Hicks’s Peaceable Kingdom

Many people would recognize the work of Edward Hicks (1780-1849) in his Peaceable Kingdom paintings. But it would be a rare person who would know much more about his life and beliefs, which were totally connected with them. Some think of him as a colonial folk artist, untrained and self-taught, simple, sweet, or naive. That view is partially true, but also misleading. Although Hicks was self-taught, he developed sophisticated technical ability and had an educated and penetrating intellect.

 

His career started as a decorator of carriages and maker of signs. Some of the signs were patriotic, such as views of Washington crossing the Delaware with the moon penetrating storm clouds, like the cosmic eye of God, observing and approving of the events. Another was a wooden placard adorned with the face of Benjamin Franklin. The most curious sign to us might be the one of a joyful jumble of hats for a hatter named Jacob Christ, who surprisingly came from Nazareth, albeit Pennsylvania.

 

At first his fellow Quakers looked a bit askance at his profession, and because of this, at one time he gave It up to be a farmer. He was unsuccessful at farming, however, and returned to his brushes. It was honest work, so fellow members of his meeting eventually forgave him, especially since he was becoming a strong preacher, traveling among many meetings. He did agree with them about certain vanities in art and refused to paint portraits, which were too ego-centered.

 

He worked at the time when both the United States and modern American Quakerism were young. His spiritual beliefs came from Barclay and 18th-century quietism, which espoused simplicity, self-discipline, and contact with the Inner Light. FIias Hicks, his second cousin, was a central figure in a religious storm. Edward Hicks was a spokesman, in word and in image, for those who became known as the Hicksites. It broke his heart to see Quakers becoming worldly, with excessive material goods and inflated pride, and leaning towards the creation of a spiritual elite. He felt this corrosion also in the authoritarian control of elders, as mere men, and not as followers of the Inner Spirit of Christ. He had a genuine feeling for the Scriptures, along with hope for a continuing sense of insight open to all. Some of the divisions between urban and rural Quakers have been laid at the feet of visiting Quakers from England, justly or unjustly. In his travels, Hicks spoke much of this.

 

He also spoke of something else: his own education included ancient concepts of animal symbolism with its references to aspects of human personality. These symbols came into his paintings. The lion was quick-tempered and willful. The wolf was full of melancholy and reserved. The bear was sluggish and greedy. The leopard, buoyant. In his paintings, these were both animal qualities with potential violence as well as the aforementioned rage, egoism, greed, etc. personified.

 

His "signature" subject of the peaceable kingdom slowly evolved. His symbols of the animals were joined to a quotation of Isaiah's prophecy in the Bible (Isa. 11:6): The wolf shall also dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.

 

The Peaceable Kingdom paintings portray a delicate balance of difficult and unresolved issues. The lion-ego poses the greatest threat. The wild animals are seemingly domesticated and brought into line with loving kindness. However, their expression of pop-eyed puzzlement is not lost on any viewer. For the moment, they are behaving themselves, eating bovine food and not the little lambs. Hicks's paintings over the years show an increasingly subtle rendering of these animals and children clustered together. His concern is revealed through a tree that appears as if struck by lightning, splitting it. These are not mere decorations added for the naturalistic setting. The divided tree remains a major element in his paintings. As with the animal symbolism, other figures could represent concepts like "justice" or "purity." Originally a sign painter, Hicks continued to make "signs," except that now we have to call them symbols.

 

The little child had appeared in earlier paintings representing liberty and freedom from autocratic oppression. Politically, that meant kings and princes for' Hicks. But spiritual freedom also has to be obtained. There is a struggle against a foe, not British Quakers or material riches, but the weakness and characteristics of a willful self. The true foe was a self-willed, egotistical, greedy, lustful, or slanderously poisonous self Hicks rejected the authority of the self-aggrandized. He sought the authority of a purer self, washed by the Inner Light, which could reveal religious understandings, even if possibly at odds with established views.

 

This search was not his alone, and there was resistance to it. A face-off came, with dire results culminating in a division amongst Quakers. For Friends there were many words, not necessarily all polite. Hicks laid the blame upon the inherent human propensities that when uncontrolled turn wild. He felt that a peaceable kingdom was possible, that the child would lead them, that the lamb would lie down with the wolf, etc. Across the ravine was seen an example of William Penn demonstrating how it could be done. There might be other groups of Quakers, with Elias Hicks among them, representing what the artist felt were the better aspects of humankind, wrapped in long ribbons, with messages such as "Mind the Inner Light." Deeper in the paintings, in colorful satu- rations of light, might be seen a hilltop with a figure and twelve followers, indicating something even loftier, but with no written labels.

 

Edward Hicks allows us to see the Light coming out of all living beings and the world, speaking to that which shines within every one of us.

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard published by the Bodleian Library and printed at the Oxford University Press.

 

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, his first novel Zastrozzi appeared and 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. 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 undoubtably [sic] 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. His 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."

 

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?"

Painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, this evocative portrait captures architect Sir William Chambers (1723–1796) at a moment of creative spark. Holding a sketchbook and quill, his gaze is fixed on an imagined structure yet to be drawn — an image of intellect and invention. Reynolds was both friend and admirer, and painted Chambers three times. This version dramatizes the scene with theatrical lighting that pools on the architect’s face, as if a divine plan had just been whispered in his ear.

 

This panel also bears a darker history — it is an œuvre spoliée, a looted artwork seized by the Nazis and later recovered. It now resides in Bordeaux on deposit from the Musée du Louvre under the MNR (Musées Nationaux Récupération) system.

 

🇫🇷 Peint par Sir Joshua Reynolds, ce portrait saisissant montre l’architecte Sir William Chambers (1723–1796) dans un moment d’inspiration intense. Carnet de croquis et plume à la main, il fixe du regard une structure encore imaginaire — image vivante de l’intellect et de la création. Reynolds, ami et admirateur, l’a représenté à trois reprises. Cette version dramatise la scène par une lumière théâtrale, concentrée sur le visage de l’architecte, comme si un plan divin venait de lui être soufflé.

 

Cette œuvre porte également une histoire plus sombre : spoliée par les nazis pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, elle a été restituée puis déposée au musée de Bordeaux par le musée du Louvre sous le sigle MNR (Musées Nationaux Récupération).

 

Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux

Housed in a wing of Bordeaux’s Palais Rohan, the Musée des Beaux-Arts offers a rich and refined collection spanning from the Renaissance to the 20th century. From Rubens to Renoir, its galleries celebrate both French masters and European greats — a tranquil yet powerful space where art breathes through centuries of brushwork.

 

🇫🇷 Installé dans une aile du Palais Rohan, le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux abrite une collection précieuse allant de la Renaissance au XXe siècle. De Rubens à Renoir, ses galeries rendent hommage aux grands maîtres français et européens — un lieu paisible et inspirant où l’art traverse les siècles d’un trait de pinceau.

As my mind puts a brake on its mental busyness and opens itself to emotions a new picture begins to emerge.

Thomas Henry Dawson Walker was born on 21st. July 1851 at the March of Intellect pub in Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire. His mother was the pub landlady and his father was an advance foreman for Cook’s Circus.

 

Thomas started his performing career at an early age and by the time he was eight years old he was already performing with Pablo Fanque’s Circus. He would become a multitalented performer, trained in equestrianism, tumbling, ropewalking and clowning, but became most famous for his clowning and as a pantomime actor. His slapstick humour was very popular, particularly with children.

 

In 1874, he was engaged by Charles Hengler to appear at his circus in London, where he was christened 'Whimsical Walker'.

 

Over the course of his career, Whimsical became one of the most famous clowns of his time both in the UK and internationally. He travelled around the world three times and visited America 16 times, firstly in 1874 when he joined the John Murray Railroad Circus. He later he toured with Barnum and Bailey’s Circus, and in 1887, while with Barnum’s, he purchased an elephant for £2,000 from the London Zoo, which became known as Jumbo.

The elephants fee was more than paid back in just a few performances.

 

In 1882, Whimsical opened a theatre of his own, the Metropolitan Alcazar Theatre in New York, and put on a profitable pantomime presentation of W.S. Gilbert’s The Three Wishes, becoming the only person to put on a successful English pantomime in America during this period. But misfortune struck when the defective top gallery dropped slightly when filled with people and a stampede followed. Actions for damages caused bankruptcy, reducing Whimsical to the clothes he wore and a few dollars. He had to borrow money to return to Liverpool, where he was engaged by Hengler’s Circus.

 

In 1886, Whimsical was commanded to appear at the first Royal Command Performance, staged before Queen Victoria in the riding school at Windsor Castle. After the show Victoria presented him with a diamond tie pin. .

He performed by Royal command on several occasions during his career, his last performance before royalty was for the first visit to a circus of Princess Elizabeth in 1934.

King Edward, then the Prince of Wales, once called upon Whimsical to organise a cricket match with children in which the Prince and Dr. W. G. Grace both played.

 

Walker has been described as the most versatile clown of his day. He had a great talent for training animals, among them a donkey, which once escaped from a circus procession in Hull and walked into a hotel bedroom and lay down on a bed, thoroughly scaring a chambermaid. In 1880 he performed his singing donkey act before Queen Victoria at Windsor.

One of the animals which he loved most was his dog, Whimmy, who performed with him at Olympia.

 

From 1898 to 1929 Whimsical appeared as the Harlequinade Clown in the Forty Thieves pantomime at the Theatre Royal in London, and from 1921 until his death he performed every year in the Olympia Christmas Circus in London. He also stared in the silent films The Knut and the Kernel (1915), The Starting Point (1919), and The Fordington Twins (1920). Such was his enthusiasm for his job that he once travelled by sea to Sydney, Australia and back, in order to be the clown for five nights and two matinees.

 

In 1910, Whimsical married his wife, whom he had met when they were both appearing in a comic sketch in Southend. After their wedding they lived in Gorleston-on-Sea, Norfolk, and Whimsical took over the site of Peggotty’s Hut on Brush Quay and expanded it into a rifle range. Little is known of his life between 1910 and 1934. In the early 1930’s he moved from Brush Wharf in Gorleston to a new council house at 42 Suffolk Road, in the area of Southtown. His spare time was devoted to shrimping and it was reported that he kept a number of cats for company. Two years before his death he underwent a serious operation on his throat.

A few days after he was planning to appear once again at the Olympia Christmas Circus, Whimsical Walker died on 10th. November 1934, aged 83, and was buried in an unmarked grave in the Gorleston Old Cemetery.

