Sonnet 67

Lyke as a huntsman after weary chace,
Seeing the game from him escapt away:
sits downe to rest him in some shady place,
with panting hounds beguiled of their pray,
So after long pursuit and vaine assay,
when I all weary had the chace forsooke,
the gentle deare returnd the selfe-same way,
thinking to quench her thirst at the next brooke.
There she beholding me with mylder looke,
sought not to fly, but fearelesse still did bide:
till I in hand her yet halfe trembling tooke,
and with her owne goodwill hir fyrmely tyde.
Strange thing me seemed to see a beast so wyld,
so goodly wonne with her owne will beguyld.

Edmund Spenser


with Tasso’s Rime 388 (‘Al Signor C. Pavesi’):
Questa fera gentil ch’in sí crucciosa
Fronte fuggia pur dianzi i vostri passi
tra spini e sterpi e dirupati sassi,
strada ad ogn’or prendendo erta e dubbiosa,
or, cangiato voler, d’onesta posa
vaga, discende a i sentier piani e bassi,
e, quasi ogni durezza indietro lassi,
incontro vi si fa lieta e vezzosa.

Vedete omai come ’l celeste riso
benigna v’apre, e come dolcemente
i rai de’ suoi begli occhi in voi raggira.
Pavesi, s’or tal gioia al cor v’inspira,
che sarà poi quando piú volte il viso
d’amor vi baci e di pietate ardente?

This noble beast which, with so wrathful a face,
flees right before your very steps
mid thorns and briers and steep rocks,
always taking a rough and shaky path,
now, with changed will, for decent rest
looks about, descends to flat, low paths,
and, as if leaving behind all harshness,
makes herself happy and gracious to you.

See now how the heavenly smile
opens kindly upon you, and how sweetly
the rays of her lovely eyes turn upon you.
Pavesi, if now she inspires such joy in your heart,
what will it be like when many times the face
of love kisses you and of burning devotion?




Torquato Tasso (Italian: [torˈkwaːto ˈtasso]; 11 March 1544 – 25 April 1595) was an Italian poet of the 16th century, best known for his poem La Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1581), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the siege of Jerusalem. He suffered from mental illness and died a few days before he was due to be crowned as the king of poets by the Pope. Until the beginning of the 20th century, Tasso remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe.

Images of Deer and Water in Sonnet 67
The Sonnet 67 is known as the pre-easter Sonnet.
Sonnet 68 is one of the most famous of Spenser's Sonnets.

Two intertextual referents to the Sonnet can be seen in Psalm 42 and the Easter Latin Liturgy in the youtube below.

Psalm 42

1
As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, my God.

2
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

3
My tears have been my food
day and night,
while people say to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”

4
These things I remember
as I pour out my soul:
how I used to go to the house of God
under the protection of the Mighty One[d]
with shouts of joy and praise
among the festive throng.



5
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.



6
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you
from the land of the Jordan,
the heights of Hermon—from Mount Mizar.

7
Deep calls to deep
in the roar of your waterfalls;
all your waves and breakers
have swept over me.



8
By day the Lord directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.



9
I say to God my Rock,
“Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?”

10
My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
“Where is your God?”



11
Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

Modernism and Automata

An automaton (plural: automata or automatons) is a self-operating machine, or a machine or control mechanism designed to follow automatically a predetermined sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions.[1] Some automata, such as a bellstrikers in mechanical clocks, are designed to give the illusion to the casual observer that they are operating under their own power.

The word "automaton" is the latinization of the Greek αὐτόματον, automaton, (neuter) "acting of one's own will". This word was first used by Homer to describe automatic door opening,[2] or automatic movement of wheeled tripods.[3] It is more often used to describe non-electronic moving machines, especially those that have been made to resemble human or animal actions, such as the jacks on old public striking clocks, or the cuckoo and any other animated figures on a cuckoo clock.


Modernist interpretation of the first robot 'Talos' Portland Oregon.


In Greek mythology, Talos (/ˈteɪlɒs/;[1] Greek: Τάλως, Talōs) or Talon (/ˈteɪlɒn, ən/; Greek: Τάλων, Talōn) was a giant man of bronze who protected Europa in Crete from pirates and invaders. He circled the island's shores three times daily.

Alternatively Talos could be figured as a sacred bull. His bronze nature suggested to the author of Bibliothēkē that he may have been a survivor from the Age of Bronze, a descendant of the brazen race that sprang from meliae "ash-tree nymphs" according to Argonautica 4. The conception that Hesiod's men of the Age of Bronze were actually made of bronze is extended to men of the age of gold by Lucian for humorous effect.

The pseudo-Platonic dialogue Minos rationalized the myth, thrice yearly showing at each village in turn the laws of Minos inscribed on brass tablets.

Talos is said to have been made by Hephaestus at the request of Zeus, to protect Europa from people who would want to kidnap her. In some versions of the myth, Talos is forged by the inventor Daedalus.

Which we will recall is the surname of the famous Stephen Daedalus of one of the seminal figures of 20th century modernism James Joyce.




Kraftwerk (German pronunciation: [ˈkʀaftvɛɐk], "power station") is a German electronic music band formed by Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider in 1970 in Düsseldorf, and fronted by them until Schneider's departure in 2008.

