Baucis and Philomen

Evidence that Sir Thomas Browne appreciated the artistry of Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) and also possessed a poetic sensibility, notably when he was far from the city.

Inspired by the good folk of bootiful Norfolk, the following verse, originally written in Latin, can be found in his commonplace notebooks-

'Being in the country a few miles from Norwich, I observed a handsome bower of honey-suckle over the door of a right good man; which bower I fancied to speak as followeth:

I would rather cheer a humble healthy yeoman here,

Than cherish noble noses

And nostrils foul with the plague and contagion...

Nor do I seek to cleanse stinking throats and perjured mouths

With a decoction of my leaves.

Nor do I wreathe the hard lintels of the great,

Compared to whom Cerberus would be a lamb.

But I adorn the kindly door of my master and mistress,

A house where enters neither force nor guile.

Such, if the gods came down to earth from heaven,

Is the cottage which Jupiter and Mercury would enter.*

Adding this footnote-

*Alluding to the fable in Ovid of Baucis and Philemon entertaining Jupiter and Mercury in their cottage; whereof hangs in my parlour from a draught of Rubens'.

Browne must be writing of some kind of reproduction here, perhaps a printed etching, surely not the original oil-painting of Baucis and Philomen (above) attributed to the collective workshop of Peter Paul Rubens (circa 1620-5)

Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay

The ancient city of Norwich has several interesting associations with western esoteric traditions. It was the retirement home of Arthur Dee (1578-1651) the eldest son of the Elizabethan magus John Dee. Arthur Dee accompanied his father in his travels and adventures across Bohemia and Poland in the 1580’s and remained a firm advocate of the esoteric tradition throughout his life. 

Norwich was also the home of Arthur Dee's friend and physician, Sir Thomas Browne, author of The Garden of Cyrus, an exemplary literary formulation of the type of Neo-Pythagorean thought first developed by John Dee.

The dramatist and pamphleteer Robert Greene, born in Norwich in 1558 is credited as one of the first writers to make a professional living, if at times precariously, from his pen. Nowadays Robert Greene (1558-1592) is remembered as the source of one of the few known accounts of Shakespeare and for his play The Honourable History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay (circa 1589). Greene’s drama centres upon the activities of Friar Roger Bacon (1214-1294) a British polymath and early inductive scientist. Bacon also had a reputation as a magician, one who reputedly devised a brass head which spoke prophecies. Little is known of Bacon's contemporary, the Franciscan friar Thomas Bungay, other than he was educated at Oxford (1270-1272) and Cambridge (1282-1283) and that he wrote a commentary on Aristotle's De Caelo.

In the original legend of 1555 Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay decipher an old Arabic manuscript  of instructions on how to make dead metals come alive. After much work they fasten a head  upon a pedestal of marble, placing clockwork inside it, attaching wires to its tongue and eyeballs. Unable to keep awake to hear their creation speak Friar Bacon orders his servant Miles to keep watch over the metal head. Miles however fails to wake his master at the critical moment when the Brazen Head speaks, first saying TIME IS, then TIME WAS and finally, when it is too late TIME IS PAST thus thwarting all endeavours and the destruction of the speaking head itself. 

According to the modern-day oracle Wikipedia, a Brazen Head (or Brass Head or Bronze Head) was a prophecy device attributed to many medieval scholars who were believed to be wizards, or who were reputed to be able to answer any  given question. It was always in the form of a man's head, and could correctly answer any question asked of it .  Cast in  either brass or bronze, it could be mechanical or magical, and  could answer freely or  be restricted to  simple "yes" or "no" answers.

Greene’s play may have been inspired by the success of the theme of magic in Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, which was  also based upon a long-standing medieval legend.  Marlowe’s character of Doctor Faustus and his quest remains embedded deep within the western psyche, while Ben Jonson’s  play The Alchemist (1610) debunks the mystical terminology of alchemy and the pecuniary goal its frequently associated with. Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay is also notable for being one of the very first drama's which have several plots occurring simultaneously.  

Robert Greene’s drama is one of the earliest literary works featuring notable figures from the western esoteric tradition. The mercurial place of the western esoteric tradition in the intellectual history of the Medieval and  Renaissance era has been explored by many writers since Greene and Marlowe's day, including the Spanish author Cervantes' picaresque prototype novel Don Quixote ( first part 1604) in which the character of Don Antonio Moreno has a brazen head created for him by an unnamed Polish pupil.

In Russian author Valery Brysov’s The Fiery Angel (1908) the Renaissance era of magus Cornelius Agrippa is revived, while in the Austrian novelist Gustav Meyrink’s The Angel of the West Window (1928) the life and times of John Dee are depicted. Magic features prominently in Mikhail Bulgakov's cult novel of satire and fantasy The Master and Margarita (1936) while British author John Cowper Powys (1872–1963)  in his novel The Brazen Head (1956) imaginatively conjures up the world of 13th century Wessex and Friar Bacon. Powys’s historical-fantasy-romance anticipates Belgian author Marguerite Yourcenar’s The Abyss (1968) an account of the life and times of the fictitious Zeno, a physician, philosopher, scientist and alchemist born in Bruges during the 16th century, which, in all probability, is based upon the biography of the Swiss alchemist Paracelsus. More recently, the Italian novelist Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose (1980) features the Sherlock Holmes-like character William of Baskerville, who may be based upon the English Franciscan friar William of Ockham  (c.1288-1338) an early advocate of the inductive method. Eco's The Name of the Rose, like the aforementioned novels, debates upon the medieval imagination, the tension between the perceived magic of early science and the powerful censorship and prejudices of the Church, as William of Baskerville discovers when the Inquisition is called to a monastery to investigate a series of  mysterious deaths.

