Magic Square of Numbers

Recently, while browsing in a charity shop, I found a small brass square with numbers inscribed upon it. After purchasing it and taking it home I discovered that the same total sum occurs, not only on vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines of the square, but also in each quadrant section and the central quincunx of  its squares; in each way, including all four corners, the resultant number of thirty-three is made. (Photo above).

Turns out I've stumbled upon a discarded souvenir from Barcelona, Spain, from the cathedral of Sagrada Familia to be precise. The latin words inscribed upon the reverse of, what is little more than an esoteric fridge-door magnet- TEMPLE EXPIATORI SAGRADA FAMILIA confirm the  probable origin of the brass magic square of numbers.

The unfinished cathedral in Barcelona was designed by Antoni Gaudi and later sculpted by Josep Maria Subirachs, when  he started work on the Sagrada Familia in 1987.

In squares of order 4 where the numbers run sequentially from 1-16 the magic constant (the sum of a single line, row or diagonal) is 34, however in Joseph Subirachs' square the numbers 12 or 16 are omitted while the numbers 10 and 14 are duplicated, making a magic constant of 33, a number associated with the age of Jesus Christ at the crucifixion.

A section of the text on the great doors at the west end of the Sagrada Família includes a magic square which was added by the Catalan sculptor. Every diagonal, row or line sum equals 33, symbolizing Christ's age at crucifixion.

Subrirach's magic square can also be found on the Passion facade of the Sagrada Familia.(above).

Another well-known example of a magic square of numbers occurs in the German artist Albrecht Dürer's Melencolia I.(above). In its background a magic number square can be seen in which the year of Durer's composition is inscribed in the bottom row, 15-14.

Number, along with colour, is among the deepest-rooted of all unconscious symbols. We are incapable of expressing consciously all the known associations of a symbol. Psychologically, just like each individual life, a symbol is alive and simultaneously consists of both a known and an unknown content. The colours, (not strictly colours) black and white for example, will forever hold positive and negative associations with virtue, vice, morality, emotion and mood. The colours of National flags and sports teams are often embedded deep within individual psyche's; just as the colour pink is invariably culturally embedded in gender association; no matter how consciously resisted, number and colour hold deep unconscious associations.

The ancient Greek Pythagoras based much of his teachings upon number. Worshipped as a god for almost 1000 years, the mystical philosopher once declaring - 'All is arranged to number'. Pythagoras expressed his mystery religion through symbols such as the celestial 'harmony of the spheres', geometry and the tetraktys, a pyramid of dots structured upon the sum of 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10  the number by which the followers of Pythagoras swore allegiance to him.

Number symbolism occurs in many world cultures and religions, including the Old and New Testaments of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, from the first book of the Bible describing the four rivers flowing out from Eden in Genesis, to the naming of the beast 666 in the 27th and last book of the New Testament, the book of Revelation. The numbers 7, 12 and 40  - frequently encountered in the Old Testament, retain spiritual significance to believers.

It's due to a Christian perspective in western culture that the number 13 is considered unlucky and why some high-storey buildings such as hotels omit the floor number. The whole conflict and religious schism between Protestantism and Catholicism can be expressed as a conflict between the numbers 3 and 4, the number three being favoured by Protestantism as representing the Trinity, while the number 4 is closely associated with the addition of the sacred feminine of the Virgin Mary and the symbolism of the tetramorph, the four figures of the evangelists of the New Testament in Christian iconography.

In the twentieth century the Swiss psychologist C.G.Jung based his psychology on their being four distinct functions or entities of psychic activity. He also liked quoting the opening words of Plato's influential philosophical dialogue the Timaeus as an example of Plato's awareness of a conflict existing between the numbers 3 and 4. C.G. Jung considered it highly significant that both Plato, and in the modern era, the German polymath Johann Goethe, were aware of this conflict-

'One, to, three -  but, my dear Timaeus, of those who yesterday were the banqueters where is the fourth ?

C.G.Jung also interpreted the numbers 4 and 5 as representing a dilemma between nature and culture, stating-

'There is thus a dilemma between four and five. Five is the number assigned to the 'natural' man, in so far as he consists of a trunk with five appendages. Four on the other hand, signifies a conscious totality. It describes the ideal 'spiritual' man and formulates him as a totality in contrast to the pentad, which describes the corporeal man....The dilemma of four and five corresponds to the conflict between “culture” and “nature”.  [1]

The number ten is prominent in the Judaic tradition of the ten commandments of Moses and in the ten entities or Sephiroth of the kabbalah of Judaism. It is also the number the hermetic philosopher Sir Thomas Browne consciously evokes in the totality of chapters in his literary diptych  Urn-Burial and The Garden of Cyrus.  Browne confidently declared in Religio Medici (1643) - I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras and the secret magic of numbers  and Pythagorean numerology plays no small role in his last published work, The Garden of Cyrus (1658). Like the known half of a symbol conjoining the hidden half of a symbol, Browne's The Garden of Cyrus is dense in associative symbolism as its artificer playfully provides evidence of the number five, including its geometric form, the Quincunx pattern, is archetypal in nature and art-design; its presence as an archetype is also discerned in the spiritual mysteries of Christianity, the kabbalah and astrology.