The signature Kraftwerk sound combines driving, repetitive rhythms with catchy melodies, mainly following a Western classical style of harmony, with a minimalistic and strictly electronic instrumentation. The group's simplified lyrics are at times sung through a vocoder or generated by computer-speech software. Kraftwerk was one of the first groups to popularize electronic music and is considered to be pioneers.

In the 1970s and early 1980s, Kraftwerk's distinctive sound was revolutionary, and has had a lasting effect across many genres of modern music.[2][3][4] According to The Observer, "no other band since the Beatles has given so much to pop culture" and a wide range of artists has been influenced by their music and imagery.[5] In January 2014 the Grammy Academy honored Kraftwerk with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Modernism and Automata v2


Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist epic science-fiction drama film directed by Fritz Lang. Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou wrote the silent film, which starred Brigitte Helm, Gustav Fröhlich, Alfred Abel and Rudolf Klein-Rogge. Erich Pommer produced it in the Babelsberg Studios for Universum Film A.G.. It is regarded[by whom?] as a pioneering work of the science-fiction genre in movies, being among the first feature length movies of the genre.

Made in Germany during the Weimar Period, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of Freder, the wealthy son of the city's ruler, and Maria, a poor worker, to overcome the vast gulf separating the classes of their city. Filming took place in 1925 at a cost of approximately five million Reichsmarks, making it the most expensive film ever released up to that point. The motion picture's futuristic style shows the influence of the work of the Futurist Italian architect Antonio Sant'Elia.[2]

The film met with a mixed response upon its initial release, with many critics praising its technical achievements and social metaphors while others derided its "simplistic and naïve" presentation. Because of its long running-time and the inclusion of footage which censors found questionable, Metropolis was cut substantially after its German premiere: large portions of the film went missing over the subsequent decades.



The Maschinenmensch (German for "machine-human") is a fictional character in Fritz Lang's film Metropolis, played by German actress Brigitte Helm in both its robot form and human incarnation. She is a gynoid (female robot or android) created by the scientist Rotwang. Named Maria in the film, and "Futura" in Thea von Harbou's original novel Metropolis, she was the first robot ever depicted in cinema.

The Maschinenmensch has been given several names through the decades: Parody, Ultima, Machina, Futura, Robotrix, False Maria, Robot Maria, and Hel. The intertitles of the 2010 restoration of Metropolis quotes Rotwang, the robot's creator, referring to his gynoid Maschinenmensch, literally translated as ´Machine human´.

Friendly iteration

Dystopic iteration

American Modernism: Precisionism






Charles Sheeler (July 16, 1883 – May 7, 1965) was an American painter and commercial photographer. He is recognized as one of the founders of American modernism and one of the master photographers of the 20th century.

Dr Faustus



Dr Niemann (Frankenstein)



C.A. Rowtang (Metropolis)


Dr Stangelove

Empedocles (/ɛmˈpɛdəkliːz/; Greek: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς [empedoklɛ̂ːs], Empedoklēs; c. 490 – c. 430 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for being the originator of the cosmogenic theory of the four Classical elements. He also proposed powers called Love and Strife which would act as forces to bring about the mixture and separation of the elements. These physical speculations were part of a history of the universe which also dealt with the origin and development of life. Influenced by the Pythagoreans, he supported the doctrine of reincarnation. Empedocles is generally considered the last Greek philosopher to record his ideas in verse. Some of his work survives, more than in the case of any other Presocratic philosopher. Empedocles' death was mythologized by ancient writers, and has been the subject of a number of literary treatments.


We possess only about 100 lines of his Purifications. It seems to have given a mythical account of the world which may, nevertheless, have been part of Empedocles' philosophical system. The first lines of the poem are preserved by Diogenes Laërtius:


Friends who inhabit the mighty town by tawny Acragas
which crowns the citadel, caring for good deeds,
greetings; I, an immortal God, no longer mortal,
wander among you, honoured by all,
adorned with holy diadems and blooming garlands.
To whatever illustrious towns I go,
I am praised by men and women, and accompanied
by thousands, who thirst for deliverance,
some ask for prophecies, and some entreat,
for remedies against all kinds of disease.[23]

It was probably this work which contained a story about souls,[24] where we are told that there were once spirits who lived in a state of bliss, but having committed a crime (the nature of which is unknown) they were punished by being forced to become mortal beings, reincarnated from body to body. Humans, animals, and even plants are such spirits. The moral conduct recommended in the poem may allow us to become like gods again.


Empedocles established four ultimate elements which make all the structures in the world—fire, air, water, earth.[30] Empedocles called these four elements "roots", which he also identified with the mythical names of Zeus, Hera, Nestis, and Aidoneus[31] (e.g., "Now hear the fourfold roots of everything: enlivening Hera, Hades, shining Zeus. And Nestis, moistening mortal springs with tears."[32]) Empedocles never used the term "element" (Greek: στοιχεῖον, stoicheion), which seems to have been first used by Plato.[33] According to the different proportions in which these four indestructible and unchangeable elements are combined with each other the difference of the structure is produced. It is in the aggregation and segregation of elements thus arising, that Empedocles, like the atomists, found the real process which corresponds to what is popularly termed growth, increase or decrease. Nothing new comes or can come into being; the only change that can occur is a change in the juxtaposition of element with element. This theory of the four elements became the standard dogma for the next two thousand years.