Robert Greene's drama must have been well-known to the physician-philosopher Thomas Browne who, writing in his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica  displays an uncommon knowledge of the 'Great Work' of alchemy, interpreting the legend of the speaking, oracular brass head thus-

Every ear is filled with the story of Frier Bacon,that made a brazen head to speak these words, TIME IS. Which, though there want not the like relations, is surely too literally received, and was but a mystical fable concerning the Philosophers great work, wherein he eminently laboured. Implying no more by the copper head, then the vessel wherein it was wrought; and by the words it spake, then the opportunity to be watched, about the tempus ortus, or birth of the mysticall child or Philosophical King of Lullus.  Bk 7: Chapter 1

Links

Text of Greene's The Honourable Historie of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay

The 1555 Legend upon which Green based his drama.

Tour de France 2012

For the first time ever in  its 99 year history, a Briton wins the  Le Tour de France. The history of the gruelling cycle race, first staged in 1903 is peppered with scandals, drugs, cheating, violence, strikes and bizarre occurrences, but nevertheless the 3 week 2000 mile race held in France remains one of the ultimate challenges of all endurance sports. 

It's a tradition on the last day of the race that the leader is unchallenged, so barring an accident British cyclist Bradley Wiggins is guaranteed to triumph in Paris today.

Postscript August 1: Bradley Wiggins wins his seventh gold at the Olympics for GB in the time trial event.

Wiki-Link  - Tour-de-France

Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae

The 1711 catalogue of the library of Sir Thomas Browne indicates that the German Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher was one of the physician-philosopher's favourite authors. The subject-matter of Kircher’s many books - optics, alchemy, comparative religion, antiquities, the unusual and even down-right bizarre to modern sensibilities, reflect several shared interests and a close perspective in outlook between two of the seventeenth century's greatest polymaths.

Athanasius Kircher’s books are well-represented in Thomas Browne's library, including his optical work Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae (1646) whose frontispiece is above. Kircher’s The Great Art of Light and Shadow was in all probability, one of the earliest of books purchased by Browne since commencing his residency in Norwich, after the physician-philosopher's marriage in 1642. Published the same year as Browne’s encyclopedic endeavour to promote scientific understanding, Pseudodoxia Epidemica first saw light during the endgame of the English civil war in 1646. Further revised editions of Browne's major contribution to the scientific revolution appeared until the last edition in 1672. 

The frontispiece of Kircher's The Great Art of Light and Shadow depicts a personification of the sun, with the symbols of the zodiac covering his body, below him sits a double-headed eagle. On the right,  a woman as a personification of the moon and covered in stars, below her sits two peacocks. Rays of light hit various lenses which reflects Kircher's optical discoveries. The frontispiece (above) also depicts Kircher's sources of knowledge in descending order of clarity: sacred authority, reason, sense (aided by instruments) and profane authority. Browne in his Pseudodoxia lists authority, experience and reason as his primary sources of knowledge.

Kircher discovered that by placing a lens between a screen and a mirror which had been written on, a sharp but inverted image would appear on the screen. Using a spherical water-filled flask as a condenser to concentrate the light. Images and texts painted on the mirror's surface could be projected by light from a candle after dark. These optical demonstrations eventually resulted in the birth of the magic lantern, an invention which is sometimes attributed to Kircher.

A near exact contemporary of  Thomas Browne (1605-82) Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680) has been described as ‘the supreme representative of Hermeticism within post-Reformation Europe’. Although now known to have been often mistaken in many of his theories, especially in comparative religion, Kircher, like Browne in his Pseudodoxia Epidemica disseminated and popularized much new scientific knowledge, including recent discoveries confirmable to amateur scientists in the field  of optics and magneticism. Browne  devoted several chapters on his own experiments in  magneticism and static electricity  in Book 2 of Pseudodoxia Epidemica .

Kircher studied philosophy, mathematics, Greek and Hebrew, as did Browne. But above all else he shared with Browne a deep interest in comparative religion and the esoteric. Browne even respecting Kircher’s knowledge in the field of comparative religion enough to describe him as -   'that eminent example of industrious Learning, Kircherus'.

