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nicolesophia · 4 years

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WORLD LITERATURE

World literature is used to refer to a literature being circulated outside the country where it was published, and it’s pretty sure that everyone nowadays is very familiar with literature, because, who isn’t? People these days lives their daily lives with literature, surely, it surrounds our lives. Ever wonder if there’s an occurrence one day in our life, a day without literature? Will we able to live with it? Well, I don’t think so, after all, literature is our life. Now, before we go to the topic, lets have a brief introduction about when did the literature began.

The literature began early before 17th century, and ever since that time, it had a big impact from all over the world, it almost had taken up the whole world, a world of literature, indeed. And since the literature continues to expand, its dominant themes and styles of each literature around the world, expands, as well. And of course, up until today, there are still many more surprising notions about the literature all over the world!

Today, I’ll show you different dominant themes and styles of literature from Southeast Asia, East Asia, South and West Asia, Anglo-America and Europe, Africa, and Latin America. I hope that in the end, you’ll learn something new about the different themes and styles from around the world.

1. SOUTHEAST ASIA LITERATURE

Southeast Asia consists of 11 countries in total, these are Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. All of these countries were colonized by the other countries, except Thailand, that’s why most of their literary works were mostly influenced by the countries who colonized them. Just like in the Philippines, The Philippines were colonized by the Spaniards, Japanese, and Americans; however most of the literature here in the Philippines were predominantly influenced by the Spaniards for they colonized the country for 333 years.

The Southeast Asian literature’s dominant theme are mainly diaspora (diasporic) theme. Diasporic theme focuses on stories outside the country where the writer is, it also talks about the experiences of an immigrant in a foreign country. Some example of a diasporic theme literature is “Banyaga: A song of War” by Charlson Ong, the story is about how Ernesto (protagonist) struggles living outside the country he came from, and fun fact, the author Charlson Ong’s relation with the main character is that they shared the same experiences! It’s like the author tells his very own life story in the presence of Ernesto as the character. “Banyaga: A Song of War” as well, portrays the Filipino culture, as the author being half Filipino.

2. East Asia Literature

East Asia consists of 8 countries in total, these are China, Japan, South Korea, North Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Mongolia, and Macao. Without a doubt, East Asia is the most popular region in the whole world because of the countries it consists of. Mainly, the East Asia literature were mostly influenced by the Chinese writers; commonly, the China is the building block of the counties in the East Asia, on a fact that most of the East Asia country were colonized by the Chinese. With all of the 8 countries, the Chines and Japanese literature is the most prominent among the East Asia literature.

However, the Japanese literature has a different style, too. Their literature is mostly fond of ambiguous theme, wherein it has a deep meaning and sometimes, the reader wouldn’t get the meaning of it if you are from other countries or city in Japan. The Japanese literature is also well-known for its Haiku and Tanka poems.

Some example of the East Asia literature is Seol Gongchan-jeon (The Tale of Seol Gongchan), korean literature written by Chae Su, the novel was written during the early Joseon era and was originally written in classical Chinese text. The story of said novel is about a person being possessed by the dead spirit who tells story from the underworld. But, the said novel was banned during its era of publication.

Other example of the East Asia literature is a Tanka poem from the Japanese literature. Tanka poems are mostly commonly written as an expression of love and/or gratitude, it may, as well a self-reflection poem.

Narukami no sukoshi toyomite

(A faint clap of thunder)

sashi kumori

(Clouded skies)

Ame mo furanu ka?

(Perhaps rain comes)

Kimi wo todomemu

(If so, will you stay here with me?)

Narukami no sukoshi toyomite

(A faint clap of thunder)

furazu to mo

(Even if rain comes not)

warewa tomaramu

(I will stay here)

imoshi todomeba

(Together with you)

3. South and West Asia Literature

The South and West Asia consists of 17 countries, mostly the Middle East region, these countries are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Georgia, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Apparently, the South and West Asia is commonly known for their own films, “Bollywood” rather than other literature. However, they do, of course have a unique styles and themes of literature.

Literature from the 21st Century Middle East circumscribes a lot assortments of genres, it, as well talks about human experiences oftentimes through a realist manners. Also, what makes their literature unique is that they have or includes their own traditions and practices of their culture.

One example of South and West Asia Literature is “White Tiger” a novel written by an Indian author named Aravin Adiga. It talks about the life of an Indian in the light and darkness, although most part of the novel focusses on India of darkness. Also, the novel has a darkly humorous perspective of Indian’s struggles in life. Here’s some excerpt from the novel “The White Tiger”

“In fact, each time when great men like you visit our country I say it. Not that I have anything against great men. In my way, sir, I consider myself one of your kind. But whenever I see our prime minister and his distinguished sidekicks drive to the airport in black cars and get out and do namastes before you in front of a TV camera and tell you about how moral and saintly India is, I have to say that thing in English.”

4. Anglo-America and Europe Literature

The Anglo-America is a large region that covers up 14 countries in total, these are Canada, United States, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Jamaica, Guyana, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago. And as we all know, Europe is a large continent that consists a lot of countries, well, we’ll not go to far with mentioning all those countries. The Anglo-American literature is closely linked to traditional English, since the American was colonized by the English, they adapted their literature, as well and was influenced by the English writers. However, the history of their literature is too wide, it covers up from the Old English until the Contemporary era.

In spite of that Anglo- American combined literature, the American literature is imposing to be separated to the Anglo (English), but why? The American literature has a distinct characteristic which evolves through eras and such; them, too have their own unique feature, themes, and styles of literature. In short, they have their own, so, for them, what is the essences of being together with the Anglo?

One of the greatest author in the Anglo-America is who we all know, William Shakespeare. With his one of the famous works “Romeo and Juliet” we can mirror the traditional style of Anglo-America literature that somewhat related to their culture, as well. Here’s some excerpt from the classic story “Romeo and Juliet”.

”’Tis but thy name that is my enemy;

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.

What’s Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,

Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part

Belonging to a man. O! be some other name:

]What’s in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,

Retain that dear perfection which he owes

Without that title. Romeo, doff

thy name;

And for that name, which is no part of thee,

Take all myself”

On the other hand, European literature includes writing for some dialects; among the most significant of the cutting edge composed works are those in English, Spanish, French, Dutch, Polish, German, Italian, Modern Greek, Czech and Russian and works by the Scandinavians and Irish. Significant old style and archaic customs are those in Ancient Greek, Latin, Old Norse, Medieval French and the Italian Tuscan tongue of the renaissance. Moreover, the literature was written with regards to Western culture in the dialects of Europe, as a few topographically or verifiably related dialects. Various as they seem to be, European literature, as Indo-European dialects, are portions of a typical legacy having a place with a race of pleased countries which brag any semblance of Homer who composed Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil who composed the Aeneid, Dante who composed Divine Comedy, Chaucer who composed Canterbury Tales. These, and other abstract works of art structure part of what we call as Western Canon.

5. African Literature

The Africa consists of 54 countries in total, however, the African literature has a unique theme and styles. Their literature often to be relevant to its colonial background, and also connected to their traditions and culture, which makes their literature more unique. In addition, their literatures are often known as subversive and expressive contents.

Moreover, oral and composed narrating conventions have had an equal turn of events, and from multiple points of view they have affected one another. Old Egyptian recorders, early Hausa and Swahili copyists and memorizers, and contemporary scholars of famous novellas have been the conspicuous and essential momentary figures in the development from oral to abstract customs. What occurred among the Hausa and Swahili was happening somewhere else in Africa—among the Fulani, in northern Ghana among the Guang, in Senegal among the Tukulor and Wolof, and in Madagascar and Somalia.

One of the most famous African novel is entitled “Things Fall Apart” written by Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart exhaustively envisions how the Nigerian Igbo people group worked preceding expansionism. The divisions in this network go with the deplorable fall of the legend, Okonkwo, whose chivalrous however careless remain against expansionism closes in a forlorn self-destruction. Achebe's astuteness is adequate to move perusers past recriminations or authentic fault, since the Igbo people group adjusts to oblige Christianity and new types of pioneer administration. Similarly as the novel's title cites Yeats' sonnet The Second Coming, Achebe's African way of thinking of equilibrium in everything runs after a millennial association with Western innovation. Here’s some excerpt from the novel “Things Fall Apart”

“The drums beat and the flutes sang and the spectators held their breath. Amalinze was a wily craftsman, but Okonkwo was as slippery as a fish in water. Every nerve and every muscle stood out on their arms, on their backs and their thighs, and one almost heard them stretching to breaking point. In the end, Okonkwo threw the Cat”

6. Latin American Literature

The Latin America is generally consists of all the countries in South America, in addition to Mexico, Central America, and the Islands of the Caribbean, indeed, there’s also a lot of country in the Latin America region. The Latin American mostly adapted their literature from the Aztecs and Mayans, two of the great ancient civilizations of our world, also, the themes of their literature are usually characterized by mysticism, magic, uniqueness, raw creativity, and wonder. Them, too give way and introduced “magical realism”.

Magical realism is a classification of writing that portrays this present reality as having a propensity of sorcery or dream. Mystical authenticity is a piece of the authenticity classification of fiction. Inside a work of supernatural authenticity, the world is as yet grounded in reality, however fantastical components are viewed as ordinary in this world. It is different from what we know “fantasy”.

One example of a magical realism novel is ”House of Spirits(La casa de los Espíritus)” written by Isabel Allende. The novel was published in 1982, Isabel Allende's presentation novel narratives the violent political occasions of post provincial Chile, through the lives of four ages of the rich Trueba family. The extraordinary is available from the start, with Allende portraying the supernatural capacities of one of the novel's principle heroes, Clara. Expect ghosts blended into the consistently, time shifts in the story and signs being figured it out. A genuine show-stopper, of the sorcery authenticity classification, yet additionally of women's activist and Chilean writing. Here’s some excerpt from the novel ”House of Spirits(La casa de los Espíritus)”

“That was Marcos’s longest trip. He returned with a shipment of enormous boxes that were piled in the far courtyard, between the chicken coop and the woodshed, until the winter was over. At the first signs of spring he had them transferred to the parade grounds, a huge park where people would gather to watch the soldiers file by on Independence Day, with the goosestep they had learned from the Prussians. When the crates were opened, they were found to contain loose bits of wood, metal, and painted cloth. Marcos spent two weeks assembling the contents according to an instruction manual written in English, which he was able to decipher thanks to his invincible imagination and a small dictionary. When the job was finished, it turned out to be a bird of prehistoric dimensions, with the face of a furious eagle, wings that moved, and a propeller on its back.”

With all of that, it may be seem that different regions from the world has their very own unique way in terms of literature, all of the literature around the world is really fascinating and amazing. Now that I’ve shown you the different dominant themes and styles of literature from Southeast Asia, East Asia, South and West Asia, Anglo-America and Europe, Africa, and Latin America. I hope that you’ve learned something new and surprising thing about the different themes and styles from around the world!

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goftor-blog · 5 years

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XE3F8753 – Mijaíl Glinka (Михаил Иванович Глинка), Tikhvin Cemetery (Saint Petersburg)

Mijaíl Ivánovich Glinka (en ruso: Михаил Иванович Глинка; Novospásskoie, provincia de Smolensk, 1 de junio de 1804-Berlín, 15 de febrero de 1857) fue un compositor ruso, considerado el padre del nacionalismo musical ruso. Durante sus viajes visitó España, donde conoció y admiró la música popular española, de la cual utilizó el estilo de la jota en su obra La jota aragonesa. Recuerdos de Castilla, basado en su prolífica estancia en Fresdelval, «Recuerdo de una noche de verano en Madrid», sobre la base de la obertura La noche en Madrid, son parte de su música orquestal. El método utilizado por Glinka para arreglar la forma y orquestación son influencia del folclore español. Las nuevas ideas de Glinka fueron plasmadas en “Las oberturas españolas”. Glinka fue el primer compositor ruso en ser reconocido fuera de su país y, generalmente, se lo considera el ‘padre’ de la música rusa. Su trabajo ejerció una gran influencia en las generaciones siguientes de compositores de su país. Sus obras más conocidas son las óperas Una vida por el Zar (1836), la primera ópera nacionalista rusa, y Ruslán y Liudmila (1842), cuyo libreto fue escrito por Aleksandr Pushkin y su obertura se suele interpretar en las salas de concierto. En Una vida por el Zar alternan arias de tipo italiano con melodías populares rusas. No obstante, la alta sociedad occidentalizada no admitió fácilmente esa intrusión de "lo vulgar" en un género tradicional como la ópera. Sus obras orquestales son menos conocidas. Inspiró a un grupo de compositores a reunirse (más tarde, serían conocidos como "los cinco": Modest Músorgski, Nikolái Rimski-Kórsakov, Aleksandr Borodín, Cesar Cui, Mili Balákirev) para crear música basada en la cultura rusa. Este grupo, más tarde, fundaría la Escuela Nacionalista Rusa. Es innegable la influencia de Glinka en otros compositores como Vasili Kalínnikov, Mijaíl Ippolítov-Ivánov, y aún en Piotr Chaikovski. es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mijaíl_Glinka es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Cinco_(compositores)

Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (Russian: Михаил Иванович Глинка; 1 June [O.S. 20 May] 1804 – 15 February [O.S. 3 February] 1857) was the first Russian composer to gain wide recognition within his own country, and is often regarded as the fountainhead of Russian classical music. Glinka’s compositions were an important influence on future Russian composers, notably the members of The Five, who took Glinka’s lead and produced a distinctive Russian style of music. Glinka was born in the village of Novospasskoye, not far from the Desna River in the Smolensk Governorate of the Russian Empire (now in the Yelninsky District of the Smolensk Oblast). His wealthy father had retired as an army captain, and the family had a strong tradition of loyalty and service to the tsars, while several members of his extended family had also developed a lively interest in culture. His great-great-grandfather was a Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth nobleman, Wiktoryn Władysław Glinka of the Trzaska coat of arms. As a small child, Mikhail was raised by his over-protective and pampering paternal grandmother, who fed him sweets, wrapped him in furs, and confined him to her room, which was always to be kept at 25 °C (77 °F); accordingly, he developed a sickly disposition, later in his life retaining the services of numerous physicians, and often falling victim to a number of quacks. The only music he heard in his youthful confinement was the sounds of the village church bells and the folk songs of passing peasant choirs. The church bells were tuned to a dissonant chord and so his ears became used to strident harmony. While his nurse would sometimes sing folksongs, the peasant choirs who sang using the podgolosochnaya technique (an improvised style – literally under the voice – which uses improvised dissonant harmonies below the melody) influenced the way he later felt free to emancipate himself from the smooth progressions of Western harmony. After his grandmother’s death, Glinka moved to his maternal uncle’s estate some 10 kilometres (6 mi) away, and was able to hear his uncle’s orchestra, whose repertoire included pieces by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. At the age of about ten he heard them play a clarinet quartet by the Finnish composer Bernhard Henrik Crusell. It had a profound effect upon him. "Music is my soul", he wrote many years later, recalling this experience. While his governess taught him Russian, German, French, and geography, he also received instruction on the piano and the violin. At the age of 13, Glinka went to the capital, Saint Petersburg, to study at a school for children of the nobility. Here he learned Latin, English, and Persian, studied mathematics and zoology, and considerably widened his musical experience. He had three piano lessons from John Field, the Irish composer of nocturnes, who spent some time in Saint Petersburg. He then continued his piano lessons with Charles Mayer and began composing. When he left school his father wanted him to join the Foreign Office, and he was appointed assistant secretary of the Department of Public Highways. The work was light, which allowed Glinka to settle into the life of a musical dilettante, frequenting the drawing rooms and social gatherings of the city. He was already composing a large amount of music, such as melancholy romances which amused the rich amateurs. His songs are among the most interesting part of his output from this period. In 1830, at the recommendation of a physician, Glinka decided to travel to Italy with the tenor Nikolai Kuzmich Ivanov. The journey took a leisurely pace, ambling uneventfully through Germany and Switzerland, before they settled in Milan. There, Glinka took lessons at the conservatory with Francesco Basili, although he struggled with counterpoint, which he found irksome. Although he spent his three years in Italy listening to singers of the day, romancing women with his music, and meeting many famous people including Mendelssohn and Berlioz, he became disenchanted with Italy. He realized that his mission in life was to return to Russia, write in a Russian manner, and do for Russian music what Donizetti and Bellini had done for Italian music. His return route took him through the Alps, and he stopped for a while in Vienna, where he heard the music of Franz Liszt. He stayed for another five months in Berlin, during which time he studied composition under the distinguished teacher Siegfried Dehn. A Capriccio on Russian themes for piano duet and an unfinished Symphony on two Russian themes were important products of this period. When word reached Glinka of his father’s death in 1834, he left Berlin and returned to Novospasskoye. While in Berlin, Glinka had become enamored with a beautiful and talented singer, for whom he composed Six Studies for Contralto. He contrived a plan to return to her, but when his sister’s German maid turned up without the necessary paperwork to cross to the border with him, he abandoned his plan as well as his love and turned north for Saint Petersburg. There he reunited with his mother, and made the acquaintance of Maria Petrovna Ivanova. After he courted her for a brief period, the two married. The marriage was short-lived, as Maria was tactless and uninterested in his music. Although his initial fondness for her was said to have inspired the trio in the first act of opera A Life for the Tsar (1836), his naturally sweet disposition coarsened under the constant nagging of his wife and her mother. After separating, she remarried. Glinka moved in with his mother, and later with his sister, Lyudmila Shestakova. A Life for the Tsar was the first of Glinka’s two great operas. It was originally entitled Ivan Susanin. Set in 1612, it tells the story of the Russian peasant and patriotic hero Ivan Susanin who sacrifices his life for the Tsar by leading astray a group of marauding Poles who were hunting him. The Tsar himself followed the work’s progress with interest and suggested the change in the title. It was a great success at its premiere on 9 December 1836, under the direction of Catterino Cavos, who had written an opera on the same subject in Italy. Although the music is still more Italianate than Russian, Glinka shows superb handling of the recitative which binds the whole work, and the orchestration is masterly, foreshadowing the orchestral writing of later Russian composers. The Tsar rewarded Glinka for his work with a ring valued at 4,000 rubles. (During the Soviet era, the opera was staged under its original title Ivan Susanin). In 1837, Glinka was installed as the instructor of the Imperial Chapel Choir, with a yearly salary of 25,000 rubles, and lodging at the court. In 1838, at the suggestion of the Tsar, he went off to Ukraine to gather new voices for the choir; the 19 new boys he found earned him another 1,500 rubles from the Tsar. He soon embarked on his second opera: Ruslan and Lyudmila. The plot, based on the tale by Alexander Pushkin, was concocted in 15 minutes by Konstantin Bakhturin, a poet who was drunk at the time. Consequently, the opera is a dramatic muddle, yet the quality of Glinka’s music is higher than in A Life for the Tsar. He uses a descending whole tone scale in the famous overture. This is associated with the villainous dwarf Chernomor who has abducted Lyudmila, daughter of the Prince of Kiev. There is much Italianate coloratura, and Act 3 contains several routine ballet numbers, but his great achievement in this opera lies in his use of folk melody which becomes thoroughly infused into the musical argument. Much of the borrowed folk material is oriental in origin. When it was first performed on 9 December 1842, it met with a cool reception, although it subsequently gained popularity. Glinka went through a dejected year after the poor reception of Ruslan and Lyudmila. His spirits rose when he travelled to Paris and Spain. In Spain, Glinka met Don Pedro Fernández, who remained his secretary and companion for the last nine years of his life. In Paris, Hector Berlioz conducted some excerpts from Glinka’s operas and wrote an appreciative article about him. Glinka in turn admired Berlioz’s music and resolved to compose some fantasies pittoresques for orchestra. Another visit to Paris followed in 1852 where he spent two years, living quietly and making frequent visits to the botanical and zoological gardens. From there he moved to Berlin where, after five months, he died suddenly on 15 February 1857, following a cold. He was buried in Berlin but a few months later his body was taken to Saint Petersburg and re-interred in the cemetery of the Alexander Nevsky Monastery. Glinka was the beginning of a new direction in the development of music in Russia Musical culture arrived in Russia from Europe, and for the first time specifically Russian music began to appear, based on the European music culture, in the operas of the composer Mikhail Glinka. Different historical events were often used in the music, but for the first time they were presented in a realistic manner. The first to note this new musical direction was Alexander Serov. He was then supported by his friend Vladimir Stasov, who became the theorist of this musical direction. This direction was developed later by composers of "The Five". The modern Russian music critic Viktor Korshikov thus summed up: "There is not the development of Russian musical culture without…three operas – Ivan Soussanine, Ruslan and Ludmila and the Stone Guest have created Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin. Soussanine is an opera where the main character is the people, Ruslan is the mythical, deeply Russian intrigue, and in Guest, the drama dominates over the softness of the beauty of sound." Two of these operas – Ivan Soussanine and Ruslan and Ludmila – were composed by Glinka. Since this time, the Russian culture began to occupy an increasingly prominent place in world culture. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Glinka en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_(composers)

Posted by Enrique R G on 2019-09-12 09:20:20

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picturebookmakers · 5 years

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Daniel Fehr

In this post, Daniel talks about ‘Come si legge un libro?’ (How to Read a Book?) – a story of stories and a book with multiple directions of reading. This unique picturebook is illustrated by Maurizio Quarello and published in Italy by Orecchio Acerbo.

Visit Daniel Fehr’s website

Daniel: With ‘Come si legge un libro?’ (How to Read a Book?) I wanted to create a book that plays with our expectations of reading. At first sight, it might look like an instructional book to teach reading, much like Mortimer Adler’s book from 1940, from which I stole the title. But contrary to his book, which was written to teach critical reading to a popular audience, ‘How to Read a Book?’ quickly runs amok.

The characters in the book speak with you, the reader – no, they command you: Turn the book, shake it, spin it. Is this still reading? Is it playing? Has the reader been set up by the book? In the end, you know something you’ve most likely known all along – that you are supposed to read a book from the front to the back, and holding it the right way.

At the same time, you’ve experienced much more: You’ve experienced that reading can be playful; a game where both you and the book take part. You played with the book, but the book also played with you.

‘How to Read a Book?’, my sixth published picture book, belongs to my series of experimental and rather conceptual picture books, which include ‘Mr Left and Mr Right’, illustrated by Celeste Aires, and ‘A Bola Amarela’ (A Yellow Ball), illustrated by Bernardo P. Carvalho.

In ‘Mr Left and Mr Right’, for example, the two protagonists are trapped on their own pages. One on the left page, one on the right. They try to do everything to get to the other page and, finally, find a solution involving the book itself.

Since these books attempt to play with the medium, I was not just writing a manuscript or a preliminary storyboard. I created very rough prototypes to test how readers reacted before I presented the ideas to my publisher.

The challenge with ‘How to Read a Book?’ was to invite readers to participate: to actually turn the book upside down, contrary to their knowledge of how to read a book. For this, you need to have the idea in your hands to understand how it works. This is still true for the final book; it is a very analogue product. You need to be able to turn it upside down, to shake it, to spin it.

When I write a picture book, I have a clear conception of its setting, what the pictures show and how the book flows. I know which part of the text is placed on which page. I know the rhythm, I know the turns, I know what the book should look like, but it doesn’t yet; it’s still just text and scribblings, very poor scribblings. Without the illustrator, my book is nothing. Good illustrators are not only able to grasp the core of my texts quickly and precisely, but they’re also able to enrich them with their own vision. They transform and rework it until it is one – until it is not my idea anymore, but ‘our’ work.

Maurizio included characters from famous tales, like Grimm’s ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and Ahab from Herman Melville’s ‘Moby-Dick; or, The Whale’. My prototype didn’t include any of these; my figures were simply placeholders – canvases for the illustrator’s imagination. I immediately fell in love with Maurizio’s idea, since these classic characters mirror Adler’s obsession with ‘Great Books’ and mocks it gently.

At the same time, they make you curious: What are they doing in this book? Where are they coming from? What are their own stories? A story is never closed in itself, but always contains further stories. Sometimes you have to invent them yourself, sometimes they already exist. I would be very happy if Maurizio’s and my book could be a starting point for our readers to discover more stories and books.

Illustrations © Maurizio Quarello, Celeste Aires and Bernardo P. Carvalho. Post edited by dPICTUS.

Buy this picturebook

Come si legge un libro? / How to Read a Book?

Daniel Fehr & Maurizio Quarello

Orecchio Acerbo, Italy, 2018

A story of stories and a book with multiple directions of reading... ‘How to Read a Book?’ features characters from popular fairy tales and a captain from a very famous novel. They all have an appointment on the pages of this book – a bewildering book where up is down and down is up!

