems humanity, but nature needs to be redeemed by human alchemists, who are able to induce the process of transformation which alone is capable of liberating the light imprisoned in physical creation.The cosmos, according to Paracelsus, contains the divine light or life, but this holy essence is enmeshed in a mechanical trap, presided over by a kind of demiurge, named by Paracelsus Hylaster (from hyle, "matter," and astrum, "star"). The cosmic spider-god has spun a web within which the light, like an insect, is caught, until the alchemical process bursts the web. The web is none other than the consensus reality composed of the four elements of earth, water, fire and air, within which all creatures exist. The first operation of alchemy therefore addresses itself to the breaking up (torturing, bleeding, dismembering) of this confining structure and reducing it to a condition of creative chaos (massa confusa, prima materia). From this, in the process of transformation, the true, creative binaries emerge and begin their interaction designed to bring about the coniunctio or alchemical union. In this ultimate union, says Jung, the previously confined light is redeemed and brought to the point of its ultimate and redemptive fulfillment.
Through this work of manipulating energies by aiming to repair his inner structure, the alchemist is placed before the symbols and dreamlike processes of his inner world, this archetypal reality of the dream mixing the unconscious with the conscious. By proceeding in this way, it operates in 4th reality density, where the physical laws specific to 3-D no longer apply. It is the key to opening the doors of space-time for the purpose of exiting the Entropic Matrix, the opening of the third eye - that of the heart
Soul have both descended independently of one another into the depths of man's collective psyche and have there come upon realities which look so alike because thy are equally anchored in truth. Time and again he pointed out the affinities and contrasts between alchemical figures and those of Christianity, demonstrating a sort of mirror-like analogy not only between the stone of the philosophers and the image of Christ, but between alchemy and Christianity themselves.Alchemy, stands in a compensatory relationship to mainstream Christianity, rather like a dream does to the conscious attitudes of the dreamer. The Stone of alchemy is in many respects the stone rejected by the builders of Christian culture, demanding recognition and reincorporation into the building itself. . While these statements ostensibly refer to the material universe and to nature, those glassed Virgin perceives in them a model or paradigm for the material and natural aspect of human nature as well. Under the guise of liberating the light confined in matter, the alchemists were endeavoring to redeem the spirit or psychic energy locked up in the body and psyche (the "natural man" of St. Paul) and thus make this energy available for the greater tasks of the spirit or spiritual man. To better understand the Mysteries, it is necessary to consider the High as the nests of this fact represent the Forces and the old Races that are and have been more powerful in Us. Our Body is also a micro-universe. The planets are gaseous and chtonians, and are to be connected with the Earth and with the various forms of terrestrial humanities that we have known and our different cerebral, anatomical and physiological abilities past and present. As with the ones represent the Matter spirit, their composition and the speed of the electrons around it. is far from the nucleus and emits photon light, accelerates its speed and changes its orbit as the sapphire of a reading head jumps from one furrow to another. every other cell of the Spirit. The quantum leap occurs when an electron, which is an electron, would cross USA in one second twice and could therefore do so much faster; which would change our reality and our physical appearance. Virgin Saturne? Look at his right Index, his way of standing and his belly.
Harold Edward Elliott, was born at West Charlton in north-west Victoria on 19 June 1878. He was the fifth of eight children of Thomas Elliott and his wife Helen, née Janverin, who had arrived in Victoria during the gold rushes of the 1850s. Thomas and Helen, both English-born, married at St Michael’s Church of England, Talbot, in 1867 and settled in nearby Cockatoo. After years of adventurous gold-seeking had produced meagre returns, Thomas selected a block of land five miles from Charlton and switched to farming, which he found just as arduous and unremunerative. Young Harold grew up in an impoverished environment dominated by the perpetual struggle to extract a living from the soil. Life was a constant battle against the elements; bushfires, snakes, rabbits and too much or too little water were just some of them. He acquired a rudimentary primary education at the one-teacher outpost at West Charlton known as the Rock Tank School.
In 1894 his life was transformed. His father, who had never lost his fascination with the pursuit of gold, had ventured to Western Australia, where he ‘struck it rich in a big way’. Thomas purchased a stately residence, ‘Elsinore’, in Ballarat and the whole family moved there the following year, when Harold and his younger brothers began attending Ballarat College. Having been unexpectedly plucked from rural poverty and presented with a marvellous opportunity, Harold was determined to make the most of it.
Supplementing considerable aptitude with great dedication, he excelled scholastically at Ballarat College and in 1897 was dux of the school. At the University of Melbourne, where he resided at Ormond College, he again demonstrated that he could harness his above-average intellect with exceptional self-discipline and powers of concentration. In 1906 he crowned the successful completion of his law degree with the award of the Supreme Court prize for the top final-year student. He was called to the Victorian Bar in 1907. (In 1920 he completed his BA and LL M.)
Elliott was interested in sport—football and athletics principally—but his main recreational activity during these years was his involvement in military pursuits. He had a passionate interest in all aspects of soldiering. He read widely about military history, participated purposefully in peacetime defence units, and dreamed about emulating the feats of the great commanders of the past. During the Boer War he interrupted his scholarly endeavours at the university to serve in South Africa. Enlisting as a private, he returned as a lieutenant with the Distinguished Conduct Medal, which he had been awarded for a particularly daring exploit.
On 27 December 1909 Elliott married Catherine Frazer Campbell, under the auspices of the Presbyterian Church, at the Melbourne suburb of Northcote. They had two children, Violet Isabel in 1911 and Neil Campbell the following year. Now a partner in the firm of solicitors, Roberts and Elliott, he attained the rank of lieutenant colonel in Australia’s militia forces. A conventional middle-class conservative, he read the Argus and agreed with its advocacy of free trade rather than the protectionist views of the more progressive Age. He supported the White Australia policy. Like many other Protestants of Anglo-Scottish descent, he was inclined to be suspiciously hostile to Roman Catholics.[1]
At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Elliott enlisted immediately and was away for almost five years. He returned as Brigadier General ‘Pompey’ Elliott, a household name, after commanding the 7th Battalion at Gallipoli and the 15th Brigade at the Western Front. The nickname, which he acquired early in the war, endured for the rest of his life; it was derived from a well-known pre-war footballer in Melbourne, Fred ‘Pompey’ Elliott (no relation).
His reputation as one of the AIF’s most famous commanders was founded on his capacity and temperament. He was intelligent, well informed, energetic and decisive. His own bravery was exceptional, but he was vigilant and frank when assessing the advisability of proposed enterprises involving the men under him. It became an article of faith that he would never send a man anywhere he was not prepared to go himself. Emotional and tempestuous, he was also a real character. Anecdotes about him flourished, amusing the men he led and sometimes disconcerting his superiors.
In April 1915 he was wounded at the Gallipoli landing, and rejoined the 7th Battalion in June. In the desperate fighting at Lone Pine in August his battalion performed outstandingly; four of his men were awarded the Victoria Cross. Promoted to brigadier in 1916, he protested with characteristic forcefulness about the inadequacies, in his opinion, of three of the four battalion commanders allotted to his brigade. Having arrived at the Western Front, he saw his carefully prepared brigade butchered in an appallingly botched attack at Fromelles, which he had opposed and tried to prevent. This disaster affected him profoundly, but he soldiered on and rebuilt the brigade once more. His fine leadership was particularly evident at the battle of Polygon Wood, where his brigade overcame severe difficulties arising from the retreat of a British unit and, according to the historian C. E. W. Bean, ‘snatched complete success from an almost desperate situation’. It was, Bean continued, ‘the driving force of this stout-hearted leader’ that ‘was in a large measure responsible for this victory’. His crowning achievement as a commander was his prominent role in the famous counter-attack at Villers-Bretonneux in April 1918.
Elliott was devastated to learn in May 1918 that three other brigadiers had been preferred to him for promotion to divisional command. He was overlooked, despite his outstanding record, because of what his superiors regarded as his intermittently erratic judgment. Pompey nursed this deeply felt and enduring grievance, which he referred to as his supersession, while leading his brigade with customary fire until the end of the war. He arrived back in Melbourne in mid-1919. Later that year Nationalist representatives invited a number of prominent soldiers to stand as candidates at the next federal election.[2]
To the Nationalist powerbrokers Pompey was a highly desirable recruit. He had appropriately conservative political attitudes. His extraordinary popularity among returned soldiers and their families was underlined by the rapturous receptions he was given at the various welcome home functions he attended. And his political usefulness was also demonstrated after a disturbing incident in July when Harry Lawson, the Victorian Premier, was invaded in his office by an angry group of returned soldiers, one of whom hurled an inkstand at him. Pompey played a leading role in pacifying the aggrieved soldiers. Senior Nationalist strategists were concerned about the volatility and disruptive tendencies of the returned soldiers. They were keen to make use of leaders such as Elliott, who had sound, ‘right-thinking’ views as well as popularity and influence in AIF circles.
Pompey was flattered, but wary. The year 1919 was a worrying one for many Australians, who were understandably concerned about the Spanish influenza pandemic, widespread industrial unrest, bitter political conflict and the thousands of soldiers struggling to adjust to their peacetime circumstances. In this unsettling environment Elliott felt he could make a worthwhile contribution. However, the way the party system required politicians to commit themselves in advance to numerous detailed policies was abhorrent to him. ‘If any one wants me to stand for Parliament’, he told a friend in August, ‘they must have sufficient confidence in me as an honest man to trust me to run straight without binding me or attempting to bind me body and soul’. The Nationalist strategists were not deterred. The risk that Elliott might take an independent stance on some issues was outweighed by the electoral advantages accruing from his reputation as a charismatic, courageous commander.
