History Archives - Page 18 of 22 - Los Cuadernos de Julia

The Labyrinth of Minotaur: UK Human-Cow Clone Created

Sarah Hills from Metro.co.uk reports that the UK scientists have finally succeeded at creating “hybrid embryos that are part-human and part-animal”. In November 2006, a group of scientists from the University of Newcastle applied “for permission to create embryos by combining human DNA with cow eggs. Their research aims to develop new therapies for human ailments such as strokes, Alzheimer’s and tissue damage suffered by spinal trauma victims.” The permission was granted, and now we’re in for a long debate over whether or not this is ethical. Hills explains that “the technique, called nuclear transfer, involves removing the nucleus of a cow egg – which contains most of the genetic information – and replacing it with human DNA. The egg is then encouraged to divide until it is a cluster of cells only a few days old”.

Ah well… Some people compare a “human-cow” to Frankenstein’s monster. For my part, I remember a brilliant novel by Mikhail Bulgakov, The Fateful Eggs (1925), about the ray of light discovered by Ivan Persikov, the Professor of Zoology (Russian text). This is the description of discovery from Chapter III of the novel:

“What had happened was this. When the Professor put his discerning eye to the microscope, he noticed for the first time in his life that one particular ray in the coloured tendril stood out more vividly and boldly than the others. This ray was bright red and stuck out of the tendril like the tiny point of a needle, say.

Thus, as ill luck would have it, this ray attracted the attention of the great man’s experienced eye for several seconds.

In it, the ray, the Professor detected something a thousand times more significant and important than the ray itself, that precarious offspring accidentally engendered by the movement of a microscope mirror and lens. Due to the assistant calling the Professor away, some amoebas had been subject to the action of the ray for an hour-and-a-half and this is what had happened: whereas the blobs of amoebas on the plate outside the ray simply lay there limp and helpless, some very strange phenomena were taking place on the spot over which the sharp red sword was poised. This strip of red was teeming with life. The old amoebas were forming pseudopodia in a desperate effort to reach the red strip, and when they did they came to life, as if by magic. Some force seemed to breathe life into them. They flocked there, fighting one another for a place in the ray, where the most frantic (there was no other word for it) reproduction was taking place. In defiance of all the laws which Persikov knew like the back of his hand, they gemmated before his eyes with lightning speed. They split into two in the ray, and each of the parts became a new, fresh organism in a couple of seconds. In another second or two these organisms grew to maturity and produced a new generation in their turn. There was soon no room at all in the red strip or on the plate, and inevitably a bitter struggle broke out. The newly born amoebas tore one another to pieces and gobbled the pieces up. Among the newly born lay the corpses of those who had perished in the fight for survival. It was the best and strongest who won. And they were terrifying. Firstly, they were about twice the size of ordinary amoebas and, secondly, they were far more active and aggressive. Their movements were rapid, their pseudopodia much longer than normal, and it would be no exaggeration to say that they used them like an octopus’s tentacles.”

The consequences thereof were frightening and disturbing. But, of course, the whole “human-cow” thing is not at all new, and the consequences are usually monstrous. In the past I mentioned a medieval tale about a lion who fell in love and made love a Parisian woman. In Ancient Greece, however, there was a different story. I quote from Pseudo-Appollodorus (from Theoi.com):

“Minos aspired to the throne [of Krete], but was rebuffed. He claimed, however, that he had received the sovereignty from the gods, and to prove it he said that whatever he prayed for would come about. So while sacrificing to Poseidon, he prayed for a bull to appear from the depths of the sea, and promised to sacrifice it upon its appearance. And Poseidon did send up to him a splendid bull. Thus Minos received the rule, but he sent the bull to his herds and sacrificed another . . .

Poseidon was angry that the bull was not sacrificed, and turned it wild. He also devised that Pasiphae should develop a lust for it. In her passion for the bull she took on as her accomplice an architect named Daidalos . . . He built a woden cow on wheels, . . . skinned a real cow, and sewed the contraption into the skin, and then, after placing Pasiphae inside, set it in a meadow where the bull normally grazed. The bull came up and had intercourse with it, as if with a real cow. Pasiphae gave birth to Asterios, who was called Minotauros. He had the face of a bull, but was otherwise human. Minos, following certain oracular instructions, kept him confined and under guard in the labyrinth. This labyrinth, which Daidalos built, was a “cage with convoluted flextions that disorders debouchment.”

Minotaur was widely commemorated in art, as you can see in the post (all images are courtesy of Theoi.com). The rest of the story goes along the lines of a heroic myth, with Theseus eventually arriving to Knossos and killing Minotaur. It is only the beginning of human-cow cloning, but who knows: the Greek myth may turn out to be more realistic and prophetic than we have ever thought.

Information about images (from left to right, clockwise):

Theseus and the Minotauros. Attributed to Leagros Group or to Group of Vatican 424. C6th BC. Museo Gregoriano Etrusco Vaticano, Vatican City.

Theseus and the Minotauros. Attributed to Apollodoros. ca 525 – 475 BC. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Theseus and the Minotauros. Floor Mosaic. C2nd – C3rd AD. Universität Fribourg Bibliothek, Fribourg, Switzerland.