If these characters are to have a chance of getting through their story, they’ll need to teach the young reader how this book has to be read...

Italian: Orecchio Acerbo

German: Jacoby & Stuart

French: Editions Kaléidoscope

Spanish: Editorial Océano

Turkish: Cinar Yayinlari

Korean: Miseghy Children’s Press

Chinese (Simplified): TB Publishing

#switzerland

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kleb-adventures · 6 years

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CANADA AGAINST SWITZERLAND

CANADA:

Dining and Entertainment

To beckon a waiter in Quebec, quietly to say "Monsieur" or "S'il vous plait. Say "Mademoiselle" to beckon a waitress. Never beckon a waiter or waitress by snapping your fingers or shouting.

The host normally offers first toast. Wait until everyone is served wine and a toast is proposed before drinking. It is acceptable for women to propose a toast.

Wine is normally served with meals in Quebec.

The People

The vast majority of Canadians claim European ancestry. Four in nine Canadians claim some British ancestry and a little less than one in three have some French ancestry. Eighty percent of the residents in Quebec have French ancestry. Eighty percent of native French speakers live in Quebec (the others are mostly in New Brunswick, and parts of Ontario and Manitoba). Other European groups include Italians, Germans and Ukrainians (especially in the prairie states).

Broadly speaking, Canada has been divided into two distinct societies, one French-speaking (see "Quebec" below) and one English-speaking. Because they don't form as cohesive a group as French-speaking Canadians, only very general observations can be made about English-speaking Canadians; they are generally thought of (and consider themselves) more reserved, less aggressive and less excitable than their neighbors to the south.

Most Canadians identify themselves very strongly with their province. Canadians continue to wrestle with the question, "What does it mean to be Canadian?" and take pains to differentiate themselves from citizens of the United States.

Regional Differences

Atlantic Canada (includes the Maritimes -- Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island -- and Newfoundland): Primarily of British descent, the residents of the less prosperous Atlantic provinces of eastern Canada are generally more reserved, stolid, provincial and old-fashioned. Newfoundland is unique, with a dialect and culture that draws comparisons with the Irish and the people of western England.

Ontario: Residents of Canada's most populous province -- the country's economic, political and cultural colossus -- are generally thought of as more business-like and conservative than other Canadians.

Western Canada (includes Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba): Residents of Canada's western provinces are generally more open, relaxed, friendly and direct than other Canadians (comparisons are often made with inhabitants of the western United States).

British Columbia: Canada's unconventional westernmost province is seen by Canadians as the land of the future, and has more in common with Seattle than Toronto. Like many other western Canadians, many residents of British Columbia feel somewhat estranged from "easterners" (a general code word for those from Ontario and Quebec).

Quebec (and other areas of Francophone Canada): French Canadians, and especially the Québécois (or citizens of Quebec, pronounced "keh-beck-wah") have a very strong sense of cultural identity and are very nationalistic. The European influence is strongly felt in Quebec, whose people consider themselves the "defenders of French civilization in North America." Because of their animated good nature, Québécois are sometimes called the "Latins of the North."

The North: Residents of the sparsely populated north are seen as rugged embodiments of the Canadian pioneer spirit.

Meeting and Greeting

In general, Canadians are more reserved and polite than Americans, and take matters of etiquette a little more seriously.

Shake hands and introduce yourself when meeting Canadians for the first time. Always shake hands firmly when meeting or departing. Eye contact is important.

When a woman enters or leaves a room, it is polite for men to rise. Men normally offer their hands to women.

In Quebec, kissing on the cheeks in the French manner is quite common. When close friends and family meet in Quebec, they use first names and kiss both cheeks.

Corporate Culture

Punctuality is demanded for business meetings and social occasions. If a conflict arises, you are expected to let your Canadian counterpart know immediately. That said, Canadians are not as obsessed with time as Americans.

Business cards are commonly exchanged in Canada.

For Quebec, print your business cards in English or French, including your academic degree(s) and/or title. A double-sided business card (one side in English, one side in French) is best.

Dining and Entertainment

To beckon a waiter in Quebec, quietly to say "Monsieur" or "S'il vous plait. Say "Mademoiselle" to beckon a waitress. Never beckon a waiter or waitress by snapping your fingers or shouting.

The host normally offers first toast. Wait until everyone is served wine and a toast is proposed before drinking. It is acceptable for women to propose a toast.

Wine is normally served with meals in Quebec.

SWITZERLAND

The People

The Swiss value cleanliness, honesty, hard work, and material possessions. Motto: "Unity, yes; Uniformity, no." They are very proud of their environment and have a long tradition of freedom. They value sobriety, thrift, tolerance, punctuality and a sense of responsibility. They are very proud of their neutrality and promotion of worldwide peace. The Swiss have a deep-rooted respect for saving and the material wealth it brings.

Meeting and Greeting

Shake hands with everyone present -- men, women, and children -- at business or social meetings. Shake hands again when leaving.

Handshakes are firm with eye contact.

Body Language

Poor posture is frowned upon. Do not stretch or slouch in public.

Do not point your index finger to your head. This is an insult.

Body language varies from region to region in Switzerland.

Corporate Culture

The Swiss take punctuality for business and social meetings very seriously and expect that you will do likewise. Call with an explanation if you will be delayed.

Business cards in English are acceptable. Hand your business card to the receptionist upon arrival for a meeting. Give a card to each person you meet subsequently.

Dining and Entertainment

In the German parts of Switzerland, beckon a waiter by saying Herr Ober, and a waitress by saying Fräulein. It is considered rude to wave your hand.

Business luncheons are more common than business breakfasts.

Business entertainment is almost always done in a restaurant.

On my opinion, there is a lot of difference between Canada and Switzerland, but the uniqueness of both countries make me so impress. Canada as my home country make me so proud that being the most polite in the whole world. Switzerland is known for it’s own products that makes the country famous.

WORD COUNT: 1,032

REFERENCES: http://www.ediplomat.com/np/cultural_etiquette/ce_ca.htm

http://www.ediplomat.com/

#culture #Canada #Switzerland #Canadian #Swiss #difference

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ploukunm · 3 years

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How to Follow a European Championship Tournament

The world of football is unique not only in its history and in its many styles but also in its goals and aspirations. Soccer is a football competition governed by its members, which is comprised of countries that have football traditions and teams that compete at the ดู บอล บ้าน ผล บอล FIFA (Federation of International Football Associations) and the FIFA (Federation of European Football Associations) tournaments. The international rules of football, equality, subsidiarity, promotion and qualification, and fair play are the basis of the football pyramid which ensures football worldwide success and are, thus, already, ensconced in the FIFA and federation laws.

participation in international and continental competitions must always be on the ground winning on the field. It is this principle which underpins the structure of football competition and qualification to win the football competition and the way it is organised to ensure that clubs from all corners of the globe are encouraged to join and participate. The manner in which clubs are qualified and promote themselves to the football competition is dictated by the FIFA (Federation of International Football Associations) and its member associations which are sanctioned by FIFA (Federation of International Football Associations) and are certified by the FIFA (Federation of International Football Associations) to participate in the competitions and events.

A football competition can be split into two distinct sections; the domestic league or the inter-national league. The domestic league, the most well-known and longest running football competition, is held every four years and is usually separated into three divisions: the top division consisting of the English FA Cup, the English Premier League and the French Ligueliga; the second division consists of the Italian league, the German league and the Swiss league; the third division is the Russian league and theACB (American football association). The inter-national league is an annual event which is regularly held every six years and is separated into three divisions: the Brazilian league, the Colombian league and the Korean league. In case of a tie-breaker, the playoff is held every one year. The format for qualification to the cup includes the qualifying rounds held throughout the season; each division plays all other teams in its division twice while the other teams play all other teams in their respective conferences once.

Inter-club competition: this type of competition is usually played among the independent (non-playing) clubs in football with the aim of adding some spice to the game and bringing fans closer to the sport. This type of competition includes the "ikeda dos" in which all the participating clubs are invited to play against the opposition clubs in a specified stadium; the "futebol de cor" is an open, competitive and extra-time exhibition match played between the most popular European clubs; the "semi-finals" and "finals" of this competition are sometimes held in other countries outside of Europe. The most prestigious club competition is the "championship", which includes the champions of each of the six categories of football played in the competition. The most important part of this competition is the "cup final", which is held at a stadium with a capacity of more than eighty thousand spectators.

Successful club tournament: this tournament is a combination of both the above tournaments. It represents a great achievement for the clubs and a source of pride for the supporters. Every year, the champions of these two leagues are decided by a special draw, after a lengthy process of voting. The actual competition consists of teams from all over the world, but it has become quite a famous one because of football's all-time runners-up. The current list of winners includes the Barcelona and Real Madrid of Spain, the Manchester United of England and Italy, the Sevilla and FC Barcelona of Spain, the PSV Eindhoven and Borussia Dortmund of Netherlands, Benfica Lisbon and AC Milan of Portugal, Inter Milan and Manchester City of England, and Arsenal and Manchester United of England.

These football competitions make it possible for fans from all over Europe to take part in a tournament that only the strongest teams from each country can qualify for. The football giants of Europe have made their reputation on being the biggest and the best, but they still remain unbeatable when it comes to cup tournaments. And so, fans continue to watch these two teams play out their national finals, to cheer on their favourite players and to see them challenge for the title in the ongoing European champions. So far, this year's edition of the CAF Champions League has been no exception.

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epistolizer · 4 years

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Religious Progressives Abet Dictatorial Agendas

It could be argued that the United States of America holds an unique position in the world in that for the most part the nation's sociopolitical system attempts to balance the competing needs of both the group and the individual. This impressive feat is accomplished in part as a result of distinctive foundations such as a constitutional framework of government and the underlying moral assumptions shared by various interpretations of the Judeo-Christian philosophical tradition.

Without these restraints, eventually this way of life so easily taken for granted would collapse in favor of tyranny or anarchy with it becoming increasingly difficult to tell such extremities apart. Startlingly, one does not have to expend too much time and effort to find influential voices advocating for the abolition of these safeguards. Often such thinkers do so from a perspective claiming to be religions in terms of its motivating orientation or at least on behalf of organizations having accumulated a significant percentage of the largess upon which they operate by appealing to that particular underlying behavioral motivation.

For example, in the 12/30/12 edition of the New York Times, Georgetown University Professor of Constitutional Law Louis Michael Seidman published an essay titled “Let's Give Up On The Constitution”. In this analysis, an intellectual employed by a prominent Roman Catholic institution advocates abolishing the document upon which the foundations of the governing structures of the Republic rest because of the numerous instances throughout American history in which adherence to the strictures of the document proved too burdensome and in which deviation from proved the expeditious thing to do. Examples cited include Justice Robert Jackson's admission that the decision handed down in “Brown vs. Board of Education” was based on moral and political necessity rather than any explicitly constitutional provision and Franklin Roosevelt's presupposition that the Constitution was a declaration of aspirations rather than binding possibilities.

Louis Seidman remarks with the condescension endemic to the professorial class, “In the face of this long history of disobedience, it is hard to take seriously the claim of the Constitution's defenders that we would be reduced to a Hobbesian state of nature... Our sometimes flagrant disregard of the Constitution has not produced chaos or totalitarianism; on the contrary, it has helped to grow and prosper.”

The Americans of Japanese, German, and Italian ancestry interred during World Wat II might argue otherwise. Therefore, invoking Roosevelt's admonition that the Constitution is only a set of suggestions rather than an obligation might not be that good of an idea after all.

In the remainder of his analysis, Professor Seidman attempts to assure the reader that what ensures the continuation of America's fundamental liberties and semi-functioning government (at least in comparison to what prevails in most other parts of the world) is not some piece of paper that would literally disintegrate if not kept under the strictest climate-controlled conditions. Rather, the proverbial American way of life is continued by what Professor Seidman categorizes as “entrenched institutions and habits of thought and, most important, that sense that we are one nation and work out our differences.”

But without paper the Constitution to keep competing and disparate interests and factions in check within a clearly delineated framework, would what we enjoy as Americans endure for very long? As examples of what he suggests as viable political regimes that provide civilized structures without relying upon a formalized written constitution are the United Kingdom and New Zealand.

But while these countries might hold hours of endless fascination of the setting of many a BBC drama or picture postcards, are either really a place the average American would really want to live? To put it bluntly, the population of New Zealand is about as white as the sheep for which that pastured land is famous. Would that country be able to survive and endure if its population were as varied as the United States with sizable hordes refusing to abide by the values that make a viable society possible?

In terms of the diversity we are obligated to applaud as nothing but positive or face accusations of assorted thought crimes, the United Kingdom might be more akin to its sibling society in the United States. However, in many profound ways, in this regard Great Britain is nothing to be proud of or desire to emulate.

There swarms from the Third World, like plagues of grasshoppers, eagerly consume the sustenance that is provided like none other. And like these ravenous insects, significant percentages of these migrants would rather destroy than preserve the bounty set before them.

For example, in Britain, instead of exhibiting a little respect and gratitude for being extended the privilege of even being allowed to reside in such a land to begin with, one Islamist of African origins murdered a member of that nation's military along the roadside and then proudly documented the act by testifying to the atrocity in a video while still soaked in the blood of his victim. Elsewhere in that same country, others sharing in this same particular so-called religion expect their hosts to accommodate their alien peculiarities rather than for the newcomers to tone these down as any polite guest might.. For example, a number practicing polygamy demanded that each wife be allowed entrance into the country where she is in turn granted additional welfare benefits for each new whelp she continues to push out at a rate that would probably exhaust a tribblbe (the fuzzy aliens from the original Star Trek that Bones McCoy pointed out were born pregnant).

In both the United Kingdom and New Zealand, those daring to articulate perspectives against this sort of cultural subversion could be charged with assorted thought crimes on the grounds of racial or ethnic disparagement. That is because, unlike in America, the United Kingdom and New Zealand have not enshrined freedom of expression as a fundamental right in a constitution, the very thing Professor Seidman cavalierly suggests we abolish in favor of a proposed brave new world.

In his proposal, Professor Seidman even goes out of his way to address concerns raised by those shocked by what it is their discernment warns he is suggesting. He assures, “This is not to say that we should disobey all constitutional commands. Freedom of speech and religion, equal protection of the laws and ... against governmental deprivations of life, liberty, and property are important, whether or not they are in the Constitution. We should continue to follow those requirements out of respect, not obligation.”

But if these are not protected by a constitution that exists somewhat to an extent beyond the whims of ordinary politics and expediency, who is to say such niceties should not be abolished or withheld from non-compliant segments of the population when doing so would be convenient. For example, is gay marriage any longer a “right” should fifty-one percent in a plebiscite or whatever other methods are utilized to determine these kinds of questions in a world where nothing is any longer set in concrete?

Professor Seidman continues, “Nor should we have a debate about, for instance, how long the president's term should last or whether Congress should consist of two houses. Some matters are better left settled, even if not in exactly the way we favor.” Once more, who is to say?

If there is no Constitution, by what authority does one impose the perspective that such things are hereby settled? You can no longer point to an article, section, or clause of the Constitution and say, “Look. It says so right there.”

Professor Seidman's gentlemanly view of society might be barely functional in a world where most of the population adhere roughly to a similar set of values. However, such a Western world in general and an America in particular sadly no longer exists.

There is now within our midst sizable Islamic populations that not only demand their right to practice their barbarous customs but also demand that the rest of us surrender to them as well or face overwhelming violence. And this is not the only movement seeking to remake America and to eliminate what little remains of that distinct way of life and cultural perspective.

For instance, no longer is it enough to allow those that derive their deepest carnal pleasures in ways most would be shocked by or not find so appealing to so do so off on their own. Now, under threat of financial ruination, we are forced to render compelled approval in ways that violate our own convictions and sensibilities.

According to assorted accounts, Christian bakers have been forced to provide cakes for gay weddings when there were no doubt numerous others willing to provide such culinary services. Elsewhere, young girls have been forced to look on in horror in the locker or restroom as the person undressing there before them turns out that at the most basic level is still a man no matter how vehemently they attempt to deny nature's manifest construction.

Given that Professor Seidman is a professor of Constitutional Law, one would think that in calling for the elimination of the U.S. Constitution that he was essentially derailing his own gravy train as Georgetown University professors probably pull in a hefty salary and are esteemed as part of the nation's intellectual elite.

But even if scholarship in traditional constitutional studies were to become an extinct discipline, those such as Professor Seidman convined they are so much better than the rest of us will still think it will be their place to tell the rest of us what to do. However, it will simply no longer be from the standpoint of a traditional understanding of morality. This is evidenced by the “New Social Contract” called for by Evangelical Christian Progressive Jim Wallis.

In classical democratic theory, in a social contract both parties agree to fulfill a delineated number of obligations in order to receive a desired benefit. This is done from a perspective of self-interest as much or maybe even more so than to meet the desires or needs of the other party.

For example, no matter how much they claim otherwise and might even pitch in during a time of crisis, the generic big box retailer or even the so-called “mom and pop” shop down the street really don't care one way or the other whether your nutritional needs are being met. What they really care about and might even be willing to go out of their way to see that your dietary inclinations are satisfied fot is if you are willing to relent to the agreed upon price for the desired commodity.

Something similar could be said of the individuals and institutions involved in the so-called social contract. Under that theory, if parties feel that the terms are not being met, individuals are free to look elsewhere for the purposes of finding their fulfillment. For example, in a constitutional republic, individuals are free to change church affiliations or their religion entirely. In terms of government, citizens are theoretically free to either change their leaders through periodic elections or the parameters of governing structures through the amendment process.

Such is not necessarily the case regarding the idea of a covenant. For unlike the idea of a contract, the notion of a covenant often does not possess the same degree of personal self-interest. Covenant carries with it the idea of being imposed upon the individual from without by a greater power irrespective of the desire of the individual or that the individual is expected to fulfill certain obligations without expectations of benefit in return.

For example, a number of such covenants are detailed in the pages of the Bible. Foremost among these ranks the covenants between God and the Nation of Israel as promised to the Patriarch Abraham. Although he and his descendants were blessed as a result especially when by living in accordance with these stipulations, it was God that sought this people ought and laid out the terms with little room for negotiation.

But probably the kind of covenant most are most familiar with is none other than marriage. Though marriage is usually entered into voluntarily by the involved parties, in a context that honors the institution properly, it can only be exited under the strictest of conditions that would leave the party initially guilty of violating the binding terms profoundly sanctioned often to the verge of ruination. The notion of contract provides for a way out even if there is a penalty for invoking this particular provision.

In January 2013, planetary elites met at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. One of the sessions convened was titled “The Moral Economy: From Social Contract To Social Covenant”. The purpose of the undertaking was to establish a framework that would foster “(1) the dignity of the human person, (2) the importance of the common good, which transcends individual interests, and (3) the need for stewardship of the planet and prosperity.”

What's so wrong with any of that, one might easily ask? After all, each of these things sounds noble almost to the point of being inspirational. The problem arises in regards as to how these are defined and who does the defining.

For example, one of the issues harped about the most by a variety of leftists ranging from the filthy slobs of the Occupy Movement all the way to Pope Francis is the need for income redistribution. So what if the technocrats overseeing the implementation of the social covenant decide to tackle that particular economic perplexity?

Most people are disturbed by the idea of their fellow man languishing in the deprivations of overwhelming poverty. But what if the overlords of the New Social Covenant decide that the way to address that is not by sustained acts of ongoing charity but rather through the forced confiscation of what you have earned with the seized resources supposedly directed towards those that really did not earn it but in reality much of it squandered by those administering such an unprecedented global effort. After all, the Pope has all that art work to upkeep there in the Vatican and assorted U.N. Functionaries like nothing better than to gather at posh resorts in the Swiss Alps or the French seaside to denounce reliance of the middle class upon automobiles while these elites fritter from conference to conference around the globe in private jets.

Those unable to expand their imaginations beyond the relatively comfortable reality that we at the moment are blessed to enjoy counter that should some sort of global authority move to seize what we have (beyond of course the increasingly exorbitant tax rates) concerned citizens can use their freedoms of speech and assembly to petition for the redress of their grievances and to raise overall awareness about policies that have expanded beyond the bounds of propriety. But does one need to be reminded that one of the very first liberties and freedoms curtailed by the social engineers of the technocratic elite is the very freedom of expression that was part of the Constitution that was abandoned earlier in this exposition as part of the reactionary past that was hindering the further development of the human species and society?

In this pending new world order, the law will not be the only social institution manipulating and conditioning the inmates of the planetary panopticon from exercising what at one time were categorized as individual rights. For religion in general and what passes for Christianity in particular will be invoked in pursuit of this agenda.

The foundation of this perspective can be discerned in an editorial published in the July/August 2014 issue of Christianity Today titled, “It's about the common good, not just the individual good.” According to the piece, the basis of America is not the individual or even the family as the union of two distinct individuals and the children that might result from such couplings but rather the COMMUNITY.

But if it is the larger group that is imbued with those restrictions upon concentrations of authority known as rights, what will protect the individual when the individual is viewed as nothing more than a malfunctioning cog in the machine or diseased cell in the larger social organism that must be eliminated or his flourishing curtailed over justifications no greater than the COMMUNITY has declared thusly? The Christianity Today article, in particular, briefly examines the implications of this in regards to children. Unfortunately, however, this analysis is disturbingly superficial and shortsighted.

The Christianity Today article quotes favorably of a Robert Putnam (the same sociologist that categorizes you as some sort of deviant if you bowl by yourself) at Georgetown University, “Kids from working-class homes used to be 'our kids' he said, Now they are other people's kids, and we expect other people to solve their problems. But young people are our future. Their problems are ours.”

The Christianity Today editorial realized that the remarks were speaking to the matter of inequality. In other words, the increasingly leftist Evangelical mouthpiece apparently has little problem in attempting to shame and manipulate you into forking over increasing percentages of what you have earned and saved. “What, you don't support the progressive income and inheritance taxes? Why do you hate children and refuse to do your part to usher in the revolutionary utopia?”

One would hope that the current editors of that particular publication would retain enough of its founders' intellectual heritage to realize that there exists more to life than merely the physical building blocks. As the such, the phrase “our kids” when spoken in reference to any youngsters other than those you might share with your respective spouse or have adopted as one's own ought to send chills down the spine of any reflective discerning individual.

For if children are to be seen as “our children” in terms of being the children of a respective COMMUNITY apart from a few basic needs such as minimal food, shelter, and maybe healthcare, what is to prevent governing authorities from intervening to dictate what you can and cannot teach in terms of religious doctrine and morality? For example, do you believe that belief in Jesus Christ as the only Begotten Son of God and member of the Trinity is the one true faith?

Well, in the New World Order where the good and preferences of the group come before those of the individual, such an outdated understanding of the ultimate cannot be allowed even if you are an otherwise peaceful individual with no intentions of harming anyone in a traditional sense of that concept. For the assumption that a source of authority exists outside the uniformity of the group consensus is the seed from which all conflict generates forth.

The First Amendment is not the only one of the derided and denigrated constitutional liberties endangered by those out to impose the fundamental transformation of America advocated by President Obama and embraced by certain radicals in the name of errant theology. For if the First Amendment is the constitutional provision upon which our foundational liberties rest, then the Second Amendment is the constitutional provision that attempts to make sure that the robust liberties elaborated in the First Amendment continue to endure. For despite what even the National Rifle Association has been intimidated into repeating, the Second Amendment is about far more that guaranteeing the right to hunt and participate in shooting sports.

Rather, the primary purpose of the Second Amendment is to recognize and enshrine the idea that each citizen has a role to play in protecting life, liberty, and property against threats to these precious commodities originating from both within and without the borders of the United States. And yes, as the very last resort after all other alternatives have been exhausted, that may mean solemnly with deliberation and reluctance taking up arms against whatever form the threat may take on the most regrettable of occasions.

But even more importantly, it is the Second rather than the First Amendment that actually serves as a barometer of the health of liberty and freedom throughout this land. For without a government and civil society that respects the right to keep and bear arms arms as described in the Second Amendment, the seemingly loftier protections of conviction and expression will not endure much longer. That is because a country or regime that refused to acknowledge the right to protect oneself will eventually not tolerate the right to think for oneself or in a manner not as directed by those holding power.

Even those claiming to view God as the highest authority cannot resist the temptation of the continuing centralization of power. This is evidenced in two 2013 issues of the Christian Century.

The editorial titled “Terror and Guns” examined the issue by comparing the three that lost their lives in the Boston Marathon Bombing to three that lost their lives that same day in acts of gun violence elsewhere across the nation. From that the editorial made the claim that 30,000 Americans are killed by guns each year compared to the seventeen Americans that lost their lives to acts of terrorism in 2012.