The strategists were sufficiently flexible for him to acquiesce, although another factor may have affected his decision. As recorded by his friend, Frank Green, Elliott confided years afterwards that part of the stimulus for him to stand for the Senate in 1919 was to join a group secretly committed to supporting S. M. Bruce as party leader rather than W. M. Hughes, then Prime Minister. While this is an intriguing notion, there is no doubt that Elliott felt acutely motivated to do what he could to assist returned soldiers, and was influenced by the encouragement he received from many of them to go into Parliament to help ‘fix things up’. Nevertheless one 7th Battalion veteran urged him to avoid Parliament because it was ‘no place for an honest man’.
His campaign tour around Victoria was an odd mixture. There were tumultuous reunions with soldiers who had served under him interspersed with less exhilarating meetings of the political variety, where he laboured in workmanlike fashion through essentially the same lacklustre speech in every district. But the election result confirmed the wisdom of the Nationalists’ strategy. Not only did he top the poll himself; his candidature was instrumental in the election of his colleagues, Frank Guthrie and Ted Russell, giving the Nationalists success in all three Senate vacancies in Victoria.[3]
Entering the Senate in July 1920, Elliott lost no time in living up to his pre-election assertions about his political independence. He called on the Government to ‘revise drastically’ some of its proposals to overhaul public service administration, on one occasion coming up against another lawyer, Senator Keating, over definitions of terms used in the legislation. In August Elliott moved an amendment to the War Service Homes Bill, managing to convince the Minister for Repatriation, Senator E. D. Millen, that the amendment was necessary. The amended clause meant that returned soldiers who had commenced building their houses before the bill’s enactment would not be disadvantaged.
In October he and Guthrie vigorously denounced the expenditure on Canberra proposed by the Government. Amid testy exchanges with Nationalist colleagues Elliott declared: ‘I feel so strongly upon this matter that I have no desire to sit behind the Ministry if they are going to incur this expenditure. I would rather form a party of my own’. Elliott did not carry out this threat, but did rapidly establish a reputation for outspokenness in Parliament. This was dramatically reinforced the following year. Embittered by being again passed over for a divisional vacancy (this time in the postwar militia force), Elliott vented his spleen in a series of extraordinary Senate speeches during debate on the Government’s amending Defence Bill. Pompey repeatedly had his Senate colleagues, who included several fellow generals, on the edge of their seats as he lifted the lid on numerous controversial anecdotes about his wartime experiences and made some remarkable allegations about certain AIF individuals. He was repeatedly scathing about the leaders he blamed for his supersession, the AIF commander General Birdwood and his influential chief staff officer, Brudenell White.
Elliott made headlines when he alleged in the Senate on 21 April 1921 that he had been overlooked for promotion in 1918, after being the chief architect of the stunningly successful Australian counter-attack at Villers‑Bretonneux. He claimed this was because of an earlier incident during those desperate days of defence against the ominous German onslaught. He described how he and his brigade, having been rushed to the rescue, had been flung into a series of alarming situations, and on more than one occasion had to march all night. He went on to tell how his men had been hampered by the unauthorised occupation of a village by a detachment of British ‘fugitives’, his own forceful intervention causing the staff officer in charge of these ‘renegades’ to protest to his superiors. Three weeks later, Elliott told the Senate, his divisional commander paid him a visit:
He said, ‘I want to speak to you privately’, and took me out into the garden. He then said to me, ‘General, I have instructions to tell you that while you are in the Australian Imperial Force you will receive no further promotion by reason of your conduct to the [British] officers’. When he said that, I turned away rather dumbfounded, and he struck me on the back and said, ‘I have got to tell you that; but by God! you were right’. It turned out that this staff officer was the son of a Duke, and ‘put the acid’ on General Birdwood for my conduct, and you see the result.
With numerous other senior commanders in the Senate, the response to Elliott’s barrage of startling revelations was almost as interesting as the revelations themselves. ‘Fighting Charlie’ Cox, a Light Horse brigadier, consistently unleashed vacuous disapproval, but there were more discerning responses from other generals, such as E. A. Drake‑Brockman. Longstanding defence minister George Pearce was unsettled by Elliott’s account of the campaign and did not conceal his distaste. As for ‘Jupp’ Gardiner, Labor’s solitary senator in 1921, he concluded that ‘whoever is engaged in writing up the history of the war should be supplied with a special desk in this chamber and should be given a special invitation to be in regular attendance in the Senate, because matters of the greatest interest to them may crop up here at any time’. That observation by Gardiner had been triggered by one of Elliott’s more astonishing outbursts:
In France, one of the biggest ‘duds’ I know of commanded a regiment of Light Horse, and he was stationed in a village behind the lines for the whole period of the war. During practically the whole of the time he was there he was intoxicated, and the villagers, in pity and contempt, named him ‘Le Toujours Zig-Zag’, by which they meant that he was always drunk . . . He returned to Australia and is now in command of the troops in Tasmania.
Elliott did not name the commander concerned, but it was Brudenell White’s brother, whose lameness and slight speech impediment stemmed from a pre-war accident—he had not been repeatedly drunk at all. After this, Pompey had to eat humble pie, though not for the first or last time. His tendency to lash out rashly, at times relying on inadequately checked information, left him vulnerable to sharp criticism and sometimes undermined his credibility, but his extraordinary exposés were rarely without foundation.[4]
Such contentious contributions confirmed his reputation as a redoubtable gladiator. Throughout his postwar years he was inundated with requests for assistance from returned soldiers. In the main he sought to do good by stealth, but sometimes he raised grievances in Parliament. One such episode led to the formation of the Senate select committee that investigated the case of Warrant Officer J. R. Allen. Elliott chaired it. A majority of the committee concluded that the treatment of Allen by his commander had been justified. Elliott, still convinced that Allen had been unfairly treated, submitted a minority report jointly with Senator Allan McDougall. Elliott was also a member of the Royal Commission on the Navigation Act (1923–25), participating in most of its extensive investigations and contributing to its main report before resigning in August 1924.[5]
At one stage Elliott was single-handedly—though inadvertently—responsible for a change in government policy. One memorable day he was hurrying across King’s Hall when he happened to slip on the highly polished jarrah floor. His burly frame executed a dramatic tumble, reputedly rocking the Parliament House foundations; he accomplished such a spectacular slide on his back that he ended up entering the Senate chamber in arrestingly horizontal style, feet first. This amusing incident led to a less zealous polishing regime. When it was suggested that cleaning costs at Parliament House had been reduced, the press announced that ‘“Pompey” Elliott’s Slip May Save Australia Money’.
In view of Elliott’s forthrightness and maverick tendencies, it is unlikely that he was ever considered ministerial material even though he was in Parliament for over a decade and his party in government for almost all that time. That some of his strident utterances were detrimental to the Nationalist cause does not seem to have resulted in any significant pressure for him to be disowned by his party. His immense popularity—confirmed at the 1925 election when he again topped the Senate poll in Victoria—was simply too valuable to the Nationalists. Besides, apart from some characteristically idiosyncratic outbursts and his occasional willingness to cross the floor in the Senate, he was generally a wholehearted supporter of the Hughes and Bruce–Page governments. During the interminable 1921 tariff debates which resulted in considerable increases to Australian levels of protection, Elliott admitted publicly that he had abandoned his previous faith in free trade. With the zeal of the convert he consistently aligned himself with manufacturers and Victoria’s traditional adherence to the protectionist cause. Whether it was beer or malted milk, corsets or chamois leather, explosives or porcelain insulators, Elliott wanted the local product protected.
Moreover, when Bruce suddenly informed his government backbenchers of his intention to announce an about-turn on arbitration policy in 1929, Elliott responded with an immediate assurance to the Prime Minister that he would support the new policy absolutely. And when the Scullin Labor Government took office without a majority in the Senate later that year, Elliott was one of the opposition senators whose remorseless obstructionist tactics did much to demoralise the government. Nevertheless, as Senator Dooley remarked, Labor senators ‘always knew that with him the political fight was over as soon as he left the chamber’, although Elliott and D. C. McGrath, the ALP Member for Ballarat, had a sustained mutual enmity.[6]
Elliott’s parliamentary career ended with his death on 23 March 1931. The huge toll inflicted by the war on his nervous system, aggravated by the distress and misery of the Depression together with his deeply felt sense of injustice about his supersession grievance (and also, it seems, by a head injury incurred in a horse-riding accident) had undermined his mental and emotional stability. At the age of fifty-two Elliott committed suicide in hospital. His wife Kate and their children, Violet and Neil, survived him. The funeral was an extraordinary event; few, if any, in Melbourne had been bigger. Thousands lined the four-mile route the cortège travelled between his Camberwell home and Burwood Cemetery where he was buried with Presbyterian rites. Many returned soldiers marched sombrely behind the gun carriage bearing the coffin. One of them, Bruce, wrote that he had ‘never seen a greater tribute paid to a man’. Several of the parliamentary obituaries referred to Elliott’s geniality and friendliness as well as his outstanding military leadership. Opposition Leader, J. G. Latham, who had known Elliott well throughout his adult life, captured the essence of Pompey in this brief description: ‘He was a fearless man, of remarkable resolution and tenacity of purpose’. The manner of Elliott’s death was muzzled until it was controversially revealed a few weeks later by Smith’s Weekly.