Pierrot (French pronunciation: ​[pjɛʁo]) is a stock character of pantomime and Commedia dell'Arte whose origins are in the late seventeenth-century Italian troupe of players performing in Paris and known as the Comédie-Italienne; the name is a hypocorism of Pierre (Peter), via the suffix -ot. His character in contemporary popular culture—in poetry, fiction, the visual arts, as well as works for the stage, screen, and concert hall—is that of the sad clown, pining for love of Columbine, who usually breaks his heart and leaves him for Harlequin. Performing unmasked, with a whitened face, he wears a loose white blouse with large buttons and wide white pantaloons. Sometimes he appears with a frilled collaret and a hat, usually with a close-fitting crown and wide round brim, more rarely with a conical shape like a dunce's cap. But most frequently, since his reincarnation under Jean-Gaspard Deburau, he wears neither collar nor hat, only a black skullcap. The defining characteristic of Pierrot is his naïveté: he is seen as a fool, often the butt of pranks, yet nonetheless trusting.

It was a generally buffoonish Pierrot that held the European stage for the first two centuries of his history. And yet early signs of a respectful, even sympathetic attitude toward the character appeared in the plays of Jean-François Regnard and in the paintings of Antoine Watteau, an attitude that would deepen in the nineteenth century, after the Romantics claimed the figure as their own. For Jules Janin and Théophile Gautier, Pierrot was not a fool but an avatar of the post-Revolutionary People, struggling, sometimes tragically, to secure a place in the bourgeois world.[1] And subsequent artistic/cultural movements found him equally amenable to their cause: the Decadents turned him, like themselves, into a disillusioned disciple of Schopenhauer, a foe of Woman and of callow idealism; the Symbolists saw him as a lonely fellow-sufferer, crucified upon the rood of soulful sensitivity, his only friend the distant moon; the Modernists converted him into a Whistlerian subject for canvases devoted to form and color and line.[2] In short, Pierrot became an alter-ego of the artist, specifically of the famously alienated artist of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.[3] His physical insularity; his poignant lapses into mutism, the legacy of the great mime Deburau; his white face and costume, suggesting not only innocence but the pallor of the dead; his often frustrated pursuit of Columbine, coupled with his never-to-be-vanquished unworldly naïveté—all conspired to lift him out of the circumscribed world of the Commedia dell'Arte and into the larger realm of myth. Much of that mythic quality still adheres to the "sad clown" of the postmodern era.

Mother of Pearl and Silver: The Andalusian (1888–1900),

James Abbott McNeill Whistler /ˈdʒeɪmz ˈæbət məkˈniːl ˈwɪslɚ/ (July 10, 1834[1][2][3][4][5] – July 17, 1903) was an American-born, British-based artist active during the American Gilded Age. He was averse to sentimentality and moral allusion in painting, and was a leading proponent of the credo "art for art's sake". His famous signature for his paintings was in the shape of a stylized butterfly possessing a long stinger for a tail.[6] The symbol was apt, for it combined both aspects of his personality—his art was characterized by a subtle delicacy, while his public persona was combative. Finding a parallel between painting and music, Whistler entitled many of his paintings "arrangements", "harmonies", and "nocturnes", emphasizing the primacy of tonal harmony.[7] His most famous painting is "Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1" (1871), commonly known as Whistler's Mother, the revered and oft-parodied portrait of motherhood. Whistler influenced the art world and the broader culture of his time with his artistic theories and his friendships with leading artists and writers.[

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,

The muttering retreats

Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels

And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:

Streets that follow like a tedious argument

Of insidious intent

To lead you to an overwhelming question ...

Oh, do not ask, “What is it?”

Let us go and make our visit.


In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.


The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,

And seeing that it was a soft October night,

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.


And indeed there will be time

For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,

Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;

There will be time, there will be time

To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;

There will be time to murder and create,

And time for all the works and days of hands

That lift and drop a question on your plate;

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.


In the room the women come and go

Talking of Michelangelo.


And indeed there will be time

To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”

Time to turn back and descend the stair,

With a bald spot in the middle of my hair —

(They will say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)

My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,

My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —

(They will say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)

Do I dare

Disturb the universe?

In a minute there is time

For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.


For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?


And I have known the eyes already, known them all—

The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,

And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,

When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,

Then how should I begin

To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?

And how should I presume?


And I have known the arms already, known them all—

Arms that are braceleted and white and bare

(But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)

Is it perfume from a dress

That makes me so digress?

Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.

And should I then presume?

And how should I begin?


Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets

And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes

Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...


I should have been a pair of ragged claws

Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.


And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!

Smoothed by long fingers,

Asleep ... tired ... or it malingers,

Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.

Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,

Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?

But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,

Though I have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,

I am no prophet — and here’s no great matter;

I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,

And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

And in short, I was afraid.


And would it have been worth it, after all,

After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,

Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,

Would it have been worth while,

To have bitten off the matter with a smile,

To have squeezed the universe into a ball

To roll it towards some overwhelming question,

To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,

Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—

If one, settling a pillow by her head

Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;

That is not it, at all.”


And would it have been worth it, after all,

Would it have been worth while,

After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,

After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—

And this, and so much more?—

It is impossible to say just what I mean!

But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:

Would it have been worth while

If one, settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,

And turning toward the window, should say:

“That is not it at all,

That is not what I meant, at all.”