 

On Tuesday 10th. May 2022, the Gorleston-on-Sea Heritage Group (GOSH) unveiling a blue plaque to mark the gravesite. Philip Breen, known as 'Whimmie The Clown, who is Whimsical Walker’s great grandson, attended wearing his clown makeup and costume.

 

Whimsical, who was very proud of having had his portrait painted by Dame Laura Knight and which was hung in the Royal Academy, said,

"The finest thing in the world for any young boy is the circus business, you get fresh air, you get up early in the morning, you get plenty of exercise, and it teaches you what the world is".

   

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The Interrupted Self

APRIL 21, 2018 ~ MICHAEL SACASAS

In Letters From Lake Como: Explorations in Technology and the Human Race, written in the 1920’s, Romano Guardini, related the following experience: “I recall going down a staircase, and suddenly, when my foot was leaving one step and preparing to set itself down on another, I became aware of what I was doing. I then noted what self-evident certainty is displayed in the play of muscles. I felt that a question was thus raised concerning motion.”

 

“This was a triviality,” Guardini acknowledges, “and yet it tells us what the issue is here.” He goes on to explain the “issue” as follows:

 

Life needs the protection of nonawareness. We are told this already by the universal psychological law that we cannot perform an intellectual act and at the same time be aware of it. We can only look back on it when it is completed. If we try to achieve awareness of it when we are doing it, we can do so only be always interrupting it and thus hovering between the action and knowledge of it. Obviously the action will suffer greatly as a result. It seems to me that this typifies the life of the mind and spirit as a whole. Our action is constantly interrupted by reflection on it. Thus all our life bears the distinctive character of what is interrupted, broken. It does not have the great line that is sure of itself, the confident movement deriving from the self.

 

It seems to me that the tendency Guardini identifies here has only intensified during the nearly 100 years since he wrote down his observations.

 

As an aside, I find works like Guardini’s useful for at least two reasons. The first, perhaps more obvious, reason is that they offer genuine insights that remain applicable in a more or less straightforward way. The second, perhaps less obvious, reason is that they offer a small window into the personal and cultural experience of technological change. When we think about the difference technologies make in our life and for society more broadly, we often have only our experience by which to judge. But, of course, we don’t know what we don’t know, or we can’t remember what we have never known. And this is especially the case when we consider what me might call the existential or even affective aspects of technological change.

 

Returning to Guardini, has he notes in the letter on “Consciousness” from which that paragraph was taken, literature was only one sphere of culture where this heightened consciousness was making itself evident.

 

I can’t know what literary works Guardini had in mind, but there is one scene in Tolstoy’s short novel, The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886), that immediately sprung to mind. Early on in the story, which begins with Ilyich’s death, a co-worker, Peter Ivanovich, has come to Ilyich’s home to pay his respects. Upon entering the room where Ilyich’s body lay, Peter Ivanovich is uncertain as to how to proceed:

 

Peter Ivanovich, like everyone else on such occasions, entered feeling uncertain what he would have to do. All he knew was that at such times it is always safe to cross oneself. But he was not quite sure whether one should make obeisances while doing so. He therefore adopted a middle course. On entering the room he began crossing himself and made a slight movement resembling a bow.

 

I’ve come to read this scene as a microcosm of an extended, possibly recurring, cultural moment in the history of modernity, one that illustrates the emergence of self-consciousness.

 

Here is Peter Ivanovich, entering into a socially and psychologically fraught encounter with the presence of death. It is the sort of moment for which a robust cultural tradition might prepare us by supplying scripts that would relieve us of the burden of knowing just what to do while also conveying to us a meaning that renders the event intelligible. But Peter Ivanovich faces this encounter at a moment when the old traditions are only half-recalled and no new forms have arisen to take there place. He lives, that is, in a moment when, as Gramsci evocatively put it, the old is dying and the new cannot be born. In such a moment, he is thrown back upon himself: he must make choices, he must improvise, he must become aware of himself as one who must do such things.

 

His action, as Guardini puts it, “bears the distinctive character of what is interrupted.”

 

“Peter Ivanovich,” we go on to read, “continued to make the sign of the cross slightly inclining his head in an intermediate direction between the coffin, the Reader, and the icons on the table in a corner of the room. Afterwards, when it seemed to him that this movement of his arm in crossing himself had gone on too long, he stopped and began to look at the corpse.”

 

He is not inhabiting a ritual act, he is performing it and badly, as all such performances must be. “He felt a certain discomfort,” the narrator tells us, “and so he hurriedly crossed himself once more and turned and went out of the door — too hurriedly and too regardless of propriety, as he himself was aware.”

 

I’m not suggesting that Tolstoy intended this scene as a commentary on the heightened consciousness generated by liquid modernity, only that I have found in Peter Ivanovich’s awkwardness a memorable dramatic illustration of such.

 

Technology had a role to play in the generation of this state of affairs, particularly technologies of self-expression or technologies that represent the self to itself. It was one of Walter Ong’s key contentions, for example, that “writing heightened consciousness.” This was, in his view, a generally good thing. Of course, writing had been around long before Tolstoy was active in the late 19th century. He lived during an age when new technologies worked more indirectly to heighten self-consciousness by eroding the social structures that anchored the experience of the self.

 

In the early 20th century, Guardini pointed to, among other things, the rise of statistics and the bureaucracies that they empowered and to newspapers as the sources of a hypertrophied consciousness. We might substitute so-called Big Data and social media for statistics and newspapers. Rather, with regards to consciousness, we should understand the interlocking regimes of the quantified self* and social media as just a further development along the same trajectory. Fitbits and Facebook amplify our consciousness by what they claim to measure and by how they position the self vis-a-vis the self.

 

It seems to me that this heightened sense of self-consciousness is both a blessing and a curse and that it is the condition out of which much of our digital culture emerges. For those who experience it as a curse it can be, for example, a paralyzing and disintegrating reality. It may, under such circumstances further yield resentment, bitterness, and self-loathing (consider Raskolnikov or the Underground Man). Those who are thus afflicted may seek for renewed integrity through dramatic and/or violent acts, acts that they believe will galvanize their identity. Others may cope by adopting the role of happy nihilist or liberal ironist. Still others may double-down and launch out on the self-defeating quest for authenticity.

 

“Plants can grow only when their roots are in the dark,” Guardini wrote as he closed his letter on consciousness. “They emerge from the dark into the light. That is the direction of life. The plant and its direction die when the root is exposed. All life must be grounded in what is not conscious and from that root emerge into the brightness of consciousness. Yet I see consciousness becoming more and more deeply the root of our life.”

 

All of this leads him to ask in conclusion, “Can life sustain this? Can it become consciousness and at the same time remain alive?”

 

_________________________________________________

 

* For example: “Now the telescope is turned inward, on the human body in the urban environment. This terrestrial cosmos of data will merge investigations that have been siloed: neuroscience, psychology, sociology, biology, biochemistry, nutrition, epidemiology, economics, data science, urban science.”

        

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7 thoughts on “The Interrupted Self”

  

davidjsimpson1952

APRIL 21, 2018 AT 12:20 PM

I actually disagree quite strongly with this analysis. Peter Ivanovich’s problem, which I think Tolstoy is describing quite clearly, is that he is a shallow social conformist (as indeed is Ivan Ilyich until his death), a ‘modern man’, who has simply forgotten, or not learned how to behave in the traditional way, but does not have the autonomy or courage to decide for himself how to behave, in any situation. So he is all at sea. Ivan Illyich on the other hand is perfectly happy to conform, and knows how to do so, and lives an utterly false, shallow, meaningless, but ‘successful’ life, albeit unhappy at a deeper level, until his death agony and spiritual liberation / resurrection (unobserved by anyone, who simply see him dying in apparent agony).

 

Guardini is typical of a self-conscious individual (and perhaps of many modern people, especially intellectuals) – yes, you cannot think your way down stairs, you have to physically do it, and your intellect is simply an impediment – but an accomplished sportsman is absolutely aware and conscious of what he/she is doing, they are just not doing it with their mind – they have trained and practiced their whole being – mind, body and spirit (for lack of a better term) to do a particular thing well – they are and must be undistracted, particularly by their own mind not being completely engaged in the action itself, in the present moment and nowhere else. Especially not for example thinking about what they will do to win the match, or regretting or dwelling on a previous mistake. ‘keeping your eye on the ball’ is a shorthand for being 100% engaged with the current action (not looking where you hope to hit it, or watching someone in the crowd, or admiring the skill with which your playing the shot).

 

There is a certain type of intellectual activity, where it is possible to both think, and be aware of what and how you are thinking – the opposite of daydreaming or fantasy. But most modern people, apart from the really happy, effective ones, are living in an almost constant state of distraction, of a lack of proper attention to what they are actually trying to do. And that is undoubtedly in part one of the more pernicious effects of modern information technology. It is designed to distract.

 

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Michael Sacasas

APRIL 22, 2018 AT 9:00 PM

I’m not sure that I disagree with your disagreement. On the one hand, I’m not wedded to my interpretation as anything like a definitive take on what Tolstoy intended. It is more the case that Ivanovich’s interrupted, self-conscious action struck me as an image of the condition I’m trying to get at. Your reading of Ivanovich, and the general drift of the knowledge, is, as far as I’m concerned, basically correct. That said, what if we were to ask why exactly Ivanovich behaves the way he does, or, alternatively, what the sources of his shallowness may be? I wonder if the significance I’ve imported onto this scene is necessarily at odds with what your suggesting.

 

I also agree very much with your discussion of an embodied form of attentiveness that is characteristic of the accomplished sportsman or musician or dancer, etc. But that form of attention is, as you suggest, very different than the sort of attention to the self that I think Guardini is analyzing. Some years back, in fact, I wrote about embodied practices as an antidote to the hyper-self-consciousness that characterizes many in our time, myself not excepted: thefrailestthing.com/2012/10/05/low-tech-practices-and-id... See also: iasc-culture.org/THR/channels/Infernal_Machine/2015/04/79...

 

So, I’d say that, yes, distraction is clearly a problem, and modern information technology is part of the problem (addiction by design, etc.), but I’d also say that it heightens a certain kind of attention or, to put it another way, directs the attention toward the self in a way that aligns with the kind of disordered consciousness that Guardini writes about.

 

Reply

 

julian a

APRIL 21, 2018 AT 9:08 PM

I agree with @davidjsimpson1952. The cultivation of mindful awareness in Buddhism is precisely the sort of simultaneity of conscious awareness and action that it seems Guardini considered exceptional, if not impossible.