Pompey Elliott was one of the best-known parliamentarians of his decade in federal politics. The characteristics and temperament which had won him extraordinary fame as a soldier ensured that his political career would prove lively and interesting, but he was clearly more suited to soldiering than Parliament.[7]
Okay, what's this - a singing, winking barnacle? Maybe. All I know is that of the millions upon millions of barnacles covering the beach rocks, this jumped out at me. No thought went into this image. I saw it, smiled, set my tripod, fiddled with the settings, and that was all.
I know there are rules - I prefer to think of them as design principles - underlying all visual art, just as there are in music, and probably in dance and other forms of creative expression. I even know what some of them are. But I almost never try to build a composition with these in mind; if anything, I prefer my mind to be as empty as possible when I'm shooting. In the field, I work via instinct: does it feel right, like this? Shooting from the gut; shooting from the heart, not the intellect.
But it's really a mystery to me, where and how the creative impulse manifests through art. There is no formula that can explain it. I've had students - an accomplished chemist comes to mind - who demanded to know the rule for a given photo situation, and were disappointed and even angry when I insisted there are no rules. Sorry. I can divulge technique, but I can't reveal any "shortcuts to seeing well", because they do not exist. Put in the time. Look and shoot and then assess, and do it all over, again and again, and never stop doing it, and something exciting may happen. Maybe just a glimmer at first, but then, if you persist and do the work, a breakthrough. I still miss far more shots than I get. The process is ongoing for us all.
For the record, I think there are two species of barnacle here, the Common Acorn Barnacle and several Small Acorn Barnacles. Not being a barnacle expert, though, I may be wrong. Evidently the large one has been attacked and mostly eaten by some predator - most likely a shorebird such as the Black Turnstone, that I saw here in great numbers. The white marks appear to be places where other barnacles once lived. Life and death: we stumble through this drama every time we take a walk on the wild side. Sometimes it can even make us smile.
Photographed along the coast of British Columbia (Canada). Don't use this image on websites, blogs, or other media without explicit permission © 2018 James R. Page - all rights reserved.
OM
Auṃ or Oṃ, Sanskrit: ॐ) is a sacred sound and a spiritual icon in Indian religions.[1][2] It is also a mantra in Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism.[3][4]
Om is part of the iconography found in ancient and medieval era manuscripts, temples, monasteries and spiritual retreats in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.[5][6] The symbol has a spiritual meaning in all Indian dharmas, but the meaning and connotations of Om vary between the diverse schools within and across the various traditions.
In Hinduism, Om is one of the most important spiritual symbols (pratima).[7][8] It refers to Atman (soul, self within) andBrahman (ultimate reality, entirety of the universe, truth, divine, supreme spirit, cosmic principles, knowledge).[9][10][11] The syllable is often found at the beginning and the end of chapters in the Vedas, the Upanishads, and other Hindu texts. It is a sacred spiritual incantation made before and during the recitation of spiritual texts, during puja and private prayers, in ceremonies of rites of passages (sanskara) such as weddings, and sometimes during meditative and spiritual activities such as Yoga.
Vedic literature
The syllable "Om" is described with various meanings in the Vedas and different early Upanishads.[19] The meanings include "the sacred sound, the Yes!, the Vedas, the Udgitha (song of the universe), the infinite, the all encompassing, the whole world, the truth, the ultimate reality, the finest essence, the cause of the Universe, the essence of life, theBrahman, the Atman, the vehicle of deepest knowledge, and Self-knowledge".
Vedas
The chapters in Vedas, and numerous hymns, chants and benedictions therein use the syllable Om. The Gayatri mantra from the Rig Veda, for example, begins with Om. The mantra is extracted from the 10th verse of Hymn 62 in Book III of the Rig Veda.These recitations continue to be in use, and major incantations and ceremonial functions begin and end with Om.
ॐ भूर्भुवस्व: |
तत्सवितुर्वरेण्यम् |
भर्गो देवस्य धीमहि |
धियो यो न: प्रचोदयात् ||
Om. Earth, atmosphere, heaven.
Let us think on that desirable splendour
of Savitr, the Inspirer. May he stimulate
us to insightful thoughts.
Om is a common symbol found in the ancient texts of Hinduism, such as in the first line of Rig veda (top), as well as a icon in temples and spiritual retreats.
The Chandogya Upanishad is one of the oldest Upanishads of Hinduism. It opens with the recommendation that "let a man meditate on Om".[26] It calls the syllable Om as udgitha (उद्गीथ, song, chant), and asserts that the significance of the syllable is thus: the essence of all beings is earth, the essence of earth is water, the essence of water are the plants, the essence of plants is man, the essence of man is speech, the essence of speech is the Rig Veda, the essence of the Rig Veda is the Sama Veda, and the essence of Sama Veda is the udgitha (song, Om).[27]
Rik (ऋच्, Ṛc) is speech, states the text, and Sāman (सामन्) is breath; they are pairs, and because they have love and desire for each other, speech and breath find themselves together and mate to produce song.[26][27] The highest song is Om, asserts section 1.1 of Chandogya Upanishad. It is the symbol of awe, of reverence, of threefold knowledge because Adhvaryu invokes it, the Hotr recites it, and Udgatr sings it.[27][28]
The second volume of the first chapter continues its discussion of syllable Om, explaining its use as a struggle between Devas (gods) and Asuras (demons).[29] Max Muller states that this struggle between gods and demons is considered allegorical by ancient Indian scholars, as good and evil inclinations within man, respectively.[30] The legend in section 1.2 of Chandogya Upanishad states that gods took the Udgitha (song of Om) unto themselves, thinking, "with this [song] we shall overcome the demons".[31] The syllable Om is thus implied as that which inspires the good inclinations within each person.[30][31]
Chandogya Upanishad's exposition of syllable Om in its opening chapter combines etymological speculations, symbolism, metric structure and philosophical themes.[28][32] In the second chapter of the Chandogya Upanishad, the meaning and significance of Om evolves into a philosophical discourse, such as in section 2.10 where Om is linked to the Highest Self,[33] and section 2.23 where the text asserts Om is the essence of three forms of knowledge, Om is Brahman and "Om is all this [observed world]".[34]
Katha Upanishad
The Katha Upanishad is the legendary story of a little boy, Nachiketa – the son of sage Vajasravasa, who meetsYama – the Indian deity of death. Their conversation evolves to a discussion of the nature of man, knowledge,Atman (Soul, Self) and moksha (liberation).[35] In section 1.2, Katha Upanishad characterizes Knowledge/Wisdom as the pursuit of good, and Ignorance/Delusion as the pursuit of pleasant,[36] that the essence of Veda is make man liberated and free, look past what has happened and what has not happened, free from the past and the future, beyond good and evil, and one word for this essence is the word Om.[37]
The word which all the Vedas proclaim,
That which is expressed in every Tapas (penance, austerity, meditation),
That for which they live the life of a Brahmacharin,
Understand that word in its essence: Om! that is the word.
Yes, this syllable is Brahman,
This syllable is the highest.
He who knows that syllable,
Whatever he desires, is his.
— Katha Upanishad,
Maitri Upanishad
The Maitrayaniya Upanishad in sixth Prapathakas (lesson) discusses the meaning and significance of Om. The text asserts that Om represents Brahman-Atman. The three roots of the syllable, states the Maitri Upanishad, are A + U + M.[39] The sound is the body of Soul, and it repeatedly manifests in three: as gender-endowed body - feminine, masculine, neuter; as light-endowed body - Agni, Vayu and Aditya; as deity-endowed body - Brahma, Rudra[40] and Vishnu; as mouth-endowed body - Garhapatya, Dakshinagni and Ahavaniya;[41] as knowledge-endowed body - Rig, Saman and Yajur;[42] as world-endowed body - Bhūr, Bhuvaḥ and Svaḥ; as time-endowed body - Past, Present and Future; as heat-endowed body - Breath, Fire and Sun; as growth-endowed body - Food, Water and Moon; as thought-endowed body - intellect, mind and pysche.[39][43] Brahman exists in two forms - the material form, and the immaterial formless.[44] The material form is changing, unreal. The immaterial formless isn't changing, real. The immortal formless is truth, the truth is the Brahman, the Brahman is the light, the light is the Sun which is the syllable Om as the Self.[45][46]
The world is Om, its light is Sun, and the Sun is also the light of the syllable Om, asserts the Upanishad. Meditating on Om, is acknowledging and meditating on the Brahman-Atman (Soul, Self).[39]
Mundaka Upanishad[edit source]
The Mundaka Upanishad in the second Mundakam (part), suggests the means to knowing the Self and the Brahman to be meditation, self-reflection and introspection, that can be aided by the symbol Om.[47][48]
That which is flaming, which is subtler than the subtle,
on which the worlds are set, and their inhabitants –
That is the indestructible Brahman.[49]
It is life, it is speech, it is mind. That is the real. It is immortal.
It is a mark to be penetrated. Penetrate It, my friend.
Taking as a bow the great weapon of the Upanishad,
one should put upon it an arrow sharpened by meditation,
Stretching it with a thought directed to the essence of That,
Penetrate[50] that Imperishable as the mark, my friend.