Browne concludes his speculations upon the significance of the number five in the Bible in The Garden of Cyrus thus-

whether this number be oftner applied unto bad things and ends, then good in holy Scripture, and why? He may meet with abstrusities of no ready resolution.

We can be fairly confident that Browne was knowledgeable on mystical numerology;  In  a chapter of his encyclopaedic endeavour Pseudodoxia Epidemica  entitled  'Of the great Climacteric year, that is, Sixty three'  he discusses the influence of numbers thus -

Thus is it not improbable it hath also fared with number, which though wonderful in itself, and sufficiently magnifiable from its demonstrable affections, hath yet received adjections from the multiplying conceits of men, and stands laden with additions, which its equity will not admit. 
   
For first,  not only the number of 7 and 9 from considerations abstruse, have been extolled by most, but all or most of the other digits have been as mystically applauded. For the number of One and Three have not been only admitted by the Heathens, but from adorable grounds, the unity of God, and mystery of the Trinity admired by many Christians. The number of four stands much admired, not only in the quaternity of the Elements, which are the principles of bodies, but in the letters of the Name of God, which in the Greek, Arabian, Persian, Hebrew, and Egyptian, consisteth of that number; and was so venerable among the Pythagoreans that they swore by the number four.That of six hath found many leaves in its favour; not only for the days of the Creation, but its natural consideration, as being a perfect number, and the first that is completed by its parts; that is, the sixth, the half, and the third, 1. 2. 3. Which drawn into a sum, make six. The number of Ten hath been as highly extolled, as containing even, odd, long, plain, quadrate and cubical numbers; and Aristotle observed with admiration, that Barbarians as well as Greeks, did use numeration unto Ten, which being so general, was not to be judged casual, but to have a foundation in nature. So that not only 7 and 9, but all the rest have had their Eulogies .. [2]

A casual perusal of the 1711 Sales Catalogue of Sir Thomas Browne's library reveals the 17th century physician-philosopher possessed a commentary on Pythagoras and books by the ancient Greek mathematicians Euclid and Archimedes.  Janus-like, he also kept abreast of the latest discoveries of modern-rational deductive mathematics as advanced by his contemporaries. The British mathematician William Oughtred (the inventor of the slide-rule who is also credited with introducing the symbol X into mathematics) along with contemporary mathematicians Seth Ward and Henry Briggs are represented in Browne's library. [3]

It's worth remembering that no small proportion of the scientific thinking developed in the 17th century scientific revolution by men such as Galileo, Kepler and  Robert Hooke, Boyle and Newton in Britain, were scientists who promoted new ideas on nature, maths and physics and whose ideas formed the backbone of the Industrial Revolution, often held a deep interest in esoteric disciplines.

The scientific revolution, in Britain in particular, as Dame Frances Yates amply demonstrated, was the product of a hybrid of scientific thinking which evolved as much from the study of esoteric sources such as Pythagorean numerology as the methodology of rational, deductive science. In fact, many embryonic scientific discoveries were incubated in the womb of pre-Christian, pagan sources, especially from the ideas of Pythagoras and Plato, along with a host of esoteric traditions, notably from the triumvirate of alchemy, astrology and the cabbala, all of which utilized sacred numerology in one form or another. 

Esoteric symbolism continues to live in modern architectural wonders such as the cathedral Sagrada Familia at Barcelona in Spain, and in mundane and trivial souvenirs for tourists.

Nave roof of the Sagrada Familia, Barcelona

Notes
[1] C.G.Jung C.W.  9 i  680
[2] P.E. Book 4 chapter 12

[3]  Pages 28 - 29 - 30 of the 1711 Sales Catalogue lists 98 books under the generic term, Libri Mathematici includes books on astronomy, astrology and geometry along with mathematics, such as  -

Archimedes - Opera   page 28  no.2
Henry Briggs - Arithemetica Logarithmica London 1644   page 28  no. 15
Thomas Fincke - Geometria Rotundi  Basle 1583  page 29 no.11
Seth Ward - Idea Trigonomeriae  Oxford 1654  page 29 no.12

Thomas Digges  -Alae seu Scalae Mathematicae  London 1573 p. 29 no. 51

William Oughtred - Clavis Mathematica  London 1648   page 30 no. 13

Article on  Magic square numbers

Beauty and the Beast

First performed in its current production in Leeds, December 2011, and now on tour throughout the UK this October and November, Northern Ballet's Beauty and the Beast, choreographed by artistic director David Nixon.