The Art of Entarting (And Other Crafts)

I’m writing a copy about Belgium for a website, and I’ve come across the name of the Belgian actor and writer Noel Godin (left) who is famous for entarting diverse and sundry celebrities. The BBC states that the three reasons for the Entarteur to put someone high and mighty on his hit-list are: power, self-importance, and the lack of sense of humour. My printed country guide tells me that “… actor/writer Noel Godin achieved international notoriety in 1998 when he and his cohorts ambushed an unsuspecting Bill Gates and proceeded to cream the billionaire – literally. According to news reports, Godin and his groupies flung dozens of cream pies at the software magnate, scoring at least four direct hits” (Europe on a Shoestring). On the right, you can see the sweet result (apologies if this sounds slightly ambiguous!).

In 1969, the French novelist Marguerite Duras became the first target for Godin’s sweet revenge. Since then, his creamy anger struck against many a public figure, including the film-maker Jean-Luc Godard, the now French President Nikolas Sarkozy, and the now late choreographer Maurice Bejart. While being caked is undoubtedly humiliating, Godin seems to try and teach the celebrities a lesson in the importance of not taking oneself too seriously. It’s like he’s saying: don’t assume that everything that flies in your face is against you. Per chance, this pie was intended for someone else, and you simply happened to be in the way. Indeed, Sylvester Stallone apparently took being caked quite well (much to the surprise of the attackers), so he was crossed out from the entarteurs’ hit-list.

Mr Godin’s initiative is totally harmless and even gentle: he only uses traditional tarts, with whipped cream and possibly a bit of chocolate. But his many followers around the world realised that it’s best sometimes to use other kinds of tarts. In Britain, the BBC reports, the cakers preferred to use lemon meringue pies that held together well during the flight, as well as deep and large traditional custard pies. The caking groups take on “self-explanatory” names, like the original Belgian TARTE or London-based PIE.

Back in 2000, the BBC said that the caking movement took over America, targeting those worth of creaming on a twice-a-month ratio. For my part, I liked this episode with attacking the famous economist Milton Friedman. The attacker said: “[Free market economists] offer us pie in the sky, but being a down-to-earth guy, I brought that pie and gave it back to him.” This is what I call the good sense of humour – witty and subtle.

I think we’ll have to wait now for the ultimate movie review site, Rotten Tomatoes, to take it to the letter. Of course, of course, to tomato a film maker or a movie star can be dangerous, if only because tomatoes can be fairly hard. But then cinema is all about entertainment, isn’t it, so a couple of bruises may well be justified by the maddening spur of publicity.

I was trying to remember, without diving into Google Search, about any incidents of caking, egging, appling, etc, of a public figure in Russia, but didn’t remember any at the moment. There was, however, an incident of cucumbering someone to death in Russian literature. The incident was narrated by Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) in his short story, What They Sell in the Shops These Days. The story below is quoted from the website of collected works by Kharms, prepared by Serge Winitzky, with translations in English and German.

Koratygin came to see Tikakeyev but didn’t find him in.At that time Tikakeyev was at the shop buying sugar, meat and cucumbers.Koratygin hung about by Tikakeyev’s door and was just thinking of scribbling a note when he suddenly looked up to see Tikakeyev himself coming, carrying in his arms an oilskin bag.Koratygin spotted Tikakeyev and shouted: – I’ve been waiting for you a whole hour!- That’s not true – said Tikakeyev – I’ve only been out of the house twenty-five minutes.- Well, I don’t know about that – said Koratygin – except that I’ve already been here a whole hour.- Don’t tell lies – said Tikakeyev – you should be ashamed to lie.- My dear fellow! – said Koratygin – Be so good as to be a little more particular with your expressions.- I consider … – began Tikakeyev, but Koratygin interrupted him:- If you consider . . . – he said, but at this point Tikakeyev interrupted Koratygin and said:- A fine one you are!These words put Koratygin into such a frenzy that he pressed a finger against one of his nostrils and through his other nostril blew snot at Tikakeyev.Then Tikakeyev pulled the biggest cucumber out of his bag and hit Koratygin across the head with it.Koratygin clutched at his head with his hands, fell down and died.That’s the size of the cucumbers sold in the shops these days!

Slavoj Žižek on (Mis)Uses of Violence at the Leeds University

They say that the tickets to Slavoj Žižek ‘s lectures sell out almost as quickly as those to the pop stars’ concerts. The lecture at the University of Leeds on 18th of March was free, and the temptation to go and see and listen to one of the leading philosophers of today was too strong to resist. As a result, I know now that I can arrange an ad hoc trip from Manchester to Leeds (with an overnight stay) in less than half a day.

Thankfully, this knowledge wasn’t the only outcome of my trip to Leeds. I saw Prof Žižek on TV previously, but this was a different experience. It’s been a long while since I attended a proper University lecture, the “full house” one where you have to look for a seat (consider that I came directly from work, with a small suitcase) and where the staff, students and members of the public all sit together, occupying every available space – including the steps. In this sense going to Žižek’s lecture was like getting back to the old times when I was a student. But more than that, it was a wonderful intellectual stimulation. Slavoj Žižek’s current “tour of the North” of England (as aptly described by the “tour manager” Dr Paul A. Taylor, ICS, University of Leeds and Editor of the International Journal of Žižek Studies) serves to introduce his new book, Violence. The reviews of it that you may find on the web (The Independent’s Simon Critchley being perhaps the kindest) criticise Žižek, on the one hand, for calling for no action as the response to the “systemic” violence of the socio-economic order (the counterargument is how can someone be inactive in the face of injustice or war, etc.), and, on the other, for never taking the extra step to act himself. So, as he acknowledged from the start of his talk, this lecture is what he would add to his book, if he were to prepare a new edition.

