book note : library crime and punishment

A sixteenth-century sign, posted in the Biblioteca de Salamanca in Spain, threatens excommunication to anyone stealing a book from the premises. seen here (PDF)

The text :

Hai excomunion reservada a su santidad contra qualesquiera personas, que quitaren, distraxeren, o de otro qualquier modo enagenaren algun libro, pergamino o papel de esta biblioteca, sin que puedan ser absueltas hasta que esta esté perfectamente reintegrada.

In English :

There is excommunication reserved to his holiness against any person who takes, loses, or other any way alienates any book, parchment or paper from this library, they can not be absolved until it is fully repaid.

On 14 November 1568 Pope Pius V established a decree excommunicating book thieves leading to this sign. (almost related - Seinfeld s3e22 The Library)

The sign in context

What a marvelous looking library :

Book Notes : Hitler's Willing Excutioneers by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

endnote book note 

Hitler's Willing Excutioneers by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen p506 footnote 95 

Mosse, in "From 'Schutzjuden' to "deutsche Staatsburger Jüdeischen Glaubens,'" Writes that during the 1880s and 1890s, "there can be little doubt that without [the state's] neutrality and [its] maintenance of law and order, where necessary by force, a wave of pogroms would have swept Germany with incalculable results"' (p90). For a vivid account of a man bursting to assault Jews physicall, but who was restrained by the limits imposed by the state, see Erich Goldhagen, "The Mad Count : A Forgotten Portent of the Holocaust," Midstream 22, no 2 (Feb 1976). Goldhagen writes "Mere words, however, did not satisfy the Count – he thirsted for action. But the pleasure of striking at Jews physicaly was denied to him by the Imperial Government which, while condoning barking against Jews, would not tolerate the beating of them. Count Pueckler, therefore, chose to vent his passions through make-believe gestures. At the head of a troop of mounted peasants, whom he had especially arrayed for the occasions, and to the fanfare of trumpets, he would lead cavalry charges against imaginary Jews, striking them down and trampling them under foot. It was a spectacle affording a psychic equivalent for murder. It was also a remarkable prefigurement of the FinalSolution" p61-62

Sometimes we presume people are rational beings and think there must be some logic or reason behind things but sometimes people are just nuts.

Chuck Close at work part 2

(see also the post Chuck Close at work part 1 that showed the process of his post-photorealistic, prismatic grid work)

 Painting of John 1971-72 progression of various sections of the painting. The painting's size is 100 x 90 inches (8' 6" x 7' 6")

from Chuck Close Work page 78

 Chuck Close painting Mark 1978-79 (108 x 84 inches or 9 x 7 feet)
from Chuck Close Work page 86

Notice the 5 reference photos : magenta color separation, cyan color separation, then magenta+cyan color separation so he can check his progress, yellow color separations and magenta+cyan+yellow (the full color photo).

Chuck Close's approach to photorealistic painting is not what I expected. To achieve a slick photorealistic you pretty much have to approach it from a strict mechanical process but this wasn't what I expected. But it seems like a sensible approach : simplification and the use of technology.

He appears to begin, from top to bottom dividing the image into sections. A section is then painted from the magenta separation and once that is done that section is painted from the cyan separation with the magenta+cyan proof as an added reference. Then the section is painted guided by yellow separation. Only once the section is completed does he move on to another section

By painting one color at a time he is essentially doing 3 monochrome paintings albeit the second and third are atop a previous painting. Copying each color separation and using the magenta+cyan reference photos he reduces the problems of mixing colors correctly and consistently. Instead, he only has to do faithfully copy each color separation using a selection of values from light to dark of only a single color and the final color should come out correct.

Personally, I prefer his later "prismatic grid" works. Once you've seen a couple giant portraits they lose their uniqueness. They become enlarged photos. Photos enlarged by a very time consuming mechanical process like Chuck Close is an Epson printer. That is the point some might say but …

Pictures from the book Chuck Close Work by Christopher Finch (2010).

movie notes : Wagner & Me

The original music of Richard Wagner's Götterdämmerung bound into book form.

Wagner and Me (2010) is a little movie about Stephen Fry's mixed feelings about the music of Richard Wagner and his distaste for things associated with the music (including the composer). Fry is a professional raconteur so despite the movie at times being centered more on Fry and what he might be thinking at that particular moment than Wagnerian history (to be fair, the title is Wagner & Me as opposed to All About Wagner) it is interesting and entertaining throughout.

Stephen Fry says :

Wagner's Russian adventure was a triumph. He was even sounded out about taking over as artistic director of the Mariinsky. Had he accepted there might never have been a Bayreuth Festival House [The theater designed to Wagner's vision of his ideal theater]. He might never have completed the Ring Cycle.

