What remains

At the Medeiros-Almedia this morning I happened to glance down and notice a Tekke Turkman. It looked more or less like this:


Tekke were Turkmen nomads, famous for their horses. Their carpets all feature the pattern of flattened roughly octagonal ellipsoids arranged in four parallel rows running the length of the piece. Sometimes they alternate with 8-pointed stars.

A recent issue of Hali magazine started out by asking where the abstract patterns seen in Persian carpets might come from and argued rather well that these ellipsoids, known in Turkish as göl, may derive from the bronze talismans of BMAC.

B-what? you might well ask.

BMAC, it turns out, stands for the Bactria-Margiana Archeological Complex, which was an advanced, settled, agricultural, possibly literary bronze-age civilization on the Oxus. It thrived between 2200 and 1700 B.C. but was subsequently lost. It was unearthed by a Russian archeologist, Victor Sarianidi, in the 70's and 80's and represents a discovery similar in scale, antiquity and mystery to the Mohenjo-Daro find on the Indus. The news of this new discovery did not begin to filter into the West until the fall of the Soviet Empire.

BMAC talismans were widely produced and it has been suggested that they may have been worn as magical protection. The author of the Hali article thinks the göl may be representations of these amulets.

If so, they represent a cultural survival from BMAC. Other remnants of the BMAC may include the Vedic soma cult, several aspects of Zoroastrianism, including the architectonic arrangement of the Zoroastrian temples of fire, and small figurines including the figure of "Scarface" -- snake-scaled man with a vicious gush across his right cheek -- like this one, in the Louvre:



"Scarfaces", says the Louvre, are

anthropomorphic dragon-snakes belonging to the mythology of central Asia, where they incarnated the hostile forces of the underworld. Their power was controlled not by killing them but by reducing them to silence by a slash across the right cheek. Thus dominated, they could become benevolent.

No source given for this interesting report. (Here is the Louvre's write up for you to make up your mind).

To me, the most interesting aspect of Scarface is that only four complete specimen of him survive while there are hundreds of thousands of Tekke Turkmen carpets. What survives seems so unpredictable. (What will remain behind when we are gone? Golden arches?)

And another thing: how much one can see by simply looking down; most people, when they do look down -- if they look down -- see only a worn-out carpet; but if you look carefully, it turns out that there lies at your feet a great civilization dead three thousand years!

Some notes on The Notes

1

Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes on the Redefinition of Culture isn't much better, alas: Steiner's argument that the world changed with the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars because now everyone became involved in the great events of history (because war became total, there was general mobilization, troops marched outside Hegel's window while he wrote Phenomenology, etc.), "whereas in times previous war swept over human beings with tidal mystery" would surprise anyone who has lived through the total horror of the Thirty Years War (between 1618 and 1648 Germany lost half its population); or the French civil wars of the 16th century; or the English civil war; or the contemporary Khmelnitsky uprising.

Besides -- excuse me -- what is "tidal mystery"?

2

Is there perhaps something lacking in the education of fellows like Geo. Steiner? Do they not get enough maths and logic? Would a course in chemistry perhaps teach them to write sentences that mean something? Should their teachers not have insisted that a sentence's best business is demonstrable truth?

Several in-depth courses on individual historical periods might have been useful, too, to teach these guys how difficult it is to make generalizations about an age (what is an "age", anyway?); and to deconstruct the fanciful "grand-sweep of history" view which one acquires by limiting his reading to introductory textbooks. (Too little education can be more dangerous than none).

3

I am not sure that Steiner is right in suggesting that ennui was more common in the nineteenth century than it was, say, in the eighteenth or seventeeth; statistics do not exist; but he is right in observing that many nineteenth century writers expressed it. Perhaps boredom was merely generized, which is to say "made into an acceptable genre", that is, it was discovered that it's OK to write about it (i.e., if you do, someone will actually read it). (The way Roth has generized incontinence).

Having said that, personally, I would not be surprised to learn that the nineteenth century were in fact more bored than the eighteenth: unlike Steiner, I have never thought the nineteenth century my Paradise Lost; its culture, for the most part, tires and bores me. Why should it not have bored its own people?

I mean, come on, Donizetti?

(Hurray for the eighteenth century).

4

But perhaps the nineteenth century did represent a kind of departure from the past: an informatics departure, if you pardon the jargon. The rise of the newspaper, the telegraph, and cheap mass-printed book meant, I am guessing, that cultural figures at least were now spending a far greater amount of their time chasing mundane news -- from the political (Man bites dog in Bakhchisarai!) to the cultural (a new book of poetry by minor heath poets); leading to a low quality information overload. The truth is that the flood of low quality information must be interrupted (the newspaper subscription canceled, the tube turned off, the blog comments (for the most part) ignored, the minor heath poets not read); or else our own brains become stuffed up with their mediocrity, acquire their tastelessness, and -- inevitably -- begin to bore their owners.

Eye Candy

What a story! This sculpture appeared in a small provincial French auction last year estimated at £800. It has since reappeared on the market with a... £3.8 million price tag, re-attributed as it has been to -- Giambologna. Read about it here.

Now, Giambologna was Flemish (he was really Jean de Boulogne), but studied sculpture in Rome. It figures: just look at these girls!



Clearly, Giambologna and I have at least one thing in common: a certain -- loving -- interest in heft.

George Steiner's Greek Fantasies

All men are aware of tragedy in life. But tragedy as a form of drama is not universal. Oriental art knows violence, grief, and the stroke of natural or contrived disaster; the Japanese theater is full of ferocity and ceremonial death. But that representation of personal suffering and heroism which we call tragic drama is distinctive of the western tradition. It has become so much a part of our sense of the possibilities of human conduct, the Oresteia, Hamlet and Phedre are so ingrained in our habits of spirit, that we forget what a strange and complex idea to reenact private anguish on public stage. The idea and the vision of the man which it implies are Greek.