The three-hour “performance” (and I’m not being ironic) included a short demonstration from the film Žižek!, and I’m embedding three short extracts from the lecture itself. The choice is purely personal, in that I chose the topics that I found most interesting. The first extract is about the problem of explicit and implicit ideological injunctions. Žižek starts by alluding to John Carpenter’s They Live (1988) as the story of how ideology works and of what it takes to liberate oneself from its throes. Liberation hurts, concludes Žižek, and there is hidden agenda underneath every ideological appeal. When he illustrates this with the examples from the Fascist past, it’s hard to disagree. Even when he says that the Catholic appeals to be a priest conceal a promise of paedophile pleasures, one can not only agree, but even bring in a supportive example: The Bad Education (2004) by Pedro Almodovar. It gets more contentious when he argues that behind appeals for humanitarian help there is, in fact, an urge to act without thinking, to contribute money rather than to treat the problem itself. As a result, people become indifferent to humanitarian problems. It is tempting to disagree, but again, I recall Andrew Marr’s deploring in his book My Trade the overflow of sentiments in modern journalism, which makes little more but decrease the tabloid sales. At the same time, the audience grows dispassionate, and – I can add – the phone-in scandals hardly help the matter.

Another extract is about appearances and freedom. The modern relationships between the master and subjects, Žižek claims, are much more oppressive. We simply don’t have the freedom of choice, even though it feels like we’ve never been freer than today. Elsewhere in his lecture Žižek underlined the fact that we’re often left without an alternative. We expect to choose between fundamentalism and liberal democracy, for instance, as if there is no other form of social organisation. I suppose this is what could be called the “unknown knowns” – exactly what Donald Rumsfeld has omitted in his (in)famous speech and to what Prof Žižek alluded a few times. The price for ignoring the “unknown knowns” is usually high, as Žižek didn’t fail to demonstrate. The potential aim of the war in Iraq, apart from freeing the world of Hussein and the weapons of mass destruction, was to create a secular state. The result is that the Iraqi state is now much less secular and more fundamentalist than it was under Hussein: the so-called intelligentsia has fled the country, whereas it is with the help of precisely this social group that the secular state can be built.

In the third extract Žižek speaks of the problem of the Big Other. He is preoccupied with the importance of such notion or object (the “chicken”), especially because it relates to the problem of trauma, as recently discussed by Catherine Malabou in her book The Newly Wounded (Les Nouveaux Blessés). What happens when the Big Other is erased? – is the question Žižek attempts to answer here. Trauma is evidently connected to violence, but he also made a point during his talk that Malabou concentrated too much on the “Western” type of trauma, a momentary trauma, whereas in impoverished deprived African states trauma is literally a state of existence.

Perhaps, many a critique of Žižek’s work could be dismissed by his own statement that, as a philosopher, he isn’t there to help us solve problems or to realise the expectations. His job is actually far more complex: he needs to explain to us whether or not our expectations are sustainable. It is possibly because of this that he prefers to retreat to the back bench. Maybe, instead of supplying us with the facts, he wants us to go and do the job ourselves. The question is not whether Žižek is right; the question is whether we are really ready for this. Already in a 2001 interview (following the 9/11 in America) he stated that there is something wrong with one group of people increasingly “moving” to live in the virtual space while another group of people (which he called “cutters”) maintain that they need to cut themselves in order to feel alive. Seven years later some pundits admit that, in spite of its universally binding force, the Internet (and social media, in particular) leaves you feel extremely lonely – perhaps to the point when you do start cutting your own flesh.

I find one particular thesis very engaging. Žižek repeatedly blazes his critique against the modern multiculturalism, which, in his opinion, is just a new form of racism. Sounds odd, doesn’t it, especially when I’m writing this sitting in a city that prides itself on being diverse and multicultural? But I have only to think of some Mancunians’ attitude to homosexuality. They say there’s nothing wrong about being gay. They say it’s great that a person can be different. They accept and respect homosexuality – as long as they don’t have to visit the Gay Village, to mesh in the Gay Parade, to watch queer films, or to have a gay son or a lesbian daughter. Multiculturalism disguises indifference, which very likely conceals the deeply hidden disgust or fear. On the same note, it’s OK to respect the Hindus, Žižek said in 2001, but does this “respect” extend onto the Hindu custom of a wife burning herself following the husband’s death?

“What is it to be a human?” Žižek asks in his Leeds Lecture, answering: it is perhaps not what we can do, but something that is beyond our reach which we nonetheless are trying to grasp. To be human is to be driven, and indeed, “we endlessly care about things we cannot change”. Furthermore, he states, our innermost narrative (what we tell ourselves about ourselves) is a fundamental lie; we need, in fact, to concentrate on what undermines us. In simple terms, instead of looking at what is familiar to ourselves in ourselves, we should face the “unknown knowns”, things that exist within us but of which we are not immediately aware.

So, the thesis I find extremely interesting is that the true solidarity is not a solidarity in understanding – it is a solidarity in struggle, which manifests itself as the political universality, the only true universality (I guess we may need to retreat to George Orwell once again and his pondering on the political purpose of a writer). “Political”, however, is external, whereas what interests me is the application of Žižek’s thesis to the story of one’s self. I agree with those who say that one must first learn to solve their own problems before they attempt to solve the problems of the others. This is not an advocacy or apology for doing nothing but rather the understanding that the common insight (of which Žižek spoke in 2001) is hardly a matter of divine providence. It has to come from somewhere, and very likely the “somewhere” is within us. Learning to accept one’s personal hidden depths instead of alienating, pitying or victimising oneself in one’s own eyes is for me exactly the lesson of solidarity in struggle. It also exemplifies, powerfully and convincingly, that this struggle never ends, instead it takes on new forms and new dimensions.