 

Reply

 

Michael Sacasas

APRIL 22, 2018 AT 9:03 PM

Thanks for the comment, Julian. See my reply above to David. The sort of awareness you describe is, I believe, of a different sort than the consciousness Guardini finds problematic, in part, I suspect, because it is not, strictly speaking, mental, or at least not merely mental.

 

Reply

 

Daniel David

APRIL 22, 2018 AT 1:19 AM

Excellent…this topic (the intensifying self-consciousness of modern humans) has preoccupied me for a few years now, and I think it’s under discussed. Your mention of irony reminded me; I frequently have the thought that the rise of the ironic attitude is tied to the need to remain ever more socially flexible. The ironic mode is an effective way to remain uncommitted to either seriousness or flippancy. It allows our remaining to remain loosely defined, like a legal contract, until the concrete details of the situation become clear enough to settle on a firmer stance.

 

I haven’t read a ton of sociology from the early-to-mid-twentieth century, so if you know of other sources on this I’d be interested. Some few thinkers I am aware of seemed to notice this growing self consciousness, though: I feel it lurking throughout Erving Goffman’s work, particularly when he mentions things like the “bureaucratization of the spirit,” which we all undergo “so that we can be relied upon to give a perfectly homogenous performance at ever appointed time.” Surely this new self consciousness is partially a product of a new and more intense social consciousness, born of new pressures and the feedback of new forms of representation.

 

Georg Simmel seems to have been convinced it was tied to the rise of the modern city. In his essay “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” he writes “The psychological foundation, upon which the metropolitan individuality is erected, is the intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift of external and internal stimuli.” And prior to that, he asserts that, of the more famous responses to modernity (Nietzschean, socialist), “the same fundamental motive was at work,

namely the resistance of the individual to being levelled, swallowed up in the social- technological mechanism.”

 

I’m also reminded me of a talk by Alasdair McIntyre called “A Culture of Choices and Compartmentalization,” but I haven’t read it recently enough to say more than that.

 

Part of the difficulty here is that even realizing the burdens of an over-abundance of self consciousness does little to cope with them; in fact, it’s much the opposite. But what I think is clear from Simmel and Goffman especially (and we’ve come some way since then, haven’t we?) is that this reserve and hyper-attentive presentation has become a fixture of social life – a necessity. Where humans once gathered resources, we now focus much more on collecting attitudes and cultural snippets as a kind of social currency. And, if that’s correct, it implies that communication is a lot more work than it used to be.

 

Reply

 

Michael Sacasas

APRIL 22, 2018 AT 9:23 PM

As it has been for you, so, too, has this been an area of interest for me for some time. I do tend to think it is a crucial aspect of the modern (post-, meta-, etc.) identity. Really, it is at the heart of all of our identity-talk, which is somehow both cause and symptom of the condition. I tend to see it as the product of the formative impact of increasingly sophisticated technologies of the self and the untethering of the self that is characteristic of modernity (the physic consequences of everything melting into air). I think it may have been you who noted in a comment (to which I never replied, my apologies if so) a certain resemblance to communitarian thought in some of what I’ve written. That would be a fair assessment. My thinking on this bears a similar stamp. Along those lines, I’ll have to look up the piece by MacIntyre, I don’t think I’ve come across it before. Several years ago, Thomas de Zengotita’s Mediated covered much of this ground in a useful way.

  

Celastraceae (staff vine or bittersweet family) » Celastrus paniculatus

 

see-LAS-trus -- from the ancient Greek kelastros, the name of another tree

pan-ick-yoo-LAY-tus or pan-ick-yoo-LAH-tus -- referring to the flower clusters (panicles)

 

commonly known as: black-oil plant, celastrus, oriental bittersweet, intellect tree, staff tree • Bengali: kijri, malkangani • Gujarati: માલકંગના malkangana • Hindi: मालकंगनी malkangani • Kannada: ಭವಮ್ಗ bhavamga, ಜೊತಿಷ್ಮತಿ jotishmati, ಕರಿಗನ್ನೇ kariganne, ಕೊಉಗಿಲು kougilu • Konkani: माळकांगोणी malkangoni • Marathi: कांगुणी kanguni, माळकांगोणी malkangoni • Oriya: korsana, pengu • Sanskrit: अलवण alavan, ज्योतिषमति jyotishmati, कन्गु kangu • Tamil: குவரிகுண்டல் kuvarikuntal, மண்ணைக்கட்டி mannai-k-katti, வாலுளுவை valuluvai • Telugu: కాసరతీగె kasara-tige, మానెరు maneru • Urdu: کنگني مال malkanguni

 

Native to: India, China, Sri Lanka, south-east Asia

  

References: Flowers of India • Sahyadri Database • ENVIS - FRLHT • eFlora

Adhya Sharma

Youth (12 years and under)

"Ganesha - Lord of Intellect"

2022

Works on Paper (watercolor, pencil, ink, charcoal, pastel, marker, crayon, digital)

8"x12"

10 of 10 for my final critique in my Digital Photography class. (I didn't post 4, because they're actually already on my flickr!)

 

Thanks guys for all the feedback! I did well in my Digital Photography class and the critique, I got an A!! :)

"I think that the leaf of a tree, the meanest insect on which we trample, are in themselves arguments more conclusive than any which can be adduced that some vast intellect animates Infinity."

Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

Astrid Ewing Photography

 

An often overlooked bird.....some might think ugly, but, I think their face is full of character and intellect.

--- G.K. Chesterson

 

Yes, I am still alive.

Somehow.

Glory to the courage, labour and intellect of the Soviet people!

 

by V. Viktorov, 1962

Ancient sexuality exposed

.

The mind, intellect, ego and mind are not I, nor are the ears in the tongue, nor the sense of smell in the eyes

Neither sky nor earth nor fire nor air: I am the form of the bliss of consciousness, I am Shiva, I am Shiva

 

I am neither the mind, nor the intellect, nor the ego, nor the consciousness

I am neither ears, nor tongue, nor nose, nor eyes

I am neither sky, nor earth, nor fire, nor air

I am pure consciousness, eternal, infinite Shiva

 

There is no life-force, nor the five airs, nor the seven elements, nor the five cells.

Neither speech, hands, feet, nor the air in the abdomen, I am the form of the bliss of consciousness: I am Shiva, I am Shiva

 

I am neither the life force nor the five airs

I am not the seven metals,

Nor am I five dictionaries

I am neither speech, nor feet, nor hands nor the senses of excretion

I am pure consciousness, eternal, infinite Shiva

 

I have no hatred, no passion, no greed, no delusion, no intoxication, no envy:

I am neither Dharma nor Artha nor desire nor liberation; I am the form of the bliss of consciousness; I am auspicious

 

I have no hatred, no attachment, no greed and no delusion

I am neither proud nor jealous

I am beyond religion, wealth, desire and salvation

I am pure consciousness, eternal, infinite Shiva

 

No merit, no sin, no happiness, no suffering, no mantra, no holy place, no Vedas, no sacrifices:

 

I am the food, not the eatable, nor the enjoyer; I am the form of the bliss of consciousness: I am Shiva, I am Shiva

 

I am different from virtue, sin, happiness and

I am neither mantra, nor shrine, nor knowledge, nor sacrifice

I am neither the object of enjoyment, nor the experience of enjoyment, nor the enjoyer

I am pure consciousness, eternal, infinite Shiva

 

I have no doubt of death, I have no caste: I have no father, I have no mother, I have no birth:

I am neither a friend nor a friend, nor a teacher nor a disciple; I am the form of the bliss of consciousness; I am auspicious

 

I have no fear of death, nor do I discriminate against any caste

I have no father or mother, nor was I ever born

I have no brother, no friend, no disciple and no teacher

I am pure consciousness, eternal, infinite Shiva

 

I am the formless, formless, and omnipotent everywhere of all the senses

Neither is there any association, nor liberation, nor Maya: I am the form of the bliss of consciousness, I am Shiva, I am Shiva

 

I am nirvikalpa, I am formless

I pervade every place as consciousness, I am in all the senses

I have no attachment to anything and I am not free from it

I am pure consciousness, eternal, infinite Shiva

.

จิตใจ สติปัญญา อัตตา และจิตใจไม่ใช่ฉัน หูอยู่ในลิ้น หรือกลิ่นในตาไม่ใช่ฉัน

ไม่ใช่ทั้งฟ้า ดิน ไฟ หรืออากาศ ฉันเป็นรูปร่างแห่งความสุขแห่งจิตสำนึก ฉันคือพระศิวะ ฉันคือพระศิวะ

 

ฉันไม่ใช่ทั้งจิตใจ หรือสติปัญญา หรืออัตตา หรือจิตสำนึก

ฉันไม่ใช่หูหรือลิ้นหรือจมูกหรือตา

ฉันไม่ใช่ทั้งฟ้า ดิน หรือไฟ หรืออากาศ

ฉันเป็นจิตสำนึกอันบริสุทธิ์ นิรันดร์ พระอิศวรอันไม่มีสิ้นสุด

 

ไม่มีพลังชีวิต หรือลมทั้งห้า หรือธาตุทั้งเจ็ด หรือทั้งห้าเซลล์

ไม่ว่าคำพูด มือ เท้า หรืออากาศในท้อง ฉันเป็นความสุขแห่งจิตสำนึก ฉันคือพระศิวะ ฉันคือพระศิวะ

 

ฉันไม่ใช่ทั้งพลังชีวิตหรือลมทั้งห้า

ฉันไม่ใช่โลหะทั้งเจ็ด

และฉันก็ไม่ใช่พจนานุกรมห้าเล่ม

ข้าพระองค์ไม่ใช่ทั้งคำพูด เท้า หรือมือ หรือประสาทสัมผัสแห่งการขับถ่าย

ฉันเป็นจิตสำนึกอันบริสุทธิ์ นิรันดร์ พระอิศวรอันไม่มีสิ้นสุด

 

ข้าพเจ้าไม่มีความเกลียดชัง ไม่มีราคะ ไม่มีโลภ ไม่มีความหลง ไม่มีความมึนเมา ไม่มีริษยา

ข้าพเจ้าไม่ใช่ธรรมะหรืออาถรรพ์หรือความปรารถนาหรือความหลุดพ้น ข้าพเจ้าเป็นความสุขแห่งจิตสำนึก

 

ฉันไม่มีความเกลียดชัง ไม่มีความผูกพัน ไม่มีความโลภ และไม่มีความหลง

ฉันไม่ภูมิใจหรืออิจฉา

ฉันอยู่เหนือศาสนา ความมั่งคั่ง ความปรารถนา และความรอด

ฉันเป็นจิตสำนึกอันบริสุทธิ์ นิรันดร์ พระอิศวรอันไม่มีสิ้นสุด

 