Om is the bow, the arrow is the Soul, Brahman the mark,
By the undistracted man is It to be penetrated,
One should come to be in It,
as the arrow becomes one with the mark.
— Mundaka Upanishad, 2.2.2 - 2.2.4[51][52]
Adi Shankara, in his review of the Mundaka Upanishad, states Om as a symbolism for Atman (soul, self).[53]
Mandukya Upanishad
The Mandukya Upanishad opens by declaring, "Om!, this syllable is this whole world".[54] Thereafter it presents various explanations and theories on what it means and signifies.[55] This discussion is built on a structure of "four fourths" or "fourfold", derived from A + U + M + "silence" (or without an element).[54][55]
Aum as all states of time
In verse 1, the Upanishad states that time is threefold: the past, the present and the future, that these three are "Aum". The four fourth of time is that which transcends time, that too is "Aum" expressed.[55]
Aum as all states of Atman
In verse 2, states the Upanishad, everything is Brahman, but Brahman is Atman (the Soul, Self), and that the Atman is fourfold.[54] Johnston summarizes these four states of Self, respectively, as seeking the physical, seeking inner thought, seeking the causes and spiritual consciousness, and the fourth state is realizing oneness with the Self, the Eternal.[56]
Aum as all states of consciousness
In verses 3 to 6, the Mandukya Upanishad enumerates four states of consciousness: wakeful, dream, deep sleep and the state of ekatma (being one with Self, the oneness of Self).[55] These four are A + U + M + "without an element" respectively.[55]
Aum as all of knowledge
In verses 9 to 12, the Mandukya Upanishad enumerates fourfold etymological roots of the syllable "Aum". It states that the first element of "Aum" is A, which is from Apti (obtaining, reaching) or from Adimatva (being first).[54] The second element is U, which is from Utkarsa (exaltation) or from Ubhayatva(intermediateness).[55] The third element is M, from Miti (erecting, constructing) or from Mi Minati, or apīti (annihilation).[54] The fourth is without an element, without development, beyond the expanse of universe. In this way, states the Upanishad, the syllable Om is indeed the Atman (the self).[54][55]
Shvetashvatara Upanishad
The Shvetashvatara Upanishad, in verses 1.14 to 1.16, suggests meditating with the help of syllable Om, where one's perishable body is like one fuel-stick and the syllable Om is the second fuel-stick, which with discipline and diligent rubbing of the sticks unleashes the concealed fire of thought and awareness within. Such knowledge, asserts the Upanishad, is the goal of Upanishads.[57][58] The text asserts that Om is a tool of meditation empowering one to know the God within oneself, to realize one's Atman (Soul, Self).[59]
Epics[edit source]
The Bhagavad Gita, in the Epic Mahabharata, mentions the meaning and significance of Om in several verses. For example, Fowler notes that verse 9.17 of the Bhagavad Gita synthesizes the competing dualistic and monist streams of thought in Hinduism, by using "Om which is the symbol for the indescribable, impersonal Brahman".[60]
I am the Father of this world, Mother, Ordainer, Grandfather, the Thing to be known, the Purifier, the syllable Om, Rik, Saman and also Yajus.
— Krishna to Arjuna, Bhagavad Gita 9.17, [60]
The significance of the sacred syllable in the Hindu traditions, is similarly highlighted in various of its verses, such as verse 17.24 where the importance of Omduring prayers, charity and meditative practices is explained as follows,[61]
Therefore, uttering Om, the acts of yajna (fire ritual), dāna (charity) and tapas (austerity) as enjoined in the scriptures, are always begun by those who study the Brahman.
— Bhagavad Gita
Yoga Sutra
The aphoristic verse 1.27 of Pantanjali's Yogasutra links Om to Yoga practice, as follows,
तस्य वाचकः प्रणवः ॥२७॥
His word is Om.
— Yogasutra 1.27,
Johnston states this verse highlights the importance of Om in the meditative practice of Yoga, where it symbolizes three worlds in the Soul; the three times – past, present and future eternity, the three divine powers – creation, preservation and transformation in one Being; and three essences in one Spirit – immortality, omniscience and joy. It is, asserts Johnston, a symbol for the perfected Spiritual Man (his emphasis).
The being is a hybrid of Einstein and Cthulhu — an ancient cosmic intellect given form.
Its anatomy merges human cognition with incomprehensible scale. The head and upper structure echo a cybernetic human design: exposed brain matter partially encased in biomechanical architecture. Organic folds, veins, and subtle mechanical interfaces fuse seamlessly, as if evolution and engineering reached the same conclusion from opposite ends.
The brain emits a faint, cold glow — not radiant, but deliberate — suggesting intelligence that does not seek attention, only understanding.
Beauty - a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses, esp. the sight: I was struck by her beauty | an area of outstanding natural beauty.
• a combination of qualities that pleases the intellect or moral sense.
We went to a funeral on Tuesday, it was north two hours in a small town. On our way home we took a different route, it was a winding road and there were numerous lakes and huge rocks…it was beautiful…true Canadian lake country. We had taken someone with us who needed a ride to the funeral and all I heard from the backseat for quite awhile was her remarking at all the beautiful landscape we were passing and how peaceful it was. That made me smile and realize the beauty that was in her. And even though the day was dreary the beauty was still evident. When we see something beautiful we want to stay, linger and take it in. As human beings we are drawn to beauty.
As women the whole beauty thing can be hard. We are bombarded with what culture says is beautiful when it comes to women and often times it is outward beauty and something the majority of us can never attain. And when we try to attain it it becomes our idol, our driving force for acceptance. We try so hard to conform to what culture says is beautiful that we end up destroying the true beauty that is within us. I know this is an area where I struggle. I don't want to conform to what the world says is beautiful, I want to be true to who God has created me to be.
Often times when I am struggling and feel I don't measure up my husband will pull me aside, stand in front of me and say "Tina, you know what true beauty is, it's in here" as he points to my heart "and I see it in your eyes, that's true beauty, that's what I'm looking for." And I know he's right and it's what the world needs. Physical beauty is fleeting…we all grow old…but true beauty remains and grows, it's life giving. Straight physical beauty is not life giving, if that's all we're looking and striving for it actually robs us and those around us of life.
The funeral we attended was from the mother of a woman who goes to our Church. I never knew her mother, I only saw her once and she was old and frail. Yet to hear her daughter and pastor speak of her, she was a woman of true beauty, she lived her life selflessly giving to others. Her daughter said her front door was always swinging open. She gave freely to those whose paths she crossed, she saw the need in others and gave what she could. Her beauty was life giving.
The beauty that trips some of us women up…what we see on magazine covers, billboards, commercials, movies, television shows, etc. may be outward physical beauty but it's not what we're to strive for, it's not what the world needs, it's not what our families need, it's a false reality.
Accept who you are…I say this to myself too :-) Each of us is special and has a place in this world and at this time…embrace it and be you…it's the most freeing place to be, the most rewarding and the most life-giving.
I've posted a number of images of some of the beautiful women in my life, check it out if you'd like.
tina-ramblingsofacountrywoman.blogspot.ca/2012/04/some-of...
The Postcard
A postally unused postcard that was published prior to June 1918. The card has a divided back.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
Percy Bysshe Shelley, who was born on the 4th. August 1792, was one of the major English Romantic poets.
A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achievements in poetry grew steadily following his death, and he became an important influence on subsequent generations of poets, including Robert Browning, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Thomas Hardy, and W. B. Yeats.
American literary critic Harold Bloom describes Shelley as:
"A superb craftsman, a lyric poet without
rival, and surely one of the most advanced
sceptical intellects ever to write a poem."
Shelly's reputation fluctuated during the 20th. century, but in recent decades he has achieved increasing critical acclaim for the sweeping momentum of his poetic imagery, his mastery of genres and verse forms, and the complex interplay of sceptical, idealist, and materialist ideas in his work.
Among his best-known works are "Ozymandias" (1818), "Ode to the West Wind" (1819), "To a Skylark" (1820), the philosophical essay "The Necessity of Atheism" written alongside his friend T. J. Hogg (1811), and the political ballad "The Mask of Anarchy" (1819).
Shelley's other major works include the verse drama "The Cenci" (1819) and long poems such as "Alastor", or "The Spirit of Solitude" (1815), "Julian and Maddalo" (1819), "Adonais" (1821), "Prometheus Unbound" (1820) - widely considered his masterpiece - "Hellas" (1822), and his final, unfinished work, "The Triumph of Life" (1822).
Shelley also wrote prose fiction and a quantity of essays on political, social, and philosophical issues.
Much of his poetry and prose was not published in his lifetime, or only published in expurgated form, due to the risk of prosecution for political and religious libel.
From the 1820's, his poems and political and ethical writings became popular in Owenist, Chartist, and radical political circles, and later drew admirers as diverse as Karl Marx, Mahatma Gandhi, and George Bernard Shaw.
Shelley's life was marked by family crises, ill health, and a backlash against his atheism, political views and defiance of social conventions. He went into permanent self-exile in Italy in 1818, and over the next four years produced what Leader and O'Neill call:
"Some of the finest poetry
of the Romantic period".
His second wife, Mary Shelley, was the author of Frankenstein.
Shelley died in a boating accident in 1822 at the age of 29.