In the course of the performance at Theatre Royale, Norwich, there was a giant hologram, full stage projections, on stage explosions, a judicious use of strobe lighting and bungee cords, seven different stage settings and seventeen scene changes in total. No mean achievement for a company which is currently suffering the effects of a draconian  25% funding cut.  

Artistic director David Nixon became interested in choreography when at the National Ballet School of Canada while still a dancer. His interest became more serious when he took over his first company, stating-

'I discovered that my work was pivotal in developing dancers’ potential and that I had an ability to tell stories through dance'. 

David Nixon has been artistic director of Northern Ballet since 2001. He's created new versions of Madame Butterfly, Swan Lake, A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Peter Pan and The Three Musketeers. A highlight of his choreographic career is his innovative Dracula (1999). He received an OBE in the 2010 New Year Honours for his services to Ballet and his latest work, Cleopatra, was given it's world premiere in  Leeds in February 2011. 

The skeletal framework of Nixon's stylish interpretation of the archetypal story of the opposites, of outer beauty and inner moral worth, is the music of several French romantic composers. Setting the atmosphere firmly in the world of the daimonic and fairy-tale, the ballet opened with the Northern Ballet Sinfonia's lively rendering of Saint-Saen's Danse Macabre. 

Highlights of the evening included a tender pas de deux by the principal dancer's (Martha Leebolt and Giuliano Contadini) to the music of Debussy's Clair de Lune and a dream sequence pas de trois, in which Beauty and the Prince dance a rapturous love duet while the Beast despairingly gambols around them in torment. It was also nice to hear a zestful extract from Glazunov's The Seasons, a sprightly invitation to the dance matched by a riot of colour in costume change. 

Interspersed throughout the romantic fantasy there was humour, in particular from Beauty's two vain shopaholic sisters and most amusingly from the Beast's ape-like servants. The  prop link between a hand-held white rose and a giant-scale white rose in which Beauty slept as a guest of the Beast (photo above) was neat too.

Personally, I felt the last movement of Debussy's La Mer seemed a little too powerful and out of synch emotionally with the ballet's narrative, however, the love-story was well-served returning to the music of the composer opening the ballet; the celebrated pomp and grandeur of the final movement of Saint-Saens Organ Symphony was highly effective accompaniment to the climax and apotheosis of the fairy-tale ballet. The company of dancers received rapturous applause from an appreciative audience which seemed to enjoy the acrobatic talents of the Beast slightly more than Beauty's charms, for he received the louder applause at the curtain-call.

The story of Beauty and the Beast has inspired various artists since it's first recorded appearance in the 18th century. Earlier last century, the French multi-genre artist Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) made a film based upon what is, in essence, an utterly French tale of love, beauty and deception, La Bete et La Belle (1946). The American composer Philip Glass in turn, wrote an opera in 1994 based on Cocteau's film, which, closely following each scene, is effectively a new soundtrack for Cocteau's masterpiece.  

First performed in 1997, it's beginning to look as if Beauty and the Beast is establishing itself firmly in the ballet repertoire. I certainly hope so as David Nixon's stunning interpretation deserves preserving in the ephemeral world of modern dance.

Links - Northern Ballet

The Lovesick Man

Saturnine blues, this time in the form of an early work by the German artist George Grosz's The Lovesick Man (circa 1916),  a painting which reflects dominant themes in Grosz's art - human nature and individual weaknesses, themes which have lost little relevance today.

George Grosz (1893-1959) was born in Berlin and grew up during the prelude to World War I (1914-1818).  In protest against the nationalist fervour and rabid anti-British sentiment vocalized on Berlin’s streets in the build-up to war, Grosz and fellow artist Jon Herzefelde (1891-1968) provocatively changed their names to an Anglicized form of spelling and pronunciation. Incidentally, there's a stylistic affinity between the pioneering photo-montage developed by John Herzefelde for political propaganda, one or two examples of which I've discussed before and the surreal humour of Terry Gilliam (b. 1940) the creator of cut-out, animated montages which were an integral part of the British TV series Monty Python's flying Circus (1969-71). 

In his tense and unsettling portrait of a lovesick young man, George Grosz alludes to the Ursprung tragic hero of German romanticism, Werther, a character created by Johann Goethe in his Der Leidenschaft der Junge Werther (1774) known in English as The Sorrows of Young Werther. 

