vimeo.com/paulbezuijen/greta

 

Villa Greta

 

After not seeing each other for eight years, a group of childhood friends come together for a reunion. Interested in each others stories and how the interactions will be, they decide to lock themselves into a villa for four days. Their only purpose is to party, But after the days and nights pass on and the repressed memory's come to light one thing is certain. This is no longer the tight group of friends it used to be. Will the forgotten memory's and phobia's take their toll? One thing is certain: It will be hard to live through the days unharmed.

 

Music:

Bram Faber

 

Actors:

Arnoud Wilpstra

 

Rob Mulder

 

Lex Bezuijen

 

Stijn Tammenga

 

Stef Mulder

 

Rob van Zanten

 

Gregor Doornbosch

 

Frank Bally

 

Kim Lockhorn

Heraldic window in honour of the great humanist and neo-Latin poet George Buchanan (died 1582) in:-

 

Greyfriars Kirk, today Greyfriars Tolbooth & Highland Kirk,

 

(Scout/Explore no. 349 on 5th November 2006)

 

George Buchanan (humanist)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

George Buchanan, BA, MA (February, 1506 - September 28, 1582) was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar.

Contents

 

* 1 Biography

* 2 Works

* 3 Modern Publications and Influence

* 4 References

 

[edit] Biography

 

His father, a younger son of an old family, owned the farm of Moss, in the parish of Killearn, Stirling, but he died young, leaving his widow and children in poverty. George's mother, Agnes Heriot, was of the family of the Heriots of Trabroun, East Lothian, of which George Heriot, founder of Heriot's Hospital, was also a member. Buchanan is said to have attended Killearn school, but not much is known of his early education. In 1520 he was sent by his uncle, James Heriot, to the University of Paris, where, according to him, he devoted himself to the writing of verses "partly by liking, partly by compulsion (that being then the one task prescribed to youth)."

 

In 1522 his uncle died, and Buchanan was unable to continue longer in Paris; he returned to Scotland. After recovering from a severe illness, he joined the French auxiliaries who had been brought over by John Stewart, Duke of Albany, and took part in an unsuccessful foray into England. In the following year he entered the University of St Andrews, where he graduated B.A. in 1525. He had gone there chiefly for the purpose of attending the celebrated John Mair's lectures on logic; and when that teacher moved to Paris, Buchanan followed him in 1526. In 1527 he graduated B.A., and in 1528 M.A. at Paris. Next year he was appointed regent, or professor, in the College of Sainte-Barbe, and taught there for over three years. In 1529 he was elected "Procurator of the German Nation" in the University of Paris, and was re-elected four times in four successive months. He resigned his regentship in 1531, and in 1532 became tutor to Gilbert Kennedy, 3rd Earl of Cassilis, with whom he returned to Scotland early in 1537.

 

At this period Buchanan assumed the same attitude toward the Roman Catholic Church that Erasmus maintained. He did not repudiate its doctrines, but considered himself free to criticise its practice. Though he listened with interest to the arguments of the Reformers, he did not join their ranks until 1553. His first production in Scotland, when he was in Lord Cassilis's household in the west country, was the poem Somnium, a satirical attack on the Franciscan friars and monastic life generally. This assault on the monks was not displeasing to James V, who engaged Buchanan as tutor to one of his natural sons, Lord James Stewart (not the son who was afterwards regent), and encouraged him in a more daring effort.

 

The poems Palinodia and Franciscanus et Fratres, although they remained unpublished for many years, made the author the object of bitter hatred to the Franciscan order, and put his safety in jeopardy. In 1539 there was bitter persecution of the Lutherans, and Buchanan among others was arrested. He managed to effect his escape and with considerable difficulty made his way to London and thence to Paris. In Paris, however, he found his enemy, Cardinal David Beaton, who was there as ambassador, and on the invitation of André de Gouvéa, proceeded to Bordeaux. Gouvéa was then principal of the newly founded College of Guienne at Bordeaux, and by his influence Buchanan was appointed professor of Latin. During his residence here, several of his best works, the translations of Medea and Alcestis, and the two dramas, Jephthes (sive Votum) and Baptistes (sive Calumnia), were completed.

 

Michel de Montaigne was Buchanan's pupil at Bordeaux and acted in his tragedies. In the essay Of Presumption he classes Buchanan with Aurat, Theodore Beza, Michel de l'Hôpital, Montdore and Turnebus, as one of the foremost Latin poets of his time. Here also Buchanan formed a lasting friendship with Julius Caesar Scaliger; in later life he won the admiration of Joseph Scaliger, who wrote an epigram on Buchanan which contains the couplet, famous in its day: "Imperii fuerat Romani Scotia limes; Romani eloquii Scotia limes erit?"

 

In 1542 or 1543 he returned to Paris, and in 1544 was appointed regent in the college of Cardinal le Moine. Among his colleagues were the renowned Muretus and Adrianus Turnebus.

 

In 1547 Buchanan joined the band of French and Portuguese humanists who had been invited by Gouvéa to lecture in the Portuguese University of Coimbra. The French mathematician Elie Vinet, and the Portuguese historian, Jeronimo de Osorio, were among his colleagues; Gouvéa, called by Montaigne le plus grand principal de France, was rector of the university, which had reached the summit of its prosperity under the patronage of King John III. But the rectorship had been coveted by Diogo de Gouvéa, uncle of André and formerly head of Sainte-Barbe. It is probable that before André's death at the end of 1547 Diogo had urged the Inquisition to attack him and his staff; up to 1906, when the records of the trial were first published in full, Buchanan's biographers generally attributed the attack to the influence of Cardinal Beaton, the Franciscans, or the Jesuits, and the whole history of Buchanan's residence in Portugal was extremely obscure.

 

A commission of inquiry was appointed in October 1549 and reported in June 1550. Buchanan and two Portuguese, Diogo de Teive and Joao da Costa (who had succeeded to the rectorship), were committed for trial. Teive and Costa were found guilty of various offences against public order, and the evidence shows that there was ample reason for a judicial inquiry. Buchanan was accused of Lutheran and Judaistic practices. He defended himself with conspicuous ability, courage and frankness, admitting that some of the charges were true. About June 1551 he was sentenced to abjure his errors, and to be imprisoned in the monastery of São Bento in Lisbon. Here he was compelled to listen to edifying discourses from the monks, whom he found "not unkind but ignorant." In his leisure he began to translate the Psalms into Latin verse. After seven months he was released, on condition that he remained in Lisbon; and on February 28, 1552 this restriction was lifted. Buchanan at once sailed for England, but soon made his way to Paris, where in 1553 he was appointed regent in the College of Boncourt. He remained in that post for two years, and then accepted the office of tutor to the son of the Maréchal de Brissac. It was almost certainly during this last stay in France, where Protestantism was being repressed with great severity by King Francis I, that Buchanan took the side of Calvinism.

 

In 1560 or 1561 he returned to Scotland, and by April 1562 was installed as tutor to the young Queen Mary I of Scotland, who read Livy with him daily. Buchanan now openly joined the Protestant, or Reformed Church, and in 1566 was appointed by the earl of Murray principal of St Leonard's College, St Andrews. Two years before he had received from the queen the valuable gift of the revenues of Crossraguel Abbey. He was thus in good circumstances, and his fame was steadily increasing. So great, indeed, was his reputation for learning and administrative capacity that, though a layman, he was made Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1567. He had sat in the assemblies from 1563. He was the last lay person to be elected Moderator until Alison Elliot in 2004, the first female Moderator.

 

Buchanan accompanied the regent Murray into England, and his Detectio (published in 1572) was produced to the commissioners at Westminster. In 1570, after the assassination of Murray, he was appointed one of the preceptors of the young king, and it was through his tuition that James VI acquired his scholarship. While discharging the functions of royal tutor he also held other important offices. He was for a short time director of chancery, and then became Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland, a post which entitled him to a seat in the parliament. He appears to have continued in this office for some years, at least till 1579.

 

His last years had been occupied with completion and publication of two of his most important works, De Jure Regni apud Scales (1579) and Rerum Scoticarum Historia (1582). He died in Edinburgh in 1582 and is buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard (rather ironically, considering that his old foes had been the greyfriars).

 

[edit] Works

 

For mastery of the Latin language, Buchanan has seldom been surpassed by any modern writer. His style is not rigidly modelled on that of any classical author, but has a freshness and elasticity of its own. He wrote Latin as if it were his mother tongue. Buchanan also had a rich vein of poetical feeling, and much originality of thought. His translations of the Psalms and of the Greek plays are more than mere versions; his two tragedies, Baptistes and Jephthes, enjoyed a European reputation for academic excellence.

 

In addition to these works, Buchanan wrote in prose Chamaeleon, a satire in Scots against Maitland of Lethington, first printed in 1711; a Latin translation of Linacre's Grammar (Paris, 1533); Libellus de Prosodia (Edinburgh, 1640); and Vita ab ipso scripta biennio ante mortem (1608), edited by R. Sibbald (1702). His other poems are Fratres Fraterrimi, Elegiae, Silvae, two sets of verses entitled Hendecasyllabon Liber and Iambon Liber; three books of Epigrammata; a book of miscellaneous verse; De Sphaera (in five books), suggested by the poem of Joannes de Sacrobosco, and intended as a defence of the Ptolemaic theory against the new Copernican view.

 

There are two early editions of Buchanan's works: (a) Georgii Buchanani Scoti, Poetarum sui seculi facile principis, Opera Omnsa, in two vols. fol. edited by Thomas Ruddiman (Edinburgh, Freebairn, folio, 1715): (b) edited by Burman, quarto 1725. The Vernacular Writings.

 

The first of his important late works was the treatise De Jure Regni apud Scales, published in 1579. In this famous work, composed in the form of a dialogue, and evidently intended to instil sound political principles into the mind of his pupil, Buchanan lays down the doctrine that the source of all political power is the people, that the king is bound by those conditions under which the supreme power was first committed to his hands, and that it is lawful to resist, even to punish, tyrants. The importance of the work is proved by the persistent efforts of the legislature to suppress it during the century following its publication. It was condemned by act of parliament in 1584, and again in 1664; and in 1683 it was burned by the University of Oxford.

 

The second of his larger works is the history of Scotland, Rerum Scoticarum Historia, completed shortly before his death (1579), and published in 1582. It is of great value for the period personally known to the author, which occupies the greater portion of the book. The earlier part is based, to a considerable extent, on the legendary history of Boece. Buchanan's purpose was to "purge" the national history "of sum Inglis lyis and Scottis vanite" (Letter to Randolph). He said that it would "content few and displease many".

 

[edit] Modern Publications and Influence

 

Polygon Books have published the poet Robert Crawford's selection of Buchanan's verse in Apollos of the North: Selected Poems of George Buchanan and Arthur Johnston (ISBN 1904598811) in 2006, the 500th anniversary of Buchanan's birth.

 

In the lead-up to the anniversary Professor Roger Mason of the University of St Andrews has published A Dialogue on the Law of Kingship among the Scots, a critical edition and translation of George Buchanan's 'De Iure Regni apud Scotos Dialogus (ISBN 1859284086).

 

The Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery is hosting an exhibition and event programme over winter 2006-7 to commemorate the anniversary, including performances of musical settings of Buchanan's psalms, due to be published in 2007.

"Country" explores some of the most remote cultural traditions of the Indigenous peoples of Australia and focusses on contemporary aboriginal culture in the Australian Outback.

 

The exhibition is the result of a two-year research project by artist Georgia Severi who, within this Venetian setting, retraces her journey through the Australian continent. All participating artists share an investigative interest in social and political themes, each focusing on the concepts of identity.

 

The exhibition represents an ongoing study of memory and traditions through the used of mixed media aiming to reveal a new and broader perspective on what still remains a repressed and marginalized culture and to reflect upon it from both an historic and an artistic point of view. The show presents both a unique and collective experience about life, family, tradition, kinship and mere survival, constructing an imaginary bridge linking Western and Aboriginal cultures.

Pablo Picasso (/pɪˈkɑːsoʊ, -ˈkæsoʊ/; Spanish: [ˈpaβlo piˈkaso]; 25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces.Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the slightly older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.Picasso's work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period. Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.Picasso was baptized Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso,[1] a series of names honouring various saints and relatives.[9] Ruiz y Picasso were included for his father and mother, respectively, as per Spanish law. Born in the city of Málaga in the Andalusian region of Spain, he was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838–1913) and María Picasso y López.[10] His mother was of one quarter Italian descent, from the territory of Genoa.[11] Though baptized a Catholic, Picasso would later on become an atheist.[12] Picasso's family was of middle-class background. His father was a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruiz's ancestors were minor aristocrats.Picasso showed a passion and a skill for drawing from an early age. According to his mother, his first words were "piz, piz", a shortening of lápiz, the Spanish word for "pencil".[13] From the age of seven, Picasso received formal artistic training from his father in figure drawing and oil painting. Ruiz was a traditional academic artist and instructor, who believed that proper training required disciplined copying of the masters, and drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. His son became preoccupied with art to the detriment of his classwork.

The family moved to A Coruña in 1891, where his father became a professor at the School of Fine Arts. They stayed almost four years. On one occasion, the father found his son painting over his unfinished sketch of a pigeon. Observing the precision of his son's technique, an apocryphal story relates, Ruiz felt that the thirteen-year-old Picasso had surpassed him, and vowed to give up painting, though paintings by him exist from later years.In 1895, Picasso was traumatized when his seven-year-old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheria.[15] After her death, the family moved to Barcelona, where Ruiz took a position at its School of Fine Arts. Picasso thrived in the city, regarding it in times of sadness or nostalgia as his true home.[16] Ruiz persuaded the officials at the academy to allow his son to take an entrance exam for the advanced class. This process often took students a month, but Picasso completed it in a week, and the jury admitted him, at just 13. The student lacked discipline but made friendships that would affect him in later life. His father rented a small room for him close to home so he could work alone, yet he checked up on him numerous times a day, judging his drawings. The two argued frequently.Picasso's father and uncle decided to send the young artist to Madrid's Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, the country's foremost art school.At age 16, Picasso set off for the first time on his own, but he disliked formal instruction and stopped attending classes soon after enrolment. Madrid held many other attractions. The Prado housed paintings by Diego Velázquez, Francisco Goya, and Francisco Zurbarán. Picasso especially admired the works of El Greco; elements such as his elongated limbs, arresting colours, and mystical visages are echoed in Picasso's later work.Picasso's training under his father began before 1890. His progress can be traced in the collection of early works now held by the Museu Picasso in Barcelona, which provides one of the most comprehensive records extant of any major artist's beginnings.[17] During 1893 the juvenile quality of his earliest work falls away, and by 1894 his career as a painter can be said to have begun.The academic realism apparent in the works of the mid-1890s is well displayed in The First Communion (1896), a large composition that depicts his sister, Lola. In the same year, at the age of 14, he painted Portrait of Aunt Pepa, a vigorous and dramatic portrait that Juan-Eduardo Cirlot has called "without a doubt one of the greatest in the whole history of Spanish painting."In 1897, his realism began to show a Symbolist influence, for example, in a series of landscape paintings rendered in non-naturalistic violet and green tones. What some call his Modernist period (1899–1900) followed. His exposure to the work of Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec and Edvard Munch, combined with his admiration for favourite old masters such as El Greco, led Picasso to a personal version of modernism in his works of this period.Picasso made his first trip to Paris, then the art capital of Europe, in 1900. There, he met his first Parisian friend, journalist and poet Max Jacob, who helped Picasso learn the language and its literature. Soon they shared an apartment; Max slept at night while Picasso slept during the day and worked at night. These were times of severe poverty, cold, and desperation. Much of his work was burned to keep the small room warm. During the first five months of 1901, Picasso lived in Madrid, where he and his anarchist friend Francisco de Asís Soler founded the magazine Arte Joven (Young Art), which published five issues. Soler solicited articles and Picasso illustrated the journal, mostly contributing grim cartoons depicting and sympathizing with the state of the poor. The first issue was published on 31 March 1901, by which time the artist had started to sign his work Picasso; before he had signed Pablo Ruiz y Picasso.Picasso's Blue Period (1901–1904), characterized by sombre paintings rendered in shades of blue and blue-green, only occasionally warmed by other colours, began either in Spain in early 1901, or in Paris in the second half of the year.[22] Many paintings of gaunt mothers with children date from the Blue Period, during which Picasso divided his time between Barcelona and Paris. In his austere use of colour and sometimes doleful subject matter – prostitutes and beggars are frequent subjects – Picasso was influenced by a trip through Spain and by the suicide of his friend Carlos Casagemas. Starting in autumn of 1901 he painted several posthumous portraits of Casagemas, culminating in the gloomy allegorical painting La Vie (1903), now in the Cleveland Museum of Art..Pablo Picasso, 1905, Au Lapin Agile (At the Lapin Agile) (Arlequin tenant un verre), oil on canvas, 99.1 × 100.3 cm, Metropolitan Museum of Art

The same mood pervades the well-known etching The Frugal Repast (1904),] which depicts a blind man and a sighted woman, both emaciated, seated at a nearly bare table. Blindness is a recurrent theme in Picasso's works of this period, also represented in The Blindman's Meal (1903, the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and in the portrait of Celestina (1903). Other works include Portrait of Soler and Portrait of Suzanne Bloch.The Rose Period (1904–1906)[25] is characterized by a lighter tone and style utilizing orange and pink colours, and featuring many circus people, acrobats and harlequins known in France as saltimbanques. The harlequin, a comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, became a personal symbol for Picasso. Picasso met Fernande Olivier, a bohemian artist who became his mistress, in Paris in 1904.[15] Olivier appears in many of his Rose Period paintings, many of which are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his increased exposure to French painting. The generally upbeat and optimistic mood of paintings in this period is reminiscent of the 1899–1901 period (i.e. just prior to the Blue Period) and 1904 can be considered a transition year between the two periods.Portrait of Gertrude Stein, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. When someone commented that Stein did not look like her portrait, Picasso replied, "She will".By 1905, Picasso became a favourite of American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy. Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse, while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso.In 1907 Picasso joined an art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian and art collector who became one of the premier French art dealers of the 20th century. He was among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and the Cubism that they jointly developed. Kahnweiler promoted burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time.Picasso's African-influenced Period (1907–1909) begins with his painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Picasso painted this composition in a style inspired by Iberian sculpture, but repainted the faces of the two figures on the right after being powerfully impressed by African artefacts he saw in June 1907 in the ethnographic museum at Palais du Trocadéro.[30] When he displayed the painting to acquaintances in his studio later that year, the nearly universal reaction was shock and revulsion; Matisse angrily dismissed the work as a hoax.[31] Picasso did not exhibit Le Demoiselles publicly until 1916.Other works from this period include Nude with Raised Arms (1907) and Three Women (1908). Formal ideas developed during this period lead directly into the Cubist period that follows.Analytic cubism (1909–1912) is a style of painting Picasso developed with Georges Braque using monochrome brownish and neutral colours. Both artists took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque's paintings at this time share many similarities.Synthetic cubism (1912–1919) was a further development of the genre of cubism, in which cut paper fragments – often wallpaper or portions of newspaper pages – were pasted into compositions, marking the first use of collage in fine art. In Paris, Picasso entertained a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, poet Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Alfred Jarry, and Gertrude Stein. Apollinaire was arrested on suspicion of stealing the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911. Apollinaire pointed to his friend Picasso, who was also brought in for questioning, but both were later exonerated.Between 1915 and 1917, Picasso began a series of paintings depicting highly geometric and minimalist Cubist objects, consisting of either a pipe, a guitar or a glass, with an occasional element of collage. "Hard-edged square-cut diamonds", notes art historian John Richardson, "these gems do not always have upside or downside".[33][34] "We need a new name to designate them," wrote Picasso to Gertrude Stein: Maurice Raynal suggested "Crystal Cubism".[33][35] These "little gems" may have been produced by Picasso in response to critics who had claimed his defection from the movement, through his experimentation with classicism within the so-called return to order following the war.At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Picasso was living in Avignon. Braque and Derain were mobilized and Apollinaire joined the French artillery, while the Spaniard Juan Gris remained from the Cubist circle. During the war, Picasso was able to continue painting uninterrupted, unlike his French comrades. His paintings became more sombre and his life changed with dramatic consequences. Kahnweiler’s contract had terminated on his exile from France. At this point Picasso’s work would be taken on by the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg. After the loss of Eva Gouel, Picasso had an affair with Gaby Lespinasse. During the spring of 1916, Apollinaire returned from the front wounded. They renewed their friendship, but Picasso began to frequent new social circles.Towards the end of World War I, Picasso made a number of important relationships with figures associated with Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Among his friends during this period were Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo, Juan Gris, and others. In the summer of 1918, Picasso married Olga Khokhlova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Erik Satie's Parade, in Rome; they spent their honeymoon near Biarritz in the villa of glamorous Chilean art patron Eugenia Errázuriz.After returning from his honeymoon, and in desperate need of money, Picasso started his exclusive relationship with the French-Jewish art dealer Paul Rosenberg. As part of his first duties, Rosenberg agreed to rent the couple an apartment in Paris at his own expense, which was located next to his own house. This was the start of a deep brother-like friendship between two very different men, that would last until the outbreak of World War II.Khokhlova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant to the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo Picasso,.who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father. Khokhlova's insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso's bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. During the same period that Picasso collaborated with Diaghilev's troupe, he and Igor Stravinsky collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several drawings of the composer.In 1927 Picasso met 17-year-old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picasso's marriage to Khokhlova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce, and Picasso did not want Khokhlova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khokhlova's death in 1955. Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Marie-Thérèse Walter and fathered a daughter with her, named Maya. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her, and hanged herself four years after Picasso's death.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

 

Crystal Cubism (French: Cubisme cristal or Cubisme de cristal) is a distilled form of Cubism consistent with a shift, between 1915 and 1916, towards a strong emphasis on flat surface activity and large overlapping geometric planes. The primacy of the underlying geometric structure, rooted in the abstract, controls practically all of the elements of the artwork.This range of styles of painting and sculpture, especially significant between 1917 and 1920 (also referred to as the Crystal Period, classical Cubism, pure Cubism, advanced Cubism, late Cubism, synthetic Cubism, or the second phase of Cubism), was practiced in varying degrees by a multitude of artists; particularly those under contract with the art dealer and collector Léonce Rosenberg—Henri Laurens, Jean Metzinger, Juan Gris and Jacques Lipchitz most noticeably of all. The tightening of the compositions, the clarity and sense of order reflected in these works, led to its being referred to by the French poet and art critic Maurice Raynal as 'crystal' Cubism.Considerations manifested by Cubists prior to the outset of World War I—such as the fourth dimension, dynamism of modern life, the occult, and Henri Bergson's concept of duration—had now been vacated, replaced by a purely formal frame of reference that proceeded from a cohesive stance toward art and life.As post-war reconstruction began, so too did a series of exhibitions at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie de L'Effort Moderne: order and the allegiance to the aesthetically pure remained the prevailing tendency. The collective phenomenon of Cubism once again—now in its advanced revisionist form—became part of a widely discussed development in French culture. Crystal Cubism was the culmination of a continuous narrowing of scope in the name of a return to order; based upon the observation of the artists relation to nature, rather than on the nature of reality itself.Crystal Cubism, and its associative rappel à l’ordre, has been linked with an inclination—by those who served the armed forces and by those who remained in the civilian sector—to escape the realities of the Great War, both during and directly following the conflict. The purifying of Cubism from 1914 through the mid-1920s, with its cohesive unity and voluntary constraints, has been linked to a much broader ideological transformation towards conservatism in both French society and French culture. In terms of the separation of culture and life, the Crystal Cubist period emerges as the most important in the history of Modernism.Cubism, from its inception, stems from the dissatisfaction with the idea of form that had been in practiced since the Renaissance. This dissatisfaction had already been seen in the works of the Romanticist Eugene Delacroix, in the Realism of Gustave Courbet, in passing through the Symbolists, Les Nabis, the Impressionists and the Neo-Impressionists. Paul Cézanne was instrumental, as his work marked a shift from a more representational art form to one that was increasingly abstract, with a strong emphasis on the simplification of geometric structure. In a letter addressed to Émile Bernard dated 15 April 1904, Cézanne writes: "Interpret nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone; put everything in perspective, so that each side of an object, of a plane, recedes toward a central point."Cézanne was preoccupied by the means of rendering volume and space, surface variations (or modulations) with overlapped shifting planes. Increasingly in his later works, Cézanne achieves a greater freedom. His work became bolder, more arbitrary, more dynamic and increasingly nonrepresentational. As his color planes acquired greater formal independence, defined objects and structures began to lose their identity.'Walpurgis Night, and The Angel that other master Alfred Kubin the Western Window (whose hero is the esoteric scholar John Dee). Picasso was also a member of this Order And it seems the same is true about Picasso, if we can trust the word of Marijo Ariens-Volker, who in her article "Alchemical, Kabbalistic, and Occult Symbolism in the Work of His Contemporaries (discussed in chapter 4), brings up several disturbing arguments. According to this researcher, Picasso, at the beginning of his stay in Paris, lived with his friend Ricardo Vines, who frequented the Librairie du Merveilleux, the general headquarters of the "independent group of esoteric studies" created by Papus. Among those closest to the painter at this time, we find André Salmon, who makes reference to Papus, the Martinists, and the Masons in several of his texts There were also Juan Gris an extremely assiduous Mason 38 Max Jacob, who considered kabbalah as his "life philosophy" and will be, before being expelled by Breton for impenitent Catholicism, frequently published in Littérature, and Guillaume Apollinaire who often spoke of Hermes Tres megistus and whose library held many books by Papus and other Martinists, as well as the official journals of the Order and even a document from the 1908 Spiritualist Congress. According to his grandson, Olivier Widmaier, Picasso was extremely well versed in the kabbalah, read the Zohar, and was a spiritualist his conversations with Brassai, Picasso admitted he had been a "member of an Order during his cubist period," probably the Martinist Order: some of the collages he made at this ime even bear signs that Ariens-Volker analyzes as allusions to the Martinist grade of unknown superior 40 210 Papus (whose "confused mysticism" would be denounced by Gérard Legrand in Médium in November 1953) claimed he had received Martinist initiation from the son of a close friend of Saint-Martin, but he also spent time with the "famous" theoretician of modern occultism, the "priest" (and Mason) Alphonse Louis Constant, alias Eliphas Levi 211 (Osiris is a black god," Breton writes in Arcanum 1 and was part of Helena Blavatsky and Colonel Henry Steel Olcott's Theosophical Society. He wanted to make the Martinist order which was connected with Christian illuminism-a mystical society, "a school of moral chivalry that would strive to develop the spirituality of its members by the study of the invisible world and its laws through the exercise of devotion and intellectual assistance, and by the creation in each spirit of a faith that would be more solid by being based on by Papus's son Phillipe d'Encausse.

 

"Deriving directly from Christian Illuminism, Martinism had to adopt the principles [...]

The Order as a whole is above all a school of moral chivalry, striving to develop the spirituality of its members by studying the invisible world and its laws, by exercising devotion and intellectual assistance and by the creation in each spirit of a faith all the more solid as it is based on observation and on science.

Martinists do not do magic, either white or black. They study, they pray, and they forgive the insults as best they can.

Accused of being devils by some, clerics by others, and black magicians or insane by the gallery, we will simply remain fervent knights of Christ, enemies of violence and revenge, resolute synarchists, opposed to any anarchy from above or from below, in a word from the Martinists. ”

Papus, The Initiation, November 1906

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Cubism

 

Administration

The newspaper The archives

Other components of Picasso’s references: esotericism, the Rosicrucian movement and opium.

< Summary

> Credits

The magico-religious aspect of the Gosolan ceremonies, as well as their pagan and esoteric roots, must have attracted Picasso, who was superstitious and had been initiated into the occult by two masters, his close friends Max Jacob and Guillaume Apollinaire68. In Gósol, the painter had the opportunity to enrich his training with in situ practices.

 

The Gosolan rites highlighted the continuity between the pagan world and the Christian one. This continuity was maintained by the Neoplatonists and, once the Inquisition was abolished, secret circles that had preserved the “living” tradition resurfaced, such as the Rosicrucians led by Sâr Péladan. The Grand Master sought, among other things, to merge the Rosicrucian movement with Christianity. Their ideas influenced Picasso’s entourage69 and Picasso’s Gosolan work reflects this union between pagan and Christian symbols.

 

Furthermore, opium, which Picasso and his circle appreciated, was linked to ancient mystery religions, in particular the cult of wheat presided over by Demeter and Persephone (fig.16). Opium facilitated access to knowledge, immortality of the soul and states of revelation. The flower from which opium is extracted, the poppy, is one of the emblems of the goddess Persephone. It is the flower that Picasso drew in his Gosolan notebook, his Carnet Catalan. Opium pipes are also represented in this notebook where the word “opium” is written, as well as a prescription for laudanum.

Opium, as Jean Cocteau, Sir Harold Acton, or Fernande71 explain, provides the opium smoker with the ability to constantly metamorphose, the sensation of being able to get anywhere he wants without the slightest effort, and an out-of-body experience that allows one to contemplate everything, oneself and the world, with impartiality72. Cocteau called opium “the flying carpet” and Picasso considered the scent of opium to be “the most intelligent of odors.”73

 

Opium placed these artists on the level of the ancient initiates, and the capacity for metamorphosis that it gave them allowed them to feel and see like them. The theatrical stagings of the ancient initiatory Mysteries in Parisian esoteric circles74 found some of their last real vestiges in Gósol.

 

Notes

 

68. RICHARDSON, JOHN, op. cit., Vol. I (1881-1906), pp. 207, 216, 331 and 334.

 

69. See the number of publications by Papus and Sâr Péladan, among other occultists, in the Apollinaire library: BOUDAR, GILBERT and DÉ-CAUDIN, MICHEL The library of Guillaume Apollinaire. Paris, Éditions du Center National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1983. See also M. FREIXA, op. cit., pp. 435-439; Gabriela di Milia, “Picasso and Canudo, a Couple of Transplants” in AA.VV. Picasso: the Italian journey 1917-1924, under the direction of Jean Clair, London, Thames and Hudson, 1998, pp. 75-77 and RICHARDSON, JOHN, op cit., Vol. I (1881-1906), p. 340.

 

70. According to Fernande Olivier, Picasso stopped smoking opium in 1908 following the suicide of a friend due to multiple intoxication. In Gósol, they were still smoking opium. The couple took refuge in the small village of Rue-des-Bois, in the suburbs of Paris, in 1908 to put an end to their opium addiction. OLIVIER, FERNANDE, op. cit., p. 183.

