Aquarium of Vulcan

Sunday, August 27, 2023

'Compassion is the physician's teacher' : Gavin Francis - 'The Opium of Time'

The 21st century Renaissance of interest in Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) continues to flourish with a new, insightful appreciation by the Edinburgh-based doctor Gavin Francis on the seventeenth century physician-philosopher. The Opium of Time includes a generous selection of quotations from Browne's selected writings relevant to the themes of its eight, stand-alone chapters; these in turn are bookended by two reflective letters addressed to Browne in which the author reminds his reader of the very big differences in belief, culture and science between our world today and the seventeenth century of Browne's era.

Dr. Francis joins the ranks of other physicians who have admired Thomas Browne, these include the distinguished Canadian doctor William Osler (1849-1919), the surgeon Sir Geoffrey Keynes, and the Norwich-based GP Anthony Batty-Shaw (1922-2015). Much of the strength of Dr. Francis's appreciation rests in a shared profession for although separated by centuries he recognises that, in many ways little has changed in the role of his profession since Browne's day. Faced with human illness and suffering the role of the physician as a well-informed and trusted confidant has altered little. In this respect The Opium of Time transcends the technicalities of literary criticism, highlighting Browne's tolerance, humility and compassion as key components of a shared humanism. The discourse Urn-Burial and Christian Morals in particular are favoured by the author as exemplary of Browne's psychological understanding of the human condition, encapsulated in pithy aphorisms such as 'Sorrows destroy us or themselves'.

Its refreshing to read in The Opium of Time of the influence of the Swiss alchemist-physician Paracelsus (1493-1541). During his short life Paracelsus dedicated himself to the art of healing, declaring 'Compassion is the physician's teacher'. Crucially, he urged physicians to experiment upon nature's properties in order to discover new chemicals for medical use, Browne himself knew 'that every plant might receive a name according unto the disease it cureth, was the wish of Paracelsus' [1] As a critical follower of Paracelsus, Browne, like the Swiss physician, was both early chemist and alchemist, the difference between the two activities being fluid not fixed, even with latter scientific figures such as Robert Boyle (1627-91) and Isaac Newton (1643-1727).

Its primarily because of Dr. Francis' non-judgemental mention of the influence of Paracelsian medicine when others have either denounced, or what's worse, ridiculed Browne's 'spagyric' medicine (the Paracelsian neologism 'spagyric' is inscribed in verse on Browne's coffin-plate) that The Opium of Time can be said to be the most insightful book by a medical professional on Browne since William Osler's day, over a century ago.

The parallel between the humility of Christian faith and the humility of caring work in nursing and medicine is noted by Dr. Francis, a staunch advocate of the beloved but beleaguered institute founded upon Christian values known as the NHS. In Browne's day devout physicians took inspiration from Christ's Ministry. [2] While not sharing his subject's religious faith, Dr. Francis nevertheless applauds Browne's Christian stoicism, engendered one suspects, by a shared close proximity to human suffering and mortality in profession.

Gavin Francis also highlights Browne's little-recognised sense of humour, a tool which used carefully, he suggests, can assist the doctor-patient relationship when faced with seemingly unsurpassable dilemmas. Humour is encountered throughout Browne's writings. His quip on William Harvey's detection of the circulation of the blood as being, “a discovery I prefer to that of Columbus” (i.e that of America) [3] is typical of his dry and learned humour. Browne's most sustained piece of humour is the hilarious, 'To an illustrious friend on his wearisome Chatterer' which may have been written to cheer up his friend Joseph Hall (1574-1656) who was deposed as Bishop Of Norwich in 1643 for his Royalist sympathies.

In addition to examining the influence of piety and humility upon Browne's intellect and spirituality, Dr. Francis also tackles the thorny subject of the physician's involvement in a witch trial, discussing how much he was influenced by the endemic misogyny of his era. Browne never testified at the Bury trial, nor could his opinion have influenced any verdict while the patriarchal authority of the Judaic Old Testament held blind sway over reason. A single verse in the Old Testament sanctioned and 'justified' the legal condemnation to death of what is estimated to have been a quarter million of mostly women throughout Europe from 1400-1700. [4]

Much has been made on what is one of the very few biographical details known about Browne, often inviting disapproval from a comfortably removed historical perspective. His culpability and supposed failure in risking status and social standing when faced with mass-mind irrationality and legalized prejudice is often exaggerated. Its worthwhile remembering, as Dr. Francis does, that Browne dedicated a large part of his life to relieving the suffering of others. His psychological observation that, 'No man can justly censure or condemn another because indeed no man truly knows another' seems applicable here. [5]

Dr. Francis shares with his subject a love of travel, both doctors recognising that travel broadens the mind in tolerance, understanding and appreciation of different societies and cultures. Its an easy excuse for the author to visit Padua in Italy and Leiden in the Netherlands in search of traces of Browne's academic sojourns.

Replete with original observations which others have overlooked, Dr. Francis draws attention to how Thomas Browne when elderly, enjoyed reading, or having read to him, accounts by traveller's from distant lands such as Africa, India and China. Throughout The Opium of Time one also learns more of Dr. Francis's own extensive travels which have included working visits to India and Africa as well as Antarctica.

In a book engaging in narrative, the author takes delight as have many others, in Browne's inventive coining of new words into the English language. Browne's neologisms catered for the need for a preciser vocabulary in the early scientific revolution and many of his neologisms such as 'electricity' 'ambidextrous' 'network' cater for this need. Through his deep study and understanding of Greek and Latin Browne is credited with introducing words associated with his profession such as 'medical', 'pathology' and 'hallucination' for example.