In Goethe's phenomenally popular novella of the day, the sensitive and romantic hero Werther is unable to come to terms with the fact that his sweetheart has married another and that his love can never be consummated. He borrows a pair of pistols, and after writing a confessional letter and drinking a bottle of port, shoots himself. Goethe’s semi-autobiographical tale of unrequited love was accused of  encouraging copycat acts throughout Germany, and of making a cult of suicide, accusations which the author strongly denied. 

It's been suggested that the spate of suicides which occurred in Germany following the publication of Goethe's Werther were in fact the result of an increased awareness of educated individuals of the inflexibility of bureaucratic institutions in Germany; this extreme frustration with the deeply-rooted conservatism of German society, effectively prevented the possibility of following  in France's revolutionary path.

Although differing in artistic objective Grosz's symbolism in The Lovesick Man differs little from that of the medieval tradition of Vanitas motifs. In Grosz's early painting not only can a near palpable red heart be seen, but also a revolver in the breast-pocket of the sitter. The empty room with a vacated table and chairs heightens the solitary sitter's loneliness. On his table there's the indulgences of a pipe and cigarettes along with a bottle, probably of alcohol. There's also paper and a pen on his table, suggestive that a confessional, or urgent communication is to be made. The anchor tattooed on his head hints of sinking or wallowing in unloved despair. The bones in the bottom right corner and fish bones symbolically allude to death. In the far background beside a blood-red sickle moon, the rib-cage of a skeleton can be seen. The theme of dissipation and death is developed further with a plant at the top corner which lacks either leaves or flowers. The gun placed next to the sitter's visible heart has strong symbolic associations, hinting that either suicide or a crime of passion is about to be committed.  

Wrapped up in self-absorbed gloom Grosz's anti-romantic hero is capable of senseless acts. The message of Grosz's Marxist morality art- lesson seems to be - self-centred individuals who care only for their own happiness condemn themselves to a solitary madness; they do so at the expense of the well-being of society in general.

George Grosz witnessed the return of the defeated nation's troops to civilian life, the near breakdown of moral order and the subsequent violent conflict between the extreme left and right-wing in street fighting in post-war Berlin. The trauma of hyper-inflation added fuel to the social problems of crime, prostitution, drugs and the black market, endemic on Berlin's streets following World War I.

In January 1919 he was arrested but escaped imprisonment by producing fake identification documents which he'd forged himself. He joined the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in the same year; however, unlike the Russian communist revolution of 1917, the German communist revolution of 1919 failed, due to various factors too complex to discuss here, not least, the assassination of Communist party leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg in January 1919.

In 1921 Grosz was accused of insulting the army and fined 300 German Marks. The court also ordered his satire on German society Gott mit uns (God with us) to be destroyed. Although Grosz left the KPD in 1922 he subsequently spent five months in Russia, meeting Lenin and Trotsky.

By 1924 economic and social stability in the newly established Weimar Republic allowed the opportunity for the creation of radical new art - Fritz Lang's film Metropolis (1927), Hermann Hesse’s novel of crisis and re-integration of identity, Steppenwolf (1927) the new music of Jazz and Kurt Weill spring to mind. The decadent, pleasure-loving years of the Weimar era and the rise of fascism are also the setting of Christopher Isherwood’s autobiographical novel Goodbye to Berlin (1939) which was later was adapted as the film Cabaret (1972).

By 1920 George Grosz had mastered his artistic powers to make powerful statements on the social instability and chaos of post-war Berlin. His art gives a glimpse into a society sharply polarized between rich and poor, and of a Berlin resembling a Dante-like inferno where individuals of varying degrees of power and corruption enact Berlin's social maelstrom on the streets of the metropolis.

Grosz's low opinion of humanity is epitomised in the title of his 1946 autobiography A little Yes and a big No which he wrote once a naturalized American citizen. In a salutary lesson of how serious economic and social upheaval can affect the qualities of empathy with others and encourage selfish behaviour, the embryonic origins of fascism no less, he describes Berlin after World War I- 

"Everywhere, hymns of hatred were struck up. Everyone was hated: the Jews, the capitalists, the Junkers, the Communists, the army, the property owners, the workers, the unemployed, the black Reichwehr, the control commissions, the politicians, the department stores, and the Jews again. It was an orgy of incitement, and the republic itself was a weak thing, scarcely perceptible. … It was a completely negative world, topped with colourful froth that many imagined to be true, happy Germany before the onset of the new barbarism."  

Tragically, although in 1954 Grosz was elected to the American Academy of Arts he continued to be home-sick and returned to Berlin, where he died in 1959 in an alcohol-related accident.