The final thesis of Prof Žižek’s lecture that I also found interesting touches on the modern forms of proletarisation. In the modern capitalist world we’re deprived, he argues, of our ecological habitat (because the environment is overpolluted), of our genetic “identity” (through experiments with genome), and even of our intellectual property. The true utopia, however, is that capitalism can extend and reinvent itself forever. A clash is inevitable, but Žižek believes it is possible to do something about it.

Links:

Slavoj Žižek, The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema

International Journal of Žižek Studies

Žižek! (a film by Astra Taylor)

Details of Prof Žižek’s lecture at the University of Leeds

International Journal of Žižek Studies Facebook group

Slavoj Žižek: “The One Measure of True Love Is: You Can Insult the Other” (@ Spiked-Online)

Violence by Slavoj Žižek

Žižek on Violence (Video) – the video of the Leeds lecture uploaded by Kishore Budha to Subaltern Studies – An Inter-Disciplinary Study of Media and Communications portal.

Reviews:

Simon Critchley, The Independent

Steven Poole, The Guardian

Julian Baggini, The Times

Chris Power, BBC

I’m grateful to Mark Thwaite from ReadySteadyBook for publicising Žižek’s talk.

Earthquakes in My Life (Deux Hommes dans la Ville)

In August 2007 Robin Hamman reported on the BBC Manchester Blog about an earthquake in Manchester. He was rather surprised that very few of us, Manchester bloggers, noticed it. I didn’t notice it, no. But the Manchester earthquake was but 2 points on the Richter scale. The recent earthquake that hit much of the UK was 5 points, and I did feel it. Well, since this was the first earthquake I personally experienced I’ve got to write a memo of it. I was in the bathroom, and the door shook and rattled, but hardly anything moved, including myself. I thought it was a very strong wind which does occasionally visit the house where I currently live. You can easily imagine my surprise when in the morning I read about Britain being hit by its second strongest earthquake since 1984.

In my Russian LiveJournal I wrote about this experience, since it was really the experience, and I’m very grateful to the reader who sent me their support, even though I didn’t suffer any damage (unlike some people and households in England). In my turn, I hope that none of my friends or readers was affected by the force of Nature.

Although this was the first time I experienced an earthquake myself, it wasn’t the first earthquake in my life to which I had to react somehow. On December 7, 1988 when I was at the second form at school (still primary school), a devastating earthquake hit Armenia. As I gathered from browsing the Internet, it is now known as the Spitak, or Gyumri Earthquake. You can easily guess by looking at the date that this catastrophe occurred while the USSR still existed, and I believe it was a common initiative across all Soviet schools to organise sending some humanitarian aid to the families, and most importantly children who suffered from the earthquake. In my childhood I’ve had a lot of toys, and my Mum and I collected a huge bag of different dolls to send to children in Armenia.

I must be honest, though, and admit that the empathy upon which I focus so much these days and about which I write so much, – well, this empathy wasn’t something I had had back in 1988. I don’t know, perhaps it was normal since I was a child, and I have noticed in the recent years that some childhood experiences are relived much more sharply when I recall them some 15-20 years after they’d happened. With the Spitak Earthquake, I vividly remember smiling sceptically at my grandmother and mother, for I couldn’t understand why they were crying, as my family never had any relatives in Armenia or adjacent areas. Obviously, these days when I look at these photos and there is a whole pool of similar experiences to remember I take their reaction differently. Although I guess that there is a reason for my then reaction, I’m ashamed of it, and my parents did reproach me for it.

That was in 1988. These days I realise that I haven’t always been so detached, and that something had touched my profoundly long before the experience I’m about to relate. I told you in the past about the effect the Russian adaptation of Conan Doyle stories had on me, and there are a few more films that opened me up from one side or another. I feel that in many ways these experiences were brought by some external force (I’m not religious, but this is where I become fatalist and a mystic) to unravel my inner feelings and callings that otherwise would lay dormant.

Occasionally I feel also that when myself or whoever else speak about art, there is a more or less substantial group of people who are extremely sceptical about the ability of art to influence anyone. I don’t know about “whoever”, this is when I’m speaking entirely from my heart and my own memories. It was 1994, I was in the 9th form at school (the last year at secondary school, for you to have an idea), and because it was before my birthday in December I’d still be 13. In the summer of 1994 I read Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, which had a profound effect on me. As I don’t remember exactly how I was reading it, I doubt this effect was such that it made me cry, but it certainly made me think.

It was probably October or November 1994 when they showed Deux hommes dans la ville on Russian TV. The film is known in the English-speaking world as Two Against the Law or Two Men in Town (Due contra la città in Italian), it was made in 1973 by José Giovanni and starred Jean Gabin and Alain Delon. The plot, in short, is about a bank robber (Delon) who returns home after ten years of imprisonment, makes his best to escape the old pals, but falls victim to the harassment of a cop from his past. Gabin’s character is trying to help and save the unfortunate young man, but the tragedy unravels. The film touched on social injustice, capital punishment, and the inability of an individual to outpower the Law.