No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—

Almost, at times, the Fool.


I grow old ... I grow old ...

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.


Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.


I do not think that they will sing to me.


I have seen them riding seaward on the waves

Combing the white hair of the waves blown back

When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea

By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown

Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

T.S Eliot 1915

Reverend Shegog's Sermon and Faulkner's influences for this section:




James Weldon Johnson (June 17, 1871 – June 26, 1938) was an American author, educator, lawyer, diplomat, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Johnson is best remembered for his leadership of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), where he started working in 1917. In 1920 he was the first black individual to be chosen as executive secretary of the organization, effectively the operating officer.[1] He served in that position from 1920 to 1930. Johnson established his reputation as a writer, and was known during the Harlem Renaissance for his poems, novels, and anthologies collecting both poems and spirituals of black culture.

He was appointed under President Theodore Roosevelt as US consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua for most of the period from 1906 to 1913. In 1934 he became the first African-American professor to be hired at New York University.[2] Later in life he was a professor of creative literature and writing at Fisk University.


God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse is a 1927 book of poems by James Weldon Johnson patterned after traditional African-American religious oratory. African-American scholars Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West have identified the collection as one of Johnson's two most notable works, the other being Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man


(A Prayer from God’s Trombones)
O Lord, we come this morning
Knee-bowed and body-bent
Before Thy throne of grace.
O Lord--this morning--
Bow our hearts beneath our knees,
And our knees in some lonesome valley.
We come this morning--
Like empty pitchers to a full fountain,
With no merits of our own.
O Lord--open up a window of heaven,
And lean out far over the battlements of glory,
And listen this morning.

Lord, have mercy on proud and dying sinners--
Sinners hanging over the mouth of hell,
Who seem to love their distance well.
Lord--ride by this morning--
Mount Your milk-white horse,
And ride-a this morning--
And in Your ride, ride by old hell,
Ride by the dingy gates of hell,
And stop poor sinners in their headlong plunge.

And now, O Lord, this man of God,
Who breaks the bread of life this morning--
Shadow him in the hollow of Thy hand,
And keep him out of the gunshot of the devil.
Take him, Lord--this morning--
Wash him with hyssop inside and out,
Hang him up and drain him dry of sin.
Pin his ear to the wisdom-post,
And make his words sledge hammers of truth--
Beating on the iron heart of sin.
Lord God, this morning--
Put his eye to the telescope of eternity,
And let him look upon the paper walls of time.
Lord, turpentine his imagination,
Put perpetual motion in his arms,
Fill him full of the dynamite of Thy power,
Anoint him all over with the oil of Thy salvation,
And set his tongue on fire.

And now, O Lord--
When I’ve done drunk my last cup of sorrow--
When I’ve been called everything but a child of God--
When I’m done traveling up the rough side of the mountain--
O--Mary’s Baby--
When I start down the steep and slippery steps of death--
When this old world begins to rock beneath my feet--
Lower me to my dusty grave in peace
To wait for that great gittin’-up morning--Amen.


At my third attempt/sitting - I have finished The Sound and The Fury.

Blood Meridian

Readers of this thread from its inception will know I have read this book before. It is on my set reading list for 20thcentury literature course - thus, I am reading it again, this time closely.

There is no such joy in the tavern as upon the road thereto, said the Mennonite. (BM, Picador Ch 3 43.)

The Mennonites are Christian groups based around the church communities of Anabaptist denominations named after Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland (at that time, a part of the Holy Roman Empire). Through his writings, Simons articulated and formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders. The early teachings of the Mennonites were founded on the belief in both the mission and ministry of Jesus, which the original Anabaptist followers held to with great conviction despite persecution by the various Roman Catholic and Protestant states. Rather than fight, the majority of these followers survived by fleeing to neighboring states where ruling families were tolerant of their radical belief in believer's baptism. Over the years, Mennonites have become known as one of the historic peace churches because of their commitment to pacifism.[

Buzzards in BM




The black vulture (Coragyps atratus) also known as the American black vulture, is a bird in the New World vulture family whose range extends from the southeastern United States to Central Chile and Uruguay in South America. Although a common and widespread species, it has a somewhat more restricted distribution than its compatriot, the turkey vulture, which breeds well into Canada and south to Tierra del Fuego. Despite the similar name and appearance, this species is unrelated to the Eurasian black vulture. The latter species is an Old World vulture in the family Accipitridae (which includes eagles, hawks, kites and harriers), whereas the American species is a New World vulture. It is the only extant member of the genus Coragyps, which is in the family Cathartidae. It inhabits relatively open areas which provide scattered forests or shrublands.[2] With a wingspan of 1.5 m (4.9 ft), the black vulture is a large bird though relatively small for a vulture. It has black plumage, a featherless, grayish-black head and neck, and a short, hooked beak.

The black vulture is a scavenger and feeds on carrion, but will also eat eggs or kill newborn animals. In areas populated by humans, it also feeds at garbage dumps. It finds its meals either by using its keen eyesight or by following other (New World) vultures, which possess a keen sense of smell. Lacking a syrinx—the vocal organ of birds—its only vocalizations are grunts or low hisses.[3] It lays its eggs in caves or hollow trees or on the bare ground, and generally raises two chicks each year, which it feeds by regurgitation. In the United States, the vulture receives legal protection under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918.[4] This vulture also appeared in Mayan codices.

Another Buzzard

Olivier Levasseur (1688 or 1690 – 7 July 1730), was a pirate, nicknamed La Buse (The Buzzard) or La Bouche (The Mouth) in his early days, called thus because of the speed and ruthlessness with which he always attacked his enemies. He is also known for allegedly hiding one of the biggest treasures in pirate history, estimated at over £1 billion, and leaving a cryptogram behind with its whereabouts.


From 1720 onwards he launched his raids from a base on the island of Sainte-Marie, just off the Madagascar coast, together with pirates John Taylor and Edward England, (no doubt planning to capture one of the Great Mughal's heavily armed but usually heavily laden pilgrim ships to Mecca). They first plundered the Laccadives, and sold the loot to Dutch traders for £75,000 (adjusted for inflation to 2008: £10,350,000). Levasseur and Taylor eventually got tired of England's humanity and marooned him on the island of Mauritius.

They then perpetrated one of piracy's greatest exploits: the capture of the Portuguese great galleon Nossa Senhora do Cabo (Our Lady of the Cape) or Virgem Do Cabo (The Virgin of the Cape), loaded full of treasures belonging to the Bishop of Goa, also called the Patriarch of the East Indies, and the Viceroy of Portugal, who were both on board returning home to Lisbon. The pirates were able to board the vessel without firing a single broadside, because the Cabo had been damaged in a storm, and to avoid capsizing the crew had dumped all of its 72 cannon overboard, then anchored off Réunion island to undergo repairs. (This incident would later be used by Robert Louis Stevenson in his novel "Treasure Island" where the galleon is referred to as The Viceroy of the Indies in the account given by his famed fictional character Long John Silver).

The booty consisted of bars of gold and silver, dozens of boxes full of golden Guineas, diamonds, pearls, silk, art and religious objects from the Se Cathedral in Goa, including the Flaming Cross of Goa made of pure gold, inlaid with diamonds, rubies and emeralds. It was so heavy, that it required 3 men to carry it over to Levasseur's ship. In fact, the treasure was so huge (estimated £100,000,000 in 1968[1]) that the pirates did not bother to rob the people on board, something they normally would have done.

When the loot was divided, each pirate received at least £50,000 golden Guineas (adjusted for inflation to 2008: £7,500,000), as well as 42 diamonds each. Levasseur and Taylor split the remaining gold, silver, and other objects, with Levasseur taking the golden cross.

In 1724, Levasseur sent a negotiator to the governor on the island of Bourbon (today Réunion), to discuss an amnesty that had been offered to all pirates in the Indian Ocean who would give up their practice. However, the French government wanted a large part of the stolen loot back, so Levasseur decided to avoid the amnesty and settled down in secret on the Seychelles archipelago. Eventually he was captured near Fort Dauphin, Madagascar. He was then taken to Saint-Denis, Réunion and hanged for piracy at 5 p.m. on 7 July 1730.

The Gray Wolf has a larger natural distribution than any other mammal except humans. It once ranged through all of North America from the Arctic Circle to central Mexico. But because of human persecution and habitat destruction it has been eliminated from much of its original range.

In North America, the Gray Wolf is now found primarily in Canada and Alaska, with much smaller numbers in Minnesota. In 1995 wolves were reintroduced in wilderness areas of the northern Rocky Mountains. A small population of the sub-species Mexican Wolf once existed in higher elevations of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts of Mexico but is now extinct in its native habitat.

The Chihuahuan Desert is a desert, and an ecoregion designation, that straddles the U.S.-Mexico border in the central and northern portions of the Mexican Plateau. It is bordered on the west by the extensive Sierra Madre Occidental range, along with overlaying northern portions of the Sierra Madre Oriental. On the United States side, it occupies much of southwestern Texas and small parts of New Mexico and Arizona. On the Mexican side, it covers the northern half of the state of Chihuahua, along with the majority of Coahuila, north-eastern Durango, the extreme northern part of Zacatecas, and small western portions of Nuevo León. With an area of about 362,000 km2 (139,769 sq mi), it is the third largest desert of the Western Hemisphere and the second largest in North America, after the Great Basin Desert.[1]

Hieronymus Bosch (/ˌhaɪ.əˈrɒnɨməs ˈbɒʃ/;[1] Dutch: [ɦijeːˈroːnimʏz ˈbɔs];[2] born Jheronimus van Aken[3] [jeːˈroːnimʏs fɑn ˈaːkə(n)];[2] c. 1450 – 9 August 1516) was an Early Netherlandish painter. His work is known for its fantastic imagery, detailed landscapes and illustrations of moral and religious concepts and narratives.[4] Within his lifetime his work was collected in the Netherlands, Austria, and Spain, and widely copied, especially his macabre and nightmarish depictions of hell.

Little is known of Bosch's life, though there are some records. He spent most of it in the town of 's-Hertogenbosch, where he was born in the house of his grandfather. The roots of his forefathers are from Aachen, Germany. His pessimistic and fantastical style cast a wide influence on northern art of the 16th century, with Pieter Bruegel the Elder his best known follower. His paintings have been difficult to translate from a modern point of view; attempts to associate instances of modern sexual imagery with fringe sects or the occult have largely failed. Today he is seen as a hugely individualistic painter with deep insight into man's desires and deepest fears. Attribution has been especially difficult; today only about 25 paintings are confidently given to his hand. His most acclaimed works consist of a few triptych altarpieces, the most outstanding of which is The Garden of Earthly Delights. His best surviving panels make innovative use of oil paint and especially glazed finish.