Kircher believed that Egyptian paganism was the fount of virtually all other beliefs and creeds whether Greek, Roman, Hebrew, Chaldean or even Indian, Japanese, Aztec and Inca. His  three jumbo-sized volumes of perceived syncreticism in comparative religion Oedipus Egypticus (Rome 1652-56) of over 2000 pages are a land-mark in printing and esoterica. Given the fact that many books of western esoterica are listed as once owned by Browne it’s not too surprising that Kircher’s vast work Oedipus Egypticus was once in his library. The Norwich-based physician-philosopher alluded to the Bembine Tablet of Isis which is reproduced by Athanasius Kircher in Oedipus Egypticus  in his own work of Hermetic phantasmagoria  The Garden of Cyrus (1658).

In addition to being scholars of science and esoterica Kircher and Browne were also extremely interested in  accounts of far-way lands such as China. This is reflected in fact that the latest  reports from traveller’s, mostly missionaries returning to Rome from China, were collected and compiled by Kircher in his China Illustrata  (Amsterdam 1667). Although the earliest mention of the Chinese root-vegetable ginseng occurs in the Oxford English dictionary dated 1654, Sir Thomas Browne remembered the first detailed description of the root-vegetable Ginseng from his reading of Kircher's China Illustrata in a letter dated April 2nd 1679 to Edward Browne -

Deare Sonne, -You did well to observe Ginseng. All exotick rarities, especially of the East , the East India trade having encreased, are brought in England, and the profitt made thereof. Of this plant Kircherus writeth in his China illustrata, pag. 178, cap. "De Exoticis China plantis".

Giselle

On Friday evening I attended a performance by English Youth Ballet of Giselle at the Theatre Royale, Norwich. With a cast of over 100 young people the EYB is the only company which travels regionally throughout the United Kingdom to stage 8 full scale ballets annually. The company is augmented by 6 professional dancers in principal roles.

Artistic director Janet Lewis’s  up-dated version of Giselle  is set in early 1900's England, the class division between aristocracy and peasant emphasized by an 'upstairs-downstairs' theme which is highlighted in costume. Other notable differences in the EYB's inspired interpretation include the principal character of Giselle having a paternal ward instead of a maternal widow, the addition of other music by Adolphe Adam and quite naturally given the company’s youth, the omission of a Bacchanalian celebration. 

In the Janet Lewis and EYB production of the ballet Giselle the opportunity to showcase all the members of its company occurs, including its very youngest members.  It can be no easy logistical exercise to orchestrate in rehearsal and performance over 100 dancers ranging from the tender age of 8 to 18. The considerable amount of hard work and dedication needed for success shone through on the night of the performance; testimony to the fact that historically the English, one of the great ballet-loving nations of the world, have produced world-class dancers, choreographers and knowledgeable, appreciative audiences throughout the 20th century to the present-day.

First performed at the Paris Opera house in 1841 and originally set in a Rhineland village, Act one of Giselle celebrates the temporal world of human life, its joys and passions, the harvest of the fruits of the earth with an emphasis upon human mortality. In complete contrast Act  two of Giselle is set at night, in the supernatural and eternal world of the Wili's, vengeful female spirits who, jilted in love before their wedding-day have died heart-broken at their own hands. In the  second act of  EYB’s Giselle the corps de ballet was most spectacular in the co-ordination and symmetry of  two dozen ballerina’s dancing collectively as ethereal Wili’s.  In Act  two  Giselle defies the harsh rule of Myrtha, Queen of the underworld, that her lover Albrecht must suffer the fate of dancing himself to death (a curious anticipation of the climax of the first modern ballet of the 20th century, Stravinsky's  Le Sacre du Printemps).

With its  themes of  madness and suicide, the supernatural world and the power and triumph  of  love beyond the grave,  Giselle is the quintessential Romantic ballet. It’s a ballet which is notable on several accounts. Firstly for being a ballet for which music was written especially for it, the composer Adolphe Adam's score is full of memorable and danceable melodies, its also the first ballet score to use a leitmotif, that is, a recurrent  musical theme.

Secondly, as in Swan Lake, the principal role in Giselle makes considerable demands upon the prima ballerina who must be able to dance two quite different characters. In Giselle the prima ballerina dances the part of an innocent country girl who suffers heart-break, followed by madness and suicide. In Act 2 she must dance as an ethereal, other-worldly, spirit-creature who is determined to defy the  harsh rule of  Myrtha, Queen of the underworld. The part of  Giselle and of Queen Myrtha were excellently performed in the EYB production.

The role of Giselle was first danced by Carlotta Grisi at the tender age of 22; she was also the lover at the time of Jules Perrot, the first choreographer of Giselle. The ballet was first dreamt-up by the literary critic Theophilus Gautier from his reading a poem by the German poet Heinrich Heine.  In 1841 Gautier wrote to the German poet-

'My dear Heinrich Heine; when reviewing your fine book Uber Deutschland a few weeks ago, I came across a charming passage....where you speak of elves in white dresses, whose hems are always damp; of nixies who display their little satin feet on the ceiling of the nuptial chamber; of snow-coloured Wilis who waltz pitilessly and of those delicious apparitions you have encountered in the Harz mountains and on the banks of the Ilse, in a mist softened by German moonlight; and I involuntarily said to myself: 'wouldn't this make a pretty ballet'.  

Carlotta Grisi in the role of Giselle

Wiki-Link   Giselle