It was the first film when I sat in front of the TV set and never moved. It was the first ever film with which I sympathised. I’ve seen a few films with Delon previously, but back then I sometimes relied on the perceptions of my family, and my mother who probably looked at this actor through his performances in Borsalino or Zorro didn’t develop any affection for him. Naturally, it was different with me, and since 1994 I’ve seen many films with Delon, including La Piscine, Once a Thief, and Il Gattopardo.

But back in 1994 I was totally devastated and destroyed by the feature. I was crying throughout the last part of it. As if that wasn’t enough, I woke up in the night, instantly remembered about Delon’s character in the last scenes, especially those in the death chamber, and once again I cried. I thought of the character’s girlfriend… I knew perfectly well that nothing wrong happened to Delon. I knew that this could be just another “story”. But I was inconsolable for the rest of the night, very much moved for a few days after, and am still under the effect of the film, almost 15 years later.

Naturally, I’m thinking exactly what it was that moved me so much. The more I think about it the more I’m inclined to believe that I felt pain from my inability to change anything. Even if such story did take place in France in 1960-7os, I was sitting in Russia in the 1990s, and it was pointless to contemplate on what could be done because there was no capital punishment in France by 1994. Lars von Trier raised the same problem in Dancer in the Dark just a few years ago, although for me it was a film “in context”, whereas Deux hommes dans la ville was the first film of such topic.

So, the devastating effect of Giovanni’s feature had to do with my understanding of my “calling” or desire to be involved – be that involvement in art or in helping people. It could never take place without the actors, the script, the directing, and the whole gamut of other factors involved in film production. And while my experience as a film aficionado has grown far and wide since 1994, it is this film that I will be invariably getting back to when thinking of when and how I realised that whatever books, films, melodies, paintings tell us, they ultimately tell us something about ourselves.

Needless to say, I am deeply indebted to the cast and crew of this film. Deux hommes dans la ville was my own earthquake that shook me and threw me out of a void of detachment. I can never be thankful enough for this…

Llandudno Diaries – 4

The Great Orme is the dramatic backdrop to Llandudno, as well as the starting point of the history of the place. Hardly anything can be more impressive than to walk in Mostyn St, the central thoroughfare of the town, and to have your eyes constantly find the awe-inspiring masses of stone. At night, when the part of the Great Orme just above the Grand Hotel is lit up, you catch yourself on a thought that you’re watching the Moon’s surface. The whole of Llandudno is impressive in such way: be that the Great Orme, the Little Orme (left) or mountains that rise in the distance (right), this is the place that seems to be forever sheltered and dominated by those giants.

The Great Orme is also known as the place where you can meet the real Kashmiri goats. On my first walk around the town I stopped at Waterstones, where I flicked through the pages of a book with unknown facts about Wales. The chapter on Llandudno informed me that on the slopes of the Great Orme one is likely to see the Kashmiri goats who may be the direct descendants of the pair presented to the Queen Victoria by the Persian Shah. As I later read, the so-called Windsor herd had come into being long before the Queen’s reign. It was in fact at the beginning of the 19th c. that Squire Christopher Tower from Essex purchased two Kashmiri goats from the number that had just been imported from India to France. His idea for a business turned out to be rather profitable, as he was eventually able to manufacture a cashmere shawl which was presented to George IV. The monarch, evidently impressed, accepted two goats from Squire Tower, and thus the Windsor herd was started. It is possible that the goats presented by the Shah were added to the existing herd, and later in the 19th c. two goats were brought to Wales.

However, the book I was flicking through made it appear as if one actually needed to go to the top of the Great Orme to see the goats. I did venture up the road until the first turn, but then I realised I wouldn’t be able to walk all the way up the mountain (granted I didn’t have suitable footwear). I decided to go back to the town, but little did I know that it would be on my way down the hill that I would virtually stumble upon the Kashmiri goats. The ones you see above were the very first on my way, and although I’ve seen and photographed a plenty of sheep, horses and cows, never before did I get the opportunity to take a picture of the goats. Admittedly, the models of the image above look regal enough to believe that they may indeed have the blue blood running in them. But before I turned my back on the Great Orme I was able to catch a glimpse of a larger herd (left). Both times I was quite startled, so much so that the second time I even paraphrased a stanza from a Russian poem about a lone pine tree that stands on the top of a certain Northern mountain, covered in snow. In my paraphrase, the goat stood on the top of the Great Orme, eating grass and covered in coat, as if it was a fir coat (I believe the unusually sharp December wind made me think of the really warm clothes).

Read more about the Great Orme Kashmiri Goats.

To be continued…

Llandudno Diaries – 3

I arrived to Llandudno at about 5pm on Friday, 28th of December 2007. The wind and rain met me at the station, as well as two lines of taxis, with no drivers inside. Turned out, my train arrived earlier, and the drivers were all away to shops. I joined an elderly gentleman and a family couple at the taxi office. By the time I was on my own, we started talking with the lady in the reception. Turned out, she was quite familiar with Manchester: she was a part of the Jewish community who regularly travel from Llandudno to Salford. Then my taxi arrived, and a few minutes later I was in Craig-y-Don where I were to stay until January 6th 2008.

Craig-y-Don means “rock by the water”, and Dave Thompson tells us in his illustrated book about Llandudno that this area became popular with residents after the First World War. On the first walk “into town” when I don’t actually know yet where to go, the place seems to be quite far away from the town centre. But as you get to discover all the different ways to get from Craig-y-Don Parade to Trinity Church in Mostyn St, you’ll soon realise that it doesn’t actually take that long.