Percy Bysshe Shelley - The Early Years
Shelley was born at Field Place, Warnham, West Sussex. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley (1753–1844), a Whig Member of Parliament for Horsham from 1790 to 1792 and for Shoreham between 1806 and 1812, and his wife, Elizabeth Pilfold (1763–1846), the daughter of a successful butcher.
Percy had four younger sisters and one much younger brother. Shelley's early childhood was sheltered and mostly happy. He was particularly close to his sisters and his mother, who encouraged him to hunt, fish and ride.
At the age of six, he was sent to a day school run by the vicar of Warnham church, where he displayed an impressive memory and gift for languages.
In 1802 he entered the Syon House Academy in Brentford. Shelley was bullied and unhappy at the school, and sometimes responded with violent rage. He also began suffering from the nightmares, hallucinations and sleep walking that were periodically to afflict him throughout his life.
Shelley developed an interest in science which supplemented his voracious reading of tales of mystery, romance and the supernatural. During his holidays at Field Place, his sisters were often terrified by being subjected to his experiments with gunpowder, acids and electricity. Back at school he blew up a fence with gunpowder.
In 1804, Shelley entered Eton College, a period which he later recalled with loathing. He was subjected to particularly severe mob bullying which the perpetrators called "Shelley-baits".
A number of biographers and contemporaries have attributed the bullying to Shelley's aloofness, nonconformity and refusal to take part in fagging. His peculiarities and violent rages earned him the nickname "Mad Shelley".
His interest in the occult and science continued, and contemporaries describe him giving an electric shock to a master, blowing up a tree stump with gunpowder and attempting to raise spirits with occult rituals.
In his senior years, Shelley came under the influence of a part-time teacher, Dr James Lind, who encouraged his interest in the occult, and introduced him to liberal and radical authors.
Shelley also developed an interest in Plato and idealist philosophy which he pursued in later years through self-study. According to Richard Holmes, Shelley, by his leaving year, had gained a reputation as a classical scholar and a tolerated eccentric.
In his last term at Eton, Shelley's first novel Zastrozzi appeared, and by then he had established a following among his fellow students. Prior to enrolling at University College, Oxford in October 1810, Shelley completed Original Poetry by Victor and Cazire (written with his sister Elizabeth), the verse melodrama The Wandering Jew and the Gothic novel St. Irvine; or, The Rosicrucian: A Romance (published 1811).
At Oxford Shelley attended few lectures, instead spending long hours reading and conducting scientific experiments in the laboratory he set up in his room. He met a fellow student, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, who became his closest friend.
Shelley became increasingly politicised under Hogg's influence, developing strong radical and anti-Christian views. Such views were dangerous in the reactionary political climate prevailing during Britain's war with Napoleonic France, and Shelley's father warned him against Hogg's influence.
In the winter of 1810–1811, Shelley published a series of anonymous political poems and tracts: Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, The Necessity of Atheism (written in collaboration with Hogg) and A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things.
Shelley mailed The Necessity of Atheism to all the bishops and heads of colleges at Oxford, and he was called to appear before the college's fellows, including the Dean, George Rowley.
In the work, Shelley argued that since a person’s beliefs are involuntary, it is unjust to persecute someone for having beliefs that they cannot control. Since this was the early 1800's, Shelley faced serious punishment from Oxford’s administration.
His refusal to answer questions put by college authorities regarding whether or not he authored the pamphlet resulted in his expulsion from Oxford on the 25th. March 1811, along with Hogg.
Hearing of his son's expulsion, Shelley's father threatened to cut all contact with Shelley unless he agreed to return home and study under tutors appointed by him. Shelley's refusal to do so led to a falling-out with his father.
Shelley's Marriage to Harriet Westbrook
In late December 1810, Shelley had met Harriet Westbrook, a pupil at the same boarding school as Shelley's sisters. They corresponded frequently that winter, and also after Shelley had been expelled from Oxford.
Shelley expounded his radical ideas on politics, religion and marriage to Harriet, and they gradually convinced each other that she was oppressed by her father and at school.
Shelley's infatuation with Harriet developed in the months following his expulsion, when he was under severe emotional strain due to the conflict with his family, his bitterness over the breakdown of his romance with his cousin Harriet Grove, and his unfounded belief that he might be suffering from a fatal illness.
At the same time, Harriet Westbrook's elder sister Eliza, to whom Harriet was very close, encouraged the young girl's romance with Shelley. Shelley's correspondence with Harriet intensified in July, while he was holidaying in Wales, and in response to her urgent pleas for his protection, he returned to London in early August.
Putting aside his philosophical objections to matrimony, he left with the sixteen-year-old Harriet for Edinburgh on the 25th. August 1811, and they were married there on the 28th.
Hearing of the elopement, Harriet's father, John Westbrook, and Shelley's father cut off the allowances of the bride and groom. Shelley's father believed that his son had married beneath him, as Harriet's father had earned his fortune in trade, and was the owner of a tavern and coffee house.
Surviving on borrowed money, Shelley and Harriet stayed in Edinburgh for a month, with Hogg living under the same roof. The trio left for York in October, and Shelley went on to Sussex to settle matters with his father, leaving Harriet behind with Hogg.
Shelley returned from his unsuccessful excursion to find that Harriet's sister Eliza had moved in with Harriet and Hogg. Harriet confessed that Hogg had tried to seduce her while Shelley had been away. Accordingly Shelley, Harriet and Eliza soon left for Keswick in the Lake District, leaving Hogg in York.
At this time Shelley was involved in an intense platonic relationship with Elizabeth Hitchener, a 28-year-old unmarried schoolteacher of advanced views, with whom he had been corresponding. Hitchener, whom Shelley called the "sister of my soul" and "my second self", became his confidante and intellectual companion as he developed his views on politics, religion, ethics and personal relationships.
Shelley proposed that Elizabeth join him, Harriet and Eliza in a communal household where all property would be shared.
The Shelleys and Eliza spent December and January in Keswick where Shelley visited Robert Southey whose poetry he admired. Southey was taken with Shelley, even though there was a wide gulf between them politically, and predicted great things for him as a poet.
Southey also informed Shelley that William Godwin, author of Political Justice, which had greatly influenced him in his youth, and which Shelley also admired, was still alive. Shelley wrote to Godwin, offering himself as his devoted disciple. Godwin, who had modified many of his earlier radical views, advised Shelley to reconcile with his father, become a scholar before he published anything else, and give up his avowed plans for political agitation in Ireland.
Meanwhile, Shelley had met his father's patron, Charles Howard, 11th. Duke of Norfolk, who helped secure the reinstatement of Shelley's allowance.
With Harriet's allowance also restored, Shelley now had the funds for his Irish venture. Their departure for Ireland was precipitated by increasing hostility towards the Shelley household from their landlord and neighbours who were alarmed by Shelley's scientific experiments, pistol shooting and radical political views.
As tension mounted, Shelley claimed he had been attacked in his home by ruffians, an event which might have been real, or a delusional episode triggered by stress. This was the first of a series of episodes in subsequent years where Shelley claimed to have been attacked by strangers during periods of personal crisis.
Early in 1812, Shelley wrote, published and personally distributed in Dublin three political tracts: An Address, to the Irish People; Proposals for an Association of Philanthropists; and Declaration of Rights. He also delivered a speech at a meeting of O'Connell's Catholic Committee in which he called for Catholic emancipation, repeal of the Acts of Union and an end to the oppression of the Irish poor. Reports of Shelley's subversive activities were sent to the Home Secretary.
Returning from Ireland, the Shelley household travelled to Wales, then Devon, where they again came under government surveillance for distributing subversive literature. Elizabeth Hitchener joined the household in Devon, but several months later had a falling out with the Shelleys and left.
The Shelley household settled in Tremadog, Wales in September 1812, where Shelley worked on Queen Mab, a utopian allegory with extensive notes preaching atheism, free love, republicanism and vegetarianism. The poem was published the following year in a private edition of 250 copies, although few were initially distributed, because of the risk of prosecution for seditious and religious libel.
In February 1813, Shelley claimed he was attacked in his home at night. The incident might have been real, a hallucination brought on by stress, or a hoax staged by Shelley in order to escape government surveillance, creditors and his entanglements in local politics. The Shelleys and Eliza fled to Ireland, then London.
Back in England, Shelley's debts mounted as he tried unsuccessfully to reach a financial settlement with his father. On the 23rd. June 1813, Harriet gave birth to a girl, Eliza Ianthe Shelley, but in the following months the relationship between Shelley and his wife deteriorated.
Shelley resented the influence that Harriet's sister had over her, while Harriet was alienated by Shelley's close friendship with an attractive widow, Harriet Boinville, and her daughter Cornelia Turner.
Following Ianthe's birth, the Shelleys moved frequently across London, Wales, the Lake District, Scotland and Berkshire to escape creditors and to search for a home.
In March 1814, Shelley remarried Harriet in London to settle any doubts about the legality of their Edinburgh wedding and to secure the rights of their child. Nevertheless, the Shelleys lived apart for most of the following months, and Shelley reflected bitterly on:
"My rash & heartless union with Harriet".
Shelley's Elopement with Mary Godwin
In May 1814, Shelley began visiting his mentor William Godwin almost daily, and soon fell in love with Mary, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Godwin and the late feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft.
Shelley and Mary declared their love for each other during a visit to her mother's grave in the churchyard of St. Pancras Old Church on the 26th. June 1814. When Shelley told William Godwin that he intended to leave Harriet and live with Godwin's daughter, his mentor banished him from the house, and forbade Mary from seeing him.