If such statistics are trustworthy, that certainly causes one to pause. But instead of making the case that the extensive national security and surveillance apparatus that these sorts of left-leaning publications condemn when applied to subversives of assorted revolutionary or radical perspectives be abolished, it is insinuated that a similarly heavy hand should be applied to the matter of gun crimes and even firearms ownership. The Christian Century writes, “Terrorist threats demand vigilance, and the government has responded by creating an extensive security and intelligence capability...Why can't the nation display the same kind of resolve when it comes to keeping guns out of the hands of the wrong people?”

As evidence of this lamentation, editors of Christian Century write, “In the case of the Senate gun control bill, a majority of senators voted to strengthen background checks in people purchasing guns, but the 54-46 vote did not attain the 60 votes required in the Senate. Something is wrong with a process by which a minority can derail legislation that is supported by 90% of Americans.”

Apparently the editors could not leave their analysis at that. These propagandists continued, “Many of the votes against background checks were cast by senators from small or sparsely populated states. Based on population the vote of a senator from Wyoming has 66 times more value than that of a senator from California. This kind of disparity in political power is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind.”

From that editorial, one would initially assume in terms of the issue emphasized on the surface that the concern would be a vast comprehensive national surveillance system that would determine who would be denied access to firearms. However, just as insidious is an underlying contempt for the structures of the Republic as envisioned by the framers of the Constitution.

For the United States of America does not consist solely of “We the people” merely as a singular mass or collective of individuals. Just as intrinsic to the understanding of this particular nation is “We the people” construed as fifty distinct jurisdictional entities known as states. From that particular vantage point, each of these is to be viewed as equal to the others in terms of the voice granted in the second body of the national legislature in determining the direction in terms of law and policy that will guide the nation as a comprehensive totality.

From the statement in the Christian Century commentary complaining that the political weight of a Wyoming senator is skewered in that jurisdiction's favor over that of California with its vastly larger population, the logic would conclude that right and wrong are determined by nothing more than majority opinion. So if we are to apply that principle in regards to the regulation of firearms, the shouldn't the good liberals at propaganda outfits such as the Christian Century allow the principle to be applied to other cultural issues nearly as contentious as those surrounding the Second Amendment?

For example, if most Americans were asked what they really believed without fear of retaliation on the part of the Thought Police, most would probably admit that they are not all that hip to the idea of gay marriage and certainly not open to the idea of transgenders especially men claiming that they are women as evidenced by their external endowments legally allowed to go into a public restroom where they can in close proximity to actual women and vulnerable children engage in some of life's most personal biological function as well as possibly seek these individuals out as victims to satisfy the most base of carnal impulses.

If a few senators can disrupt the will of the people in regards to one area of life, why should a few jurists not even as directly accountable to the electorate as these disputed legislators be allowed to impose a perspective at even greater odds with decency and common sense. For is not the chanted slogan of the ethical Thunder Dome in which the nearly constant social conflict takes place that there are no absolutes?

As interesting is how the appeal to traditional moral authority is only valid when it can be buttressed to support the preferred sensibilities of the prevailing elites. This was quite evident in a second Christian Century editorial published about a similar topic on 2/6/13 titled “Of Guns and Neighbors.”

The thesis of that broadside contends that individual rights are curtailed by the good of one's neighbor in Christian understanding. The editorial states, “In the biblical perspective, social issues are always framed primarily as questions of obligation, not of individual rights: not 'What do I get to do?' but 'What do we owe to God and neighbor?'.”

The editorial demonstrates how this reasoning is applied to the firearms debate by quoting Deuteronomy 22:8. The text reads, “When you build a new home, you shall make a parapet for your roof; otherwise you might have bloodguilt on your house , if anyone should fall from it.”

So what other nuggets of jurisprudence derived from the Book of Deuteronomy interpreted through the prism of the principle that “social issues are always framed primarily as questions of obligation, not of individual rights...” is the Christian Century editorial board going to come out in favor of? No doubt this propaganda rag of mainline Protestantism of the Episcopal and Presbyterian Church, USA variety has come out in full blown support of gay marriage.

Without question, it cannot be denied that the Old Testament legal books such as Deuteronomy explicitly opposed the homosexual lifestyle and by extension the agenda advocated by those most enthusiastically mired in these particular behaviors. Given the ethical standard called for by the Christian Century, is the publication now required to withdraw any support it might have articulated in favor of gay marriage? The editorial titled “Of Guns and Neighbors” just said ethics and morality are not determined by what we get out of something but rather upon what we owe our neighbor and, even more importantly, God.

As such, if it can be deduced from these texts that God does not endorse unrestricted access to firearms (something that is not clearly spelled out in the texts), shouldn't we at least admit that the only relationship with physical pleasure being one of the foundational cornerstones that God looks favorably upon without condemnation or criticism is monogamous heterosexual marriage? Those claiming otherwise have ignored the explicit directives of the Biblical text to such an extent that we might as well toss it aside entirely in regards to other issues regarding assorted ideologues desire to render behavioral, legislative, or policy pronouncements.

It is often assumed in Christian circles that the greatest threat to human liberty are often those that categorize themselves as atheist or agnostic in that their hostility towards God is outward and explicit. However, as has been emphasized in this analysis particularly in regards to the movement to either eliminate or comprehensively alter the understanding of America's most basic constitutional liberties, there are a number of voices claiming to be religious in nature utilizing the beliefs and principles derived from such for the purposes of manipulating those open to the perspectives of this particular social sphere into surrendering the sorts of protections not easily recoverable once they have been surrendered.

By Frederick Meekins

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thisisheffner · 4 years

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Prisoners in Nazi concentration camps made music; now it's being discovered and performed - 60 Minutes - CBS News

The sign above the steel gates of Auschwitz reads "arbeit macht frei" – work sets you free. It was, of course, a chilling lie, an evil hoax. But there was one surprising source of temporary escape inside the gates: music. Composers and singers and musicians, both world-class and recreational, were among the imprisoned. And what's not widely known is that under the bleakest conditions imaginable, they performed and wrote music. Lots of it.

More than 6 million people, most of them Jews, died in the Holocaust, but their music did not, thanks in part to the extraordinary work of Francesco Lotoro. An Italian composer and pianist, Lotoro has spent 30 years recovering, performing, and in some cases, finishing pieces of work composed in captivity. Nearly 75 years after the camps were liberated, Francesco Lotoro is on a remarkable rescue mission, reviving music like this piece created by a young Jewish woman in a Nazi concentration camp in 1944.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): The miracle is that all of this could have been destroyed, could have been lost. And instead the miracle is that this music reaches us. Music is a phenomenon which wins. That's the secret of the concentration camps. No one can take it away. No one can imprison it.

It seems unlikely, even impossible, that music could have been performed and composed at a place like this site of unspeakable evil, the most horrific mass murder in human history.

This is Auschwitz-Birkenau. The Nazi concentration camp in southern Poland. Set up by the Germans in 1940 as part of Hitler's "Final Solution," it became the largest center in the world for the extermination of Jews.

More than a million men, women and children died here. For those who passed through this entrance, known as the "Gate of Death," these tracks were a path to genocide and terror.

After they disembarked from cattle cars, most were sent directly to their deaths in the gas chambers.

The sounds of the camp included the screech of train brakes, haunting screams of families separated forever., the staccato orders barked by SS guards.

But also in the air: the sound of music, the language of the gods. This piece, titled "Fantasy" was written for oboe and strings, composed by a prisoner in Poland in 1942.

"In some cases, we are in front of masterpieces that could have changed the path of musical language in Europe."

At Auschwitz, as at other camps, there were inmate orchestras, set up by the Nazis to play marches and entertain. There was also unofficial music, crafted in secret, a way of preserving some dignity where little otherwise existed.

During the Holocaust, an entire generation of talented musicians, composers and virtuosos perished. 75 years later, Francesco Lotoro is breathing life into their work.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): In some cases, we are in front of masterpieces that could have changed the path of musical language in Europe if they had been written in a free world.

Francesco Lotoro's work may culminate in stirring musical performances, but that's just the last measure, so to speak. His rescue missions, largely self-financed, begin the old fashioned way, with lots of hard work, knocking on doors, and face-to-face meetings with survivors and their relatives.

Jon Wertheim: I have heard that you've searched attics and basements. I imagine sometimes families don't even know the musical treasure they have.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): There are children who have inherited all the paper material from their dad who survived the camp and stored it. When I recovered it, it was literally infested with paper worms. So before taking it, a clean-up operation was required, a de-infestation.

Lotoro grew up and still lives in Barletta, an ancient town on the Adriatic Coast of southern Italy. His modest home, which doubles as his office, is stuffed with tapes, audio cassettes, diaries and microfilm.

Aided by his wife, Grazia, who works at the local post office to support the family, Lotoro has collected and catalogued more than 8,000 pieces of music, including symphonies, operas, folk songs, and Gypsy tunes scribbled on everything from food wrapping to telegrams, even potato sacks.

The prisoner who composed this piece used the charcoal given to him as dysentery medicine and toilet paper to write an entire symphony which was later smuggled out in the camp laundry.

Jon Wertheim: He's using his dysentery medication as a pen and he's using toilet paper as paper.

Francesco Lotoro: Yes.

Jon Wertheim: And that's how he writes a symphony.

Francesco Lotoro: Yes, when you lost freedom, toilet paper and coal can be freedom.

It's a testament to resourcefulness, how far artists will go to create. It's also a testament to the range of emotions that prisoners experienced.

Jon Wertheim: What kind of music is this? This is 1944 in Buchenwald, in a camp.

Francesco Lotoro: This here a march.

Jon Wertheim: This is a march?

Francesco Lotoro: This surely to be scored for orchestra. (SINGS) It's a march.

Lotoro isn't just collecting this music, he's arranging it and sometimes finishing these works. Jon Wertheim: Is this completed work or is this only partial?

Francesco Lotoro: No, they're only the melodies

This tender composition was written by a pole while he was in Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Lotoro says that if music like this isn't performed, it's as if it's still imprisoned in the camps. It hasn't been freed.

This wasn't an obvious calling for an Italian who was raised Roman Catholic, but from age 15, Lotoro says, he felt the pull of another religion.

Jon Wertheim: You converted to Judaism. You say you have a Jewish soul. Define what that means.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): There was a rabbi who explained to me that when a person converts to Judaism, in reality he doesn't convert. He goes back to being Jewish. Doing this research is possibly the most Jewish thing that I know.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): We Jews have a word which expresses this concept. Mitzvah. It is not something that someone tells you you must do, you know as a Jew that you must do it.

Lotoro's quest began in 1988 when he learned about the music created by prisoners in the Czech concentration camp Theresienstadt. The Nazis had set up the camp to fool the world into believing they were treating Jews humanely. Inmates were allowed to create and stage performances, some of which survive in this Nazi propoganda film. Lotoro was amazed by the level of musicianship and wondered what else was out there.

He reached out to Bret Werb, music curator at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington D.C. Werb says Francesco Lotoro is building on the legacy of others who have searched for concentration camp music, but Lotoro is taking it to the next level, making the scores performable.

Jon Wertheim: Why did people in concentration camps turn to music?

Bret Werb: It helped people to cope. It helped people to escape. It gave people something to do. It allowed them to comment on the experiences that they were undergoing.

Jon Wertheim: Did music save lives during the Holocaust?

Bret Werb: there is no doubt that being a member of an orchestra increased your chances of survival

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch is one of the last surviving members of the women's orchestra at Auschwitz. She is now 94 years old. We met her at her home in London. Jon Wertheim: What had you heard about the camp before you arrived?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: We heard everything that was going on there only we didn't – still tried not to believe it. But by the time I arrived there, in fact, I knew it was a reality, gas chambers and... yeah…

Jon Wertheim: You came prepared for the worst?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: I came prepared for the worst, yes.

Her parents, German Jews, were taken away in 1942 and she never saw them again. She was just 18 when she arrived at the death camp a year later.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: We were put in some sort of block and waited all night, and the next morning there was a sort of welcome ceremony and there were lots of people sitting there doing the reception business. Like tattooing you, taking your hair off, et cetera. That's all done by prisoners themselves

The numbers are still visible on her left arm.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: I was led to a girl also a prisoner and a sort of normal conversation took place. And then she asked me what was I doing before the war. And like an idiot, I don't know, I said, "I used to play the cello." She said, "That's fantastic." "You'll be saved," she said. I had no idea what she was talking about.

Jon Wertheim: And that's how you heard there was an orchestra?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: Yeah.

Jon Wertheim: And this is your salvation?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: That was my salvation, yeah.

The conductor of the orchestra was virtuoso violinist alma rose, niece of the famous Viennese composer, Gustav Mahler. Anita Lasker-Wallfisch says Rose, a prisoner herself, had an iron discipline and tried to focus attention away from the profound misery of the camp.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: I remember that we were scared stiff of her. She was very much the boss. And she knew very well that if she did not succeed to make a reasonable orchestra there, we wouldn't survive. So it was a tremendous responsibility this poor woman had.

The orchestra members all lived together in a wooden barracks like this – in Block 12 at Birkenau – known as the Music Block.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: We were based very near the crematoria. We could see everything that was going on.

Jon Wertheim: You're practicing your orchestra and you can see everything going on?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: Yeah, I mean, once you are inside Auschwitz, you knew what was going on, you know.

Jon Wertheim: How do you play music pretending to ignore everything going on around you?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: You arrive in Auschwitz you are prepared to go to the gas chamber. Somebody puts a cello in your hand, and you have a chance of life. Are you going to say "I'm sorry I don't play here I play in Carnegie Hall?" I mean, people have funny ideas about what it's like to arrive in a place where you know you're going to be killed.

Jon Wertheim: What I hear you say is that your ability to play the cello saved your life.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: Yeah, simple as that.

The main function of the camp orchestras: playing marches for prisoners every day here at the main gate, a way, literally to set the tempo for a day of work. And a way to count the inmates.

Jon Wertheim: Right here is where the men's orchestra played?

Francesco Lotoro: Yes there was like a procession and the orchestra played there.

The orchestras also played when new arrivals disembarked from trains at Birkenau, to give a sense of normalcy, tricking newcomers into thinking it was a hospitable place. This, when at the height of the killings, Nazis were murdering thousands of men, women and children each day. Evidence of the scope and scale of the atrocity still exists here: mountains of shoes, suitcases, glasses, shaving brushes, murder on an industrial scale.

Auschwitz archivists showed us some of the instruments that were taken out of the camp by orchestra members at the end of the war and later donated to the museum. This clarinet, a violin, and an accordion, as well as some of the music they played.

Jon Wertheim: This is the prisoner's orchestra the concentration camp Auschwitz?

Archivist: Yes.

Jon Wertheim: And this is the inventory of instruments.

Archivist: Yes, what is inside.

The orchestras also gave concerts on Sundays for prisoners and for SS officers.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch remembers playing for the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, known as "the angel of death." Mengele conducted medical experiments on prisoners. His notorious infirmary still stands just steps from the railroad tracks in Birkenau.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: What was interesting is that these people, these arch criminals, were not uneducated people.

Jon Wertheim: That this monstrous man could still appreciate Schumann.

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: Yeah.

Jon Wertheim: How do you reconcile that?

Anita Lasker-Wallfisch: I don't.

Francesco Lotoro took us to another location where the Auschwitz camp orchestra played for Nazi officers and their families. It's just feet from the crematorium and within sight of the house of camp commandant Rudolf Hess.

Jon Wertheim: You were saying sometimes the smoke from the crematorium was so thick the musicians couldn't even see the notes in front of them.

Francesco Lotoro: Yes, it happened.

Jon Wertheim: It happened.

Francesco Lotoro: And it's tragic. Life and death were together.

Jon Wertheim: Life and death were intermingling.

Francesco Lotoro: And the point of connection of life and death is music. This is all we have about life in the camp. Life disappeared. We have only music. For me, music is the life that remained.

Music may be the life that remained, music like this 1942 piece titled "Fantasy", but it is the people behind the music that animate Francesco Lotoro's long and ambitious project. Their compositions created at a time when fundamental values were in danger.

Today, as the number of Holocaust survivors dwindles, it's more often their descendants Lotoro tracks down.

For 30 years, Lotoro has been on an all-consuming quest to collect music created by prisoners during the Holocaust. As he travels the world, mostly on his own dime, he is both a detective and an archaeologist, digging through the past to recover and discover actual artifacts. But maybe even more important, he meets with survivors and their family members to excavate the stories behind the music. We traveled to Nuremberg, Germany, to meet Waldemar Kropinski. He is the son of Jozef Kropinski, perhaps the most prolific and versatile composer in the entire camp constellation.

Waldemar Kropinski says his father's work was totally unknown before Francesco Lotoro brought it to light.

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): I thought it was something that was of no interest to anyone because my father was already dead and not even one camp composition of his was performed in Poland.

Jozef Kropinski, a Roman Catholic, was 26 when he was caught working for the Polish resistance and sent to Auschwitz, where he became first violinist in the men's orchestra and started secretly composing, first for himself, and then for other prisoners. In 1942, he wrote this piece that he titled "Resignation".

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): This is the list my father did seven months before his death.

Jon Wertheim: Oh this was all of his music.

Kropinski wrote hundreds of pieces of music during his four years of imprisonment, at Auschwitz and later at Buchenwald, including tangos, waltzes, love songs, even an opera in two parts.

Still more astonishing, he composed most of them at night, by candlelight, in a tiny room the Nazis diabolically called a pathology lab, where during the day, bodies were dismembered. Other prisoners had secured the space for kropinski so he could have a quiet place to compose. Jon Wertheim: This is where he worked? This is the pathology room where the cadavers mounted and he wrote music.

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): Yes.

Paper was in short supply, so Kropinski wrote music on items like this stolen Nazi requisition form…

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): Because on the other side you had clean paper and my father could write notes…

Jon Wertheim: What's the name of this piece?

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): A set of Christmas songs for a string quartet.

That's right, a few feet from piles of dead bodies, Jozef Kropinski wrote a suite of holiday songs. Waldemar says his father did it all to help raise the spirits of his fellow prisoners.

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): His music was really touching hearts and very positive. It was important that the prisoners could hear something else in this time, something touching, so that they could go back in their memory to the old times, and feel encouraged.

In April 1945, as the Allies approached Buchenwald, the camp was evacuated and inmates were forced on a death march. Kropinski was able to smuggle out his violin and hundreds of pieces of music, some hidden in his violin case and others in a secret coat pocket, but only 117 survive today. On the march, he sacrificed the rest to build a fire for his fellow prisoners.

Jon Wertheim: You're saying your father took paper on which he had written compositions and used that to start a fire to give people heat to save their lives?

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): Yes, not only his life but the lives of others.

Francesco Lotoro says Kropinski, like so many other musicians, hasn't gotten the recognition he deserves.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): He was a man who obviously suffered a lot in the camps, but made himself available to others, creating music. He was a man who must be understood not only as a musician but as someone who created solidarity, created unison in the camps.

Jon Wertheim: When did you first come into contact with Francesco Lotoro?

Christoph Kulisiewicz: Francesco Lotoro called me and he told me that he heard about my father, that he heard about his mission about his music I couldn't believe my ears so I immediately I wanted to meet him.

We wanted to see what one of lotoro's recovery missions looked like in practice, so we went along with him to the medieval city of Krakow, one of the oldest towns in southern Poland, to meet Christoph Kulisiewicz.

Christoph is the son of Aleksander Kulisiewicz, a Pole imprisoned by the Gestapo for anti-fascist writings and deported to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp in 1939. During more than five years of imprisonment, Kulisiewicz became something of a "camp troubadour," helping inmates cope with their hunger and despair, and performing songs like this at secret gatherings. But he didn't just compose and sing. He also used his extraordinary powers of recall, memorizing hundreds of songs by other prisoners, which he dictated to a nurse after the war, so they could be recorded.

Christoph Kulisiewicz says his father considered the songs to be a form of oral history, not just giving hope to his fellow inmates but laying bare the truth of what was happening inside the camp.

Christoph Kulisiewicz: He always said, "I am living for those who died. They can't sing, they can't talk, but I can."

Jon Wertheim: It sounds like music was a way to find just a slice of dignity, of humanity.

Christoph Kulisiewicz: Exactly.

Jon Wertheim: Amid all this horrible stuff.

Christoph Kulisiewicz: Exactly. That is what my father used to say, the slice of dignity. He said, "As long as you can sing and compose and you keep it in your mind, and the SS officer doesn't know what you keep in your mind, you are free."

Jon Wertheim: What was it like for you the first time you heard your father's work sort of brought out of the shadows by Francesco Lotoro and performed? What was that like for you?

Christoph Kulisiewicz: It was amazing. It was amazing because I never thought that it would come (to) life again and now it was like the voice of my father coming back as a real music again. So he was, you know, living again for me.

Waldemar Kropinski can relate to the joy of finally hearing his father's music performed.

Waldemar Kropinski (Translation): It was a very personal feeling. Even today, although I know these pieces, I go back and listen to them often, and every time I hear them, I cry.

To date, Francesco Lotoro has arranged and recorded 400 works composed in the camps, including those by Aleksander Kulisiewicz and Jozef Kropinski, and this piece by a Jewish musician in Theriesendtadt.

This spring, Lotoro will perform some of them at a concert to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the camps.

Francesco Lotoro: What happened in the camps is more than an artistic phenomena. We have to think of this music as a last testament. We have to perform this music like Beethoven, Mahler, Schumann. These musicians, for me, wanted only one desire, that this music can be performed.

Lotoro is building what he calls a "citadel" in his hometown of Barletta. Thanks to a grant from the Italian government, in February he plans to break ground at this abandoned distillery. A campus for the study of concentrationary music, it will include a library, a museum, a theater, and will house more than 10,000 items Lotoro has collected.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): The real beneficiaries of this music aren't us who are researching it, not this generation. The generation that will benefit from it, that will enjoy this music, is the generation of those who will come in 30 or 40 years. It's an operation which is completely for the future.

He is continuing to raise funds from the public and hopes to complete the project in four years.

Jon Wertheim: You described what you're doing as a mitzvah, this Jewish term for a good deed. I think a lot of people would say what you're doing goes well beyond a good deed.

Francesco Lotoro (Translation): I don't know maybe I am doing a good thing. When I complete this research we'll talk about it again. And then we will see if we truly did more than doing a good thing. For the time being I only see all of this as expensive, difficult, at times discouraging, but it has to be done until the end.

Like a musician who benefits from word of mouth, Francesco Lotoro and his remarkable work are starting to build a worldwide fan base.

Just last month alone, he performed in Toronto, Jerusalem and at a concert hall in Sao Paolo, Brazil. And that's where we end our story tonight, as Francesco Lotoro brings to life the music he has rescued.

Produced by Katherine Davis. Associate producer, Jennifer Dozor. Broadcast associate, Cristina Gallotto.

This content was originally published here.

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jonathanbogart · 7 years

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Melodier: Nordic Corporatist Pop and New Wave

Part IV. Youtube. Previously (I, II, III). Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Finnish pop between 1981 and 1987. Tracklisting below, notes after that.

Elisabeth, “En sømand som dig”

Doe Maar, “De bom”

Belaboris, “Kuolleet peilit”

Lustans Lakejer, “Diamanter”

Lillie-Ane, “Meg selv”

Arbeid Adelt!, “Lekker westers”

Geisha, “Kesä”

Det Neodepressionistiske Danseorkester, “Godt nok mørkt”

Cherry, “Vang me”

Tappi Tíkarrass, “Kríó”

Eva Dahlgren, “Guldgrävarsång”

Svart Klovn, “Knust knekt”

Het Goede Doel, “Net zo lief gefortuneerd”

tv-2, “Vil du danse med mig (nå- nå mix)”

Lolita Pop, “Regn av dagar”

Cirkus Modern, “Karianne”

Madou, “Witte nachten”

Tuula Amberla, “Lulu”

Grafík, “Þúsund sinnum segðu já”

Klein Orkest, “Over de muur”

Di Leva, “I morgon”

Melodier: nordic corporatist pop and new wave

So far in this survey, I’ve been looking at pop scenes in languages I may not entirely speak, but am at least comfortable with. Moving into northern Europe means I’ve left the Romance family behind, and am at the mercy of fan transcribers and Google Translate if I want to understand the lyrics to the songs I enjoy. Lyrics aren’t everything (I couldn’t tell you what some of my favorite songs in English are about) but they’re enough that I’ve at least tried to look up everything I’m presenting for you in this series.