War is divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its
consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War
is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it, and in the no less inexplicable
attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.

Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre (French: [də mɛstʁ];[2] 1 April 1753 – 26 February 1821) was a Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat. He defended hierarchical societies and a monarchical State in the period immediately following the French Revolution.[3] Maistre was a subject of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, whom he served as member of the Savoy Senate (1787–1792), ambassador to Russia (1803–1817),[4] and minister of state to the court in Turin (1817–1821).[5]

Maistre, a key figure of the Counter-Enlightenment,[6] saw monarchy both as a divinely sanctioned institution and as the only stable form of government.[7] He called for the restoration of the House of Bourbon to the throne of France and argued that the Pope should have ultimate authority in temporal matters. Maistre also claimed that it was the rationalist rejection of Christianity which was directly responsible for the disorder and bloodshed which followed the French Revolution of 1789.



The Counter-Enlightenment was a term that some 20th century commentators have used to describe multiple strains of thought that arose in the late-18th and early-19th centuries in opposition to the 18th century Enlightenment. The term is usually associated with Isaiah Berlin, who is often credited with coining it, perhaps taking up a passing remark of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who used the term Gegenaufklärung at the end of the 19th century. The first known use of the term 'counter-enlightenment' in English was in 1949. Berlin published widely about the Enlightenment and its enemies and did much to popularise the concept of a Counter-Enlightenment movement that he characterised as relativist, anti-rationalist, vitalist, and organic,[1] and which he associated most closely with German Romanticism.

William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois (pronounced /duːˈbɔɪz/ doo-BOYZ; February 23, 1868 – August 27, 1963) was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, Pan-Africanist, author and editor. Born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, Du Bois grew up in a relatively tolerant and integrated community. After graduating from Harvard, where he was the first African American to earn a doctorate, he became a professor of history, sociology and economics at Atlanta University. Du Bois was one of the co-founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909.

Du Bois rose to national prominence as the leader of the Niagara Movement, a group of African-American activists who wanted equal rights for blacks. Du Bois and his supporters opposed the Atlanta compromise, an agreement crafted by Booker T. Washington which provided that Southern blacks would work and submit to white political rule, while Southern whites guaranteed that blacks would receive basic educational and economic opportunities. Instead, Du Bois insisted on full civil rights and increased political representation, which he believed would be brought about by the African-American intellectual elite. He referred to this group as the Talented Tenth and believed that African Americans needed the chances for advanced education to develop its leadership.

Racism was the main target of Du Bois's polemics, and he strongly protested against lynching, Jim Crow laws, and discrimination in education and employment. His cause included people of color everywhere, particularly Africans and Asians in colonies. He was a proponent of Pan-Africanism and helped organize several Pan-African Congresses to fight for independence of African colonies from European powers. Du Bois made several trips to Europe, Africa and Asia. After World War I, he surveyed the experiences of American black soldiers in France and documented widespread bigotry in the United States military.

Du Bois was a prolific author. His collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, was a seminal work in African-American literature; and his 1935 magnum opus Black Reconstruction in America challenged the prevailing orthodoxy that blacks were responsible for the failures of the Reconstruction Era. He wrote the first scientific treatise in the field of sociology; and he published three autobiographies, each of which contains insightful essays on sociology, politics and history. In his role as editor of the NAACP's journal The Crisis, he published many influential pieces. Du Bois believed that capitalism was a primary cause of racism, and he was generally sympathetic to socialist causes throughout his life. He was an ardent peace activist and advocated nuclear disarmament. The United States' Civil Rights Act, embodying many of the reforms for which Du Bois had campaigned his entire life, was enacted a year after his death.

I have selected Jonson's Volpone as my critical focus for my Renaissance/Shakespeare course.




Volpone[1] (Italian for "sly fox") is a comedy play by English playwright Ben Jonson first produced in 1605-06, drawing on elements of city comedy and beast fable. A merciless satire of greed and lust, it remains Jonson's most-performed play, and it is ranked among the finest Jacobean Era comedies.


Ben Jonson (originally Benjamin Jonson /ˈdʒɒnsən/; c. 11 June 1572 – 6 August 1637) was an English playwright, poet, and literary critic of the seventeenth century, whose artistry exerted a lasting impact upon English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours. He is best known for the satirical plays Every Man in His Humour (1598), Volpone, or The Foxe (1605), The Alchemist (1610), and Bartholomew Fayre: A Comedy (1614), and for his lyric poetry; he is generally regarded as the second most important English dramatist, after William Shakespeare, during the reign of James I.[1]

Jonson was a classically educated, well-read, and cultured man of the English Renaissance with an appetite for controversy (personal and political, artistic and intellectual) whose cultural influence was of unparalleled breadth upon the playwrights and the poets of the Jacobean era (1603–1625) and of the Caroline era (1625–1642).[

New Atlantis is an incomplete utopian novel by Sir Francis Bacon, published in 1627. In this work, Bacon portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge, expressing his aspirations and ideals for humankind. The novel depicts the creation of a utopian land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendour, piety and public spirit" are the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of the mythical Bensalem. The plan and organisation of his ideal college, Salomon's House (or Solomon's House), envisioned the modern research university in both applied and pure sciences.