Wiki-Link - George Grosz

Osvaldo Golijov

Earlier this year I was introduced, courtesy of a friend, to the music of Osvaldo Golijov (b. 1960). The music of Golijov, who was born and grew up in Argentinia of East European and Judaic descent, draws upon a wide spectrum including experimental and electronic, Jazz and Pop, Klezmer music, the Tango and the folk traditions of World music. In addition to these varied musical influences Golijov has been well-qualified to absorbing world-wide music languages in his career. He moved from Argentina to Israel in 1983 to study music at the Rubin Academy at Jerusalem. In 1986  he relocated to America where he has taught music at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts since 1991.  

The music-making of the Latin-American world, the city of Jerusalem and medieval Spain are of special inspirational value to Golijov. Each of these locations were once seminal places at the crossroads of overlapping cultures, where Christian, Muslim and Jew once peacefully co-existed.

I was probably in a highly-charged emotional state last winter anyway when first hearing the electrifying incantation by singer Dawn Upshaw which opens Ayre (2004). Golijov's song-cycle was influenced by a creative urge to create a companion work to Luciano Berio’s Folk Songs (1964) which draws upon traditional melodies from America, Armenia, Sicily, Genoa, Sardinia, the Auvergne and Azerbaijan. Golijov’s song cycle is no less eclectic and diverse than Berio's. It features the music of southern Spain and the intermingling of Christian, Arab and Jewish cultures with texts from the Sephardic, Arabic, Hebrew and Sardinian languages.

The influence of Berio’s folk-song cycle is most evident in the gentle and traditional Sephardic song which follows the incandescent opening. The next song Tancas serradas a muru in stark contrast is defiant and aggressive, near punk and urban rap-like in style, comes as a complete shock to those who imagine the performing persona of classically-trained singer Dawn Upshaw to be confined to the demure. Her reciting of Be a string, water, to my guitar a calm, reflective, unaccompanied poem is insightful, while the song Yah , annah emtza’cha, aurally and vividly depicts the era of medieval Spain in which Muslim, Jewish and Christian cultures once lived harmoniously. Golijov explains why Medieval Spain and the era of peaceful inter-relationship of religious faiths is close to his heart when commenting upon his song-cycle-

'With a little bend, a melody goes from Jewish to Arab to Christian. How connected these cultures are and how terrible it is when they don’t understand each. The grief that we are living in the world today has already happened for centuries but somehow harmony was possible between these civilizations’

The song-cycle Ayre is one of several Golijov compositions written specifically with the qualities and interpretative insight of the mezzo-soprano Dawn Upshaw and her gorgeous singing voice in mind. The subject of the strengths and weaknesses of composers writing with specific voices in mind may well re-surface in musical discussion next year when the centenary of the British composer Benjamin Britten (b.Lowestoft 1913) occurs. Britten wrote many song-cycles and opera parts specifically with the voice of his longtime partner the tenor Peter Pear in mind. Whether or not vocal works written for one specific voice in performance and interpretation can be completely replicated by another, remains an open question. 

Dawn Upshaw’s recording of the song-cycle Ayre concludes evoking Greek mythology with the tale of Ariadne in the labyrinth, a tense, mysterious and coiling musical theme which highlights the instrumental playing of the chamber ensemble, the Andalucian Dogs, as it slowly fades into silence.  Golijov’s final song in the cycle perfectly highlights the cross-fertilization of  musical cultures within the Mediterranean basin far better than words ever can. Golijov himself spoke of the creative motivation of composing his song-cycle-

The idea is to create a forest and for Dawn to walk in it. There is no real sense of ‘form’ –in the sense of Beethovian development – but rather lots of detours and discoveries’.

The title alone of the opera Ainadamar (Arabic: Fountain of Tears) appealed to me as the next work by Golijov work worth hearing. The opera’s title alludes to an ancient well near Granada in Spain where the poet Federico Garcia Lorca was murdered by Spanish Fascists in August 1936. First performed at the Tanglewood Festival in August 2003 Ainadamar is primarily based upon traditional Spanish music, in particular the Flamenco style.  Once more the hypnotic voice of Dawn Upshaw is featured, this time performing as Margarita Xirgu,  a Catalan tragedian and Lorca's lover and muse, who collaborated with him on several of his plays. Without wanting to post spoilers there's a very startling moment in Golijov's opera about Garcia Lorca’s murder. In recent times the terror and trauma of the Spanish civil war is the backdrop for film-director Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006) a harrowing account of an episode in the Spanish civil war interlinked with a fantasy world of magical realism.

Kepler and Sir Thomas Browne

There are a surprising number of hitherto undetected connections between the German mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) to the English physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682).