This entry collects together a bunch of nation-states that aren’t necessarily related culturally or historically. Scandinavia only refers to three countries: Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Adding Finland and Iceland makes the “Nordic” countries; but adding in the Netherlands (and Dutch-speaking Belgium, or Flanders), as I have, isn’t anything as far as UN statistical calculations are concerned. They all fit together in my head, though, because they are all stable, prosperous, and socially liberal Western nations with Germanic linguistic roots (except Finland), NATO (except Sweden and Finland) and EU (except Norway) membership, and an extensive welfare state linked to strong unionized labor and government oversight of business: the “corporatist” social organization of my subtitle.

They are all also collectively central to white supremacists’ imagined European identity, and their liberal welfare policies are frequently cited (by racists) as unworkable in more heterogeneous societies. So i’m a little hesitant to be extremely fulsome in my praise here, lest anyone get the wrong idea. For the record, money, access, and individual creativity have far more to do with making great pop music than genetics.

Still, there is undoubtedly an enviable Northern European pop tradition. A lot of that can be traced to a single act: the Swedish ABBA, who borrowed liberally from US and UK pop forms to build a global pop empire based on careful production and universal sentiments. Thanks in part to their pioneering efforts, as well as Dutch acts like Shocking Blue and Golden Earring, a great deal of Northern European pop music was produced in English, with local languages often reserved for traditional folk, comedy records, sentimental ballads — or punk rock. There was particularly a gender-based split here: female Dutch, Danish, and Swedish pop stars were, like Frida and Agnetha, more likely to sing in a universal and generic English, while male rockers could afford to be poets and philosophers in the vernacular. (This is a generalization; but the phenomenon is by no means exclusive to northern Europe, or even across languages.) But regardless of language, there was a Nordic emphasis on slickness of production that means that this mix may, record for record, sound the most expensive of any in this summertime European excavation.

Which is another way of saying it’s the most pop. The low-density Scandinavian countries have few urban populist music traditions like Portuguese fado, Spanish flamenco, French musette, Greek rebetiko, or even Italian canzone napoletana: Protestant hymnody, fishing songs, and a rather austere nineteenth-century European concert repertoire are the most prominent native cultural influences. When American, and especially American Black, music made its midcentury European Invasion (far stronger and more lasting than any Invasion US pop ever suffered), it gave Northern European youth an emotional as well as a physical pop vocabulary. This, the second generation of European rock, made it perhaps more political and personal, but by no means less international.

Because pop is an international language, even when the lyrics are not. Although the subfocus of these mixes has been “new wave,” meaning the sometimes eccentric and often electronic music made under the twin influences of punk and disco, there was less of a noodly self-important rock tradition in these nations than in the English- (or Italian-) speaking world for a new wave to rebel against. Pop thrills remained consistent; only the tools changed.

“Melodier” is the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian word for “melodies,” and it came to mind because the annual pre-Eurovision national pop contests in the Nordic countries are mostly named some variation of the Swedish Melodifestivalen.

The linguistic breakdowns in the mix, roughly following population counts, are as follows; six Dutch (of which two are Flemish), four Swedish, three each Danish, Norwegian and Finnish, and two Icelandic. Fans of twenty-first century Scandinavian pop may hear some material that presages later developments: a lot happened between ABBA and Robyn, and I’m excited to possibly introduce you to some of it.

1. Elisabeth En sømand som dig Genlyd | Aarhus, 1984

The coastal peninsula-and-archipelago nation of Denmark has been a seafaring one since the Vikings, etc. — but this song isn’t about those ancient sagas, but more recent colonial history, as the lover “Jakarta Danny” is presumably a merchant marine in the service of the Dutch East India Company. Elisabeth first became known to the Danish pop audience as the frontwoman of Voxpop, a Blondie-like pop group, and her first solo album in 1984 is a quiet classic of sultry mid-80s pop moves. This, the leadoff track, uses naval metaphors for sex: the title means “A Seaman Like You,” and the next line is “sailing in me.” The video makes it even more explicit, in more ways than one. She’s still active (her whole catalog is on Spotify), and often does children’s music now.

2. Doe Maar De bom Sky | Amsterdam, 1982

The two-tone wave in the UK had a corresponding wave in the Low Countries and Scandinavia: goofy white dudes are drawn to ska music, as Orange County can attest. Doe Maar (“go ahead,” with connotations of anger or sulkiness) were the Madness of Holland, with a string of skanking, socially observant hits. “De bom,” one of their biggest, means “The Bomb,” and is about the hideous irony of being told to go to school, get a job, and save for retirement, all under the threat of nuclear annihilation.

3. Belaboris Kuolleet peilit Femme Fatale | Helsinki, 1982

The Finnish girl group Belaboris (named for Lugosi and Karloff) was manufactured by producer Kimmo Miettinen, a Malcolm McLaren-esque figure who hired girls to sing and look pretty while a hired band played new wave music. “Kuolleet peilit” (Dead Mirror?) is a minimal-disco jam with a detached vocal by Vilma Vainikainen that looks forward to spacy twenty-first century house: in Finland, such synthpop was known as “futu,” short for futurist. When Belaboris had a second big hit in 1984, it was as an entirely different set of pretty girls.

4. Lustans Lakejer Diamanter Stranded | Stockholm, 1982

In the twenty-first century, Swedish pop is synonymous with a certain ruthless muscularity, often considered the result of pop producer Max Martin’s heavy-metal past. But even here in the early 80s, fey New Romantic band Lustans Lakejer (Lackeys of Lust) takes time out from frontman Johan Kinde’s baleful sneering about diamonds being a girl’s best friend for a flashy guitar solo that fits into glam, post-punk, and metal traditions. Lustans Lakejer were a novelty in late-70s/early-80s Swedish pop, a well-dressed band who proclaimed that their clothes were as important as their music; when Kinde had finally had enough of posing, he dissolved the band, only returning to the name occasionally as a solo act over the years.

5. Lillie-Ane Meg selv RCA Victor | Oslo, 1983

If I were approaching these mixes sensibly, I’d only be including music that had been reissued on CD, or was available on streaming platforms, or something. But having access to the more eclectic and unremunerated catalog of YouTube has ruined me: once I’d heard Lillie-Ane, I couldn’t not include her. She’d been the voice of Norwegian synthpop trio Plann, but her classical training and avant-garde sympathies made her solo material — what I’ve heard of it, which is not enough — weirder and more galvanizing than the rather derivative music she’s still better known for in Norway. She died in 2004; her swooping voice and dense harmonies on “Meg Selv” (Myself) deserve wider appreciation.

6. Arbeid Adelt! Lekker Westers Parlophone | Brussels, 1983

Flemish Belgium in the 1980s is justly famous for its industrial-music scene, with acts like Front 242 and Neon Judgment pioneering sounds that would form the basis of many electronic-rock hybrids in the 1990s. Few of them sang in Dutch, however, apart from Arbeid Adelt!, whose early records were prankstery lock-groove new wave. Once Luc van Acker (later of Revolting Cocks) joined, though, things got harsher, and “Lekker Westers” (Yummy Westerners), with its satirical singsong melody over dissonant grooves, is halfway between their Devoesque beginnngs and the industrial harshness that put Belgium on the map

7. Geisha Kesä Johanna | Helsinki, 1983

The all-female Finnish trio Geisha only released a single EP during their brief existence, but because it was on the legendary Helsinki indie label Johanna, they’ve been compiled and fondly remembered by Finnish rock fans for decades since. “Kesä” (Summer) is of a piece with the moody, dry sound of Finnish goth rock of the period, but its danceable rhythm and spectacular clattery all-percussion instrumental break suggest that they had a lot more to offer beyond being a distaff Musta Paraati.

8. Det Neodepressionistiske Danseorkester Godt nok mørkt Genlyd | Aarhus, 1986

A Danish band that began as an art-installation soundtrack and ended as a sampladelic pop act, DND (for short; their full title, as might be presumed, translates as The Neodepressionist Dance-Band) were rather inspired by the Talking Heads’ combination of dance rhythms and irony-laden cultural critique; their debut album was called Flere sange om sex og arbejde, or More Songs About Sex and Work. This song, “Good Enough [in the] Dark,” features leader Helge Dürrfeld mutter-rapping about the limits of perception while a passionate saxophone wheels endlessly and a sassy chorus chants the title.

9. Cherry Vang me Vertigo | Utrecht, 1982

Cherry Wijdenbosch is, if not the first person of color to appear in these mixes (which reflects my desire to keep back some key acts from former colonies for later inclusion around the globe more than any unadulterated whiteness of 80s European pop), is certainly the first Black woman. Of mixed Indonesian and Surinamese (which latter is to say African slave) descent, she had a couple of jazz-inflected Nederpop hits in the early 80s before becoming a cabaret act. Her debut single, “Vang me” (Catch Me), is a breezy but clear-eyed love song that borrows some of Jona Lewie’s dry music-hall delivery and adds a Manhattan Transfer kick to the middle eight.

10. Tappi Tíkarrass Kríó Gramm | Reykjavik, 1983

The eighteen-year-old singer, with her clear, youthful, and powerful voice, is nearly the only reason anyone has heard of this post-punk band; if she had not gone on to front bands K.U.K.L. and Sugarcubes, not to mention her own global superstardom as a mononymic solo artist, Tappi Tíkarrass might be an undiscovered gem rather than a pored-over Da Vinci Code by which adepts seek to unlock the mysteries of her sacred genius. This song, which predicts the soft-loud dynamics of 90s alt-rock with almost a shrug, is, according to internet Björkologists, the cry of an elderly man searching for his tern.

11. Eva Dahlgren Guldgrävarsång Polar | Stockholm, 1984

Discovered on a 1978 talent show, Dahlgren wouldn’t be a true pan-Scandinavian star until her 1991 adult-pop classic En blekt blondins hjärta (A Bleach Blonde’s Heart), but I really like her 1984 album Ett fönster mot gatan (A Window to the Street). The title of this slow-burn anthem, the leadoff track, can be translated as “Gold-digger’s song,” and is a reference to an early twentieth-century Swedish hit about Swedish immigrants failing to strike it rich in America: Dahlgren interiorizes the sentiment, making it a song about a streetwalker who dreams of finding a place where she can “kiss my brothers and sisters.” She would come out as gay in the 1990s, and is married to her partner of many years.

12. Svart Klovn Knust knekt Uniton | Oslo, 1983

Probably the most legendary Norwegian minimal-synth (I almost said synthpop, and then I remembered a-ha) single, “Knust knekt” (Shattered Jacks, as in the playing card) is a miniature masterpiece of mood. The lyrics, as far as I can determine, are standard post-punk gloom about moral corruption, but the sound and image of Svart Klovn (Black Clown), the alter ego of Svenn Jakobsen, are among the most striking in all Scandinavian pop.

13. Het Goede Doel Net zo lief gefortuneerd CNR | Utrecht, 1984

Dutch new wave duo Het Goede Doel (The Good Cause) were second only to Doe Maar in popularity, with a string of sarcastic, melodic hits that occasionally remind me of mid-period XTC. The opening orchestral hits belie the crooning tenderness of this portrait of callowness and privilege (the title is “Just So Sweet [and] Wealthy”), only tipping its satiric hand when Henk Westbroek sings on the prechorus that naturally he wanted to marry his mother.

14. tv-2 Vil du danse med mig CBS | Copenhagen, 1984

Akin to U2 in their longevity, success, and consistency (they’ve had the same four-man lineup since 1982), tv-2 are perhaps the most successful Danish band ever. Formed from the ashes of prog-hippy band Taurus and new-wave band Kliché, they started with an industrial sound that gradually brightened: this song (Will You Dance With Me) is one of the signature sounds of mid-80s Scandinavian pop. With muttered verses about how shitty men are after the initial bloom of romance is over, the chorus (and its saxophone riff) returning constantly to the moment when he asks her to dance is a sharp and poignant evocation of memory.

15. Lolita Pop Regn av dagar Mistlur | Stockholm, 1985

The small city of Örebro in inland Sweden was far distant from the Paisley Underground scene swirling around Los Angeles in the early 80s, but a band with the same influences — the Velvet Underground, Roxy Music, the Beatles — formed there, and with crisp Stockholm production seemed to predict the alternate-tuned 90s of Tanya Donelly and Letters to Cleo. “Regn av dagar” is “Rain for Days,” and the lyric is similarly 90s-depressed, while the rock band behind singer Karin Wistrand chimes and chugs along.

16. Cirkus Modern Karianne Sonet | Oslo, 1984

The songs I’ve chosen from Norway are all representative of more left-of-center pop than the more mainstream work I’ve chosen from Sweden and Denmark. Partly that reflects the the fact that Norway was just a smaller regional scene, but partly it’s that Norwegian pop is not well documented online. Cirkus Modern were a moderately successful post-punk act who produced two albums and an EP, which makes them by far the most prolific Norwegian act represented here: “Karianne” is a joyfully raucous (and slightly unsettling) jam that reminds me of when the Cure went pop circa “Lovecats.”

17. Madou Witte nachten Lark | Antwerp, 1982

The Dutch musical genre of “kleinkunst” (literally “little art”) can be compared to the German “kabarett” (cabaret) but includes folk-musical forms and socially critical lyrics. Madou, an experimental Flemish band centered around singer Vera Coomans and pianist and composer Wiet Van de Leest, brought kleinkunst into the new wave scene, with dark songs about abuse, incest, and suicide. “Witte nachten” (white or sleepless nights), despite its vaudevillian bounce, is sung from the perspective of a child whose mother shares her bed to escape the father’s fists.

18. Tuula Amberla Lulu Selecta | Turku, 1984

I may have stretched the definition of new wave to the breaking point with “Lulu” — the jazz manouche violin and general 1930s air (at least until the crisp Cars-y electric guitar solo) might sound too much like a nostalgia act for the rest of this mix. But Tuula Amberla was the lead singer of gothy post-punk band Liikkuvat Lapset, and the lyrics, written by doctor and songwriter Jukka Alihanka after a poem by sculptor and architect Alpo Jaakola, are about the decadent nightlife of modern Helsinki, as the video makes clear.

19. Grafík Þúsund sinnum segðu já GRAF | Reykjavik, 1984

Iceland’s vibrant and highly original music scene has gotten really short shrift from this mix, thanks to its tiny population. There’s lots more to dig into where this came from. But when I ran an initial survey of European music of 1984 some months ago, this sparkling gem of a pop song stood out immediately. Part Huey Lewis (that shiny production), part Prefab Sprout (those lovelorn melodies), all Grafík, perhaps Iceland’s premier pop-rock band of the 80s (at least until the Sugarcubes came along), “A Thousand TImes Say Yes” is a plea for total romantic commitment that comes across in any language.

20. Klein Orkest Over de muur Polydor | Amsterdam, 1984

One of the key songs of the Cold-War 80s, “Over de muur” is sometimes classed as a protest song, but if so it’s hard to parse which side it’s protesting. Making a clear-eyed examination of the repressive idealism of the Communist East as well as of the gluttonous “freedom” of the Democratic West, singer Harrie Jekkers’ real sympathies are with the birds who can fly over the Berlin Wall at will, as he imagines a day when the people will be able to do the same.

21. Di Leva I morgon Mistlur | Stockholm, 1987

Born Sven Thomas Magnusson, he adopted the stage name Thomas Di Leva when he joined the punk band the Pillisnorks as a teenager. His next band was Modern Art, and he went solo in 1982, at the age of 19. One of the most fascinating and creative Swedish pop stars of the early 80s, he drew inspiration from glam, electronic experiments, traditional pop, and eventually, Eastern mysticism. Those New Age leanings are all over “I morgon” (Tomorrow), which combines an up-to-the-moment U2 chug with Di Leva’s early-70s Bowie wail to create an extended, lightly trippy meditation on being, time, and the unknowableness of reality. He’s since become a New Age guru and life coach; but his early music is still really interesting.

Okay, that’s it. Join me next time when I’ll be looking at the Neue Deutsche Welle (and the Neue Österreichische Welle, and the Neue Schweizer Welle). I’m over the hump: there are three mixes left to go in this series. Thanks for reading and listening. If you want to talk to me about what I’ve compiled, or what I’ve said about it. I’m around.

#my mixology career

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autodidact-adventures · 7 years

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World War I (Part 4): The Hapsburgs

The first known Hapsburg was Guntram the Rich, a member of the noble Etichonid family. He lived during the 900's, and was a count in Breisgau (SW Germany).

In 1273, one of Guntram's descendants became the first Hapsburg monarch – King Rudolf I of Germany. His eldest son, Albert I, succeeded him on the German throne in 1298. His second son, Rudolf II, ruled Austria as the Duke of Austria from 1282-83. He shared this title with Albert I, who succeeded him.

After this, the Hapsburgs were always royal, and always ruled various countries. Their kingships included Austria, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary and Spain. They would be emperors for over 4.5 centuries (with short interruptions). They would reach their peak in the 1500's, dominating Europe and the New World.

The rulers of Germany had fancied the idea of being successors to the Ancient Roman Emperors ever since 800. This was when Charlemagne (Karl der Grosse to the Germans), the barbarian chief of the Franks (a Germanic tribe) went to Rome and had himself crowned Emperor Charles.

Before that, in the 300's & 400's, the Franks had overrun the Roman Empire, and gained control of most of what is now Italy. They continued to control this territory even through into modern times.

The greatest honour for a German was to be named Holy Roman Emperor. This title made him overall head of all the fragmented German states, even though it didn't allow him to control Rome.

Frederick III (1415-1493) was the last German Emperor to be crowned in Rome, in 1440, and the second-last Emperor to be crowned by the Pope. He was a member of the Hapsburg family's Austrian branch. The German throne was “elective” – only the hereditary rulers of major German states (including Austria) could vote. The Hapsburgs held the German throne until 1711.

Frederick III was also crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1452 – the first Hapsburg to become the HRE.

And he was also the first Hapsburg to have the famous “Hapsburg lip”, which he apparently inherited from his mother. This protruberance of the lower lip and jaw, sometimes an extremely large one, was from inbreeding. The Hapsburgs were having trouble finding spouses who were “worthy” of them, so they married each other more & more often.

The Hapsburgs tended to gain wealth and territory through marriage rather than war – the Latin saying Bella gerant alii, tu felix Austria nube means “Let others wage wars; you, happy Austria, marry.”

Frederick III was extremely successful at this practice. He married his second son Maximilian I (the eldest, Christoph, had died as a baby) to Mary of Burgundy, who was the heiress of the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Artois & Burgundy regions of modern France. (Maximilian I's second wife was Bianca Maria Sforza, daughter of the duke of Milan.)

Then, Frederick married Maximilian's son Philip I (also called Philip the Handsome) to Isabella I & Ferdinand II's eldest daughter & heir, Joanna of Castile (also called Joanna the Mad). Joanna became Queen of Castile from 1504, and of Aragon from 1516. With this marriage, the Hapsburgs gained Spain, Naples, Sicily, Sardinia, and all of Spain's possessions in the New World.

Their eldest son, Emperor Charles V, inherited all of this, and also gained Portugal and Milan. He ruled more of the world than any man had done before then, but it was too much to deal with. So he divided it up.

His eldest son Philip II (1527-98) became King of Spain. His second wife (of four) was Mary I. Charles V's brother, the Emperor Ferdinand I, became the Holy Roman Emperor, and controlled the eastern, German region.

But after that, things started going downhill. The Spanish line died out a few generations later due to inbreeding (which also weakened the German line, but didn't end it). “Insanity” also came into the family, inherited from Joanna of Castile. Charles II (1630-1685) was the last Hapsburg King of Spain, and he married three times but had no children.

The Austrian line did much better, but still had a lot of problems. Louis XIV took all the Hapsburg possessions west of the Rhine, including the provinces of Alsace & Lorraine. The Ottomans invaded Europe and conquered most of the Balkans; they actually reached the gates of Vienna twice before being turned back.

Then the Reformation happened, and Catholic Austria became the enemy of newly-Protestant northern Germany. This was great for Prussia (the leading Protestant state in Europe), which seized important pieces of Hapsburg territory.

During the Napoléonic Wars (1803-15), Napoléon occupied Vienna twice, and seized many of the Hapsburgs' southern possessions. He also took a Hapsburg princess, a grand-niece of Marie Antoinette, as his bride.

Napoléon's successes ended the “fiction” of the Holy Roman Empire. From then on, the Hapsburg monarchs were just Emperors of Austria. After Napoléon's fall, the Congress of Vienna (1814-15) attempted to restore the old order of Europe, and some of the Hapsburgs' most important southern possessions were returned to them, including northern Italy. For the next 30yrs, things went relatively peacefully.

But then in 1848, revolutions erupted across Europe, with the people demanding reform. Most of the major cities in the Hapsburg empire revolted, and for a while it was uncertain if the dynasty would survive. The Emperor Ferdinand I abdicated. His younger brother, the Archduke Franz Karl, was next in line, but the throne went instead to his son, Franz Joseph I, who was 18yrs old. The royalists hoped that he could win the loyalty of their subjects, and he succeeded in this.

Franz Joseph married Elizabeth of Bavaria, and they had four children. However, he contracted gonorrhea on one of his Italian campaigns, and passed it onto her. This was basically the end of their marriage (although unofficially).

In 1859, Italian nationalists drove Austria out of Lombardy. Not long afterwards, Austria lost Tuscany and Modena, too.

In 1866, Austria lost the Austro-Prussian War, and were forced to abandon their ancient claim to ruling Germany.

In 1867, Franz Joseph negotiated with Hungary, and Austria-Hungary was created. In this new state, Hungary wasn't just one of Austria's possessions, but its equal partner in a new dual monarchy. The ruler of Austria-Hungary would be Emperor of Austria and the “apostolic king” of Hungary. The two countries would have their own separate prime ministers & parliaments, but the finance, foreign affairs and war ministries would be centralized in Vienna.

This was a step up for the Magyars (who dominated Hungary), and it gave them a reason to want the empire to survive. But it also caused complications. All important policy decisions had to be approved in Vienna and Budapest. Also, Hungary didn't want anything to weaken their position, and thus they resisted the dual monarchy being turned into a triple one with the Slavs, even though by 1914, 3/5 of the empire's subjects were Slavs (including Serbs, Slovaks, Czechs, Poles and Ukrainians).

Also in 1867, Maximilian I (Franz Joseph's younger brother) was shot dead by a firing squad in Mexico. Three years earlier, he'd accepted an invitation to go there and become its emperor.

In 1870, Prussia led the German states to victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War. This led the unification of the states and the creation of the German Empire. The King of Prussia became the Kaiser, and Austria was excluded from the rulership. Germany had replaced Austria as the leader of the European powers, and Austria would henceforth be the lesser one in their partnership.

The Archduke Rudolf was Franz Joseph's only son, and the Crown Prince to the throne. He was a drug addict and deeply troubled, and he had also contracted syphilis and infected his wife with it, making her sterile. In 1889, he and his teenage mistress committed suicide together. He left no male heir.

In 1898, Empress Elisabeth was stabbed to death by an Italian anarchist. He had wanted to kill King Umberto I of Italy, but failed to raise the train fare to Rome, so decided to kill her instead. Then two years later, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand insisted on marrying Sophie Chotek. Their marriage was morganatic, with their children being excluded from the succession.

In 1914, Franz Joseph was 84yrs old, one of the longest-reigning monarchs in history. He rose before dawn, said his morning prayers, and began working at 5am every day. He was devoted to preserving his ancestors' traditions: they were his heritage, and there was no-one else to do so. Sometimes he spoke of wishing to die: once he said to Conrad that “all are dying, only I can't die.” Conrad replied that he was grateful for the emperor's long life, but Franz Joseph replied, “Yes, yes, but one is so alone then.”

#book: a world undone #history #military history #ww1 #napoléonic wars #revolutions of 1848 #1848 austrian revolution #austro-prussian war #franco-prussian war #germany #franks #italy #austria #spain #hungary #austria-hungary #prussia #hapsburg dynasty #suicide tw

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matthew-trs · 7 years

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Part 6: Various Names

These are all bullet-pointed, and the first part will be translated in Kaga’s own voice, since that’s how they’re written.

I also decided to include my own notes on the origin of various names. This post is also crazy long, and mostly just exists so I can keep all my ideas and facts straight.

Berwick Saga

The “Bren” (ブレン) of Brenthunder (ブレンサンダー) and the Bren Crossbow (ブレンクロスボウ) is from the famous English Bren Light Machine Gun. Military enthusiasts probably immediately recognized this.

Gorzevalus (ゴーゼワロス) was named by the designer who wrote that map’s scenario. I don’t know where he got the name, but he’s a very serious person, so I doubt he intended it to be funny.

A derrick (デリック) is a type of large crane. Since they can be used to lift heavy items as well as help survey undersea wrecks, I wanted Professor Almuth’s first name to give the impression of historical site exploration.

Things like Critical Knife and Wallenstein were simply abbreviated (クリティカルナイフ > クリテカルナイフ, and ヴァレンシュタイン > ワレンスタイン) due to a 7-character limit we had early in development. I must’ve simply missed them when I double-checked later. Similarly, we abbreviated Composite Bow (コンポジットボウ > コンジットボウ).

[Note: this won’t apply to the translation patch, since there’s no character limit.]

Sherpa (シェルパ) are a tribe of mountain guides at the base of Mt. Everest. I chose the name to parallel “Highlanders.” As for Highlanders (ハイランダー), they’re a historical ethnic group from Scotland who were renowned as brave warriors in history. I’ve been told that the Sherpa’s appearance closely resembles the hero of a certain manga, but I’ve never read it, so it’s just a coincidence.

I chose the name Kramer (クレイマー) because it’s close to “climber,” since he’s got a natural gift for climbing cliffs as a skill. I’m on the fence whether it should be to be a nickname or not... I guess it’s probably a nickname he picked himself.

Sapphire (サフィア) and Ruby (ルヴィ) are named after the precious stones, naturally.

Names like Roswick (ロズオーク), Vanmilion (バンミリオン), Shirrock (̪シロック), Quescria (クエスクリア), and the like I just made up. I didn’t take them from anywhere in particular.

[Note: in the patch, “Shirrock” will be Sherlock, which is a real name.]

Faramir (ファラミア) and Olwen (オルウェン) are from The Lord of the Rings.

[Note: I’m not sure which LotR character Olwen is supposed to be. The closest one it matches is Arwen (アルウェン), but that’s a woman...]

Faramir’s class name Wanderer (渡り戦士) is borrowed from a certain manga. Sorry, Ms. Hikawa!

Sylvis (シルウィス), Larentia (ラレンティア), Pfeizal (ファイサル), etc. are mythological/historical people; I also sometimes used the names of mythological weapons for people, too.

Most other proper names are original or just common names, like Lynette, Reese, Bernard, etc.

TearRing Saga

It’s hardly worth mentioning, but Katri (カトリ) is just a plain ranch girl’s name. Back in the day, a lot of people thought it had something to do with baseball pitching. It’s from an old anime based on a very old children’s story from Finland, so it’s natural people wouldn’t recognize where it came from.

[Note: I have no clue what Kaga means about the baseball thing.]

Ente (エンテ) is German for “duck,” while Möwe (メーヴェ) means “seagull.” In other words, it’s an play on words where if you add eyes (メ) to a duck (カモ), you get a seagull (カモメ), meant to parallel that when Ente awakens to her true self, she becomes Möwe. Naturally, there’s also the added meaning that she wants to fly in the skies freely like a seagull, not be a duck that hides itself underwater.

[Note: I had these names as “Enteh” and “Maeve” in the TRS patch. The official romanization of エンテ is definitely “Enteh,” too. Oh well...]

Neyfa (ネイファ) was the name of a character in a short story I wrote a long time ago.

Tia (ティーエ) is from Aul Toba Tieh (アウル・トバティーエ), a character from a certain fantasy novel.

Lionheart (レオンハート), of course, means “lion-hearted.” Historically, it was the epithet of the King Richard I of England. While being Lionheart’s name, this was also the source of Richard’s title the Lion Prince of Mahl (マールの獅子王子)... though I will admit now that this was pretty lazy naming on my part.

The mamluks (マムルーク) were medieval Arab slave warriors renowned for their elite archery, who later conquered Egypt and Syria. Therefore, by calling Lionheart’s class “mamluk,” I wanted to convey the imagery of a strong, elite horseman leading his own unique regiment.

[Note: this was “Nomadic Trooper” in the TRS patch.]

Translator’s Additions

Names of People:

Playable:

Aegina: Αἴγινα, a nymph in Greek myth, the great-grandmother of Achilles and Ajax the Great.

Paramythis: Paramythia (Παραμυθιά, “comforter”) is an epithet of the Virgin Mary.

Perceval: also spelled Percival; knight of the Round Table

Bosses/NPCs:

Cordova: Cordova/Córdoba, a city in Spain that was historically the capital of a large Islamic state, the Emirate (and later Caliphate) of Córdoba.

Arcturus: a star in the constellation Boötes; called the “bear-watcher” in Greek astronomy, and むぎぼし (“wheat star”) in Japanese astronomy. Kaga says these names are meant to represent Arcturus’s character as both strong and reliable.

Zephyrus: Ζέφυρος, god of the western wind in Greek myth. Kaga notes elsewhere that this pseudonym was chosen for Friedrich because of the character’s desire to eventually return home to the west, even though it was impossible for so long.

Rasputin: Grigorij Yefimovič Rasputin (Григорий Ефимович Распутин), Russian mystic and advisor to Emperor Nicholas II, later assassinated by nobles worried about his influence, especially over Empress Aleksandra Fjodorovna.

Red Baron (Richthofen in the translation): Manfred von Richthofen, German lord and fighter pilot from WWI, nicknamed “the Red Baron” due to his status as a Freiherr (”baron”) and his plane that he famously painted red.

Wallenstein: Albrecht von Wallenstein (Albrecht z Valdštejna), supreme commander of the Holy Roman Empire’s military during the Thirty Years’ War

Krishna: कृष्ण, god of love and compassion in Hinduism. Also the name of a character from TearRing Saga 1.

Sakhalin: an island just north of Hokkaido, currently owned by Russia.

Shagaal: Chagall (シャガール), king of Agustria in FE4.

Chebyshev: Pafnutij L’vovič Čjebyšjov (Пафну́тий Льво́вич Чебышёв), a Russian mathematician.

Fermat: Pierre de Fermat, a French mathematician and lawyer.

Lebesgue: Henri Léon Lebesgue, a French mathematician

Palitzsch: Johann Georg Palitzsch, a German astronomer

Weyl: Hermann Klaus Hugo Weyl, a German mathematician and physicist

Euclid: Εὐκλείδης, an ancient Greek mathematician

Jung: Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist

Grimm: possibly from the Brothers Grimm, German linguists and authors of Grimm’s Fairy Tales

Gibbs: possibly from Josiah Willard Gibbs, American physicist and chemist

Rodin: François Auguste René Rodin, a French sculptor

Wagner: possibly Wilhelm Richard Wagner, German composer, writer, and director, most famous for Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Windsor: the currently reigning dynasty of British monarchs, ultimately descended from the Germanic House of Wettin

Pizarro: Francisco Pizarro-González, Spanish conquistador

Eisenhower: Dwight David Eisenhower, general and 34th president of the United States.

Cromwell: Oliver Cromwell, major leader of the Parliamentarian side of the English Civil War

Rockefeller: John David Rockefeller Sr., American business magnate and philanthropist, and inflation-adjusted richest person in modern history.

Goebbels: Paul Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich.

Goering: Hermann Wilhelm Göring, Vice-Chancellor of Germany during the Third Reich.

Mahatma: Mahātmā (महात्मा, “venerable”), a title most associated with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Gomorrah: עֲמֹרָה‎‎, one of the legendary cities destroyed by God in the Biblical book of Genesis.

ha-Yadh (”God Hand” in Japanese): הַיָד, Hebrew for “the hand.”

Enoch: חֲנוֹךְ, ancestor of Noah in Genesis, said to have “walked with God” rather than died. Subject of several apocryphal books.

Gilgamesh: 𒄑𒂆𒈦, a semi-historical ancient king of Sumer and protagonist of the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Nazgul: Nazgûl, the ringwraiths from The Lord of the Rings.

Manaclir: corruption of Manannán mac Lir, a sea god in Irish myth.

Urbanus IV: Urbanus (anglicized as Urban) has been the papal name of eight different popes.

Arless: Ares (Ἄρης), god of war in Greek myth

Alecto: Ἀληκτώ, goddess of unstoppable rage in Greek myth

Names of Places

Berwick Isle: Berwick-upon-Tweed, a historically long-disputed territory on the border between Scotland and England

Altesia (what the Lazberians call the continent of Lieberia): Artesia, the Latin name for the county of Artois, France.

Izmil: İzmir, the Turkish name of the city classical known as Smyrna

Leoglard: corruption of Beograd, the native name for Belgrade, the capital of Serbia

Diana: goddess of the moon and hunt in Roman myth, equivalent of Greek Artemis

Valemtine: corruption of Valentine, anglicized form of the name Valentinus

Mineva: possibly from Minerva, goddess of war and wisdom in Roman myth, equivalent of Greek Athena

Sinon: possibly from Sinon (Σίνων), a Greek spy from the Iliad who helped convince the Trojans to move the Trojan Horse into their city.

Danae: Danaë (Δανάη), mother of Perseus in Greek myth

Ausonia (one of the five marches): Αυσονία, the ancient Greek name for the southern Italian peninsula

Badonia: possibly from Badon Hill (Latin Mons Badonicus/Badonis, Welsh Mynydd Baddon), the legendary location of a battle of King Arthur against the invading Anglo-Saxons.

Lombard (one of the five marches): the Lombards, a Germanic tribe who conquered parts of Italy during the 6th century.

Anatolia (an unidentified location where certain wines are from): also called Asia Minor, an ancient region corresponding with modern central and western Turkey.

Wallachia (mentioned in the description of the Tiger Pelt item): one of the three major constituents of early Romania, alongside Transylvania and Moldavia.

Pyrene: the Pyrenees, a mountain range separating the Iberian Peninsula with the rest of continental Europe

Seydlitz: Frederich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, a general serving under Frederick II of Prussia; or the German WWI battle cruiser named after him, the SMS Seydlitz.

Fort Remagen: Remagen, a town in Germany famous for the Battle of Remagen in WWII, where Allied forces temporarily captured Ludendorff Bridge, one of the last bridges over the Rhine.

Myuhen: possibly from München, the German name of Munich.

Ruan: Rouen, capital of the Normandy region of France.

Ishs: possibly from Isis, goddess of motherhood and nature in Egyptian myth.

Item Names: Original (may or may not overlap with translation)

Knives:

Vespa: Latin for “wasp”

Crotalus: the scientific name for the rattlesnake genus, itself from Greek κρόταλον (”rattle”)

Swords:

Holy Sword Vritra (”Vritra” in the translation): serpent and adversary of Indra in Hinduism.

Sakushīdo/Succeed (”Nothung” in the translation): likely from the English word “succeed.”

Dangerous Blade Albatross (”Albatross” in the translation): from the legend about a sailor shooting an albatross, a bird thought to signify good luck, who was forced by his shipmates to wear the dead bird around his neck to ensure that only he received the bad luck from killing it.

Grimhildr: queen of Burgundy in Norse myth.

Lord Gram (”Gramr” in the translation): sword of the Germanic hero Sigurðr, used to kill the dragon Fáfnir.

Harperia: possibly from harpē (ἅρπη), a type of sickle-like sword in Greek myth, most famously used to castrate Cronus and kill Medusa.

Holy Sword Vajra (”Vajra” in the translation): means “diamond” or “thunderbolt”, the weapon of Indra in Hinduism

Adrasteia: Ἀδράστεια “inescapable”, the name of two different characters in Greek myth: a nymph who nursed Zeus, and a daughter of Ares and Aphrodite.

Balmung: the name for the sword Gramr (see above) given in the Nibelungenlied.

Spears

Brionac: a spear of the god Lugh in Irish myth

Phalanx (”Doru” in the translation): a type of ancient Greek heavy infantry famous for their battle formation, where shields would be arranged to make a wall lined with protruding spears.

Wotan Spear (”Angon” in the translation): Wotan, Old High German name of the god Odin (Óðinn) from Norse myth

Axes

Gigas Axe: γίγας, Greek for “giant.” Suitably, it’s only usable by Gigas Knights in the game.

Būji (”Bhuj” in the translation): possibly from bhuj (भुज), also called an axe-knife, a type of short- but wide-bladed weapon with a very long grip.

Thorhammer (”Mjollnir” in the translation): Thor, thunder god in Norse myth, who wielded the hammer Mjǫllnir.

Gullveig: a figure from Norse mythology who is killed three times, then reborn the third time as the powerful shamaness Heiðr.

Bows/Crossbows

Holy Bow Rossweisse (”Rossweisse” in the translation): Roßweiße, German for “white horse,” one of the eight valkyries in Richard Wagner’s opera Die Walküre.

Sylph Bow (”Killer Bow” in the translation): Sylph, wind elementals from classical alchemy, invented by Paracelsus.

Magic Bow Apeiron (”Apeiron” in the translation): ἄπειρον (”limitless”), a concept in certain ancient Greek cosmologies and philosophies.

Apollo Bow (”Argyrotoxus” in the translation): Apollo, god of light in Greek myth, twin brother of Artemis, goddess of the hunt

Otinus Crossbow (”Ollerus” in the translation): possibly a faux-latinization of Óðinn

Magic

Pallas Leia/Serenia/Riana: Pallas (Παλλὰς), an epithet of the Greek goddess Athena

Starlight: from Starlight in FE1/FE3

Janura (”Nosferatu” in the translation): from the Japanese words ja (蛇, “snake”) and nurunuru (ヌルヌル, “smooth, slippery”)

Scylla: Σκύλλα, a monster in Greek myth

Bau Crash (”Kishar’s Wrath” in the translation): possibly (but not likely) from Bau (𒀭𒁀𒌑, also called “Gula” by the Babylonians, among other names), goddess of healing from Akkado-Babylonian myth.

Shields

Ajax’s Shield (”Sakos Aiantos” in the translation): the shield of the Greek hero Ajax the Great in the Iliad, made of seven layers of oxhide and one of bronze. Most famously, it could even block the javelin of the Trojan hero Hector, which pierced only the first six layers.

Aspis: ἀσπίς, a heavy wooden shield used by ancient Greek infantry

Flame Shield Hestia (”Hestia” in the translation): Hestia, goddess of the hearth and architecture in Greek myth

Materials

Celica Steel (”Zerika Steel” in the translation): possibly from Celica, a protagonist in FE2/FE15

Toneriko Wood (”Ash Wood” in the translation): とねりこ, Japanese for the Manchurian ash tree, Fraxinus mandschurica.

Jugud Wood (”Yggdra Wood” in the translation): a reference to Jugdral, itself a reference to Yggdrasil, the world-tree in Norse myth

Tilia Wood (”Linden Wood” in the translation): Tilia, the genus name for linden/basswood trees.

Ichii Wood (”Yew Wood” in the translation): いちい, Japanese for the Japanese yew tree, Taxis cuspidata.

Antilope Skin (”Antelope Pelt” in the translation): Antilope, German for “antelope”

Schwein Skin (”Boar Pelt” in the translation): Schwein, German for “swine”

Stier Skin (”Bull Pelt” in the translation): Stier, German for “steer”

Löwe Skin (”Lion Pelt” in the translation): Löwe, German for “lion”

Tigris Skin (”Tiger Pelt” in the translation): tigris, Latin for “tiger”

Lúkos Skin (”Wolf Pelt” in the translation): λύκος, Greek for “wolf”

Simurgh Feather: sīmurğ (سیمرغ), a bird from Iranian myth

Ariadne Thread: Ἀριάδνη, a woman from Greek myth who helped Theseus traverse the Labyrinth using a spool of thread

Eye of Balor: Balor, king of the Fomorians in Irish myth, who had a third eye on his forehead that wrought destruction on any it looked at.

Item Names: Translation

Swords

Succeed → Nothung: the name of Gramr (see above) given in Richard Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen. “Succeed” is a crappy name for a sword, and it’s Reese’s final weapon, so I wanted a theme naming with his earlier personal sword, Gramr.

Spears

Phalanx → Doru: δόρυ, the type of spear that Greek hoplites utilized in phalanx formation. Changed, naturally, because “phalanx” is a military formation/unit rather than a weapon.

Wotan Spear → Angon: Angon, a type of javelin used by Germanic peoples. I would’ve used “Gungnir,” since that’s the spear of Wotan/ Óðinn, but the Wotan Spear isn’t a high-tier weapon, or even the strongest thrown spear.

Bows/Crossbows

Sylph Bow → Killer Bow: I didn’t want to use “Sylph,” since there are wind-element weapons in Berwick Saga, but this isn’t one of them.

Magic Bow Aperion → Abaddon: Assuming “Aperion” is indeed a corruption of “Apollyon” (see above), I prefer the sound of the Hebrew name, Abaddon.

Apollo Bow → Argyrotoxus: Ἀργυρότοξος, an epithet of Apollo meaning “of the silver bow.”

Otinus Crossbow → Ollerus: Assuming “Otinus” is indeed a faux-latinization of “Óðinn,“ I didn’t think that Óðinn was a very fitting god to associate with a bow. Instead, I chose Ollerus, which is the latinization of the name of Ullr, Norse god of archery. As a bonus, Ullr/Ollerus is closely associated with Óðinn: during the episode where Óðinn is exiled for ten years for not being manly enough, Ullr is the one who rules the gods temporarily in his stead (during which time Ullr even uses the name Óðinn).

Gatling Bow → Chu-ko-nu: Following the tradition of the TRS1 translation, since guns aren’t in TRS, and Richard Gatling isn’t a TRS character.

Bren Crossbow → Rapid Crossbow: Similarly, guns aren’t in TRS, so “Bren” is out.

Dora → Espringal: While “ballista” and “scorpio” are both names of siege weapons, I have no idea what a “dora” is supposed to be... so I chose an actual one.

Dark Magic (I wanted the names of these spells to all be mythological references like they are in FE)

Black Meteo → Wormwood: a falling star that ruins the waters of the Earth in the Biblical book Revelation.

Berserk → Lyssa: Λύσσα, goddess of mad frenzy and rabies in Greek myth.

Sleep → Oneiroi: Ὄνειροι, the gods of dreams in Greek myth

Bau Crash → Kishar’s Wrath: Kišar (𒀭𒆠𒊹), the personified Earth in Babylonian myth. Since Bau (see above) is a goddess of motherhood rather than the earth, Kishar is more appropriate. I chose Kishar rather than the more ancient and well-established goddess Ki (also an earth goddess), since the name Ki is too short for players to reasonably identify. Even though I’m probably misunderstanding バウ as the goddess Bau, I stuck with it.

Janura → Nosferatu: to fit in line with FE’s Nosferatu; from adaptations of Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Tumahann → Saehrimnir: Sæhrímnir, the beast killed and eaten--then resurrected--by the Æsir and einherjar every evening in Norse myth. I wanted to use something bestial or related to eating, since this spell drains the EXP of its victim.

Hellworm → Jormungandr: to fit in line with FE’s Jormungandr; from Jǫrmungandr, the serpent surrounding Miðgarðr in Norse myth

Shields

Perushīda → Perseid: I’m not really sure what Perushīda is supposed to be, so I picked something that sounded close. The Perseids are a meteor shower occurring in late summer; named after the Perseid dynasty said to descend from the mythological hero Perseus

Ajax’s Shield → Sakos Aiantos: σᾰ́κος Αἴᾰντος, Epic Greek for “Ajax’s shield.” Fun Fact: Ajax’s shield in particular is called a sakos (”leather shield”) rather than an aspis (the general word for “shield”) in the Iliad. I didn’t want to use the English words, since I didn’t want to assert that Ajax was a person in the TRS universe. I’m even considering making it just Sakos, actually.

Fire-God Shield → Kojin Shield: Sanbō-Kōjin (三宝荒神, “wild god of the three treasures”), or just Kōjin, a Shinto god of fire, cooking, and the hearth. I used “Kōjin” rather than “Kagu-Tsuchi” (the god of fire in general) in order to nicely parallel the names of the related Fūjin Shield and Raijin Shield.

Accessories, etc.

Sun Charm → Dawn Charm: While the original name is a reference to the skill FE Sol, that name doesn’t fit with what the charm really does. It gives +10 Hit, so it makes it easier to see, hence “dawn.”

Meteor Charm → Dusk Charm: While the original name is a reference to the FE skill Astra, that name doesn’t fit with what the charm really does. It gives +10 Avoid, so it makes it harder be seen, hence “dusk.”

Moonlight Charm → Vanish Charm: While the original name is a reference to the FE skill Luna, that name doesn’t fit with what the charm really does. It activates the skill Hide, hence “vanish.”

Purgatory Bracelet → Gambler’s Brace: This brace lowers Hit and Avoid by 10 but increases Strength and Defense by 2, so it’s risky. I assume “purgatory” was meant to refer to the in-between-good-and-bad-for-you stat bonus given. The thing is, nobody who’s non-Catholic seems to understand that purgatory is a good place; hence, the old name is just plain dumb.

Ligan/Ishian Racehorse: These horses increase your Movement, hence “racehorse.”

Ligan Warhorse: This horse increases your Damage, hence “warhorse.”

Ishian/Sinonan Stallion: This horse increases your Speed, and the word “stallion” evokes an imagery of a wild, quick horse.

#yes i know this is disorganized and crazy you don't have to remind me

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brittanyspace · 5 years

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Week 2, Group Research

Group assignment - A Ritual Based Ceremony

Group Members - Erin, Natalie, Luc, Bailley

At the end of class we were assigned a type of eating experience which will be a basis for this section of the assignment. Our group was assigned to look at a ritual based ceremony that involves food or drink. We decided to focus our efforts on the rituals of wedding cake. It is a food that is strongly associated with the ceremony of weddings.

As with any ritual based ceremony, the specific rituals involved have evolved over time. This is why we have began our research with a look into the history of the wedding cake, and other food associated with the wedding ceremonies. I was assigned to research the aspect of wedding cakes across other cultures and how these differ from each other and our traditional idea of cakes here in NZ.

The History of the Wedding Cake

Ancient Rome – Barley Loaf

The earliest tradition that sparked the use of cakes at wedding ceremonies was founded in ancient Rome. Although not a cake, a scone-like wheat or barley cake broken over the bride’s head for luck and fertility. it has been recorded that the groom was the one to break the bread over his bride’s head. This was to show his dominance over her and also to show the end of her virginal state. This ritual was conducted at the end of the ceremony and the crumbs were then eaten by the bride and groom as their first act together in marriage. Once the newlyweds had their share, wedding guests would scoop up the leftover crumbs. An example of this is shown below.

Medieval Era – Brides Pie

Bride’s pie was the next evolution of what we now know as the wedding cake. However it was not sweet and instead was a savoury pastry crust filled an assortment of oysters, lamb testicles, throat, rooster comb, and pine kernels. As guests at a wedding, it was rude not to consume the bride’s pie as eating it was a form of wishing the groom and bride good luck and prosperity in their marriage. A tradition also associated with Bride’s Pie was a glass ring hidden within he center of the pie, it was said that any woman who found it in their slice would be the next to marry.

More expensive and lavish iterations of the bride’s pie included live birds/snakes being baked within the pie. See the clip from Game of Thrones for an visual interpretation of a pie with live stock – also note how they exchange a slice of the pie as bride and groom after it has been cut into.

https://youtu.be/l2W2xHM4cWo (relevant content from 4:00 – 4:33)

17th Century – Grooms and Brides cake

By the 17th century, the bride’s pie had evolved into seperate bride and groom cakes. Groom’s cakes were small fruitcakes given to guests as favors at the end of the night. Fruit cakes themselves were a sign of fertility and prosperity, which helped them gain popularity because married men wanted to have plenty of children. The brides pie then evolved into the the bride’s cake. This cake was usually a simple pound cake with white icing because white was a sign of virginity and purity.

Victorian Era/19th century – White cakes

In the early 19th century, sugar became easier to obtain during the time when the bride’s cakes became popular. The more refined and whiter sugars were still very expensive. so only wealthy families could afford to have a very pure white frosting. This display would show the wealth and social status of the family. When Queen Victoria used white icing on her cake it gained a new title, royal icing.

Today – Modern wedding cakes

Today the wedding cake takes on many different shapes, flavours, colours and sizes. The traditions and rituals associated with the wedding cake are not so much dependent on the cake’s physical attributes, but more of what the cake and actions involved symbolizes. Many of the same traditions such as cutting the cake and sharing it with guest still exist, and some of the same social factors and influence are still involving, even if it’s on a subconscious level.

A famous example of a modern wedding cake:

Prince Harry and Megan Markle (2018)

Wedding cake in Different Cultures

Even though we have looked at the history of wedding cakes, we’ve only looked at the wedding cake that we associate with in and British/Euopean culture (which is what we typically associate with our traditional wedding cake). So next we have decided to look at different cultures and countries and find out what their tradition in lieu of the wedding cake might be.

Indonesia

A cake typically served at weddings Indonesia weddings cake is a massive, multilayered creation known as kek lapis. The cake is typically made from layers of chocolate and vanilla and dates back to the Dutch colonial period; today’s versions are often spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. These layers are symbolic of a ladder that the couple will ‘climb’ up to success. To follow with this ladder symbol, some couples will cut the cake from the bottom up. The bride and groom will also cut each other a small bite size piece and feed each other.

Greece

These days, most Greek couples prefer a flourless almond cake, which is filled with vanilla custard and fruit, and covered in sliced almonds. The traditional rendition of a Greek wedding cake consists of honey, sesame seed, and quince, which is said to symbolize the couple’s enduring commitment to each other. Sourdough wedding bread decorated with beads and blossoms is also a traditional treat. The couple will cut the cake immediately after their first dance to prevent the cake from melting in the heat. The couple will feed each other a bite with the same spoon to show they’re letting their boundaries down, sharing, becoming one.

Japan

Many Japanese actually use imposter cakes at wedding receptions. Made of artificial rubber, these faux confections are iced with wax — and even feature a slot for the bride and groom to insert a knife. Some models have even been known to produce a puff of steam! Other dupes consist of elaborately frosted Styrofoam dummy cakes. While the imposters are just for show, cakes hiding out in the kitchen are cut and served to guests.

Korea

Many wedding cakes are from ingredients we would consider sweet. In Korea, they opt instead for a cake made of ground steamed rice covered in red bean powder and filled with fruit, nuts or a mung bean paste. A tiered sponge cake covered in non dairy whipped cream is also a popular treat.

Italy

The history around the wedding cake goes back to Ancient Rome. A popular choice for an Italian wedding is a zuppa inglese. Scrumptiously filled with chocolate custard, vanilla custard, rum cream, and fruit, tiers of pound cake are elaborately trimmed with flower blooms of royal icing. Wedding cakes are regional in Italy, and in some areas cake is not served at all. At those where they are, taste trumps decoration. In many areas, the custom is to serve a mille-foglia, an Italian cake made from layers of light filo pastry, chocolate, and vanilla creams, and topped with strawberries. This is a single tiered dessert and is a light way to finish an evening meal.

Bermuda

In Bermuda, it’s common to have a small cedar sapling top off a wedding cake. The sapling is said to symbolise the couple’s growing love, and is usually replanted after the ceremony. This is typically a fruit or a pound cake. In some weddings, both the bride and groom will have a cake, one of each type.

Caribbean

Caribbean couples traditionally feast on fruitcakes. The cake is often dark and filled with dried fruits and sherry, wine, or rum. Party guests in the West Indies pay for a lucky peek at the wedding cake hidden under a fine white tablecloth. Here a rum-laced fruitcake is the sweet of choice. The cake is a minimum of three tiers and the top tier is put in the freezer for the one year anniversary. From the second tier, a sliver of cake should be cut and put under the bride’s pillow that same night as they believe this ritual guarantees contraception. As soon as a wedding date is confirmed, the dried fruits are put into a vat to soak for up to 6 months.

Norway

The Norwegians serve Kransekake, which is an almond based ring cake, with the texture more like a cookie than cake. It is popular to decorate these cakes with flags from Norway, Denmark, or Sweden, as well as with the signature ripples of icing on each layer. In other parts of Norway, cake is not traditionally served, Norwegians serve brudlaupskling, a type of wedding bread first developed when white flour was a rarity on farms in Norway. Any food containing wheat was once highly prized, so the wedding bread was considered a true treat. Topped with cheese, cream, and syrup, this unique bread is folded over and cut into small squares and served to all the guests.

Denmark

The Danish are known to feast upon a cornucopia cake. Made of almond cake and marzipan, the ring-shaped confection is decorated with pastilage and filled in the center with candy, almond cakes, fresh fruit, or sorbet. Sometimes marzipan portraits of the bride and groom are attached to the outside of the cake. To avoid bad luck, the newlyweds cut the cake together; all the guests must eat a slice.

Iceland

Icelanders enjoy a kransakaka at weddings. Made up of ring-shaped almond pastries piled on top of one another to form a pyramid, the hollow center of the tower is filled with fine chocolates or candies.

France

The French traditionally serve up what is known as a croquembouche. This tall tower of cream-filled pastries is coated in caramel and formed into a pyramid shape and is decorated in spun sugar. Typically these are large scale statement piece towers. Another not so traditional wedding cake choice is one made from crepes. These crepes are layered on top of each other and dusted with icing sugar.

Germany

Though American-style wedding cakes are slowly making their way into Europe, countries such as Germany are hanging onto their own traditions. German couples often serve up a rich nut genoise or sponge cake to their guests. The cake is usually laced with liqueur or syrup; filled with jam, marzipan or nougat; and covered in fondant or ganache. Any use of artificial coloring on a cake is considered a major faux pas.

Lithuania

In Lithuania, the wedding cake is actually a cookie-like pastry shaped into a Christmas tree. Baked to a sunny yellow hue, the pastry, called a sakotis, displays fresh flowers and herbs protruding from the top peak.

Ukraine

Ukrainian couples share a type of wedding bread known as Korovai. Decorated with designs representing eternity and the joining of the two families, the bread is considered a sacred part of the wedding feast.

Other notable aspects of wedding cake

Tiers

When looking at the history of wedding cakes, we discovered that cakes used to be stacked as high as possible to challenge the newly-wed couple and was a test of whether the marriage would prosper. Today, we still use tiers and themes of prosperity are still involved. Although it is not about challenging one another to kiss above the cake without knocking it down, the top tier of the cake is saved for either the first anniversary, or the birth of the first child. This current tradition still tells something about the cake being an important role in the future of the couple, that by saving this there is an intended future together and the hope is they will prosper and move forward together into the next step of life together (either with further years together or children).

Superstition

Many superstitions have a role in the past of the wedding cake. One of these is the ingredients of the cake themselves – people once believed that it should be made from fruits and nuts to ensure fertility and happiness and the Bride should be the one to bite first (to ensure she will conceive). There was also a superstition around the era of bride cakes, where the bride would sleep with the cake under her pillow for good luck. It was thought that if the bridesmaid slept with a piece of this cake under her pillow, she would dream of her future husband.

Use this link to view full google document with research and the sources of information

Social context of the Wedding and Wedding cake

Now that we have been able to research the past and different type of wedding cakes, we need to look at the reoccurring themes in this ritual. What has aspects of the ritual have survived the test of time? Why have certain aspects of the ritual changed over time?

A lot of the tradition involved with the process of the wedding cake has developed different meanings over time due to changing social circumstance. A good example of this can found with the breaking of the barley loaf in Ancient Rome vs the cutting of the wedding cake in a contemporary context. The breaking of the loaf over the brides head used to symbolise the groom’s dominance over the female who could now be seen as belonging to him. This is a stark contrast to the cutting of the cake today, which is now completed by both of the people getting married together in the same action, symbolising their bond and promise to work together. Even though the cake is being broken or cut, the meaning has changed from one of male dominance to one of equality. This is due to the changed social context of what was once a male dominated society to one now of equality and acceptance.

Another key aspect of the wedding ceremony that has changed in recent years is the presumed notion that a male and female relationship is being celebrated in the ceremony. In the history of the wedding cake we touched on the bride and grooms cakes – where bride and groom had seperate cakes. In a contemporary context this is not even relevant in the sense that a wedding can be between any two people, not just one female and one male.

Society’s constantly changing views cause traditions to continue to change and evolve. However when looking at all these different historic examples of wedding cake, and even across different culture’s tradition, there is a key element of the wedding cake ritual the always remains integral. The cake is always shared with the guests in attendance. The wedding is has always been a ceremony revolving heavily around the community and society of those being married. No matter what a wedding looks like, there are always guests, even in a court house wedding there must be witnesses in attendance at the ceremony for it to be legal. Wedding are a public declaration of two people’s romantic union, and the guest’s role is one of approval and acceptance of the union and therefore legitimatising this union in the eyes of the community. The wedding cake is a physical performance re-informing this idea.

An interesting current example of these ideas of societal acceptance and the wedding cake, is the legal case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commision. Essentially this case is about a gay couple that requested a wedding cake from a cake store in their community. They were denied service due to the fact that the owner of the store didn’t accept or believe that the men had the right to join together in marriage. This is interesting in relation to the idea that the wedding is a form of gaining a society’s acceptance of romantic union. In this case, by not selling them a cake, the couple mentioned didn’t have the support or approval by members of the community they lived in.

What’s physically involved with the ritual?

We think that the ritual involved with wedding cake can be broken down into the following steps:

Cutting the cake

The newly-wed couple eating the cake

The sharing of the cake with guests

Within almost every historic version of the wedding cake ritual, these are key elements that come into play.

Furniture/objects

As the cake is an important ritual in the wedding ceremony, it often has it’s own small table or place specially allocated on a table. That way this ritual can be isolated from many of the other rituals involved with a wedding. When it is time to cut and share the cake, this can be a focal point for the performance.

Utensils

Obviously one of the most important utensil in the ritual is the knife. This is used for the beginning of the ritual where the cake is cut by the couple.

Personal performances

The ritual of wedding cake is performed by the groom and bride (groom and groom, bride and bride). They are performing the act of cutting the cake together – symbolising helping one another. They also perform the act of feeding the cake to one another – symbolic of providing for one another. The act of sharing the cake is also a performance. The people invited to the wedding are essentially an audience of the couple’s chosing, within their social circles. The act of sharing the cake with the guests invites them to also accept and partake in their union. By being included into the ritual, the couple are inviting people from their social circles into their new lives as a married couple.

Relationships

This aspect of the ritual also ties in with the idea of performance in the ritual. Relationships are the core of what weddings are about, its the affirmation of a romantic relationship, and the support and celebration of platonic relationships. Another important relationship is the one of the individual and their relationship to their community.

Audience

Not only is the audience the guest in attendance at the ceremony but the ritual is also often staged for cameras/a photographer. The moment of cutting and exchanging the cake is often documented and then, through the use of internet/social media, uploaded to wider audience. This may even include people within their social media community that didn’t attend the wedding but observe it through this process of documentation through photography.

Group References:

https://www.theknot.com/content/a-world-tour-of-wedding-cake-traditions

http://www.expat.or.id/info/weddings.html

https://loveandtravel.dk/en/greek-wedding-traditions/

https://www.eater.com/2018/5/18/17340392/cake-royal-wedding-meghan-markle-prince-harry-william-kate-elizabeth-history

https://www.lochcarron.co.uk/blog/scottish-wedding-traditions-an-introduction/

https://shop.mybluprint.com/cake-decorating/article/traditional-wedding-cakes-from-around-the-world/

https://www.bermuda-attractions.com/bermuda_0000c2.htm

http://marrycaribbean.com/food/wedding-cakes/

https://www.asimplehomestead.com/kransekake-norwegian-wedding-cake/

https://www.more.com/lifestyle/wedding/yours-mine-or-theirs-whos-wedding-really

https://marriage.laws.com/marriage-ceremony/marriage-ceremony-importance

https://www.thespruce.com/what-is-a-wedding-3489821

http://www.mywedding.com/wedding-ideas/advice/remembering-what-weddings-are-all-about/

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3600214?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&article=1221&context=etd

https://www.harlowgarland.com/blog/wedding-superstitions

https://www.zeenees.com/blog/wedding-cake-traditions-history-superstitions/

https://www.thepinkbride.com/wedding-superstition-2-save-the-cake/

https://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/06/living/matrimony-superstitions/index.html

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blackkudos · 7 years

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Al Jarreau

Alwin Lopez (Al) Jarreau (March 12, 1940 – February 12, 2017) was an American jazz singer. He won seven Grammy Awards and was nominated for over a dozen more. He is perhaps best known for his 1981 album Breakin' Away, for having sung the theme song of the late-1980s television series Moonlighting, and as a performer in the 1985 charity song "We Are the World".

Background

Jarreau was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the fifth of six children. His website refers to Reservoir Avenue, the name of the street where he lived. His father was a Seventh-day Adventist Church minister and singer, and his mother was a church pianist. He and his family sang together in church concerts and in benefits, and he and his mother performed at PTA meetings.

He was student council president and Badger Boys State delegate for Lincoln High School. At Boys State, he was elected governor. He went on to attend Ripon College, where he also sang with a group called the Indigos. Jarreau graduated in 1962 with a Bachelor of Science degree in psychology. He went on to earn a master's degree in vocational rehabilitation from the University of Iowa, worked as a rehabilitation counselor in San Francisco, and moonlighted with a jazz trio headed by George Duke.

In 1967, he joined forces with acoustic guitarist Julio Martinez. The duo became the star attraction at a small Sausalito night club called Gatsby's. This success contributed to Jarreau's decision to make professional singing his life and full-time career.

Going full-time

In 1968, Jarreau made jazz his primary occupation. In 1969, Jarreau and Martinez headed south, where Jarreau appeared at such Los Angeles hot spots as Dino's, The Troubadour, and Bitter End West. Television exposure came from Johnny Carson, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, Dinah Shore, and David Frost. He expanded his nightclub appearances performing at The Improv between the acts of such rising-star comics as Bette Midler, Jimmie Walker, and John Belushi. During this period, he became involved with the United Church of Religious Science and the Church of Scientology, but he later dissociated from Scientology. Also, roughly at the same time, he began writing his own lyrics, finding that his Christian spirituality began to influence his work.

In 1975, Jarreau was working with pianist Tom Canning when he was spotted by Warner Bros. Records. On Valentine's Day 1976 he sang on the 13th episode of NBC's new Saturday Night Live hosted, that week by Peter Boyle. Soon thereafter he released his critically acclaimed debut album, We Got By, which catapulted him to international fame and garnered him an Echo Award (the German equivalent of the Grammy's in the United States). A second Echo Award would follow with the release of his second album, Glow.

In 1978, Al won his first U.S. Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance for his album, Look To The Rainbow.

One of Jarreau's most commercially successful albums is Breakin' Away (1981), which includes the hit song "We're in This Love Together". He won the 1982 Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for Breakin' Away. In 1984, his single "After All" reached 69 on the US Hot 100 chart and number 26 on the R&B chart. It was especially popular in the Philippines. His last big hit was the Grammy-nominated theme to the 1980s American television show Moonlighting, for which he wrote the lyrics. Among other things, he was well known for his extensive use of scat singing, and vocal percussion. He was also a featured vocalist on USA for Africa's "We Are the World" in which he sang the line, "...and so we all must lend a helping hand." Another charitable media event, HBO's Comic Relief, featured Al in a duet with Natalie Cole singing the song "Mr. President", written by Joe Sterling, Mike Loveless and Ray Reach.

Jarreau took an extended break from recording in the 1990s. As he explained in an interview with Jazz Review: "I was still touring, in fact, I toured more than I ever had in the past, so I kept in touch with my audience. I got my symphony program under way, which included my music and that of other people too, and I performed on the Broadway production of Grease. I was busier than ever! For the most part, I was doing what I have always done … perform live. I was shopping for a record deal and was letting people know that there is a new album coming. I was just waiting for the right label (Verve), but I toured more than ever."

In 2003, Jarreau and conductor Larry Baird collaborated on symphony shows around the United States, with Baird arranging additional orchestral material for Jarreau's shows.

Jarreau toured and performed with Joe Sample, Chick Corea, Kathleen Battle, Miles Davis, David Sanborn, Rick Braun, and George Benson. He also performed the role of the Teen Angel in a 1996 Broadway production of Grease. On March 6, 2001, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 7083 Hollywood Boulevard on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and La Brea Avenue.

In 2006, Jarreau appeared in a duet with American Idol finalist Paris Bennett during the Season 5 finale and on Celebrity Duets singing with actor Cheech Marin.

In 2010, Jarreau was a guest on the new Eumir Deodato album, with the song "Double Face" written by Nicolosi/Deodato/Al Jarreau. The song was produced by the Italian company Nicolosi Productions.

On February 16, 2012, he was invited to the famous Italian Festival di Sanremo to sing with the Italian group Matia Bazar.

On February 8, 2017, after being hospitalized for exhaustion, Jarreau cancelled his remaining 2017 tour dates and retired from touring.

Personal life

Jarreau was married twice. His first marriage, to Phyllis Hall, lasted from 1964 to 1968. His second wife was model Susan Elaine Player, whom he married in 1977. Jarreau and Player had one son together, Ryan.

It was reported on July 23, 2010, that Jarreau was critically ill at a hospital in France, while in the area to perform a concert at nearby Barcelonnette, and was being treated for respiratory problems and cardiac arrhythmias. He was taken to the intensive-care unit at Gap late on July 22, 2010. Jarreau was conscious, in a stable condition and in the cardiology unit of La Timone hospital in Marseille, the Marseille Hospital Authority said. He was expected to remain there for about a week for tests. In June 2012, Jarreau was diagnosed with pneumonia, which caused him to cancel several concerts in France. Jarreau made a full recovery and continued to tour extensively until February 2017.

In 2009 children's author Carmen Rubin published the story Ashti Meets Birdman Al, inspired by Jarreau's music. He wrote the foreword for the book and read from it across the world. Al and Carmen worked together to promote literacy and the importance of keeping music alive in children.

Death

After having been hospitalized for exhaustion in Los Angeles, Jarreau died on February 12, 2017, at the age of 76.

Discography

Albums

1975: We Got By (Reprise) US# 209

1976: Glow (Reprise) – US# 132, R&B No. 30, Jazz# 9

1978: All Fly Home (Warner Bros.) – US# 78, R&B# 27, Jazz# 2

1980: This Time (Warner Bros.) – US# 27, R&B# 6, Jazz# 1

1981: Breakin' Away (Warner Bros.) – US# 9, R&B# 1, Jazz# 1, UK# 60

1983: Jarreau (Warner Bros.) – US# 13, R&B# 4, Jazz# 1, UK# 39

1984: High Crime (Warner Bros.) – US# 49, R&B# 12, Jazz# 2, UK# 81

1986: L Is for Lover (Warner Bros.) – US# 81, R&B# 30, Jazz# 9, UK# 45

1988: Heart's Horizon (Reprise) – US# 75, R&B# 10, Jazz# 1

1992: Heaven and Earth (Warner Bros.) – US# 105, R&B# 30, Jazz# 2

2000: Tomorrow Today (Verve) – US# 137, R&B# 43, Jazz# 1

2002: All I Got (Verve) – US# 137, R&B# 43, Jazz# 3

2004: Accentuate the Positive (Verve) - Jazz# 6

2006: Givin' It Up (with George Benson) (Concord) – US# 58, R&B# 14, Jazz# 1

2008: Christmas (Rhino) - Jazz# 5

2014: My Old Friend: Celebrating George Duke (Concord)

Live albums

1977: Look to the Rainbow (Warner Bros.) – US# 49, R&B# 19, Jazz# 5

1984: In London (Warner Bros.) – US# 125, R&B# 55, Jazz# 10. Sometimes titled Live in London.

1994: Tenderness (Warner Bros.) US# 114, R&B# 25, Jazz# 2. Recorded live in a studio in front of an invited audience.

2012: Al Jarreau and The Metropole Orkest: LIVE (Concord)

2011: Al Jarreau And The George Duke Trio: Live At The Half/Note 1965, Volume 1 (BPM Records) Originally offered exclusively at georgeduke.com.

Compilations

1996: Best Of Al Jarreau (Warner Bros.) – Jazz No. 8

2008: Love Songs (Rhino)

2009: An Excellent Adventure: The Very Best Of Al Jarreau (Rhino) (This compilation holds one previously unreleased track: "Excellent Adventure")

Early material recorded before 1974

After Jarreau's breakthrough in 1975 an almost uncountable number of compilations of earlier recordings from 1965 to 1973 have emerged, including some or all of the following songs:

Songs by various composers

"My Favorite Things" (5:02, Hammerstein, Rodgers)

"Stockholm Sweetnin'" (5:50, Jones)

"A Sleepin' Bee" (5:52, Arlen, Capote)

"The Masquerade Is Over" (6:34, Magidson, Wrubel)

"Sophisticated Lady" (4:14, Ellington, Mills, Parish)

"Joey, Joey, Joey" (3:42, Loesser)

Singles

1976: "Rainbow in Your Eyes" – R&B No. 92

1977: "Take Five" – R&B No. 91

1978: "Thinkin' About It Too" – R&B No. 55

1980: "Distracted" – R&B No. 61

1980: "Gimme What You Got" – R&B No. 63

1980: "Never Givin' Up" – R&B No. 26

1981: "We're in This Love Together" – US No. 15, R&B No. 6, UK No. 55

1982: "Breakin' Away" – US No. 43, R&B No. 25

1982: "Teach Me Tonight" – US No. 70, R&B No. 51

1982: "Your Precious Love", duet with Randy Crawford – R&B No. 16

1982: "Roof Garden" - NL No. 2

1983: "Boogie Down" – US No. 77, R&B No. 9, UK No. 63, NL No. 14

1983: "Mornin'" – US No. 21, R&B No. 6, UK No. 28, NL No. 16

1983: "Trouble in Paradise" – US No. 63, R&B No. 66, UK No. 36

1984: "After All" – US No. 69, R&B No. 26

1985: "Raging Waters" – R&B No. 42

1986: "L Is for Lover" – R&B No. 42

1986: "Tell Me What I Gotta Do" – R&B No. 37

1986: "The Music of Goodbye" (from Out Of Africa), duet with Melissa Manchester – AC No. 16

1987: "Moonlighting (theme)" (from Moonlighting) – US No. 23, R&B No. 32, UK No. 8, AC#1

1988: "So Good" R&B No. 2

1989: "All of My Love" – R&B No. 69

1989: "All or Nothing at All" – R&B No. 59

1992: "Blue Angel" – R&B No. 74

1992: "It's Not Hard to Love You" – R&B No. 36

2001: "In My Music" (with Phife Dawg)

Soundtrack inclusions

1982: "Girls Know How", in the film Night Shift (Warner Bros)

1984: "Moonlighting (theme)" and "Since I Fell for You", in the television show Moonlighting (Universal)

1984: "Boogie Down", in the film Breakin' (Warner Bros)

1986: "The Music of Goodbye", duet with Melissa Manchester, in the film Out of Africa (MCA Records)

1989: "Never Explain Love", in the film Do the Right Thing (Motown)

1992: "Blue Skies", in the film Glengarry Glen Ross (New Line Cinema)

1984: "Million Dollar Baby", in the film City Heat (Warner Bros)

Guest appearances

1978: "Hot News Blues" from Secret Agent/Chick Corea (Polydor)

1979: "Little Sunflower" from The Love Connection/Freddie Hubbard (Columbia)

1983: "Bet Cha Say That to All the Girls" from Bet Cha Say That to All the Girls/Sister Sledge (Cotillion)

1985: "We Are the World" from We Are the World/USA for Africa (Columbia) US No. 1, R&B No. 1 UK No. 1

1986: "Since I Fell for You" from Double Vision/Bob James & David Sanborn (Warner Bros.)

1987: "Day by Day" from City Rhythms/Shakatak

1997: "How Can I Help You Say Goodbye" from Doky Brothers 2/Chris Minh Doky/Niels Lan Doky (Blue Note Records)

1997: "Girl from Ipanema" and "Waters of March" from A Twist of Jobim/Lee Ritenour (GRP)

2010: "Whisper Not" from New Time, New Tet/Benny Golson (Concord Jazz)

1974: "If I Ever Lose This Heaven" from Body Heat/Quincy Jones (A&M) (Jarreau provides background scat and vocal percussion.)

Wikipedia

#Al Jarreau

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Text

‘VIVITUR INGENIO’

392J. Albrecht DÜRER 1471-1528, Translator Giovanni Paolo Gallucci,; 1538-1621?

Di Alberto Durero pittore, e geometra chiarissimo. Della simmetria dei corpi humani. Libri quattro : Nuouamente tradotti dalla lingua Latina nella Italiana, da M. Gio. Paolo Gallucci Salodiano. Academico Veneto. Et accresciuti del quinto Libro, nel quale si tratta, con quai modi possano i Pittori, & Scoltori mostrare la diuersità della natura de gli huomini, & donne, & con quali le passioni, che sentono per li diuersi accidenti, che li occorrono. … Opera à i Pittori, e Scoltori non solo utile, ma necessaria, & ad ogn’altro, che di tal materia desidera acquistarsi perfetto giudicio.