‘”As reality is created as something unforeseeable and new, its image is reflected behind it into the indefinite past; thus it finds that it has from all time been possible, and that is why I said that its possibility, which does not precede its reality, will have preceded it once the reality has appeared”



Henri-Louis Bergson (French: [bɛʁksɔn]; 18 October 1859 – 4 January 1941) was a major French philosopher, influential especially in the first half of the 20th century. Bergson convinced many thinkers that the processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.

He was awarded the 1927 Nobel Prize in Literature "in recognition of his rich and vitalizing ideas and the brilliant skill with which they have been presented".[2] In 1930 France awarded him its highest honour, the Grand-Croix de la Legion d'honneur.

Currently enmeshed, immersed and entangled juggling an Annotated Reading List of Francis Bacon whilst trying to get my head around Malloy by Samuel Beckett.

My head is imploding.

Apologies for not many updates but I am back in the grind of semester and trying to keep my head in the right place. All my spare 2+2 time has been in POG and a draft thread. Will be in a better place next week to give a full update...

bleh blah bleh

Worst day in a year or more.

Misfortune, mismanagement, miscommunication and missteps

The four horse men of the apocalypse

If anyone has a willing ear and an understanding of Humanities based thesis advisors and what you should look for and avoid - please contact me via PM as I have some questions.

I know or suspect some of my readers either have been a thesis advisor or have been through the process. I, however, do not want to be overly familiar. So if you do not mind hearing my queries nor giving advice. Your help would be welcome.

Thanks
Digger.

An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland

The forward youth that would appear

Must now forsake his Muses dear,

Nor in the shadows sing

His numbers languishing.

’Tis time to leave the books in dust,

And oil th’ unused armour’s rust,

Removing from the wall

The corslet of the hall.

So restless Cromwell could not cease

In the inglorious arts of peace,

But thorough advent’rous war

Urged his active star.

And like the three-fork’d lightning, first

Breaking the clouds where it was nurst,

Did through his own side

His fiery way divide.

For ’tis all one to courage high,

The emulous or enemy;

And with such to enclose

Is more than to oppose.

Then burning through the air he went,

And palaces and temples rent;

And Cæsar’s head at last

Did through his laurels blast.

’Tis madness to resist or blame

The force of angry Heaven’s flame;

And, if we would speak true,

Much to the man is due,

Who from his private gardens where

He liv’d reserved and austere,

As if his highest plot

To plant the bergamot,

Could by industrious valour climb

To ruin the great work of time,

And cast the kingdom old

Into another mould.

Though justice against fate complain,

And plead the ancient rights in vain;

But those do hold or break

As men are strong or weak.

Nature that hateth emptiness

Allows of penetration less,

And therefore must make room

Where greater spirits come.

What field of all the civil wars

Where his were not the deepest scars?

And Hampton shows what part

He had of wiser art,

Where, twining subtle fears with hope,

He wove a net of such a scope

That Charles himself might chase

To Carisbrooke’s narrow case,

That thence the royal actor borne

The tragic scaffold might adorn,

While round the armed bands

Did clap their bloody hands.

He nothing common did or mean

Upon that memorable scene,

But with his keener eye

The axe’s edge did try;

Nor call’d the gods with vulgar spite

To vindicate his helpless right,

But bowed his comely head

Down as upon a bed.

This was that memorable hour

Which first assur’d the forced pow’r.

So when they did design

The Capitol’s first line,

A bleeding head, where they begun,

Did fright the architects to run;

And yet in that the state

Foresaw its happy fate.

And now the Irish are asham’d

To see themselves in one year tam’d;

So much one man can do

That does both act and know.

They can affirm his praises best,

And have, though overcome, confest

How good he is, how just,

And fit for highest trust;

Nor yet grown stiffer with command,

But still in the republic’s hand;

How fit he is to sway

That can so well obey.

He to the Commons’ feet presents

A kingdom for his first year’s rents;

And, what he may, forbears

His fame, to make it theirs,

And has his sword and spoils ungirt,

To lay them at the public’s skirt.

So when the falcon high

Falls heavy from the sky,

She, having kill’d, no more does search

But on the next green bough to perch,

Where, when he first does lure,

The falc’ner has her sure.

What may not then our isle presume

While victory his crest does plume!

What may not others fear

If thus he crown each year!

A Cæsar he ere long to Gaul,

To Italy an Hannibal,

And to all states not free,

Shall climacteric be.

The Pict no shelter now shall find

Within his parti-colour’d mind;

But from this valour sad

Shrink underneath the plaid,

Happy if in the tufted brake

The English hunter him mistake,

Nor lay his hounds in near

The Caledonian deer.

But thou, the war’s and fortune’s son,

March indefatigably on;

And for the last effect

Still keep thy sword erect;

Besides the force it has to fright

The spirits of the shady night,

The same arts that did gain

A pow’r, must it maintain.



Andrew Marvell (/ˈmɑrvəl/; 31 March 1621 – 16 August 1678) was an English metaphysical poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1659 and 1678. As a metaphysical poet, he is associated with John Donne and George Herbert. He was a colleague and friend of John Milton. His poems include "To His Coy Mistress", "The Garden", "An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland", "The Mower's Song" and the country house poem "Upon Appleton House".


Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (November 3, 39 AD – April 30, 65 AD), better known in English as Lucan (/ˈluːkən/), was a Roman poet, born in Corduba (modern-day Córdoba), in the Hispania Baetica. Despite his short life, he is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial Latin period. His youth and speed of composition set him apart from other poets.

The Pharsalia (also known as De Bello Civili "On the Civil War" or also simply Bellum Civile "The Civil War") is a Roman epic poem by the poet Lucan, telling of the civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the Great. The poem's title is a reference to the Battle of Pharsalus, which occurred in 48 BC, near Pharsalus, Thessaly, in northern Greece. Caesar decisively defeated Pompey in this battle, which occupies all of the epic's seventh book. Though probably incomplete, the poem is widely considered the best epic poem of the Silver Age of Latin literature.[

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (December 8, 65 BC – November 27, 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (/ˈhɒrəs/ or /ˈhɔrəs/), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintillian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."[nb 1]

Horace also crafted elegant hexameter verses (Sermones and Epistles) and caustic iambic poetry (Epodes). The hexameters are amusing yet serious works, friendly in tone, leading the ancient satirist Persius to comment: "as his friend laughs, Horace slyly puts his finger on his every fault; once let in, he plays about the heartstrings".[


The Odes (Latin: Carmina) are a collection in four books of Latin lyric poems by Horace. The Horatian ode format and style has been emulated since by other poets. Books 1 to 3 were published in 23 BC. According to the journal Quadrant, they were "unparalleled by any collection of lyric poetry produced before or after in Latin literature".[1] A fourth book, consisting of 15 poems, was published in 13 BC.

The Odes were developed as a conscious imitation of the short lyric poetry of Greek originals - Pindar, Sappho and Alcaeus are some of Horace's models. His genius lay in applying these older forms to the social life of Rome in the age of Augustus. The Odes cover a range of subjects - Love, Friendship, Wine, Religion, Morality, Patriotism; poems of eulogy addressed to Augustus and his relations; and verses written on a miscellany of subjects and incidents, including the uncertainty of life, the cultivation of tranquility and contentment, and the observance of moderation or the "golden mean."


The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians ("Roundheads") and Royalists ("Cavaliers") in the Kingdom of England over, principally, the manner of its government. The first (1642–46) and second (1648–49) wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third (1649–51) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The war ended with the Parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.

The overall outcome of the war was threefold: the trial and execution of Charles I; the exile of his son, Charles II; and the replacement of English monarchy with, at first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–53) and then the Protectorate (1653–59) under Oliver Cromwell's personal rule. The monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship in England ended with the victors consolidating the established Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament's consent, although the idea of parliament as the ruling power of England was legally established as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688.

Ireland had known continuous war since the rebellion of 1641, with most of the island controlled by the Irish Confederates.[114] Increasingly threatened by the armies of the English Parliament after Charles I's arrest in 1648, the Confederates signed a treaty of alliance with the English Royalists.[115] The joint Royalist and Confederate forces under the Duke of Ormonde attempted to eliminate the Parliamentary army holding Dublin, but their opponents routed them at the Battle of Rathmines (2 August 1649).[116] As the former Member of Parliament Admiral Robert Blake blockaded Prince Rupert's fleet in Kinsale, Oliver Cromwell could land at Dublin on 15 August 1649 with an army to quell the Royalist alliance in Ireland.[117]

Cromwell's suppression of the Royalists in Ireland during 1649 still has a strong resonance for many Irish people. After the siege of Drogheda,[117] the massacre of nearly 3,500 people — comprising around 2,700 Royalist soldiers and 700 others, including civilians, prisoners, and Catholic priests (Cromwell claimed all the men were carrying arms) — became one of the historical memories that has driven Irish-English and Catholic-Protestant strife during the last three centuries. The Parliamentarian conquest of Ireland ground on for another four years until 1653, when the last Irish Confederate and Royalist troops surrendered.[118] The victors confiscated almost all Irish Catholic-owned land in the wake of the conquest and distributed it to the Parliament's creditors, to the Parliamentary soldiers who served in Ireland, and to English people who had settled there before the war.[

Mythopoeia (also mythopoesis, after Hellenistic Greek μυθοποιία, μυθοποίησις "myth-making") is a narrative genre in modern literature and film where a fictional mythology is created by the writer of prose or other fiction. This meaning of the word mythopoeia follows its use by J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1930s. The authors in this genre integrate traditional mythological themes and archetypes into fiction.

Marvell's Cromwell?



In the inglorious arts of peace,

But thorough advent’rous war

Urged his active star.

And like the three-fork’d lightning, first

Breaking the clouds where it was nurst,

Did through his own side

His fiery way divide.




Lucan's Caesar



Even so the lightning is driven forth by wind
through the clouds : with noise of the smitten
heaven and crashing of the firmament it flashes out
and cracks the daylight sky, striking fear and terror
into mankind and dazzling the eye with slanting
flame. It rushes to its appointed quarter of the
sky ; nor can any solid matter forbid its free course,
but both falling and returning it spreads destruction
far and wide and gathers again its scattered fires.

Marvell's Cromwell as Caesar...

Then burning through the air he went,

And palaces and temples rent;

And Cæsar’s head at last

Did through his laurels blast.