Kepler’s life, like Browne’s, spanned a watershed in scientific thought. Kepler not only advocated  rational inductive science and the astronomical discoveries of Galileo but also augmented his scientific enquiries with Neoplatonic and Pythagorean ideas. Kepler’s astronomical discoveries were as much structured upon precise mathematical calculation as deeply held theological beliefs and God-given revelation; his scientific perspective, not unlike Browne’s own scientific perspective a full half century later, were an admixture of Christian awe of the Creation, precise mathematical analysis and Platonic and Pythagorean concepts of the ancient Greek world.

Listed as once in Sir Thomas Browne’s library is an edition of Kepler’s first published book, Mysterium Cosmographicum (Prague 1596) [1]. Kepler's ‘Mysteries of the Cosmos’ is the direct result of a vision the young mathematician experienced in which he believed God’s geometrical plan of the universe had been revealed to him. In his mystical revelation Kepler discovered the geometric solids as first described by Plato, the tetrahedron (4 sided) cube (6 sided) octahedron (8 sided) dodecahedron (12 sided) and icosahedron (20 sided) could each be uniquely represented by spherical orbs; each solid nesting within and encased in a sphere, would in total produce six layers, corresponding to the six known planets—Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. By ordering the Platonic solids in their correct numerical sequence Kepler also discovered  that the spheres could be placed at intervals which corresponded to his own calculations of the relative size of each planet’s path, as each planet circled the Sun.

                                                    

Kepler’s great patron was the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II (1552 -1612). During his long reign Rudolph II gathered at his relocated court at Prague, some of the most remarkable figures in the world of art and science. He was a generous patron to artists of the Mannerist school such as Archimboldo, Bartholomeus Spranger and Adrian de Vries, and to the astronomers Kepler and Tycho Brahe. Indeed, Rudolph II's pairing of the observational genius of the Dane Tycho Brahe to the mathematical gifts of Kepler has been considered his major contribution towards the advancement of astronomy.

Kepler’s residence at the court of the Holy Roman emperor from 1600 to 1612 resulted in his naming and dedicating his major work of scientific notation of planetary motion, the Rudulphine Tables, to Emperor Rudolph. Other visitors to the court of the melancholic, alchemy-loving Emperor and connoisseur of the arts include the Elizabethan mathematician and major figure of esotericism, John Dee (1527 -1608)  and the poet Elizabeth Jane Weston.  

The division between astrology and astronomy in Kepler’s day was quite blurred and not as sharply delineated as nowadays. Throughout his life Kepler supplemented his income by regularly publishing calendars which predicted future events from astrology. For the year 1595 he prophesied a particularly cold winter, an attack by the Turks from the south and a peasant uprising: all of which occurred.

Norwich 1912 Floods

The summer of 2012 in England has been a bit of a wash-out, not just the wettest ever April to June since records began in 1910,  but in fact the wettest summer for over one hundred years.  However, no  matter how dismal this summer's been, no loss of life has occurred from the weather, unlike events in Norwich a century ago. 

After 7 inches of rain fell over several days in late August 1912, the river Wensum which flows through the City finally burst its banks, resulting in floods radiating over a 40 mile area. It's estimated that the rain fell at the rate of one inch of water an hour and in total four people lost their lives. Those who remained in their homes had food and other supplies delivered to them by boat or horse and cart. The city's rail-links to the outside world were  temporarily blocked by flood-water, fallen trees and debris.

On August 31, Henry John Copeman, Lord Mayor of Norwich at the time, wrote to all the nation's leading newspapers - “Following a rainfall unprecedented in the records of the Meteorological Office, whole streets in the low-lying part of the city have been flooded, houses rendered desolate, the furniture and bedding destroyed, and their occupants homeless and resourceless".

But as ever, such a disaster united people and brought out the best in them. Members of the Royal Family donated £300 and the King and Queen of Norway gave £21, but the biggest donation came from the local industrial entrepreneur J. J Colman who donated £1,000,  an enormous amount of money a century ago. The total amount of money given to the people of Norwich came to £24,579 14s 7d. A report outlining how every penny was spent was duly published.

Nowadays we tend to attribute natural disasters to climate change, but in fact natural disasters, in particular flooding in this region, have occurred throughout history. The worst case being the 1953 North Sea floods, which, due to a fatal combination of winds, atmospheric pressure and high tides, affected not only East Anglia, but also Scotland and Holland, resulting in the loss of over 80 lives on the North-West Norfolk coast alone. The 1953 floods claimed over 2,500 lives, the low-lying Netherlands being by far the worst affected nation. 

Wiki-Link - 1953 floods

Mermaid

The seductive figure of the mermaid has a fascinating place in world art and literature. 