Venetia [Venice] : Appresso Roberto Meietti, Hora di nouo stampati. 1594. $15,500

Folio, !6 A-L6 M7 N-P6 Q8 R-Z6 . Bound in contemporary limp vellum.

In this book there are hundreds of woodcut illustrations on almost every opening in the book, each representing the proportions of the human body depending on the age, the sex and the personal development. Each body is drawn/represented a frontal, side and in motion ,view while the heads are shown in different positions, such as looking upwards or downwards. Depicting which kind of perspective the artist should take in order to represent a person better.

In the first three books Dürer discusses methods of measuring and representing human proportion. The third book concludes with a passage on the relationship of art to God. The fourth book discusses the representation of movement and bent postures.

Most of the illustrations are close copies of those in the first, German edition (1528).

This book is a cornerstone in the history of the human representation.

The work was published for the first time posthumously in Nuremberg, in 1528, with the original German title Vier Bücher von menschlicher Proportion.

The first book was mainly composed by 1512/13 and completed by 1523, showing five differently constructed types of both male and female figures, all parts of the body expressed in fractions of the total height. Dürer based these constructions on both Vitruvius and empirical observations of “two to three hundred living persons”. The second book includes eight further types, broken down not into fractions but an Albertian system, which Dürer probably learned from Francesco di Giorgio’s ‘De harmonica mundi totius’ of 1525. In the third book, Dürer gives principles by which the proportions of the figures can be modified, including the mathematical simulation of convex and concave mirrors; here Dürer also deals with human physiognomy. The fourth book is devoted to the theory of movement.

Appended to the last book, is an essay on aesthetics, which Dürer worked on between 1512 and 1528, and it is here that we learn of his theories concerning ‘ideal beauty’. Dürer rejected Alberti’s concept of an objective beauty, proposing a relativist notion of beauty based on variety. Nonetheless, Dürer still believed that truth was hidden within nature, and that there were rules which ordered beauty, even though he found it difficult to define the criteria for such a code. In 1512/13 he wrote that his three criteria were function (‘Nutz’), naïve approval (‘Wohlgefallen’) and the happy medium (‘Mittelmass’).

However, unlike Alberti and Leonardo, Dürer was most troubled by understanding not just the abstract notions of beauty but also as to how an artist can create beautiful images. Between 1512 and the final draft in 1528, Dürer’s belief developed from an understanding of human creativity as spontaneous or inspired to a concept of ‘selective inward synthesis’.

In other words, that an artist builds on a wealth of visual experiences in order to imagine beautiful things. Dürer’s belief in the abilities of a single artist over inspiration prompted him to assert that “one man may sketch something with his pen on half a sheet of paper in one day, or may cut it into a tiny piece of wood with his little iron, and it turns out to be better and more artistic than another’s work at which its author labours with the utmost diligence for a whole year”.

Adams D, 1055; Cicognara 321; Durling/NLM 1299; Mortimer, Italian 169 (in nota); Wellcome II, 1920. E. PANOFSKY, Albrecht Dürer, I, pp. 244-245:

«Dürer was the firstartist, who, brought up in the late-medieval workshops of the North, fell under the spell of art theory as it had evolved in Italy. It is in his development as a theorist of art that we can study in vitro, as it were, the transition from a convenient code of instructions to a systematic and formulated body of knowledge».

•Selz, Albrecht Dürer: le peintre, le graveur et le théoreticien (1996); •A. Dürer, The writings of Albrecht Dürer, tr. and ed. W.M. Conway (1958); •E. Panofsky, ‘Dürer as a theorist of art’, in E. Panofsky, Albrecht Dürer, vol. I (1943), p.260-84.; •E. Panofsky, ‘The history of the theory of human proportions as a reflection of the history of styles’, in Meaning in the visual arts (1955), p.55-107; •V. Mortet, ‘La mesure de la figure humaine et le canon des proportions d’aprs les dessins de Villard d’Honnecourt, d’Albert Dürer et de Léonard de Vinci’, in Mélanges offerts à M. Emile Chatelain (1910), p.367-71.

§§

2) 398J. Antoninus Florentinus

Confessionale: Defecerunt scrutantes scrutinio… Add: Titulus de restitutionibus; Conclusiones et decisiones in foro conscientiae; Versus decem praeceptorum ac septem peccatorum mortalium

Venice: Venetiis : Impressum per Petrum Jo. de q[ua]rengijs Bergome[n]se[m] 15 February 1499.

Imprint from colophon (leaf z3v) which reads: Explicit vtilissima [con]fessio[n]alis su[m]mula cu[m] tractatu[m] de Restit[uti]o[n]ibus … Reuerendissimi b[ea]ti Antonini archiepiscopi florentini … Impressu[m] p[er] Petrum Jo. de q[ua]rengijs Bergome[n]se[m]. die. 15. febrarij. [sic] 1499. $5,500

Octavo (150 x 102 mm), a-y8 z6 contemporary reversed vellum from a Medieval manuscript, preserved in a red velvet box, ff. [182].Gothic type 13:69G and 17:98G. Text in Latin on 2 columns, Gothic type, 33 lines. A large woodcut at colophon, repre-senting a blessing angel. In this book Antoninus deals with the authority, science and doctrine of confessor and illustrates all the methods to question the penitent soul. Antoninus, Archbishop of Florence. Shows us the the powers of the confessor, the seven deadly sins (the initial of each of the seven sins capitals ordered by their importance: Superbia, Avaritia, Luxuria, Ira, Gluttony, Invidia and Accidia (pride, avarice, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and laziness) (book 2, section 2), the manner of interrogating people of different social and professional status (including butchers, bakers, musicians, jewellers, physicians and pharmacists, book 2, section 3), together with absolution and imposition of penance.

There are three versions of the Confessionalia which are distinguished by their incipits, the first one (GW 2075- 2079) “Curam illius habe” which is in Italian and sometimes known as “Medicina dell’anima”, and the second “Omnis mortalium cura” or “Specchio di coscienza”, again in Italian, to which various other texts are appended (GW 2152-2176). The third, found here, “Defecerunt scrutantes scrutinio” (GW 2080-2151) is by far the most printed and is known not only in Latin but was translated into Italian and Spanish,

This work is of considerable interest for the student of medieval and renaissance social history.

PROVENANCE: Inscription Ad usum Jo. Ant. Romagnoli on the title-page.

ISTC ia00830000 : Goff A831;GW; 2138 (variant colophon); Hain,; *1206 ; IGI 653; BSB-Ink A-591; H 1206*; Pellechet854; Richard 43; IDL 347; IBP 413; Sajó-Soltész 244; Sack(Freiburg) 225; Lőkkös(Cat BPU) 35; Gisi 28; Sack 225:Husung 111 .

https://data.cerl.org/istc/ia00831000

§•§

3). 388J Gisbert Cuper. 1644-1716

Gisb. Cuperi Harpocrates, Sive Explicatio imaguncluæ argenteæ perantiquæ; quæ in figuram Harpocratis formata representat Solem. Ejusdem Monumenta Antiqua Inedita. Multi Auctorum loci, multæ Inscriptiones, Marmora, Nummi, Gemmæ, varii ritus, & Antiquitates in utroque Opusculo emendantur & illustrantur. Accedit Stephani Le Moine Epistola de Melanophoris.

Utrecht: (Trajecti ad Rhenum) Apud Franciscum Halma, Acad. Typogr., 1687. $1,800

Quarto. *4, A-Z4, Aa-Pp4, Qq2. (Two blank leaves follow Qq2 which may or may not be integral.)

This book has an added engraved title, forty-one text engravings, seven folding engravings, and one text woodcut. It is in bright, crisp condition throughout,

“Gisbert Cuper, a Dutch critic and philologist, born at Hemmendem in 1644. He was for many years professor of history at Deventer, and published serveral valuable works.” (Thomas’ Pronouncing Dictionary)

Harpocrates was adapted by the Greeks from the Egyptian child god Horus, who represented the newborn sun, rising each day at dawn. Harpocrates’s name was a Hellenization of the Egyptian Har-pa-khered or Heru-pa-khered, meaning “Horus the Child”. Yet to the Romans, who misinterpreted Harpocrates as the personification of silence, and this particular work is a study of statues and other art from classical antiquity that depict these later figures of silence.

STCN ppn 833724266; Brunet 6, no. 22603; Cicognara 3212; Ebert 5512; Graesse 2,308) The engraved frontispiece, depicts Harpocrates standing on a pedestal, around him gods like Apollo, Hermes, Serapis and Isis, and in the foreground Tempus, who shovels for Egyptian antiquities. Woodcut printer’s mark on the title, motto: ‘vivitur in genio’, ‘only through his genius man survives’. there are 3 cul de lampe vignettes, text engravings on 39 pages, small woodcuts on 2 pages; 6 plates depicting ancient monuments) This is a philological tour de force of the Dutch classical scholar Gisbertus Cuper. In the second century B.C., and who was connected with the mystery cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis. Cuper’s research began, he tells us in the preface, with a small silver statuette which he saw in the famous collection of his friend (and scholar) Johannes Smetius, whom he visited in 1674 in Nijmegen. The statuette was found in the ground of the collector’s hometown Nijmegen. It is a sculpture of a small boy, almost naked, and with a lotus flower on his head. He is winged and wears a small quiver on his back; the boy holds the index finger of his right hand against his lips, as if to enjoin silence. (p. 1: ‘manus dextrae digito indice premit vocem, & silentia suadet’) From his right arm hangs a small bucket (situla), and around his left arm coils a snake. His left hand rests on a club, around which another snake coils, and to which a goose has been attached. At the boy’s right foot sits a rabbit or hare. At his left foot a small bird of prey (accipiter vel alia avis). (p. 2) As soon as Cuper saw this aenigmatic figurine, he decided to examine it, for he could not imagine that all those attributes had been added without any intention. He recognized the boy from a Egyptian hieroglyph as Harpocration, whom Egyptian superstition brought to Rome. He immediately realized also that this boy did not ask for silence (non silentium tantum digito suadens), but that he represented the Sun (verum Solis imaginem referens). (p. 2) In the rest of the book Cuper closely examines all the relevant passages concerning Harpocrates’ iconography in ancient authors, in mythology, coins, inscriptions, amulets etc., to prove his point, that Harpocrates’s finger was misunderstood, from the Roman scholar Varro to Augustine, and that the boy was not a diety of Silence at all. This 1687 edition is a reissue, considerably augmented with ‘Gisberti Cuperi Monumenta antiqua inedita’ (ca. 70 pages) in which Cuper discusses recent finds. He examines various inscriptions in leading his reflection on the various cults Hercules, Diane. He offers a description and image of the finds, and tries to explain matters with the help of ancient sources and the work of contemporary scholars. At the end has also been added ‘Ad Gisb. Cuperum De Melanphoris epististola’ (30 pages) written by the French orientalist Stephanus Le Moine, 1624-1689, who lectured in Leiden from 1676. His letter is a treatise on the black clothes (melamphoroi), which the members of the Isis fraternities wore when they lamented.

Cuper was one of Pierre Bayle’s Dutch correspondents who was an important source of information for the Nouvelles de la &Republique des Lettres and the Dictionnaire historique et critique was Gisbert Cuper (1644-17 i6), a well-known humanist and professor of history at Deventer. A recognized numismatist and author of several scholarly works on aspects of Roman history and culture, Cuper was also a magistrate and a deputy from the province of Overijssel to the Estates-General from i686 to I693. In recognition of his scholarly interpretations of Roman medals and coins, he was named as one of the first foreign correspondents to the Academie des Inscriptions.

Because he was in the mainstream of both the scholarly and political life of Holland, Cuper was an invaluable correspondent for Bayle. Because Cuper was an important source of material and information, Bayle could use him for his own publications. Also Bayle, who was often under attack for his unorthodox views on religion and politics, was in need of the favor and protection that can be offered by respected and influential people. Cuper was on good terms with conservative elements of Dutch society of the times, such as the Orangists, and thus was in a strategic position to be helpful.

Cuper and Bayle first began corresponding in July, I684, soon after the first issue of the Nouvelles (March I684), in which Bayle reviewed the former’s commentary on a cameo, L’Apotheose d’Home’re grave’e sur un marbre. Subsequently the two corresponded on a fairly regular basis over a period of twenty years, exchanging information on scholarlv activities underway on the continent and Cuper’s work, Apotheosis seu coissecratio Homneri (Amsterdam, I683), is re- viewed in the Nouivelles for March, i684, art, VIII.

This content downloaded from 47.14.74.123 on Fri, 27 Mar 2020 18:35:29 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms

The frontispiece signed and dated in the plate: Joh. van der Avele invention and fecit. Title page in red and black. This edition is enhanced with a letter of Etienne Le Moyne; this text has a half-title and the second text: Monumenta Antiqua. Cuper’s research are a precursor to art history and Winckelmann. Many Greek and Hebrew quotations in the texts.

§§

4) 389J Anonmyous

The humours, and conversations of the town, expos’d in two dialogues, the first, of the men. The second, of the women.

London : printed for R. Bentley, in Russel-Street, in Covent-Garden, and J. Tonson, at the Judge’s-Head in Chancery-Lane, 1693. $2,000

Octavo A⁶ B-G¹².

Wing (2nd ed.), H3720; Macdonald, Hugh. John Dryden; a bibliography. Oxford, 1939, p. 275-276.

§§

5). 393J Lucretius

THE LAST BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALDUS

Venice: Aldus Manutius and Andrea Torresani di Asolo, 1515 $4,500

Octavo. *8a-q8 (*8, q78 blank except for device on q8) This is the second Aldine edition, the first edited by Andrea Navagero (1483–1529), the editor of all the last Latin editions published by Aldus from the Cicero of 1514 onwards, and considered superior to the edition of 1500. Bound in an18th century stiff vellum with label and gilt-lettered title at spine, yellow edges. This books was published one month before Aldus’s death, on February 1515 and contains his last preface, addressed to Alberto Pio, prince of Carpi.The title-page was restored and remounted; honest copy with short margins.

This book is a classical enchiridion, in the octavo format with text in Italic types, with no accompanying commentary or printed decoration. De rerum natura of Titus Lucretius Carus, the first century B.C. Roman natural philosopher, expounds, in the form of an epic poem, the cosmological theories of his teacher, the Greek philosopher Epicurus, demonstrating the workings of his model of a universe based on the atom as the fundamental particle. In the preface Aldus notes that although much of the philosophy expounded by Lucretius is repugnant to a believing Christian, t is much of value in his work and he should tfore be read anyway. Aldus, now sixty-five, would die within a month of publication of this, his last production. Thus his complaint concluding the preface becomes the more poignant: “But, if it weren’t for the bad health with which I have been rather harshly afflicted for some months now, quite a bit would have been added which would testify to all of our diligence, and would have made [the text] of Lucretius itself fuller.” From all accounts, Aldus simply wore himself out (as the eulogy in the 1515 edition of Lactantius states). This 1515 Lucretius is one of the celebrated Aldine editions of the ancient classics in the handy small 8vo format.

Lucretius was the first of the Latin classic poets printed by Aldus, selected for both his elegance and his philosophical interest. Although De rerum natura has notably anti-religious undertones, its psychedelic vision of swerving atoms enchanted early modern readers—including Pope Sixtus IV, Aldus’s preoccupation with the integrity and correctness of the original text lies behind the publication of his edition of the Epicurean poem De rerum natura .It might be a strange choice if one considers the controversial nature of the text often in contrast with Christian beliefs–as the publisher himself points out in his dedicatory letter–but a natural choice given the philosophical nature of the text, in line with Aldus’s interests in scientific and philosophical texts from the Antiquity. Aldus’s admission that the text has also been chosen in view of the classical elegance of the verse introduces a new element of interest in the text.

In the preface Aldus notes that although much of the philosophy expounded by Lucretius is repugnant to a believing Christian, there is much of value in his work and he should therefore be read anyway. Aldus, now sixty-five, would die within a month of publication of this, his last production. Thus his complaint concluding the preface becomes the more poignant: “But, if it weren’t for the bad health with which I have been rather harshly afflicted for some months now, quite a bit would have been added which would testify to all of our diligence, and would have made [the text] of Lucretius itself fuller.”

Gordon, Bibliography of Lucretius, 6; Adams L-1651. New UCLA 130;Davies, Devices of the Early Printers, no.236).; Renouard AA p. 74:11; Kallendorf & Wells #127; Dibdin II 198-199. Renouard, 74.11.;Keynes.H.1.33, fol. q6 recto; Censimento 16 CNCE 37499; Texas 126;

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6) 223J Rubens, Peter Paul, 1577-1640. Barbé, Jean Baptiste,; 1578-1649. Galle, Cornelis,; 1576- 1650. Leczycki, Mikolaj,; 1574-1652. Pázmány, Péter,; 1570-1637.

Vita beati P. Ignatii Loiolae Societatis Iesu fundatoris.

Romae [Rome, Italy] : [s.n.], 1609 $3,800

Engraved architectonical frontispiece of important founders of the Society.

Quarto, 2 leaves plus 79 numbered cuts. This book consists of 81 copper engravings (including title page and frontispiece)–attributed either to Jean Baptiste Barbé or Cornelis Galle, the elder. Nineteen drawings for the engravings have been identified as the work of Peter Paul Rubens. Cf. The Rubens engravings of The life of St Ignatius (St Omers Press, 2005), p. 107-108; Diccionario histórico de la Compañia de Jesus, v. 4, p. 3428; Dictionary of art, v. 12, p. 16 (under Cornelis Galle)./

Commissioned by the Society of Jesus in 1605/1606 and issued in 1609, the year of Ignatius’ beatification. Each engraved plate includes a descriptive caption in Latin, attributed to Nicolaus Lancicius (i.e. Mikolaj Leczycki)–and Cardinal Peter Pázmány. Cf. modern edition: Vida de San Ignacio de Loyola en imágenes (Ediciones Mensajero, Bilbao, [1995])./ Title within architectural border depicting significant members of the Society of Jesus.

81 copper engravings (including title page and frontispiece) 19 after Rubens. Small (4to) 18×13.5 cm (7×5¼”) Later vellum ornamented with stamps of gilt St. Benedict, spine lettered on red morocco label in gilt, modern marbled endpapers.

Nineteen drawings for the engravings have been identified as the work of Peter Paul Rubens. Cf. The Rubens engravings of The life of St Ignatius (St Omers Press, 2005), p. 107-108; Diccionario histórico de la Compañia de Jesus, v. 4, p. 3428; Dictionary of art, v. 12, p. 16 (under Cornelis Galle)./ Commissioned by the Society of Jesus in 1605/1606 and issued in 1609, the year of Ignatius’ beatification.

Each engraved plate includes a descriptive caption in Latin, attributed to Nicolaus Lancicius (i.e. Mikolaj Leczycki)–and Cardinal Peter Pázmány. Cf. modern edition: Vida de San Ignacio de Loyola en imágenes (Ediciones Mensajero, Bilbao, [1995])./ Title within architectural border depicting significant members of the Society of Jesus.

to (20.5cm), attractive binding in contemporary limp vellum with gold fillets on boards and central fleuron, golden edges (some marginal repairs to a few leaves, light browning). First edition of this iconographic biography of St Ignatius Loyola, which was the result of an international collaboration: the two promoters, the Jesuit Nicholas Lancicius (Polish) and Philip Rinaldi, supported by the Hungarian P»ter P?zm?ny, composed the Latin text, while it is possible that the images used for the engravings by Jean Baptiste Barb» were drawn by Rubens, at the start of his collaboration with the Jesuits (although another hypothesis is that they are the work of Cornelis Galle). The author, a skilled Latinist, is particularly known for his history of the JesuitsÌ early ventures to Asia. He refers here to IgnatiusÌs friend, Francis Xavier, and the mission to the East Indies and Japan, which Xavier had embarked upon in 1541 (Quaritch Cat. 1226, 132). Cicognara 2139; Thieme-B. XIII, 106; Hollstein VII, 169-249.

The book was published in Rome in 1609, on the occasion of the beatification of Ignatius of Loyola. Includes 79 copper engravings (in addition to the cover page and portrait) that illustrate the life of the founder of the Society of Jesus, since its inception in 1491, its conversion, its journey to the Holy Land and so on, until its death in 1556. Surely the book was in preparation for some time and was part of the Jesuit strategy to make S. Ignazio’s figure more important to the public.

Backer-Sommervogel,; v. 6, column 409, no. 13; as well as Vol XI col 1485(Quaritch Cat. 1226, 132). Cicognara 2139; Thieme-B. XIII, 106; Hollstein VII, 169-249.

§§

7) 583G Eleven works bound together, .

1) Vindiciae doctrinae societ: Iesu a Calumniis patroni torunensium anonymi. [Bound with] 2) Apologia Roberti S.R.E. Cardinalis Bellarmini, pro responsione sua ad librum Iacobi Magnae Britanniae … [Bound with] 3) Controversia de ecclesia verbo dei, conciliis, summo pontifice, certis conclusionibus comprehensa. [Bound with] 4) Monita Calvinistarum privata & publica, generalia & specialia, ex libris illorum, dictis, & factis collecta … [Bound with] 5). Pax non pax seu rationes aliquot, quibus confoederationis Evangelicorum cum Catholicis pacem … [Bound with] 6). Obronarozsadku o niedopuszczeniu Budowania Haeretyckiego zboru wpoznaniu narespons … [Bound with] 7) Krotkie a Zwiezne otworzenie oczu [Bound with] 8) Symbola tria. Catholicum. Calvinianum. Lutheranum. Omnia. Ipsis eorum auctorum verbis expressa. [Bound with] 9) Symbolum Lutheranum [Bound with] 10)Theses Catholicae, de vocatione ministrorum evangelicorum. [Bound with] 11) Veritas catholica [in Hebrew] Tres divinae personae pater, filius, & spiritus sanctus in una essentia contra obstinatos Iudaeos, Arianos, & Anabaptistas. $11,500

Quarto, 7.25 x 6 in. The collations for all ten works are as follows: (1.) A-G4 (2.) *4, A-K8 (3.) *2, A-B2, A4 [-*3, *4] (4.) A-E4, F2 (5.) A4, B6 (6.) A-M4 (7.) π, A4, B5 (8.) *4, A-F4 (9.) A-D4 (10.) π, A4, B6 (11) A3, B-E4, F1

This sammelband is bound in the original Eastern European binding of blind tooled calf with ties. The binding has been strengthened as the sewing supports were virtually non-existent. The works are all in very good condition, a minor tear to D3 in the sixth work, and the work by Brezeski, the third work, lacks two leaves of preliminaries. This sammelband contains eleven Catholic controversial works of mainly Polish and Lithuanian origin the majority of which are by Jesuit authors. Most of the works could not be located in any institution world-wide. 1. Tyszkiewicz, George (1571-1625) The author of the first work was a long-time professor of philosophy and theology at Posen and at Lubin in addition to serving as rector of many of the different colleges. This work, a response to the second work of Patronus Torunensium that attacked the doctrine of the Jesuits, is not recorded by OCLC and no copies could be located world-wide. Krakow: in Officina Andreae Petricouii S.R.M. Typographi, 1616.

2. Bellarmino, Robert (1542-1621)

Bellarmino, who taught the humanities for many years at Florence, is well known for his controversial literature of which, this work is an example. Bellarmino wrote this work under the pseudoname “Matthaeus Torti” in response to England’s king James I “Triplici nodo triplex cuneus,” an apology for the oath of allegiance and consequently an attack on papal authority which James associated with he antichrist. The “Triplici” first appeared in 1607 and Bellarmino’s response, in 1609. This edition is one of five editions that appeared in 1610. 3. Brzeski, Albertum Stanislaum. Brzeski taught philosophy and theology in the Jesuit school at Alma and this disputation took place on June 21, 1626. Interestingly, the author thanks George Tyszkiewicz, the author of the first work in this volume, as the overseer of the school in which Brzeski teaches. This author is not in Sommervogel and no books by him appear in OCLC. 4. Kaczorowski, Kacorovius (1578-1628) Kaczorowski taught grammar, rhetoric and math. There is an interesting note in De Backer/ Sommervogel questioning the authorship of this work and offering the possibility that it was written under pseudonym. The “Monita” is very much in the vein of other sixteenth and seventeenth century controversial works. Kaczorowski has, as he states on the title page, collected information from the books, sayings and deeds of the Calvinists to produce this attack on their doctrine. One copy only OCLC. First edition Crachow: Typis Francisci Cesarii, 1616

5. Bembus, Matthieu (1567-1645) Bembus entered the Jesuit order in 1587 and soon after taught taught philosophy and theology. He was named rector of Posen and then superior of the house at Crachow before his death in 1645. Joseph Lukaszewicz, another Polish Jesuit and Polish historian, held Bembus in high regard and penned a elegy upon his death in 1645: “in sacred eloquence, he occupies the first rung after father P. Skarga; his sermons are not only a monument of eloquence and style, but a mine of documents for the history of Poland.” TWO copies recorded by OCLC. First edition. [no imprint info, but dated 1615]

6 and 7. Not much is known about these two Polish language works. Neither work is recorded by OCLC. The printer, Roku Panskiego, produced mainly catholic works and these two works join the five works recorded by OCLC (all appearing before 1600) as having been issued from his press. The first work is dated 1616 and the second 1624.

8. Cnoglerus, Quirinus The present work, the “Symbola Tria” was edited by Cnoglerus and was printed with his explanatory notes by a press operated by the Jesuit order in Vilnius, Lithuania. The work consists of parallel columns of extracts from various Catholic, Calvinist and Lutheran authors and Cnoglerus’s commentary on them. Copies are located at the National Library of France, In Sweden at the Kungl. Biblioteket in Stockholm, in addition to four loacations in the United Kingdom including Oxford. Vilnius: Ex officina typographica Societ. IESU, anno, MeDIatorIs ChrIstI [or 1592 or 1602, but probably the latter]

9.and 10 Cnoglerus, Quirinus Another work by Cnoglero follows in this sammelband and like the earlier work, it is another controversial work directed this time against the Calvinists in Vilnius in Lithuania and like the previous work, it was printed by the Jesuits. No copies could be located world-wide. Vilnius, typis acad. societ. IESU. 1603

11. Pikel, Sebastien Very little information is available on this author. Even De Backer / Sommervogel mentions that their records contain little or no information on this author. Pikel wrote one other work that made it to the press, another controversial work printed in 1642 and like the preceding works, executed by the Jesuit press in Vilnius in Lithuania. No copies of this work could be located world-wide. First edition. Vilnius: Typis Academicis Societatis Iesu, 1642.

1. Sommervogel VIII: 331 Oclc 2 copies Rome & Poland 2. Sommervogel I: 1213. Oclc 1 copy Mannheim Germany 3. Not in Sommervogel. Oclc no copies 4. Sommervogel IV: 894. Oclc no copies 5. Sommervogel I: 1279. Oclc 2 copies both Rome 6. Not in any major reference work 7. Not in any major reference work 8. Jocher I: 1977 . Oclc 5 copies 9. Not in any major reference work. 10. Sommervogel VI: 749

§§

9) 399J Benjamin Jenks

A letter to a gentleman of note, guilty of common swearing. Recommended now to all such of that rank, as are under the same guilt. And fit to be perused by all Their Majesties good subjects, that would please both God, and the king, in helping to suppress this crying sin By B.J

London: London Printed for Randall Taylor 1690. $900

Wing (CD-ROM, 1996),; J618A; McAlpin,; IV, p. 388; ESTC (RLIN),; R008925.kesU

Free Library of Philadelphia

Harvard University

Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery

Princeton Theological Seminary

Union Theological Seminary

Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

§§ 00 §§

10). 397J. Balthasar Mentzer, d.ä.

Concordia. Pia et unanimi consensu repetita confessio fidei & doctrinæ electorum : principum et ordinum imperii, atque eorundem theologorum, qui Augustanam confessionem amplectuntur: cui e sacra scriptura unica illa veritatis norma & regula, quorundam articulorum, qui post D. Martini Luther felicem ex hac vita exitum in controversiam venerunt, Solida accessit declaratio. Ante haec tempora communi eorundem electorum, principum ac ordinum imperij consilio, nunc verò singulari Serenissimi Saxoniae electoris Christiani II. mandato, instituendis & erudiendis subditis, Ecclesijs atq[ue] scholis suis, ad posteritatis memoriam typis vulgata.

[bound with]

Exegesis Augustanæ confessionis: cuius articuli XXI. breviter & succincte explicantur & Succincte explicantur, & subiecta antithesei ton heterodoxon Papistarum, Calvinistarum & Photinianorum, illustrantur. Authore Balthasare Mentzero SS. TheologiÆ ejusq olim in Marpurgensi, nunc Giessensi Academia Professore, & stipendiatorum Ephoro. Editio quarta castigatior & multo auctior.

Lipsiæ : Abrahamus Lamberg , Anno 1618. & [bound with] Lubecæ, typis & sumptib. Samuelis Jauchij. M. DC. XVII

Very thick Octavo. 6 1/2 x 3 3/4 inches ; a8-b8, c4, A-Z8, Aa-Zz8Aaa-Lll8. [bound with] (?)8, A-Z8, Aa-Ii8

adII VD17 1:080914U Balthasar Mentzer], a German Lutheran divine, greatly noted for his decided opposition to the Reformed Church theologians, was born in Allendorf Hesse, February 27, 1565. He studied at the University of Marburg, where he excelled by the display of unusual talents and knowledge. After preaching for several years at Kirtorf, he was appointed in 1596 professor of theology at his alma mater. While in this position he was involved in many controversies because of his prince’s tendency towards the doctrines of the Reformed Church. Mentzer was especially radical in his opposition to their views on the doctrine of Ubiquity, on Iconoclasm, the Lord’s Supper, and the Decalogue, and in 1605 was actually forced to quit Marburg, and, together with’ his colleagues, Winckelmann and Leuchter, removed to Giessen; to take a position in the new university founded by landgrave Lewis, and there became one of the most renowned teachers. He died Jan. 6, 1627, at Marburg, to which place the university had been removed in the mean time.

Mentzer was a pure Lutheran; his Christian faith was a truly orthodox belief in the Christological dogma as furnished in the idiomatic and ubiquistic doctrine. He published many works, most of which bore a polemic character. His Latin works were afterwards collected and published by his son: Opera theologica Latina (Frankf. 1669,2 vols. 8vo). His apologetic works against Romanism aid the Reformed Church contain the Exegesis Confessionis Augustance (Giessen, 1603). Similar to this is his Repetitio Chemnitiana. Challenged by the work of the Romanist John Pistorius (Wegweiser fur alle ves fuhrte Christen), he wrote Anti-Pistorius sui disputatio de prcecipuis quibusdam controversis capitibus (Marburg, 16 ( “Engelischer Wegweiser (Marburg, 1603); and many others. He engaged in a controversy with John Crocius, profesor Marburg, against whom he sent forth Abstersio calumniarum J. Crocii, Apologetica, Anticrocia, Collatio Augustance Confessionis cum doctrina Calvini, Bezoe et sociorun (1610). He had also a controversy with John Sadeel, of Paris and Geneva, Matthias Martinius, at Herborn, Paul Stein, at Cassel, Schinfeld, and Pareus: Elencheus errorumn J. Sadeelis in libello de veritate humance naturce Christi (Giessen, 1615): — Elencheus errorunm J. Sadeelis in libello de sacramentali manducatione (Giessen, 1612): Anti Martinius sive modesta et solida responsio, etc. (Giessen, 1612); and many others. These polemics concerning the human nature of Christ, the sacramental use of the Lord’s Supper, and the idiomatic use of impanation, give an idea of the logic of the Reformed criticism and the tenacity of the Lutheran defence. The humanity of Christ, the “Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us,” are the principal points of Mentzer’s theological grounds. He condemns his opponent’s view as Arianistic: ” Non igitur existimo, unquam exstitisse inter Christianos, qui Christo homini vel naturse ejus humanae minus gloriae et auctoritatis et potentale tribuendum censuerint, quam Martinium hunc Freienhagensem” (Anti-Martinius, p. 167). In a communication to Martinius, Mentzer’s assertion, “Ipsa divina pruesentia juxta sacras literas est actio,” provoked another controversy with his colleagues at Giessen, professors Winckelmann and Gisenius. This controversy was settled by the landgrave’s personal interference only, who in 1607 imposed silence and peace on all parties. Mentzer’s principal work is Necessaria et justa defensio contra injustas criminationes L. Osiandri, M. Nicolai, Th. Tummii, in qua multi de persona et officio Christi erroris deteguntur et refutantur (1624). This was answered in 1625 in Thummi’s Acta. In 1618 Mentzer was called to Wolfenbittel to give his opinion on Calixtus’s Epitome theologice. He never went thither, but sent a criticism to his son-in-law, superintendent Wiedeburg, acknowledging the eminent talents of the author, but judging his epitome from his own narrow and exclusive stand-point. See Witten, Mem. Theol. 1:223 sq.; Strieder, Hessische Gelehrtengeschichte, vol. viii; Walch, Relig. Streitigkeiten innerhalb der Luth.-Kirche; also, Streitigkeiten ausserhall der’ Luther. Kirche, 3:505; Henke, Georg. Calixtus, 1:123, 282, 307, 321; 2:23; Memor. Theol. 1:223 sq.; Gasz, Gesch. der protest. Theol. 1:277, 278; Walch, Biblioth. theologica, 2:654; Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, 2:243 et al. (J. H. W.)

*§()§*

11) 342G. Jean Hermant 1650-1726

La storia delle eresie, nella quale si descrive con ordine Alfabetico il nome, e la Vita degli Eresiarchi che hanno turbata la Chiesa dalla Nascita di Gesucristo fino a nostri tempi, e gli errori che vi hanno disseminati. Con un Trattato tradotto dal Latino di Alfonso de Castro, Il quale risolve molte Questioni generali intorno all’Eresia

Venezia, Appresso Francesco Pitteri, in Merceria all’Insegna della Fortuna Trionfante, 1735 [Venice: Pitteri, 1735]. $2,800

The first volume is mostly a history of heresies and what makes an heresie. Followed in volume two and three a list of heretics in alphabetical order with brief listings of their crimes from (one of my favorites ) Abelardo to- Zuingliani, it it a little disturbing that I have read most of the books by these guys.. go figure?

Three duodecimo volumes A-Z4 Aa-Zz4 Aaa-Lll4. pp. 448 to first volume, pp. 432 to the second one, pp. 450 (ther last leaf is blank) to the third volume. Text in Italian. Each of the three volumes are bound in full matching vellum binding, handwritten title at spine, marbled edges . Provenance: I. Handwritten inscription to the first fly-leaf of volume I (partially erased), Continet hoc liber xxxx Delle Hesie (sic) Tom Primo | Pro Medarum Biblioteca | Pater Conradus | a | Castro S.ti Joannis | Dicavit | Amodo Rev.di Patres | Mon(a)st(e)ri | permissu. II. On the verso of the front fly-leaf of each volume, handwritten inscription Ad uso del P. Corrado di Castel S. Gio. dedicato alla Lit.a di S. Fra.sco di Medes con licenza del Sup.e Pro.le.

Palau [49088].{CCPB 000353019-1; ICCU.; Toda 6030}

Fascicule XXII 11 more books . Media Plaga ‡ Aprili MMXX 'VIVITUR INGENIO' 392J. Albrecht DÜRER 1471-1528, Translator Giovanni Paolo Gallucci,; 1538-1621? Di Alberto Durero pittore, e geometra chiarissimo.

#Media Plaga #Vivitur Ingenio

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todaynewsstories · 6 years

Text

Aston Martin is recreating James Bond′s ′Goldfinger′ DB5 | Europe| News and current affairs from around the continent | DW

Luxury auto group Aston Martin announced on Monday it will recreate 25 legendary DB5 cars. The original DB5 was used by secret agent James Bond in cinema classics such as “Goldfinger” (1964), “Tomorrow Never Dies (1997),” “Skyfall” (2012) and “Spectre” (2015).

The Aston Martin DB5 made its first appearance in 1964 with Sean Connery’s James Bond in ‘Goldfinger’

Functioning gadgets such as “revolving number plates and more,” will be included on the Aston Martin DB5 recreation, according to an Aston Martin press release. It did not specify whether the bulletproof screen at the rear of the prototype driven by Sean Connery in “Goldfinger” would be included. Nor did it mention the front-mounted guns, a passenger ejector seat, a nail spreader, or a smoke screen device at the rear.

Read more: James Bond actor Daniel Craig auctions Aston Martin

‘M’s orders, 007. You’ll be using this Aston Martin DB5, with modifications. Now, pay attention please…’

James Bond’s Aston Martin also had an oil slick sprayer and water jets, courtesy of MI6’s Q-Branch, but the fictional spy unit won’t be involved in the new DB5 creations. Instead, EON Productions, which makes James Bond movies, will work with Aston Martin and a special effects supervisor.

James Bond’s car at Oxford University while he has a lesson with Professor Inga Bergstrom in ‘Tomorrow Never Dies’ (1997)

The original prototype uesd in the films was auctionedfor $4.6 million (€4.03 million at today’s exchange rate) in 2010. Each of the new Goldfinger DB5s will cost £2.75 million ($3.50 million, €3.07 million). The cars will not be road-legal. The first model is set to be ready for sale in 2020.

The silver screen Bond, perenially a Bentley man in the original novels by Iain Fleming, has driven many different brands of cars down the decades. However, ever since the DB5 made its 1964 debut, 007 and Q-branch have had a special relationship with Aston Martin. As well as using his DB5 in five films, Bond has been issued with five other tricked-out Astons.

12 spy films set in Germany

Tom Hanks among spies in Berlin

Many parts of Steven Spielberg’s movie were shot in and around Berlin. It re-enacts the first of a series of spy swaps that took place on Glienicke Bridge, which became known as the “Bridge of Spies,” hence the title of the film. Spielberg isn’t the first filmmaker to portray secret agents in Germany. Here are more examples.

12 spy films set in Germany

‘5 Fingers’

The film “5 Fingers” (1952), directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, is about a famous secret agent during World War II who worked for the Nazis – widely known by his code name, Cicero. Although other spy movies were filmed on location, this one was mainly shot in the studio.

12 spy films set in Germany

‘Spy for Germany’

This West German thriller, originally titled “Spion für Deutschland” (1956), also depicts the actions of a German secret agent during World War II. Starring Martin Held and Nadja Tiller, it was filmed both in Berlin and the US.

12 spy films set in Germany

‘The Dirty Game’

Werner Klinger, who directed “Spy for Germany,” was also among the four filmmakers who helmed this 1965 anthology spy film. It is made up of stories directed by a German, a French, an Italian, and a British filmmaker. Shot in Berlin, it starred Henry Fonda and Robert Ryan.

12 spy films set in Germany

‘Torn Curtain’

Alfred Hitchcock filmed his spy thriller “Torn Curtain” in the studio in 1966. However, some scenes were shot on location in Berlin. Camera crews filmed in the German capital and sent their footage to Hollywood so Hitchcock could use the material in his movie. The cast included German actors Wolfgang Kieling and Hansjörg Felmy, along with US stars Julie Andrews and Paul Newman.

12 spy films set in Germany

James Bond in Berlin: ‘Octopussy’

A large part of the 13th movie of the most popular secret agent in film history, James Bond, was shot in Berlin in 1983. Agent 007, depicted by Roger Moore, is seen at Checkpoint Charlie, in front of the Berlin Wall, and does a chase scene on the AVUS highway. Bond’s love scenes were filmed in the studio, though.

12 spy films set in Germany

‘The Innocent’

In 1993, John Schlesinger filmed on location in Berlin. “The Innocent” is based on the Cold War “Operation Gold,” where CIA and MI6 agents built a tunnel under the Russian sector of Berlin. Anthony Hopkins, Isabella Rossellini and Campbell Scott star in the film.

12 spy films set in Germany

‘Mission: Impossible III’

For the third film in the “Mission: Impossible” series, director J.J Abrams and star Tom Cruise initially planned to film in the German Reichstag. But the German government didn’t allow them to shoot in the building – a council decided it should not be used in commercial films. The crew had to build sets in Babelsberg Studio, just outside Berlin.

12 spy films set in Germany

‘The Good German’

“The Good German” (2006) by Steven Soderbergh also demonstrates how studio sets can replace actual locations. The story is set in post-war Berlin, but was filmed in Los Angeles. However, Soderbergh built in archive material of the actual war-torn city in his gloomy film shot in black-and-white.

12 spy films set in Germany

‘Spy Game’

This 2001 spy thriller starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt is set in Berlin, but it wasn’t shot in Germany either. Locations in Budapest were used to reproduce the German capital. This can actually be noticed in some scenes: Some elements in the background do not exist in Berlin.

12 spy films set in Germany

‘The Man from U.N.C.L.E.’

Currently in theaters, the secret agent comedy “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” contains many scenes set in Berlin in the 1960s. Henry Cavill depicts an American secret agent competing with a Russian spy. The film beautifully recreates the atmosphere of divided Berlin – yet everything was done by computer.

12 spy films set in Germany

‘Homeland’

The fifth season of the popular TV series “Homeland” was shot in Berlin, too. Agent Carrie Mathison is no longer working for the CIA and is hired by a German private security firm. Filming was also done in Babelsberg Studios and in Brandenburg.

12 spy films set in Germany

On location: Glienicke Bridge

Steven Spielberg filmed his spy movie on location in Berlin. After all, the legendary and mysterious Glienicke Bridge also inspired the title of his film, “Bridge of Spies.” Sometimes the actual location simply beats all studio sets and digital reproductions.

Author: Jochen Kürten / eg

Each evening at 1830 UTC, DW’s editors send out a selection of the day’s hard news and quality feature journalism. You can sign up to receive it directly here.

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goldeagleprice · 7 years

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Was Boggs an artist or a counterfeiter?

Editor’s Note: This article is Part II of a two-part study of James Stephen George Boggs, the internationally famous money artist who died at age 62 in late January of this year. Click here to read Part I.

By Neil Shafer

In 2001, Boggs engineered the manufacture of 100,000 Sacagawea dollar copies in orange plastic, which he called Boggs Money. (It is surmised that Boggs used orange for these pieces as well as many of his Boggs Bills because that is the color employed by the FUN show for its uniforms, and a goodly number of his products are directly related to that event. Besides, he lived a while in Florida and for a period of years he rather faithfully attended that show.)

Boggs’ rendition of an English 10-pound note: uniface, larger than regular size and on cardboard. I wonder if he tried to “spend” these notes, or any of the others that represent the various countries from which he copied images.

I received a set of seven of these plastic dollars, and six of the seven have distinctive differences on their obverses that make them each unique. All have a normal-looking Sac image and LIBERTY above. All have legend BOGGS MONEY at left instead of the motto IN GOD WE TRUST. The most distinctive differences are seen in the date area. Details as follows: 1) 1984/CH; 2) FUN/1999/B; 3) FUN/2000/G; 4) FUN/2000/J; 5) FUN/2000/J; 6) 2000/M21; 7) 2001/S. It would appear that Nos. 4 and 5 are identical. As made they are in fact the same, but on one of them there is the handwritten name J S G / BOGGS in black on the reverse in capital letters, exactly as received from Boggs.

France is favored with a Boggs look alike of a 100-francs issue. Characteristics of its manufacture are basically similar to all the world issues shown here and as described in the caption for the English piece.

When the plastic Boggs money debuted, Boggs told Numismatic News (Jan. 23, 2001) that he considered it a natural progression in his evolution as a money-issuing entity.

“I want them to circulate as money,” he said. “I made so many of them [100,000] to prevent them from leaving circulation as quickly as they were put in.”

There are two items with respect to his German issue. The usual copy is based on a 100-mark note; the unusual piece is one with Boggs’ own portrait instead of the original one.

To add to the collectibility of the new Boggs Money, Boggs told the News that Boggs Money was issued in different dates and mintmarks. Among the combinations available were a 1984-CH (CH stands for Chicago, where Boggs got his start; 1984 was the year), 2000-J, -G, -B and 2001-S (the J, S, G and B relating to his initials; 2000 is the year in which he conceived this project) and 2001-M21 (the M21 is in reference to a museum of 21st-century art planned for St. Petersburg, Fla; Boggs had donated “real” U.S. currency to its founding).

This piece is the Boggs takeoff on the German 100-mark issue.

Boggs told the News he planned to exchange any previously-issued Boggs bills for the Boggs Money at face value or slightly above. He said he envisioned a time when discounts on the direct purchase of his artworks would be given for those using Boggs Money in payment.

His Italian artwork was modeled after a 1,000-lire issue in use from 1982 to 1990.

It’s unlikely that Boggs ever realized this part of his dream for Boggs Bills and Boggs Money.

Switzerland was represented by the 100-francs issue made from 1975 to 1993.

To explain his actions further, his admirers and Boggs himself considered his “transactions” as true works of art. Apparently the art world agrees with this assessment, as he is represented in such highly placed institutions as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. “I create images that say things and ask things,” Boggs said in the 2013 Discovery Channel documentary “Secret Life of Money.” “I take them out into the real world and try to spend them, not as counterfeits, but as works of art that ask us about the nature of money.”

For an ANA Summer Convention (1995, Anaheim, Calif.) Boggs prepared three similar issues of his orange $2 backs with a modified rendition of Monticello. Just below the building on each he placed a different title: LA ANA HEIM; KALIPHORNIA; BONDBACKED.

In 1994, Bank Note Reporter commissioned Boggs to do a special Boggs Bill to be used as a Bank Note Reporter subscription premium. This was in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of the Florida United Numismatists in January 1995.

Three similar orange $5 backs with a left view of the Supreme Court were made for the 1996 FUN show. Boggs used different titles above the building: FUN; TRUST GOD; GOD.

Those who paid $40 for a one-year subscription to BNR also received a Boggs “FUN 40 print” (a limited edition of 500) and a $1 Boggs Bill in change. The Boggs Bill was based on real money, showing the back of $1 bill but orange in color for FUN.

Boggs made a trio of orange $10 for FUN 1997, this time with a view to right of the Supreme Court. His different titles beneath the building: U.S. SURPLUS COURT; U.S. PLUS COLOUR; SUPREMELY UNTRIED.

Nine hundred of the Boggs Bills were produced and serial numbered. Those used in the promotion were numbered 101-600. (The additional 400 were used by Boggs for other purposes, including the payment to the FUN committee and staff “for working so hard on the show.”)

A $20 for FUN 1998 in black was produced, certainly an unusual color venue. For this single issue he had the title as HAPPY TRAILS BOB. I theorize that Boggs made this issue as a kind of personal remembrance possibly for someone close to him named Bob. Just a theory.

After the BNR promotion ended, the remaining souvenir cards (159 of them valued at $1 each) and the Boggs Bills (120 of them valued at $1 each) were part of a transaction, later that same year, at an exhibit of Boggs’ works at the Nancy Drysdale Gallery in Washington, D.C. They were exchanged for a work called the “Big Penny,” by Tom Otterness, valued at $250 (Bank Note Reporter, June 1995). Change and a receipt were given to complete the “transaction.”

The Boggs $50 in orange was used at the 1999 FUN show. His title for this altered view was OUR CAPITAL. I imagine such wording was done on purpose as a play on words.

Boggs was apparently interested in other aspects of money creation. Some works of money art that he designed include the mural All the World’s a Stage, roughly based on a Bank of England Series D £20 note and featuring some Shakespearean themes, as well as bank note-sized creations that depict Boggs’s ideas as to what U.S. currency should look like. A $100 bill featuring Harriet Tubman is one known example.

Did Boggs endorse all his checks with unique designs? This is one of mine returned in 1994 with a design of a $50 cipher having nothing at all to do with the $211 face value of the check.

The book by Lawrence Wechsler discussed last month has some quotes by Boggs but most of the text is by Wechsler. I have two other publications about Boggs. One is titled J.S.G. Boggs / smart money about an exhibition of art at the Tampa Museum of Art around 1990. Main text is by Bruce W. Chambers and Arthur D. Canto. This booklet also lists a number of renditions by Boggs. (From what I have seen on the Internet and elsewhere, there can never be a complete listing of all of Boggs’ works.)

Sometimes Boggs took multiple check endorsements to finish the full back design. Here he used four returned checks to achieve the desired results.

The last is a reprint of a 1993 article in the Chicago-Kent Law Review that was written by Boggs. It is titled “Who Owns This?” Here, finally, one gets the full impact of his philosophy as he expresses his personal thoughts on many aspects of art, money, his participation and its reception by the authorities.

In summation, I believe Boggs was quite a unique individual who literally made his indelible mark on the numismatic and art worlds in a way that will have ramifications for many years. I am very glad I got to know him at the conventions where we were able to spend some time together and where he allowed me to assemble a collection of his works of art.

This article was originally printed in Bank Note Reporter. >> Subscribe today.

More Collecting Resources

• The Standard Catalog of United States Paper Money is the only annual guide that provides complete coverage of U.S. currency with today’s market prices.

• Any coin collector can tell you that a close look is necessary for accurate grading. Check out this USB microscope today!

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