 

71. OLIVIER, FERNANDE Recuerdos íntimos. Escritos para Picasso. Barcelona. Ed. Parsifal. 1990 (1st ed. Souvenirs intimes: écrits pour Picasso, Calmann-Lévy, 1988), pp. 149 and 150 and OLIVIER, FERNANDE Picasso y sus amigos. Madrid. Taurus Ediciones. 1964 (Picasso and his friends, Stock, Paris, 1933), pp. 45 and p. 46.

 

72. COCTEAU, JEAN Opio. Buenos Aires, Editorial Sudamericana, 2002 and ACTON, HAROLD Memorias de un esteta (originally Memoirs of an Aesthete), Valencia, Ed. Pre Textos, 2010, pp. 522 and 523.

 

73. RICHARDSON, JOHN El aprendiz de brujo. Madrid, Alianza Editorial, 2001. (1st edition The sorcerer’s Apprentice, 1991), pp. 313 and 314.

 

74. Sâr Péladan had organized theatrical performances of the ancient Mysteries. Reference consulted on May 9, 2011 on fratreslucis.netfirms.com/Peladan01.html

 

www.picasso.fr/details/ojo-les-archives-mars-2013-ojo-21-...

 

ANDRÉ BRETON AND HERMETICISM. FROM << MAGNETIC FIELDS >>> TO << THE KEY TO THE FIELDS >>>

 

Communication by Mrs. A. BALAKIAN (New York)

 

at the XIVth Congress of the Association, July 26, 1962.

 

In one of his most recent essays, "Before the Curtain," André Breton accused academic criticism of having made no formal effort to establish the esoteric schemes of art and poetry: "By abstaining until now from taking them into account, academic criticism has devoted itself purely and simply to inanity... thus the great emotional movements that still agitate us, the sensitive charter that governs us, would they proceed, whether we like it or not, from a tradition completely different from that which is taught: on this tradition the most unworthy, the most vindictive silence is kept (1)." Would not our investigation, "Hermeticism and Poetry," be a denial of this reproach?

 

It is true that hermeticism in all its forms has served as a cult for surrealism since Les Champs Magnétiques, the first surrealist document, until André Breton's last collection of essays, published under the cryptographic title of La Clé des Champs, which sums up the definitive position he reached after having searched for more than a quarter of a century for the occult foundations of the human pyramid. Already in he First Manifesto of the Magician Shepherd of the Magnetic Fields had proclaimed that Rimbaud's Alchemy of the Word should be taken literally. In the article, "Why I am Taking the Direction of the Surrealist Revolution", which dates from 1925, he had considered the surrealists as an army of adventurers who act under the orders of the marvelous. On many occasions he has traced the underground framework that, according to him, unites poetic minds since what he calls "the admirable fourteenth century" when Flamel mysteriously received the manuscript of the book of Abraham Juif, through the work of the alchemists of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, passing through the work of Martinès, Saint-Martin, Fabre d'Olivet, Abbé Contant, through that of the enlightened ones of the nineteenth century: Hugo, Lautréamont, Rimbaud, to a certain degree Mallarmé, and more recently up to the work of Jarry, Apollinaire, and Raymond Roussel; Breton thus marks the parallel between the occultists and the poets. The philosopher's stone does not simply transform metals but takes on a symbolic meaning; according to Breton it unleashes the human imagination, a word to which he attributes a very special meaning. It is not a deceptive faculty but a liberating one. Without it we are forced to live under the empire of rationalism, that is to say on the surface of things and according to the evident current of phenomena. According to Breton, imagination alone would be capable of delivering us from this condition. Indeed, he attributes to imagination this special characteristic of the human being that Hermes Trismegistus would have defined as "the intimate union of sensation and thought" . This faculty, not inert but latent, "domesticated" (the word is Breton's) for centuries, could find its repressed impulses to make us envisage an unexpected and dynamic rather than organized order of the world. The hermetic tradition that is perpetuated in an underground way at all times and under any form of culture, does not constitute a conscious influence; it is rather a kind of transfusion that at each new mystical crisis of humanity strengthens those

 

(1) La Clé des Champs, Sagittaire, 1953, p. 93.

 

www.persee.fr/doc/caief_0571-5865_1963_num_15_1_2248

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For the album by The Creatures, see Anima Animus.

The anima and animus are described in Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology as part of his theory of the collective unconscious. Jung described the animus as the unconscious masculine side of a woman, and the anima as the unconscious feminine side of a man, each transcending the personal psyche. Jung's theory states that the anima and animus are the two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind, as opposed to the theriomorphic and inferior function of the shadow archetypes. He believed they are the abstract symbol sets that formulate the archetype of the Self.

 

In Jung's theory, the anima makes up the totality of the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a man possesses and the animus the masculine ones possessed by a woman. He did not believe they were an aggregate of father or mother, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, or teachers, though these aspects of the personal unconscious can influence a person's anima or animus.

 

Jung believed a male's sensitivity is often lesser or repressed, and therefore considered the anima one of the most significant autonomous complexes. Jung believed the anima and animus manifest themselves by appearing in dreams and influence a person's attitudes and interactions with the opposite sex. A natural understanding of another member of the opposite sex is instilled in individuals that stems from constant subjection to members of the opposite sex. This instilment leads to the development of the anima and animus.[1] Jung said that "the encounter with the shadow is the 'apprentice-piece' in the individual's development ... that with the anima is the 'masterpiece'".[2] Jung viewed the anima process as being one of the sources of creative ability. In his book The Invisible Partners, John A. Sanford said that the key to controlling one's anima/animus is to recognize it when it manifests and exercise our ability to discern the anima/animus from reality.[3]

  

Contents

1Origin

1.1Anima

1.2Animus

2Levels of anima development

2.1Eve - Object of desire, provider of nourishment, security and love

2.2Helen - Worldly achiever, intelligent and talented

2.3Mary - Righteous and a paragon of virtue

2.4Sophia - Wise and fully human, equal and not at all an object

3Levels of animus development

3.1Tarzan - Man of mere physical power

3.2Byron - Man of action or romance

3.3Lloyd George - Man as a professor, clergyman, orator

3.4Hermes - Man as a spiritual guide

4Anima and animus compared

5Jungian cautions

6References

7Further reading

8External links

Origin

Anima

Anima originated from Latin, and was originally used to describe ideas such as breath, soul, spirit or vital force. Jung began using the term in the early 1920s to describe the inner feminine side of men.[4]

 

Animus

Animus originated from Latin, where it was used to describe ideas such as the rational soul, life, mind, mental powers, courage or desire.[5] In the early nineteenth century, animus was used to mean "temper" and was typically used in a hostile sense. In 1923, it began being used as a term in Jungian psychology to describe the masculine side of women.[5]

 

Levels of anima development

Jung believed anima development has four distinct levels, which in "The psychology of the transference" he named Eve, Helen, Mary and Sophia. In broad terms, the entire process of anima development in a man is about the male subject opening up to emotionality, and in that way a broader spirituality, by creating a new conscious paradigm that includes intuitive processes, creativity and imagination, and psychic sensitivity towards himself and others where it might not have existed previously.[citation needed]

 

Eve - Object of desire, provider of nourishment, security and love

The first is Eve, named after the Genesis account of Adam and Eve. It deals with the emergence of a man's object of desire. The anima is completely tied up with woman as provider of nourishment, security and love.

 

The man at this anima level cannot function well without a woman, and is more likely to be controlled by her or, more likely, by his own imaginary construction of her. He is often impotent or has no sexual desire.[citation needed]

 

Helen - Worldly achiever, intelligent and talented

The second is Helen, an allusion to Helen of Troy in Greek mythology. In this phase, women are viewed as capable of worldly success and of being self-reliant, intelligent and insightful, even if not altogether virtuous. This second phase is meant to show a strong schism in external talents (cultivated business and conventional skills) with lacking internal qualities (inability for virtue, lacking faith or imagination).[citation needed]

 

Mary - Righteous and a paragon of virtue

The third phase is Mary, named after the Christian theological understanding of the Virgin Mary (Jesus' mother). At this level, women can now seem to possess virtue by the perceiving man (even if in an esoteric and dogmatic way), in as much as certain activities deemed consciously unvirtuous cannot be applied to her.[citation needed]

 

Sophia - Wise and fully human, equal and not at all an object

The fourth and final phase of anima development is Sophia, named after the Greek word for wisdom. Complete integration has now occurred, which allows women to be seen and related to as particular individuals who possess both positive and negative qualities. The most important aspect of this final level is that, as the personification "Wisdom" suggests, the anima is now developed enough that no single object can fully and permanently contain the images to which it is related.[citation needed]

 

Levels of animus development

Jung focused more on the man's anima and wrote less about the woman's animus. Jung believed that every woman has an analogous animus within her psyche, this being a set of unconscious masculine attributes and potentials. He viewed the animus as being more complex than the anima, postulating that women have a host of animus images whereas the male anima consists only of one dominant image.

 

Jung stated that there are four parallel levels of animus development in a woman.[6]

 

Tarzan - Man of mere physical power

The animus "first appears as a personification of mere physical power - for instance as an athletic champion or muscle man, such as 'the fictional jungle hero Tarzan'".[7]

 

Byron - Man of action or romance

In the next phase, the animus "possesses initiative and the capacity for planned action...the romantic man - the 19th century British poet Byron; or the man of action - America's Ernest Hemingway, war hero, hunter, etc."[8]

 

Lloyd George - Man as a professor, clergyman, orator

In the third phase "the animus becomes the word, often appearing as a professor or clergyman...the bearer of the word - Lloyd George, the great political orator".[8]

 

Hermes - Man as a spiritual guide

"Finally, in his fourth manifestation, the animus is the incarnation of meaning. On this highest level he becomes (like the anima) a mediator of...spiritual profundity".[9] Jung noted that "in mythology, this aspect of the animus appears as Hermes, messenger of the gods; in dreams he is a helpful guide." Like Sophia, this is the highest level of mediation between the unconscious and conscious mind.[citation needed] In the book The Invisible Partners, John A. Sanford said that the key to controlling one's anima/animus is to recognize it when it manifests and exercise our ability to discern the anima/animus from reality.[3]

 

Anima and animus compared

The four roles are not identical with genders reversed. Jung believed that while the anima tended to appear as a relatively singular female personality, the animus may consist of a conjunction of multiple male personalities: "in this way the unconscious symbolizes the fact that the animus represents a collective rather than a personal element".[10]

 

The process of animus development deals with cultivating an independent and non-socially subjugated idea of self by embodying a deeper word (as per a specific existential outlook) and manifesting this word. To clarify, this does not mean that a female subject becomes more set in her ways (as this word is steeped in emotionality, subjectivity, and a dynamism just as a well-developed anima is) but that she is more internally aware of what she believes and feels, and is more capable of expressing these beliefs and feelings. Thus the "animus in his most developed form sometimes...make[s] her even more receptive than a man to new creative ideas".[11]

 

Both final stages of animus and anima development have dynamic qualities (related to the motion and flux of this continual developmental process), open-ended qualities (there is no static perfected ideal or manifestation of the quality in question), and pluralistic qualities (which transcend the need for a singular image, as any subject or object can contain multiple archetypes or even seemingly antithetical roles). They also form bridges to the next archetypal figures to emerge, as "the unconscious again changes its dominant character and appears in a new symbolic form, representing the Self".[12]

 

Jung's theory of anima and animus draws from his theory of individuation. In order for a person to reach the goal of individuation is to engage in a series of intrapersonal dialogues which help the person understand how he or she relates to the world. This process requires men and women to become aware of their anima or animus respectively, in so doing the individual will learn how not to be controlled by their anima or animus. As individuals are made aware of their anima or animus, it allows them to overcome thoughts of who they ought to be and accept themselves for who they really are. According to Jung, individuals can discover a bridge to the collective unconscious through the development of their anima or animus. The anima and the animus represent the unconscious. The anima and animus are not gender specific and men and women can have both, however, more empirical research is required to determine whether both men and women do possess both archetypes. [13]

 

Jungian cautions

Jungians warned that "every personification of the unconscious - the shadow, the anima, the animus, and the Self - has both a light and a dark aspect....the anima and animus have dual aspects: They can bring life-giving development and creativeness to the personality, or they can cause petrification and physical death".[14]

 

One danger was of what Jung termed "invasion" of the conscious by the unconscious archetype - "Possession caused by the anima...bad taste: the anima surrounds herself with inferior people".[15] Jung insisted that "a state of anima possession...must be prevented. The anima is thereby forced into the inner world, where she functions as the medium between the ego and the unconscious, as does the persona between the ego and the environment".[16]

 

Alternatively, over-awareness of the anima or animus could provide a premature conclusion to the individuation process - "a kind of psychological short-circuit, to identify the animus at least provisionally with wholeness".[17] Instead of being "content with an intermediate position", the animus seeks to usurp "the self, with which the patient's animus identifies. This identification is a regular occurrence when the shadow, the dark side, has not been sufficiently realized".[17]

 

References

Ewen, Robert B. (2003). An Introduction to the Theories of Personality. Taylor & Francis. p. 66. ISBN 9780805843569.

Jung quoted in Anthony Stevens On Jung (London 1990) p. 206

Sandford, John A. The Invisible Partners: How the Male and Female in Each of Us Affects Our Relationships, 1980, Paulist Press, N.Y.

"The definition of anima". www.dictionary.com. Retrieved 2018-05-31.

"The definition of animus". www.dictionary.com. Retrieved 2018-05-31.

Jung, Carl. The Psychology of the Unconscious, Dvir Co., Ltd., Tel-Aviv, 1973 (originally 1917)

M.-L. von Franz, "The Process of Individuation" in Carl Jung ed., Man and his Symbols (London 1978) p. 205-6

von Franz, "Process" p. 205-6

von Franz, "Process" p. 206-7

von Franz, Process p. 206

von Franz, Process p. 207

von Franz, Process p. 207-8

K., Papadopoulos, Renos (2012). The Handbook of Jungian Psychology : Theory, Practice and Applications. Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-1-135-48078-3. OCLC 817888854.

von Franz, "Process" in Jung, Symbols p. 234

C. G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (London 1996) p. 124

C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies (London 1978) p. 180

Jung, Alchemical p. 268

Further reading

The Invisible Partners: How the Male and Female in Each of Us Affects Our Relationships by John A. Sanford (Paperback – Jan 1, 1979).

External links

Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism website

Sample image with scholarly commentary: Hall of the Bulls at Lascaux

Jung on the anima and animus

vte

Carl Jung

Theories

Analytical psychologyCognitive functionsInterpretation of religionPersonality typeSynchronicityTheory of neurosis

Concepts

The psyche

Anima and animusCollective unconsciousComplexElectra complexInner childPersonal unconsciousPersonaSelfShadow

Jungian archetypes

ApolloTricksterWise Old Man and Wise Old WomanWounded healer

Other

Active imaginationEnantiodromiaExtraversion and introversionIndividuationParticipation mystique

Publications

Early

Psychology of the Unconscious (1912)Psychological Types (1921)Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933)

Later

Psychology and Alchemy (1944)Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1951)Answer to Job (1954)Mysterium Coniunctionis (1956)

Posthumous

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961)Man and His Symbols (1964)Red Book (2009) Seven Sermons to the Dead (1916)Black Books (2020)

The Collected Works

of C. G. Jung

Psychiatric Studies (1970)Experimental Researche (1973)Psychogenesis of Mental Disease (1960)Freud & Psychoanalysis (1961)Symbols of Transformation (1967, a revision of Psychology of the Unconscious, 1912)Psychological Types (1971)Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (1967)Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche (1969)Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1969)Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1969)Civilization in Transition (1970)Psychology and Religion (1970)Psychology and Alchemy (1944)Alchemical Studies (1968)Mysterium Coniunctionis (1970)Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature (1966)Practice of Psychotherapy (1966)Development of Personality (1954)The Symbolic Life (1977)General Bibliography (Revised Edition) (1990)General Index (1979)

People

Jungfrauen

Marie-Louise von FranzBarbara HannahJolande JacobiAniela JafféEmma JungToni Wolff

Colleagues

Sigmund FreudMaria MoltzerWolfgang PauliSabina SpielreinVictor WhiteRichard Wilhelm

Followers

Joseph CampbellJames HillmanErich NeumannMaud OakesJordan PetersonLaurens van der PostSonu ShamdasaniJune SingerAnthony Stevens

Houses

Bollingen TowerC. G. Jung House Museum

Organizations

Bollingen FoundationC. G. Jung Institute in ZürichEranosInt'l Assoc. for Analytical PsychologyInt'l Assoc. for Jungian StudiesJungian Society for Scholarly StudiesPhilemon FoundationPsychology Club Zürich

Popular culture

A Dangerous MethodSynchronicity (albumsong 12)Shadow ManThe Soul KeeperPersona (series)Soul

Other

Archetypal literary criticismArchetypal pedagogyBollingen PrizeBurghölzliI ChingThe Secret of the Golden Flower

Commons page CommonsWikiquote page WikiquoteWikisource page Wikisource texts

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus

 

Jung and the idea of ​​androgyny in human beings

Like all archetypal Jungian representations the anima, in which Jung was interested before the animus, is so named because it emanates from an inner image, an image in the soul, unlike the persona which is a exterior image.

 

Jung, in The Roots of Consciousness (p. 42.) gives a biological explanation for the fact that there is some kind of residue of the character of the opposite sex:

 

“The image of the opposite sex resides, to some extent, in each sex, since biologically it is only the greater number of male genes that tips the scales in the choice of male sex. The smaller number of female genes appears to constitute a female trait which, however, usually remains unconscious due to its quantitative inferiority. "

 

It is on this presence of the two elements male and female that he bases his idea of ​​the androgyny of the human being.

 

This idea of ​​the androgyny of the human being is rooted in the biological and in the conscious-unconscious psychic totality. The unconscious would then have the coloring of the opposite sex. How to recognize and make accessible to experience the manifestations of this archetype?

 

This is one of the subjects on which Jung is least clear. However, with many digressions on the general functioning of the psyche, he gives us indications in several guide books of which we will retain Dialectics of the Self and the Unconscious, The Roots of Consciousness, Aion, and Transference Psychology.First coined by famous psychiatrist Carl Jung, the terms “Anima” and “Animus” refer to the indwelling masculine and feminine energies that we all possess. Specifically, the anima is thought to be the feminine part of a man’s soul, and the animus refers to the masculine part of a female’s soul. Both the anima and animus are ancient archetypes (or raw forms of energy) that every being contains.

 

Let’s explore these parts of us more in depth …

 

The Anima Explained

Derived from Latin meaning “a current of air, wind, breath, the vital principle, life, soul,” the Anima refers to the unconscious feminine dimension of a male which is often forgotten or repressed in daily life.

 

As it’s generally considered taboo to embrace the inner female side, men often fail to fully embody and embrace this fundamental energy. Sadly, if a male does embrace his Anima, he is often criticized as being “a wimp,” “a sissy,” “a fag,” and other horribly derogatory names.

 

However, in the perspective of psychology, in order to fully step into a mature masculine role, a man must go on a quest to explore this inner Divine Feminine energy. In other words, he must unite with the other half of his Soul.

 

Often, this quest results in some sort of projection, that is, trying to find the ideal lover or soul mate in the form of another idealized person. But we can never embody the Anima through another person – only through our own concerted effort. The key realization here is that we must find this force within us, rather than disown it onto another.

 

As described by Jungian Psychologist Dan Johnston, the man who has connected with his feminine Anima displays “tenderness, patience, consideration and compassion.” However, repression of the female element within males often results in a negative Anima that emerges as personality traits such as “vanity, moodiness, bitchiness, and sensitivity to hurt feelings.”

 

Indeed, a man who has failed to embody his Anima also tends to fall prey to emotional numbness and toxic masculine traits such as aggression, ruthlessness, coldness, and a purely rational approach to life.

 

The Animus Explained

The Animus, which is a Latin word that means “the rational soul; life; the mental powers, intelligence,” is the unconscious male dimension in the female psyche. Due to societal, parental, and cultural conditioning, the Animus, or male element within the woman, is often inhibited, restrained, and suppressed.

 

But the Animus isn’t always repressed – sometimes, it is actually over-emphasized and imposed upon women. Take Western society for example. Here is a culture that ruthlessly imposes masculine ideals such as stoicism, emotional numbness, and ruthlessness as ways to excel and succeed in life.

 

All of these external elements can contribute towards a negative Animus, which can reveal itself in a woman’s personality through argumentative tendencies, brutishness, destructiveness, and insensitivity. However, integrating a positive Animus into the female psyche can result in strength, assertiveness, levelheadedness, and rationality.

Unusually wide open EDSA extension may unleash the repressed Lewis Hamiltons out of Jeepney drivers

Leonardo Da Vinci painted this woman at two ages is that he himself had a screenplay. The canvas is not only an aesthetic work but also an allegory of the myth of Isis.The whole composition of the painting, its decorations and tasks combine in an orderly and chronological way all the elements of the myth of Isis. Thierry Gallier zooms in on certain parts of the painting and shows us scenes, objects and characters. Thus the famous phallus of Osiris is found in the meanders of a path in the background of the painting. It's all there! We let ourselves be guided by the author, especially since in the preamble of the book, he had given us a quotation from Leonardo da Vinci which invited the observer to find realities in graphical representations that could have appeared at first glance as abstract or random. The Italian genius would have been a follower of the language of birds applied to painting. Mona Lisa is... Isis. The world's most famous painting chronologically tells the story of Isis and Osiris.

 

The woman depicted in the Mona Lisa might be both a Chinese slave, and Leonardo da Vinci's mother, according to a new theory from Angelo Paratico, a Hong Kong-based historian and novelist.

The identity of the sitter for the portrait hanging in Paris' Louvre museum has long been a matter of debate. If Paratico's theory is correct, it means the 15th-century polymath was half-Chinese.

However, the historian's claims are tenuous.

Paratico told the South China Morning Post: "I am sure up to a point that Leonardo's mother was from the Orient, but to make her an oriental Chinese, we need to use a deductive method.

"One wealthy client of Leonardo's father had a slave called Caterina. After 1452, Leonardo's date of birth, she disappeared from the documents. She was no longer working there. During the Renaissance, countries like Italy and Spain were full of oriental slaves."It is also necessary to rethink Western ethnocentrism in order to regain the invention of landscape painting in China and certainly to rediscover the contribution of Taoist alchemy in medieval alchemy with the important role of religious emissaries.

  

In support of his theory, Paratico, who is finishing a book entitled Leonardo da Vinci: a Chinese scholar lost in Renaissance Italy, also cited Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud's 1910 assumption that the painting was inspired by the artist's mother, and claimed that certain aspects of Da Vinci's life and work suggest an oriental link.

 

Freud was the first to apply psychoanalysis to art, choosing for his subject the life and work of Leonardo da Vinci. Observing Leonardo's partly fused image of the Virgin and St. Anne, he inferred that the artist had depicted his two mothers, his biological mother and his stepmother. This very early analytic discourse on parent loss and adoption changed the course of the interpretation of art. Freud explored the psychology of art, the artist, and aesthetic appreciation. Confronting the age-old enigma of the Mona Lisa, he proposed a daring solution to the riddle of the sphinxlike smile of this icon of art. His paper prefigures concepts of narcissism, homosexuality, parenting, and sublimation. Lacking modern methodology and theory, Freud's pioneering insights overshadow his naive errors. In this fledgling inquiry, based on a childhood screen memory and limited knowledge of Leonardo's artistic and scientific contributions, Freud identified with this Renaissance genius in his own self-analytic and creative endeavor.

 

"For instance, the fact he was writing with his left hand from left to right... and he was also a vegetarian which was not common," he told the paper. "Mona Lisa is probably a portrait of his mother, as Sigmund Freud said in 1910. On the back of Mona Lisa, there is a Chinese landscape and even her face looks Chinese."

Users of China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo were quick to express their incredulity, posting dozens of parodies of the painting.

One user replaced her features with unlikely faces ranging from Chinese male comedian Zhao Benshan (pictured below) to British actor Rowan Atkinson, to a grimacing robot holding a Mona Lisa mask.

"I now understand why her smile looks so mysterious and concealed – it's typically Chinese," said another poster.

THE VULTURE phantasy of Leonardo still absorbs our interest. In words which only too plainly recall a sexual act (“and has many times struck against my lips with his tail”), Leonardo emphasizes the intensity of the erotic relations between the mother and the child. A second memory content of the phantasy can readily be conjectured from the association of the activity of the mother (of the vulture) with the accentuation of the mouth zone. We can translate it as follows: My mother has pressed on my mouth innumerable passionate kisses. The phantasy is composed of the memories of being nursed and of being kissed by the mother. 1

A kindly nature has bestowed upon the artist the capacity to express in artistic productions his most secret psychic feelings hidden even to himself, which powerfully affect outsiders who are strangers to the artist without their being able to state whence this emotivity comes. Should there be no evidence in Leonardo’s work of that which his memory retained as the strongest impression of his childhood? One would have to expect it. However, when one considers what profound transformations an impression of an artist has to experience before it can add its contribution to the work of art, one is obliged to moderate considerably his expectation of demonstrating something definite. This is especially true in the case of Leonardo. 2

He who thinks of Leonardo’s paintings will be reminded by the remarkably fascinating and puzzling smile which he enchanted on the lips of all his feminine figures. It is a fixed smile on elongated, sinuous lips which is considered characteristic of him and is preferentially designated as “Leonardesque.” In the singular and beautiful visage of the Florentine Monna Lisa del Giocondo it has produced the greatest effect on the spectators and even perplexed them. This smile was in need of an interpretation, and received many of the most varied kind but none of them was considered satisfactory. As Gruyer puts it: “It is almost four centuries since Monna Lisa causes all those to lose their heads who have looked upon her for some time.” 1 3

Muther states: 2 “What fascinates the spectator is the demoniacal charm of this smile. Hundreds of poets and writers have written about this woman, who now seems to smile upon us seductively and now to stare coldly and lifelessly into space, but nobody has solved the riddle of her smile, nobody has interpreted her thoughts. Everything, even the scenery is mysterious and dream-like, trembling as if in the sultriness of sensuality.” 4

The idea that two diverse elements were united in the smile of Monna Lisa has been felt by many critics. They therefore recognize in the play of features of the beautiful Florentine lady the most perfect representation of the contrasts dominating the love-life of the woman which is foreign to man, as that of reserve and seduction, and of most devoted tenderness and inconsiderateness in urgent and consuming sensuality. Müntz 3 expresses himself in this manner: “One knows what indecipherable and fascinating enigma Monna Lisa Gioconda has been putting for nearly four centuries to the admirers who crowd around her. No artist (I borrow the expression of the delicate writer who hides himself under the pseudonym of Pierre de Corlay) has ever translated in this manner the very essence of femininity: the tenderness and coquetry, the modesty and quiet voluptuousness, the whole mystery of the heart which holds itself aloof, of a brain which reflects, and of a personality who watches itself and yields nothing from herself except radiance….” The Italian Angelo Conti 4 saw the picture in the Louvre illumined by a ray of the sun and expressed himself as follows: “The woman smiled with a royal calmness, her instincts of conquest, of ferocity, the entire heredity of the species, the will of seduction and ensnaring, the charm of the deceiver, the kindness which conceals a cruel purpose, all that appears and disappears alternately behind the laughing veil and melts into the poem of her smile…. Good and evil, cruelty and compassion, graceful and catlike, she laughed….” 5

Leonardo painted this picture four years, perhaps from 1503 until 1507, during his second sojourn in Florence when he was about the age of fifty years. According to Vasari he applied the choicest artifices in order to divert the lady during the sittings and to hold that smile firmly on her features. Of all the gracefulness that his brush reproduced on the canvas at that time the picture preserves but very little in its present state. During its production it was considered the highest that art could accomplish; it is certain, however, that it did not satisfy Leonardo himself, that he pronounced it as unfinished and did not deliver it to the one who ordered it, but took it with him to France where his benefactor Francis I, acquired it for the Louvre. 6

Let us leave the physiognomic riddle of Monna Lisa unsolved, and let us note the unequivocal fact that her smile fascinated the artist no less than all the spectators for these 400 years. This captivating smile had thereafter returned in all of his pictures and in those of his pupils. As Leonardo’s Monna Lisa was a portrait we cannot assume that he has added to her face a trait of his own so difficult to express which she herself did not possess. It seems, we cannot help but believe, that he found this smile in his model and became so charmed by it that from now on he endowed it on all the free creations of his phantasy. This obvious conception is, e.g., expressed by A. Konstantinowa in the following manner: 5 7

“During the long period in which the master occupied himself with the portrait of Monna Lisa del Gioconda, he entered into the physiognomic delicacies of this feminine face with such sympathy of feeling that he transferred these creatures, especially the mysterious smile and the peculiar glance, to all faces which he later painted or drew. The mimic peculiarity of Gioconda can even be perceived in the picture of John the Baptist in the Louvre. But above all they are distinctly recognized in the features of Mary in the picture of St. Anne of the Louvre.” 8

But the case could have been different. The need for a deeper reason for the fascination which the smile of Gioconda exerted on the artist from which he could not rid himself has been felt by more than one of his biographers. W. Pater, who sees in the picture of Monna Lisa the embodiment of the entire erotic experience of modern man, and discourses so excellently on “that unfathomable smile always with a touch of something sinister in it, which plays over all Leonardo’s work,” leads us to another track when he says: 6 9

“Besides, the picture is a portrait. From childhood we see this image defining itself on the fabric of his dream; and but for express historical testimony, we might fancy that this was but his ideal lady, embodied and beheld at last.” 10

Herzfeld surely must have had something similar in mind when stating that in Monna Lisa Leonardo encountered himself and therefore found it possible to put so much of his own nature into the picture, “whose features from time immemorial have been imbedded with mysterious sympathy in Leonardo’s soul.” 7 11

Let us endeavor to clear up these intimations. It was quite possible that Leonardo was fascinated by the smile of Monna Lisa, because it had awakened something in him which had slumbered in his soul for a long time, in all probability an old memory. This memory was of sufficient importance to stick to him once it had been aroused; he was forced continually to provide it with new expression. The assurance of Pater that we can see an image like that of Monna Lisa defining itself from Leonardo’s childhood on the fabric of his dreams, seems worthy of belief and deserves to be taken literally. 12

Vasari mentions as Leonardo’s first artistic endeavors, “heads of women who laugh.” 8 The passage, which is beyond suspicion, as it is not meant to prove anything, reads more precisely as follows: 9 “He formed in his youth some laughing feminine heads out of lime, which have been reproduced in plaster, and some heads of children, which were as beautiful as if modeled by the hands of a master….” 13

Thus we discover that his practice of art began with the representation of two kinds of objects, which would perforce remind us of the two kinds of sexual objects which we have inferred from the analysis of his vulture phantasy. If the beautiful children’s heads were reproductions of his own childish person, then the laughing women were nothing else but reproductions of Caterina, his mother, and we are beginning to have an inkling of the possibility that his mother possessed that mysterious smile which he lost, and which fascinated him so much when he found it again in the Florentine lady. 10 14

The painting of Leonardo which in point of time stands nearest to the Monna Lisa is the so-called Saint Anne of the Louvre, representing Saint Anne, Mary and the Christ child. It shows the Leonardesque smile most beautifully portrayed in the two feminine heads. It is impossible to find out how much earlier or later than the portrait of Monna Lisa Leonardo began to paint this picture. As both works extended over years, we may well assume that they occupied the master simultaneously. But it would best harmonize with our expectation if precisely the absorption in the features of Monna Lisa would have instigated Leonardo to form the composition of Saint Anne from his phantasy. For if the smile of Gioconda had conjured up in him the memory of his mother, we would naturally understand that he was first urged to produce a glorification of motherhood, and to give back to her the smile he found in that prominent lady. We may thus allow our interest to glide over from the portrait of Monna Lisa to this other hardly less beautiful picture, now also in the Louvre. 15

Saint Anne with the daughter and grandchild is a subject seldom treated in the Italian art of painting; at all events Leonardo’s representation differs widely from all that is otherwise known. Muther states: 11 16

“Some masters like Hans Fries, the older Holbein, and Girolamo dei Libri, made Anne sit near Mary and placed the child between the two. Others like Jakob Cornelicz in his Berlin pictures, represented Saint Anne as holding in her arm the small figure of Mary upon which sits the still smaller figure of the Christ child.” In Leonardo’s picture Mary sits on her mother’s lap, bent forward and is stretching out both arms after the boy who plays with a little lamb, and must have slightly maltreated it. The grandmother has one of her unconcealed arms propped on her hip and looks down on both with a blissful smile. The grouping is certainly not quite unconstrained. But the smile which is playing on the lips of both women, although unmistakably the same as in the picture of Monna Lisa, has lost its sinister and mysterious character; it expresses a calm blissfulness. 12 17

On becoming somewhat engrossed in this picture it suddenly dawns upon the spectator that only Leonardo could have painted this picture, as only he could have formed the vulture phantasy. This picture contains the synthesis of the history of Leonardo’s childhood, the details of which are explainable by the most intimate impressions of his life. In his father’s home he found not only the kind step-mother Donna Albiera, but also the grandmother, his father’s mother, Monna Lucia, who we will assume was not less tender to him than grandmothers are wont to be. This circumstance must have furnished him with the facts for the representation of a childhood guarded by a mother and grandmother. Another striking feature of the picture assumes still greater significance. Saint Anne, the mother of Mary and the grandmother of the boy who must have been a matron, is formed here perhaps somewhat more mature and more serious than Saint Mary, but still as a young woman of unfaded beauty. As a matter of fact Leonardo gave the boy two mothers, the one who stretched out her arms after him and another who is seen in the background, both are represented with the blissful smile of maternal happiness. This peculiarity of the picture has not failed to excite the wonder of the authors. Muther, for instance, believes that Leonardo could not bring himself to paint old age, folds and wrinkles, and therefore formed also Anne as a woman of radiant beauty. Whether one can be satisfied with this explanation is a question. Other writers have taken occasion to deny generally the sameness of age of mother and daughter. 13 However, Muther’s tentative explanation is sufficient proof for the fact that the impression of Saint Anne’s youthful appearance was furnished by the picture and is not an imagination produced by a tendency. In 1910, after about a year from his trip to the US, Freud decided to write something on Leonardo da Vinci. The outcome of that decision was a novelette whose purpose was to expose a psychoanalytic study on Leonardo. Freud acknowledged that this endeavor was very tentative and his findings were based on a scarcity of biographical materials. Nevertheless, he established the framework of his book on a rumination about childhood that Leonardo left in one of his notebooks. Freud took that childhood contemplation and elaborated an artistic interpretation from it. First, here is Leo’s legacy to Freud:

 

It seems…that I was destined to occupy myself so thoroughly with a vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory that, as I was in my cradle, a vulture came down to me, opened my mouth with its tails, and stuck me many times with its tail against my lips.