An early western literary account of the mermaid legend occurs in a medieval Romance which tells of Melusine, a fairy of extraordinary beauty who sometimes changes into a serpent. A popular fifteenth century Romance recounted the tale of Melusine, a fairy who promises to marry Raimondin of Lusignan and make him a rich king if he agrees to marry but never to look at her on a Saturday evening. They marry and Raimondin grows wealthy, while Melusine with her magic builds him a castle. Raimondin however, is also consumed with jealousy, suspecting his wife of unfaithfulness. One Saturday evening he gouges a spy-hole through a wall to watch Melusine when she retires to her room. While she is bathing he sees that his wife has become half woman, half serpent. Melusine, distressed at being seen transformed flies away with frightful screams. Associated through marriage with the Lusignan family, Melusine appears over the centuries on the towers of their castle, wailing mournfully every time  a disaster or death in the family is imminent. 

In the utterly charming novel The Wandering Unicorn (1965) by the Argentinian author Manuel Mujica Lainez (1910-64) the legend of Melusine is developed further. Set in medieval France and the holy Land of the Crusades, Lainez’s novel is a rich serving of fantasy and romance. Narrated from the perspective of the shape-changing Melusine, the early events of the original legend are soon recounted before she embarks upon an adventure and unrequited love-affair with Aiol, the son of Ozil, a crusader knight who bequeaths a Unicorn’s lance to his son. Together the young knight Aiol and Melusine travel across Europe to eventually arrive in war-torn Jerusalem of the Crusades. The reader is drawn into Lainez’s neglected gem of magical realism with growing empathy towards Melusine as she recollects her adventures and love of Aiol, only to experience the full emotional impact of the tragic and sad ending of the love-affair between a mortal and an immortal.

18th century Melusine with the four Elements

The Renaissance alchemist-physician Paracelsus (1493-1541) also fell under the potent spell of the mermaid Melusine. It’s worth remembering that Paracelsus, above all others, was the foremost alchemist who influenced the psychologist C.G. Jung. Both men were physicians of Swiss-German nationality as well as radical protestant theologians. In the darkest year of World War II, 1942 C.G. Jung delivered a conference paper on the Swiss physician at Zurich for the quatercentenary anniversary of Paracelsus's death in 1542, which analysed the symbolism of the mermaid, stating in his essay Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon -

Melusine comes into the same category as the nymphs and sirens who dwell in the watery realms. In his De Pygmaeis Paracelsus informs us that Melusina was originally a nymph who was seduced by Beelzebub into practising witchcraft. She was descended from the whale in whose belly the prophet Jonah beheld great mysteries. This derivation is very important: the birthplace of Melusina is the womb of mysteries, obviously what we today would call the unconscious. Melusines have no genitals, a fact that characterizes them as paradisiacal beings, since Adam and Eve in paradise had no genitals either……Adam and Eve “fell for” the serpent and became “monstrous”, that is, that they acquired genitals. But the Melusines remained in the paradisal state as water creatures and went on living in the human blood. Since blood is a primitive symbol for the soul, Melusina can be interpreted as a spirit, or some kind of psychic phenomenon. Gerard Dorn confirms this in his commentary on De Vita longa , where he says that Melusina is a “vision appearing in the mind.” For anyone familiar with the subliminal processes of psychic transformation, Melusina is clearly an anima figure. She appears as a variant of the mercurial serpent, which was sometimes represented in the form of a snake-woman by way of expressing the monstrous, double nature of Mercurius.[1]

C.G. Jung defined the alchemists of the medieval and Renaissance era as none other than embryonic psychologists who recognized the very real existence of the psyche but lacked a terminology to describe the psyche’s workings. According to Jung-

Paracelsus seems to have known nothing of any psychological premises. He attributes the appearance and transformation of Melusina to the effect of the “intervening” Scaiolae, the driving spiritual forces emanating from the homo maximus.[2]

The four Scaiolae or spiritual powers of the mind of Paracelsian alchemy have a distinct affinity to C.G. Jung’s preciser four nominated functions of the psyche, namely, thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. Jung defined the Paracelsian Scaiolae and their relationship to Melusina thus-

Since the Scaiolae are psychic functions….as functions of consciousness, and particularly as imaginato, speculation, phantasia and fides, they “intervene” and stimulate Melusina, the water-nixie, to change herself into human form….Now this figure is certainly not an allegorical chimera or a mere metaphor: she has her particular psychic reality in the sense that she is a glamorous apparition who, by her very nature, is on one side a psychic vision but also, on account of the psyche’s capacity for imaginative realization is a distinct objective entity, like a dream which temporarily becomes reality. The figure of Melusina is eminently suited to this purpose. The anima belongs to those borderline phenomena which chiefly occur in special psychic situations. [3] 

In this context the anima figure's role in the individuation process is of great significance. Paracelsus apprehended this fact when identifying the 'difficult' nature of Melusine in her relationship to the Scaiolae of the homo maximus or  the greater man within.