Shelley and Mary however eloped to Europe on the 28th. July 1814, taking Mary's step-sister Claire Clairmont with them. Before leaving, Shelley had secured a loan of £3,000, but had left most of the funds at the disposal of Godwin and Harriet, who was now pregnant. The financial arrangement with Godwin led to rumours that he had sold his daughters to Shelley.
Shelley, Mary Godwin and Claire made their way across war-ravaged France where Shelley wrote to Harriet, asking her to meet them in Switzerland with the money he had left for her.
However, hearing nothing from Harriet in Switzerland, and being unable to secure sufficient funds or suitable accommodation, the three travelled to Germany and Holland before returning to England on the 13th. September 1814.
Shelley spent the next few months trying to raise loans and avoid bailiffs. Mary was pregnant, lonely, depressed and ill. Her mood was not improved when she heard that, on the 30th. November 1814, Harriet had given birth to Charles Bysshe Shelley, heir to the Shelley fortune and baronetcy.
This was followed, in early January 1815, by news that Shelley's grandfather, Sir Bysshe, had died leaving an estate worth £220,000. The settlement of the estate, and a financial settlement between Shelley and his father (now Sir Timothy), however, was not concluded until April the following year.
In February 1815, Mary gave premature birth to a baby girl who died ten days later, deepening her depression. In the following weeks, Mary became close to Hogg who temporarily moved into the household.
Shelley was almost certainly having a sexual relationship with Claire at this time, and it is possible that Mary, with Shelley's encouragement, was also having a sexual relationship with Hogg. In May Claire left the household, at Mary's insistence, to reside in Lynmouth.
In August 1815 Shelley and Mary moved to Bishopsgate where Shelley worked on Alastor, a long poem in blank verse based on the myth of Narcissus and Echo. Alastor was published in an edition of 250 in early 1816 to poor sales and largely unfavourable reviews from the conservative press.
On the 24th. January 1816, Mary gave birth to William Shelley. Percy was delighted to have another son, but was suffering from the strain of prolonged financial negotiations with his father, Harriet and William Godwin. Shelley showed signs of delusional behaviour, and was contemplating an escape to the continent.
Lord Byron
Claire initiated a sexual relationship with Lord Byron in April 1816, just before his self-exile on the continent, and then arranged for Byron to meet Shelley, Mary and her in Geneva.
Shelley admired Byron's poetry, and had sent him Queen Mab and other poems. Shelley's party arrived in Geneva in May and rented a house close to Villa Diodati, on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Byron was staying. There Shelley, Byron and the others engaged in discussions about literature, science and "various philosophical doctrines".
One night, while Byron was reciting Coleridge's Christabel, Shelley suffered a severe panic attack with hallucinations. The previous night Mary had had a more productive vision or nightmare which inspired her novel Frankenstein.
Shelley and Byron then took a boating tour around Lake Geneva, which inspired Shelley to write his "Hymn to Intellectual Beauty", his first substantial poem since Alastor.
A tour of Chamonix in the French Alps inspired "Mont Blanc", which has been described as an atheistic response to Coleridge's "Hymn before Sunrise in the Vale of Chamoni". During this tour, Shelley often signed guest books with a declaration that he was an atheist. These declarations were seen by other British tourists, including Southey, which hardened attitudes against Shelley back home.
Relations between Byron and Shelley's party became strained when Byron was told that Claire was pregnant with his child. Shelley, Mary, and Claire left Switzerland in late August, with arrangements for the expected baby still unclear, although Shelley made provision for Claire and the baby in his will.
In January 1817 Claire gave birth to a daughter by Byron who she named Alba, but later renamed Allegra in accordance with Byron's wishes.
Shelley's Marriage to Mary Godwin
Shelley and Mary returned to England in September 1816, and in early October they heard that Mary's half-sister Fanny Imlay had killed herself. Mary believed that Fanny had been in love with Shelley, and Shelley himself suffered depression and guilt over her death, writing:
"Friend had I known thy
secret grief
Should we have parted so."
Further tragedy followed in December 1816 when Shelley's estranged wife Harriet drowned herself in the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Harriet, pregnant and living alone at the time, believed that she had been abandoned by her new lover. In her suicide letter she asked Shelley to take custody of their son Charles but to leave their daughter in her sister Eliza's care.
Shelley married Mary Godwin on the 30 December 1816, despite his philosophical objections to the institution. The marriage was intended to help secure Shelley's custody of his children by Harriet and to placate Godwin who had refused to see Shelley and Mary because of their previous adulterous relationship.
After a prolonged legal battle, the Court of Chancery eventually awarded custody of Shelley and Harriet's children to foster parents, on the grounds that Shelley had abandoned his first wife for Mary without cause, and was an atheist.
In March 1817 the Shelleys moved to the village of Marlow, Buckinghamshire, where Shelley's friend Thomas Love Peacock lived. The Shelley household included Claire and her baby Allegra, both of whose presence was resented by Mary. Shelley's generosity with money and increasing debts also led to financial and marital stress, as did Godwin's frequent requests for financial help.
On the 2nd. September 1817 Mary gave birth to a daughter, Clara Everina Shelley. Soon after, Shelley left for London with Claire, which increased Mary's resentment towards her step-sister. Shelley was arrested for two days in London over money he owed, and attorneys visited Mary in Marlowe over Shelley's debts.
Shelley was part of the literary and political circle that surrounded Leigh Hunt, and during this period he met William Hazlitt and John Keats. Shelley's major work during this time was Laon and Cythna, a long narrative poem featuring incest and attacks on religion.
It was hastily withdrawn after publication due to fears of prosecution for religious libel, and was re-edited and reissued as The Revolt of Islam in January 1818. Shelley also published two political tracts under a pseudonym: A Proposal for putting Reform to the Vote throughout the Kingdom (March 1817) and An Address to the People on the Death of Princess Charlotte (November 1817).
In December he wrote "Ozymandias", which is considered to be one of his finest sonnets, as part of a competition with friend and fellow poet Horace Smith.
Shelley in Italy
On the 12th. March 1818 the Shelleys and Claire left England:
"To escape its tyranny civil and religious".
A doctor had also recommended that Shelley go to Italy for his chronic lung complaint, and Shelley had arranged to take Claire's daughter, Allegra, to her father Byron who was now in Venice.
After travelling some months through France and Italy, Shelley left Mary and baby Clara at Bagni di Lucca (in today's Tuscany) while he travelled with Claire to Venice to see Byron and make arrangements for visiting Allegra.
Byron invited the Shelleys to stay at his summer residence at Este, and Shelley urged Mary to meet him there. Clara became seriously ill on the journey, and died on the 24th. September 1818 in Venice.
Following Clara's death, Mary fell into a long period of depression and emotional estrangement from Shelley.
The Shelleys moved to Naples on the 1st. December 1818, where they stayed for three months. During this period Shelley was ill, depressed and almost suicidal: a state of mind reflected in his poem "Stanzas written in Dejection – December 1818, Near Naples".
While in Naples, Shelley registered the birth and baptism of a baby girl, Elena Adelaide Shelley (born on the 27th. December 1818), naming himself as the father and falsely naming Mary as the mother.
The parentage of Elena has never been conclusively established. Biographers have variously speculated that she was adopted by Shelley to console Mary for the loss of Clara, that she was Shelley's child to Claire, that she was his child to his servant Elise Foggi, or that she was the child of a "mysterious lady" who had followed Shelley to the continent.
Shelley registered the birth and baptism on the 27th. February 1819, and the household left Naples for Rome the following day, leaving Elena with carers. Elena died in a poor suburb of Naples on the 9th. June 1820.
In Rome, Shelley was in poor health, probably suffering from nephritis and tuberculosis which later was in remission. Nevertheless, he made significant progress on three major works: Julian and Maddalo, Prometheus Unbound, and The Cenci.
Julian and Maddalo is an autobiographical poem which explores the relationship between Shelley and Byron, and analyses Shelley's personal crises of 1818 and 1819. The poem was completed in the summer of 1819, but was not published in Shelley's lifetime.
Prometheus Unbound is a long dramatic poem inspired by Aeschylus's retelling of the Prometheus myth. It was completed in late 1819 and published in 1820.
The Cenci is a verse drama of rape, murder and incest based on the story of the Renaissance Count Cenci of Rome and his daughter Beatrice. Shelley completed the play in September, and the first edition was published that year. It was to become one of his most popular works, and the only one to have two authorised editions during his lifetime.
Shelley's three-year-old son William died in June, probably of malaria. The new tragedy caused a further decline in Shelley's health, and deepened Mary's depression. On the 4th. August she wrote:
"We have now lived five years together;
and if all the events of the five years
were blotted out, I might be happy".
The Shelleys were now living in Livorno where, in September, Shelley heard of the Peterloo Massacre of peaceful protesters in Manchester. Within two weeks he had completed one of his most famous political poems, The Mask of Anarchy, and despatched it to Leigh Hunt for publication. Hunt, however, decided not to publish it for fear of prosecution for seditious libel. The poem was only officially published in 1832.
The Shelleys moved to Florence in October, where Shelley read a scathing review of the Revolt of Islam (and its earlier version Laon and Cythna) in the conservative Quarterly Review. Shelley was angered by the personal attack on him in the article which he erroneously believed had been written by Southey. His bitterness over the review lasted for the rest of his life.