 

Freud, who was an erudite in religion and history, knew that the symbol for vulture was a hieroglyph for mother in ancient Egypt. Since Leonardo was an illegitimate child, Freud called him, romantically, the “vulture child.” Later on, Freud speculated that Leonardo had a very affectionate mother, and that passionate maternal love, coupled with the experience of not having a father, had an important influence on is early development. However, because of the over-protective and excessive love from her mother, Leonardo was subjected to too much femininity, which set the stage for his homosexuality. But that explained only the inception process of homosexuality. Full blown homosexual behavior comes later on in life, after the child finally becomes an adult and tends to repress his love for his mother and inadvertently identifies with her. Additionally, another important factor that plays a role in becoming a homosexual is anal eroticism. Anal eroticism comes from a fixation during the anal stage of psychosexual development.

 

This theory about the origins of homosexuality seems far-fetched. It was based on a vague account that Leonardo left behind, to which Freud found mainly an artistic interpretation. The book is replete with lyricism, so its appeal is understandable. Nevertheless, the conjectures Freud made are not entirely scientific.

 

The Evidence

In order to give some validity to Freud’s claims, we need to find if there is any evidence that support the fact that males from the homosexual community had (1) careless or missing fathers, (2) overly affective mothers, (3) strong maternal identification, and (4) some characteristics that relate to anal fixation.

Leonardo’s childhood was precisely as remarkable as this picture. He has had two mothers, the first his true mother, Caterina, from whom he was torn away between the age of three and five years, and a young tender step-mother, Donna Albiera, his father’s wife. By connecting this fact of his childhood with the one mentioned above and condensing them into a uniform fusion, the composition of Saint Anne, Mary and the Child, formed itself in him. The maternal form further away from the boy designated as grandmother, corresponds in appearance and in spatial relation to the boy, with the real first mother, Caterina. With the blissful smile of Saint Anne the artist actually disavowed and concealed the envy which the unfortunate mother felt when she was forced to give up her son to her more aristocratic rival, as once before her lover. 19

Our feeling that the smile of Monna Lisa del Gioconda awakened in the man the memory of the mother of his first years of childhood would thus be confirmed from another work of Leonardo. Following the production of Monna Lisa, Italian artists depicted in Madonnas and prominent ladies the humble dipping of the head and the peculiar blissful smile of the poor peasant girl Caterina, who brought to the world the noble son who was destined to paint, investigate, and suffer. 20

When Leonardo succeeded in reproducing in the face of Monna Lisa the double sense comprised in this smile, namely, the promise of unlimited tenderness, and sinister threat (in the words of Pater), he remained true even in this to the content of his earliest reminiscence. For the love of the mother became his destiny, it determined his fate and the privations which were in store for him. The impetuosity of the caressing to which the vulture phantasy points was only too natural. The poor forsaken mother had to give vent through mother’s love to all her memories of love enjoyed as well as to all her yearnings for more affection; she was forced to it, not only in order to compensate herself for not having a husband, but also the child for not having a father who wanted to love it. In the manner of all ungratified mothers she thus took her little son in place of her husband, and robbed him of a part of his virility by the too early maturing of his eroticism. The love of the mother for the suckling whom she nourishes and cares for is something far deeper reaching than her later affection for the growing child. It is of the nature of a fully gratified love affair, which fulfills not only all the psychic wishes but also all physical needs, and when it represents one of the forms of happiness attainable by man it is due, in no little measure, to the possibility of gratifying without reproach also wish feelings which were long repressed and designated as perverse. 14 Even in the happiest recent marriage the father feels that his child, especially the little boy has become his rival, and this gives origin to an antagonism against the favorite one which is deeply rooted in the unconscious. 21

When in the prime of his life Leonardo reencountered that blissful and ecstatic smile as it had once encircled his mother’s mouth in caressing, he had long been under the ban of an inhibition, forbidding him ever again to desire such tenderness from women’s lips. But as he had become a painter he endeavored to reproduce this smile with his brush and furnish all his pictures with it, whether he executed them himself or whether they were done by his pupils under his direction, as in Leda, John, and Bacchus. The latter two are variations of the same type. Muther says: “From the locust eater of the Bible Leonardo made a Bacchus, an Apollo, who with a mysterious smile on his lips, and with his soft thighs crossed, looks on us with infatuated eyes.” These pictures breathe a mysticism into the secret of which one dares not penetrate; at most one can make the effort to construct the connection to Leonardo’s earlier productions. The figures are again androgynous but no longer in the sense of the vulture phantasy, they are pretty boys of feminine tenderness with feminine forms; they do not cast down their eyes but gaze mysteriously triumphant, as if they knew of a great happy issue concerning which one must remain quiet; the familiar fascinating smile leads us to infer that it is a love secret. It is possible that in these forms Leonardo disavowed and artistically conquered the unhappiness of his love life, in that he represented the wish fulfillment of the boy infatuated with his mother in such blissful union of the male and female nature.

 

www.bartleby.com/277/4.html

Boris Artzybasheff (Ukrainian: Борис Арцебашев, 1899-1965).

Ego psychology is a school of psychoanalysis rooted in Sigmund Freud's structural id-ego-superego model of the mind.

 

An individual interacts with the external world as well as responds to internal forces. Many psychoanalysts use a theoretical construct called the ego to explain how that is done through various ego functions. Adherents of ego psychology focus on the ego's normal and pathological development, its management of libidinal and aggressive impulses, and its adaptation to reality.[1]

  

Contents

1History

1.1Early conceptions of the ego

1.2Freud's ego psychology

1.3Systematization

1.3.1Anna Freud

1.3.2Heinz Hartmann

1.3.3David Rapaport

1.3.4Other contributors

1.4Decline

2Contemporary

2.1Modern conflict theory

3Ego functions

4Conflict, defense and resistance analysis

5Cultural influences

6Criticisms

7See also

8References

9Further reading

History[edit]

Early conceptions of the ego[edit]

Sigmund Freud initially considered the ego to be a sense organ for perception of both external and internal stimuli. He thought of the ego as synonymous with consciousness and contrasted it with the repressed unconscious. In 1910, Freud emphasized the attention to detail when referencing psychoanalytical matters, while predicting his theory to become essential in regards to everyday tasks with the Swiss psychoanalyst, Oscar Pfister.[2] By 1911, he referenced ego instincts for the first time in Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning and contrasted them with sexual instincts: ego instincts responded to the reality principle while sexual instincts obeyed the pleasure principle. He also introduced attention and memory as ego functions.

 

Freud's ego psychology[edit]

Freud began to notice that not all unconscious phenomena could be attributed to the id; it appeared as if the ego had unconscious aspects as well. This posed a significant problem for his topographic theory, which he resolved in his monograph The Ego and the Id (1923).[3]

 

In what came to be called the structural theory, the ego was now a formal component of a three-way system that also included the id and superego. The ego was still organized around conscious perceptual capacities, yet it now had unconscious features responsible for repression and other defensive operations. Freud's ego at this stage was relatively passive and weak; he described it as the helpless rider on the id's horse, more or less obliged to go where the id wished to go.[4]

 

In Freud's 1926 monograph, Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety, he revised his theory of anxiety as well as delineated a more robust ego. Freud argued that instinctual drives (id), moral and value judgments (superego), and requirements of external reality all make demands upon an individual. The ego mediates among conflicting pressures and creates the best compromise. Instead of being passive and reactive to the id, the ego was now a formidable counterweight to it, responsible for regulating id impulses, as well as integrating an individual's functioning into a coherent whole. The modifications made by Freud in Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety formed the basis of a psychoanalytic psychology interested in the nature and functions of the ego. This marked the transition of psychoanalysis from being primarily an id psychology, focused on the vicissitudes of the libidinal and aggressive drives as the determinants of both normal and psychopathological functioning, to a period in which the ego was accorded equal importance and was regarded as the prime shaper and modulator of behavior.[5]

 

Systematization[edit]

Following Sigmund Freud, the psychoanalysts most responsible for the development of ego psychology, and its systematization as a formal school of psychoanalytic thought, were Anna Freud, Heinz Hartmann, and David Rapaport. Other important contributors included Ernst Kris, Rudolph Loewenstein, René Spitz, Margaret Mahler, Edith Jacobson, and Erik Erikson.

 

Anna Freud[edit]

Anna Freud focused her attention on the ego's unconscious, defensive operations and introduced many important theoretical and clinical considerations. In The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936), Anna Freud argued the ego was predisposed to supervise, regulate, and oppose the id through a variety of defenses. She described the defenses available to the ego, linked them to the stages of psychosexual development during which they originated, and identified various psychopathological compromise formations in which they were prominent. Clinically, Anna Freud emphasized that the psychoanalyst's attention should always be on the defensive functions of the ego, which could be observed in the manifest presentation of the patient's associations. The analyst needed to be attuned to the moment-by-moment process of what the patient talked about in order to identify, label, and explore defenses as they appeared. For Anna Freud, direct interpretation of repressed content was less important than understanding the ego's methods by which it kept things out of consciousness.[6] Her work provided a bridge between Freud's structural theory and ego psychology.[7]

 

Heinz Hartmann[edit]

Heinz Hartmann (1939/1958) believed the ego included innate capacities that facilitated an individual's ability to adapt to his or her environment. These included perception, attention, memory, concentration, motor coordination, and language. Under normal conditions, what Hartmann called an average expectable environment, these capacities developed into ego functions and had autonomy from the libidinal and aggressive drives; that is, they were not products of frustration and conflict, as Freud (1911) believed. Hartmann recognized, however, that conflicts were part of the human condition and certain ego functions may become conflicted by aggressive and libidinal impulses, as witnessed by conversion disorders (e.g., glove paralysis), speech impediments, eating disorders, and attention-deficit disorder.[5]

 

Through Hartmann's focus on ego functions, and how an individual adapts to his or her environment, he worked to create both a general psychology and a clinical instrument with which an analyst could evaluate an individual's functioning and formulate appropriate therapeutic interventions. Based on Hartmann's propositions, the task of the ego psychologist was to neutralize conflicted impulses and expand the conflict-free spheres of ego functions. By doing so, Hartmann believed psychoanalysis facilitated an individual's adaptation to his or her environment. Hartmann claimed, however, that his aim was to understand the mutual regulation of the ego and environment rather than to promote adjustment of the ego to the environment. Furthermore, an individual with a less-conflicted ego would be better able to actively respond to and shape, rather than passively react to, his or her environment.

 

Mitchell and Black (1995) wrote: "Hartmann powerfully affected the course of psychoanalysis, opening up a crucial investigation of the key processes and vicissitudes of normal development. Hartmann's contributions broadened the scope of psychoanalytic concerns, from psychopathology to general human development, from an isolated, self-contained treatment method to a sweeping intellectual discipline among other disciplines" (p. 35).

 

David Rapaport[edit]

David Rapaport played a prominent role in the development of ego psychology and his work likely represented its apex.[5] In Rapaport's influential monograph The Structure of Psychoanalytic Theory (1960), he organized ego psychology into an integrated, systematic, and hierarchical theory capable of generating empirically testable hypotheses. According to Rapaport, psychoanalytic theory—as expressed through the principles of ego psychology—was a biologically based general psychology that could explain the entire range of human behavior.[8] For Rapaport, this endeavor was fully consistent with Freud's attempts to do the same (e.g., Freud's studies of dreams, jokes, and the "psychopathology of everyday life".)

 

Other contributors[edit]

While Hartmann was the principal architect ego psychology, he collaborated closely with Ernst Kris and Rudolph Loewenstein.[9]

 

Subsequent psychoanalysts interested in ego psychology emphasized the importance of early-childhood experiences and socio-cultural influences on ego development. René Spitz (1965), Margaret Mahler (1968), Edith Jacobson (1964), and Erik Erikson studied infant and child behavior and their observations were integrated into ego psychology. Their observational and empirical research described and explained early attachment issues, successful and faulty ego development, and psychological development through interpersonal interactions.

 

Spitz identified the importance of mother-infant nonverbal emotional reciprocity; Mahler refined the traditional psychosexual developmental phases by adding the separation-individuation process; and Jacobson emphasized how libidinal and aggressive impulses unfolded within the context of early relationships and environmental factors. Finally, Erik Erikson provided a bold reformulation of Freud's biologic, epigenetic psychosexual theory through his explorations of socio-cultural influences on ego development.[10] For Erikson, an individual was pushed by his or her own biological urges and pulled by socio-cultural forces.

 

Decline[edit]

In the United States, ego psychology was the predominant psychoanalytic approach from the 1940s through the 1960s. Initially, this was due to the influx of European psychoanalysts, including prominent ego psychologists like Hartmann, Kris, and Loewenstein, during and after World War II. These European analysts settled throughout the United States and trained the next generation of American psychoanalysts.

 

By the 1970s, several challenges to the philosophical, theoretical, and clinical tenets of ego psychology emerged. The most prominent of which were: a "rebellion" led by Rapaport's protégés (George Klein, Robert Holt, Roy Schafer, and Merton Gill); object relations theory; and self psychology.

 

Contemporary[edit]

Modern conflict theory[edit]

Charles Brenner (1982) attempted to revive ego psychology with a concise and incisive articulation of the fundamental focus of psychoanalysis: intrapsychic conflict and the resulting compromise formations. Over time, Brenner (2002) tried to develop a more clinically based theory, what came to be called “modern conflict theory.” He distanced himself from the formal components of the structural theory and its metapsychological assumptions, and focused entirely on compromise formations.

 

Ego functions[edit]

 

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Reality testing: The ego's capacity to distinguish what is occurring in one's own mind from what is occurring in the external world. It is perhaps the single most important ego function because negotiating with the outside world requires accurately perceiving and understanding stimuli. Reality testing is often subject to temporary, mild distortion or deterioration under stressful conditions. Such impairment can result in temporary delusions and hallucination and is generally selective, clustering along specific, psychodynamic lines. Chronic deficiencies suggest either psychotic or organic interference.[11]

Impulse control: The ability to manage aggressive and/or libidinal wishes without immediate discharge through behavior or symptoms. Problems with impulse control are common; for example: road rage; sexual promiscuity; excessive drug and alcohol use; and binge eating.

Affect regulation: The ability to modulate feelings without being overwhelmed.

Judgment: The capacity to act responsibly. This process includes identifying possible courses of action, anticipating and evaluating likely consequences, and making decisions as to what is appropriate in certain circumstances.

Object relations: The capacity for mutually satisfying relationship. The individual can perceive himself and others as whole objects with three dimensional qualities.

Thought processes: The ability to have logical, coherent, and abstract thoughts. In stressful situations, thought processes can become disorganized. The presence of chronic or severe problems in conceptual thinking is frequently associated with schizophrenia and manic episodes.

Defensive functioning: A defense is an unconscious attempt to protect the individual from some powerful, identity-threatening feeling. Initial defenses develop in infancy and involve the boundary between the self and the outer world; they are considered primitive defenses and include projection, denial, and splitting. As the child grows up, more sophisticated defenses that deal with internal boundaries such as those between ego and super ego or the id develop; these defenses include repression, regression, displacement, and reaction formation. All adults have, and use, primitive defenses, but most people also have more mature ways of coping with reality and anxiety.

Synthesis: The synthetic function is the ego's capacity to organize and unify other functions within the personality. It enables the individual to think, feel, and act in a coherent manner. It includes the capacity to integrate potentially contradictory experiences, ideas, and feelings; for example, a child loves his or her mother yet also has angry feelings toward her at times. The ability to synthesize these feelings is a pivotal developmental achievement.

Reality testing involves the individual's capacity to understand and accept both physical and social reality as it is consensually defined within a given culture or cultural subgroup. In large measure, the function hinges on the individual's capacity to distinguish between her own wishes or fears (internal reality) and events that occur in the real world (external reality). The ability to make distinctions that are consensually validated determines the ego's capacity to distinguish and mediate between personal expectations, on the one hand, and social expectations or laws of nature on the other. Individuals vary considerably in how they manage this function. When the function is seriously compromised, individuals may withdraw from contact with reality for extended periods of time. This degree of withdrawal is most frequently seen in psychotic conditions. Most times, however, the function is mildly or moderately compromised for a limited period of time, with far less drastic consequences' (Berzoff, 2011).

 

Judgment involves the capacity to reach “reasonable” conclusions about what is and what is not “appropriate” behavior. Typically, arriving at a “reasonable” conclusion involves the following steps: (1) correlating wishes, feeling states, and memories about prior life experiences with current circumstances; (2) evaluating current circumstances in the context of social expectations and laws of nature (e.g., it is not possible to transport oneself instantly out of an embarrassing situation, no matter how much one wishes to do so); and (3) drawing realistic conclusions about the likely consequences of different possible courses of action. As the definition suggests, judgment is closely related to reality testing, and the two functions are usually evaluated in tandem (Berzoff, 2011).

 

Modulating and controlling impulses is based on the capacity to hold sexual and aggressive feelings in check with out acting on them until the ego has evaluated whether they meet the individual's own moral standards and are acceptable in terms of social norms. Adequate functioning in this area depends on the individual's capacity to tolerate frustration, to delay gratification, and to tolerate anxiety without immediately acting to ameliorate it. Impulse control also depends on the ability to exercise appropriate judgment in situations where the individual is strongly motivated to seek relief from psychological tension and/or to pursue some pleasurable activity (sex, power, fame, money, etc.). Problems in modulation may involve either too little or too much control over impulses (Berzoff, 2011).

 

Modulation of affect The ego performs this function by preventing painful or unacceptable emotional reactions from entering conscious awareness, or by managing the expression of such feelings in ways that do not disrupt either emotional equilibrium or social relationships. To adequately perform this function, the ego constantly monitors the source, intensity, and direction of feeling states, as well as the people toward whom feelings will be directed. Monitoring determines whether such states will be acknowledged or expressed and, if so, in what form. The basic principle to remember in evaluating how well the ego manages this function is that affect modulation may be problematic because of too much or too little expression. As an integral part of the monitoring process, the ego evaluates the type of expression that is most congruent with established social norms. For example, in white American culture it is assumed that individuals will contain themselves and maintain a high level of personal/vocational functioning except in extremely traumatic situations such as death of a family member, very serious illness or terrible accident. This standard is not necessarily the norm in other cultures (Berzhoff, Flanagan, & Hertz, 2011).

 

Object relations involves the ability to form and maintain coherent representations of others and of the self. The concept refers not only to the people one interacts with in the external world but also to significant others who are remembered and represented within the mind. Adequate functioning implies the ability to maintain a basically positive view of the other, even when one feels disappointed, frustrated, or angered by the other's behavior. Disturbances in object relations may manifest themselves through an inability to fall in love, emotional coldness, lack of interest in or withdrawal from interactions with others, intense dependency, and/or an excessive need to control relationships (Berzhoff, Flanagan, & Hertz, 2011).

 

Self-esteem regulation involves the capacity to maintain a steady and reasonable level of positive self-regard in the face of distressing or frustrating external events. Painful affective states, including anxiety, depression, shame, and guilt, as well as exhilarating emotions such as triumph, glee, and ecstasy may also undermine self-esteem. Generally speaking, in dominant American culture a measured expression of both pain and pleasure is expressed; excess in either direction is a cause for concern. White Western culture tends to assume that individuals will maintain a consistent and steadily level of self-esteem, regardless of external events or internally generated feeling states (Berzhoff, Flanagan, & Hertz, 2011).

 

Mastery when conceptualized as an ego function, mastery reflects the epigenetic view that individuals achieve more advanced levels of ego organization by mastering successive developmental challenges. Each stage of psychosexual development (oral, anal, phallic, genital) presents a particular challenge that must be adequately addressed before the individual can move on to the next higher stage. By mastering stage-specific challenges, the ego gains strength in relations to the other structures fothe mind and thereby becomes more effective in organizing and synthesizing mental processes. Freud expressed this principle in his statement, “Where id was, shall ego be.” An undeveloped capacity for mastery can be seen, for example, in infants who have not been adequately nourished, stimulated, and protected during the first year of life, in the oral stage of development. When they enter the anal stage, such infants are not well prepared to learn socially acceptable behavior or to control the pleasure they derive from defecating at will. As a result, some of them will experience delays in achieving bowel control and will have difficulty in controlling temper tantrums, while others will sink into a passive, joyless compliance with parental demands that compromises their ability to explore, learn, and become physically competent. Conversely, infants who have been well gratified and adequately stimulated during the oral stage enter the anal stage feeling relatively secure and confident. For the most part, they cooperate in curbing their anal desires, and are eager to win parental approval for doing so. In addition, they are physically active, free to learn and eager to explore. As they gain confidence in their increasingly autonomous physical and mental abilities, they also learn to follow the rules their parents establish and, in doing so, with parental approval. As they master the specific tasks related to the anal stage, they are well prepared to move on to the next stage of development and the next set of challenges. When adults have problems with mastery, they usually enact them in derivative or symbolic ways (Berzhoff, Flanagan, & Hertz, 2011).

 

Conflict, defense and resistance analysis[edit]

According to Freud's structural theory, an individual's libidinal and aggressive impulses are continuously in conflict with his or her own conscience as well as with the limits imposed by reality. In certain circumstances, these conflicts may lead to neurotic symptoms. Thus, the goal of psychoanalytic treatment is to establish a balance between bodily needs, psychological wants, one's own conscience, and social constraints. Ego psychologists argue that the conflict is best addressed by the psychological agency that has the closest relationship to consciousness, unconsciousness, and reality: the ego.

 

The clinical technique most commonly associated with ego psychology is defense analysis. Through clarifying, confronting, and interpreting the typical defense mechanisms a patient uses, ego psychologists hope to help the patient gain control over these mechanisms.[12]

 

Cultural influences[edit]

The classical scholar E. R. Dodds used ego psychology as the framework for his influential study The Greeks and the Irrational (1951).[13]

The Sterbas relied on Hartmann's conflict-free sphere to help explain the contradictions they found in Beethoven's character in Beethoven and His Nephew (1954).[14]

Criticisms[edit]

Many[who?] authors have criticized Hartmann's conception of a conflict-free sphere of ego functioning as both incoherent and inconsistent with Freud's vision of psychoanalysis as a science of mental conflict. Freud believed that the ego itself takes shape as a result of the conflict between the id and the external world. The ego, therefore, is inherently a conflicting formation in the mind. To state, as Hartmann did, that the ego contains a conflict-free sphere may not be consistent with key propositions of Freud's structural theory.

 

Ego psychology, and 'Anna-Freudianism', were together seen by Kleinians as maintaining a conformist, adaptative version of psychoanalysis inconsistent with Freud's own views.[15] Hartmann claimed, however, that his aim was to understand the mutual regulation of the ego and environment rather than to promote adjustment of the ego to the environment. Furthermore, an individual with a less-conflicted ego would be better able to actively respond and shape, rather than passively react to, his or her environment.

 

Jacques Lacan was if anything still more opposed to ego psychology, using his concept of the Imaginary to stress the role of identifications in building up the ego in the first place.[16] Lacan saw in the "non-conflictual sphere...a down-at-heel mirage that had already been rejected as untenable by the most academic psychology of introspection'.[17] Ego psychologists responded by doubting whether Lacan's approach is ever applied to clinical work with real patients who have real illnesses, specific ego functions mediating those illnesses, and specific histories.[18]

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_psychology

The Alexander Column also known as Alexandrian Column is the focal point of Palace Square in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The monument was raised after the Russian victory in the war with Napoleon's France. The column is named for Emperor Alexander I of Russia, who reigned from 1801 to 1825.

 

Column

The Alexander Column was designed by the French-born architect Auguste de Montferrand, built between 1830 and 1834 with Swiss-born architect Antonio Adamini, and unveiled on 30 August 1834 (St. Alexander of Constantinople's Day). The monument is claimed to be the tallest of its kind in the world at 47.5 m (155 ft 8 in) tall and is topped with a statue of an angel holding a cross, as a triumphal column it may be the highest but the Monument to the Great Fire of London is a freestanding column 62 m high. As a monolith that has been quarried, moved and erected it is the heaviest recorded. The statue of the angel was designed by the Russian sculptor Boris Orlovsky. The face of the angel bears great similarity to the face of Emperor Alexander I.

 

The column is a single piece of red granite, 25.45 m (83 ft 6 in) long and about 3.5 m (11 ft 5 in) in diameter. The granite monolith was obtained from Virolahti, Finland and in 1832 transported by sea to Saint Petersburg, on a barge specially designed for this purpose, where it underwent further working. Without the aid of modern cranes and engineering machines, the column, weighing 600 tonnes (661 tons) on 30 August 1832 was erected by 3,000 men under the guidance of William Handyside in less than 2 hours. It is set so neatly that no attachment to the base is needed and it is fixed in position by its own weight alone.

 

Pedestal

The pedestal of the Alexander Column is decorated with symbols of military glory, sculpted by Giovanni Battista Scotti.

 

On the side of the pedestal facing the Winter Palace is a bas-relief depicting winged figures holding up a plaque bearing the words "To Alexander I from a grateful Russia". The composition includes figures representing the Neman and Vistula rivers that were associated with the events of the Patriotic War. Flanking these figures are depictions of old Russian armour – the shield of Prince Oleg of Novgorod, the helmet of Alexander Nevsky, the breastplate of Emperor Alexander I, the chainmail of Yermak Timofeyevich and other pieces recalling heroes whose martial feats brought glory to Russia.

 

The other three sides are decorated with bas-reliefs featuring allegorical figures of Wisdom and Abundance, Justice and Mercy, Peace and Victory, the last holding a shield bearing the dates 1812, 1813 and 1814. These compositions are enhanced by depictions of Ancient Roman military symbols and Russian armour.

 

The sketches for the bas-reliefs were produced by Auguste de Montferrand. He coordinated the scale of their compositions with the monumental forms of the monument. The panels were designed to the planned size by the artist Giovanni Battista Scotti. The models were produced by the sculptors Piotr Svintsov and Ivan Lepee, the ornamental embellishments by sculptor Yevgeny Balin. The casting of the bronze was done at Charles Baird's works in Saint Petersburg.

 

A commemorative silver rouble designed by N. Gube was struck in 1834 and it is rumoured that a chest of these coins was placed in the foundations.

 

Later years

In 1952, according to some recent reports, the authorities of the Soviet Union demanded the replacement of the statue of the angel with a statue of Joseph Stalin. A historic cast-iron railing around the column was removed during the Soviet period. The railing was restored in 2002.

 

Boris Ivanovich Orlovsky (Russian: Борис Иванович Орловский; 1790s – 28 December 1837) was a Russian Neoclassical sculptor.

 

Biography

Born into a serf peasant family in Tula, Russia, his artistic talent led to him being freed by his master and sent to the Imperial Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg. After studying for six years in Italy under Bertel Thorvaldsen, he returned to teach at the Academy where he later became a Professor. At the same time, he improved his skill in the studios of Santino Campioni and Agostino Triscorni. Boris Orlovsky died in 1837 in Saint Petersburg.

 

Orlovsky's statues of Kutuzov and Barclay de Tolly in front of the Kazan Cathedral reveal a realistic undercurrent in his otherwise Neoclassical work, typified by the Angel on top of the Alexander Column at the Palace Square.

 

Saint Petersburg, formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991; see below), is the second-largest city in Russia after Moscow. It is situated on the River Neva, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea. The city had a population of roughly 5.6 million residents as of 2021, with more than 6.4 million people living in the metropolitan area. Saint Petersburg is the fourth-most populous city in Europe, the most populous city on the Baltic Sea, and the world's northernmost city of more than 1 million residents. As Russia's Imperial capital, and a historically strategic port, it is governed as a federal city.

 

The city was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703 on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was named after the apostle Saint Peter. In Russia, Saint Petersburg is historically and culturally associated with the birth of the Russian Empire and Russia's entry into modern history as a European great power. It served as a capital of the Tsardom of Russia, and the subsequent Russian Empire, from 1712 to 1918 (being replaced by Moscow for a short period of time between 1728 and 1730). After the October Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks moved their government to Moscow. The city was renamed Leningrad after Lenin's death in 1924. In June 1991, only a few months before the Belovezha Accords and the dissolution of the USSR, voters supported restoring the city's original appellation in a city-wide referendum.

 

As Russia's cultural centre, Saint Petersburg received over 15 million tourists in 2018. It is considered an important economic, scientific, and tourism centre of Russia and Europe. In modern times, the city has the nickname of being "the Northern Capital of Russia" and is home to notable federal government bodies such as the Constitutional Court of Russia and the Heraldic Council of the President of the Russian Federation. It is also a seat for the National Library of Russia and a planned location for the Supreme Court of Russia, as well as the home to the headquarters of the Russian Navy, and the Western Military District of the Russian Armed Forces. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Petersburg is home to the Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world, the Lakhta Center, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and was one of the host cities of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the UEFA Euro 2020.

 

The city of Saint Petersburg was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on 27 May 1703. It became the capital of the Russian Empire and remained as such for more than two hundred years (1712–1728, 1732–1918). Saint Petersburg ceased being the capital in 1918 after the October Coup.

 

The new capital

On 1 May 1703, Peter the Great took both the Swedish fortress of Nyenschantz and the city of Nyen, on the Neva river. Tsar Peter the Great founded the city on 27 May 1703 (in the Gregorian calendar, 16 May in the Julian calendar) after he reconquered the Ingrian land from Sweden, in the Great Northern War. He named the city after his patron saint, the apostle Saint Peter. The original spelling in three words Sankt-Piter-burkh (Санкт-Питер-Бурх) uses Latin: Sankt, as in Sankt Goar and some other European cities (it is a common misconception about the "Dutch cultural origin"; for local versions, there are Sant or Sint in modern Dutch. Besides Netherlands, Peter the Great also spent three months in Great Britain so it is preferable to speak about the general European experience which influenced the tsar.)

 

St. Petersburg is actually used as an English equivalent to three variant forms of the name: originally Санкт-Питер-Бурх (Sankt Piter-Burkh), later Санкт-Петерсбурх (Sankt Petersburkh), and then Санкт-Петербург (Sankt Peterburg). The full name is often substituted by the abbreviation SPb (СПб). Sankt was usually confined to writing; people usually called it Петербург (Peterburg) or the common nickname Питер (Piter). Petrograd (Петроград), the name given in 1914 on the outbreak of World War I to avoid the German sound of Petersburg, was a Slavic translation of the previous name. The name was changed to Leningrad (Ленинград) in 1924.

 

The city was built under adverse weather and geographical conditions. The high mortality rate required a constant supply of workers. Peter ordered a yearly conscription of 40,000 serfs, one conscript for every nine to sixteen households. Conscripts had to provide their own tools and food for the journey of hundreds of kilometres, on foot, in gangs, often escorted by military guards and shackled to prevent desertion, but many escaped; others died from disease and exposure under the harsh conditions.

 

The new city's first building was the Peter and Paul Fortress, which originally also bore the name of Sankt Petersburg. It was laid down on Zayachy (Hare's) Island, just off the right bank of the Neva, three miles inland from the Gulf. The marshland was drained and the city spread outward from the fortress under the supervision of German and Dutch engineers whom Peter had invited to Russia. Peter restricted the construction of stone buildings in all of Russia outside St Petersburg so that all stonemasons would come to help build the new city.

 

At the same time Peter hired a large number of engineers, architects, shipbuilders, scientists and businessmen from all countries of Europe. Substantial immigration of educated professionals eventually turned St. Petersburg into a much more cosmopolitan city than Moscow and the rest of Russia. Peter's efforts to push for modernization in Moscow and the rest of Russia were completely misunderstood by the old-fashioned Russian nobility and eventually failed, causing him much trouble with opposition, including several attempts on his life and the treason involving his own son.

 

Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712, nine years before the Treaty of Nystad. Called the "window to Europe", it was a seaport and also a base for Peter's navy, protected by the fortress of Kronstadt. The first person to build a home in Saint Petersburg was Cornelis Cruys, commander of the Baltic Fleet. Inspired by Venice and Amsterdam, Peter the Great proposed boats and coracles as means of transport in his city of canals. Initially there were only 12 permanent bridges over smaller waterways, while the Great Neva was crossed by boats in the summertime and by foot or horse carriages during winter. A pontoon bridge over Neva was built every summer.

 

Peter was impressed by the Versailles and other palaces in Europe. His official palace of a comparable importance in Peterhof was the first suburban palace permanently used by the Tsar as the primary official residence and the place for official receptions and state balls. The waterfront palace, Monplaisir, and the Great Peterhof Palace were built between 1714 and 1725. In 1716, Prussia's King presented a gift to Tsar Peter: the Amber Room.

 

Aleksandr Danilovich Menshikov, Peter's best friend, was the first Governor General of Saint Petersburg Governorate in 1703–1727. In 1724 St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences was established in the city. After the death of Peter the Great, Menshikov was arrested and exiled to Siberia. In 1728 Peter II of Russia moved the capital back to Moscow, but four years later, in 1732, St. Petersburg again became the capital of Russia and remained the seat of the government for about two centuries.

 

Revolutions

Several revolutions, uprisings, assassinations of tsars, and power takeovers in St. Peterburg had shaped the course of history in Russia and influenced the world. In 1801, after the assassination of the Emperor Paul I, his son became the Emperor Alexander I. Alexander I ruled Russia during the Napoleonic Wars and expanded his Empire by acquisitions of Finland and part of Poland. His mysterious death in 1825 was marked by the Decembrist revolt, which was suppressed by the Emperor Nicholas I, who ordered execution of leaders and exiled hundreds of their followers to Siberia. Nicholas I then pushed for Russian nationalism by suppressing non-Russian nationalities and religions.

 

The cultural revolution that followed after the Napoleonic wars further opened St. Petersburg up, in spite of repression. The city's wealth and rapid growth had always attracted prominent intellectuals, scientists, writers and artists. St. Petersburg eventually gained international recognition as a gateway for trade and business, as well as a cosmopolitan cultural hub. The works of Aleksandr Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Ivan Turgenev, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and numerous others brought Russian literature to the world. Music, theatre and ballet became firmly established and gained international stature.

 

The son of Emperor Nicholas I, Emperor Alexander II, implemented the most challenging reforms undertaken in Russia since the reign of Peter the Great. The emancipation of the serfs (1861) caused the influx of large numbers of poor into the capital. Tenements were erected on the outskirts, and nascent industry sprang up, surpassing Moscow in population and industrial growth. By 1900, St. Petersburg had grown into one of the largest industrial hubs in Europe, an important international center of power, business and politics, and the fourth largest city in Europe.

 

With the growth of industry, radical movements were also astir. Socialist organizations were responsible for the assassinations of many public figures, government officials, members of the royal family, and the tsar himself. Tsar Alexander II was killed by suicide bomber Ignacy Hryniewiecki in 1881, in a plot with connections to the family of Lenin and other revolutionaries. The Revolution of 1905 initiated here and spread rapidly into the provinces. During World War I, the name Sankt Peterburg was seen to be too German, so the city was renamed Petrograd.

 

1917 saw the next stages of the Russian Revolution and the re-emergence of the Communist party led by Lenin, who declared "guns give us the power" and "all power to the Soviets!" After the February Revolution, Tsar Nicholas II was arrested and the Tsar's government was replaced by two opposing centers of political power: the "pro-democracy" Provisional government and the "pro-communist" Petrograd Soviet. Then the Provisional government was overthrown by the communists in the October Revolution, causing the Russian Civil War.

 

The city's proximity to anti-Soviet armies forced communist leader Vladimir Lenin to move his government to Moscow on 5 March 1918. The move was disguised as temporary, but Moscow has remained the capital ever since. On 24 January 1924, three days after Lenin's death, Petrograd was renamed Leningrad. The Communist party's reason for renaming the city again was that Lenin had led the revolution. After the Civil War, and murder of the Tsar Nicholas II and his family, as well as millions of anti-Soviet people, the renaming to Leningrad was designed to destroy last hopes among the resistance, and show strong dictatorship of Lenin's communist party and the Soviet regime.

 

St. Petersburg was devastated by Lenin's Red Terror then by Stalin's Great Purge in addition to crime and vandalism in the series of revolutions and wars. Between 1917 and 1930s, about two million people fled the city, including hundreds of thousands of educated intellectuals and aristocracy, who emigrated to Europe and America. At the same time many political, social and paramilitary groups had followed the communist government in their move to Moscow, as the benefits of capital status had left the city. In 1931 Leningrad administratively separated from Leningrad Oblast.

 

In 1934 the popular governor of Leningrad, Kirov, was assassinated, because Stalin apparently became increasingly paranoid about Kirov's the growth of his popularity. The death of Kirov was used to ignite the Great Purge where supporters of Trotsky and other suspected "enemies of the Soviet state" were arrested. Then a series of "criminal" cases, known as the Leningrad Centre and Leningrad Affair, were fabricated and resulted in death sentences for many top leaders of Leningrad, and severe repressions of thousands of top officials and intellectuals.

 

Siege of Leningrad

During World War II, Leningrad was surrounded and besieged by the German Wehrmacht from 8 September 1941 to 27 January 1944, a total of 29 months. By Hitler's order the Wehrmacht constantly shelled and bombed the city and systematically isolated it from any supplies, causing death of more than 1 million civilians in three years; 650,000 died in 1942 alone. The secret instruction from 23 September 1941 said: "the Führer is determined to eliminate the city of Petersburg from the face of earth. There is no reason whatsoever for subsequent existence of this large-scale city after the neutralization of the Soviet Russia." Starting in early 1942, Ingria was included into the Generalplan Ost annexation plans as the "German settlement area". This implied the genocide of 3 million Leningrad residents, who had no place in Hitler's "New East European Order".

 

Hitler ordered preparations for victory celebrations at the tsar's palaces. The Germans looted art from museums and palaces, as well as from private homes. All looted treasures, such as the Amber Room, gold statues of the Peterhof Palace, paintings and other valuable art were taken to Germany. Hitler also prepared a party to celebrate his victory at the hotel Astoria. A printed invitation to Hitler's reception ball at the Hotel Astoria is now on display at the City Museum of St. Petersburg.

 

During the siege of 1941–1944, the only ways to supply the city and suburbs, inhabited by several millions, were by aircraft or by cars crossing the frozen Lake Ladoga. The German military systematically shelled this route, called the Road of Life, so thousands of cars with people and food supplies had sunk in the lake. The situation in the city was especially horrible in the winter of 1941–1942. The German bombing raids destroyed most of the food reserves. The daily food ration was cut in October to 400 grams of bread for a worker and 200 grams for a woman or child. On 20 November 1941, the rations were reduced to 250 and 125 grams respectively. Those grams of bread were the bulk of a daily meal for a person in the city. The water supply was destroyed. The situation further worsened in winter due to lack of heating fuel. In December 1941 alone some 53,000 people in Leningrad died of starvation, many corpses were scattered in the streets all over the city.

 

"Savichevs died. Everyone died. Only Tanya is left," wrote 11-year-old Leningrad girl Tanya Savicheva in her diary. It became one of the symbols of the blockade tragedy and was shown as one of many documents at the Nuremberg trials.

 

The city suffered severe destruction – the Wehrmacht fired about 150,000 shells at Leningrad and the Luftwaffe dropped about 100,000 air bombs. Many houses, schools, hospitals and other buildings were leveled, and those in the occupied territory were plundered by German troops.

 

As a result of the siege, about 1.2 million of 3 million Leningrad civilians lost their lives because of bombardment, starvation, infections and stress. Hundreds of thousands of unregistered civilians, who lived in Leningrad prior to WWII, had perished in the siege without any record at all. About 1 million civilians escaped with evacuation, mainly by foot. After two years of the siege, Leningrad became an empty ghost town with thousands of ruined and abandoned homes.

 

For the heroic resistance of the city and tenacity of the survivors of the siege, Leningrad became the first to receive the Hero City title, as awarded in 1945.

 

Postwar reconstruction

The war damaged the city and killed many old Petersburgers who had not fled after the revolution and did not perish in the mass purges before the war. Nonetheless, Leningrad and many of its suburbs were rebuilt over the post-war decades, partially according to the pre-war plans. In 1950 the Kirov Stadium was opened and soon set a record when 110,000 fans attended a football match. In 1955 the Leningrad Metro, the second underground rapid transit system in the country, was opened with its first six stations decorated with marble and bronze.

 

Timeline of post-war recovery

1945–1970s

Re-building and restoration of thousands of buildings, industries, schools, transport, energy supplies and infrastructure.

Restoration of destroyed suburban museums, palaces, and other historic and cultural landmarks and treasures.

Explosions of left behind land mines caused numerous deaths among citizens.

 

1946

January – December: some schools, universities, and colleges reopened.

January – December: some theatres and movies were opened to the public.

 

1947

May: The fountains of Peterhof park were opened to the public again, but the palaces were in ruins for the next several decades.

 

1949

Stalin set up a plot to have the leaders of the city government arrested and killed. Aleksei Kuznetsov, Nikolai Voznesensky, P. Popkov, Ya. Kapustin, P. Lazutin, and several more, who were heroic and efficient in defending Leningrad, became very popular figures. They were arrested on false accusations. Stalin's plot to kill the leaders of Leningrad was kept top-secret in the former Soviet Union. It is now known as the Leningrad Affair.

 

1955

Leningrad Metro, which was designed before the war in the 1930s to serve as an underground shelter, was completed after the war and opened in 1955 with its first seven stations decorated with marble and bronze. It became the second underground rapid transit system in the country.

The population of Leningrad, including suburbs, increased in the 10 post-war years from under 0.8 million to about 4 million.

 

1960s

The Ilya Repin House Museum is restored in the northern suburb of Repino, and open to the public. However, most of the artist's original paintings and personal items remain missing since the Finnish army was there during WWII.

 

1970s

The Memorial to Defenders and Survivors of the Siege of Leningrad is erected at the former defence lines on Moskovsky Prospekt near Pulkovo Airport.

 

2003

May: the Amber Room was re-created with the sponsorship of Germany. It is open to the public in the completely restored Catherine Palace.

27–31 May marked the 300-year anniversary of the city.

 

2004

January: the 60th anniversary of the Lifting of the Siege of Leningrad in 1944 was officially celebrated in St. Petersburg on 27 January 2004. About twelve thousand survivors of the siege who were children at the time of WWII, are now living on a state pension in St. Petersburg and suburbs. Tens of thousands of other survivors, who were evacuated from besieged Leningrad as children, are still living in Russia and other countries across the world.

 

Postwar history

During the late 1940s and 1950s the political and cultural elite of Leningrad suffered from more harsh repression under the dictatorship of Stalin – hundreds were executed and thousands were imprisoned in what became known as the Leningrad Affair. Independent thinkers, writers, artists and other intellectuals were attacked, the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad were banned, Akhmatova and Zoshchenko were repressed, and tens of thousands of Leningraders were exiled to Siberia. More crackdowns on Leningrad's intellectual elite, known as the Second Leningrad affair, were part of the unfair economic policies of the Soviet state. Leningrad's economy was producing about 6% of the USSR GNP, despite having less than 2% of the country's population, but the Soviet Communist Party negated such economic efficiency and diverted the earned income from the people of Leningrad to other Soviet places and programs. As a result, during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, the city of Leningrad was seriously underfunded in favor of Moscow. Leningrad suffered from the unfair distribution of wealth because the Soviet leadership drained the city's resources to subsidise higher standards of living in Moscow and in some under-performing parts of the Soviet Union and beyond. Such unfair redistribution of wealth caused struggles within the Soviet government and communist party, which led to their fragmentation and played a role in the eventual collapse of the USSR.

 

On 12 June 1991, the day of the first Russian presidential election, in a referendum 54% of Leningrad voters chose to restore "the original name, Saint Petersburg", on 6 September 1991. In the same election Anatoly Sobchak became the first democratically elected mayor of the city. Among his first initiatives, Sobchak attempted to minimise Moscow's federal control to keep the income from St. Petersburg's economy in the city.

 

Original names were returned to 39 streets, six bridges, three Saint Petersburg Metro stations and six parks. Older people sometimes use old names and old mailing addresses. The media heavily promoted the name Leningrad, mainly in connection with the siege, so even authorities may refer to Saint Petersburg as the "Hero city Leningrad". Young people may use Leningrad as a vague protest against social and economic changes. A popular ska punk band from Saint Petersburg is called Leningrad.

 

Leningrad Oblast retained its name after a popular vote. It is a separate federal subject of Russia of which the city of St. Petersburg is the capital.

 

In 1996, Vladimir Yakovlev was elected the head of the Saint Petersburg City Administration, and changed his title from mayor to governor. In 2003 Yakovlev resigned a year before his second term expired. Valentina Matviyenko was elected governor. In 2006 the city legislature re-appointed her as governor.

 

The Constitutional Court of Russia completed its move from Moscow to Senate Square in St. Petersburg in 2008. The move partially restored Saint Petersburg's historic status, making the city Russia's second judicial capital.

Real Name: Dmitri Smerdyakov

 

Eyes: Brown Hair: Unknown

 

Height: Unknown Weight: Unknown

 

Group Affiliation: The Exterminators,formally The Sinister Six,The Sinister Twelve

 

Bio: Dmitri Smerdyakov was the illegitimate son of the patriarch of the Russian Kravinoff family and a servant. His only friend growing up was Joe Cord, an American boy who once saved his life while his half-brother Sergei, the legitimate heir, and his father treated him with contempt and brutality. This scarred Dmitri so deeply that he repressed his very identity and came to believe he had been friends with Sergei instead. His loss of self led him to become a master of disguise and a Soviet spy. Initially without super-powers, the Chameleon relied on his skills and a mixture of costumes and make-up to conceal his identity. He wore a multi-pocket disguise vest in which he kept the materials he would need to mask himself at short notice.

 

Powers and Abilities: The Chameleon can instantly change his appearance and imitate others so convincingly that practically no one can tell the Chameleon and his victim apart. His natural talents are now augmented with a face-changing serum.

   

I have posted over 65535 Hindu blogs ,,shot Hindu culture , rituals Kumbh Maha Kumbh, Naga Sadhus Tantriks ..including the Marriammen feast .. and all this thanks to my two Gurus Late BW Jatkar and Shreekant Malushte Sir ,,including some great photographer friends at PSI Mumbai my camera club..

Most of the Hindu feasts in Bandra I hardly shoot and most of them are now being shot by my 3 year old granddaughter @nerjisasifshakir

She has shot Advocate Ashish Shelars Ganpati for last two years.

I live in Mumbai my parents were not bigots , they gave us the best upbringing even the Marathi bai that worked with us when we were kids our mother insisted we call her Aiee ,, Mother ,,and all this has culminated in shooting my cultural inheritance ,,and so for those who do not wish to see this part of my documentation you can unfriend and block me ,, I shall not hold it against you as most of you I added recently was because you were also friends with my Peersabs son Syed Farid Chishty Sabri I did not see your profile just added you blindly when you sent me a friends request .

And if you comment adversely on my Hindu or Shia blogs I will block you instantly,, I am a photo journalist documentarist I dont promote any religion caste or creed I promote India and my Indianess ..

Thanks .

  

Kali, also known as Kalika (Bengali: কালী, Kālī / কালিকা Kālīkā ; Sanskrit: काली), is a Hindu goddess associated with death and destruction. The name Kali means "black", but has by folk etymology come to mean "force of time (kala)". Despite her negative connotations, she is today considered the goddess of time and change. Although sometimes presented as dark and violent, her earliest incarnation as a figure of annihilation still has some influence. More complex Tantric beliefs sometimes extend her role so far as to be the "ultimate reality" or Brahman. She is also revered as Bhavatarini (literally "redeemer of the universe"). Comparatively recent devotional movements largely conceive Kali as a benevolent mother goddess.

 

Kali is represented as the consort of god Shiva, on whose body she is often seen standing. She is associated with many other Hindu goddesses like Durga, Bhadrakali, Sati, Rudrani, Parvati and Chamunda. She is the foremost among the Dasa-Mahavidyas, ten fierce Tantric goddesses.[1]

 

Contents [hide]

1 Etymology

2 Origin

3 In Tantra

4 In Bengali tradition

5 Mythology

5.1 Slayer of Raktabija

5.2 Daksinakali

5.3 Maternal Kali

5.4 Mahakali

6 Iconography

6.1 Popular form

6.2 Mahakali form

6.3 Shiva in Kali iconography

7 Development

8 In New Age and Neopaganism

9 See also

10 Notes

11 References

12 Further reading

13 External links

   

Etymology

Kālī is the feminine of kāla "black, dark coloured" (per Panini 4.1.42). It appears as the name of a form of Durga in Mahabharata 4.195, and as the name of an evil female spirit in Harivamsa 11552.

 

The homonymous kāla "appointed time", which depending on context can mean "death", is distinct from kāla "black", but became associated through folk etymology. The association is seen in a passage from the Mahābhārata, depicting a female figure who carries away the spirits of slain warriors and animals. She is called kālarātri (which Thomas Coburn, a historian of Sanskrit Goddess literature, translates as "night of death") and also kālī (which, as Coburn notes, can be read here either as a proper name or as a description "the black one").[2]

 

Kali's association with blackness stands in contrast to her consort, Shiva, whose body is covered by the white ashes of the cremation ground (Sanskrit: śmaśāna) in which he meditates, and with which Kali is also associated, as śmaśāna-kālī.

  

Origin

Kali appears in the Mundaka Upanishad (section 1, chapter 2, verse 4) not explicitly as a goddess, but as the black tongue of the seven flickering tongues of Agni, the Hindu god of fire.[3] However, the prototype of the figure now known as Kali appears in the Rig Veda, in the form of a goddess named Raatri. Raatri is considered to be the prototype of both Durga and Kali.

 

In the Sangam era, circa 200BCE–200CE, of Tamilakam, a Kali-like bloodthirsty goddess named Kottravai appears in the literature of the period.[citation needed] Like Kali she has dishevelled hair, inspires fear in those who approach her and feasts on battlegrounds littered with the dead.

 

It was the composition of the Puranas in late antiquity that firmly gave Kali a place in the Hindu pantheon. Kali or Kalika is described in the Devi Mahatmya (also known as the Chandi or the Durgasaptasati) from the Markandeya Purana, circa 300–600CE, where she is said to have emanated from the brow of the goddess Durga, a slayer of demons or avidya, during one of the battles between the divine and anti-divine forces. In this context, Kali is considered the 'forceful' form of the great goddess Durga. Another account of the origins of Kali is found in the Matsya Purana, circa 1500CE, which states that she originated as a mountain tribal goddess in the north-central part of India, in the region of Mount Kalanjara (now known as Kalinjar). However this account is disputed because the legend was of later origin.

 

The Kalika Purana a work of late ninth or early tenth century, is one of the Upapuranas. The Kalika Purana mainly describes different manifestations of the Goddess, gives their iconographic details, mounts, and weapons. It also provides ritual procedures of worshipping Kalika.

  

In Tantra

 

Mahakali YantraGoddesses play an important role in the study and practice of Tantra Yoga, and are affirmed to be as central to discerning the nature of reality as the male deities are. Although Parvati is often said to be the recipient and student of Shiva's wisdom in the form of Tantras, it is Kali who seems to dominate much of the Tantric iconography, texts, and rituals.[4] In many sources Kali is praised as the highest reality or greatest of all deities. The Nirvana-tantra says the gods Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva all arise from her like bubbles in the sea, ceaselessly arising and passing away, leaving their original source unchanged. The Niruttara-tantra and the Picchila-tantra declare all of Kali's mantras to be the greatest and the Yogini-tantra, Kamakhya-tantra and the Niruttara-tantra all proclaim Kali vidyas (manifestations of Mahadevi, or "divinity itself"). They declare her to be an essence of her own form (svarupa) of the Mahadevi.[5]

 

In the Mahanirvana-tantra, Kali is one of the epithets for the primordial sakti, and in one passage Shiva praises her:

 

At the dissolution of things, it is Kala [Time] Who will devour all, and by reason of this He is called Mahakala [an epithet of Lord Shiva], and since Thou devourest Mahakala Himself, it is Thou who art the Supreme Primordial Kalika. Because Thou devourest Kala, Thou art Kali, the original form of all things, and because Thou art the Origin of and devourest all things Thou art called the Adya [primordial Kali. Resuming after Dissolution Thine own form, dark and formless, Thou alone remainest as One ineffable and inconceivable. Though having a form, yet art Thou formless; though Thyself without beginning, multiform by the power of Maya, Thou art the Beginning of all, Creatrix, Protectress, and Destructress that Thou art.[6]

The figure of Kali conveys death, destruction, fear, and the consuming aspects of reality. As such, she is also a "forbidden thing", or even death itself. In the Pancatattva ritual, the sadhaka boldly seeks to confront Kali, and thereby assimilates and transforms her into a vehicle of salvation.[7] This is clear in the work of the Karpuradi-stotra, a short praise to Kali describing the Pancatattva ritual unto her, performed on cremation grounds. (Samahana-sadhana)

 

He, O Mahakali who in the cremation-ground, naked, and with dishevelled hair, intently meditates upon Thee and recites Thy mantra, and with each recitation makes offering to Thee of a thousand Akanda flowers with seed, becomes without any effort a Lord of the earth. 0 Kali, whoever on Tuesday at midnight, having uttered Thy mantra, makes offering even but once with devotion to Thee of a hair of his Sakti [his female companion] in the cremation-ground, becomes a great poet, a Lord of the earth, and ever goes mounted upon an elephant.[8]

The Karpuradi-stotra clearly indicates that Kali is more than a terrible, vicious, slayer of demons who serves Durga or Shiva. Here, she is identified as the supreme mistress of the universe, associated with the five elements. In union with Lord Shiva, who is said to be her spouse, she creates and destroys worlds. Her appearance also takes a different turn, befitting her role as ruler of the world and object of meditation.[9] In contrast to her terrible aspects, she takes on hints of a more benign dimension. She is described as young and beautiful, has a gentle smile, and makes gestures with her two right hands to dispel any fear and offer boons. The more positive features exposed offer the distillation of divine wrath into a goddess of salvation, who rids the sadhaka of fear. Here, Kali appears as a symbol of triumph over death.[10]

  

In Bengali tradition

Kali is also central figure in late medieval Bengali devotional literature, with such devotees as Ramprasad Sen (1718–75). With the exception of being associated with Parvati as Shiva's consort, Kali is rarely pictured in Hindu mythology and iconography as a motherly figure until Bengali devotion beginning in the early eighteenth century. Even in Bengali tradition her appearance and habits change little, if at all.[11]

 

The Tantric approach to Kali is to display courage by confronting her on cremation grounds in the dead of night, despite her terrible appearance. In contrast, the Bengali devotee appropriates Kali's teachings, adopting the attitude of a child. In both cases, the goal of the devotee is to become reconciled with death and to learn acceptance of the way things are. These themes are well addressed in Ramprasad's work.[12]

 

Ramprasad comments in many of his other songs that Kali is indifferent to his wellbeing, causes him to suffer, brings his worldly desires to nothing and his worldly goods to ruin. He also states that she does not behave like a mother should and that she ignores his pleas:

 

Can mercy be found in the heart of her who was born of the stone? [a reference to Kali as the daughter of Himalaya]

Were she not merciless, would she kick the breast of her lord?

Men call you merciful, but there is no trace of mercy in you. Mother.

You have cut off the headset the children of others, and these you wear as a garland around your neck.

It matters not how much I call you "Mother, Mother." You hear me, but you will not listen.[13]

To be a child of Kali, Ramprasad asserts, is to be denied of earthly delights and pleasures. Kali is said to not give what is expected. To the devotee, it is perhaps her very refusal to do so that enables her devotees to reflect on dimensions of themselves and of reality that go beyond the material world.[14][15]

 

A significant portion of Bengali devotional music features Kali as its central theme and is known as Shyama Sangeet. Mostly sung by male vocalists, today even women have taken to this form of music. One of the finest singers of Shyama Sangeet is Pannalal Bhattacharya.

  

Mythology

 

Slayer of Raktabija

 

"Kali Triumphant on The Battle Field," Punjab, circa 1800–20CE)In Kali's most famous myth, Durga and her assistants, Matrikas, wound the demon Raktabija, in various ways and with a variety of weapons, in an attempt to destroy him. They soon find that they have worsened the situation, as for every drop of blood that is spilt from Raktabija the demon reproduces a clone of himself. The battlefield becomes increasingly filled with his duplicates.[16] Durga, in dire need of help, summons Kali to combat the demons. It is also said that Goddess Durga takes the form of Goddess Kali at this time.

 

The Devi Mahatmyam describes:

 

Out of the surface of her (Durga's) forehead, fierce with frown, issued suddenly Kali of terrible countenance, armed with a sword and noose. Bearing the strange khatvanga (skull-topped staff ), decorated with a garland of skulls, clad in a tiger’s skin, very appalling owing to her emaciated flesh, with gaping mouth, fearful with her tongue lolling out, having deep reddish eyes, filling the regions of the sky with her roars, falling upon impetuously and slaughtering the great asuras in that army, she devoured those hordes of the foes of the devas.[17]

 

Kali destroys Raktabija by sucking the blood from his body and putting the many Raktabija duplicates in her gaping mouth. Pleased with her victory, Kali then dances on the field of battle, stepping on the corpses of the slain. Her consort Shiva lies among the dead beneath her feet, a representation of Kali commonly seen in her iconography as Daksinakali'.[18]

 

In Devi Mahatmya version of this story, Kali is also described as an Matrika and as a Shakti or power of Devi. She is given the epithet Cāṃuṇḍā (Chamunda) i.e the slayer of demons Chanda and Munda.[19] Chamunda is very often identified with Kali and is very much like her in appearance and habit.[20]

  

Daksinakali

 

Bhadrakali (A gentle form of Kali), circa 1675.

Painting; made in India, Himachal Pradesh, Basohli,

now placed in LACMA Museum.In her most famous pose as Daksinakali, it is said that Kali, becoming drunk on the blood of her victims on the battlefield, dances with destructive frenzy. In her fury she fails to see the body of her husband Shiva who lies among the corpses on the battlefield.[21] Ultimately the cries of Shiva attract Kali's attention, calming her fury. As a sign of her shame at having disrespected her husband in such a fashion, Kali sticks out her tongue. However, some sources state that this interpretation is a later version of the symbolism of the tongue: in tantric contexts, the tongue is seen to denote the element (guna) of rajas (energy and action) controlled by sattva, spiritual and godly qualities.[22]

 

One South Indian tradition tells of a dance contest between Shiva and Kali. After defeating the two demons Sumbha and Nisumbha, Kali takes residence in a forest. With fierce companions she terrorizes the surrounding area. One of Shiva's devotees becomes distracted while doing austerities and asks Shiva to rid the forest of the destructive goddess. When Shiva arrives, Kali threatens him, claiming the territory as her own. Shiva challenges her to a dance contest, and defeats her when she is unable to perform the energetic Tandava dance. Although here Kali is defeated, and is forced to control her disruptive habits, we find very few images or other myths depicting her in such manner.[23]

  

Maternal Kali

Another myth depicts the infant Shiva calming Kali, instead. In this similar story, Kali again defeated her enemies on the battlefield and began to dance out of control, drunk on the blood of the slain. To calm her down and to protect the stability of the world, Shiva is sent to the battlefield, as an infant, crying aloud. Seeing the child's distress, Kali ceases dancing to take care of the helpless infant. She picks him up, kisses his head, and proceeds to breast feed the infant Shiva.[24] This myth depicts Kali in her benevolent, maternal aspect; something that is revered in Hinduism, but not often recognized in the West.

  

Ekamukhi or "One-Faced" Murti of Mahakali displaying ten hands holding the signifiers of various Devas

Mahakali

Main article: Mahakali

Mahakali (Sanskrit: Mahākālī, Devanagari: महाकाली), literally translated as Great Kali, is sometimes considered as greater form of Kali, identified with the Ultimate reality Brahman. It can also simply be used as an honorific of the Goddess Kali,[25] signifying her greatness by the prefix "Mahā-". Mahakali, in Sanskrit, is etymologically the feminized variant of Mahakala or Great Time (which is interpreted also as Death), an epithet of the God Shiva in Hinduism. Mahakali is the presiding Goddess of the first episode of Devi Mahatmya. Here she is depicted as Devi in her universal form as Shakti. Here Devi serves as the agent who allows the cosmic order to be restored.

  

Iconography

 

Statue from Dakshineswar Kali Temple, West Bengal, India; along with her Yantra.Kali is portrayed mostly in two forms: the popular four-armed form and the ten-armed Mahakali form. In both of her forms, she is described as being black in color but is most often depicted as blue in popular Indian art. Her eyes are described as red with intoxication and in absolute rage, her hair is shown disheveled, small fangs sometimes protrude out of her mouth and her tongue is lolling. She is often shown naked or just wearing a skirt made of human arms and a garland of human heads. She is also accompanied by serpents and a jackal while standing on a seemingly dead Shiva, usually right foot forward to symbolize the more popular Dakshinamarga or right-handed path, as opposed to the more infamous and transgressive Vamamarga or left-handed path.[26]

 

In the ten armed form of Mahakali she is depicted as shining like a blue stone. She has ten faces and ten feet and three eyes. She has ornaments decked on all her limbs. There is no association with Siva.[27]

 

The Kalika Purana describes Kali as possessing a soothing dark complexion, as perfectly beautiful, riding a lion, four armed, holding a sword and blue lotuses, her hair unrestrained, body firm and youthful.[28]

 

In spite of her seemingly terrible form, Kali is often considered the kindest and most loving of all the Hindu goddesses, as she is regarded by her devotees as the Mother of the whole Universe. And, because of her terrible form she is also often seen as a great protector. When the Bengali saint Ramakrishna once asked a devotee why one would prefer to worship Mother over him, this devotee rhetorically replied, “Maharaj, when they are in trouble your devotees come running to you. But, where do you run when you are in trouble?”[29]

 

According to Ramakrishna darkness is Ultimate Mother or Kali:

 

My Mother is the principle of consciousness. She is Akhanda Satchidananda; indivisible Reality, Awareness, and Bliss. The night sky between the stars is perfectly black. The waters of the ocean depths are the same; The infinite is always mysteriously dark. This inebriating darkness is my beloved Kali.

 

-Sri Ramakrishna

 

Throughout her history artists the world over have portrayed Kali in myriad poses and settings, some of which stray far from the popular description, and are sometimes even graphically sexual in nature. Given the popularity of this Goddess, artists everywhere will continue to explore the magnificence of Kali’s iconography. This is clear in the work of such contemporary artists as Charles Wish, and Tyeb Mehta, who sometimes take great liberties with the traditional, accepted symbolism, but still demonstrate a true reverence for the Shakta sect.

  

Popular form

Classic depictions of Kali share several features, as follows:

 

Kali's most common four armed iconographic image shows each hand carrying variously a sword, a trishul (trident), a severed head and a bowl or skull-cup (kapala) catching the blood of the severed head.

 

Two of these hands (usually the left) are holding a sword and a severed head. The Sword signifies Divine Knowledge and the Human Head signifies human Ego which must be slain by Divine Knowledge in order to attain Moksha. The other two hands (usually the right) are in the abhaya and varada mudras or blessings, which means her initiated devotees (or anyone worshiping her with a true heart) will be saved as she will guide them here and in the hereafter.[30]

 

She has a garland consisting of human heads, variously enumerated at 108 (an auspicious number in Hinduism and the number of countable beads on a Japa Mala or rosary for repetition of Mantras) or 51, which represents Varnamala or the Garland of letters of the Sanskrit alphabet, Devanagari. Hindus believe Sanskrit is a language of dynamism, and each of these letters represents a form of energy, or a form of Kali. Therefore she is generally seen as the mother of language, and all mantras.[31]

 

She is often depicted naked which symbolizes her being beyond the covering of Maya since she is pure (nirguna) being-consciousness-bliss and far above prakriti. She is shown as very dark as she is brahman in its supreme unmanifest state. She has no permanent qualities — she will continue to exist even when the universe ends. It is therefore believed that the concepts of color, light, good, bad do not apply to her — she is the pure, un-manifested energy, the Adi-shakti.[32]

  

Mahakali form

 

The Dasamukhi MahakaliKali is depicted in the Mahakali form as having ten heads, ten arms, and ten legs. Each of her ten hands is carrying a various implement which vary in different accounts, but each of these represent the power of one of the Devas or Hindu Gods and are often the identifying weapon or ritual item of a given Deva. The implication is that Mahakali subsumes and is responsible for the powers that these deities possess and this is in line with the interpretation that Mahakali is identical with Brahman. While not displaying ten heads, an "ekamukhi" or one headed image may be displayed with ten arms, signifying the same concept: the powers of the various Gods come only through Her grace.

  

Shiva in Kali iconography

In both these images she is shown standing on the prone, inert or dead body of Shiva. There is a mythological story for the reason behind her standing on what appears to be Shiva’s corpse, which translates as follows:

 

Once Kali had destroyed all the demons in battle, she began a terrific dance out of the sheer joy of victory. All the worlds or lokas began to tremble and sway under the impact of her dance. So, at the request of all the Gods, Shiva himself asked her to desist from this behavior. However, she was too intoxicated to listen. Hence, Shiva lay like a corpse among the slain demons in order to absorb the shock of the dance into himself. When Kali eventually stepped upon her husband she realized her mistake and bit her tongue in shame.[33]

 

The Tantric interpretation of Kali standing on top of her husband is as follows:

 

The Shiv tattava (Divine Consciousness as Shiva) is inactive, while the Shakti tattava (Divine Energy as Kali) is active. Shiva, or Mahadeva represents Brahman, the Absolute pure consciousness which is beyond all names, forms and activities. Kali, on the other hand, represents the potential (and manifested) energy responsible for all names, forms and activities. She is his Shakti, or creative power, and is seen as the substance behind the entire content of all consciousness. She can never exist apart from Shiva or act independently of him, i.e., Shakti, all the matter/energy of the universe, is not distinct from Shiva, or Brahman, but is rather the dynamic power of Brahman.[34]

  

Kali in Traditional Form, standing on Shiva's chest.While this is an advanced concept in monistic Shaktism, it also agrees with the Nondual Trika philosophy of Kashmir, popularly known as Kashmir Shaivism and associated most famously with Abhinavagupta. There is a colloquial saying that "Shiva without Shakti is Shava" which means that without the power of action (Shakti) that is Mahakali (represented as the short "i" in Devanagari) Shiva (or consciousness itself) is inactive; Shava means corpse in Sanskrit and the play on words is that all Sanskrit consonants are assumed to be followed by a short letter "a" unless otherwise noted. The short letter "i" represents the female power or Shakti that activates Creation. This is often the explanation for why She is standing on Shiva, who is either Her husband and complement in Shaktism or the Supreme Godhead in Shaivism.

 

To properly understand this complex Tantric symbolism it is important to remember that the meaning behind Shiva and Kali does not stray from the non-dualistic parlance of Shankara or the Upanisads. According to both the Mahanirvana and Kularnava Tantras, there are two distinct ways of perceiving the same absolute reality. The first is a transcendental plane which is often described as static, yet infinite. It is here that there is no matter, there is no universe and only consciousness exists. This form of reality is known as Shiva, the absolute Sat-Chit-Ananda — existence, knowledge and bliss. The second is an active plane, an immanent plane, the plane of matter, of Maya, i.e., where the illusion of space-time and the appearance of an actual universe does exist. This form of reality is known as Kali or Shakti, and (in its entirety) is still specified as the same Absolute Sat-Chit-Ananda. It is here in this second plane that the universe (as we commonly know it) is experienced and is described by the Tantric seer as the play of Shakti, or God as Mother Kali.[35]

  

Kali and Bhairava (the terrible form of Shiva) in Union, 18th century, NepalFrom a Tantric perspective, when one meditates on reality at rest, as absolute pure consciousness (without the activities of creation, preservation or dissolution) one refers to this as Shiva or Brahman. When one meditates on reality as dynamic and creative, as the Absolute content of pure consciousness (with all the activities of creation, preservation or dissolution) one refers to it as Kali or Shakti. However, in either case the yogini or yogi is interested in one and the same reality — the only difference being in name and fluctuating aspects of appearance. It is this which is generally accepted as the meaning of Kali standing on the chest of Shiva.[36]

 

Although there is often controversy surrounding the images of divine copulation, the general consensus is benign and free from any carnal impurities in its substance. In Tantra the human body is a symbol for the microcosm of the universe; therefore sexual process is responsible for the creation of the world. Although theoretically Shiva and Kali (or Shakti) are inseparable, like fire and its power to burn, in the case of creation they are often seen as having separate roles. With Shiva as male and Kali as female it is only by their union that creation may transpire. This reminds us of the prakrti and purusa doctrine of Samkhya wherein prakāśa- vimarśa has no practical value, just as without prakrti, purusa is quite inactive. This (once again) stresses the interdependencies of Shiva and Shakti and the vitality of their union.[37]

 

Gopi Krishna proposed that Kali standing on the dead Shiva or Shava (Sanskrit for dead body) symbolised the helplessness of a person undergoing the changing process ( psychologically and physiologically) in the body conducted by the Kundalini Shakti.[38]

  

Development

In the later traditions, Kali has become inextricably linked with Shiva. The unleashed form of Kali often becomes wild and uncontrollable, and only Shiva is able to tame her. This is both because she is often a transformed version of one of his consorts and because he is able to match her wildness.

  

Bharatanatyam dancer portraying Kali with a tridentThe ancient text of Kali Kautuvam describes her competition with Shiva in dance, from which the sacred 108 Karanas appeared. Shiva won the competition by acting the urdva tandava, one of the Karanas, by raising his feet to his head. Other texts describe Shiva appearing as a crying infant and appealing to her maternal instincts. While Shiva is said to be able to tame her, the iconography often presents her dancing on his fallen body, and there are accounts of the two of them dancing together, and driving each other to such wildness that the world comes close to unravelling.

 

Shiva's involvement with Tantra and Kali's dark nature have led to her becoming an important Tantric figure. To the Tantric worshippers, it was essential to face her Curse, the terror of death, as willingly as they accepted Blessings from her beautiful, nurturing, maternal aspect. For them, wisdom meant learning that no coin has only one side: as death cannot exist without life, so life cannot exist without death. Kali's role sometimes grew beyond that of a chaos — which could be confronted — to that of one who could bring wisdom, and she is given great metaphysical significance by some Tantric texts. The Nirvāna-tantra clearly presents her uncontrolled nature as the Ultimate Reality, claiming that the trimurti of Brahma, Visnu and Rudra arise and disappear from her like bubbles from the sea. Although this is an extreme case, the Yogini-tantra, Kamakhya-tantra and the Niruttara-tantra declare her the svarupa (own-being) of the Mahadevi (the great Goddess, who is in this case seen as the combination of all devis).

 

The final stage of development is the worshipping of Kali as the Great Mother, devoid of her usual violence. This practice is a break from the more traditional depictions. The pioneers of this tradition are the 18th century Shakta poets such as Ramprasad Sen, who show an awareness of Kali's ambivalent nature. Ramakrishna, the 19th century Bengali saint, was also a great devotee of Kali; the western popularity of whom may have contributed to the more modern, equivocal interpretations of this Goddess. Rachel McDermott's work, however, suggests that for the common, modern worshipper, Kali is not seen as fearful, and only those educated in old traditions see her as having a wrathful component. Some credit to the development of Devi must also be given to Samkhya. Commonly referred to as the Devi of delusion, Mahamaya, acting in the confines of (but not being bound by) the nature of the three gunas, takes three forms: Maha-Kali, Maha-Lakshmi and Maha-Saraswati, being her tamas-ika, rajas-ika and sattva-ika forms. In this sense, Kali is simply part of a larger whole.

  

1947 TIME Magazine cover by Boris Artzybasheff depicting a self-hurting Kālī as a symbol of the partition of IndiaLike Sir John Woodroffe and Georg Feuerstein, many Tantric scholars (as well as sincere practitioners) agree that, no matter how propitious or appalling you describe them, Shiva and Devi are simply recognizable symbols for everyday, abstract (yet tangible) concepts such as perception, knowledge, space-time, causation and the process of liberating oneself from the confines of such things. Shiva, symbolizing pure, absolute consciousness, and Devi, symbolizing the entire content of that consciousness, are ultimately one and the same — totality incarnate, a micro-macro-cosmic amalgamation of all subjects, all objects and all phenomenal relations between the "two." Like man and woman who both share many common, human traits yet at the same time they are still different and, therefore, may also be seen as complementary.[39]

 

Worshippers prescribe various benign and horrific qualities to Devi simply out of practicality. They do this so they may have a variety of symbols to choose from, symbols which they can identify and relate with from the perspective of their own, ever-changing time, place and personal level of unfolding. Just like modern chemists or physicists use a variety of molecular and atomic models to describe what is unperceivable through rudimentary, sensory input, the scientists of ontology and epistemology must do the same. One of the underlying distinctions of Tantra, in comparison to other religions, is that it allows the devotee the liberty to choose from a vast array of complementary symbols and rhetoric that which suits one’s evolving needs and tastes. From an aesthetic standpoint, nothing is interdict and nothing is orthodox. In this sense, the projection of some of Devi’s more gentle qualities onto Kali is not sacrilege and the development of Kali really lies in the practitioner, not the murthi.

 

A TIME Magazine article of October 27, 1947 used Kālī as a symbol and metaphor for the human suffering in British India during its partition that year.[40]

  

In New Age and Neopaganism

 

A Western Shacan representation of KaliAn academic study of Western Kali enthusiasts noted that, "as shown in the histories of all cross-cultural religious transplants, Kali devotionalism in the West must take on its own indigenous forms if it is to adapt to its new environment."[41] The adoption of Kali by the West has raised accusations of cultural misappropriation:

 

"A variety of writers and thinkers [...] have found Kali an exciting figure for reflection and exploration, notably feminists and participants in New Age spirituality who are attracted to goddess worship. [For them], Kali is a symbol of wholeness and healing, associated especially with repressed female power and sexuality. [However, such interpretations often exhibit] confusion and misrepresentation, stemming from a lack of knowledge of Hindu history among these authors, [who only rarely] draw upon materials written by scholars of the Hindu religious tradition. The majority instead rely chiefly on other popular feminist sources, almost none of which base their interpretations on a close reading of Kali's Indian background. [...] The most important issue arising from this discussion – even more important than the question of 'correct' interpretation – concerns the adoption of other people's religious symbols. [...] It is hard to import the worship of a goddess from another culture: religious associations and connotations have to be learned, imagined or intuited when the deep symbolic meanings embedded in the native culture are not available."[42]

 

The man who popularised the religion of Wicca, Gerald Gardner, was reportedly particularly interested in Kali whilst he was in the far east, before returning to England to write his seminal works on Wicca[citation needed

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali

“In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed.”

― Jane Austen, Pride And Prejudice

Photo from a series: «Russian Orthodoxy».

Variations on a theme «...with a film across Russia»

 

Ascension David deserts - Monastery of the Moscow Patriarchate; Located on the right bank of the river Lopasnya (tributary. Oka) on the territory of the ancient parish Hatunskoy near the current village of New Life Chekhov, Moscow Region.

The monastery was founded on May 31 (June 10) 1515 Saint David, what has an entry in the monastery Synodikon 1602.

In troubled times in 1619, the monastery was devastated by Lithuanians and Cossacks led by Hetman Sagaydachnogo. The activities of the monastery was resumed only 1 (10) in April 1625.

In 1915 in Moscow and Serpukhov celebrated the 400th anniversary of the monastery, in which the mark of David desert was assigned the second class.

Finally, the monastery was closed in October 1929. Brethren of the monastery was part of the repressed, part sold.

In 1992, residents of the village of New Life was founded Orthodox community, which was handed over to the Cathedral of the All-Merciful Saviour.

June 1, 1995, the Holy Synod decided to form a monastic community; previously appointed rector Hieromonk Herman (Vyacheslav Khapugin) was elevated to the rank of abbot.

May 24, 1997 were found relics of St.. David (local saint of the Moscow diocese).

July 26, 2005, Archimandrite German (Khapugin) was killed in his cell.

Location: Russia, 142322, Moscow region, Chekhov district, village New Life

  

Camera: Canon PRIMA BF-800 lens Canon 28/5,6

Film: Kodak 200 ISO / film expired for 5 years

Pictured: Ascension David deserts (monastery). The bell tower (built between 1844 and 1845)

Photo taken: 28 March 2015

The original picture + easy perspective correction, without color correction and no other changes

o candle,

light up my room,

light up my heart,

light up my mind,

light up my memories,

as they have been repressed for too long.

 

British postcard in the Filmshots series by Film Weekly. Photo: United Artists. David Manners and Gloria Stuart in Roman Scandals (Frank Tuttle, 1933).

 

Plot: When kind-hearted delivery boy and self-acclaimed authority on ancient Rome Eddie (Eddie Cantor) is thrown out of his home-town of West Rome, Oklahoma by scheming and corrupt politicians, he protests that nothing of the sort would have been allowed to happen in ancient Rome. On his way out of town, he imagines that he is back in Imperial Rome, where he is sold in a slave market to good-natured tribune Josephus (David Manners). Eddie soon discovers that Roman society was just as corrupt as in his own town and when he decides to do something about it, he becomes involved in court intrigue and a murder plot against the evil Emperor Valerius (Edward Arnold) himself.

 

Gloria Frances Stuart (born Gloria Stewart; July 4, 1910 – September 26, 2010) was an American actress, visual artist, and activist. She was initially known for her roles in Pre-Code films, including the horror films The Old Dark House (1932) and The Invisible Man (1933), though she would garner renewed fame later in life for her portrayal of Rose DeWitt Bukater in James Cameron's disaster romantic drama Titanic (1997), the highest-grossing film of all time to that point. Her performance in the film won her a Screen Actors Guild Award and nominations for a Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Gloria Stuart reached the high age of 100 years.

 

David Manners (1900-1998) was a Canadian-born American stage and screen actor, who peaked in Hollywood in the early 1930s in Journey's End, Dracula and other classical horror movies and as leading man opposite popular female stars.

 

Manners was the son of headmaster and author George Moreby Acklom (1870-1959). The family later moved to New York. Manners originally studied forestry at the University of Toronto, but when he found this too boring he became an actor against the wishes of his family. He first appeared in the theater under the direction of George Cukor, among others, before he came to Hollywood at the beginning of the sound film era. He was under contract with Warner Brothers, but also played for other studios. The director James Whale used him in the war film The Journey's End (1930) - for which he was praised by the New York critics. A year later he played Jonathan Harker opposite Bela Lugosi in Tod Browning's Dracula (1931), one of his most famous roles. Manners also worked in two other horror films, 1932 in The Mummy with Boris Karloff and 1934 in The Black Cat, the latter with both Karloff and Lugosi. In addition to the horror films he is best known for today, David Manners appeared regularly as the Leading Man alongside established female stars such as Ruth Chatterton in The Right to Love (1930), Barbara Stanwyck in The Miracle Woman (1931), Kay Francis in Man Wanted (1932), and Elissa Landi in The Warrior's Husband (1933). Manners starred alongside Katharine Hepburn in her film debut in A Bill of Divorcement (1932). In 1933 he was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild.

 

From 1929 until their divorce in 1931, David Manners was married to Suzanne Bushnell. From 1948 until his death in 1978 he lived with the writer Bill Mercer in Pacific Palisades; the two ran an art gallery. In 1936 Manners suddenly withdrew from the film business and lived alone on a ranch in the Mojave Desert near Victorville, California, until his relationship with Mercer began. To this day there is speculation about the number of actors and creatives who had to hide their homosexuality for their careers and / or under pressure from the Hollywood Studios. The main reason for Manner's sudden withdrawal seems to have been his repressed feelings. In his loneliness he dealt with spiritual and religious topics and wrote two books. Occasionally he still appeared as a theater actor until the 1950s. Mention should be made of his appearance in Maxwell Anderson's Truckline Cafe next to a then unknown Marlon Brando in 1946. Brando stated several times that he owed his career to the support of Manners.

 

David Manners is also said to have received one of the first 100 stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, which was later removed for unknown reasons. However, this urban legend has now been disproved: he never got one. David Manners died at the old age of 98 in a retirement home where he had spent the last two years of his life.

 

Sources: English and French Wikipedia, IMDB.

still being repressed.

Dutch postcard. Photo: Rank. Anne Heywood in Violent Playground (Basil Dearden, 1958). Sent by mail in 1959.

 

British film actress Anne Heywood (1931) started her career as Miss Great Britain in 1950. In the mid-1950s, she began to play supporting roles as the ‘nice girl’ for Rank. Gradually she evolved into a leading lady, best known for her dramatic roles in the pioneer lesbian drama The Fox (1967) and La monaca di Monza/The Nun of Monza (1969).

 

Anne Heywood was born as Violet Joan Pretty in Handsworth (now Birmingham), England in 1932. She was one of seven children. Her father, Harold Pretty, was a former orchestral violinist, turned factory worker. Her mother died when Violet was just 13. Violet had to leave school at 14 to look after the younger members of her family. This frustrated her wish to go to art school. Instead, she joined in 1947 the Highbury Little Theatre in Sutton Coldfield near Birmingham and stayed there for two years gaining stage experience. At only 17, the knockout brunette won the National Bathing Beauty Contest in 1950, later renamed as the Miss Great Britain contest. Her prizes were £1000 and a silver rose bowl. The following year she made her film debut as a beauty contestant in the comedy Lady Godiva Rides Again (Frank Launder, 1951) with Dennis Price. That year she also became the personal assistant of Carroll Levis, a talent spotter on a radio show, which toured along the main theatres of Great Britain. She stayed at the show for four years and even appeared three times with the show on television. Heywood attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. While playing the principal boy in Aladdin at the Chelsea Palace, she was spotted by a talent scout for the Rank Organisation. In 1956, she signed a seven-year contract and her name was changed to Anne Heywood. According to Glamour Girls at the Silver Screen, she later recalled: “I always hated my name. It sounded unreal.” For Rank, she appeared in supporting roles as the 'nice girl'. Her films included the comedy Doctor at Large (Ralph Thomas, 1957) starring Dirk Bogarde, the crime drama Violent Playground (Basil Dearden, 1958) opposite Stanley Baker, and the adventure Dangerous Exile (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1958) starring Louis Jourdan. Gradually Heywood evolved into a leading lady.

 

Anne Heywood met producer Raymond Stross in 1959 at the set of A Terrible Beauty/The Night Fighters (Tay Garnett, 1960) starring Robert Mitchum. A year later they married in Zurich, Switzerland. He was 16 years her senior. Stross started to reshape her image with such sexy, offbeat dramas as The Very Edge (Cyril Frankel, 1963) with Richard Todd, and 90 Degrees in the Shade (Jiri Weiss, 1965). At the Berlin Film Festival, the latter won the International Critics' Prize. Her breakthrough role was Ellen March in The Fox (Mark Rydell, 1967), co-starring Sandy Dennis. This film adaptation of a D. H. Lawrence novella caused controversy at the time due to its lesbian theme. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb on Heywood and Dennis: “the two were quite believable as an unhappy, isolated couple whose relationship is irreparably shattered by the appearance of a handsome stranger (Keir Dullea). At the height of the movie's publicity, Playboy magazine revealed a ‘pictorial essay’ just prior to its 1967 release with Anne in a nude and auto-erotic spread.” Heywood was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. The Fox, a Canadian film, did win the Best Foreign Film Golden Globe. Heywood did not win. The Fox is now respected as a pioneer, ground-breaking lesbian film. Heywood’s next film was La monaca di Monza/The Nun of Monza (Eriprando Visconti, 1969) with Hardy Krüger. This controversial drama tells the tale of how a 17th-century Italian nun's long-repressed sexual passion is awakened when a handsome nobleman rapes and impregnates her. Later she is captured and captured and given a horrible life sentence. This ‘true story’ of Sister Virginia, the nun of Monza, was shot in a fifteenth-century castle 27 miles north of Rome and in medieval churches in Lombardy, where the original story took place. This quite nasty and exploitative drama grossed more than $1,000,000 in its initial run in Italy and paid back its negative cost in three weeks. The box office success led to an Italian sub-genre of ‘nunsploitation’ films in the 1970s.

 

Anne Heywood and Raymond Stross moved from Switzerland to the US. Despite the Golden Globe nomination and the Playboy spread, Heywood never endeared herself to American filmgoers. Her Hollywood productions as the caper Midas Run (Alf Kjellin, 1969) with Fred Astaire, and the action drama The Chairman (J. Lee Thompson, 1969) with Gregory Peck were no successes. She seemed drawn toward highly troubled, flawed characters, like in I Want What I Want (John Dexter, 1972) and Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (Marvin J. Chomsky, 1979). In the 1970s, she also appeared in several Italian films, including the Giallo L'assassino... è al telefono/The Killer Is on the Phone (Alberto De Martino, 1972) with Telly Savalas and Willeke van Ammelrooy, the nunsploitation Le monache di Sant'Arcangelo/The Nun & The Devil (Domenico Paolella, 1973) with Ornella Muti, and the romantic drama La prima volta sull'erba/Love Under the Elms (Gianluigi Calderone, 1975). Her career declined in the 1980s. Her final feature was What Waits Below (Don Sharp, 1985). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “a goofy fantasy filmed on the cheap by the ever-canny Don Sharp. The story involves a team of anthropologists and military men who busy themselves exploring a serpentine system of subterranean caves. They discover a lost race of Albinos, which wreaks havoc upon the surface-dwelling humans. The British actor Robert Powell and Timothy Bottoms star. According to some sources, Sharp and co. approached the production with extreme carelessness; thanks to an unfortunate accident, a large percentage of the cast and crew were almost fatally poisoned by carbon monoxide in the caves where the movie was filmed.” Heywood's penultimate role was as Manon Brevard Marcel on the American TV series The Equalizer (1988), starring Edward Woodward. In 1988 her husband Raymond Stross died. The following year she was seen in a final television movie, Memories of Manon (Tony Wharmby, 1989) based on the character from The Equalizer. After this role, she retired. She remarried George Danzig Druke, a former New York Assistant Attorney General. Anne Heywood Druke resides with her husband in Beverly Hills, USA. She has one son, Mark Stross (1963), with Raymond Stross.

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

www.delazy.com/

 

"South African Toya Delazy is a bold and visionary artist offering a true 21st-century sound. Delazy is known as the creator of Afrorave, a genre infusing techno and drum&bass with Zulu lyricism. Her music draws from her roots in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, as well as the sonic identity of her adopted hometown, London.

 

Fearless, outspoken and passionate about music, Delazy is an icon for the oppressed and repressed, taking a strong stand for issues such as human rights, sexual rights and cultural diversity. Also a UNICEF ambassador, Delazy encourages everyone of African origin to unapologetically express themselves and their cultural identity."

maailmakylassa.fi/en/event/toya-delazy-rsa-uk/

 

Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no 1498. Photo: Rank. Publicity still for Floods of Fear (Charles Crichton, 1958).

 

British film actress Anne Heywood (1931) started her career as Miss Great Britain in 1950. In the mid-1950s, she began to play supporting roles as the ‘nice girl’ for Rank. Gradually she evolved into a leading lady, best known for her dramatic roles in the pioneer lesbian drama The Fox (1967) and La monaca di Monza/The Nun of Monza (1969).

 

Anne Heywood was born as Violet Joan Pretty in Handsworth (now Birmingham), England in 1932. She was one of the seven children. Her father, Harold Pretty, was a former orchestral violinist, turned factory worker. Her mother died when Violet was just 13. She had to leave school at fourteen to look after the younger members of her family. This frustrated her wish to go to art school. Instead, she joined in 1947 the Highbury Little Theatre in Sutton Coldfield near Birmingham and stayed there for two years gaining stage experience. At only 17, the knockout brunette won the National Bathing Beauty Contest in 1950, later renamed as the Miss Great Britain contest. Her prizes were £1000 and a silver rose bowl. The following year she made her film debut as a beauty contestant in the comedy Lady Godiva Rides Again (1951, Frank Launder) with Dennis Price. That year she also became the personal assistant of Carroll Levis, a talent spotter on a radio show, which toured along the main theatres of Great Britain. She stayed at the show for four years and even appeared three times with the show on television. Heywood attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. While playing the principal boy in Aladdin at the Chelsea Palace, she was spotted by a talent scout for the Rank Organization. In 1956, she signed a seven-year contract and her name was changed to Anne Heywood. According to Glamour Girls at the Silver Screen, she later recalled: “I always hated my name. It sounded unreal.” For Rank, she appeared in supporting roles as the 'nice girl'. Her films included the comedy Doctor at Large (1957, Ralph Thomas) starring Dirk Bogarde, the crime drama Violent Playground (1958, Basil Dearden) opposite Stanley Baxter, and the adventure Dangerous Exile (1958, Brian Desmond Hurst) starring Louis Jourdan. Gradually Heywood evolved into a leading lady.

 

Anne Heywood met in 1959 producer Raymond Stross at the set of A Terrible Beauty/The Night Fighters (1960, Tay Garnett) starring Robert Mitchum. A year later they married in Zurich, Switzerland. He was 16 years her senior. Stross started to reshape her image with such sexy, offbeat dramas as The Very Edge (1963, Cyril Frankel) with Richard Todd, and 90 Degrees in the Shade (1965, Jiri Weiss). At the Berlin Film Festival, the latter won the International Critics' Prize. Her breakthrough role was Ellen March in The Fox (1967, Mark Rydell), co-starring Sandy Dennis. This film adaptation of a D. H. Lawrence novel caused controversy at the time due to its lesbian theme. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb on Heywood and Dennis: “the two were quite believable as an unhappy, isolated couple whose relationship is irreparably shattered by the appearance of a handsome stranger (Keir Dullea). At the height of the movie's publicity, Playboy magazine revealed a ‘pictorial essay’ just prior to its 1967 release with Anne in a nude and auto-erotic spread.” Heywood was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. The Fox, a Canadian film, did win the ‘Best Foreign Film Golden Globe. Heywood did not. The Fox is now respected as a pioneer, ground-breaking lesbian film. Heywood’s next film was La monaca di Monza/The Nun of Monza (1969, Eriprando Visconti) with Hardy Krüger. This controversial drama tells the tale of how a 17th-century Italian nun's long-repressed sexual passion is awakened when a handsome nobleman rapes and impregnates her. Later she is captured and captured and given a horrible life sentence. This ‘true story’ of Sister Virginia, the nun of Monza, was shot in a fifteenth-century castle 27 miles north of Rome and in medieval churches in Lombardy, where the original story took place. The nasty exploitative drama grossed more than $1,000,000 in its initial run in Italy and paid back its negative cost in three weeks. The box office success lead to an Italian subgenre of ‘nunsploitation’ films in the 1970s.

 

Anne Heywood and Raymond Stross moved from Switzerland to the US. Despite the Golden Globe nomination and the Playboy spread, Heywood never endeared herself to American filmgoers. Such Hollywood productions as the caper Midas Run (1969, Alf Kjellin) with Fred Astaire, and the action drama The Chairman (1969, J. Lee Thompson) with Gregory Peck were no successes. She seemed drawn toward highly troubled, flawed characters, like in I Want What I Want (1972, John Dexter) and Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (1979, Marvin J. Chomsky). In the 1970s, she also appeared in several Italian films, including the Giallo L'assassino... è al telefono/The Killer Is on the Phone (1972, Alberto De Martino) with Telly Savalas and Willeke van Ammelrooy, the nunsploitation Le monache di Sant'Arcangelo/The Nun & The Devil (1973, Domenico Paolella) with Ornella Muti, and the romantic drama La prima volta sull'erba/Love Under the Elms (1975, Gianluigi Calderone). Her career declined in the 1980s. Her final feature was What Waits Below (1985, Don Sharp. Hal Erickson at IMDb: “a goofy fantasy filmed on the cheap by the ever-canny Don Sharp. The story involves a team of anthropologists and military men who busy themselves exploring a serpentine system of subterranean caves. They discover of a lost race of Albinos, which wreaks havoc upon the surface-dwelling humans. The British actor Robert Powell and Timothy Bottoms star. According to some sources, Sharp and co. approached the production with extreme carelessness; thanks to an unfortunate accident, a large percentage of the cast and crew were almost fatally poisoned by carbon monoxide in the caves where the movie was filmed.” Her penultimate role was as Manon Brevard Marcel on the American TV series The Equalizer (1988), starring Edward Woodward. In 1988 her husband Raymond Stross died. The following year she appeared in a final television movie, Memories of Manon (1989, Tony Wharmby) based on the character from The Equalizer. After this role, she retired. She remarried to George Danzig Druke, a former New York Assistant Attorney General. Anne Heywood Druke resides with her husband in Beverly Hills, USA. She has one son, Mark (1963), with Raymond Stross.

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Edvard Munch (Norwegian 1863-1944)

Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway.

 

======================================================

Edvard Munch is best known as being a Norwegian born, expressionist painter, and printer. In the late 20th century, he played a great role in German expressionism, and the art form that later followed; namely because of the strong mental anguish that was displayed in many of the pieces that he created.

  

Edvard Munch was born in Norway in 1863, and was raised in Christiania (known as Oslo today). He was related to famous painters and artists in their own right, Jacob Munch (painter), and Peter Munch (historian).

  

Only a few years after he was born, Edvard Munch's mother died of tuberculosis in 1868, and he was raised by his father.

  

Edvard's father suffered of mental illness, and this played a role in the way he and his siblings were raised. Their father raised them with the fears of deep seated issues, which is part of the reason why the work of Edvard Munch took a deeper tone, and why the artist was known to have so many repressed emotions as he grew up.

  

In 1885, Edvard Munch traveled to Paris, and was extremely influenced by Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, and followed by the post-impressionism artists Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Paul Gauguin. In fact, the main style of Munch's work is post-impressionism, and focused on this style.

  

From about 1892, to 1908, Munch split most of his time between Paris and Berlin; it was in 1909 that he decided to return to his hometown, and go back to Norway.

  

During this period, much of the work that was created by Edvard Munch depicted his interest in nature, and it was also noted that the tones and colors that he used in these pieces, did add more color, and seemed a bit more cheerful, than most of the previous works he had created in years past.

  

The pessimistic under toning which was quite prominent in much of his earlier works, had faded quite a bit, and it seems he took more of a colorful, playful, and fun tone with the pieces that he was creating, as opposed to the dark and somber style which he tended to work with earlier on during the course of his career.

  

From this period, up to his death, Edvard Munch remained in Norway, and much of his work that was created from this period on, seemed to take on the similar, colorful approach which he had adopted, since returning home in 1909.

  

A majority of the works which Edvard Munch created, were referred to as the style known as symbolism. This is mainly because of the fact that the the paintings he made focused on the internal view of the objects, as opposed to the exterior, and what the eye could see.

  

Symbolist painters believed that art should reflect an emotion or idea rather than represent the natural world in the objective, quasi-scientific manner embodied by Realism and Impressionism. In painting, Symbolism represents a synthesis of form and feeling, of reality and the artist's inner subjectivity.

  

Many of Munch's works depict life and death scenes, love and terror, and the feeling of loneliness was often a feeling which viewers would note that his work patterns focused on.

  

These emotions were depicted by the contrasting lines, the darker colors, blocks of color, somber tones, and a concise and exaggerated form, which depicted the darker side of the art which he was designing.

  

Munch is often and rightly compared with Van Gogh, who was one of the first artists to paint what the French artist called "the mysterious centers of the mind."

  

But perhaps a more overreaching influence was Sigmund Freud, a very close contemporary. Freud explained much human behavior by relating it to childhood experiences.

  

Munch saw his mother die of tuberculosis when he was 5, and his sister Sophie die of the same disease when he was 14. Munch gives the By the Death Bed and Death in the Sickroom a universal cast by not specifically depicting what he had witnessed. Several versions of The Sick Child are surely his sister.

  

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.”- Edvard Munch

  

Edvard Munch passed away in 1944, in a small town which was just outside of his home town in Oslo.

  

Upon his death, the works which he had created, were not given to family, but they were instead donated to the Norwegian government, and were placed in museums, in shows, and in various local public buildings in Norway.

  

In fact, after his death, more than 1000 paintings which Edvard Munch had created were donated to the government. In addition to the paintings that he had created during the course of his career, all other art forms he created were also donated to the government.

  

A total of 15,400 prints were donated, 4500 drawings and water color art was donated, and six sculptures which Edvard Munch had created, were all turned over to the Oslo government, and were used as display pieces in many locations.

  

Due to the fact that all of this work which Edvard Munch had created, was donated to the Norwegian government, the country decided to build the Munch Museum of Art.

  

This was done to commemorate his work, his life, and the generosity which he showed, in passing his art work over to the government, so that it could be enjoyed by the general public, rather than be kept locked up by the family.

  

Although the art which he did donate, was spread throughout a number of museums and art exhibits, a majority of them were kept in Oslo.

  

And, most of the works which were donated by Munch, were placed in the Munch Museum of Art, to commemorate the work he did, as well as the unique style, and the distinct movements which he introduced to the world, through the creations which he had crafted.

  

www.edvardmunch.org

Minha textura: www.flickr.com/photos/deborafotos/8411363545/

.

SAUDADE is a Portuguese word that has no direct translation in English. It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing will never return. A stronger form of saudade may be felt towards people and things whose whereabouts are unknown, such as a lost lover, or a family member who has gone missing.

Saudade was once described as "the love that remains" after someone is gone. Saudade is the recollection of feelings, experiences, places or events that once brought excitement, pleasure, well-being, which now triggers the senses and makes one live again. It can be described as an emptiness, like someone (e.g., one's children, parents, sibling, grandparents, friends, pets) or something (e.g., places, things one used to do in childhood, or other activities performed in the past) should be there in a particular moment is missing, and the individual feels this absence. In Portuguese, 'tenho saudades tuas', translates as 'I have saudade of you' meaning 'I miss you', but carries a much stronger tone. In fact, one can have 'saudade' of someone whom one is with, but have some feeling of loss towards the past or the future.

WIKIPEDIA

the chilean news media keeps repeating over and over that the student's social movement is filled with "terrorists" and "antisocials" that want to destroy the city. in fact, this "terrorists" are just young people asking for an oportunity to study... and being repressed over and over by the police and the State.

 

so it brings the obvious question: who's the terrorist in here?

Belgian postcard. Photo: Eagle Lion.

 

Red headed Moira Shearer (1926-2006) was a luminous star of the British ballet. She became an international film idol with her unforgettable debut as the young ballerina Vicky in The Red Shoes (1948), a classic of the British cinema and probably the most popular film about ballet ever.

 

Moira Shearer King was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1926. She was the daughter of actor Harold V. King. In 1931 her family moved to Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. Her mother pushed her into ballet and Moira received her first dancing training under a former pupil of Enrico Cecchetti. She returned to Britain in 1936 and trained with Flora Fairbairn in London for a few months before she was accepted as a pupil by the Russian teacher Nicholas Legat. After three years with Legat, she joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet School. However, after the outbreak of the World War II, her parents took her to live in Scotland. The Scottish beauty with her flaming red hair made her debut with Mona Inglesby's International Ballet in 1941 before moving on to the famous Sadler's Wells in 1942. There she was second only to the world renowned prima ballerina, Margot Fonteyn. From 1942 to 1952 Shearer danced all the major classic roles and a full repertoire of revivals and new ballets. She came to international attention for her first film role as the doomed heroine in the ballet-themed film The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948). The film employs the story within a story device. Victoria Page (Shearer), a young, unknown dancer from an aristocratic background meets at a party Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), the ruthless but charismatic impresario of the Ballet Lermontov. He invites her to join his famous ballet company. She becomes the lead dancer in a new ballet called The Red Shoes, itself based on the fairy tale The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen. Vicky is torn between the powerful impresario and a struggling composer (Marius Goring) whom she loves. The film got rave reviews and became one of the highest earning British films of all time. Shearer’s role and the film were so powerful that although she went on to star in other films, she is primarily known for playing ‘Vicky.’ She toured the United States with the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1949 and in 1950/51. Moira Shearer’s second film was the magnificent spectacle The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1951), an adaptation of Jacques Offenbach's final opera, Les contes d'Hoffmann. The film co-starred Robert Helpmann and Léonide Massine. It is not just a film of a staged opera, but a true cinematic opera that makes use of film techniques not available in an opera house. Powell and Pressburger were nominated for the Grand Prize of the 1951 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Exceptional Prize. They also won the Silver Bear award for Best Musical at the 1st Berlin International Film Festival.

 

In 1953, a combination of ill-health, injury and her wish to make a name for herself as an actress made Moira Shearer decide to retire from the ballet stage at age 27. She co-starred with James Mason in a segment of The Story of Three Loves (Vincente Minnelli, Gottfried Reinhardt, 1953), a romantic anthology film made by MGM. She appeared as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the 1954 Edinburgh Festival. The following year she starred in the British film comedy The Man Who Loved Redheads (Harold French, 1955) based on the play Who is Sylvia? by Terence Rattigan. She toured as Sally Bowles in the play I am a Camera in 1955 and appeared at the Bristol Old Vic as G.B. Shaw’s Major Barbara in 1956. Shearer worked again for Powell on the controversial film Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960) about a sexually repressed serial killer (Karlheinz Böhm) who murders women and films their expressions of terror and dying gasps on film. Its controversial subject and the extremely harsh reception by critics effectively destroyed Powell's career as a director. However, it attracted a cult following, and in later years, it has been re-evaluated and is now considered a masterpiece. A year later she appeared in the musical 1-2-3-4 ou Les Collants noirs/Black Tights (Terence Young, 1961) with Zizi Jeanmaire and Cyd Charisse. It would be Shearer’s last film. Shearer was on the BBC's General Advisory Council from 1970 to 1977 and the Scottish Arts Council from 1971 to 1973. In 1972, she was chosen by the BBC to present the Eurovision Song Contest when it was staged in Edinburgh. In 1977 she played Madame Ranevsky in Anton Chekhov's Cherry Orchard at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh and, in 1978, was Judith Bliss in Noel Coward's Hay Fever. She wrote two books, biographies of the choreographer George Balanchine and the actress Ellen Terry, and a column for The Daily Telegraph. She also gave talks on ballet worldwide. The choreographer Gillian Lynne persuaded her to return to ballet to play the mother of artist L. S. Lowry (Christopher Gable) in the ballet film A Simple Man (1987, Gillian Lynne) for the BBC. In 1950, Moira Shearer had married writer and broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy. The couple had a son, Alastair, and three daughters, Ailsa, Rachel and Fiona. In 2006, Moira Shearer died of natural causes in Oxford, England at the age of 80

 

Sources: Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times), Steve Crook (IMDb), The Telegraph, Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

BEST seen in LARGE size.

 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je8MXiwmNIk

  

THE RETURN OF THE REPRESSED: "According to Freud, the history of man is the history of his repression. Culture constrains not only his societal but also his biological existence, not only parts of the human being but his instinctual structure itself. However, such constraint is the very precondition of progress. Left free to pursue their natural objectives, the basic instincts of man would be incompatible with all lasting association and preservation: they would destroy even where they unite. (...) The return of the repressed makes up the tabooed and subterranean history of civilization. And the exploration of this history reveals not only the secret of the individual but also that of civilization. Freud’s individual psychology is in its very essence social psychology. Repression is a historical phenomenon. The effective subjugation of the instincts to repressive controls is imposed not by nature but by man. The primal father, as the archetype of domination, initiates the chain reaction of enslavement, rebellion, and reinforced domination which marks the history of civilization." (H. MARCUSE)

www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/eros-civ...

 

THE REPTILIAN BRAIN: "The reptilian complex, also known as the R-complex or "reptilian brain", was the name MacLean gave to the basal ganglia, structures derived from the floor of the forebrain during development. The term derives from the fact that comparative neuroanatomists once believed that the forebrains of reptiles and birds were dominated by these structures. MacLean contended that the reptilian complex was responsible for species typical instinctual behaviors involved in aggression, dominance, territoriality, and ritual displays."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXyp9p1UDPg

 

THE DEVIL: The 15th major arcanum of the TAROT decks. "Though many decks portray a stereotypical Satan figure for this card, it is more accurately represented by our bondage to material things rather than by any evil persona. It also indicates an obsession or addiction to fulfilling our own earthly base desires. Should the Devil represent a person, it will most likely be one of money and power, one who is persuasive, aggressive, and controlling.

In Jungian terms, he is The Shadow: all the repressed, unmentioned or unmentionable desires that lurk beneath."

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_(Tarot_card)

  

Skin (LIZARD), hat (CHART MAN) and cravat (CHART MAN) created by CapCat Ragu and Meilo Minotaur

 

Eyes: Theoretical Afterthought

 

Second Life - Menagerie Island

Grant Wood American 1891 – 1942

Drawings for Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street , 1936-7

 

TOP ROW, FROM LEFT TO RIGHT:

 

The Perfectionist , 1936

Crayon, graphite, ink, and opaque watercolor on paper

Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco; gift of Mr. and Mrs. John D. Rockefeller 3rd 1979.7.106

 

Main Street Mansion , 1936

Pencil, chalk, and charcoal on paper

Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Museum purchase 1995.14

 

The Radical , 1936

Graphite, colored pencil, chalk, and ink on paper

Private collection, courtesy Northeast Auctions

 

The Good Influence , 1936

Carbon pencil, India Ink, and gouache on paper

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Collections Fund 1952.6.2

 

BOTTOM ROW, LEFT TO RIGHT

 

The Practical Idealist , 1936

Charcoal, pencil, and chalk on paper

Collection of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson

 

Booster , 1936

Charcoal, pencil, and chalk on paper

Figge Art Museum, Davenport, Iowa, City of Davenport Art Collection; museum purchase with funds provided by the Friends of Art Acquisition Fund and by Mr. and Mrs Morris Geifman 1993.3

 

General Practitioner , 1936

Pencil, colored pencil, and chalk on paper

Private collection

 

Village Slums , 1936-37

Charcoal, pencil, and chalk on paper

Private Collection

 

The Sentimental Yearner , 1936

Graphite, Conté crayon, and gouache on paper

Minneapolis Institute of Art; gift of Mr. Alan Goldstein 80.91

 

FROM THE SHOW AT The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City.

  

Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables

Grant Wood's American Gothic—the double portrait of a pitchfork-wielding farmer and a woman commonly presumed to be his wife—is perhaps the most recognizable painting in 20th century American art, an indelible icon of Americana, and certainly Wood's most famous artwork. But Wood's career consists of far more than one single painting. Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables brings together the full range of his art, from his early Arts and Crafts decorative objects and Impressionist oils through his mature paintings, murals, and book illustrations. The exhibition reveals a complex, sophisticated artist whose image as a farmer-painter was as mythical as the fables he depicted in his art. Wood sought pictorially to fashion a world of harmony and prosperity that would answer America's need for reassurance at a time of economic and social upheaval occasioned by the Depression. Yet underneath its bucolic exterior, his art reflects the anxiety of being an artist and a deeply repressed homosexual in the Midwest in the 1930s. By depicting his subconscious anxieties through populist images of rural America, Wood crafted images that speak both to American identity and to the estrangement and isolation of modern life.

 

This exhibition is organized by Barbara Haskell, Curator, with Sarah Humphreville, Senior Curatorial Assistant.

 

Grant Wood: American Gothic and Other Fables is sponsored by Bank of America.

 

From the web site:

www.whitney.org/Exhibitions/GrantWood

 

Interested in the Book?

www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=Se...

  

www.samkharadze.inf.ge

 

Strasbourg

France.

November 2010

  

Strasbourg (French pronunciation: [stʁazbuʁ]; Lower Alsatian: Strossburi, [ˈʃd̥rɔːsb̥uri]; German: Straßburg, [ˈʃtʁaːsbʊɐ̯k]) is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in north-eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin department. In 2006, the city proper had 272,975 inhabitants and its urban community 467,375 inhabitants. With 638,670 inhabitants in 2006, Strasbourg's metropolitan area ("aire urbaine") (only the part of the metropolitan area on French territory) is the ninth largest in France. The transnational Eurodistrict Strasbourg-Ortenau has a population of 884,988 inhabitants.

 

Strasbourg is the seat of several European institutions such as the Council of Europe (with its European Court of Human Rights, its European Directorate for the Quality of Medicines and its European Audiovisual Observatory) and the Eurocorps as well as the European Parliament and the European Ombudsman of the European Union. The city is the seat of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine.

 

Strasbourg's historic city centre, the Grande Île ("Grand Island"), was classified a World Heritage site by UNESCO in 1988, the first time such an honor was placed on an entire city centre. Strasbourg is fused into the Franco-German culture and although violently disputed throughout history, has been a bridge of unity between France and Germany for centuries, especially through the University of Strasbourg, currently the largest in France, and the co-existence of Catholic and Protestant culture.

 

Economically, Strasbourg is an important centre of manufacturing and engineering, as well as of road, rail, and river communications. The port of Strasbourg is the second largest on the Rhine after Duisburg, Germany. In terms of city rankings, Strasbourg has been ranked 3rd in France and 18th globally for innovation. The city has been largely omitted from top rankings based on quality of living.

  

Geography and climate

Strasbourg is situated on the Ill River, where it flows into the Rhine on the border with Germany, across from the German town Kehl. The city is situated in the Upper Rhine Plain, approximately 20 km (12 mi) east of the Vosges Mountains and 25 km (16 mi) west of the Black Forest. Winds coming from either direction being often deflected by these natural barriers, the average annual precipitation is low[9] and the perceived summer temperatures can be inordinately high. The defective natural ventilation also makes Strasbourg one of the most atmospherically polluted cities of France,[10][11] although the progressive disappearance of heavy industry on both banks of the Rhine, as well as effective measures of traffic regulation in and around the city are showing encouraging results.[12] The Grand contournement ouest (GCO) project, nurtured since 1999, plans the construction of a 24 km (15 mi) long highway connection between the junctions of the A 4 and the A 35 autoroutes in the north and of the A4 and the A352 and A35 autoroutes in the south, meant to divest another significant portion of motorized traffic from the unité urbaine.[13]

  

After World War I and the abdication of the German Emperor, Alsace-Lorraine declared itself an independent Republic, but was occupied by French troops within a few days. On 11 November 1918 (Armistice Day), communist insurgents proclaimed a "soviet government" in Strasbourg, following the example of Kurt Eisner in Munich as well as other German towns. The insurgency was brutally repressed on 22 November by troops commanded by French general Henri Gouraud; a major street of the city now bears the name of that date (Rue du 22 Novembre).[26][27] In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles reattributed the city to France. In accordance with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's "Fourteen Points", the return of the city to France was carried out without a referendum. The date of the assignment was retroactively established on Armistice Day. It is doubtful whether a referendum among the citizens of Strasbourg would have been in France's favor, because the political parties that strove for an autonomy of Alsace, or a connection to France, had achieved only small numbers of votes in the last Reichstag elections before the War.[28]

 

In 1920, Strasbourg became the seat of the Central Commission for Navigation on the Rhine, previously located in Mannheim, one of the oldest European institutions. It moved into the former Imperial Palace.

 

When the Maginot Line was built, the Sous-secteur fortifié de Strasbourg (fortified sub-sector of Strasbourg) was laid out on the city's territory as a part of the Secteur fortifié du Bas-Rhin, one of the sections of the Line. Blockhouses and casemates were built along the Grand Canal d'Alsace and the Rhine in the Robertsau forest and the port.[29]

 

Between the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 and the Anglo-French declaration of War against the German Reich on 3 September 1939, the entire city (a total of 120 000 people) was evacuated, like other border towns as well. Until the arrival of the Wehrmacht troops mid-June 1940, the city was, for ten months, completely empty, with the exception of the garrisoned soldiers. The Jews of Strasbourg had been evacuated to Périgueux and Limoges, the University had been evacuated to Clermont-Ferrand.

 

After the ceasefire following the Fall of France in June 1940, Alsace was annexed to Germany and a rigorous policy of Germanization was imposed upon it by the Gauleiter Robert Heinrich Wagner. When, in July 1940, the first evacuees were allowed to return, only residents of Alsatian origin were admitted. The last Jews were expelled on 15 July 1940 and the main synagogue, a huge Romanesque revival building that had been a major architectural landmark with its 54-metre-high dome since its completion in 1897, was set ablaze, then razed.[30] From 1943 the city was bombarded by Allied aircraft. While the First World War had not notably damaged the city, Anglo-American bombing caused extensive destruction in raids of which at least one was allegedly carried out by mistake.[31] In August 1944, several buildings in the Old Town were damaged by bombs, particularly the Palais Rohan, the Old Customs House (Ancienne Douane) and the Cathedral.[32] On 23 November 1944, the city was officially liberated by the 2nd French Armored Division under General Leclerc. In 1947, a fire broke out in the Musée des Beaux-Arts and devastated a significant part of the collections. This fire was an indirect consequence of the bombing raids of 1944: because of the destructions inflicted on the Palais Rohan, humidity had infiltrated the building, and moisture had to be fought. This was done with welding torches, and a bad handling of these caused the fire.[33]

 

In the 1950s and 1960s the city was enriched by new residential areas meant to solve both the problem of housing shortage due to war damage, as well as the strong growth of population due to baby boom and immigration from North Africa: Cité Rotterdam in the North-East, Quartier de l'Esplanade in the South-East, Hautepierre in the North-West. Since 1995 and until 2010, in the South of Hautepierre, a new district is being built in the same vein, the Quartier des Poteries.

 

In 1949, the city was chosen to be the seat of the Council of Europe with its European Court of Human Rights and European Pharmacopoeia. Since 1952, the European Parliament has met in Strasbourg, which was formally designated its official 'seat' at the Edinburgh meeting of the European Council of EU heads of state and government in December 1992. (This position was reconfirmed and given treaty status in the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam). However, only the (four-day) plenary sessions of the Parliament are held in Strasbourg each month, with all other business being conducted in Brussels and Luxembourg. Those sessions take place in the Immeuble Louise Weiss, inaugurated in 1999, which houses the largest parliamentary assembly room in Europe and of any democratic institution in the world. Before that, the EP sessions had to take place in the main Council of Europe building, the Palace of Europe, whose unusual inner architecture had become a familiar sight to European TV audiences.[34] In 1992, Strasbourg became the seat of the Franco-German TV channel and movie-production society Arte.

 

In 2000, an Islamist plot to blow up the cathedral was prevented by German authorities.

 

On 6 July 2001, during an open-air concert in the Parc de Pourtalès, a single falling Platanus tree killed thirteen people and injured 97. On 27 March 2007, the city was found guilty of neglect over the accident and fined € 150,000.[35]

 

In 2006, after a long and careful restoration, the inner decoration of the Aubette, made in the 1920s by Hans Arp, Theo van Doesburg, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp and destroyed in the 1930s, was made accessible to the public again. The work of the three artists had been called "the Sistine Chapel of abstract art".

During the Middle Ages, the town of Soria in Castille was home to several orders having to do with the Holy Land. Among them were the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John of Jerusalem, who were given a little church by the side of River Duero, outside of the town itself so that they could build a hospital and even a leprosy —not too far from the main road, yet out of the way to avoid the plague spreading. The church was, and still is, pretty nondescript, and can still be seen as such today. The Hospitallers re-did the vaulting of the single apse but, more spectacularly, built two astounding ciboria, those Oriental canopies of stone that cover and protect the altars. Two new altars were built underneath them, so that the knights/monks could perform their traditional rites and follow their own early Syrian church-inspired liturgy.

 

Truly, stepping inside that church and seeing those is like being transported to the Mediæval Orient!

 

Now, trying to produce decent photography of monuments is never easy, but when busload upon busload of tourists come into play, it borders on impossible! Furthermore, and this is the only time it ever happened to me in Spain (contrary to Italy, alas!), I was ordered by some repressed prison warden (judging by her amiability and kindness) posing as the welcome (very much so!) person for the monument, not to use the tripod to take pictures! And why, pray? Because that’s the way it is! Unbelievable. As I am cleverer than she was, I managed to beat the system and snap the first two or three exposures on the tripod at ISO 64, but for the rest, I had to bump up the ISO to 500 to accommodate whatever little light there was. Sorry for the resulting loss of quality.

 

Besides that amazingly “orientalized” church, the cloister is the main reason people come visit this ancient place. Art historians reckon it was built around 1200 by mudéjar architects and masons, maybe from Toledo. It is an absolutely unique achievement, unlike anything else I had seen before, and I’m probably not about to see the like of it anytime soon!

 

These are the first surprises that greet you in this unique cloister: first, some columns do not sit on a low wall as is customary, but go all the way to the ground, allowing unrestrained passage between the gallery and the space inside the cloister; and second, the corners are not right angles but cut at 45-degree obliques, and they are not marked by massive sculpted pillars but by archways with horseshoe shapes that definitely come from the Orient...

When I was a art school people were obsessed with phallic symbols it would seem, even in the Swinging Sixties feelings of sexuality were repressed and we had to resort to Symbolism to get our kicks, indeed we were warned that looking at too many tall chimneys could make you go blind. My answer to that of course is to not do it looking into the sun. Nevertheless it must have rubbed off on me as Jojo quite likes having them around telling me how sexy I look. Interestingly this moss-stick for some reason always becomes erect when I enter the bedroom, I think it loves the way it gets stroked and then afterwards it gets splashed when the big waxy leaves are sponged down helping to keep the plant it supports healthy and vibrant. It told me it has close relatives in Brazil which shared a bedroom with some of the cutest most greedy trans porn stars and as you can imagine had plenty a story to tell as there they get plenty of the real thing. As for me I will carry on dusting but wearing my best Karen Millen dress as even the lazy spider plant crawls out of it's pot for that.

Being blessed with a Scots mother and an English father, and having lived in England, Scotland and Wales, I consider myself British. And I'm proud to be British, with a heart often in Scotland, a body in England, memories of Wales and thoughts of travelling the world. My country is Great Britain, the United Kingdom. It says so on my passport. As it does for every other British person in the UK, whichever part they live in or were born in.

 

We are a cosmopolitan nation made up of every race in the world, all living in relative harmony. Except a few.

 

They are a small minority who have made a fuss and a noise about being miserable, put on, repressed and disadvantaged. They are the sort of people who want things given to them without making any effort to give in return. They are takers, not givers. People who look at their glass as half empty rather than half full. They are people who do not appreciate what we have, but always moan about what they don't have. Unfortunately they are easily led and persuaded, with the promise of extra giveaways and benefits.

 

The socialist movement in Scotland has, over the years, made empty promise after empty promise to these dependent classes and with a divisive strategy has led the country into a referendum to separate itself from the other members that make up the United Kingdom: England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is a Union of four countries that has existed for over 300 years.

 

As someone who is half Scottish and half English, because I currently live in England, I am denied a vote on the future of my country. Nor can the estimated 20 million 'Scots' who live elsewhere around the world.