ไม่มีบุญ ไม่มีบาป ไม่มีความสุข ไม่มีความทุกข์ ไม่มีมนต์ ไม่มีสถานที่ศักดิ์สิทธิ์ ไม่มีพระเวท ไม่มีเครื่องบูชา:

 

ฉันเป็นอาหาร ไม่ใช่สิ่งที่กินได้ ฉันเป็นรูปแบบของความสุขแห่งจิตสำนึก ฉันคือพระอิศวร ฉันคือพระศิวะ

 

ฉันแตกต่างจากคุณธรรม บาป ความสุข และ

ฉันไม่ใช่มนต์หรือเทวสถานหรือความรู้หรือการเสียสละ

ฉันไม่ใช่เป้าหมายของความเพลิดเพลิน หรือประสบการณ์ของความเพลิดเพลิน หรือผู้เพลิดเพลิน

ฉันเป็นจิตสำนึกอันบริสุทธิ์ นิรันดร์ พระอิศวรอันไม่มีสิ้นสุด

 

ฉันไม่สงสัยในความตาย ฉันไม่มีวรรณะ ฉันไม่มีพ่อ ฉันไม่มีแม่ ฉันไม่มีการเกิด

ฉันไม่ใช่ทั้งเพื่อนและเพื่อนหรือครูหรือลูกศิษย์ฉันเป็นความสุขแห่งจิตสำนึก

ฉันไม่กลัวความตาย และไม่เลือกปฏิบัติต่อชนชั้นวรรณะใดๆ

ฉันไม่มีพ่อหรือแม่ และฉันก็ไม่เคยเกิดมาด้วย

ฉันไม่มีพี่ชาย ไม่มีเพื่อน ไม่มีลูกศิษย์ และไม่มีอาจารย์

ฉันเป็นจิตสำนึกอันบริสุทธิ์ นิรันดร์ พระอิศวรอันไม่มีสิ้นสุด

 

ฉันเป็นผู้ไม่มีรูปร่าง ไร้รูปร่าง และมีอำนาจทุกอย่างในทุกแห่งของประสาทสัมผัสทั้งหมด

ไม่มีการสมาคมใด ๆ หรือการหลุดพ้น หรือมายา ฉันเป็นรูปแบบของความสุขแห่งจิตสำนึก ฉันคือพระศิวะ ฉันคือพระศิวะ

 

ฉันคือนิรวิกัลปะ ฉันไม่มีรูปร่าง

ฉันแผ่ซ่านไปทุกแห่งหนเป็นจิตสำนึก ฉันอยู่ในประสาทสัมผัสทั้งหมด

ฉันไม่มีความผูกพันกับสิ่งใดๆ และฉันก็ไม่ได้เป็นอิสระจากมัน

ฉันเป็นจิตสำนึกอันบริสุทธิ์ นิรันดร์ พระอิศวรอันไม่มีสิ้นสุด

China and India

   

english

 

Ganesha (Sanskrit: गणेश; IAST: Gaṇeśa ), also spelled Ganesa or Ganesh, also known as Ganapati (Sanskrit: गणपति; IAST: gaṇapati), Vinayaka (Sanskrit: विनायक; IAST: Vināyaka), and Pillaiyar (Tamil: பிள்ளையார்), is one of the deities best-known and most widely worshipped in the Hindu pantheon. His image is found throughout India and Nepal. Hindu sects worship him regardless of affiliations. Devotion to Ganesha is widely diffused and extends to Jains, Buddhists, and beyond India.

Although he is known by many other attributes, Ganesha's elephant head makes him easy to identify.Ganesha is widely revered as the Remover of Obstacles and more generally as Lord of Beginnings and Lord of Obstacles (Vighnesha (Sanskrit: विघ्नेश; IAST: Vighneśa), Vighneshvara (Sanskrit: विघ्नेश्वर; IAST: Vighneśvara), patron of arts and sciences, and the deva of intellect and wisdom. He is honoured at the beginning of rituals and ceremonies and invoked as Patron of Letters during writing sessions. Several texts relate mythological anecdotes associated with his birth and exploits and explain his distinct iconography.

 

Ganesha emerged a distinct deity in clearly recognizable form in the 4th and 5th centuries CE, during the Gupta Period, although he inherited traits from Vedic and pre-Vedic precursors. His popularity rose quickly, and he was formally included among the five primary deities of Smartism (a Hindu denomination) in the 9th century. A sect of devotees called the Ganapatya, (Sanskrit: गाणपत्य; IAST: gāṇapatya), who identified Ganesha as the supreme deity, arose during this period. The principal scriptures dedicated to Ganesha are the Ganesha Purana, the Mudgala Purana, and the Ganapati Atharvashirsa.

 

Etymology and other names

 

Ganesha has many other titles and epithets, including Ganapati and Vigneshvara. The Hindu title of respect Shri (Sanskrit: श्री; IAST: śrī; also spelled Sri or Shree) is often added before his name. One popular way Ganesha is worshipped is by chanting a Ganesha Sahasranama, a litany of "a thousand names of Ganesha". Each name in the sahasranama conveys a different meaning and symbolises a different aspect of Ganesha. At least two different versions of the Ganesha Sahasranama exist; one version is drawn from the Ganesha Purana, a Hindu scripture venerating Ganesha.

The name Ganesha is a Sanskrit compound, joining the words gana (Sanskrit: गण; IAST: gaṇa), meaning a group, multitude, or categorical system and isha (Sanskrit: ईश; IAST: īśa), meaning lord or master. The word gaņa when associated with Ganesha is often taken to refer to the gaņas, a troop of semi-divine beings that form part of the retinue of Shiva (IAST: Śiva). The term more generally means a category, class, community, association, or corporation. Some commentators interpret the name "Lord of the Gaņas" to mean "Lord of Hosts" or "Lord of created categories", such as the elements. Ganapati (Sanskrit: गणपति; Tamil: கணபதி; IAST: gaṇapati), a synonym for Ganesha, is a compound composed of gaṇa, meaning "group", and pati, meaning "ruler" or "lord". The Amarakosha, an early Sanskrit lexicon, lists eight synonyms of Ganesha : Vinayaka, Vighnarāja (equivalent to Vignesha), Dvaimātura (one who has two mothers), Gaṇādhipa (equivalent to Ganapati and Ganesha), Ekadanta (one who has one tusk), Heramba, Lambodara (one who has a pot belly, or, literally, one who has a hanging belly), and Gajanana (IAST: gajānana) ; having the face of an elephant).

Vinayaka (Sanskrit: विनायक; Tamil: விநாயகா; IAST: vināyaka) is a common name for Ganesha that appears in the Purāṇas and in Buddhist Tantras. This name is reflected in the naming of the eight famous Ganesha temples in Maharashtra known as the Ashtavinayak (aṣṭavināyaka). The names Vighnesha (Sanskrit: विघ्नेश; IAST: vighneśa) and Vighneshvara (Sanskrit: विघ्नेश्वर; vighneśvara) (Lord of Obstacles) refers to his primary function in Hindu mythology as the master and remover of obstacles (vighna). The widespread name of Ganesha in Thailand is Phra Phikanet or Phra Phikanesuan, both of which are derived from Vara Vighnesha and Vara Vighneshvara respectively, whereas the name Kanet (from Ganesha) is rather rare. In the Kundalini, Ganesha is the presiding deity of 'Mooladhara Chakra" and hence referred to as "Mooladhara Murthy" signifying that he is the Lord to be propitiated at the beginning of any event.

A prominent name for Ganesha in the Tamil language is Pille(பிள்ளை) or Pillaiyar(பிள்ளையார்) (Little Child). A. K. Narain differentiates these terms by saying that pille means a "child" while pillaiyar means a "noble child". He adds that the words pallu(பல்லு), pella, and pell in the Dravidian family of languages signify "tooth or tusk", also "elephant tooth or tusk". Anita Raina Thapan notes that the root word pille in the name Pillaiyar might have originally meant "the young of the elephant", because the Pali word pillaka means "a young elephant".

In the Burmese language, Ganesha is known as Maha Peinne (မဟာပိန္နဲ, pronounced [məhà pèiɴné]), derived from Pali Mahā Wināyaka (မဟာဝိနာယက).

  

portugues

 

No hinduísmo, Ganexa ou Ganesha (sânscrito: गणेश ou श्रीगणेश (quando usado para distinguir status de Senhor) (ou "senhor dos obstáculos," seu nome é também escrito como Ganesa ou Ganesh e algumas vezes referido como Ganapati) é uma das mais conhecidas e veneradas representações de deus. Ele é o primeiro filho de Shiva e Parvati, e o esposo de Buddhi (também chamada Riddhi) e Siddhi. Ele é chamado também de Vinayaka em Kannada, Malayalam e Marathi, Vinayagar e Pillayar (em tâmil), e Vinayakudu em Telugu. 'Ga' simboliza Buddhi (intelecto) e 'Na' simboliza Vijnana (sabedoria). Ganesha é então considerado o mestre do intelecto e da sabedoria. Ele é representado como uma divindade amarela ou vermelha, com uma grande barriga, quatro braços e a cabeça de elefante com uma única presa, montado em um rato. É habitualmente representado sentado, com uma perna levantada e curvada por cima da outra. Em geral, antepõe-se ao seu nome o título Hindu de respeito 'Shri' ou Sri.

 

Ganesha é o símbolo das soluções lógicas e deve ser interpretado como tal. Seu corpo é humano enquanto que a cabeça é de um elefante; ao mesmo tempo, seu transporte (vahana) é um rato. Desta forma Ganesha representa uma solução lógica para os problemas, ou "Destruidor de Obstáculos". Sua consorte é Buddhi (um sinônimo de mente) e ele é adorado junto de Lakshmi (a deusa da abundância) pelos mercadores e homens de negócio. A razão sendo a solução lógica para os problemas e a prosperidade são inseparáveis.

 

O culto de Ganesha é amplamente difundido, mesmo fora da Índia. Seus devotos são chamados Ganapatyas.

According to the 10th century philosopher, Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi, calligraphy is "… Jewellery fashioned by the hand from the pure gold of the intellect". In addition the words themselves came to represent power, protection and blessing. The written word, as early as the 7th century, was adopted as the distinctive symbol of Islam. Arabic inscriptions continued to be used throughout the Islamic world on buildings and coins to signify the authority of Muslim rule.