On the 12th. November, Mary gave birth to a boy, Percy Florence Shelley. Around the time of Percy's birth, the Shelleys met Sophia Stacey, who was a ward of one of Shelley's uncles, and who was staying at the same pension as the Shelleys.
Sophia, a talented harpist and singer, formed a friendship with Shelley while Mary was preoccupied with her newborn son. Shelley wrote at least five love poems and fragments for Sophia including "Song Written for an Indian Air".
The Shelleys moved to Pisa in January 1820, ostensibly to consult a doctor who had been recommended to them. There they became friends with the Irish republican Margaret Mason (Lady Margaret Mountcashell) and her common-law husband George William Tighe. Mrs Mason became the inspiration for Shelley's poem "The Sensitive Plant", and Shelley's discussions with Mason and Tighe influenced his political thought and his critical interest in the population theories of Thomas Malthus.
In March Shelley wrote to friends that Mary was depressed, suicidal and hostile towards him. Shelley was also beset by financial worries, as creditors from England pressed him for payment and he was obliged to make secret payments in connection with his "Neapolitan charge" Elena.
Meanwhile, Shelley was writing A Philosophical View of Reform, a political essay which he had begun in Rome. The unfinished essay, which remained unpublished in Shelley's lifetime, has been called:
"One of the most advanced and
sophisticated documents of political
philosophy in the nineteenth century".
Another crisis erupted in June when Shelley claimed that he had been assaulted in the Pisan post office by a man accusing him of foul crimes. Shelley's biographer James Bieri suggests that this incident was possibly a delusional episode brought on by extreme stress, as Shelley was being blackmailed by a former servant, Paolo Foggi, over baby Elena.
It is likely that the blackmail was connected with a story spread by another former servant, Elise Foggi, that Shelley had fathered a child to Claire in Naples and had sent it to a foundling home. Shelley, Claire and Mary denied this story, and Elise later recanted.
In July, hearing that John Keats was seriously ill in England, Shelley wrote to the poet inviting him to stay with him at Pisa. Keats replied with hopes of seeing him, but instead, arrangements were made for Keats to travel to Rome.
In early July 1820, Shelley heard that baby Elena had died on 9 June. In the months following the post office incident and Elena's death, relations between Mary and Claire deteriorated, and Claire spent most of the next two years living separately from the Shelleys, mainly in Florence.
That December Shelley met Teresa (Emilia) Viviani, who was the 19-year-old daughter of the Governor of Pisa and who was living in a convent awaiting a suitable marriage. Shelley visited her several times over the next few months, and they started a passionate correspondence which dwindled after her marriage the following September. Emilia was the inspiration for Shelley's major poem Epipsychidion.
In March 1821 Shelley completed "A Defence of Poetry", a response to Peacock's article "The Four Ages of Poetry". Shelley's essay, with its famous conclusion "Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world", remained unpublished in his lifetime.
Following the death of Keats in 1821, Shelley wrote Adonais, which is considered to be one of the major pastoral elegies. The poem was published in Pisa in July 1821, but sold few copies.
Shelley went alone to Ravenna in early August to see Byron, making a detour to Livorno for a rendezvous with Claire. Shelley stayed with Byron for two weeks and invited the older poet to spend the winter in Pisa. After Shelley heard Byron read his newly completed fifth canto of Don Juan he wrote to Mary:
"I despair of rivalling Byron."
In November Byron moved into Villa Lanfranchi in Pisa, just across the river from the Shelleys. Byron became the centre of the "Pisan circle" which was to include Shelley, Thomas Medwin, Edward Williams and Edward Trelawny.
In the early months of 1822, Shelley became increasingly close to Jane Williams, who was living with her partner Edward Williams in the same building as the Shelleys.
Shelley wrote a number of love poems for Jane, including "The Serpent is Shut out of Paradise" and "With a Guitar, to Jane". Shelley's obvious affection for Jane was to cause increasing tension between Shelley, Edward Williams and Mary.
Claire arrived in Pisa in April at Shelley's invitation, and soon after they heard that her daughter Allegra had died of typhus in Ravenna. The Shelleys and Claire then moved to Villa Magni, near Lerici on the shores of the Gulf of La Spezia.
Shelley acted as mediator between Claire and Byron over arrangements for the burial of their daughter, and the added strain led to Shelley having a series of hallucinations.
Mary almost died from a miscarriage on the 16th, June, her life only being saved by Shelley's effective first aid. Two days later Shelley wrote to a friend that there was no sympathy between Mary and him, and if the past and future could be obliterated he would be content in his boat with Jane and her guitar.
That same day he also wrote to Trelawny asking for prussic acid. The following week, Shelley woke the household with his screaming over a nightmare or hallucination in which he saw Edward and Jane Williams as walking corpses, and himself strangling Mary.
During this time, Shelley was writing his final major poem, the unfinished The Triumph of Life, which Harold Bloom has called:
"The most despairing poem he wrote".
The Death of Shelley
On the 1st. July 1822, Shelley and Edward Williams sailed in Shelley's new boat the Don Juan to Livorno where Shelley met Leigh Hunt and Byron in order to make arrangements for a new journal, The Liberal.
After the meeting, on the 8th. July, Shelley, Williams and their boat boy sailed out of Livorno for Lerici. A few hours later, the Don Juan and its inexperienced crew were lost in a storm. The vessel, an open boat, had been custom-built in Genoa for Shelley.
Mary Shelley declared in her "Note on Poems of 1822" that the design had a defect, and that the boat was never seaworthy. In fact, however, the Don Juan was overmasted; the sinking was due to a severe storm and poor seamanship of the three men on board.
Shelley's badly decomposed body washed ashore at Viareggio ten days later, and was identified by Trelawny from the clothing and a copy of Keats's Lamia in a jacket pocket. On the 16th. August, his body was cremated on a beach near Viareggio, and the ashes were buried in the Protestant Cemetery of Rome.
When news of Shelley's death reached England, the Tory London newspaper The Courier printed:
"Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry,
has been drowned; now he knows whether
there is God or no."
Shelley's ashes were reburied in a different plot at the cemetery in 1823. His grave bears the Latin inscription Cor Cordium (Heart of Hearts), and a few lines of "Ariel's Song" from Shakespeare's The Tempest:
'Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea change
Into something rich and strange'.
When Shelley's body was cremated on the beach, his presumed heart resisted burning, and was retrieved by Trelawny. The heart was possibly calcified from an earlier tubercular infection, or was perhaps his liver.
Trelawny gave the scorched organ to Hunt, who preserved it in spirits of wine and refused to hand it over to Mary. He finally relented, and the heart was eventually buried either at St Peter's Church, Bournemouth or in Christchurch Priory. Hunt also retrieved a piece of Shelley's jawbone which, in 1913, was given to the Shelley-Keats Memorial in Rome.
Shelley's Political, Religious and Ethical views
-- Politics
Shelley was a political radical who was influenced by thinkers such as Rousseau, Paine, Godwin, Wollstonecraft, and Leigh Hunt. He advocated Catholic Emancipation, republicanism, parliamentary reform, the extension of the franchise, freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, an end to aristocratic and clerical privilege, and a more equal distribution of income and wealth.
The views he expressed in his published works were often more moderate than those he advocated privately, because of the risk of prosecution for seditious libel and his desire not to alienate more moderate friends and political allies. Nevertheless, his political writings and activism brought him to the attention of the Home Office, and he came under government surveillance at various periods.
Shelley's most influential political work in the years immediately following his death was the poem Queen Mab, which included extensive notes on political themes. The work went through 14 official and pirated editions by 1845, and became popular in Owenist and Chartist circles. His longest political essay, A Philosophical View of Reform, was written in 1820, but not published until 1920.
-- Nonviolence
Shelley's advocacy of nonviolent resistance was largely based on his reflections on the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon, and his belief that violent protest would increase the prospect of a military despotism.
Although Shelley sympathised with supporters of Irish independence, he did not support violent rebellion. In his early pamphlet An Address, to the Irish People (1812) he wrote:
"I do not wish to see things changed now,
because it cannot be done without violence,
and we may assure ourselves that none of
us are fit for any change, however good, if
we condescend to employ force in a cause
we think right."
In his later essay A Philosophical View of Reform, Shelley did concede that there were political circumstances in which force might be justified:
"The last resort of resistance is
undoubtedly insurrection.
The right of insurrection is derived
from the employment of armed
force to counteract the will of the
nation."
Shelley supported the 1820 armed rebellion against absolute monarchy in Spain, and the 1821 armed Greek uprising against Ottoman rule.
Shelley's poem "The Mask of Anarchy" (written in 1819, but first published in 1832) has been called:
"Perhaps the first modern statement of
the principle of nonviolent resistance".
Gandhi was familiar with the poem, and it is possible that Shelley had an indirect influence on Gandhi through Henry David Thoreau's Civil Disobedience.
-- Religion
Shelley was an avowed atheist, who was influenced by the materialist arguments in Holbach's Le Système de la Nature. His atheism was an important element of his political radicalism, as he saw organised religion as inextricably linked to social oppression.
The overt and implied atheism in many of his works raised a serious risk of prosecution for religious libel. His early pamphlet The Necessity of Atheism was withdrawn from sale soon after publication following a complaint from a priest.
Shelley's poem Queen Mab, which includes sustained attacks on the priesthood, Christianity and religion in general, was twice prosecuted by the Society for the Suppression of Vice in 1821. A number of his other works were edited before publication to reduce the risk of prosecution.