 

The Yes Campaigners for Scottish Independence wish to cherry pick all the best parts of being part of the United Kingdom, and none of the negative parts of the 'marriage'. They demand the rest of the UK allows them into a currency union so they get the benefits of our strong currency, debt protection, low interest rates. They want to inherit the UK's EU membership and gain the same EU rebates. They want the protection of the nuclear alliance NATO yet will not permit nuclear submarines to use NATO's most strategic submarine base which is in Scotland and protects all of Europe. And they want to keep the Queen as head of state, but have nothing to do with the Royal Family.They wish to create a Nordic nirvana without realising the Nordic countries and peoples are nothing like the Scots.

They wish to build a better country based on pie in the sky economics and a wish list that would bankrupt the country. The rest of the UK, some 60 million people do not wish the population of 5 million in Scotland to become a separate and isolated country.

 

If the Yes Campaign manage to sleepwalk enough people to vote for their Fool's Paradise, I foresee a two tier Britain after separation. England, Wales and Northern Ireland will become a little more right thinking and Scotland will lurch to the left. The Scots have always sown their oats and fanned out across the world, but isolation as a separate country would only speed up the brain drain. And those Scots will seek their fortune in the rest of the UK as they always have, because the UK will out pace Scotland in enterprise and opportunity. Scotland will sit in the rest of the UK's shadow. Perhaps it will find itself in the same situation again as it did in 1707, when Scotland, a poor country, had fallen so far behind England that it chose to form a Union with its neighbour, creating the United Kingdom. Together they were better, Scotland playing a significant contribution in creating the British Empire. Ah well, they say things go in cycles.

 

The people living in Scotland vote on independence on 18th September. My opinion is they would be foolish to give away everything we have. I would hate to think that the nation so many of our forefathers fought to protect should be split by a minority of whingers. I would hate to think of my family separated from me in a foreign country. I would hate to lose my identity of "British". I would hate to lose part of my country (I think I know a little what it must feel like to be Ukrainian and to have lost part of my country to Putin).

 

To those outside the UK of other nationalities, are you baffled as to why some Scots wish to split up this country, the United Kingdom? I would be interested to hear your thoughts.

 

BTW the photo shows Balvicar, a little hamlet, with one shop and no pub, on the Isle of Seil near Oban, Argyll, Scotland.

American postcard by Kline Poster Co. Inc., Phila. Image: Metro.

 

American actress Ethel Barrymore (1879-1959) was a member of the Barrymore family of actors. Her career as a stage, screen and radio actress spanned six decades, and she was regarded as 'The First Lady of the American Theatre'. She made 15 silent pictures between 1914 and 1919, most of them for the Metro Pictures studio.

 

Ethel Barrymore was born Ethel Mae Blythe in Philadelphia, 1n 1879. She was the second child of the actors Maurice Barrymore (whose real name was Herbert Blythe) and Georgiana Drew. Her father was nearly killed four months before her birth in a famous Old West encounter in Texas while heading a traveling road company. She was named for her father's favourite character—Ethel in William Makepeace Thackeray’s 'The Newcomes'. She was the sister of actors John and Lionel Barrymore, the aunt of actor John Drew Barrymore and actress Diana Barrymore, and great-aunt of actress Drew Barrymore. She was also a granddaughter of actress and theater-manager Louisa Lane Drew (Mrs. John Drew), and niece of Broadway matinée idol John Drew Jr and early Vitagraph star Sidney Drew. She spent her childhood in Philadelphia and attended Roman Catholic schools there. In 1884, the family sailed to England and stayed two years. Maurice had inherited a substantial amount of money from an aunt and decided to exhibit a play and star in some plays at London's Haymarket Theatre. Ethel recalled being frightened on first meeting Oscar Wilde when handing him some cakes and later being reprimanded by her parents for showing fear of Wilde. Returning to the U.S. in 1886, her father took her to her first baseball game. She established a lifelong love of baseball and wanted to be a concert pianist. In the summer of 1893 Barrymore was in the company of her mother, Georgie, who had been ailing from tuberculosis and took a curative sabbatical to Santa Barbara, California. Georgie did not recover and died in 1893 a week before her 37th birthday. Essentially Ethel's and Lionel's childhood ended when Georgie died. They were forced to go to work in their teens with neither finishing high school. John, a few years younger, stayed with their grandmother. Barrymore's first appearance on Broadway was in 1895, in a play called 'The Imprudent Young Couple' which starred her uncle John Drew, Jr., and Maude Adams. She appeared with Drew and Adams again in 1896 in 'Rosemary'. William McPeak at IMDb: " Her youthful stage presence was at once a pleasure, a strikingly pretty and winsome face and large dark eyes that seemed to look out from her very soul. Her natural talent and distinctive voice only reinforced the physical presence of someone destined to command any role set before her." In 1897 Ethel went with William Gillette to London to play Miss Kittridge in Gillette's 'Secret Service'. She was about to return to the States with Gillette's troupe when Henry Irving and Ellen Terry offered her the role of Annette in 'The Bells'. A full London tour was on and, before it was over, Ethel created, on New Year's Day 1898, Euphrosine in 'Peter the Great' at the Lyceum, the play having been written by Irving's son, Laurence. Men everywhere were smitten with Ethel, most notably Winston Churchill, who asked her to marry him. Not wishing to be a politician's wife, she refused. Winston, years later, married Clementine Hozier, a ravishing beauty who looked very much like Ethel. Winston and Ethel remained friends until the end of her life. Their 'romance' was their own little secret until his son let the cat out of the bag 63 years after it happened.

 

After her season in London, Ethel Barrymore returned to the U.S. Charles Frohman cast her first in 'Catherine' and then as Stella de Grex in 'His Excellency the Governor'. After that, benefactor and friend Frohman finally gave Ethel the role that would make her a star: Madame Trentoni in 'Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines', which opened at the Garrick Theatre in London's West End in 1901. Unbeknownst to Ethel, her father Maurice had witnessed the performance as an audience member and walked up to his daughter, congratulated her and gave her a big hug. It was the first and only time he saw her on stage professionally. When the tour concluded in Boston in June, she had out-drawn two of the most prominent actresses of her day, Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Minnie Maddern Fiske. Following her triumph in 'Captain Jinks', Ethel gave sterling performances in many top-rate productions. In Thomas Raceward's 'Sunday', she uttered what would be her most famous line, "That's all there is, there isn't any more." She portrayed Nora in 'A Doll's House' by Henrik Ibsen (1905), and Juliet in 'Romeo and Juliet' by William Shakespeare (1922). Barrymore, along with friend Marie Dressler, was a strong supporter of the Actors' Equity Association and had a high-profile role in the 1919 strike. AEA came into being primarily to allow performers to have a bigger share in the profits of stage productions and to provide benefit to elderly or infirm actors. This angered many producers and cost Barrymore her friendship with George M. Cohan, an actor, songwriter and producer. Ethel Barrymore's involvement in AEA may have been motivated by the fate of both of her parents, both long standing actors, her mother who had needed proper medical care and her father who required years of institutionalized care. In 1926, she scored one of her greatest successes as the sophisticated spouse of a philandering husband in W. Somerset Maugham's comedy, 'The Constant Wife'. Maugham counted himself among her admirers, saying that during rehearsals for the play he had "fallen madly in love with her." She starred in 'Rasputin and the Empress' (1932), playing the czarina married to Czar Nicholas. In July 1934, she starred in the play 'Laura Garnett', by Leslie and Sewell Stokes, at Dobbs Ferry, New York.

 

In 1914, Ethel Barrymore appeared in her first feature film, The Nightingale (Augustus Thomas, 1914). Members of her family were already in pictures. Uncle Sidney Drew, his wife Gladys Rankin, and Lionel had entered films in 1911 and John made his first feature in 1913 after having debuted in Lubin short films in 1912. She made 15 silent pictures between 1914 and 1919, most of them for the Metro Pictures studio. Most of these pictures were made on the East Coast, as her Broadway career and children came first. A few of her silent films have survived: for example, one reel from The Awakening of Helena Richie (John W. Noble, 1916) and The Call of Her People (John W. Noble, 1917). The only two films that featured all three siblings - Ethel, John, and Lionel - were National Red Cross Pageant (Christy Cabanne, 1917) and Rasputin and the Empress (Richard Boleslawski, 1932). The former film is now considered a lost film. She returned to the stage, where she had her most endearing role in 'The Corn is Green', during a tour that lasted from 1940 to 1942. Barrymore came back to California and won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the mother of Cary Grant in the film None but the Lonely Heart (Clifford Odets, 1944), but made plain that she was not overly impressed by it. She appeared in The Spiral Staircase (Robert Siodmak, 1946), and The Paradine Case (Alfred Hitchcock, 1947), in which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She played the repressed wife of Charles Laughton's character. William McPeak: "Her engaging wit and humanity stood out in even supporting roles, such as, the politically savvy mother of Joseph Cotten in The Farmer's Daughter (H.C. Potter, 1947) and, once again with Cotton, as sympathetic art dealer Miss Spinney, with those eyes, in the haunting screen adaptation of Robert Nathan's novel Portrait of Jennie (William Dieterle, 1948)." Barrymore also appeared as Miss Em opposite Jeanne Crain in the Academy Award nominated film Pinky (Elia Kazan, 1949), for which she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress. Her last film appearance was in Johnny Trouble (John H. Auer, 1957) with Stuart Whitman. On the radio, Barrymore starred in the situation comedy Miss Hattie (1944-1945). Barrymore also made a number of television appearances in the 1950s, including one memorable encounter with comedian Jimmy Durante on NBC's All Star Revue in 1951. In 1956, she hosted 14 episodes of the TV series Ethel Barrymore Theatre. Ethel Barrymore married Russell Griswold Colt in 1909. In 1911, Barrymore took preliminary divorce measures against Colt, much to Colt's surprise, and later recanted by Barrymore as a misunderstanding by the press. At least one source alleged Colt abused her and that he fathered a child with another woman while married to Barrymore. They divorced in 1923. The couple had three children: Samuel 'Sammy' Colt (1909–1986), a Hollywood agent and occasional actor; actress-singer Ethel Barrymore Colt (1912–1977), who appeared on Broadway in Stephen Sondheim's Follies; and John Drew Colt (1913–1975), who became an actor. Ethel Barrymore never remarried. In 1955 she published her book 'Memories, An Autobiography'. Barrymore died of cardiovascular disease in 1959, at her home in Hollywood, after having lived for many years with a heart condition. She was less than two months shy of her 80th birthday. She was entombed at Calvary Cemetery. The Ethel Barrymore Theatre in New York City is named for her. In 1960, Barrymore was posthumously inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star for her contributions to the film industry. Her star is located at 7001 Hollywood Boulevard.

 

Sources: William McPeak (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Edvard Munch (Norwegian 1863-1944)

Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway.

 

Edvard Munch is best known as being a Norwegian born, expressionist painter, and printer. In the late 20th century, he played a great role in German expressionism, and the art form that later followed; namely because of the strong mental anguish that was displayed in many of the pieces that he created.

 

Edvard Munch was born in Norway in 1863, and was raised in Christiania (known as Oslo today). He was related to famous painters and artists in their own right, Jacob Munch (painter), and Peter Munch (historian).

 

Only a few years after he was born, Edvard Munch's mother died of tuberculosis in 1868, and he was raised by his father.

 

Edvard's father suffered of mental illness, and this played a role in the way he and his siblings were raised. Their father raised them with the fears of deep seated issues, which is part of the reason why the work of Edvard Munch took a deeper tone, and why the artist was known to have so many repressed emotions as he grew up.

 

In 1885, Edvard Munch traveled to Paris, and was extremely influenced by Impressionists such as Claude Monet, Edouard Manet, and followed by the post-impressionism artists Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, and Paul Gauguin. In fact, the main style of Munch's work is post-impressionism, and focused on this style.

 

From about 1892, to 1908, Munch split most of his time between Paris and Berlin; it was in 1909 that he decided to return to his hometown, and go back to Norway.

 

During this period, much of the work that was created by Edvard Munch depicted his interest in nature, and it was also noted that the tones and colors that he used in these pieces, did add more color, and seemed a bit more cheerful, than most of the previous works he had created in years past.

 

The pessimistic under toning which was quite prominent in much of his earlier works, had faded quite a bit, and it seems he took more of a colorful, playful, and fun tone with the pieces that he was creating, as opposed to the dark and somber style which he tended to work with earlier on during the course of his career.

 

From this period, up to his death, Edvard Munch remained in Norway, and much of his work that was created from this period on, seemed to take on the similar, colorful approach which he had adopted, since returning home in 1909.

 

A majority of the works which Edvard Munch created, were referred to as the style known as symbolism. This is mainly because of the fact that the the paintings he made focused on the internal view of the objects, as opposed to the exterior, and what the eye could see.

 

Symbolist painters believed that art should reflect an emotion or idea rather than represent the natural world in the objective, quasi-scientific manner embodied by Realism and Impressionism. In painting, Symbolism represents a synthesis of form and feeling, of reality and the artist's inner subjectivity.

 

Many of Munch's works depict life and death scenes, love and terror, and the feeling of loneliness was often a feeling which viewers would note that his work patterns focused on.

 

These emotions were depicted by the contrasting lines, the darker colors, blocks of color, somber tones, and a concise and exaggerated form, which depicted the darker side of the art which he was designing.

 

Munch is often and rightly compared with Van Gogh, who was one of the first artists to paint what the French artist called "the mysterious centers of the mind."

 

But perhaps a more overreaching influence was Sigmund Freud, a very close contemporary. Freud explained much human behavior by relating it to childhood experiences.

 

Munch saw his mother die of tuberculosis when he was 5, and his sister Sophie die of the same disease when he was 14. Munch gives the By the Death Bed and Death in the Sickroom a universal cast by not specifically depicting what he had witnessed. Several versions of The Sick Child are surely his sister.

 

Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye... it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.”- Edvard Munch

 

Edvard Munch passed away in 1944, in a small town which was just outside of his home town in Oslo.

 

Upon his death, the works which he had created, were not given to family, but they were instead donated to the Norwegian government, and were placed in museums, in shows, and in various local public buildings in Norway.

 

In fact, after his death, more than 1000 paintings which Edvard Munch had created were donated to the government. In addition to the paintings that he had created during the course of his career, all other art forms he created were also donated to the government.

 

A total of 15,400 prints were donated, 4500 drawings and water color art was donated, and six sculptures which Edvard Munch had created, were all turned over to the Oslo government, and were used as display pieces in many locations.

 

Due to the fact that all of this work which Edvard Munch had created, was donated to the Norwegian government, the country decided to build the Munch Museum of Art.

 

This was done to commemorate his work, his life, and the generosity which he showed, in passing his art work over to the government, so that it could be enjoyed by the general public, rather than be kept locked up by the family.

 

Although the art which he did donate, was spread throughout a number of museums and art exhibits, a majority of them were kept in Oslo.

 

And, most of the works which were donated by Munch, were placed in the Munch Museum of Art, to commemorate the work he did, as well as the unique style, and the distinct movements which he introduced to the world, through the creations which he had crafted.

 

www.edvardmunch.org

СССР (Союз Советских Социалистических Республик ) is a Russian (Cyrillic) abbreviation for the Soviet Union.

 

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Russian: Сою́з Сове́тских Социалисти́ческих Респу́блик, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik) abbreviated to USSR (Russian: СССР, tr. SSSR) or the Soviet Union (Russian: Советский Союз, tr. Sovetsky Soyuz), was a constitutionally communist state that existed between 1922 and 1991, ruled as a single-party state by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital. A union of multiple subnational Soviet republics, its government and economy were highly centralized.

 

The Soviet Union had its roots in the Russian Revolution of 1917, which deposed the imperial autocracy. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, then overthrew the Provisional Government. The Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic was established and the Russian Civil War began. The Red Army entered several territories of the former Russian Empire and helped local communists seize power. In 1922, the Bolsheviks were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics. Following Lenin's death in 1924, a troika collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism and initiated a centrally planned economy. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialisation and collectivisation which laid the basis for its later war effort and dominance after World War II. However, Stalin repressed both Communist Party members and elements of the population through his authoritarian rule.

 

During the first phase of World War II, Soviet Union used the opportunity to acquire territories in Eastern Europe adjacent to Nazi Germany, its satellites, and their occupied territories. Later in 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history and violating an earlier non-aggression pact between the two countries. The Soviet Union suffered the largest loss of life in the war, but halted the Axis advance at intense battles such as that at Stalingrad, eventually driving through Eastern Europe and capturing Berlin in 1945. Having played a decisive role in the Allied victory in Europe, the Soviet Union established the Eastern Bloc in much of Central and Eastern Europe and emerged as one of the world's two superpowers after the war. Together with these new satellite states, through which the Soviet Union established economic and military pacts, it became involved in the Cold War, a prolonged ideological and political struggle against the Western Bloc, led by the other superpower, the United States.

 

A de-Stalinization period followed Stalin's death, reducing the harshest aspects of society. The Soviet Union then went on to initiate significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including launching the first ever satellite and world's first human spaceflight, which led it into the Space Race. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis marked a period of extreme tension between the two superpowers, considered the closest to a mutual nuclear confrontation. In the 1970s, a relaxation of relations followed, but tensions resumed with Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The occupation drained economic resources and dragged on without achieving meaningful political results.

 

In the late 1980s the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, also sought reforms in the Union, introducing the policies of glasnost and perestroika in an attempt to end the period of economic stagnation and democratize the government. However, this led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements. Central authorities initiated a referendum, boycotted by the Baltic republics and Georgia, which resulted in the majority of participating citizens voting in favour of preserving the Union as a renewed federation. In August 1991, a coup d'état was attempted by hardliners against Gorbachev, with the intention of reversing his moderate policies. The coup failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a high-profile role in facing down the coup but resulted in the restoration of the Baltic states. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the remaining 12 constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states. The Russian Federation, successor of the Russian SFSR, assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and is recognised as its continued legal personality [Wikipedia.org]

Synchronicity was in a great way for this picture between couple sun ☀️ and moonlight 🌙 , throned son, cristal light’s heals all the soul under nymphs...( thanks to Nymphaea by Claude Monet ) Cristal healing and echoes of consciousness.

Liberation of darkness is possible way with your pineal glands and you can compare them with a crystal light and follow the guidance through your dream.Other significant work for linking the throne to nymphaea could be a Jungian interpretation for Alchemist (following old Egyptian science)

It’s amazing how crystal light is a healing process for testing your body to sitting on a throne.However, it has only recently become clear that apomorphine can be utilized, with excellent results, to treat erectile dysfunction. It is a centrally acting, selective D1/D2 dopamine agonist, and activation of dopaminergic receptors in the paraventricular nucleus of the hypothalamus initiates a cascade of events, ultimately resulting in smooth muscle relaxation and vasodilatation within the corpora cavernosa, leading to penile erection. Crystal river and albedo was whiteness day for a throne of consciousness enlightenment

 

This discovery provides a likely explanation for the appearance of Nymphaea in the Luxor frescoes and in erotic cartoons ... The fact that temple drawings only depict use by the higher castes, such as priests and royalty, suggests that the masses did not benefit from this discovery. The Nymphaea story serves as a further illustration of how the effects of substances of plant origin were known even though the discoverers lacked the technology to explain them. The water lily was also used for other medicinal purposes, according to Lise Manniche in An Ancient Egyptian Herbal, including liver disease, poultices for the head, constipation and as an enema (1989, p. 134). She also notes that it was used in a magical spell to cause a "hated woman"'s hair to fall out. In Greco-Roman times, it was thought of as a cooling herb, and was thus used to bring down a fever.

 

Original article: www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/egypt_wate...

© Caroline Seawright

 

The source is one: male and female are united. In alchemical images we see a throne from which streams of water flow into one flashback to primordial life’s hermaphrodite.

The Syrian love goddess who the Egyptians married off to Min, was depicted as a naked woman who stood on the back of a lion, carrying snakes and water lily buds. The buds are likely linked with her role as a goddess of sexuality and fertility. Votive offerings to Hathor included bowls with water lily motifs, again alluding to fertility, the renewal of life and rebirth. (A water bowl was also the hieroglyph for a woman, which A.H. Gardiner in Egyptian Grammar believes to represent the vagina, linking the fertility sign of the water lily in the bowl to female fertility in this case.) The Egyptian idea of sexuality was identified with creation. Being a flower of creation, the flower became linked to human fertility and sexuality. The images of women holding the flower may be hinting at her ability to bear children or that she was sexually desirable, and images of men holding the flower may hint at their potency. It could also be a way to ensure that the person painted would be fertile - and sexy - in the afterlife.

 

Contemporary reference to the role of water lilies and mandrakes (Nymphaea and Mandragora, respectively) in ancient Egyptian healing ... suggest the possible importance of these plants as adjuncts to shamanistic healing in dynastic Egypt. Although the usual interpretation of the water lily and the mandrake has been that of a part of ritual mourning ... it is argued that the dynastic Egyptians had developed a form of shamanistic trance induced by these two plants and used it in medicine as well as healing rituals. Analysis of the ritual and sacred iconography of dynastic Egypt, as seen on stelae, in magical papyri, and on vessels, indicates that these people possessed a profound knowledge of plant lore and altered states of consciousness. The abundant data indicate that the shamanistic priest, who was highly placed in the stratified society, guided the souls of the living and dead, provided for the transmutation of souls into other bodies and the personification of plants as possessed by human spirits, as well as performing other shamanistic activities. test was carried out to see if there were any narcotic effects of the blue water lily. There were no known psychotropic substance found in the flower itself. In The Mystery of the Cocaine Mummies Rosalie David ('Keeper of Egyptology, Manchester Museum') says that "we see many scenes of individuals holding a cup and dropping a water lily flower into the cup which contained wine". The assertion by Dr Andrew Sherratt, based on these depictions, is that he believes that when the flower was infused with wine, that the chemical content might change and become the ancient Egyptian party drug or a shamanistic aid. The lilies were flown from Cairo to England, and nineteen of them opened after the sun came out. The flowers were soaked in the wine, and after a few days, two volunteers - who claimed to know nothing about ancient Egypt - drank the lily-wine:Unfortunately the test was not up to scientific standards - there was no control group (where another set of volunteers would drink wine not infused with the lily, but told that it had been) - so it is rather difficult to know how much of the effects on the two were just from the alcohol and if any were from the lily infusion itself.The blue water lily was possibly also a symbol of sexuality - Dr Liz Williamson says that the flower "has a sort of Viagra effect". Women were wooed with the blue water lily. In certain erotic scenes from the Turin Papyrus, women are shown wearing very little apart from the white lily as a headdress.The blue water lily was possibly also a symbol of sexuality - Dr Liz Williamson says that the flower "has a sort of Viagra effect". Women were wooed with the blue water lily. In certain erotic scenes from the Turin Papyrus, women are shown wearing very little apart from the white lily as a headdress.

The blue water lily was possibly also a symbol of sexuality - Dr Liz Williamson says that the flower "has a sort of Viagra effect". Women were wooed with the blue water lily. In certain erotic scenes from the Turin Papyrus, women are shown wearing very little apart from the white lily as a headdress.

 

More recently, it has been discovered that this plant could have been used by the ancient Egyptians to help with erectile dysfunction. This would help explain why the plant was so intimately connected with sex and sexuality:

 

Nymphaea caerulea (blue lotus) and N. ampla, which has a white flower but a similar alkaloid content, grow along lakes and rivers, thrive in wet soil, and bloom in the spring. They belong to the water-lily family ... The isolation of the psychoactive apomorphine from Nymphaea species has offered chemical support to speculation that Nymphaea species may have been employed as hallucinogens in both the Old and the New World. The use of N. caerulea and of N. lotos in rites and rituals is depicted in the frescoes within the tombs, and in very early papyrus scrolls. The most important of these was the scroll of Ani (Book of the Dead). Nymphaea is mentioned and represented in several chapters of the book, always tied to magical-religious rites.

The water lily was also used for other medicinal purposes, according to Lise Manniche in An Ancient Egyptian Herbal, including liver disease, poultices for the head, constipation and as an enema (1989, p. 134). She also notes that it was used in a magical spell to cause a "hated woman"'s hair to fall out. In Greco-Roman times, it was thought of as a cooling herb, and was thus used to bring down a fever.The flower wasn't just used at parties, but it was used at funerals. As with many symbols of fertility, the blue water lily was also symbolic of rebirth after death. Tutankhamen's innermost gold coffin had blue water lily petals scattered over it along with a few other floral tributes. The Egyptians looked forward to their souls coming to life "like a water lily reopening", thinking that the deceased died as the water lily closed awaiting opening with the morning sun. The Book of the Dead has a spell to allow the deceased to transform into one of these flowers:

 

The goddess Qedeshet, standing on a lion, holding water lilies and a snake, the Syrian love goddess who the Egyptians married off to Min, was depicted as a naked woman who stood on the back of a lion, carrying snakes and water lily buds. The buds are likely linked with her role as a goddess of sexuality and fertility. Votive offerings to Hathor included bowls with water lily motifs, again alluding to fertility, the renewal of life and rebirth. (A water bowl was also the hieroglyph for a woman, which A.H. Gardiner in Egyptian Grammar believes to represent the vagina, linking the fertility sign of the water lily in the bowl to female fertility in this case.) The Egyptian idea of sexuality was identified with creation. Being a flower of creation, the flower became linked to human fertility and sexuality. The images of women holding the flower may be hinting at her ability to bear children or that she was sexually desirable, and images of men holding the flower may hint at their potency. It could also be a way to ensure that the person painted would be fertile - and sexy - in the afterlife.As we mentioned above, Aphrodite/Venus as the morning star is a central image for the albedo phase of the Great Work. Aphrodite was born from the foam that arose when the genitals of Uranus (cut of by Chronos, out of hate and jealousy) fell into the sea. The cutting of the genitals represents repressed and tormented love. The sea, symbol of the soul, however will bring forth the love goddess. Liberation will happen when we become conscious again of the contents of the soul. As Aphrodite is born from the sea, she is the guide through the fearful world of the unconscious (the sea, or the underworld). The alchemist descends into these depths to find the ‘prima materia’, also called the ‘green lion’. The color green refers to the primal life forces. Venus also has the green color. An important characteristic of Aphrodite is that she helps us in our human shortcomings. She gives ideals and dreams to fulfill. But she also gives frightening images in order to make man aware of his lower nature. "By her beauty Venus attracts the imperfect metals and gives rise to desire, and pushes them to perfection and ripeness." (Basilius Valentinus, 1679) Liberation can only happen by becoming conscious of the lower nature and how we transmute it.

In Jungian psychology Venus/Aphrodite is the archetype of the anima (in alchemy also the ‘soror’ or ‘wife’ of the alchemist). The anima is the collective image of the woman in a man. It is an image especially tainted by his first contact with his mother. The anima represents all the female tendencies in the psyche of a man, such as feelings, emotions, moods, intuition, receptivity for the irrational, personal love and a feeling for nature. She is the bearer for the spiritual. Depending on the development of the man she can also be the seductress who lures him away to love, hopelessness, demise, and even destruction.

Other alchemical images for albedo are baptism and the white dove, both derived from Christianity. Baptism symbolizes the purification of both body and soul by ‘living water’. ‘Living water’ was regarded as the creative force of the divine. It allowed the soul to be received into the community of the holy spirit. Thus baptism allows the purified soul to bring forth the resurrection of Christ in oneself. This is the ‘hieros gamos’, the ‘sacred marriage’ between the soul and Christ. Christ here represent our own inner divine essence.

There are many other symbols in alchemy for the second phase, or albedo: the white swan, the rose, the white queen, and so on. As lead is the metal of nigredo, silver is the metal of albedo, transmuted from lead. As silver is the metal of the moon, the moon was also a symbol for albedo. Alchemists also talk about the white stone or white tincture. They all means basically the same thing, although one has to understand them in the context in which they were written.

The union of Hermes and Aphrodite. The moon is above the retort, indicating this is the stage of Albedo. The sun above is the next stage of Rubedo. At the same time sun and moon are again the opposites to be united. Aphrodite has two torches. One pointing down, representing the lower passions to be transmuted. The upside down torch is the purified energies. Aphrodite is standing on a tetrahedron, the perfect three dimensional body, as all corners are equally distant from each other, resulting in a lack of tension.

Albedo, symbolized by Aurora, by the dawn, the morning star (Venus-Aphrodite), and by the sun rising up from the Philosopher's Sea.

 

Albedo is also represented by Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn. Her brother is Helios, the Sun. With a play of words aurora was connected with aurea hora, ‘the hour of gold’. It is a supreme state of conscious. Pernety (1758): "When the Artist (=Alchemist) sees the perfect whiteness, the Philosophers say that one has to destroy the books, because they have become superfluous."

Albedo is also symbolized by the morning star Venus/Aphrodite. Venus has a special place in the Great Work. In ancient times Lucifer was identified with the planet Venus. Originally Lucifer has a very positive meaning. In the Bible we find 2Petrus 1:19 "…till the day arrives and the morning star rises in your hearts". In Revelation 12:16 Christ says: "I am the shining morning star". Here Christ identifies himself with the Lucifer! We find the same in mystic literature. In ancient times Lucifer was a positive light being. It was just one man who changed all that: when a certain Hieronymous read a phrase from Jesaja 14:12 (Jesaja talking to a sinful king of Babylon): " How did you fall from heaven, you morning star, you son of the dawn; how did you fall to earth, conqueror of people". Hieronymous used this phrase to identify Lucifer with the dragon thrown out of heaven by Michael. By the interpretation of this one man, Lucifer was tuned from a shining light being into the darkest devilish being in the world.

We find Lucifer in alchemy associated with impure metals polluted by rough sulfur. It means that the light being Lucifer in ourselves is polluted by what the alchemists call ‘superfluities’, ‘dross’, caused by man himself.

Mercury and Lucifer are one and the same. One talks about Mercury when he is pure, it is the white sulphur, the fire in heaven. As ‘spiritus’ he gives life. As ‘spiritus sapiens’ he teaches the alchemist the Great Work. Lucifer is the impure Mercury. Lucifer is the morning star fallen from (the golden) heaven. He descended into the earth and is now present in all humans. Lucifer is Mercury mixed with impure elements. He dissolved ‘in sulfur and salt’, ‘is wrapped with strings’, ‘darkened with black mud’. Keep in mind we are always talking about our consciousness. Lucifer represents our everyday consciousness, all the (psychological and other) complexes have clouded our pure consciousness, Mercury.

The light of Mercury that appears to us as Lucifer, because of the distortion caused by the impurities, gives the impression of what the alchemists called ‘red sulfur’. The red sulfur of Lucifer, as traditional devil, is actually an illusion. It does not exist by itself because it is only an image, a distorted image of Mercury. We ourselves caused the impurities, the blackness that veils our true light being.