 

Qur'an Page | Museum of Islamic Art, Doha, Qatar

 

Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark II

Lens: Zeiss Distagon T* 2/25 ZE

Focal Length: 25 mm

Exposure: ¹⁄₃₀ sec at f/2.5

ISO: 640

China and India

   

english

 

Ganesha (Sanskrit: गणेश; IAST: Gaṇeśa ), also spelled Ganesa or Ganesh, also known as Ganapati (Sanskrit: गणपति; IAST: gaṇapati), Vinayaka (Sanskrit: विनायक; IAST: Vināyaka), and Pillaiyar (Tamil: பிள்ளையார்), is one of the deities best-known and most widely worshipped in the Hindu pantheon. His image is found throughout India and Nepal. Hindu sects worship him regardless of affiliations. Devotion to Ganesha is widely diffused and extends to Jains, Buddhists, and beyond India.

Although he is known by many other attributes, Ganesha's elephant head makes him easy to identify.Ganesha is widely revered as the Remover of Obstacles and more generally as Lord of Beginnings and Lord of Obstacles (Vighnesha (Sanskrit: विघ्नेश; IAST: Vighneśa), Vighneshvara (Sanskrit: विघ्नेश्वर; IAST: Vighneśvara), patron of arts and sciences, and the deva of intellect and wisdom. He is honoured at the beginning of rituals and ceremonies and invoked as Patron of Letters during writing sessions. Several texts relate mythological anecdotes associated with his birth and exploits and explain his distinct iconography.

 

Ganesha emerged a distinct deity in clearly recognizable form in the 4th and 5th centuries CE, during the Gupta Period, although he inherited traits from Vedic and pre-Vedic precursors. His popularity rose quickly, and he was formally included among the five primary deities of Smartism (a Hindu denomination) in the 9th century. A sect of devotees called the Ganapatya, (Sanskrit: गाणपत्य; IAST: gāṇapatya), who identified Ganesha as the supreme deity, arose during this period. The principal scriptures dedicated to Ganesha are the Ganesha Purana, the Mudgala Purana, and the Ganapati Atharvashirsa.

 

Etymology and other names

 

Ganesha has many other titles and epithets, including Ganapati and Vigneshvara. The Hindu title of respect Shri (Sanskrit: श्री; IAST: śrī; also spelled Sri or Shree) is often added before his name. One popular way Ganesha is worshipped is by chanting a Ganesha Sahasranama, a litany of "a thousand names of Ganesha". Each name in the sahasranama conveys a different meaning and symbolises a different aspect of Ganesha. At least two different versions of the Ganesha Sahasranama exist; one version is drawn from the Ganesha Purana, a Hindu scripture venerating Ganesha.

The name Ganesha is a Sanskrit compound, joining the words gana (Sanskrit: गण; IAST: gaṇa), meaning a group, multitude, or categorical system and isha (Sanskrit: ईश; IAST: īśa), meaning lord or master. The word gaņa when associated with Ganesha is often taken to refer to the gaņas, a troop of semi-divine beings that form part of the retinue of Shiva (IAST: Śiva). The term more generally means a category, class, community, association, or corporation. Some commentators interpret the name "Lord of the Gaņas" to mean "Lord of Hosts" or "Lord of created categories", such as the elements. Ganapati (Sanskrit: गणपति; Tamil: கணபதி; IAST: gaṇapati), a synonym for Ganesha, is a compound composed of gaṇa, meaning "group", and pati, meaning "ruler" or "lord". The Amarakosha, an early Sanskrit lexicon, lists eight synonyms of Ganesha : Vinayaka, Vighnarāja (equivalent to Vignesha), Dvaimātura (one who has two mothers), Gaṇādhipa (equivalent to Ganapati and Ganesha), Ekadanta (one who has one tusk), Heramba, Lambodara (one who has a pot belly, or, literally, one who has a hanging belly), and Gajanana (IAST: gajānana) ; having the face of an elephant).

Vinayaka (Sanskrit: विनायक; Tamil: விநாயகா; IAST: vināyaka) is a common name for Ganesha that appears in the Purāṇas and in Buddhist Tantras. This name is reflected in the naming of the eight famous Ganesha temples in Maharashtra known as the Ashtavinayak (aṣṭavināyaka). The names Vighnesha (Sanskrit: विघ्नेश; IAST: vighneśa) and Vighneshvara (Sanskrit: विघ्नेश्वर; vighneśvara) (Lord of Obstacles) refers to his primary function in Hindu mythology as the master and remover of obstacles (vighna). The widespread name of Ganesha in Thailand is Phra Phikanet or Phra Phikanesuan, both of which are derived from Vara Vighnesha and Vara Vighneshvara respectively, whereas the name Kanet (from Ganesha) is rather rare. In the Kundalini, Ganesha is the presiding deity of 'Mooladhara Chakra" and hence referred to as "Mooladhara Murthy" signifying that he is the Lord to be propitiated at the beginning of any event.

A prominent name for Ganesha in the Tamil language is Pille(பிள்ளை) or Pillaiyar(பிள்ளையார்) (Little Child). A. K. Narain differentiates these terms by saying that pille means a "child" while pillaiyar means a "noble child". He adds that the words pallu(பல்லு), pella, and pell in the Dravidian family of languages signify "tooth or tusk", also "elephant tooth or tusk". Anita Raina Thapan notes that the root word pille in the name Pillaiyar might have originally meant "the young of the elephant", because the Pali word pillaka means "a young elephant".

In the Burmese language, Ganesha is known as Maha Peinne (မဟာပိန္နဲ, pronounced [məhà pèiɴné]), derived from Pali Mahā Wināyaka (မဟာဝိနာယက).

  

portugues

 

No hinduísmo, Ganexa ou Ganesha (sânscrito: गणेश ou श्रीगणेश (quando usado para distinguir status de Senhor) (ou "senhor dos obstáculos," seu nome é também escrito como Ganesa ou Ganesh e algumas vezes referido como Ganapati) é uma das mais conhecidas e veneradas representações de deus. Ele é o primeiro filho de Shiva e Parvati, e o esposo de Buddhi (também chamada Riddhi) e Siddhi. Ele é chamado também de Vinayaka em Kannada, Malayalam e Marathi, Vinayagar e Pillayar (em tâmil), e Vinayakudu em Telugu. 'Ga' simboliza Buddhi (intelecto) e 'Na' simboliza Vijnana (sabedoria). Ganesha é então considerado o mestre do intelecto e da sabedoria. Ele é representado como uma divindade amarela ou vermelha, com uma grande barriga, quatro braços e a cabeça de elefante com uma única presa, montado em um rato. É habitualmente representado sentado, com uma perna levantada e curvada por cima da outra. Em geral, antepõe-se ao seu nome o título Hindu de respeito 'Shri' ou Sri.

 

Ganesha é o símbolo das soluções lógicas e deve ser interpretado como tal. Seu corpo é humano enquanto que a cabeça é de um elefante; ao mesmo tempo, seu transporte (vahana) é um rato. Desta forma Ganesha representa uma solução lógica para os problemas, ou "Destruidor de Obstáculos". Sua consorte é Buddhi (um sinônimo de mente) e ele é adorado junto de Lakshmi (a deusa da abundância) pelos mercadores e homens de negócio. A razão sendo a solução lógica para os problemas e a prosperidade são inseparáveis.

 

O culto de Ganesha é amplamente difundido, mesmo fora da Índia. Seus devotos são chamados Ganapatyas.

‘Love and intellect cannot stay together in one head.’ - His Holiness Younus AlGohar

 

A Faruqi String of Seven Madani Pearls

 

Amir-ul-Muminin Sayyiduna 'Umar Faruq A'zam has stated:

 

1. He who avoids talking uselessly is blessed with intellect and wisdom.

 

2. He who avoids useless gazing i.e. looking around unnecessarily, gains tranquillity of the heart.

 

3. He who refrains from useless eating (meaning, one who refrains from eating excessively or eating different type of food without any hunger merely for pleasure) is bestowed with pleasure in 'Ibadah(worship).

 

4. He who refrains from useless laughter is granted awe and dignity.

 

5. He who refrains from joking around and mockery, is blessed with light of Iman (faith).

 

6. He who refrains from fondness of this worlds, is given fondness of the afterlife.

 

7. He who refrains from finding faults in others, is blessed with the ability to rectify his own faults. (Derived from Al-Munabbihat, p.89)

 

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Life Quotes

pearlisticdimensionz.wordpress.com/2019/09/17/style-it-29...

Photographed from our running bus.

  

My experience

 

We entered Yellowstone NP through the eastern entrance using U.S. Route 14. It had been a moderate snow fall in the end of the first week of October, 2017. From few kilometers before reaching Yellowstone Lake, remnants of devastating wild fire were being evident. It was a shocking sight for me at the beginning and could not perceive how fire had devastated hundreds of acres of alpine forests in the valleys and atop the hills. But when I had a closer look to the floor of the forests, I was amazed by the facts how nature maintains its ecological balance! Numerous tiny siblings are growing besides the burnt and decaying logs. The future forests of the park are coming alive.

   

The park seemed to me the world’s finest natural laboratory and archive to study and understand all the faculties of human intellect.

   

The qualities of the photographs are not satisfactory, because they were taken so fast through the glass windows of our running bus. But I didn’t want to miss such life time opportunities. The overall beauties were essentially more important than technicalities, as I always believe.

 

Our luck didn’t favor anyway in this park trip, when our tour guide had declared a forecast for heavy snowfall next day since morning. He therefore decided to visit as many spots as possible in a single day, and not to wait for day-2. I hurried through the trails taking as many snaps as possible.

 

The next day heavy snowfall started since 9 am, and our guide cancelled the day-2 trip. Thanks God…we covered somehow all the spots on the first day.

 

I hope, you may like my Yellowstone series…

     

Description

 

Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Approximately 96 percent of the land area of Yellowstone National Park is located within the state of Wyoming. The Park spans an area of 8,983 km2 comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is the most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests eco-region.

   

It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. Native Americans have lived in the Yellowstone region for at least 11,000 years. Aside from visits by mountain -men during the early to mid-19th century, organized exploration did not begin until the late 1860s.

 

The park contains the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name. Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the ‘Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone’, the Native American name source is unclear.

     

Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-elevation lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered as an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million year. The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The magma chamber that lies under Yellowstone is estimated to be a single connected chamber, about 60 km long, 29 km wide, and 5 to 12 km deep. Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet deep and has 180 km of shoreline.The lake is at an elevation of 7,733 feet above sea levels. Half of the world's geysers and hydrothermal features are there in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly-intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone. In 1978, Yellowstone was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

 

In May 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey, Yellowstone National Park, and the University of Utah created the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a partnership for long-term monitoring of the geological processes of the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field, for disseminating information concerning the potential hazards of this geologically active region.