-- Free Love
Shelley's advocacy of free love drew heavily on the work of Mary Wollstonecraft and the early work of William Godwin. In his notes to Queen Mab, he wrote:
"A system could not well have been
devised more studiously hostile to
human happiness than marriage."
He argued that:
"The children of unhappy marriages
are nursed in a systematic school of
ill-humour, violence and falsehood".
Shelley believed that the ideal of chastity outside marriage was "a monkish and evangelical superstition" which led to the hypocrisy of prostitution and promiscuity.
Shelley believed that "sexual connection" should be free among those who loved each other, and last only as long as their mutual love. Love should also be free, and not subject to obedience, jealousy and fear.
He denied that free love would lead to promiscuity and the disruption of stable human relationships, arguing that relationships based on love would generally be of long duration and marked by generosity and self-devotion.
When Shelley's friend T. J. Hogg made an unwanted sexual advance to Shelley's first wife Harriet, Shelley forgave him of his "horrible error" and assured him that he was not jealous. It is very likely that Shelley encouraged Hogg and Shelley's second wife Mary to have a sexual relationship.
-- Vegetarianism
Shelley converted to a vegetable diet in early March 1812 and sustained it, with occasional lapses, for the remainder of his life. Shelley's vegetarianism was influenced by ancient authors such as Hesiod, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Ovid and Plutarch, but more directly by John Frank Newton, author of The Return to Nature, or, A Defence of the Vegetable Regimen (1811).
Shelley wrote two essays on vegetarianism: A Vindication of Natural Diet (1813) and "On the Vegetable System of Diet" (written circa 1813–1815, but first published in 1929).
William Owen Jones argues that Shelley's advocacy of vegetarianism was strikingly modern, emphasising its health benefits, the alleviation of animal suffering, the inefficient use of agricultural land involved in animal husbandry, and the economic inequality resulting from the commercialisation of animal food production. Shelley's life and works inspired the founding of the Vegetarian Society in England (1847) and directly influenced the vegetarianism of George Bernard Shaw and perhaps Gandhi.
Reception and Influence of Shelley's Work
Shelley's work was not widely read in his lifetime outside a small circle of friends, poets and critics. Most of his poetry, drama and fiction was published in editions of only 250 copies which generally sold poorly. Only The Cenci went to an authorised second edition while Shelley was alive – in contrast, Byron's The Corsair (1814) sold out its first edition of 10,000 copies in one day.
The initial reception of Shelley's work in mainstream periodicals (with the exception of the liberal Examiner) was generally unfavourable. Reviewers often launched personal attacks on Shelley's private life and political, social and religious views, even when conceding that his poetry contained beautiful imagery and poetic expression.
There was also criticism of Shelley's intelligibility and style, Hazlitt describing it as:
"A passionate dream, a straining
after impossibilities, a record of fond
conjectures, a confused embodying
of vague abstraction".
Shelley's poetry soon however gained a wider audience in radical and reformist circles. Queen Mab became popular with Owenists and Chartists, and Revolt of Islam influenced poets sympathetic to the workers' movement such as Thomas Hood, Thomas Cooper and William Morris.
However, Shelley's mainstream following did not develop until a generation after his death. Bieri argues that editions of Shelley's poems published in 1824 and 1839 were edited by Mary Shelley to highlight her late husband's lyrical gifts and downplay his radical ideas. Matthew Arnold famously described Shelley as a "beautiful and ineffectual angel".
Shelley was a major influence on a number of important poets in the following decades, including Robert Browning, Swinburne, Hardy and Yeats.
Shelley-like characters frequently appeared in nineteenth-century literature, such as Scythrop in Peacock's Nightmare Abbey, Ladislaw in George Eliot's Middlemarch, and Angel Clare in Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles.
Twentieth-century critics such as Eliot, Leavis, Allen Tate and Auden variously criticised Shelley's poetry for deficiencies in style, "repellent" ideas, and immaturity of intellect and sensibility.
However, Shelley's critical reputation rose from the 1960's as a new generation of critics highlighted Shelley's debt to Spenser and Milton, his mastery of genres and verse forms, and the complex interplay of sceptical, idealist and materialist ideas in his work.
American literary critic Harold Bloom describes him as:
"A superb craftsman, a lyric poet
without rival, and surely one of the
most advanced sceptical intellects
ever to write a poem".
According to Donald H. Reiman:
"Shelley belongs to the great tradition
of Western writers that includes Dante,
Shakespeare and Milton".
John Lauritsen and Charles E. Robinson have argued that Shelley's contribution to Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein was extensive, and that he should be considered a collaborator or co-author.
However Professor Charlotte Gordon and others have disputed this contention. Fiona Sampson has said:
"In recent years Percy's corrections, visible
in the Frankenstein notebooks held at the
Bodleian Library in Oxford, have been
seized on as evidence that he must have
at least co-authored the novel. In fact, when
I examined the notebooks myself, I realised
that Percy did rather less than any line editor
working in publishing today."
Final Thoughts From Percy Shelley
"The soul's joy lies in doing."
"I have drunken deep of joy, And
I will taste no other wine tonight."
"A poet is a nightingale, who sits in
darkness and sings to cheer its own
solitude with sweet sounds."
"War is the statesman's game, the
priest's delight, the lawyer's jest,
the hired assassin's trade."
"Soul meets soul on lovers' lips."
"Fear not for the future,
weep not for the past."
"Our sincerest laughter with some
pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs
are those that tell of saddest thought."
"O, wind, if winter comes, can
can spring be far behind?"
This photo offers a feminist perspective on Rodin's "The Thinker," challenging traditional gender roles by portraying a female figure in a contemplative pose similar to the sculpture. While "The Thinker" emphasizes physical strength, the photo presents softness and subtlety, suggesting that intellectualism can be seen through a feminine lens. The photo also contrasts the raw texture of "The Thinker" with the soft, ethereal quality of the female subject, valuing traditionally feminine qualities in intellectual expression. Additionally, the partial nudity in the photo can be interpreted as a feminist statement on reclaiming and owning the female form, celebrating it as a site of both intellectual and physical strength.
Question: Philosophical superhero with a genius intellect, brilliant detective skills, martial arts prowess, and a special chemical mask to hide his face.
Riddler: Smooth-talking supervillain with genius-level deductive reasoning, cunning skills in criminal strategy, engineering abilities, and vast esoteric knowledge.
If they had to fight, who would win?
#95 in the Duel 365 series.
“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”
― Samuel Johnson, The Rambler
Sérdeilis spennandi dagskrá þar sem fléttast saman hljóðverk eftir hljóð - og myndlistarmanninn Joe Banks og margvísleg kvikmyndaljóð sem varpað verður á vegg Mengis. VIð sögu koma meðal annars Schubert og T.S. Eliot, Dolce og Gabbana, mexíkósk ljóðskáld og seigfljótandi hljóð utan úr geimnum. Að baki hlustunarpartýinu stendur enski hljóð og myndlistarmaðurinn Joe Banks sem hefur starfað undir nafninu Disinformation frá árinu 1995 og skapað hljóðverk, hljóðinnsetningar og vídeóverk. Hann hefur gefið út rómaðar plötur á vegum útgáfufyrirtækisins Ash International (systurútgáfu Touch Records), Iris Light og Adaadat Records og haldið fjölda einkasýninga. Í Mengi býður hann upp á verk sem byggja á upptökum stuttbylgjuútvarpa af segulstormum sem myndast vegna kórónugoss eða kórónuskvettu en svo nefnist það þegar gríðarstórar gasbólur springa út frá kórónu sólar.
PoetryFilm var stofnað af sýningastjóranum og listamanninum Zata Banks árið 2002. PoetryFilm Paradox er klukkustunda löng dagskrá með stuttmyndum sem eiga það sammerkt að rannsaka og velta fyrir sér margvíslegum birtingarmyndum ástarinnar, erótík, rómantík og væntumþykju. Myndirnar eru þrettán talsins - þar á meðal er stuttmynd eftir Kate Jessop þar sem við sögu koma hjartnæm bréfaskipti hönnuðanna Domenico Dolce og Stefano Gabbana, kvikmyndafantasía Bruno Teixidor sem byggir á ljóði eftir mexíkóska rithöfundinn og þýðandann Tomas Segovia, táknmálsmynd eftir Brooke Griffin sem byggir á ljóðum Raymond Luczak, kvikmynd Stuart Pound sem byggir á ljóðasöngnum “Die Nebensonnen” úr Vetrarferð Franz Schuberts og Wilhelm Müller, myndræn túlkun Martin Pickles og Mikey Georgeson á ljóði T.S. Eliot “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”, stuttmyndin “Fucking Him” eftir listamennina C. O. Moed & Adrian Garcia Gomez, og “447: Intellect - N” eftir Jane Glennie.
Mengi, Reykjavik, 10 March 2016
2,000 ISK - starts at 9pm sharp
Viðburðurinn hefst klukkan 21
Miðaverð 2000 krónur
Mengi, Óðinsgata 2
Reykjavik 101
Iceland
The Disinformation Listening Party focusses on shortwave radio recordings of so-called “Type II” (slow-drift) noise storms - interstellar shock-waves produced by coronal mass ejections from the surface of the sun.
rorschachaudio.com/2016/02/12/kvikmyndaljod-upplysingafol...