Llandudno itself boasts a remarkable history. The origins of the place date back as early as the Bronze Age, and the remains of the Bronze Age Copper Mines located on the Great Orme is a great tourist attraction, allowing you to explore 250ft below the surface. There, on the Great Orme, is also the church of St Tudno. The church takes its name from the site of a small monastic community founded by the Welsh Christian missionary in the 6th c. AD. I haven’t visited it, but Thompson notes that the church “still has some ancient features within it including a splendid twelfth-century font”.

The fate of Llandudno was apparently determined by the Liverpool Architect Owen Williams in 1840s. The image on the left is that of The King’s Head where Williams reportedly remarked that this bay area would make an ideal watering place. His words were related to The Hon. Edward Mostyn MP who had already had plans to exploit the area of Llandudno as a potential summer resort. Some time before Williams’s prophetic remark Lord Mostyn, with the support of the Bishop of Bangor, was able to obtain through the Parliament “the sole rights to develop the low isthmus between the north and west shores”. Williams was commissioned with the survey which, when completed, presented Llandudno as a lovely seaside town, “shaped with a grid of spacious thoroughfares and a sweeping promenade”.

Although it wasn’t Williams who undertook the final planning and building, the progress of Llandudno was compelling, given its unrivalled popularity with the masses, the royalty, and the men-of-arts. It is still disputed whether or not Lewis Carroll visited Llandudno, but even without him there are enough names among Llandudno’s patrons to make any other town of its caliber blush with envy: Napoleon III, Disraeli, Gladstone, Bismarck, to name but a few. The Queen Elizabeth of Roumania, who wrote under the pen name of Carmen Sylva (commemorated in the name of one of the streets in Craig-y-Don), stayed here for five weeks in 1890. Buffalo Bill came here with his Wild West Show in 1904. The Beatles performed at The Odeon in Llandudno in 1963, and the last person to ever appear on the Odeon’s stage was Billy Connolly in 1986.

For references, I am indebted to Dave Thompson’s Llandudno (Images of Wales series, Tempus, 2005).

To be continued…

remember, remember THE FIREWORKS on 5 of November

I am getting really weary of the traditional celebrations of 5 of November night in England. It’s like a competition in the neighbourhood…

This is probably a surprising kind of rant from somebody who spent several years studying Medieval & Early Modern History, and Tudor & Stuart History in particular. But I am getting really weary of the traditional celebrations of the Guy Fawkes night in England. It feels like every year there is a competition in neighbourhood – to see how many fireworks one is capable of setting off, say, in the matter of 10 minutes. While somebody is celebrating, you are interned in the four walls of your own house, feeling hot and brimming with headache. There is no point to try and open the windows, for the air somehow seems to be fresher in your house than in the street.

I think I already told the story of my coming to England precisely on November 5th 2002. A somewhat abrupt landing at Heathrow was outdone by our landing in Manchester, when the plane literally dropped down instead of landing gradually. A few Russian people sat next to me across the aisle, and one of them instantly phoned his relatives, and said jokingly:

“Hello, we’re OK, we’ve just fallen down. No, no, we landed, but it was like falling down”.

Needless to say, my head was pounding after such landing.

This year it went from bad to worse, particularly today. The astonishingly loud fireworks were intercepted by an even louder fugue of cars’ sirens. If I’m not mistaken, there were two or three cars involved. I’m being told that this was a long Guy Fawkes weekend because children go back to school on November 5th. Apparently, this means that my week of vacation that started on Friday evening, should not be spoilt any more.

But the question I’ve suddenly asked myself this evening is both strange and not, considering the fact that it comes from somebody who studied History. I know that sometimes most strange customs survive for centuries, and I am by no means attempting to discard the importance of the Gunpowder Plot or of the Guy Fawkes Night. What I am wondering about is exactly what is now being celebrated. So, Guy Fawkes didn’t get to blow up James I in the Parliament in 1605 – great. But it only took another 44 years for James’s son Charles to be executed in 1649. One king was saved, another wasn’t, so this is certainly not the reason for a festival. Perhaps, people are celebrating the fact that the magnificent Houses of Parliament weren’t blown up. Fair enough, but the Parliament that Fawkes was plotting to destroy had perished in the 1834 fire.

Obviously, it is impossible to forget the historical reason for the festivities held on November 5th. But upon looking – and smelling – those festivities, I feel it may be more appropriate to give them the name of the Fireworks Night. At least, such name will reflect the now spirit of the celebrations, which have evidently ceased to do with history.

Western Approaches in Schmap Liverpool Guide

I mentioned that I loved photography. I discovered it in my late teens, and I owe the interest not so much to my father, but to my acquaintance with and passion for surrealism. Back then I adored Man Ray. Later I discovered Helmut Newton, and Cecil Beaton, and David Bailey, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, and of course Eugene Atget, and so my passion has crystallised. I should note that many of the pictures you see on Flickr were taken with cameraphone, although I’ve recently begun to upload those that were taken with a regular camera.

Quite a few people recently have told me that they liked my pictures, which is very encouraging. Even more so was a Flickrmail from the editor of Schmap Guides a couple of weeks ago telling me that one of my Liverpool pictures was shortlisted for the inclusion in the forthcoming edition of Schmap Liverpool Guide. Then yesterday at work, when I checked my email during lunch, I found out that my photo of the Western Approaches Headquarters was included in the Guide. What a wonderful way to start the weekend!