Thomas Browne gave good advice to literary critics when declaring - 'If the substantial subject be well forged we need not examine the sparks which fly irregularly from it'. [6]

The Opium of Time is a wholly original response to the Renaissance humanism, wit and scholarship of Thomas Browne, nevertheless a few 'irregular sparks' fly from it, silently smouldering in the deep pile carpet of truth. Credence is given to the unreliable narrator of W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn who mischievously supplements fictitious text to the conclusion of The Garden of Cyrus.

A footnote regret that Aldrovandi's Monstrorum Historia would not have been known to Browne is groundless. Throughout his life Browne kept well-abreast on the latest publications, nationally and internationally. The Sales Auction Catalogue of his and his eldest son Edward's combined libraries is solid evidence of the vast and extraordinary range of Browne's interests. The 1711 catalogue records that Aldrovandi's Monstrorum Historia (picture below) along with some half a dozen other titles by the Italian zoologist are listed as once in his library. [7]

Nor can one agree that Browne's choice of a 'provincial general practise' is exemplary of his humility. Norwich was in Browne's day England's second city, a position it occupied until the early Industrial Revolution. Densely populated and surrounded by a highly-productive agricultural hinterland, the ancient City had important links in trade, culture and travel to mainland Europe, in particular the Netherlands. As the home to a wealthy gentry who were financially able to consult and afford a doctor's fees, Norwich was an ideal location for an ambitious, newly-qualified physician to establish a medical practise in order to support a wife, home and family.

But the greatest weakness of The Opium of Time is its author's reluctance to acknowledge Browne's esoteric inclinations, resulting in an incomplete portrait of the seventeenth century physician-philosopher. Other than a welcome mention of the medical influence of Paracelsus, Dr. Francis is reluctant to discuss Browne's relationship to esotericism. Its a reluctance which results in the removal of an entire sentence of text in which Browne makes a tacit nod to like-minded influences upon him. The declaration- It was the opinion of Plato and is yet of the Hermetical philosophers', is removed with lacuna thus .........., and not presumably for the purpose of page formatting or in order to save ink. [8]

Such glossing over of Browne's esoteric credentials is regrettable. Its a slippery path to travel upon if, for example, one dislikes the sentiment expressed in a few bars of a Beethoven symphony or imagery in the lines of a Shakespeare sonnet to simply extract and omit them from a work of art.

It's usually the British historian Dame Frances Yates (1899-1981) who is credited as the first to explore the vital influence which Western esotericism wielded upon scientists, thinkers and artists of the Renaissance-era. Yates demonstrated Western esotericism to be worthy of academic study. Catholic in faith herself, she also disproved a commonplace misapprehension, that its necessary to personally believe ideas espoused by Western esotericism when studying its influence in intellectual history.

Ever since the humanist scholar Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) introduced Plato's Timaeus to Western readers and attributed his translation of the Corpus Hermeticum to the mythic Hermes Trismegistus, numerous thinkers, scholars and artists throughout the Renaissance era (circa 1500-1650) studied and were influenced by Western esoteric concepts such as Neoplatonism, Hermetic philosophy, kabbalah, gnosticism and alchemy which they integrated into their philosophy, art and science. Thomas Browne, in common with his British contemporaries such as the Welsh clergyman Thomas Vaughan (1621-1666) the Oxford antiquarian Elias Ashmole (1617-92), the Paracelsian physician Robert Fludd (1574-1637) and Arthur Dee (1579-1651) the eldest son of the Elizabethan magus John Dee were all influenced by the tenets of Western esotericism. Thomas Browne makes clear his own allegiance to the esoteric in Religio Medici when stating, 'the severe schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes wherein as in a portrait things are not truly seen but in equivocal shapes'.[9] There's no evidence that he ever deviated from this opinion in his life-time. Even in his Christian Morals a moralistic work which is believed to have been written late in his life and which Dr. Francis refreshingly champions for its many profound psychological observations, there can be found mention of astrology, physiognomy, the alchemical maxim solve et coagula and the mythic Hermes Trismegistus.

The Garden of Cyrus has been described as 'the ultimate test of one's response to Browne'. For Dr. Francis and for many others, its 'the strangest of all Browne's books'. Consulting the well-worn role-call of Browne's literary critics assists little in comprehension of its hermetic content. From the height of the 18th century Age of Reason Dr. Johnson in particular was unsympathetic and disparaging towards it. Modern scholarship however recognises a helpful interpreter, one whom Gavin Francis mentions in his 'Shapeshifters: A Doctor's Notes on Medicine and Human change' namely the Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961).

Through a judicious application of C.G. Jung's life-long study and understanding of Western esotericism its possible to acquire new insights on Browne's inventive creativity and literary symbolism.

Dr. Francis notes of a passage in Urn-Burial, that - 'It is almost as if Browne wished death and new life to sit adjacent on the page. He seemed to want to demonstrate the fraternity of life and death, their interdependence.' But in fact its more through the physical binding and union of the diptych discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus that Browne ingeniously demonstrates this fraternity. The somber, saturnine speculations of Urn-Burial are 'answered" by the mercurial garden delights of Cyrus. The gordian knot as to why they exhibit a plethora of oppositions or polarities in respective themes, truths and imagery such as - Decay and Growth, Mortality and Eternity, Body and Soul, Accident and Design, Speculation and Revelation, Darkness and Light, World and Universe, Microcosm and Macrocosm, is sundered in C. G. Jung's sharp observation - 'the alchemystical philosophers made the opposites and their union their chiefest concern'. [10]

Jung's lifetime study of comparative religion and alchemical literature also assists in identifying the source of imagery at the apotheosis of Browne's Urn-Burial in which he states, 'Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us'. Browne's 'astral imagery' in this case originates from his reading and 'borrowing' imagery by the Belgian alchemist and foremost advocate of Paracelsus, Gerard Dorn whose writings feature in the alchemical anthology known as the Theatrum Chemicum. [11]

All of which strongly suggests Browne's esoteric inclinations are far greater than acknowledged, and none of which distracts from enjoyment of what is a personal appreciation.

Slender in volume but compressed with original observations and well-attuned with its subject, The Opium of Time will hopefully be enjoyed and enlighten its readers, long may it remain in print. Opium however, in Browne's proper-name symbolism is invariably associated with Oblivion, the author of the Oblivion of Time in Urn-Burial knowing that ultimately little survives the devouring of Time.

Books consulted

* The Opium of Time: Gavin Francis OUP 2023

* Shapeshifters: A doctor's notes on medicine and human change Gavin Francis Wellcome Collection 2016

* The Major Works of Sir Thomas Browne edited and with an Introduction by C. A. Patrides Penguin 1977

* A Catalogue of the Libraries of Sir Thomas Browne and Dr Edward Browne, his son. A Facsimile Reproduction with an Introduction, Notes and Index by J.S. Finch pub. E. J .Brill 1986

Saturday, April 01, 2023

Vulcan's Aquarium

In reply to a recent enquiry, what exactly is 'the Aquarium of Vulcan' from which this blog is named, its useful to refer to the ancient Greek literary figure of Athenaeus, author of the Deipnsophistae or 'Banquet of the Philosophers' the allusive source of the little-known myth of Vulcan's love-gift to Venus.

But first, by far the better-known myth associated with Vulcan is that of the goddess Venus caught in bed with Mars, trapped by her husband Vulcan throwing an 'invisible net' over the pair of lovers. The Roman poet Ovid supplied rich material for many Renaissance-era artists in his Metamorphoses including a description of how Vulcan responded when discovering Venus and Mars in bed together.

'At once, he began to to fashion slender bronze chains, nets and snares which the eye could not see. The thinnest threads spun on the loom, or cobwebs hanging from rafters are no finer than was that workmanship. Moreover, he made them so that they would yield to the lightest touch, and to the smallest movement. These he set skillfully around his bed.

When his wife and her lover lay down together upon that couch they were caught by the chains, ingeniously fastened there by her husband's skill, and they were held fast in the very act of embracing. Immediately, Vulcan flung open the ivory doors, and admitted the gods. There lay Venus and Mars, close bound together, a shameful sight. The gods were highly amused; ... They laughed aloud, and for long this was the best-known story in heaven'. [1]

Vulcan enmeshing Venus and Mars in his net was a popular subject for many Renaissance artists including Velasquez, Tintoretto, Piero di Cosimo, Van Dyck and Rubens. Northern Mannerists artists in particular, such as Wtewael, Spranger and Heemskercke were all attracted to the myth.

Tintoretto in his 'Mars and Venus Surprised by Vulcan' dated 1551-1552 (below) has Vulcan interrupting Venus and Mar's love-making without his net. Examining by invitation her beauty, in close proximity, Vulcan is momentarily distracted from detecting a seemingly timorous Mars hiding under a bed.

The Dutch Northern Mannerist artist Joachim Wtewael (1566–1638) painted the moment in which Venus and Mars are surprised by Vulcan in three differing versions (below). The main protagonists of the celestial drama with their respective attributes can all be seen in Wtewael's elaborate staging, including Mercury with his caduceus, Saturn with his scythe along with Vulcan preparing to fling his net over the lovers.

Bartholomew Spranger (1546-1611) was a Flemish artist who worked as a Court artist for the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II. The erotic content of his 'Vulcan and Venus' (below) is overt with its emphasis upon the Beauty and the Beast aspect of the relationship. The art critic Linda Murray notes of the main thematic and stylist traits of Mannerist art -

'Mannerism can be quite easily recognised and defined: in general it is equated with a concentration on the nude, often in bizarre and convoluted poses, and with exaggerated muscular development; with subject matter either deliberately obscure, or treated so that it becomes difficult to understand -the main incident pushed into the background or swamped with irrelevant figures serving as excuses for displays of virtuosity in figure painting; with extremes of perspective, distorted proportions or scale -figures jammed into too small a space so that one has the impression that any movement would burst the confines of the picture space; with vivid colour schemes, employing discordant contrasts, effects of 'shot' colour, not for descriptive or naturalistic purposes, but as a powerful adjunct to the emotional impact of the picture'. [2]

Its a seemingly unequal pairing of a submissive Vulcan and dominant Venus in Spranger's interpretation of the two gods relationship.

With its unusual perspective, depiction of ancient world mythology and eroticism, Maarten van Heemskerck's (1498-1574) 'Venus, Mars and Vulcan' (below) is closely associated with Northern Mannerist art in subject-matter along with exploring expressions of sexuality. Confident in her seductive qualities, its a not-so demure-looking Venus who gazes into the viewer's eyes in Heemskerck's painting.

The Graeco-Roman myth of Mars trapped by Vulcan's net is included in the hermetic phantasmagoria of the English physician-philosopher Thomas Browne's 'network' discourse, The Garden of Cyrus (1658) its full running title being The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, Naturally, Artificially, Mystically considered.

'As for that famous network of Vulcan, which enclosed Mars and Venus, and caused that inextinguishable laugh in heaven; since the gods themselves could not discern it, we shall not pry into it. Although why Vulcan bound them, Neptune loosed them, and Apollo should first discover them, might afford no vulgar mythology'.

And in fact the highly symbolic figure of Vulcan opens Browne's hermetic discourse, ('That Vulcan gave arrows to Apollo and Diana') and ushers its apotheosis in which 'Vulcan and his whole forge sweat to work out Achilles his armour'.

