Experience the Mystical Music of Hildegard Von Bingen: The First Known Composer in History (1098 – 1179)

in History, Music, Religion | June 15th, 2018

The Ger­man abbess, vision­ary, mys­tic poet, com­pos­er, and heal­er Hilde­gard von Bin­gen “has become a sym­bol to dis­parate groups,” writes Bri­an Wise at WQXR, includ­ing “fem­i­nists and the­olo­gians, musi­col­o­gists and new-age med­i­cine prac­ti­tion­ers. Her chants have been set to tech­no rhythms; her writ­ings on nutri­tion have yield­ed count­less cook­books (even though she nev­er left behind a sin­gle recipe.)” She did leave behind an astound­ing body of work that has made her improb­a­bly pop­u­lar for a 12th cen­tu­ry nun, with a live­ly pres­ence on Face­book and her own Twit­ter account, @MysticHildy (“very into tech­nol­o­gy, love to trav­el”).

Her fame rests not only on the beau­ty of her work, but on her extra­or­di­nary life sto­ry and the fact that she is the first com­pos­er to whose work we can put a name. She was born in 1098 in Berm­er­sheim, the tenth child of a noble fam­i­ly. It being the cus­tom then to ded­i­cate a tenth child (a “tithe”) to the church, Hilde­gard was sent to the Monastery of Saint Dis­i­bo­den­berg to become a Bene­dic­tine nun under the tute­lage of Jut­ta, a high­ly-respect­ed anchoress.

“After Jutta’s death,” notes Ford­ham University’s source­book, “when Hilde­gard was 38 years of age, she was elect­ed the head of the bud­ding con­vent liv­ing with­in cramped walls of the anchor­age.”

Through­out her life, Hilde­gard had expe­ri­enced visions, begin­ning at the age of 3. (Oliv­er Sacks attrib­uted these to migraines). At age 42, she had a pow­er­ful expe­ri­ence that rad­i­cal­ly changed her life. She described this moment in her writ­ings:

And it came to pass … when I was 42 years and 7 months old, that the heav­ens were opened and a blind­ing light of excep­tion­al bril­liance flowed through my entire brain. And so it kin­dled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burn­ing but warm­ing… and sud­den­ly I under­stood of the mean­ing of expo­si­tions of the books…

Over­whelmed, and fear­ful of writ­ing down her visions “because of doubt and a low opin­ion of myself and because of diverse say­ings of men,” she nonethe­less found encour­age­ment from lead­ers in the church to write and cir­cu­late her the­o­log­i­cal work: “With papal impri­matur, Hilde­gard was able to fin­ish her first vision­ary work Scivias (“Know the Ways of the Lord”) and her fame began to spread through Ger­many.” Soon after, she relo­cat­ed her con­vent to Bin­gen, and began an incred­i­bly pro­duc­tive peri­od in the last few decades of her life.

All told, she turned out an “extra­or­di­nary array of cre­ative trea­sures,” writes Wise: a dra­ma in verse, “more than 70 musi­cal works, med­ical texts filled with 2,000 reme­dies, writ­ings pre­sent­ing fem­i­nine arche­types for the divine.” Although she held to ortho­dox doc­trine, oppos­ing the Cathars, for exam­ple, and oth­er “schis­mat­ics,” she was a mys­tic whose ideas far exceed­ed the cramped the­o­log­i­cal con­fines of so many male coun­ter­parts. “Hildegard’s visions caused her to see humans as ‘liv­ing sparks’ of God’s love, com­ing from God as day­light comes from the sun,” writes Fr. Don Miller. “This uni­ty was not appar­ent to many of her con­tem­po­raries.”

Her tran­scen­dent sight did not blind her to the diverse beau­ty of the nat­ur­al world. “She not only had faith,” says Ger­man direc­tor and actress Mar­garethe Von Trot­ta, who made a 2010 biopic about Hilde­gard, “but she was so curi­ous. Today, per­haps she would have been a sci­en­tist because she did so much research on heal­ing peo­ple, on plants and ani­mals.” Hildegard’s tal­ent, intel­lect, and force­ful per­son­al­i­ty made her a for­mi­da­ble per­son, “the only known female fig­ure of her time,” writes Music Acad­e­my Online, “who achieved such intel­lec­tu­al stature and whose con­tri­bu­tions have had last­ing impact.” The revived inter­est in her music coin­cid­ed with “the ‘new age’ chant craze in the mid-1990s,” but Hildegard’s work dif­fers marked­ly from medieval chant writ­ten for male voic­es.