   

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants.Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the contiguous United States. Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in this park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States.

   

Forest fires occur in the park each year. In the largest forest fires of 1988, nearly one third of the park was burnt.

   

Yellowstone has numerous recreational opportunities, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing and sightseeing. Paved roads provide close access to the major geothermal areas as well as some of the lakes and waterfalls. During the winter, visitors often access the park by way of guided tours that use either snow coaches or snowmobiles.

     

Fire in Yellowstone NP

 

Causes of wildfire in Yellowstone NP

 

Wildfire has had a role in the dynamics of Yellowstone’s ecosystems for thousands of years. Although many fires were caused by human activities, most ignitions were natural. The term "natural ignition" usually refers to a lightning strike. Afternoon thunderstorms occur frequently in the northern Rocky Mountains but release little precipitation, a condition known as ‘dry lightning’. In a typical season there are thousands of lightning strikes in Yellowstone. Lightning strikes are powerful enough to rip strips of bark off of a tree in a shower of sparks and blow the pieces up to 100 feet away. However, most lightning strikes do not result in a wildfire because fuels are not in a combustible state.

   

The great fire incidence of 1988

 

The Yellowstone fires of 1988 collectively formed the largest wildfire in the recorded history of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Starting as many smaller individual fires, the flames quickly spread out of control due to drought conditions and increasing winds, combining into one large conflagration which burned for several months. The fires almost destroyed two major visitor destinations and, on September 8, 1988, the entire park closed to all non-emergency personnel for the first time in its history. Only the arrival of cool and moist weather in the late autumn brought the fires to an end. A total of 793,880 acres, or 36 percent of the park was affected by the wildfires.

   

Fire incidence, 2016

 

As of September 21, 2016, 22 fires (human and lightning-caused) have burned more than 62,000 acres in Yellowstone National Park, making it the highest number of acres burned since the historic 1988 fire.

   

Heritage and Research Center

 

The Heritage and Research Center is located at Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance to the park. The center is home to the Yellowstone National Park's museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium. The Yellowstone National Park Archives maintain collections of historical records of Yellowstone and the National Park Service. The collection includes the administrative records of Yellowstone, as well as resource management records, records from major projects, and donated manuscripts and personal papers. The archives are affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration.

   

A Quick Overview Map of Yellowstone

 

(www.yellowstonepark.com/park/overview-map-yellowstone)

 

Free Yellowstone Trip Planner:

 

( www.yellowstonepark.com/travel-guides/yellowstone-trip-pl...)

 

8 Best Yellowstone Geyser Basins and Map

 

( www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/yellowstone-geyser-b... )

 

National Park Maps

 

( www.yellowstonepark.com/park/national-park-maps )

 

Interactive map of ALL Yellowstone thermal features at the Yellowstone Research Coordination Network

 

( www.rcn.montana.edu )

  

For more info on our trip to the Summer Palace, check out

Postcard Intellect

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use." Galileo Galilei.

   

"Paris is a mighty schoolmaster, a grand enlightener of the provincial intellect." -- Mary Elizabeth Braddon

The Greek physician Dioscorides is reported to have used this plant to stop internal bleeding and heal wounds.

 

Medicinal uses: In western herbalism, bindweed is used as a laxative and a purgative. It has also been used topically to treat spider bites, and taken internally to slow menstruation and stimulate bile flow. In Ayurvedic medicine it is considered a brain tonic that will promote intellect and help with insomnia, confusion, epilepsy, psychoneurosis and neurological disorders. It is also used as a tranquiliser and blood purifier, for excess bleeding and venereal diseases.

Celastraceae (staff vine or bittersweet family) » Celastrus paniculatus

 

see-LAS-trus -- from the ancient Greek kelastros, the name of another tree

pan-ick-yoo-LAY-tus or pan-ick-yoo-LAH-tus -- referring to the flower clusters (panicles)

 

commonly known as: black-oil plant, celastrus, oriental bittersweet, intellect tree, staff tree • Bengali: kijri, malkangani • Gujarati: માલકંગના malkangana • Hindi: मालकंगनी malkangani • Kannada: ಭವಮ್ಗ bhavamga, ಜೊತಿಷ್ಮತಿ jotishmati, ಕರಿಗನ್ನೇ kariganne, ಕೊಉಗಿಲು kougilu • Konkani: माळकांगोणी malkangoni • Marathi: कांगुणी kanguni, माळकांगोणी malkangoni • Oriya: korsana, pengu • Sanskrit: अलवण alavan, ज्योतिषमति jyotishmati, कन्गु kangu • Tamil: குவரிகுண்டல் kuvarikuntal, மண்ணைக்கட்டி mannai-k-katti, வாலுளுவை valuluvai • Telugu: కాసరతీగె kasara-tige, మానెరు maneru • Urdu: کنگني مال malkanguni

 

Native to: India, China, Sri Lanka, south-east Asia

  

References: Flowers of India • Sahyadri Database • ENVIS - FRLHT • eFlora

"Intellectual, (Lat.) belonging to the Intellect, Spiritual."

– 'Glossographia Anglicana nova; or, A dictionary interpreting such hard words of whatever language, as are at present used in the English tongue' (1707).

 

"[General System Theory]... is a logico-mathematical field, the subject matter of which is the formulation and derivation of those principles which hold for systems in general."

– Ludwig von Bertalanffy, 'Problems of Life' (1952).

 

"Many psychiatrists and psychologists refuse to entertain the idea that society as a whole may be lacking in sanity. They hold that the problem of mental health in a society is only that of the number of ‘unadjusted’ individuals, and not of a possible unadjustment of the culture itself."

– Erich Fromm, 'The Sane Society'.

 

Photographed from our running bus.

  

My experience

We entered Yellowstone NP through the eastern entrance using U.S. Route 14. It had been a moderate snow fall in the end of the first week of October, 2017. From few kilometers before reaching Yellowstone Lake, remnants of devastating wild fire were being evident. It was a shocking sight for me at the beginning and could not perceive how fire had devastated hundreds of acres of alpine forests in the valleys and atop the hills. But when I had a closer look to the floor of the forests, I was amazed by the facts how nature maintains its ecological balance! Numerous tiny siblings are growing besides the burnt and decaying logs. The future forests of the park are coming alive.

 

The park seemed to me the world’s finest natural laboratory and archive to study and understand all the faculties of human intellect.

 

The qualities of the photographs are not satisfactory, because they were taken so fast through the glass windows of our running bus. But I didn’t want to miss such life time opportunities. The overall beauties were essentially more important than technicalities, as I always believe.

Our luck didn’t favor anyway in this park trip, when our tour guide had declared a forecast for heavy snowfall next day since morning. He therefore decided to visit as many spots as possible in a single day, and not to wait for day-2. I hurried through the trails taking as many snaps as possible.

The next day heavy snowfall started since 9 am, and our guide cancelled the day-2 trip. Thanks God…we covered somehow all the spots on the first day.

I hope, you may like my Yellowstone series…

  

Description

Yellowstone National Park is an American national park located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho. Approximately 96 percent of the land area of Yellowstone National Park is located within the state of Wyoming. The Park spans an area of 8,983 km2 comprising lakes, canyons, rivers and mountain ranges. The park is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is the most abundant. It is part of the South Central Rockies forests eco-region.

 

It was established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872. Yellowstone was the first national park in the U.S. and is also widely held to be the first national park in the world. Native Americans have lived in the Yellowstone region for at least 11,000 years. Aside from visits by mountain -men during the early to mid-19th century, organized exploration did not begin until the late 1860s.

The park contains the headwaters of the Yellowstone River, from which it takes its historical name. Although it is commonly believed that the river was named for the yellow rocks seen in the ‘Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone’, the Native American name source is unclear.

  

Yellowstone Lake is one of the largest high-elevation lakes in North America and is centered over the Yellowstone Caldera, the largest supervolcano on the continent. The caldera is considered as an active volcano. It has erupted with tremendous force several times in the last two million year. The Yellowstone Caldera is the largest volcanic system in North America. It has been termed a "supervolcano" because the caldera was formed by exceptionally large explosive eruptions. The magma chamber that lies under Yellowstone is estimated to be a single connected chamber, about 60 km long, 29 km wide, and 5 to 12 km deep. Yellowstone Lake is up to 400 feet deep and has 180 km of shoreline.The lake is at an elevation of 7,733 feet above sea levels. Half of the world's geysers and hydrothermal features are there in Yellowstone, fueled by this ongoing volcanism. Lava and rocks from volcanic eruptions cover most of the land area of Yellowstone. The park is the centerpiece of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, the largest remaining nearly-intact ecosystem in the Earth's northern temperate zone. In 1978, Yellowstone was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

In May 2001, the U.S. Geological Survey, Yellowstone National Park, and the University of Utah created the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory (YVO), a partnership for long-term monitoring of the geological processes of the Yellowstone Plateau volcanic field, for disseminating information concerning the potential hazards of this geologically active region.

 

Hundreds of species of mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles have been documented, including several that are either endangered or threatened. The vast forests and grasslands also include unique species of plants.Yellowstone Park is the largest and most famous megafauna location in the contiguous United States. Grizzly bears, wolves, and free-ranging herds of bison and elk live in this park. The Yellowstone Park bison herd is the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States.

 

Forest fires occur in the park each year. In the largest forest fires of 1988, nearly one third of the park was burnt.

 

Yellowstone has numerous recreational opportunities, including hiking, camping, boating, fishing and sightseeing. Paved roads provide close access to the major geothermal areas as well as some of the lakes and waterfalls. During the winter, visitors often access the park by way of guided tours that use either snow coaches or snowmobiles.

  

Fire in Yellowstone NP

Causes of wildfire in Yellowstone NP

Wildfire has had a role in the dynamics of Yellowstone’s ecosystems for thousands of years. Although many fires were caused by human activities, most ignitions were natural. The term "natural ignition" usually refers to a lightning strike. Afternoon thunderstorms occur frequently in the northern Rocky Mountains but release little precipitation, a condition known as ‘dry lightning’. In a typical season there are thousands of lightning strikes in Yellowstone. Lightning strikes are powerful enough to rip strips of bark off of a tree in a shower of sparks and blow the pieces up to 100 feet away. However, most lightning strikes do not result in a wildfire because fuels are not in a combustible state.