On a mundane level the appeal of the myth of Venus and Mars surprised by Vulcan may be viewed as social commentary upon the rise of adultery in urban Europe. During the Renaissance, with the increase and mix of population in European cities, opportunities for extra-marital affairs grew. The myth served well as a moral warning to its viewers. Renaissance painters also seized upon the myth of Venus and Mars and its symbolism in order to comment upon war-torn Europe of the late 16th and early 17th centuries for from the union of Venus, the goddess of Peace and Mars, the god of war, a child named Harmony was born. From an esoteric perspective the union of Venus and Mars is a lesser example of the 'coniunctio' or union of opposites in alchemy which was more often symbolized by the luminaries Sol et Luna.

Although Vulcan was famed for his inventiveness, making armour for the hero Achilles and a chair for his mother-in-law from which she could not escape when sitting on, no painting has survived of his constructing an aquarium for Venus. In any event, Casaubon's edition of Athenaeus's 'Banquet of the Philosophers' was not published until 1612 and therefore no painting of this subject before this date is possible. There is however at least one Renaissance painting in which Venus is depicted visiting her husband Vulcan's forge, perhaps for the purpose of requesting a love-gift.

In the Dutch painter Jan van Kessel's 'Venus at the forge of Vulcan' of 1662 (below) the stark contrast between the naked vulnerability of Venus and the metallic accoutrements of protective armour scattered in its foreground is notable.

Thomas Browne for one knew that a close relationship existed between the goddess Venus, water and fish. In his commonplace notebooks the following verse couplet can be found-

'Who will not commend the wit of Astrology ?

Venus born of the sea hath her exaltation in Pisces'.

Its possible that Thomas Browne knew of the myth of Vulcan's Aquarium for Isaac Casaubon's 1612 edition of Athenaeus's Deipnosophistae, or 'The Banquet of the Philosophers' is listed as once in his library. Browne also wrote a short, humorous piece entitled 'From a reading of Athenaeus'. [3]

Athenaeus lived in Naucratis circa the late 2nd to early 3rd century CE In his day Naucratis was an important Egyptian harbor and a dynamic melting-pot of Greek and Egyptian art and culture. Its also the setting of 'The Banquet of the Philosophers' in which characters such as physicians, philosophers, grammarians, parasites and musicians discuss topics as diverse as Baths, Wine, invented words, feasts and music, useless philosophers, precious metals, flatterers, gluttony and drunkenness, hedonism and obesity, women and love, mistresses and courtesans, the cooking of fish and cuisine in general, ships, entertainment, luxury and perfumes.

In total the 15 books of the 'Banquet of the philosophers', mention almost 800 authors. Over 2500 separate works are cited in it, making it a valuable source of numerous works of Greek literature which otherwise would have been lost, which includes three surviving lines on Vulcan's aquarium.

James Russell Lowell famously characterized the Deipnosophistae as -'the somewhat greasy heap of a literary rag-and-bone-picker like Athenaeus is turned to gold by time'. In the seventeenth century there was a revived interest in the Banquet of the Philosophers following its publication by the scholar Isaac Casaubon (1559-1614) in 1612. The commentary to the text was Isaac Causabon’s magnum opus. Incidentally it was the scholarship of Isaac Causabon which proved from his textual analysis of the Corpus Hermeticum that it could not have been written by the mythic ancient Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus who anticipated the coming of Christ, as commonly believed, but in fact was a syncretic work of Gnostic and Greek philosophy dated centuries after Christ's era, circa 200 and 300 CE.

By all accounts Athenaeus was a favourite author of Thomas Browne for he stated in his encyclopaedic endeavour Pseudodoxia Epidemica-

'Athenæus, a delectable Author, very various, and justly stiled by Casaubon, Græcorum Plinius (Greek Pliny) . There is extant of his, a famous Piece, under the name of Deipnosophista, or Coena Sapientum, containing the Discourse of many learned men, at a Feast provided by Laurentius. It is a laborious Collection out of many Authors, and some whereof are mentioned nowhere else. It containeth strange and singular relations, not without some spice or sprinkling of all Learning. The Author was probably a better Grammarian then Philosopher, dealing but hardly with Aristotle and Plato, and betrayeth himself much in his Chapter De Curiositate Aristotelis. In brief, he is an Author of excellent use, and may with discretion be read unto great advantage: [4]

From his reading of Athenaeus Browne knew of ancient world sexual activities -

'The impudent wantonness of the ancients placed sponges in the natural parts of women that by expanding they might produce a lewd and as it were haunching movement in the female, whence a keener lust is provoked in the male. In the elaborations of coition almost nothing has been untried, so that the indecent egg of Marcellus Empiricus is no marvel. Away with these foolish toys of lust'.

Its in book 2 of 'Banquet of the Philosophers' that Athenaeus records how the blacksmith of the gods Vulcan set about creating sheets of glass which he bonded together with an early version of tungsten steel. Tungsten is one of the oldest elements used for alloying steel. It forms a very hard carbide and iron tungstite. High tungsten content in the alloy however tends to cause brittleness and makes it subject to fracturing rather than bending. Somehow Vulcan over came this weakness, its speculated through adding 'the salty sweat' of his workshop labourers to the molten crucible.

The little-known myth is recounted in the Deipnosophistae after heated discussion upon the best sauces to prepare for fish. The courtesan and lute-player musician Callipygae recites three verses from a long-lost comedy, now known only by the title of The Chessmen of Odysseus. Its believed that the following lines specifically allude to Vulcan's aquarium -

As the Pleiades ascended, Vulcan's workshop laboured,

the sound of hammer on anvil could be heard

echoing through mountains

until rosy dawn glowed furnace-like in the east.

Salty sweat streamed in torrents into hissing troughs,

smelting and refining the dross.

Crafted and ready

to bind with ox-like ribs the thick and cloudy glass,

Vulcan's love-gift for Venus.

[6] (Book 2 Lines 27-29 )

Aquariums are mysterious habitats which often evoke great underwater beauty. They function well as calming distractions and their psychological benefits include reducing stress. Looking into an aquarium, observing fish swimming care-free, helps people momentarily forget their worries.

The symbol of the aquarium invites speculation and analysis. For the seminal twentieth century psychologist C.G. Jung -

'The protean mythologem and the shimmering symbol express the processes of the psyche far more trenchantly than, in the end, far more clearly than the clearest concept.' [7]

Perhaps Venus made her request to test the fullness of Vulcan's forgiveness, or else to alleviate her boredom with Vulcan spending long hours away from her at the forge, or simply for her amusement and pleasure, its not really known. Nor is it known how many or what kind of fish she choose to place in her aquarium. But whether Vulcan manufactured his love-gift for Venus specifically for any of these reasons remains unclear. What is clear is that the fish in the Aquarium of Vulcan are far more playful than previously imagined.

Notes

[1] Ovid Metamorphosis Book 4 lines 180-190

[2] The High Renaissance and Mannerism Linda Murray Thames and Hudson 1977

[3] 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue page 7 no. 67

[4] Pseudodoxia Epidemica . Bk.1 chapter 8

[5] From a reading of Athenaeus

[6] Deipnosophistae Book 2 lines 27-29

[7] Collected Works of C.G.Jung vol. 13 Alchemical Studies (1967) para. 199

Friday, February 24, 2023

The comic genius of Jan van Haasternen

Celebrating the comic genius of Jan van Haasternen on the occasion of his birthday, with a brief look at his artwork, alongside Dutch 'Golden Age' paintings.

Jan van Haasteren (b. February 24th 1936 - ) was born in Schiedam in the region of South Holland in the Netherlands. His early childhood years were lived through the second World War. He later attended technical school, where he learned to become a home decoration painter, and then studied Publicity and Advertising at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam. After his military service he began his career with a small Rotterdam-based advertising agency. He joined the Marten Toonder studios in 1962 and began freelancing in 1967. Throughout the 1960's and 70's Jan worked with a wide variety of magazine advertising agencies and comic strip publishers.

Jan van Haasternen joined Jumbo puzzles in 1980 and has now supplied the jigsaw manufacturing company with over two hundred of his inventive, action packed tableaux in which almost anything and everything is happening at the same time. An early example of Jan's comic strip art style can be seen in his popular 'Baron von Tast' series. (Below)

In 'The Bachelor' (below) an unmarried man engaged in domestic chores, tidies away his pet octopus. A mysterious hand grasps to stop the pendulum of a Grand-father clock which has the ages of 30, 40, 50 and 60 years inscribed upon its face.

Two regular characters in Jan's comic puzzles are featured in his earliest artwork for Jumbo. In 'The Classroom' (below) a teacher screams in fright at a mouse whilst a cat sleeps undisturbed on top of a locker. The school children are absorbed in their own fun and games and aren't concerned at all with their teacher's alarm !

'Get that cat !' an early artwork supplied by Jan for Jumbo puzzles (below) displays a variety of architectural styles which are the background to a pack of dogs gathered to catch a cat. They've surrounded a tree in which the cat sits, calm and safe above them all. A spotty Dalmatian dog and a tabby cat are the oldest characters regularly featured in Jan's puzzle art.

With his industrious inventiveness, ability to supply a near endless variations upon a theme, accompanied by a humorous multiplicity of action, its not too bold to state that Jan's skillful draughtsmanship, along with his astute observation of people, shares characteristics with artists of the 'Golden Age' of Dutch Art. Indeed, Jan's own hometown, Schiedam, was also the birthplace of the gifted 'Golden Age' artist Adam Pynacker. Like many Dutch artists of the seventeenth century, Adam Pynacker (1622-79) had a relatively short life. He's noted for painting in the fashionable and popular Italian style which often featured ancient ruins in a rural setting lit by a glowing, south of the Alps sunlight, as in his Landscape with a Goatherd (Below).

Adam Pynacker -Landscape with a goatherd

There's one Dutch painter in particular whose art shares fruitful comparison to Jan van Haasternen's, its by another Jan, the most Dutch of all Dutch names, the artist Jan Steen (1626-79). Jan Steen's paintings capture the lives of the ordinary Dutch citizens enjoying life, often drinking, music-making and playing pranks upon each other. The chaos and disorder often to be found in Jan Steen's paintings is not so removed from Jan van Haasternen's comic art, but without Steen's moralising. In Jan Steen's 'A School class' the moral lesson that its bad teachers who make bad schoolchildren is underscored with anarchy and chaos reigning supreme in the classroom.

Jan Steen - A School Class (circa 1670)

The prosperous times of the Dutch Republic resulted in an estimated million paintings being bought and owned by ordinary citizens in a short, historical era. The art genres of landscape, portraiture, still life, maritime scenes and depictions from mythology and the Bible were all popular, as was a genre known as 'merry group' art, such as in Jan Steen's, 'As the Old Sing, So Pipe the Young' dated circa 1668-1670 (above).

Sometimes allusion to famous Dutch or Flemish art is easily detected. Michel Ryba's 'The Seasons' (detail below) explicitly alludes to Pieter Breugel's famous painting known as ' The Hunters in the Snow' (1565).

The Dutch nation have long been renowned for their peaceful and tolerant attitude whilst living in close proximity to each other. In Pieter Bruegel the Elder's 'Dutch Proverbs' (below) over 126 proverbs are referenced, including, 'Horse droppings are not figs' meaning appearances are deceiving, 'There's more in it than an empty herring' meaning, there's more than meets the eye, 'to hang one's cloak according to the wind' meaning to adapt one's viewpoint to the current opinion, and 'he who has spilt his porridge cannot scrape it all up again'. (Don't cry over spilt milk.) The sheer profusion of people in Bruegel's 'Dutch proverbs' is suggestive of the thriving, dense population of the Netherlands during the Renaissance and equally true of modern-day Netherlands.