His story would have had a different and probably less controversial ending.

Hmmm, if his music had become more influential in Russia than Germany… I guess Russian Czars and Russian Communists must have ruled in a boring and completely uncontroversial way.  Interesting isn't it that some mass murdering political leaders are controversial and some aren't.  Note that the controversy is not due to Richard Wagner's antisemitism which was known before his trip to Russia but because several decades after Wagner's death (Feb 13, 1883) someone bad liked his music. 

I confess that despite the movie's attempt at explaining why some people balk at Wagner because Hitler (born 6 years after Wagner's death) liked his music and the Nazi's played it, I do not understand it. I think I'll watch the movie again later to try to determine if it is a lack of understanding on my part or if I don't understand because it isn't rational.

I've heard the dislike of Wagner and of "his relationship with the Nazis" before and for a while I was under the impression that he was, if not a Nazi, then a Nazi sympathizer which must have meant that he lived to be well over 100. What is really meant is the Nazi's relationship to Wagner not Wagner's 

relationship with the Nazis as he was long, long dead. (I can't help but wonder if some people confuse Richard Wagner with another German composer, Richard Strauss, who was alive during the Nazi regime and did deal with the Nazis.)

There is a transgenerational corruption of blood mentioned in the movie, but with a twist. Normally the corruption of blood stains the descendants but Fry has the stain run from descendants' spouses to taint the ancestor and his musical compositions. The movie informs that Wagner's son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a racist and early supporter of Hitler and his daughter-in-law Winifred is said "to revere Hitler." The beliefs of the spouse of Wagner's third child is left unmentioned. 

Other than Wagner, would Fry accept someone else claiming music or a bloodline or a family is tainted by the words and actions of ancestors or descendants? 

Hypothetically, if Johann Sebastian Bach's great-great-great-great granddaughter is a inveterate shoplifter will some people chose not to listen to a Bach piece or perhaps with the distance of time they'll simply refuse to listen to it in stereo.

At one interesting point Fry is discussing Wagner with a musician who survived the Auschwitz as to whether his music is tainted and she starts asking him questions : "What happens to you when you sit there for five hours?" "Why do you have to listen to Wagner in Bayreuth?"

Oversized bust of Richard Wagner by Arno Breker at Bayreuth Festspielhaus (note the monumental scale)

Stephen Fry says :

"even this memorial bust was created by Hitler's favorite sculptor"

Considering that the bust was done by Arno Breker in 1939 (Breker was born 27 years after Wagner's death and the work done 56 years after) is it really surprising that it was done by a Nazi approved artist at a time when so-called degenerate art was being discouraged (as in censored). 

I'm not sure what to call this. Instead of sins of the father perhaps call it Sins of the Muse. The implication is that Hitler liked a sculptor and decades after the composer's death that sculptor used Wagner as a subject and therefore through no action by Wagner his music is tainted. 

Additionally, I'll note that Stephen Fry wore pants throughout the entire movie! Just like Hitler! 

civility : pissing on a grave

Eduardo Labarca appears to urinate on the grave of Jose Luis Borges on the cover of his book The Enigma of the Modules

"Peeing on that tomb was a legitimate artistic act," … "I am not just a person who goes around peeing on tombs, but a writer with a serious oeuvre," he said today.

By legitimate he means fake :

 The photo has provoked outrage in Borges's native Argentina, even though Labarca admits the stream of water descending on the great man's grave actually came from a bottle of water hidden in his right hand.

 The reason for it all :

"Anyone who is offended by this is very short-sighted," he said. "Borges was a giant as a writer but I feel complete contempt for him as a citizen. As an old man, almost blind, he came to meet the dictator Pinochet in the days when he was busy killing."

p.s. if you find the design of Borges' gravestone as interesting as I do there then someone has already done the research on it.

Book Notes : nasty, misogynistic, fearful contempt

page from The Essential Hieronymus Bosch

from the little book The Essential Hieronymus Bosch by W. John Campbell (2000) p81 about the painting the Temptations of Saint Anthony :

Unlike the abstract theme of salvation through prayer in the middle panel, the right wing – like the left – is a narrative, the temptation of the saint by a beautiful girl. This misogynist episode – a nasty medieval expression of fearful contempt of women – pits the saint and his Bible against the allure of a slender nude in the hollow of a dead tree.

the Temptations of Saint Anthony triptych (right panel) by Hieronymus Bosch.  (A complaint about misogyny and no one mentioned the phallic shaped top of the building in the upper right?)  

click to embiggen
detail of the Temptations of Saint Anthony (right panel) by Hieronymus Bosch

So, Saint Anthony being tempted by a plate full of gold coins is a gold-hating episode and a nasty medieval expression of fearful contempt of gold.

Is it misogynistic to suggest that many men can be tempted by a naked woman? Is it misogynistic to reject the advances of a naked woman? Or is it that she is naked? It must not be the temptation itself or it would be "biblical contempt" and not medieval contempt. Or is it misogynistic that she appears not to have feet (because she is standing in water)? Is the man and woman on a flying fish misogynistic too?

She appears to be covering herself with a crab. If she is infested with gigantic genital crabs then most men would be less tempted by her.

If the author intends "misogynist episode" to refer to Saint Anthony's rejection of the woman then the author has it wrong as I think she was actually the devil in disguise. A mis-diabolus-ist episode!

an attempt to show the scale of the painting

Essential Hieronymus Bosch book review : As an aside, I bought the book on impulse and blindly online and it wasn't exactly what I was hoping for.  It is physically small (about 6" x 6") and parts of it are written in a style that, I think, is intended to sound like a high school girl. Oddly, this casual style isn't consistent. It is as if an editor circled a few paragraphs and said "Hey, punch this up a little and make it sound cool and youthful. Y'know, hep and groovy like the kids talk these days. And be sure to mention a popular TV show so the readers know that we know what's on TV. And call something misogynistic because the whippersnappers are always doing that."

It isn't a very deep book. Many of Bosch's paintings have a great many elements in them and while the book may take a stab at explaining a couple things it then moves on to the next painting. For example, the painting The Seven Deadly Sins illustrates the 7 deadly sins. There is an overview of the painting and about basically one line illuminating what is going on in most scenes. Like "Greed (Avaricia), as a judge taking a bribe (sitting on a bench, as in a modern court, he extends his palm behind him in a gesture called a 'porter's tip')" I would point out that the judge in the painting is literally sitting on a long bench with 2 other people while a modern judge sits on an elevated platform behind a large desk – which is called the bench for historical reasons. No mention of the other 2 men in the painting, the wood in the body of water or the peculiar tree behind the judge or if any of those elements are significant.

Some barely lend any insight at all to the painting like "Gluttony (Gula), a common problem in a world of feast or famine," or "Lust or Excess (Luxuria), as a party in a tent that recalls medieval book illustrations for romance of courtly love" while I think most people might want to know if that is a monk spanking a jester's bare bottom? The answer isn't found in this book.

Hieronymus Bosch's Seven Deadly Sins detail of Lust
"medieval book illustrations for romance of courtly love" =  a man in robes spanking a man dressed like a rabbit?

The blurb on the otherwise sparse back cover (there is only "bosch" in large letters, the UPC and the blurb) says "'Be an art expert in 5 minutes.' – The New York Times". The actual headline is "MAKING BOOKS; Be an Art Expert In Five Minutes!" and may involve sarcasm. The article itself says things like "At their worst (and perhaps at their best, too) the books provide art education through one-liners, sometimes with an attitude that, if not snide, is flip and condescending."  Also from the NYTimes article is this bit of snobbery "…the words may be embarrassingly rudimentary at times…" The problem is the lack of information not the lack of polysyllabic words.

Tatting With Style

click to embiggen

Apparently, a tatting book won't show you how to tattoo a teardrop under someone's eye with style.

How Orwellian : Like Uganda?

"In their place" Atlas of Women In The World pages 18-19

In the book Atlas of Women In The World section noting how women are kept "in their place" the USA is classified like Uganda where a man can inherit his dead brother's wives and where a man can claim "unmarried women as wives by raping them" and like Swaziland where "married women are legal minors."

The yellowish color on the map above indicates that "cultural norms, religious fundamentalism, or nationalist pressure are imposing increasing social restrictions on women" and the particulars noted for the US are all abortion related.

Curiously, quite a few countries that have much stricter abortion laws than the US but are displayed in a neutral tan color.  Ireland and many countries in Central and South America ban abortion in all circumstances except to save the life of the mother.

How many US states limit abortion to government approved reasons like say Japan, South Korea, Finland and Poland? Zero. (Finland and Poland are tan while South Korea and Japan are not visible because they are covered by the map's key. I hope the mapmaker is suitable embarrassed by that incompetence and especially by the big empty space on the bottom right of the page.)

Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain have gestational limits that are more restrictive than any US state but apparently that is hunkydory because they are neutral tan, too.

Even Angola and Nicaragua get a pass and are tan while they ban abortion in all circumstances including to save the life of the mother.

The map notes that Venezuela allows a man who rapes a woman to marry her to avoid punishment but it isn't colored yellow. Venezuela remains neutral tan despite banning abortion in all cases except to save the life of the mother.

France has troubled banlieues where the organization Ni Putes Ni Soumises (Neither Whores Nor Submissive) was born because women (no matter their beliefs) are expected to follow strict islamic rules or face violence. In France, convicted gang rapists get a pathetic and outrageous slap on the wrist as punishment : "two were given a year in prison; the third, six months; and the fourth, a suspended sentence two were given a year in prison; the third, six months; and the fourth, a suspended sentence" Despite all this France is neutral tan.

This map says a lot by what it doesn't show. Mostly, that it is an incompetently made map.

(the links above are to the Center for Reproductive Rights overview of world abortion laws (PDF link) and to the Guttmacher Institute's overview of US state laws (PDF link). This UN chart (PDF link) also has some interesting bits)

Still Stripping After 25 Years

I admit I was a little concerned when I saw that my mom owns a book called "Still Stripping After 25 Years." My first thought was that a stripper who has been doing it for 25 years, although experienced, might be past her prime stripping years. Then I noted it was written by Eleanor Burns and I thought "Eleanor" is not a very sexy stripper name.

Apparently, stripping another meaning I'm not aware of.

editorial decisions

A few years ago I bought an old medical dictionary (The American Illustrated Medical Dictionary, 20th edition, printed in 1946). I soon discovered that it wasn't very helpful because terminology has changed so much. Looking things up on the internet was usually both easier and better. Occasionally I'd use it to look something up if I didn't have the internet available or I'd flip it open & read a few entries when I was bored.

It has 1668 pages and boasts 885 illustrations. Of the 885 illustrations some are portraits of notable people (which is a pretty much a waste of space in a dictionary, I'd say). A random page has 44 entries on it. Assuming that is typical then there are about 73,000 entries in the book. The title page notes that 240 illustrations are portraits leaving 645 useful diagrams. That is 1 useful illustration for every 113 entries. One would imagine that scarcity would drive the editors to come up with criteria that would insure only the most significant entries and the entries that could best be explained with an illustration would get an illustration. On the other hand, someone might insist that 4 different types of hymens absolutely must be illustrated. Oh, and that the entry on elephantitis should definitely include an illustration of elephantitis of the scrotum.

Valentine's Day

Hercules and Omphale (getting frisky) by François Boucher circa 1724. How frisky? Two cupid frisky.

Here is a statue of Omphale dressed in a lion skin holding a club at her side and it is not Omphale sitting while standing erect and happy to see you.

I also learned from wiki that "Hercule et Omphale" is a short pornographic poem by Guillaume Apollinaire from a book called "Les onze mille verges" (The eleven thousand penises). That is one hell of a book title (assuming it isn't a sequel) but the poem doesn't impress me.

The sensual saint

Saint Francis et His Four Ladies by Joan Mowat Erikson

An interesting little book that I bought at a book sale a few years ago. It includes this quote from Archivum Historicum, vol.13, trans. Nesta de Robeck, Quaracchi, 1920 concerning a dream/vision had by Lady Clare about Saint Francis of Assisi. Erikson prefaced the quote with "(Clare saw Francis as having the attributes) of a nourishing mother, being a source of both spiritual and sensual sustenance." Personally, I think the sensual aspects overwhelms the motherly aspects.

"The Lady Clare also told that once she had seen St. Francis in a vision and she was bringing him a jug of hot water and with this she was ascending a long stairway, but so easily that it was as though she walked on the level earth. When she reached Saint Francis, he bared his breast saying: "Come, take and drink." And having sucked the Saint exhorted her to do so again: which doing what she sucked was so sweet and delightful that she could in no way describe it. And having sucked, that roundness, or the mouth of the pap from which the milk flowed remained in the mouth of blessed Clare; and if taken in the hand what had remained in her mouth seemed something bright and shining in which all could be seen as in a mirror, in which she saw her own reflection."

(I also can't help but wonder if there may have been a translation error somewhere)

Ex libris

I've always wanted a bookplate. They seem cool. Classy. Something everyone should have. Then I realized :
1) I don't like defiling books. Sticking a bookplate does seem like book abuse
2) marking books to say "this is mine" seems pointless. I know it is mine. Does anyone else care. I doubt anyone will walk up to my book shelves and bewilderedly ask whose books are these? Perhaps if I lent my books to a wider group of people...
3) If I don't have a reason for a bookplate then having one would be vain
4) I have quite a few books and I don't want to go to the trouble of adding a bookplate to each

However, I kept doodling even as I thought of the above.