 

The great fire incidence of 1988

The Yellowstone fires of 1988 collectively formed the largest wildfire in the recorded history of Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Starting as many smaller individual fires, the flames quickly spread out of control due to drought conditions and increasing winds, combining into one large conflagration which burned for several months. The fires almost destroyed two major visitor destinations and, on September 8, 1988, the entire park closed to all non-emergency personnel for the first time in its history. Only the arrival of cool and moist weather in the late autumn brought the fires to an end. A total of 793,880 acres, or 36 percent of the park was affected by the wildfires.

 

Fire incidence, 2016

As of September 21, 2016, 22 fires (human and lightning-caused) have burned more than 62,000 acres in Yellowstone National Park, making it the highest number of acres burned since the historic 1988 fire.

 

Heritage and Research Center

The Heritage and Research Center is located at Gardiner, Montana, near the north entrance to the park. The center is home to the Yellowstone National Park's museum collection, archives, research library, historian, archeology lab, and herbarium. The Yellowstone National Park Archives maintain collections of historical records of Yellowstone and the National Park Service. The collection includes the administrative records of Yellowstone, as well as resource management records, records from major projects, and donated manuscripts and personal papers. The archives are affiliated with the National Archives and Records Administration.

 

A Quick Overview Map of Yellowstone

(www.yellowstonepark.com/park/overview-map-yellowstone)

Free Yellowstone Trip Planner:

( www.yellowstonepark.com/travel-guides/yellowstone-trip-pl...)

8 Best Yellowstone Geyser Basins and Map

( www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/yellowstone-geyser-b... )

National Park Maps

( www.yellowstonepark.com/park/national-park-maps )

Interactive map of ALL Yellowstone thermal features at the Yellowstone Research Coordination Network

( www.rcn.montana.edu )

   

AN ENERGY PHOTO REPORT FROM EARL R. STONEBRIDGE

 

"In my honest opinion, people, this is the size of the intellect of those who believe American industry will succeed by using green power," he said.

 

"Incidentally, scientists have discovered that glaciers were melting in the 1700s at the same rate as today. So, if you want to get rid of coal and oil, you might as well turn off your lights now."

__________________________________________________________________________

 

Earl R. Stonebridge is an avid supporter of using our nation's supply of natural gas. He has written extensively on the benefits of how our use of natural gas could completely change the nature of energy in North America, making the import of middle-eastern oil no longer necessary.

Massachusetts Avenue NW

Artist: Alex Outka

Address: 400 Marquette NW

Location: City/County Government Building, 5th Floor

628

Metro Youth Purchase Award

Celastraceae (staff vine or bittersweet family) » Celastrus paniculatus

 

see-LAS-trus -- from the ancient Greek kelastros, the name of another tree

pan-ick-yoo-LAY-tus or pan-ick-yoo-LAH-tus -- referring to the flower clusters (panicles)

 

commonly known as: black-oil plant, celastrus, oriental bittersweet, intellect tree, staff tree • Bengali: kijri, malkangani • Gujarati: માલકંગના malkangana • Hindi: मालकंगनी malkangani • Kannada: ಭವಮ್ಗ bhavamga, ಜೊತಿಷ್ಮತಿ jotishmati, ಕರಿಗನ್ನೇ kariganne, ಕೊಉಗಿಲು kougilu • Konkani: माळकांगोणी malkangoni • Marathi: कांगुणी kanguni, माळकांगोणी malkangoni • Oriya: korsana, pengu • Sanskrit: अलवण alavan, ज्योतिषमति jyotishmati, कन्गु kangu • Tamil: குவரிகுண்டல் kuvarikuntal, மண்ணைக்கட்டி mannai-k-katti, வாலுளுவை valuluvai • Telugu: కాసరతీగె kasara-tige, మానెరు maneru • Urdu: کنگني مال malkanguni

 

Native to: India, China, Sri Lanka, south-east Asia

  

References: Flowers of India • Sahyadri Database • ENVIS - FRLHT • eFlora

...Intellect on the offensive

"It is clear to me that treading the path of felicity is the determination of the intelligent (folk) and its neglect is the heedlessness of the ignorant.

 

translation of a chapter from al-Ghazali’s Criterion of Action (Mizan al-‘Ammal) Ed. By S. Dunyah (dar al-Marraif Press, Cairo, 1964) pp. 194-197. Translation by Muhammad Hozien

 

How could someone travel this road without any knowledge of it?"

 

THAT SAGGINESS IN SEEKING BLISS IS AKIN TO ABSURDITY[1]

 

What we mean by eternal bliss is: Everlasting without demise, pleasure without effort, felicity without tragedy, prosperity without poverty, perfection without defect, and esteem without humiliation.

 

As a whole: Everything imagined be it a request of a petitioner or an aspiration of a yearner that is eternally forever in a manner that will not be diminished by the passage of time and extinction of generations.

 

Indeed, if the whole world is full of grains and a bird was to pilfer a single grain every one thousand years then the grains will be exhausted, not diminishing anything from everlasting eternity.

 

This then will not need any encouragement to request it nor incriminating slackness in seeking it after confirming its existence? Since every intelligent being will scurry for lesser gains than this and it will not hold him back even if the way to accomplish it is arduous, and requires leaving the worldly pleasures, and endure a multitude of hardships.

 

The time spent in adversity is finite and what is missed is minimal for the worldly pleasures are transitory and easily exhausted.

 

As for the intelligent person it is easy for him to part with petty amount in order to gain its multiple ten fold. That is why you see everyone in commerce and industry and even in the pursuit of knowledge will withstand all kinds of humiliations, poverty, hardships, and intolerable pain, eagerly desiring a gain of a pleasure in the future that is greater than what they miss at the present moment, a limited increase. How is it then that they will not leave present conditions in order to reach priceless and unlimited gains?

 

There is not an intelligent being in creation that is eager to gain wealth when asked to spend a dinar to wait a month in order to gain pure gold surely his ego will quickly allow him to spend it. Even though it may will be requested at that very instance, indeed that a person who will not even withstand the pains of hunger, for example, in that time period in order that he may achieve an abundant reward in the future will not be considered sane.

 

It may that it will not be imagined to exist in creation, even though that death is always looming and threatening over everyone and gold will not benefit anyone in the hereafter.

 

It may be that he will die in that month or a day after that month and will not benefit from that gold. All this will not deter his opinion in spending it for his eagerness in reaping that reward. How is it then that the opinion of the intelligent being is deceived in bearing the burden of desires in his life which is at maximum one hundred years and the reward for it is everlasting bliss?

 

However the reluctance of creation in following the path of felicity is due to their lack of conviction in the final day. For even the deficient intellect will quickly judge to go on the path of felicity over one with complete intelligence.

  

[1] Being a translation of a chapter from Abu Hamid al-Ghazali’s Criterion of Action (Mizan al-‘Ammal) Ed. By S. Dunyah (dar al-Marraif Press, Cairo, First Edition, 1964) pp. 180-181. Translation by Muhammad Hozien.

  

In his famous autobiography, The Deliverer from Error, al-Ghazālī reconstructs the way the science of ethics is supposed to have developed. Al-Ghazālī contends that the philosophical ethics taught by the Arabic Aristotelians necessarily depends upon prior revelations handed to religious aspirants of a vaguely Sufi stamp. Al-Ghazālī’s argument is reminiscent of similar ones made in late antiquity; I maintain, however, that for al-Ghazālī the point bears added systematic significance. Given the central position held by the purification of the soul in al-Ghazālī’s conception of true religion, he can hardly admit that the philosophers should have discovered independently any of the philosophical ethics al-Ghazālī himself espouses. It is the supernatural power of prescribed ritual acts that ultimately allows al-Ghazālī to maintain the superiority of religiously predicated ethics. Leaving aside Ghazālī's ethics of character, the article examines his treatment of the ethics of action in Iqtiṣād, Iḥyāʾ and Mustaṣfā and finds a consistent theory. The ethical meaning of wājib is defined as "necessary for an agent's interest." The main interest for man is personal salvation. Al-Ghazali, who lived in the eleventh century of the Christian era, was one of the greatest Muslim thinkers. He had an encyclopaedic knowledge and wrote a great number of "books on many subjectsj ethics, Islamic jurisprudence, theology, metaphysics and logic. Ethics occupied a central position in his thought. He set forth his ethical views in many books according to the need and interest of various categories of his readers. Since his thought developed through several stages, the books he wrote including those on ethics are usually divided in accordance with these stages. They have been arranged chronologically by such scholars as Maurice Boyges, W. Montgomery Watt, George F. Hourani, ^Abd-ar-Rahman Badawl and Farid Jabre. The creative part of al-GhazalPs life may broadly be divided into two phases, the early period and the later period which began from his conversion to Islamic mysticism (sufism). His ethical works belonged to both periods and are coloured with their characteristics. There is disagreement on the authenticity of some of the works attributed to al-Ghazali, Some ethical works ascribed to him as of the later period of his life are of doubtful authenticity in their entirety, while some ethical works of both periods are shown to be spurious only in part. Some ideas in an ethical work of a moderate size of the earliest period or, more accurately, of the transitional period, are regarded as superseded by those set forth in his later works. In view of these established facts regarding al-Ghazall's works on morals, any study of them which does not take these facts into consideration may not "be regarded as revealing the truth about him in its entirety. Such a study misleads readers and scholars with regard to al-Ghazall and engenders various theories of his life. Unfortunately, all of the very few studies hitherto made on his ethics are partly based upon the unauthentic books, unauthentic parts of books and the books containing the superseded ideas, as they are also based upon the authentic books. Besides thtis mixing the non- Ghazalian or superseded Ghazalian ideas with the genuine Ghazalian teachings, they often failed to investigate the basic moral principles which are explicit or implicit in his teaching and also to give as complete a description of it as possible in the length of a book. They are unsatisfactory on various other accounts also. Therefore, there is a need for a study of his ethics which is based only upon those ethical works which all the scholars have accepted as authentic and which have not been superseded by others. Such a study should give readers a true knowledge and understanding of this great man and of his thought concerning moral problems. The present work is an effort to meet this need. It is a new approach to the study of al-Ghazsli's ethical theory for it seeks to present this theory in a reasonably complete form "by drawing only upon materials from Ms genuine works or genuine parts of works which have not "been superseded. Among the works of the earlier period, therefore, Mizan al-rAmal (Criterion o f Action) is discarded altogether; (reference to it is made in a few places only for the sake of comparison). Out of the large number of the ethical works of the later period whose authenticity has "been generally accepted, almost a score is selected to constitute the basis of the present study, since to make use of all Ms works would be impossible in a limited period of time. Efforts are also made in tMs work to bring to light the principles of al-Ghazalis ethics. Sometimes it has been found necessary to enquire into the sources of his inspiration and ideas. This study, however, does not seek, except very rarely, to determine the influence of al-Ghazali's ethics upon the subsequent development of ethical thought in Islam or in Christianity - a task which may form the subject-matter of a separate study.