Jan's view of art and of the public viewing of art in galleries is encapsulated in a puzzle below.

Jan van Haasternen's comic art for Jumbo puzzles often involves a crowd of participants, male and female, young and old, cheerful and annoyed, engaged in a multiplicity of antics and pranks, not least in his 'Acrobat Circus' (Below). Several regulars characters in Haasternen's puzzles including a bishop (swinging on a rope) a convict, a pink octopus and Jan's signature motif, a shark's fin cutting through the action, can be spotted. By the way double-clicking on these images enlarges them for greater detail, especially if using a lap-top.

'Acrobat Circus'

'St. George and the Dragon'

'The Holiday Fair'

'Sportsday'

The outdoor scene 'Winter Games' (below) is one of my personal favourites. Its exemplary of Jan's superb draughtsmanship skills, bringing alive a wide expanse with great depth of field perspective. As ever Jan's signature motif, a shark's fin can be spotted by the sharp-eyed, silently cutting its way through the hilarious action.

In 2013 Jan van Haasternen became a Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau for his contributions to Dutch comics culture and for his role as an inspirer of comic artists and illustrators. And in 2021 he and other members of Studio Van Haasteren (notably Dick Heins and Rob Derks) were awarded the P. Hans Frankfurther Prize for special merits.

But perhaps the greatest award and achievement of the comic genius of Jan van Haasternen is the simple fact that Jan's puzzles gave cheer to countless puzzlers, young and old, during the long days and nights of the global pandemic (2020-22). At a time when many were time rich as never before, socially isolated and in need of mental stimulation, jigsaws, not least by Jan van Haasternen occupied the minds of many world-wide, effectively offering escape from gloomy days, giving a challenge and a chuckle during their construction, along with a real sense of accomplishment upon completion.

I'm confident that admirers of JvH jigsaws will today raise a glass on the occasion of the artist's 87th birthday, and toast with me to the good health of the comic genius, Jan van Haasternen.

Friday, January 27, 2023

'One face of Janus holds no proportion to the other'.

January, the first month of the year, takes its name from the early Roman King Numa (753-673 BCE) who nominated it after Janus in his reorganization of the calendar. One of the most ancient and highest divinities of the Roman world, Janus is usually depicted with two faces, one on each side of his head, sometimes one youthful and one aged (above). The two faces of Janus meant that he viewed both the past and the future as well as guarding doors and gates. As a god who is associated with beginnings and endings, war and peace and transition from the past to the future, Janus, like all the Graeco-Roman gods has potent psychological symbolism.

Allusion to Janus can be found in each of the English physician-philosopher Thomas Browne's major literary works for, in common with other 'alchemystical' philosophers, he discerned that profound psychological truths are embodied in classical myths. Browne's life-long citing of the Roman god Janus is a superb example of his proto-psychology; in fact its justifiable to say that the rudimentary beginnings of modern-day psychology originated from literary symbolism such as Browne's. Furthermore, he himself possessed Janus-like qualities being well-versed in Classical antiquity as well as 'predicting' the future of the New World, notably in his miscellaneous tract known as 'A Prophecy concerning the future state of several nations'. As ever, new interpretive insights can be acquired by modern readers of Thomas Browne when viewed through the prism of Carl Gustav Jung's study of comparative religion. Highly influential to the present-day, the Swiss psychologist firmly believed that -

'The protean mythologem and the shimmering symbol express the processes of the psyche far more trenchantly than, in the end, far more clearly than the clearest concept;' [1]

Intriguingly, C. G. Jung (1875-1961) cited the title of Browne's Religio Medici (1643) on several occasions in his voluminous writings.

'For the educated person of those days, who studied the philosophy of alchemy as part of his general equipment, - it was a real Religio Medici'. [2]

In his self-portrait and spiritual testament Religio Medici, the newly-qualified physician Thomas Browne confesses to the paradoxical nature of his philosophy. Alluding to the primary attribute of Janus, he frankly admits-

'In philosophy where truth seems double-faced there is no man more paradoxical than myself, but in Divinity I love to keep the road. [3]

A few paragraphs later Browne utilizes highly original proper-name symbolism, stating -

'yet I perceive the wisest heads stand like Janus in the field of knowledge'. [4]

in other words, the true intellect respects the wisdom of the past as well as advancing knowledge for future generations.

The agenda of Browne's subsequent publication, the encyclopedic endeavour known as Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646-72) was to challenge and refute many of the superstitions and folk-lore beliefs prevalent in Browne's day in favour of reason, experience and 'occular observation'. This included a rejection of medical cures by means through amulets or 'magical' stones, of which the physician wittily remarks-

'he must have more heads than Janus, that makes out half of those virtues ascribed unto stones and their not only medical, but magical properties, which are to be found in Authors of great name'. [5]

The Roman god Janus is also employed by Browne as a literary 'conjoining' symbol which ingeniously unites his philosophical discourses Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus (1658). Thematically structured upon the metaphysical templates of Time (Urn-Burial) and Space (The Garden of Cyrus) and highly polarised in their imagery, respective truth and style, Browne's twin Discourses remain unique in World literature. Its in Urn-Burial the gloomy, stoical and funerary half of the literary diptych, that the learned physician laments -

'We cannot hope to live so long in our names, as some have done in their persons, one face of Janus holds no proportion unto the other'. [6]

in other words, everyone has either a greater or lesser proportion of their life remaining which no-one can ever know with certainy as to when they have arrived at the equidistant point of their lives. The past and the future are unequal in the lives of all through unknowingness of lifespan.

Janus is also encountered in the esoteric discourse The Garden of Cyrus. With typical subtle humour Browne declares-

'And in their groves of the Sun this was a fit number, by multiplication to denote the days of the year; and might Hieroglyphically speak as much, as the mystical Statua of Janus in the Language of his fingers. And since they were so critical in the number of his horses, the strings of his Harp, and rays about his head, denoting the orbs of heaven, the Seasons and Months of the Year; witty Idolatry would hardly be flat in other appropriations'. [7]

Ever helpful to his reader, Browne adds an explanatory foot-note- 'Which King Numa set up with his fingers so disposed that they numerically denoted 365'. i.e. Numa reformed the Roman calendar.

A primary source of information about Janus can be found in Ovid's Fasti (Festivals). Over a dozen books by the Roman poet Ovid (43 BCE - 17 CE) including Fasti as well as several editions of his most famous work Metamorphoses are listed as once in the combined libraries of Thomas Browne and his eldest son Edward.[8] The opening page of Ovid's Fasti narrates firstly of how the poet encounters and questions Janus, the poet reminding his reader that there is no equivalent to Janus in the Greek pantheon of gods -

'Yet what god am I to call you, biformed Janus ? / For Greece has no deity like you'.

Janus subsequently informs the poet of his origins and attributes thus-

'The ancients (since I'm a primitive thing) called me Chaos.

Then I, who had been a ball and a faceless hulk,

Got the looks and limbs proper to a god.

Now as a small token of my once confused shape,

My front and back appear identical....

Whenever you see around, sky, ocean, clouds, earth,

They are all closed and opened by my hand.....

Just as your janitor seated by the threshold

Watches the exits and the entrances,

So I the janitor of the celestial court

Observe the East and West together'.

The celestial 'janitor' who has the power to open and to close is defined as the god of mysteries in general by Ovid who recounts one of the few surviving myths known of Janus. Ovid tells of a deceitful nymph called Carna whom many lovers pursued, but all in vain.

'A young man would declare words of love to her,

And her immediate reply would be:

''This place has too much light and the light causes shame.

Lead me to a secluded cave, I'll come''.

He naively goes ahead; she stops in bushes

And lurks, and can never be detected.

Janus had seen her. Clutched by desire at the sight,

He deployed soft words against her hardness.

The nymph, as usual, demands a more remote cave,

Trails at her leader's heels and deserts him.

Fool ! Janus observes what happens behind his back

You fail; he sees your hideout behind him.

You fail, see, I told you: as you hide by that rock,

He grabs you in his arms and works his will.

'For lying with me,' he says, 'take control of the hinge;

Have this prize for your lost virginity'. [8]

Hinges are integral and often ornate components of many medieval Church doors (above). Its interesting to note in passing that the joints of fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees and ankles in human anatomy are hinge-like in their function, while the colloquial phrase 'to be unhinged' alludes to mental instability.

The primary attributes of Janus are hindsight, the ability to learn from past events and foresight, the ability to anticipate future events. These attributes may have contributed in no small measure towards the continuity of Roman civilization on both an individual and collective basis. The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (121 -180 CE) in his stoical Meditations (listed as once in Browne's library) gives Janus-like advice his reader-

'Look closely at the past and its changing Empires, and it is possible to foresee the things to come'. [9]

During the Renaissance the gods of the Classical world were radically reinterpreted and given attributes they never originally possessed. The humanist scholar and promoter of hermetic wisdom Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) reinterpreted Janus as a symbol of reintegration, declaring him to be 'for 'celestial souls -

'In ancient poetry these souls were signified by the double-headed Janus, because, being supplied like him with eyes in front and behind, they can at the same time see the spiritual things and provide for the material'.

Browne was a pioneering scholar of comparative religion, that is, the study of religious beliefs, their doctrines and symbols, alongside their spread and influence in the world. Assisting him in this study were the six modern languages he was fluent in, as well as Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Although at times misguided in his study, notably by the Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher (1602-80) whose books are well-represented in his library and to whom he somewhat slavishly believed, nonetheless his tolerance and broad-mindedness, paved the way for future scholars. As stated earlier, Janus is exclusively a Roman god without Greek equivalent. It was not until the eighteenth century that the British philologist Sir William James (1746-94) detected linguistic similarities between Sanskrit and Latin which indicated that Janus originated from the Indian elephant-headed god Ganesh. Its highly probable that Roman merchants who travelled to India for luxury goods such as saffron introduced and modified the Indian god to the Roman world.

Late in his life Browne wrote, though never published, an advisory for the benefit of his children. Christian Morals is Browne's last known written work. Published posthumously (1716) its an equal testimony to Religio Medici in his adherence to the Christian faith; nevertheless mention of alchemy and astrology along with Hermes Trismegistus can also be found within its pages. The name of Janus occurs no less than four times in Christian Morals, primarily in the guise as a moral figure advising the reader to learn from hindsight and to develop foresight in their life.

Browne firstly links the temple of Janus in ancient Rome whose doors were shut during peace-time and open during times of war to individual temperament. He cautions his reader to - 'keep the Temple of Janus shut by peaceable and quiet tempers' [10]

Next, he advises that when in doubt one should opt for virtue-

'In bivous theorems and Janus-faced doctrines let virtuous considerations state the determination.' [11]

The stoic moralist also instructs his grown-up children to-

'Let the mortifying Janus of Covarrubias be thy daily thoughts'' [12]

adding the explanatory footnote - 'Don Sebastian de Covarrubias writ 3 Centuries of moral emblems in Spanish. In the 88th of the second century he sets down two faces averse, and conjoined Janus-like, the one gallant beautiful face, the other a death's head face, with this motto out of Ovid's Metamorphosis Quid fuerim quid simque vide'. ('See what I was and what I am now').

Lastly, Browne juxtaposes Roman mythology to Biblical scripture in vivid imagery, declaring-

'What is prophetical in one age proves historical in another, and so must hold on unto the last of time; when there will be no room for prediction, when Janus shall lose one face, and the long beard of time shall look like those of David's servants, shorn away upon one side.' [13]

The Old Testament book of Samuel recounts that-

'Wherefore Hanun took David's servants, and shaved off the one half of their beards, and cut off their garments in the middle, even to their buttocks, and sent them away'. [14]

The Biblical figure of King David is now believed to have lived circa 1010–970 BCE. Its worthwhile remembering that the King James Bible (1611) with its soaring strophes, rhythmic cadences and striking parallelisms was the predominant influence upon Browne's spirituality. Freshly translated from Hebrew by a host of scholars, the text of the King James Bible was, in all probability, the first book which young Thomas learnt to read as a child, and subsequently a powerful influence upon his literary style as an adult.

Browne's own Janus-like ability to 'foresee' the future is testified in a memoir by the Reverend Whitefoot. The Heigham-based priest was a close friend of Browne's from the newly-qualified physician's arrival to Norwich in 1637 until 1682 when Browne upon his death-bed gave 'expressions of dearness' to his long-time friend. Reverend Whitefoot's memoir includes the character testimony-

'Tho' he were no prophet, nor son of a prophet, yet in that faculty which comes nearest it, he excelled, i.e. the stochastick, wherein he was seldom mistaken, as to future events, as well publick as private; but not apt to discover any presages or superstition'.

Even greater testimony to Browne's ability to prognosticate the future can be found in the miscellaneous tract known as 'A Prophecy concerning the future state of several nations'. Imitative of the opaque verse of Nostradamus, Browne's 'Prophecy' consists of a series of couplet verse 'predictions' several of which on America. In Browne's proper-name symbolism America is invariably equated with the new, exotic and unexplored, a good example occurring in Pseudodoxia Epidemica in which he describes his encyclopaedic endeavours as, 'oft-times fain to wander in the America and untravelled parts of Truth'. At least three 'predictions' in 'A prophecy concerning the future state of several nations' are remarkable -

* 'When Africa shall no more sell out their Blacks/ To make slaves and drudges to the American Tracts'.

* 'When America shall cease to send out its treasure/But employ it at home in American pleasure'.

* 'When the new world shall the old invade/Nor count them their lords but their fellows in trade'.

Browne's 'prophecy' concludes thus-

'Then think strange things are come to light/ Where but few have had a foresight'. [15]

In conclusion, Thomas Browne's life-long penchant for utilizing Janus as a symbol is illuminated by the psychologist Carl Gustav Jung who considered Janus to be -

'a perfect symbol of the human psyche, as it faces both the past and future. Anything psychic is Janus-faced: it looks both backwards and forwards. Because it is evolving it is also preparing for the future'. [16]

I've written before about the many ideas shared between Browne and Jung. Not only does one of the earliest recorded usages in modern English of the word 'archetype' occur in Browne's hermetic vision, The Garden of Cyrus but the archetype of 'the wise ruler' itself is sketched through highly original proper-name symbolism. King Cyrus, Moses, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Solon, Scipio, King Cheops, Hermes Trismegistus and Augustus are all cited in the discourse as exemplary of 'the wise ruler' archetype.

Nowadays the phrase 'two-faced' more often than not is used as a pejorative term, however, from his deep study of the Ancient world to his anticipation of 'future discoveries in Botanical Agriculture', there's a good case to be made for Thomas Browne to be lauded as the Janus-faced sage of Norwich. The learned physician-philosopher's assessment of our own increasingly uncertain times was one which was, 'not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred Years hence, when no Man can comfortably imagine what Face this World will carry'. [17] What is certain however is that centuries before C.G. Jung, the proto-psychology of Thomas Browne utilized Janus as symbolic of the human psyche. And just like the Roman god Janus, whose name is remembered in the month of January, we too continue to look back to the past and forward to the future in order to define our identity.

Notes

[1] Collected Works of C.G.Jung vol. 13 Alchemical Studies (1967) para. 199

[2] C. W 10:727

[3] Religio Medici Part 2: Section 8

[4] Ibid. Part 2 section 12

[5] Pseudodoxia Epidemica. Book 1 Chapter 5

[6] Urn-Burial Chapter 5

[7] The Garden of Cyrus Chapter 1 N.B. 'Flat' here means empty or boring.

[8] Ovid's Fasti 6 lines 100 - 128. Listed in Browne's library p. 16 A no. 15

[9] Marcus Aurelius Meditations 7:27 Listed in Browne's library p. 14 no. 68

[10] Christian Morals Part 2 : Section 12

[11] Ibid. Part 3 Section 3

[12] Ibid. Part 3 Section 10. Sebastián de Covarrubias (1539–1613) was a Spanish lexicographer, cryptographer and chaplain. An edition of his 'Emblems Morales de D. Sebast. de Cavarrubias' published in Madrid in 1610 is listed in the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue of Thomas Browne's library on page 42 under Libros Espannolos no. 4 (Quarto).

[13] Ibid Part 3 Section 13

[14] 2 Samuel 10:4 KJV

[15] Miscellaneous Tract no. 12

[16] Collected Works of C.G. Jung vol. 6. Psychological Types (1921) para. 717

[17] from 'A Letter to a Friend'.

Books consulted

* Sir Thomas Browne The Major Works Penguin 1977 edited with an Introduction by C.A. Patrides

* Thomas Browne Selected Writings OUP 2014 edited with an Introduction by Kevin Killeen

* Ovid Metamorphoses Penguin 1955 trans. with an Introduction by Mary M. Innes

* Ovid Fasti Penguin 2000

* Pagan Mysteries of the Renaissance - Edgar Wind 1958, revised edition OUP 1980

* A Facsimile of the 1711 Sales Auction Catalogue of Sir Thomas Browne and his son Edward's Libraries. With an introduction, notes and index by J.S. Finch pub. E.J. Brill: Leiden, 1986

* 1658 edition of Pseudodoxia Epidemica with Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus appended.