What to do with a book which begins like this? Throw it out without advancing beyond page three? After all, how right can can be the rest of a book which starts out this wrong?

This is George Steiner speaking, the book is what made his enormous reputation (The Death of Tragedy) and the paragraph is unalloyed, 24-carat, pure-water nonsense. What do they do in Bali every day for a month during the Denpassar festival but enact private drama on public stage? Or in all the small towns up and down the Kerala coast in December where weekly all-night performances of Kathakali are given in temple courtyards? And if Sonezaki Shinju is not private suffering on public stage, then, obviously, neither is Hamlet nor Phedre.

Whence comes this urge of western scholars to define the West, us, Europe (whatever) by making a fantastic grand-sweeping and utterly false generalization about The Other? (And what is The Other anyway?) How comes it that grand scholars should think it's OK to spew this sort of garbage? And how comes it that no one stands up and screams in objection?

Seeking the opinions of others

1

If you believe in evolution, you must also believe that significant genetic variety within the human species. (Evolution proceeds by individual mutation followed by breeding competition: every species subject to evolution is full of competing mutations).

2

And if you accept that changes in brain structure lead to changes in intellectual capacity (e.g. dogs and humans differ in intellectual capacity because their brains differ); and that the human brain has evolved and is subject to further evolution; then it follows that there must exist a plurality of different human brain mutations with different intellectual capacities: in short, different kinds of minds. (And since most of these mutations will have been around for a while and have had time to breed, we should expect that some individual mutations exist within very large numbers of brains; ergo, while the eye sees such doubtful categories as Poles and Portuguese, blacks and whites, men and women, we could perhaps with some justice speak of different brain populations; which probably do not overlap with any of the former categories).

3

This has two important and seemingly contradictory consequences regarding how we should treat the opinions of others.

4

In cases of objective knowledge – is buying GM stock a good move? -- we are well advised to consult the opinion of others because their brains may see something – some important clues or some subtle causal relations between clues and facts – which ours do not. In such cases, it is most useful to consult those with brains as different from ours as possible because we are hoping to look at a particular problem from a different vantage point in the hope of discovering something previously invisible. We are trying to borrow their cognitive system to look at the outside world.

5

In cases of subjective knowledge consulting with others is not entirely useless, because we do not have perfect introspective vision (i.e. we do not always know how we feel or why); in such instances learning about the feelings of others who find themselves in our circumstances can shed important light on our own problems. (This includes matters of taste: observing how others furnish their living rooms, for example, can be a rich source of good ideas).

But in such instances, we need to consult with those whose brains are as similar to ours as we can find because the question how a totally different brain might work in our particular circumstances, while amusing, is, practically speaking, useless.

So far, OK?

Running into the Prince of Poland

I first bumped into him through the services of Andrew Manze. Manze's recording of The Concert for the Prince of Poland is elegantly, in places touchingly, played, though it is, like most Manze, a bit anemic. The Concert was Vivaldi's last published work. He sold it in order to finance his move to Vienna (where, alas, he soon died).

The CD's liner-notes described the public fetes put on by Venice to welcome the Prince of Poland -- regattas, andatas, fireworks and receptions. The Concert was written for these celebrations. But who was the prince? (The crown was elective, there was no such thing as a Prince of Poland).

The answer to that question came unexpectedly several years later, from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the author of the delightful Letters. It's a bit of a tragic story: in her middle age, with her marriage on the rocks, she allowed herself an affair and fell in love with a young Italian rogue (Algarotti -- that fellow keeps turning up everywhere, too). Probably tiring of her (nothing is as embarassing to a young lover than an older woman in love: love, being silly, is for girls), he'd hit on a great ruse: "You go to Florence, amore, and wait for me there" he said and left for... Dresden. Lady Mary went, pined and waited. Finally, she had to admit to herself what she had long suspected; she packed and went to Venice. And that turned out lucky: she happened to be there during the Prince's visit; she describes it in some detail. Better yet -- she met the Prince and befriended him. Some romantic gondola rides took place and touching private conversations were had: they were both star-struck: the prince was lame and had to be carried about by his footmen; his mother pressed him to quit the succession and enter holy orders.

And he was from Dresden.

That allowed me to identify him: he was Frederick Christian Wettin. His father, Augustus III, was simultaneously Elector of Saxony and King of Poland. The title Prince of Poland was not a title but an apellation. It certainly worked on the Venetians: like all Replebeians, they were easily impressed by titles.

That was 1740.

In the same 1740 Giuseppe Galli Bibiena published his Architetture e Prospettive dedicate alla maesta di Carlo Sesto Imperador de' Romani, a book of engravings among which are some of his stage designs (the four generations of Bibienas dominated European theater and stage design for about a hundred years). I stumbled upon it yesterday and among the engravings I disovered a series entitled "Scene de la Festa Teatrale in occasione delle Sponsali del Principe Reale di Polonia e Elettorale di Sassonia". (They are all hilariously over the top).

Freddie! I exclaimed as if meeting an old friend. Alas, no: Freddie did not marry till 1747. The Principe Reale in question here must have been his Dad, Augustus III, who married an Imperial Princess in 1719.

Tobacco leaf

Chinese, Qianlong period.

Never seen anything like it anywhere else in the world. But here I have found them in two places already: Arte Antiga and Medeira e Almeida. Apparently, the pattern was developed specifically for the Portuguese (Brazilian?) market. (There are even lame knock-offs made today).







The Met of course has it (and keeps it in storage): see some here. Decent-looking reproductions of the Met pieces can be had here.