 

ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.640142

 

THAT THE ROAD TO FELICITY IS KNOWLEDGE AND ACTION

 

(p. 194)

 

If you say: "It is clear to me that treading the path of felicity is the determination of the intelligent (folk) and its neglect is the heedlessness of the ignorant.

 

How could someone travel this road without any knowledge of it?

 

How could I know that knowledge and action are the path [to felicity] in order to tread upon it?"

 

You have two ways of knowing it:

 

First, one that is agreeable to the prior methodology, and it is that you should consider what the three groups agreed upon.

 

Indeed they were united in [the belief] that success and salvation will not be achieved save by knowledge and action together.

 

They have agreed that knowledge is nobler than action. It is as though action is its achievement. Knowledge steers action to arrive at its destination.

 

Allah, the Most High, states:

 

{To Him pious speech rises, And the righteous action advances it higher}

 

The pious speech is known through study of knowledge. It [pious speech] is what is elevated and falls in place. Action is like a servant; it elevates and bears it. Indeed this is a remark pointing to the prestige of knowledge.

 

(p. 195)

 

The teaching of the first group who are the ones that subscribe to the first definition of the literalist who link salvation with knowledge and action. Proving this is beyond enumeration.

 

The majority of Sufis and philosophers who believe in Allah and The Final Day are all in agreement that felicity is reached through knowledge and worship, even though they differed in its mode.

 

Their differences are in the minute exposition of knowledge and action. The suspension (of action) in light of this [above mentioned] agreement is imbecility.

 

Whosoever is overwhelmed by an ailment and the consensus of medical texts and consultations, with their varying specialties, state that the cure for the malady is a "cold cure".

 

The abstention (from taking the cure) by the patient is a stupidity in his intellect. Indeed, it is a requirement of intellect to initiate the measures [of taking the cure].

 

Indeed, he may then find [an independent] means; until that is realized, not by imitating the masses on the contrary by verifying the true reality of the malady and the ways that are valid for its cause to be cured. He will then rise with clear vision if he searches, becomes independent, surge above the perigee of imitation (mimicry) and compliance to the apogee of scrutiny.

 

The Sufis and other groups claim that it is possible to reach the realization [of that station] with cognition and verification.

 

Not realizing the reality of death is the removal of the instrument from useful function to the annihilation of the user. Knowing that the felicity, delight and repose are attaining its distinctive perfection

 

Knowing the distinctive perfection of humanity is the realization of the reality of rationals for what it is, not by what is illusionary and sensible, which it has in common with animals.

 

(p. 196)

 

Knowing that the soul itself is thirsty for it, [knowledge and action], and by its nature, has prepared for it. What distracts the body is overwhelming afflictions and its occupation with carnal desires. However, he may destroy and over power those desires and free himself from its servitude and bondage.

 

If he has devoted (himself) to contemplation and meditation in the majesty of the heavens and earth, indeed in contemplating the marvels of what is created in himself then he would have attained his personal [level of] perfection.

 

Indeed, then he would be blissful on earth for there is no significance of felicity save for the soul's attainment of its potential perfection; even though the levels of perfection are countless.

 

However, he will not feel that delight so long as he is in this world prohibited by senses, illusions, and afflictions of the soul. [The situation is] similar to the person who was presented with a savory dish but his taste buds are numb and [numbness] dissipates then he will sense the ultimate delectation.

 

Death is like the dissipation of anesthetizing for I have heard from elite Sufis, saying that the advanced student to the way of Allah will perceive paradise while he is on Earth and that the loftiest Firdaws is within his heart if he would only attain it.

 

Its attainment is by freeing oneself from the trappings of the world and the placement of all his effort in contemplating divine matters until the divine revelation is clearly manifested to him.

 

This is achieved when his soul is purified from these [earthly] defilements. The attainment of this station is true felicity. Action is the aid in its fulfillment.

 

Those are a group that claimed gnosis by knowledge and action towards felicity. What they have said is sound and, they claim, will not be known except by struggle and devotional exercises.

 

As Allah most high has stated:

 

{and those that struggle in Our path We will guide them to Our path}

 

Your only path is to struggle and dedicate yourself to the cause; conceivably the reality of the situation will be manifested either by negation or substantiation.

 

It is enough [proof] for you to embark on knowledge and action. The consensus of the three [groups] is [enough], if your aim of the question is not argumentative. Indeed, if your aim is the achievement of success, just like the ill who seek a cure, not disputation. If you seek it with the consensus of various classes of medical experts.

 

ghazali.org/works/mizan-en2.htm

Celastraceae (staff vine or bittersweet family) » Celastrus paniculatus

 

see-LAS-trus -- from the ancient Greek kelastros, the name of another tree

pan-ick-yoo-LAY-tus or pan-ick-yoo-LAH-tus -- referring to the flower clusters (panicles)

 

commonly known as: black-oil plant, celastrus, oriental bittersweet, intellect tree, staff tree • Bengali: kijri, malkangani • Gujarati: માલકંગના malkangana • Hindi: मालकंगनी malkangani • Kannada: ಭವಮ್ಗ bhavamga, ಜೊತಿಷ್ಮತಿ jotishmati, ಕರಿಗನ್ನೇ kariganne, ಕೊಉಗಿಲು kougilu • Konkani: माळकांगोणी malkangoni • Marathi: कांगुणी kanguni, माळकांगोणी malkangoni • Oriya: korsana, pengu • Sanskrit: अलवण alavan, ज्योतिषमति jyotishmati, कन्गु kangu • Tamil: குவரிகுண்டல் kuvarikuntal, மண்ணைக்கட்டி mannai-k-katti, வாலுளுவை valuluvai • Telugu: కాసరతీగె kasara-tige, మానెరు maneru • Urdu: کنگني مال malkanguni

 

Native to: India, China, Sri Lanka, south-east Asia

  

References: Flowers of India • Sahyadri Database • ENVIS - FRLHT • eFlora

 

Only Now is Real Mandala

 

Mandala for meditation/contemplation or decoration.

  

The words need little explanation – “Only Now is Real” yet if this is a new concept to you, it may be necessary to consider what that means beyond logic and intellect in order to appreciate the simplicity of the message. Time does not exist – we invented it in order to plan our daily lives and so we use clock time for practical purposes; yet it is always the present moment.

 

Here is a brief idea of what the illustration could mean.

 

As time does not exist, the two clock faces have no hands; the smaller clock face starts a winding path towards its destination which is of course Now (the present moment). The larger clock face stands for eternity and is potentially the everlasting sun. Larger dark circle suggests night as a contrast to the blue sky of day. Either side of the main waterfall are two air pockets; the loose theme being air, water (which is turning to wood), wood turning to fire and then fire to darkness. Flowers and leaves represent life and growth, grey mounds possibly earth. Trees reaching up represent continuing cycles of birth and death and birds stand for freedom. Clouds represent thought movement.

 

If you enjoy this Mandala there are four others for purchase either singularly or in a set from:

 

www.spiritualinspiration.co.uk

 

Mind Map Inspiration Blog www.mindmapinspiration.com

 

Let's Get It Started, in here...

 

And the base keep runnin' runnin', and runnin', and runnin', and runnin', and runnin', and runnin', and runnin', and

runnin', and runnin', and runnin', and runnin', and runnin', and runnin', and runnin', and runnin', and...

 

In this context, there's no disrespect, so, when I bust my rhyme, you break your necks.

We got five minutes for us to disconnect, from all intellect collect the rhythm effect. Obstacles are inefficient, follow

your intuition, free your inner soul and break away from tradition.

Coz when we beat out, girl it's pullin without. You wouldn't believe how we wow shit out.

Burn it till it's burned out. Turn it till it's turned out. Act up from north, west, east, south.

  

Everybody, everybody, let's get into it.

Get stupid.

Get started, get started, get started.

Let's get started (ha), let's get started in here. Let's get started (ha), let's get started in here.

Let's get started (ha), let's get started in here. Let's get started (ha), let's get started in here.

Yeah.

 

Lose control, of body and soul.

Don't move too fast, people, just take it slow.

Don't get ahead, just jump into it.

Ya'll here a body, two peices to it.

Get stutted, get stupid.

You'll want me body people will walk you through it.

Step by step, like you're into new kid.

Inch by inch with the new solution.

Trench men hits, with no delusion.

The feeling's irresistible and that's how we movin'.

  

Everybody, everybody, let's get into it.

Get stupid.

Get started, get started, get started.

Let's get started (ha), let's get started in here. Let's get started (ha), let's get started in here.

Let's get started (ha), let's get started in here. Let's get started (ha), let's get started in here.

Yeah.

 

Runnin' runnin', and runnin' runnin', and runnin' runnin', and runnin runnin' and... Come on ya'll let's get...Oohhoo!

Aha, let's get oohhoo... in here (right now yeah.) Cookoo, aha, let's get, cookoo, in here... Cookoo, aha, let's get,

cookoo, in here...ow, ow, ow...

ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...

 

Let's get ill, that's the deal.

At the gate, we'll bring the bud top drill. (Just)

Lose your mind this is the time,

Ya'll test this drill, Just and bang your spine. (Just)

Bob your head like epilepsy, up inside your club or in your bentley.

Get messy, loud and sick.

Ya'll mount past slow mo in another head trip. (So)

Come then now do not correct it, let's get pregnant let's get hectic.

  

Everybody, everybody, let's get into it.

Get stupid. (Come on)

Get started (come one) , get started (yeah), get started.

Let's get started (ha), let's get started in here. Let's get started (ha), let's get started in here. (R-E-T-A-R-D-E-D)

Let's get started (ha), let's get started in here. Let's get started (ha), let's get started (woah, woah, woah) in here.

Yeah.

Oohhoo! Aha, oohhoo... in here... Cookoo, aha, cookoo, in here (S-T-A-R-T-D-E-D)... Cookoo, aha, let's get, cookoo, in here...ow, ow, ow...

ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya, ya...

 

Runnin' runnin', and runnin' runnin', and runnin' runnin', and runnin' runnin'

 

Cartoon from Punch magazine 1867.

Punch the London magazine of wit, satire and political humour.