I am thoroughly delighted and grateful to the editorial of Schmap for this inclusion. I would certainly like more of this and similar things to come, but ultimately, this means that I should finally start taking my passion for photography just as seriously as I take my passion for literature, cinema, and music.

You can navigate the guide below, in the cultural section of which you will find, apart from the Western Approaches Museum, St Georges Hall, Walker Art Gallery, and Liverpool Museum and Planetarium.

http://www.schmap.com/templates/t011g.html?uid=liverpool&sid=tours_tour2&ultranarrow=true&#mapview=Map&tab=map&placeid=106184&topleft=53.41894,-3.00304&bottomright=53.39643,-2.9694&autoplay=1&c=f6f6f6A72122A62122A62122FFF88FFAF5BBffffffFFF88Fd8d8d8A4A7A6A621226990ffECEBBD0000005C5A4E5C5A4E000000929292F0EFDA

As a matter of fact, although I’ve been to Liverpool I haven’t been to many Liverpool museums, and reading about the Western Approaches, which is now a part of Liverpool War Museum, absolutely makes me want to visit it. Bearing in mind that I’m currently on a week-long holiday, this should be a great opportunity to navigate the Schmap Guide. As Liverpool War Museum website tells us,

The Western Approaches is a rectangular area of the Atlantic ocean lying on the western coast of the United Kingdom. It is roughly the same height as the west coast of Britain, starting directly on the coast and ending in the Atlantic roughly at Iceland. The area is particularly important to the UK, because many of the larger shipping ports lie in this area. (http://www.liverpoolwarmuseum.co.uk/history/)

The bunker, we are told, had played a crucial part in the Battle of the Atlantic, “its role being to ensure the successful delivery of supplies and equipment into wartime Britain from the sea”. Reconstructed by the Walton Group, the bunker “is the original building where the original battle was fought and won. It has been reconstructed exactly how it used to be”.

Below is a bigger version of my picture of the Western Approaches Headquarters.

Stella Artois: Just the Name Makes the Beer Taste Better

Whether you are a cinema fan, or a beer fan, the name of Stella Artois is familiar to you. Exquisite TV adverts with an anecdotal story at heart of each of them, praising the labour of love of the Belgian brewery in Leuven. The Belgian tradition of brewing the beer dates back to 1366, and last year saw Stella Artois’s 640’s anniversary. The launch of a new interactive website this year is a perfect birthday gift to the dedicated beer-makers and to all faithful Artois lovers.

The website is located at www.artois.co.uk, but on October 8th it was only open to a limited number of people invited for its online premiere. It was a pleasant surprise for me to have been invited (along with “various designers, marketers, film enthusiasts, beer connoisseurs and reasonably friendly-seeming people”, to quote the invitation email), and I have just spent the most wonderful hour on the site. As you see from a very blurred image on the top left, I had to type in two special words to access the site, and once I did I have entered the Artois Wonderland.

On your journey through the Wonderland you are being guided not by a White Rabbit, but by a newly appointed (i.e. invented) Artois brew master (left). As the creators of the website, Johan Tesch, Noel Pretorius, and Tim Scheibel, explain, the whole visual language of the journey is strongly influenced by the early 20th c. posters., films, and Artois’s own print ads of the time. To get in the mood for your journey, watch this teaser (courtesy of http://www.artoisblog.co.uk/).

//www.youtube.com/get_player

As it happens in all polite houses, La Famille Artois first introduces you to their beers (left). After learning everything you certainly did not know about these wonderful beverages, you are taken to the dawn of history of La Famille Artois. The section Le Courage (right), which, as the creators admit, is one of the most entertaining, captivating, innovative and humorous parts of the site, potently reminds one that to brew a good beer in 1366 was indeed an act of courage. The hard-working citizens of Leuven had to balance the Earth, fight against the evil spirits, and even to appease gods. But we, modern people, obviously know that the Earth has got no end, and we can help, for example, to balance it. A Greek mathematician, Archimedes, reportedly claimed that he could overturn the Earth with the help of a mere stick, all for the sake of science. Well, to make a perfect beer is a science, too, so you have 30 seconds to turn the Earth with your mouse, to save the precious hops.

I must admit: although I managed to balance the Earth and to appease the gods, I was unable to do any more for the lovely people of medieval Leuven. In particular, I couldn’t lit the lantern of a brewer who went to collect water, and I was told that “the people of Leuven would be sorry tonight”. So am I.

The next section, L’Origine, tells the actual story of La Famille Artois, from 1366 when Den Horen brewery had been established in Leuven to 1926 when the Artois produced the first filtered lager (left). La Publicité is a deftly arranged collection of diverse and sundry TV adverts, of which you may perhaps recognise the one on the right. And the section L’Etranger is the best place to test your knowledge of pouring the ideal glass of beer, or better else, of learning how to do it (below). At least with regards to La Publicité, I can imagine its content being enjoyed and put to good use by some clever cinema or media student.

Although the Stella Artois website would be impossible without the three gifted guys I mentioned above, it is accompanied by a special Artois Blog, written mainly by Sam. The blog serves as a hub of everything you want to know about La Famille Artois, as well as the website developments, and Sam has granted permission to use some of the contents in this post.

The website will be up and running full-time since October 9th, and I hope the teaser and the pictures have put you in the right mood for enjoying the process of “passing on something good”, as Artois have been doing for over six hundred years. As for me, I totally enjoyed it, mostly as a cinema fan rather than a beer connoisseur, but also as an historian. I notice I keep getting back to where I came from academically, that is Medieval and Early Modern History. Le Courage is absolutely a hit for me, for its amazing animation and subtle jokes on the Titanic labour of medieval beer-makers. But as you also know, I am a Francophone, and all the sections after Le Courage is a great treat for someone like me. Finally, I just loved this phrase, which sounds like a perfect tagline and has been used in this post’s title: “just the name makes the beer taste better”. Vraiment, c’est ça!