Illustration by Charles Robinson 1937

J. Jacobi in a glossary to selected works by Paracelsus, defines Melusina as -

A legendary, magic being, whose name Paracelsus also uses to designate an arcarnum. He conceives of it as a psychic force whose seat is a watery part of the blood, or as a kind of anima vegetativa (vegetative soul.)

In a fine example of how male fantasy invariably  either under-values or over-values the anima figure (although often considered of a helpful, guiding nature there's also malevolent aspects of the femme fatale in the mermaid) and how Christian misogyny conspired to condemn the mermaid as symbolic of sinful sensuality, the Paracelsian scholar and lexiconographer, Martin Ruland in his Dictionary of Alchemy (1612) asserted -

Mermaids were Kings' daughters in France, snatched away by Satan because they were hopelessly sinful, and transformed into spectres horrible to behold...They are thought to exist with a rational soul, but a merely brute-like body, of a visionary kind, nourished by the elements and, like them, destined to pass away at the last day unless they contract a marriage with a man. Then the man himself may, perish by a natural death, while they live naturally by this nuptial union.

Invariably portrayed as solitary and beautiful with long-flowing hair, not easy to become acquainted  with, changeable in mood and elusive, often fleeing from human presence when approached, with an ability to inhabit an alien element, namely water, the mermaid represents the archetype of the anima in Jungian psychology. The anima is born from unconscious contents associated with, and projected onto ‘the other’  which in the male psyche is the female sex, gender being the greatest divide of nature which includes human nature. 

C.G.Jung considered fish to be perfect symbols of the contents of the unconscious psyche and the element of water itself as a symbol of the unknown and therefore also of the unconscious psyche. In essence the mermaid is a composite symbol of alluring virgin attached to an alien and repellent fish-form. From this tension of opposites, half seductress, half fish, C.G.Jung recognised the mermaid as another symbol connected to the shape-shifting deity associated with reconciling the opposites in alchemy, Mercurius.

During the romantic era of the nineteenth century  the mermaid became an object of sentimentality. Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy-tale The Little Mermaid (1837) inspired Carl Jacobsen, son of the founder of the Carlsberg brewery who had been entranced by a ballet he'd seen based upon Anderson’s fairytale at Copenhagen's Royal Theatre. In 1913 Jacobsen commissioned a bronze sculpture of a mermaid by Edward Ericksen which was placed in the entrance to Copenhagen harbour. Ericksen’s sculpture, though often sadly frequently vandalized, has become emblematic of the city of Copenhagen. The capital city of Warsaw in Poland has had a mermaid as part of its heraldic coat-of-arms since the 14th century.

Fascination with the slippery and wet fantasy of the mermaid became increasingly eroticized in paintings of the late romantic era. In British artist Frederic Leighton’s The Fisherman and the Siren (top picture) for example, the sheer unashamed erotic content of the mermaid is celebrated as in many other late 19th century paintings in which the mermaid is an object of  male fantasy and elusive desire.

The mermaid could not possibly slip away into the sea of obscurity and escape from the sharp-eyed scrutiny of the 17th century British scholar of comparative religion Sir Thomas Browne. In his encyclopaedia Pseudodoxia Epidemica, he noted of the mermaid's resemblance in the ancient world to the winged siren, and to Dagon, an ancient Assyro-Babylonian fertility fish-god, noting-

Few eyes have escaped the Picture of Mermaids; that is, according to Horace his Monster, with woman’s head above, and fishy extremity below: and these are conceived to answer the shape of the ancient Syrens that attempted upon Ulysses. Which notwithstanding were of another description, containing no fishy composure, but made up of Man and Bird; ........

And therefore these pieces so common among us, do rather derive their original, or are indeed the very descriptions of Dagon; which was made with human figure above, and fishy shape below; whose stump, or as Tremellius and our margin renders it, whose fishy part only remained, when the hands and upper part fell before the Ark. Of the shape of Atergates, or Derceto with the Phœniceans; in whose fishy and feminine mixture, as some conceive, were implyed the Moon and the Sea, or the Deity of the waters; and therefore, in their sacrifices, they made oblations of fishes. From whence were probably occasioned the pictures of Nereides and Tritons among the Grecians, and such as we read in Macrobius, to have been placed on the top of the Temple of Saturn. [4]

Japanese hentai anime of the anima figure of the Mermaid.  

Notes

[1]  C.G.Jung  Collected Works vol. 13. 180 

[2]  Vol. 13:220

[3]  Vol. 13:216-217

[4]  Pseudodoxia Epidemica book 5 chapter 19

Wiki-Links - Mermaid 

Posted for Emily Josephine Jackman on her birthday with love.

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