Red sulfur is the same as what is called Maya in eastern philosophies. Maya is the world of illusions, or the veil that prevents us from seeing and experiencing true reality, where the eternal light is. By the impurities of Maya, man has become ignorant. He has forgotten his origin and thinks he is in a world which in actuality is an illusion.Albedo - Whiteness

 

Je ne craignais pas de mourir

mais de mourir sans etre illumine.

(I was not afraid to die,

but to die without having been enlightened)

Comte de Saint-Germain, La Tres Sainte Trinisophie

The herald of the light

is the morning star.

This way man and woman approach

the dawn of knowledge,

because in it is the germ of life,

being a blessing of the eternal.

Haji Ibrahim of Kerbala

Lucifer, Lucifer stretch your tail,

and lead me away, full speed through the narrow passage,

the valley of the death,

to the brilliant light, the palace of the gods.

Isanatha Muni

Being deep in nigredo, a white light appears. We have arrived at the second stage of the Great Work: albedo, or whiteness. The alchemist has discovered within himself the source from which his life comes forth. The fountain of life from which the water of life flows forth giving eternal youth.

The source is one: male and female are united. In alchemical images we see a fountain from which two streams of water flow into one basin. Albedo is the discovery of the hermaphroditic nature of man. In the spiritual sense each man is a hermaphrodite. We can also see this in the first embryonic phase of the fetus. There is no sex until a certain number of weeks after conception. When man descended into the physical world his body entered a world of duality. On the bodily level this is expressed by the sexes. But his spirit is still androgen, it contains duality in unity. Its unity is not bound to space, time or matter. Duality is an expression of unity in our physical world. It is temporal and will eventually cease to exist. When male and female are united again, one will experience his true self. Conscious and unconscious are totally united.

Albedo happens when the Sun rises at midnight. It is a symbolic expression for the rising of the light at the depth of darkness. It is the birth of Christ in the middle of the winter. In the depth of a psychological crises, a positive change happens.

 

www.soul-guidance.com/houseofthesun/alchemy 2.htm

 

I probably do not fit into the preconceived notion of a "rebel".

  

I have no visible tattoos and minimal piercing. I do not possess a leather jacket. In fact, when most people look at me, their first thought usually is something along the lines of "oppressed female."

 

The brave individuals who have mustered the courage to ask me about the way I dress usually have questions like: " Do your parents make you wear that?" or " Don't you find that really unfair?"

 

A while back, a couple of girls in Montreal were kicked out of school for dressing like I do. It seems strange that a little piece of cloth would make for such controversy. Perhaps the fear is that I am harbouring an Uzi underneath it. You never can tell with those Muslim fundamentalists.

 

Of course, the issue at hand is more than a mere piece of cloth. I am a Muslim woman who, like millions of other Muslim women across the globe, chooses to wear the hijab. There are many different ways to wear it, but in essence, what we do is cover our entire bodies .

 

If you're the kind of person who has watched a lot of popular movies, you'd probably think of harem girls and belly-dancers, women who are kept in seclusion except for the private pleasure of their male masters. In the true Islamic faith, nothing could be further from the truth. And the concept of the hijab, contrary to popular opinion, is actually one of the most fundamental aspects of female empowerment.

 

When I cover myself, I make it virtually impossible for people to judge me according to the way I look. I cannot be categorised because of my attractiveness or lack thereof. Compare this to life in today's

society: We are constantly sizing one another up on the basis of our clothing, jewellery, hair and makeup. What kind of depth can there be in a world like this?

 

Yes, I have a body, a physical manifestation upon this Earth. But it is the vessel of an intelligent mind and a strong spirit. It is not for the beholder to leer at or to use in advertisements to sell everything

from beer to cars. Because of the superficiality of the world in which we live, external appearances are so stressed that the value of the individual counts foralmost nothing.

 

It is a myth that women in today's society are liberated. What kind of freedom can there be when a woman cannot walk down the street without every aspect of her physical self being "checked out''?

 

When I wear the hijab I feel safe from all of this. I can rest assured that no one is looking at me and making assumptions about my character from the length of my skirt. There is a barrier between me and those who would exploit me. I am first and foremost a human being, equal to any man, and not vulnerable because of my sexuality.

 

One of the saddest truths of our time is the question of the beauty myth and female self-image. Reading popular teenage magazines, you can instantly find out what kind of body image is "in'' or "out.'' And if you have the "wrong" body type, well, then, you're just going to have to change it, aren't you? After all, there is no way that you can be overweight and still be beautiful.

 

Look at any advertisement. Is a woman being used to sell the product? How old is she? How attractive is she? What is she wearing? More often than not, that woman will be no older than her early 20s, taller, slimmer and more attractive than average, dressed in skimpy clothing.

 

Why do we allow ourselves to be manipulated like this? Whether the '90s woman wishes to believe it or not, she is being forced into a mould. She is being coerced into selling herself, into compromising herself. This is why we have 13-year-old girls sticking their fingers down their throats andoverweight adolescents hanging themselves.

 

When people ask me if I feel oppressed, I can honestly say no. I made this decision out of my own free will. I like the fact that I am taking control of the way other people perceive me. I enjoy the fact that I don't give anyone anything to look at and that I have released myself from the bondage of the swinging pendulum of the fashion industry and other institutions that exploit females.

 

My body is my own business. Nobody can tell me how I should look or whether or not I am beautiful. I know that there is more to me than that. I am also able to say no comfortably when people ask me if I feel as though my sexuality is being repressed. I have taken control of my sexuality.

 

I am thankful I will never have to suffer the fate of trying to lose/gain weight or trying to find the exact lipstick shade that will go with my skin colour. I have made choices about what my priorities are and these are not among them.

 

So next time you see me, don't look at me sympathetically. I am not under duress or a male-worshipping female captive from those barbarous Arabic deserts. I've been liberated.

British autograph card by the Rank Organisation. Publicity still for The Heart of a Man (Herbert Wilcox, 1959). Sent by mail in 1959.

 

British film actress Anne Heywood (1931) started her career as Miss Great Britain in 1950. In the mid-1950s, she began to play supporting roles as the ‘nice girl’ for Rank. Gradually she evolved into a leading lady, best known for her dramatic roles in the pioneer lesbian drama The Fox (1967) and La monaca di Monza/The Nun of Monza (1969).

 

Anne Heywood was born as Violet Joan Pretty in Handsworth (now Birmingham), England in 1932. She was one of seven children. Her father, Harold Pretty, was a former orchestral violinist, turned factory worker. Her mother died when Violet was just 13. Violet had to leave school at 14 to look after the younger members of her family. This frustrated her wish to go to art school. Instead, she joined in 1947 the Highbury Little Theatre in Sutton Coldfield near Birmingham and stayed there for two years gaining stage experience. At only 17, the knockout brunette won the National Bathing Beauty Contest in 1950, later renamed as the Miss Great Britain contest. Her prizes were £1000 and a silver rose bowl. The following year she made her film debut as a beauty contestant in the comedy Lady Godiva Rides Again (Frank Launder, 1951) with Dennis Price. That year she also became the personal assistant of Carroll Levis, a talent spotter on a radio show, which toured along the main theatres of Great Britain. She stayed at the show for four years and even appeared three times with the show on television. Heywood attended the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. While playing the principal boy in Aladdin at the Chelsea Palace, she was spotted by a talent scout for the Rank Organisation. In 1956, she signed a seven-year contract and her name was changed to Anne Heywood. According to Glamour Girls at the Silver Screen, she later recalled: “I always hated my name. It sounded unreal.” For Rank, she appeared in supporting roles as the 'nice girl'. Her films included the comedy Doctor at Large (Ralph Thomas, 1957) starring Dirk Bogarde, the crime drama Violent Playground (Basil Dearden, 1958) opposite Stanley Baker, and the adventure Dangerous Exile (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1958) starring Louis Jourdan. Gradually Heywood evolved into a leading lady.

 

Anne Heywood met producer Raymond Stross in 1959 at the set of A Terrible Beauty/The Night Fighters (Tay Garnett, 1960) starring Robert Mitchum. A year later they married in Zurich, Switzerland. He was 16 years her senior. Stross started to reshape her image with such sexy, offbeat dramas as The Very Edge (Cyril Frankel, 1963) with Richard Todd, and 90 Degrees in the Shade (Jiri Weiss, 1965). At the Berlin Film Festival, the latter won the International Critics' Prize. Her breakthrough role was Ellen March in The Fox (Mark Rydell, 1967), co-starring Sandy Dennis. This film adaptation of a D. H. Lawrence novella caused controversy at the time due to its lesbian theme. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb on Heywood and Dennis: “the two were quite believable as an unhappy, isolated couple whose relationship is irreparably shattered by the appearance of a handsome stranger (Keir Dullea). At the height of the movie's publicity, Playboy magazine revealed a ‘pictorial essay’ just prior to its 1967 release with Anne in a nude and auto-erotic spread.” Heywood was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress. The Fox, a Canadian film, did win the Best Foreign Film Golden Globe. Heywood did not win. The Fox is now respected as a pioneer, ground-breaking lesbian film. Heywood’s next film was La monaca di Monza/The Nun of Monza (Eriprando Visconti, 1969) with Hardy Krüger. This controversial drama tells the tale of how a 17th-century Italian nun's long-repressed sexual passion is awakened when a handsome nobleman rapes and impregnates her. Later she is captured and captured and given a horrible life sentence. This ‘true story’ of Sister Virginia, the nun of Monza, was shot in a fifteenth-century castle 27 miles north of Rome and in medieval churches in Lombardy, where the original story took place. This quite nasty and exploitative drama grossed more than $1,000,000 in its initial run in Italy and paid back its negative cost in three weeks. The box office success led to an Italian sub-genre of ‘nunsploitation’ films in the 1970s.

 

Anne Heywood and Raymond Stross moved from Switzerland to the US. Despite the Golden Globe nomination and the Playboy spread, Heywood never endeared herself to American filmgoers. Her Hollywood productions as the caper Midas Run (Alf Kjellin, 1969) with Fred Astaire, and the action drama The Chairman (J. Lee Thompson, 1969) with Gregory Peck were no successes. She seemed drawn toward highly troubled, flawed characters, like in I Want What I Want (John Dexter, 1972) and Good Luck, Miss Wyckoff (Marvin J. Chomsky, 1979). In the 1970s, she also appeared in several Italian films, including the Giallo L'assassino... è al telefono/The Killer Is on the Phone (Alberto De Martino, 1972) with Telly Savalas and Willeke van Ammelrooy, the nunsploitation Le monache di Sant'Arcangelo/The Nun & The Devil (Domenico Paolella, 1973) with Ornella Muti, and the romantic drama La prima volta sull'erba/Love Under the Elms (Gianluigi Calderone, 1975). Her career declined in the 1980s. Her final feature was What Waits Below (Don Sharp, 1985). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “a goofy fantasy filmed on the cheap by the ever-canny Don Sharp. The story involves a team of anthropologists and military men who busy themselves exploring a serpentine system of subterranean caves. They discover a lost race of Albinos, which wreaks havoc upon the surface-dwelling humans. The British actor Robert Powell and Timothy Bottoms star. According to some sources, Sharp and co. approached the production with extreme carelessness; thanks to an unfortunate accident, a large percentage of the cast and crew were almost fatally poisoned by carbon monoxide in the caves where the movie was filmed.” Heywood's penultimate role was as Manon Brevard Marcel on the American TV series The Equalizer (1988), starring Edward Woodward. In 1988 her husband Raymond Stross died. The following year she was seen in a final television movie, Memories of Manon (Tony Wharmby, 1989) based on the character from The Equalizer. After this role, she retired. She remarried George Danzig Druke, a former New York Assistant Attorney General. Anne Heywood Druke resides with her husband in Beverly Hills, USA. She has one son, Mark Stross (1963), with Raymond Stross.

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Belgian collectors card, no. A 66.

 

Red headed Moira Shearer (1926-2006) was a luminous star of the British ballet. She became an international film idol with her unforgettable debut as the young ballerina Vicky in The Red Shoes (1948), a classic of the British cinema and probably the most popular film about ballet ever.

 

Moira Shearer King was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1926. She was the daughter of actor Harold V. King. In 1931 her family moved to Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. Her mother pushed her into ballet and Moira received her first dancing training under a former pupil of Enrico Cecchetti. She returned to Britain in 1936 and trained with Flora Fairbairn in London for a few months before she was accepted as a pupil by the Russian teacher Nicholas Legat. After three years with Legat, she joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet School. However, after the outbreak of the World War II, her parents took her to live in Scotland. The Scottish beauty with her flaming red hair made her debut with Mona Inglesby's International Ballet in 1941 before moving on to the famous Sadler's Wells in 1942. There she was second only to the world renowned prima ballerina, Margot Fonteyn. From 1942 to 1952 Shearer danced all the major classic roles and a full repertoire of revivals and new ballets. She came to international attention for her first film role as the doomed heroine in the ballet-themed film The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948). The film employs the story within a story device. Victoria Page (Shearer), a young, unknown dancer from an aristocratic background meets at a party Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), the ruthless but charismatic impresario of the Ballet Lermontov. He invites her to join his famous ballet company. She becomes the lead dancer in a new ballet called The Red Shoes, itself based on the fairy tale The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen. Vicky is torn between the powerful impresario and a struggling composer (Marius Goring) whom she loves. The film got rave reviews and became one of the highest earning British films of all time. Shearer’s role and the film were so powerful that although she went on to star in other films, she is primarily known for playing ‘Vicky.’ She toured the United States with the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1949 and in 1950/51. Moira Shearer’s second film was the magnificent spectacle The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1951), an adaptation of Jacques Offenbach's final opera, Les contes d'Hoffmann. The film co-starred Robert Helpmann and Léonide Massine. It is not just a film of a staged opera, but a true cinematic opera that makes use of film techniques not available in an opera house. Powell and Pressburger were nominated for the Grand Prize of the 1951 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Exceptional Prize. They also won the Silver Bear award for Best Musical at the 1st Berlin International Film Festival.

 

In 1953, a combination of ill-health, injury and her wish to make a name for herself as an actress made Moira Shearer decide to retire from the ballet stage at age 27. She co-starred with James Mason in a segment of The Story of Three Loves (Vincente Minnelli, Gottfried Reinhardt, 1953), a romantic anthology film made by MGM. She appeared as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the 1954 Edinburgh Festival. The following year she starred in the British film comedy The Man Who Loved Redheads (Harold French, 1955) based on the play Who is Sylvia? by Terence Rattigan. She toured as Sally Bowles in the play I am a Camera in 1955 and appeared at the Bristol Old Vic as G.B. Shaw’s Major Barbara in 1956. Shearer worked again for Powell on the controversial film Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960) about a sexually repressed serial killer (Karlheinz Böhm) who murders women and films their expressions of terror and dying gasps on film. Its controversial subject and the extremely harsh reception by critics effectively destroyed Powell's career as a director. However, it attracted a cult following, and in later years, it has been re-evaluated and is now considered a masterpiece. A year later she appeared in the musical 1-2-3-4 ou Les Collants noirs/Black Tights (Terence Young, 1961) with Zizi Jeanmaire and Cyd Charisse. It would be Shearer’s last film. Shearer was on the BBC's General Advisory Council from 1970 to 1977 and the Scottish Arts Council from 1971 to 1973. In 1972, she was chosen by the BBC to present the Eurovision Song Contest when it was staged in Edinburgh. In 1977 she played Madame Ranevsky in Anton Chekhov's Cherry Orchard at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh and, in 1978, was Judith Bliss in Noel Coward's Hay Fever. She wrote two books, biographies of the choreographer George Balanchine and the actress Ellen Terry, and a column for The Daily Telegraph. She also gave talks on ballet worldwide. The choreographer Gillian Lynne persuaded her to return to ballet to play the mother of artist L. S. Lowry (Christopher Gable) in the ballet film A Simple Man (1987, Gillian Lynne) for the BBC. In 1950, Moira Shearer had married writer and broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy. The couple had a son, Alastair, and three daughters, Ailsa, Rachel and Fiona. In 2006, Moira Shearer died of natural causes in Oxford, England at the age of 80

 

Sources: Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times), Steve Crook (IMDb), The Telegraph, Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

www.freemoviescinema.com/science-fiction/video/latest/con... Full Feature

See more photos in set.

 

Starring Walter Brooke, Eric Fleming, Mickey Shaughnessy, Phil Foster, William Redfield, William Hopper, Benson Fong, Ross Martin, Vito Scotti. Directed by Byron Haskin. Producer George Pal gave us the sci-fi landmark Destination Moon in 1950. He then gave us the timeless classic War of the Worlds in '53. This, his third epic, was a grand effort, but fell shy of his earlier triumphs. On paper, it should have been another mega-classic. The team members from the earlier hits were reassembled. Pal as producer, Haskin directing, Lydon on screenplay, O'Hanlon writing. Conquest was also based on a popular book. Yet, despite all this pedigree, something fell short. Conquest would not go on to be remembered as one of the 50s mega-classics. Some of this obscurity may be due to Conquest being in the "serious" science fiction sub-genre, like Destination Moon and Riders to the Stars which tried to depict a plausible space-traveling future. Audiences were becoming much more entranced with saucers and weird aliens.

 

In some ways,Conquest is a remake of the basic story line from Destination Moon -- a crew are the first to land on a celestial body. They struggle to survive and yet courageously return. This time, instead of the moon, it's Mars. As a remake goes, however, it's worthy. The Technicolor is rich and the sets well done. This is an A-level production which at its release was the 2001: A Space Odyssey of its day. All the melodrama, however, starts to get in the way of the techno-gee-whiz.

Synopsis

Based aboard a rotating wheel space station, workmen prepare a big flying wing of a rocket ship. A group of potential crewmen train for what they think will be a moon landing mission. As the work nears completion, they find out that the real mission will be a landing on Mars instead. While aboard "The Wheel", we're introduced to the phenomenon of "space sickness" -- a mental breakdown due to workload and confinement for long periods. One of the crew candidates is scrubbed because of one such breakdown. Nonetheless, the multinational crew are chosen and embark for the long journey to Mars. After departure, it's found that General Merritt's old friend, Sergeant Mahoney, stowed away. On the way to Mars, a communications antenna is damaged and must be fixed via spacewalking crewmen. Just as the repairs are completed, the customary meteor arrives, threatening to hit the ship. General Merritt manages to fly the ship out of the way, but one of the crewmen on EVA is hit with micrometeoroids (like bullets) and killed. The General is also starting to show odd behavior, doubting whether their mission is proper or is an affront to God. Their evasive action puts them behind schedule, but they arrive at Mars. While attempting to land on Mars, the General has another bout of delusion and tries to abort the landing. His son, Captain Merritt, manages to take control and brings in the flying-wing lander to a rough but successful landing. The others go out to explore, but the General, now fully delusional, is venting rocket fuel in an attempt to blow up the ship. His son discovers this and the two struggle. The General's pistol discharges, killing him. Mahoney comes on the scene just then and accuses Captain Merritt of murdering the General. The rest explore a bit more, but pronounce Mars a dead planet. Despite this, Imoto discovers that his earth flower seed sprouted in martian soil. Earthquakes cause the escape rocket to shift off of perpendicular. They get it righted and blast off. On the way home, Mahoney and Captain Merritt make up and declare that the dead General was a hero, the man who conquered space. The End.

The color, the sets, models and background paintings are very visually rich. The whole image is a great snapshot of the future as people in the mid-50s imagined it would be. More tidbits in the Notes section below.

There is actually a subtle anti-war tone to the movie. No overt talk of nuclear dangers or menacing enemies. It is notable, however, that among the conspicuously international crew candidates, there is no Russian. Americans would "conquer" space with a few other nationals along for the ride, but NO Russians. There is also a poorly explained urgency to the mission. What's the hurry? Back in the Cold War, it was pretty common that WE had to get something before THEY did.

In 1949, Willy Ley wrote the book "The Conquest of Space," which speculated about how mankind might travel to other planets. This book was illustrated by space artist Chesley Bonestell. This book would become the inspiration for the movie.

 

From 1952 to 1954, Collier's magazine ran a series of stories about mankind conquering space. These were repeats by Ley and Bonestell of their 1949 book, but this time Collier's added material from "rocket scientist" Werner von Braun. Bonestell's new illustrations were clearly the prototype for the look of Conquest. People felt that mankind was on the verge of taking to the stars. The Collier's series expressed that giddy optimism.

The screenplay for Conquest added weak human interest sub-plots which almost negate the gee-whiz optimism that the visuals convey. The screenwriters were all experienced in their craft, so it's puzzling why such amateurish characterizations are so prominent. The comic relief moments are almost cartoonish. The whole leader-gone-mad sub-plot seems out of place.

A possible "message" to Conquest is that man is a fragile creature who may not be ready for the rigors of space travel. Certainly, people wondered about this, and other movies touched on the theme too, such as Riders to the Stars ('54). Our not being mentally ready yet was cited by the aliens in It Came From Outer Space ('53). General Merritt's dementia was foreshadowed in the breakdown of Roy early in the movie.

One thing that strikes the viewer is how much life aboard the space station is presumed to duplicate life aboard a navy ship. It's not overtly stated that the military should (or will) be the agency which "conquers" space, but from the ranks and uniforms and the navy-life scenes, that message comes through. Space ships will be like earthly ships.

On the surface, it seems like Conquest is blasting Christians as dangerous religious fanatics. This notion, that anyone who believes in God simply MUST be wacko, would be much more popular in later decades, but it was uncommon in the 50s. For that reason, the General's dementia deserves a closer look.

Actually, General Merritt was not the stereotypic religious fanatic. His son comments that he had never seen him carrying around and reading the Bible before. Instead of headaches or paralysis, the General's "space sickness" took a paranoid turn. He had rational misgivings about the Mars mission from the start, pre-dementia. His repressed misgivings are expressed in Bible verses dealing with sinners being punished by God. He once quotes from Psalm 38, then later from Psalm 62.

Throughout all this, God is not mocked. Indeed, only the "religious" man had the courage to go outside and give the dead Fodor a proper burial. The other non-relgious crewmen were at a loss for what to do.

The notion of impudent mankind trying to meddle in God's domain, is treated as a credible issue. In this, the pattern of the Tower of Babel is drawn. Prideful mankind thinks they can build their way into God's realm. God foils that plan. General Merritt's dementia seems motivated by a fear that this divine retribution could be coming again.

The writers of Conquest imagine a multinationalism in space. Most notable are two former enemy nations: Imoto is from Japan and Fodor is a German-accented Austrian, (as a stand-in for Germany). Imoto gets to make a little speech about why Japan went to war (lack of resources). Fodor gets to be seen as the cherished son of a classic "mama". By 1955, it was starting to become okay to look beyond World War 2.

At one point, the crew of The Wheel are watching a movie with many scantily clad dancing girls (much like sailors aboard a ship). The movie is a lavish musical number with many gold bikini clad pseudo-harem girls dancing while Rosemary Clooney sings about love "...in the desert sand." This clip is total non-sequetor to the high-tech space environment. What's interesting, is that it's NOT stock footage recycled. Clooney had not done any such movie. This dance number must have been staged and shot just for this scene in Conquest. Random act of musical. Gotta love 'em.

 

Bottom line? Conquest is an almost-epic. It's definitely an A-grade sci-fi movie, so it's well worth watching. The human story part gets in the way sometimes, but the visuals more than make up for it.

 

Hijras are so often misunderstood its pathetic.

 

They essentially are men who cross dress or undergo the surgery.

 

In THAILAND they are either a transgender woman or an effeminate gay male

 

in the USA would be called transgender or gay or crossdressers or transvestite or queer.

 

Most hijras live at the margins of society with very low status; the very word "hijra" is sometimes used in a derogatory manner

 

IMHO:

they are basically HOMOSEXUALS who because of the repressed society they live in cannot come out of the closet as they would really like to & live and dress

plain and unadorned LIKE everyone else on the planet ..........

  

So they hide behind this semi/pseudo glamorized though mostly demoralized place in society..................

 

JAISALMER

 

Photography’s new conscience

linktr.ee/GlennLosack

linktr.ee/GlennLosack

  

glosack.wixsite.com/tbws

 

An investigative study into the ways in which certain minorities express themselves, in this case, it’s Drag Queens. Drag is an art and refined skill, but most importantly, drag is a way for one to express themselves through the beauty of a performative identity. Having spoken to over 100 queens over Instagram, I have discovered so much about the culture; such as the fact that there are categories of queens such as comedy queens, spooky queens, club kids, pageant and the most dominant being look queens. It’s fair to say that drag is not something you’d class as ‘normal’, but that certainly doesn’t devalue the significance it truly holds. Breaking gender stereotypes is such a vital way for society to progress. Offensive ideologies such as sexism, homophobia and even transphobia seem to be alleviated as soon as one gets into drag. A man dressed as a women, (usually) part of the LGBT community and clothed in a plethora of elegant attires is so strongly standing for those who are socially repressed in nowadays society for the way in which they identify. Talking to Dixey the queen, she opened my eyes to the idea that “drag is there for those who need that boost of inspiration, that kick of confidence or stance of pride. I live unapologetically and standing on that stage with my double Ds and 30 inch wig makes me feel powerful. but i don’t do it for my own ego, I do it for those who need need the encouragement to be who they want. Yeh, I look like a fool up there, but when my head is high and the crowds are cheering, someone in the world is feeling like they can conquer anything and that is why I get up every morning”. (Ran out of word count - will post my essay soon)

The classic American school bus.

 

Ah.. the sounds! The smells! The repressed memories of what could best be described as "the Lord of the Flies" on wheels.

During the Middle Ages, the town of Soria in Castille was home to several orders having to do with the Holy Land. Among them were the Knights Hospitaller of Saint John of Jerusalem, who were given a little church by the side of River Duero, outside of the town itself so that they could build a hospital and even a leprosy —not too far from the main road, yet out of the way to avoid the plague spreading. The church was, and still is, pretty nondescript, and can still be seen as such today. The Hospitallers re-did the vaulting of the single apse but, more spectacularly, built two astounding ciboria, those Oriental canopies of stone that cover and protect the altars. Two new altars were built underneath them, so that the knights/monks could perform their traditional rites and follow their own early Syrian church-inspired liturgy.

 

Truly, stepping inside that church and seeing those is like being transported to the Mediæval Orient!

 

Now, trying to produce decent photography of monuments is never easy, but when busload upon busload of tourists come into play, it borders on impossible! Furthermore, and this is the only time it ever happened to me in Spain (contrary to Italy, alas!), I was ordered by some repressed prison warden (judging by her amiability and kindness) posing as the welcome (very much so!) person for the monument, not to use the tripod to take pictures! And why, pray? Because that’s the way it is! Unbelievable. As I am cleverer than she was, I managed to beat the system and snap the first two or three exposures on the tripod at ISO 64, but for the rest, I had to bump up the ISO to 500 to accommodate whatever little light there was. Sorry for the resulting loss of quality.

 

Besides that amazingly “orientalized” church, the cloister is the main reason people come visit this ancient place. Art historians reckon it was built around 1200 by mudéjar architects and masons, maybe from Toledo. It is an absolutely unique achievement, unlike anything else I had seen before, and I’m probably not about to see the like of it anytime soon!

 

The ciborium on the left side of the apse. Because in a church, left and right can be inverted depending on where you stand, the French conoscenti refer to le côté de l’épître (“the side of the epistle”) to mean the right side of the altar as seen when you’re facing it (because that’s the side where the epistle to be read sits on a lectern during Mass), while the other side, the left side when you’re facing the altar, is referred to as le côté de l’évangile (“the side of the Gospel”), for the same reason.

 

Both ciboria features very beautiful historied capitals. We will look at those more in detail in future uploads.

The Limited Edition Elsa Doll, released in stores in North America on March 3, 2015. My doll is #2942 of 5000. She is in jeweled purple felt (made from faux wool). This is the outfit she wore as an 18 year old when saying good bye to her parents before their overseas journey. She is wearing ice blue jeweled satin gloves, which help repress her ice powers. Her hands are clasped together. Her pose and look are that of a sternly repressed nature. She is standing in front a purple window of the Castle, which is closed, as she is closed to the outside world.

 

She is wearing black flats with floral decoration. Her jacket is pinned to her dress, which I left alone, as it helps to keep the jacket from opening up. There was a large amount of tissue paper stuffing under her skirt. I had to remove her from the doll stand before I could remove the tissue.

 

She has shiny pearlescent skin, and her skin tone is between that of Coronation Elsa and Snow Queen Elsa. Her hair is slicked down in the front and is in a bun in the back. There is gold tinsel in her hair, even in her side burns.

 

Limited Edition Elsa Doll - Frozen - 17''

Released in stores 2015-03-03

Purchased in store 2015-03-03

Released online 2015-03-04

Sold out in 10 minutes

$119.95

Item No. 6070040901176P

 

Wintry wonder

The Disney Store proudly presents the worldwide Limited Edition Elsa Doll. A regal vision, draped in sumptuous dark purple velvet from head to toe, Elsa is costumed as seen at the beginning of Disney's feature film Frozen.

 

Magic in the details...

 

Please Note: Purchase of this item is limited to 1 per Guest.

 

• Limited Edition of 5000

• Certificate of Authenticity

• Rich velvet costume with bejeweled and embroidered accents

• Jacket features iridescent appliquéd details and fine metallic gold trim

• Skirt features beautiful golden trim, dazzling gemstones, and richly embroidered satin appliqués

• Faux leather belt with shining metallic embroidery

• Satin mittens with jeweled accents

• Glittering rooted hair and eyelashes

• Fully poseable

• Display stand included

• Comes in elegant window display packaging

• Meticulously designed by Disney Store artists to ensure every detail was captured

• Look for our Limited Edition Anna Doll - Frozen - 17'', sold separately

 

The bare necessities

 

• Ages 6+

• Plastic / polyester

• 17'' H

• Imported

 

Safety

 

WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD - Small Parts. Not for children under 3 years.

Day Twenty:

 

Once upon a time there was a tree that lived in the woods. As happy as he was living the au naturale life he was always wary of those coming into his forest. All those happy cheery voices that would rip off limbs and tear down branches. Throwing those pieces of him onto an inferno and singing as they watch it burn.

 

For the tree was not just one, it was the whole forest and it could feel the monstrous nature of those who visited. There was nothing a tree could do until one day a little acorn of an idea dropped to the forest floor. Taking root it grew. This too had limbs but not like all the others. It had the shape and dexterity of those who would see this family of foliage feloniously felled.

 

And with this new body the tree took the revenge of a thousand years of repressed rage. Hacking at the branches of all those would come near this world of wonder. Carving his never ending name onto their soft and smooth fleshy bark. Stomping on their acorns and letting their remains nourish the new forest in their place.

 

And the forest lived happily ever after.

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