Raphael, Degas, and the 16th c. music

2004 saw the first exhibition of Raphael in England. In November I happened to be in London, and my first visit to the National Gallery naturally included a voyage to the Sainsbury Wing. I had mere half an hour to enjoy some 40 works of one of the Titans of Renaissance. To see them, I had to gently if politely wriggle past some visitors, or queue up where it was impossible to squeeze through. Everyone who knows the Sainsbury Wing will recall its catacomb-like interior: low ceilings, dim light, rather small rooms with dark walls – hardly a backdrop for the rich Italian masterpieces.

At exactly the same time they were exhibiting Edgar Degas upstairs. The works of French artist resided in two or three well lit halls with tall ceilings and light pastel-colour walls, there were not many visitors (it was one of the first days of exhibition, I should note). Most paintings were of medium size, in front of every second or third of which there stood a Far-Eastern girl with a pad and some crayons, copying the works of one of the greatest Impressionists. To this day I cannot fathom why these two exhibitions could not be swapped places.

I wrote a lengthy text about it in Russian in the same 2004, contemplating on how these two exhibitions manifested our attitude to art. I was probably a bit harsh to suggest that it was easy to admire the classical art because then no-one would find a fault in your taste, but on second thoughts this is hardly far from the truth. Indeed, one would rather be ridiculed if they admitted liking pop music than if they admitted liking Mozart. Same with Raphael. As Henry James put it, Raphael was a happy genius, and by looking and admiring his Madonnas we seek to find happiness, too. Raphael is also easier to comprehend, unlike his contemporaries. Leonardo is very intellectual, to which La Gioconda is a good proof. Michelangelo’s devotion to the physique is sometimes baffling, as can be seen, for instance, in the figures on the Medici monument. Raphael, on the contrary, is always pleasant, always radiant, always rich in colour, and even if his end may not be as happy as his paintings, we probably shall still forget about it when we observe his work.

It is different with Degas. Degas was known for his perfectionism, and many times in his life he turned to rework his own paintings, as the examination of certain works, e.g. Portrait of Elena Carafa, shows. The name of the exhibition – “Art in the Making” – further highlights Degas’s critical, intellectual approach to his work. The British art historian Kenneth Clark in his book “The Nude: A Study in the Ideal Form” (N.Y., 1956) says, in particular, that Degas excelled at what the Florentine artists of the 16th c. would call “disegno” (i.e. a drawing, a sketch). He focused on a human figure as his main theme, but aimed to capture the ideal image of the movement of this figure, and especially the energy of this movement. Degas’s painting is more vigorous than Raphael’s, and his Madonnas are not only nude, they are also depicted in the poses or at such activity that many of us would still deem inappropriate. Still, again in the words of Clark, had the figures painted by Michelangelo come to life, they would have scared us to a far bigger extent than Degas’s naked women.

Thanks to his colour palette, techniques, and themes, Degas appears more disturbing, almost revolutionary, compared to Raphael. I noted in my text that in the three centuries, from Raphael to Degas, the very attitude to art had changed. As far as Madonnas are concerned, after the European revolutions of the 19th c. and on the eve of the First World War they became more emancipated, they drank absinthe and spent evenings in the Parisian cafes. Their blurred faces, loose hair and outrageous nudity were the symbols of their time, the sign of the fear of changes and of the vulnerability in the face of the outer world. Their movement and individuality were more prominently expressed in comparison to their Renaissance predecessors. Like many other Impressionists, Degas is much more “relevant” to our time, but as it happens we prefer to turn to what gives us hope and faith, and Raphael seemed to be a perfect saviour. Apparently, I concluded, when people turn to the classical art, they seek peace; and when they find peace, they’ll think of a revolution.

Nevertheless, I bought a wonderful CD at the Raphael’s exhibition, The Music of the Courtier, which contained several beautifully performed pieces by the late 15th – 16th cc. composers. One of this, Dilla da l’acqua, by Francesco Patavino (1497?-1556?), performed by I Fagiolini, has become an instant favourite, and I hope you enjoy it too.

http://media.imeem.com/m/xMPLqzqmmW/aus=false/

The paintings used (from top, left to right, clockwise):

Raphael, La Donna Velata (c. 1514-1516)
Edgar Degas, Portrait of Elena Carafa (c. 1875)
Raphael, Madonna of the Pinks (c. 1506-1507)
Michelangelo, The Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici (1526-1531)
Leonardo da Vinci, La Gioconda (c. 1503-1506)
Raphael, Madonna Connestabile (c. 1502)
Edgar Degas, La Coiffure (Combing Her Hair) (c. 1896)
Edgar Degas, Russian Dancers (c. 1899)
Raphael, Ansidei Madonna (1505)
Raphael, Lady with a Unicorn (c. 1505-1506)
Edgar Degas, Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando (c. 1879)
Edgar Degas, Young Spartans Exercising (c. 1860)
Edgar Degas, After the Bath (c. 1890-1895)
Raphael, St Catherine (c. 1507)

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=loscuadernos-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=B0006BAUKI&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=loscuadernos-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0140435077&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=loscuadernos-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0691017883&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr