The Culture Enthusiast

Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Books 9:56 AM

If you asked me to recommend a book of poetry, I’d recommend Sonnets from thePortuguese. Many times, poetry can be unintelligible and difficult to tackle – Sonnets from the Portuguese is neither.

They are written in a direct way which makes them easy to understand. They are about love, which is relatable.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote these poems to her husband, the also poet, Robert Browning. The title has a double explanation. Elizabeth was dark complexioned so her husband used to call her “my Portuguese”. It is also a reference to the 16^th century Portuguese poet Camoens and his love Catherine.

You can read the poems as a documentation of her relationship with Robert Browning, but we can’t forget that they are poems written by a poet to another poet. So there’s a lot of richness in them also.

The first poem is to me one of the most interesting and sets the tone for the whole series. She is old and had been sick and bed-ridden for many years. While contemplating her "sweet, sad years", a mystic Shape pulls her by the hair and asks: "'Guess now who holds thee?' - 'Death,' I said. But, there,/ The silver answer rang, - 'Not Death, but Love.'"

Isn't it interesting how she presents love as a source of rejuvenation and life?

I said the other day Elizabeth was my new hero. Unlike so many writers who tend to focus on the negative in their lives, she brings her "melancholy years" to light only as a comparison to the happiness Robert Browning brought her.

The poems show both Robert and herself were an active part in her happiness. Her life was saved not only because of him, but because she loved him back. Imagine how easy it would be for a sick 40-year-old woman to simply dismiss him because he is a handsome 6 year-younger poet and her father didn’t approve of the marriage.

While reading the poems I was amazed at how she could be both physically fragile and interiorly strong.

When Elizabeth gave her husband the sonnets he said it was the best thing after Shakespeare’s sonnets. Robert was a poet himself so, if that compliment is not love I don’t know what is.

What do you think of the Brownings' story?

Image via The Omniscient Mussel

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Cool facts about the Parthenon

Art 9:16 AM

The Parthenon is a temple inside the Acropolis in Athens, Greece, dedicated to the goddess Athena. It is considered the most important surviving building of Classical Greece. I've recently finished reading about it in an art book and was fascinated by these facts:

1) Pericles built the temple with the funds provided by Athen's allies to build a new fleet to fight the Persians. The allies and many Athenians weren't so hot on the idea of prioritizing art over security. Plus, a lot of people just didn't like the style of the work. Because of these disputes, Pericles fell from power and Pheidias (the artist who was supervising the project) had to flee into exile.

2) Plutarch, talking about the decorative sculptures 500 years later said: "They were created in a short time for all time. Each, immediately it was done, assumed the dignified air of antiquity, and now that they are old, they seem fresh, as though done only yesterday. They have about them the bloom of eternal youth, so that time cannot age them, they are replete with life that fades not, and a spirit which never grows old."

3) The building was already transformed into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary and into an Islamic mosque. The Greeks used it as a treasury.

4) A lot of the sculptures that decorated the Parthenon were saved from destruction by Lord Elgin. In the 19th century he bought a great number of them from the occupying Ottoman Empire. They are now in the British Museum.

5) Since the 1980's the Greek government has been trying to get the Parthenon's sculptures back to Athens. The British Museum doesn't seem willing to return them and claims they offer the sculptures free of charge for the whole world to see and that many are available for study online. You can read more about it here.

The British Museum made an interesting video about Parthenon sculptures which I couldn't embed... It's a very good way to see them closely.

What do you think about the Parthenon and its sculptures?

Images via 1, 2, 3.

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Inkheart

Movies 5:59 PM

For the love of Thomas Hardy

They say script writers should always assume their audiences are twelve year old. That's awful but at least it wouldn't pose too much of a problem for kid movies, right?

It actually does. There are not a lot of intelligent kid movies out there. I know a lot of people love Shrek, for example, but I just don’t get it. Is a five year old supposed to get a reference to The Matrix?

I like real kid movies, the type that can entertain and stimulate bright kids.

One of them is Inkheart.

This movie isn't so popular and I wonder if it's because the movie has serious flaws or if people are not that into innocent adventures anymore.

The story is just so promising: Mo (the always pleasing Brendan Fraser) is a silver tongue, he has the ability to bring fictional characters to life when he reads books aloud. The catch is that every time a fictional character comes to our world, a real person enters the book, which is what happened to Mo’s wife, Resa.

The character that was brought from the book Inkheart, Dustfinger, is now after Mo: he wants to go back to his story. It sounds complicated, but it’s not really.

The movie is excellent because the story is very well thought of. Not only is it filled with adventure and excitement, but there are a couple of aspects that can really instruct children (and adults) without them even knowing it.

The villain and his gang all wear black, carry guns and walk around marching. In case that analogy isn't clear enough, they also burn books.

I remember that the book in which this movie was based there's a quote that says "Where people burn books, they’ll soon burn people”.

Moreover, there’s the symbolism of the writer of Inkheart - the story within the story – Fenoglio. Dustfinger is afraid to know his creator, the writer, whereas Fenoglio loves Dustfinger and wants to stay close to him.

When they first meet, Dustfinger, acting just like a rebelled creature, says “You are not my god”. It's like what Saint Augustine said: "the question that torments mankind the most is how God can have foreknowledge of everything in the future and yet we do not sin by necessity but by our own free will."

Inkheart, regardless of being a kid’s movie, is my type of movie. It cater for younger audiences with its “Middle Earth” fantastical atmosphere and... Brendan Fraser.

But it has more. it deals with issues that are difficult to bring up even in serious adult movies such as Nazism and the relationship between man and God. I really like this movie, perhaps because I am a book person, but mostly because it doesn’t assume I'm dumb.

Have you seen Inkheart ot read the books?

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Top 10 Books and Authors I'm Thankful for

lists 9:41 AM

Yesterday's Broke and Bookish Top Tuesday's meme is more than appropriate: Top 10 Authors and Books I'm Thankful for.

While compiling this list it occurred to me: wouldn't it be nice to meet these authors one day and thank them in person? But for now, here's my virtual thanks:

5 Books I'm thankful for:

1) Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
I begin with one of my childhood favorites. This was not the first book I've ever read and it saddens me to say I actually don't remember what was the first book I read, but there's something special about books you read as a child. Part of the appeal they had to you at a younger age lingers on when you grow up. This in particular played a key role in my taste for books, which is why it's so important to give children great books to read.

2) Poetics by Aristotle

"It's a book you finish in 20 minutes and then you spend the rest of your life thinking about it". That's what my Classics professor said when he assigned this book. He was right: I read it in my first semester and was using it to write papers on my last semester. The most useful book I've ever bought during college (I didn't actually buy this book because I was lucky to live in a house which already contained a copy of this book (something else to be extremelly thankful for)) . Many people are sorry for the fact that the part on comedies was lost, but I prefer to take the glass half full approach (who cares about comedies anyway, right?

3) Life of Christ by Perez de Urbel
There are many, many religious books I'm thankful for, the most obvious of them being the Bible. I love the idea of fishermen writing the most profound and inspiring books of all times. Isn't it beautiful to imagine an angel helping them write the Gospels?

But there's one book in particular I'm thankful for: Life of Christ. In the beginning of this year I went on a retreat and parts of this book were read to us. I get back home and look for this book in used book stores, because there are no new editions of this book. I actually found only one copy online. I looked for the bookstore's address and it's in my neighborhood! If that's not Divine Providence I don't know what is. This book retells Christ's life story based on the Gospels but in a much more detailed "novel-like" way.

4) How to live a life on 24 hours a day by Arnold Bennett

I've talked about how much I love this book and it is one of those books I actually don't have a lot of memories connected to it, because I read it by myself, not for college, no one recommended it to me. I didn't even buy the book. It was a time I was really into audio books and I saw that on Librivox and just listened to it. His idea using the time you commute to reflect on what you read really changed my commuting routine. I didn't feel like I was wasting my time in traffic anymore which decreased a great deal of stress. At one point I was even writing down topics to think about when I was in the bus.

5) I dare you by Willian H. Danforth

Another book that is very similar to the one above. Written in 1938, I dare you is a relatively unknown book that came to me almost by accident. I was at an antique shop browsing the books section. A small red cover called my attention. Like many old books, it had nothing written in the back and no book jackets. I had no choice but to actually read the first pages and once I did I had to buy the book. It dared me to! It is a very motivational book, so you have to actually put it into practice, but I still like it very much.

5 authors I'm thankful for:

6) Jane Austen

How could I forget my little Janie? I'd punch Mark Twain for you, Jane. But she probably wouldn't want that and frankly, who am I kidding?, neither would I. She's one of my favorite writers ever, the one who gave me full access to a delightful world I'll never know in real life. Every single novel of hers gave me immense joy (except, of course, Persuasion, but let's not go there).

7) Oriana Fallaci
For those unfamiliar with Oriana Fallaci, she was a journalist and non fiction author who in the past years wrote adamantly against the rise of Islamic terrorism. Needless to say, that attracted a lot of criticism and even personal attacks against her. I imagine it must have been very difficult to write the books she did and to face criticism everywhere. When you read her book you can understand very subtly how she is trying to convince people of an imminent danger. She reminds me of the tragic heroin, Cassandra. She died rather young (cancer) a couple of years ago.

8) Shakespeare
I feel like every list I write has Shakespeare in it. There's not one book of his that didn't blow my mind (Ok, there's Twelfth Night, but I like to think that's the exception that proves the rule). His books are timeless. The ones you can always talk about, because people have read it (at least in high school) and if they didn't they have seen the movie. I have this goal of reading a lot of his plays and once I'm finished I'll keep re-reading them forever. I can't find this quote anywhere, so maybe I'm hallucinating, but Virginia Woolf once said you can see a person's growth on the notes he makes on Shakespeare's books. I couldn't agree more (that is if she actually said that).

9) Reinaldo Arenas

Like Oriana, Arenas had a very difficult life. He was a Cuban poet who suffered political persecution from the Cuban government and spent many years in prison. While there, he continued to write and because of it was punished and even threatened with death. After being released from prison he managed to flee to the United States when Fidel Castro allowed Cubans to leave the island. Years later he was diagnosed with AIDS and in 1990 he committed suicide. When asked why he wrote he answered: "Revenge".

10) Elizabeth Barrett Browning
In a nutshell, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is my new personal hero. I'll talk more about it next week, when I discuss Sonnets from the Portuguese.

What books and authors are you thankful for?

Images via Tea, Coffee and Books except #2 which is a detail from the painting Saint Matthew and the angel by Caravaggio

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The Calumny of Appelles by Botticelli

Analysis 9:28 AM

The Calumny of Appelles by Botticelli

(click on the image to enlarge)

A little bit of history

Date: 1494

Located in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

In Ancient Greece, there was a famous painter called Apelles. You might never heard of him because none of his paintings or even copies of his paintings survived. Apparently, before he died he was working on a painting called "Calumny" which is the first known exercise in allegory.

You see, Apelles had a rival, the artist Antiphilos, who was spreading rumours about Apelles being involved in an anti-Ptolemy plot. This episode, which almost cost Apelles his life, was the basis for his allegorical painting.

In Apelles' painting, we would see Calumny, Jealousy, Treachery, Deception, Ignorance and Suspicion personified - all of them convincing a fool who is more than ready to listen to their rumors. Behind them we'd see Repentance in tears appealing to Truth.

Sixteen centuries later, Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli created his own version of this painting, following the accounts of Apelle's work.

A little bit of technique

There's a great sense of drama in the painting. The characters are all portrayed in a very realistic manner and with subtle details which help identify their allegorical meaning.

The "bad judge", for example, has donkey ears. He believes whatever Suspicion and Ignorance are whispering to him.

The torch that Calumny is holding doesn't illuminate - a symbol of false knowledge.

Treachery and Deception are doing Calumny's hair. Why would anybody be fixing a person's hair in the middle of a trial? Because Treachery and Deception make Calumny's lies more attractive and seductive. That way the man will easily believe them.

A little bit of enthusiasm

I got to say, I am a sucker for allegories. Unlike e. e. cummings, I love words in capital letters - Love! Truth! Calumny! Deception! you get the idea...

What makes Botticelli's work so unique is how he was able to unite Classical Antiquity with the Christian culture.

His source material is from Ancient Greece, but what about the man with his hands closed together in prayer? Not to mention the rags he wears and the way he positions his feet as if he were about to be crucified. I doubt a Greek would portray a man who's being dragged with feet like that!

So, there's the Classical, the Christian and... us. We boast about living in the so called "Information Age". Are we?

Sometimes I wonder how much of what we hear in the news is really true. That's why I can help but identifying with the man with the donkey ears.

The painting offers, then, two comforts. One, that we are not alone, the Greeks have been there, Calumny has always existed. We are all more or less subject to Hamlet's curse: "Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny".

The other is that, despite what many people say, Truth does exist. Botticelli even gives us a clue of where to find it: his personified Truth is pointing at it.

What do you think about Botticelli's allegory?

Image via Wikipaintings (I suggest zooming to check out the details)

Source: Art by Paul Johnson pps. 70-71

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