Vary­ing from “high­ly syl­lab­ic to dra­mat­ic melis­mas (swirling melodies on a sin­gle open syl­la­ble,” Melanie Spiller explains, “her music is quite dis­tinc­tive and eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able, with unsu­al ele­ments for the time, includ­ing exceed­ing an octave by a fourth or fifth, and large and fre­quent leaps.” Her music also func­tioned as “a vehi­cle for her own mys­ti­cal expe­ri­ence,” and it con­tin­ues to move listeners—of faith and no faith—who hear in her song cel­e­bra­tions of the divine­ly fem­i­nine and the won­ders of the nat­ur­al world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

A YouTube Chan­nel Com­plete­ly Devot­ed to Medieval Sacred Music: Hear Gre­go­ri­an Chant, Byzan­tine Chant & More

Mashup Weaves Togeth­er 57 Famous Clas­si­cal Pieces by 33 Com­posers: From Bach to Wag­n­er

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Enter a Digitized Collection of 38,000 Pamphlets & Periodicals From the French Revolution

in History | June 13th, 2018

“What oth­er solu­tion but rev­o­lu­tion?” asks Jon­ah Wal­ters of the con­di­tions for most of the pop­u­la­tion in late-18th cen­tu­ry France. The major­i­ty lived in abject pover­ty; “the eco­nom­ic sub­ju­ga­tion in the coun­try­side was pro­found.” The urban workers—or sans-culottes—fared lit­tle bet­ter. “The cler­gy and nobil­i­ty,” on the oth­er hand, “com­pris­ing about 1.6 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, were doing just fine—most nobles lived in extreme opu­lence.” This out­line sketch­es the barest con­text for the resent­ment that fueled the vio­lence of the French Rev­o­lu­tion and the thou­sands of exe­cu­tions even­tu­al­ly car­ried out by the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Tri­bunal.

Lawyer and ora­tor Georges Dan­ton, who had argued force­ful­ly for the killing of Louis XVI, pro­posed the Tri­bunal, in fact, as a means of stem­ming ter­ror. “I shall go so far as to say,” he declared, “that if a tri­bunal had been in exis­tence” in the years between 1789 and 1793, “the peo­ple, who have been so often and so cru­el­ly rebuked for the actions of these days, would not have cov­ered them with blood.” He advo­cat­ed that the tri­bunal “be ter­ri­ble in order that the peo­ple may be spared the neces­si­ty of being ter­ri­ble.” The fol­low­ing year, Dan­ton him­self was behead­ed, accused of lenien­cy and self-indul­gence.

Like his con­tem­po­raries Robe­spierre and Marat, Danton’s sto­ry illus­trates the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies’ elo­quent ide­al­ism and their com­mit­ment to the exe­cu­tion of roy­al­ists, coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, and thou­sands of accused crim­i­nals as a means of remak­ing the nation and ful­ly destroy­ing the Ancien Régime. Kingston University’s Marisa Lin­ton sums up the polit­i­cal cri­sis:

The French went almost overnight from being an absolute monar­chy to a polit­i­cal sys­tem in which the will of the peo­ple replaced that of the king. In the absence of tra­di­tions of par­lia­men­tary rule, the French fell back on uni­ver­sal­ist abstract prin­ci­ples and Enlight­en­ment rhetoric which were to prove increas­ing­ly divi­sive and leave no space for legit­i­mate oppo­si­tion. In this cli­mate, all polit­i­cal rivals had the poten­tial to be denounced as con­spir­a­tors against pop­u­lar sov­er­eign­ty.

As in the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion a few years ear­li­er, these debates took place in pub­lic via speech­es, peri­od­i­cals, and pam­phlets, which were print­ed by the tens of thou­sands. Chicago’s New­ber­ry Library French Rev­o­lu­tion Col­lec­tion hous­es on the Inter­net Archive “more than 30,000” such pam­phlets and “more than 23,000 issues of 180 peri­od­i­cals pub­lished between 1780 and 1810…. The col­lec­tion rep­re­sents the opin­ions of all the fac­tions that opposed and defend­ed the monar­chy dur­ing the tur­bu­lent peri­od between 1789 and 1799 and also con­tains innu­mer­able ephemer­al pub­li­ca­tions of the ear­ly Repub­lic.”

Much of the impres­sive New­ber­ry col­lec­tion, “among the most com­pre­hen­sive in the world,” has been dig­i­tized and made freely avail­able via the French Rev­o­lu­tion Pam­phlets Dig­i­tal Ini­tia­tive. Addi­tion­al­ly, the New­ber­ry has an open project for trans­lat­ing these pam­phlets into Eng­lish “in order to broad­en access, aid class­room instruc­tion, and sup­port schol­ar­ship.” The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the mate­ri­als are, of course, in French, but some few are also in Latin and oth­er lan­guages.

The pam­phlet at the top is one of sev­er­al trans­lat­ed by the stu­dents of DePaul Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sor Pas­cale-Anne Brault. This doc­u­ment announces the ver­dict of the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Court against Jean-Bap­tiste Car­ri­er, a for­mer deputy of the Nation­al Con­ven­tion who stood accused of hor­rif­ic atroc­i­ties in the com­mis­sion of his duties, includ­ing “drown­ing men, women, chil­dren” and “assas­si­nat­ing a large num­ber of peo­ple and burn­ing towns, where men and women had their throats cut and girls were raped.” The judg­ment claims that “Nero was less blood­thirsty” than Car­ri­er and his accom­plices.

Fur­ther up, we see the first page of a pam­phlet writ­ten by René Louis Delagueulle, a mem­ber of the Nation­al Con­ven­tion, detail­ing plans for “a Repub­li­can Edu­ca­tion of the Peo­ple.” Delagueulle begins his pro­pos­al with a set of jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, among them the need for full employ­ment. “This mea­sure equal­ly oblig­es all cit­i­zens to learn,” he writes, “at a set age, an art, a trade or a pro­fes­sion capa­ble of procur­ing them the means of sub­sis­tence. We have decreed equal­i­ty: we wish it not to be an emp­ty name, that it remain illu­so­ry & with­out real­i­ty; for in a demo­c­ra­t­ic & pop­u­lar Repub­lic, the law of equal­i­ty is the only law that can bring about com­mon hap­pi­ness.”

Just above, see a pam­phlet titled “The Dec­la­ra­tion of the Rights of Women,” penned in 1792 by an anony­mous col­lec­tive of female French cit­i­zens writ­ing under the pseu­do­nym Phi­laletes (Greek for “lover of truth”). The pam­phlet con­sists of sev­en­teen arti­cles enu­mer­at­ing the rights of free speech for French women. “Women are born, live, and die with the right to speak,” states the first arti­cle. “They are equal in their ambi­tion in this regard.” The doc­u­ment ends with a “Ded­i­ca­tion Epis­tle to Female Cit­i­zens,” which begins, “for too long the Assem­blée Nationale has made you wait for the dec­la­ra­tion of your rights; it is essen­tial and urgent that they be pro­claimed.”

These fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ments rep­re­sent just a tiny sam­pling of the thou­sands of pam­phlets avail­able, though most of them remain to be trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. You can vol­un­teer to help with the trans­la­tion ini­tia­tive here. And enter the enor­mous archive of near­ly 40,000 pam­phlets, orga­nized by year, sub­ject, cre­ator, col­lec­tion, and lan­guage, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

14,000 Free Images from the French Rev­o­lu­tion Now Avail­able Online

Explore 5,300 Rare Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized by the Vat­i­can: From The Ili­ad & Aeneid, to Japan­ese & Aztec Illus­tra­tions

3,500 Occult Man­u­scripts Will Be Dig­i­tized & Made Freely Avail­able Online, Thanks to Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Optical Scanning Technology Lets Researchers Recover Lost Indigenous Languages from Old Wax Cylinder Recordings

in History, Science, Technology | June 12th, 2018

In an 1878 North Amer­i­can Review descrip­tion of his new inven­tion, the phono­graph, which tran­scribed sound on wax-cov­ered met­al cylin­ders, Thomas Edi­son sug­gest­ed a num­ber of pos­si­ble uses: “Let­ter writ­ing and all kinds of dic­ta­tion with­out the aid of a stenog­ra­ph­er,” “Phono­graph­ic books” for the blind, “the teach­ing of elo­cu­tion,” and, of course, “Repro­duc­tion of music.” He did not, vision­ary though he was, con­ceive of one extra­or­di­nary use to which wax cylin­ders might be put—the recov­ery or recon­struc­tion of extinct and endan­gered indige­nous lan­guages and cul­tures in Cal­i­for­nia.

And yet, 140 years after Edison’s inven­tion, this may be the most cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant use of the wax cylin­der to date. “Among the thou­sands of wax cylin­ders” at UC Berkeley’s Phoebe A. Hearst Muse­um of Anthro­pol­o­gy, writes Hyperallergic’s Alli­son Meier, “are songs and spo­ken-word record­ings in 78 indige­nous lan­guages of Cal­i­for­nia. Some of these lan­guages, record­ed between 1900 and 1938, no longer have liv­ing speak­ers.”

Such is the case with Yahi, a lan­guage spo­ken by a man called “Ishi,” who was sup­pos­ed­ly the last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of his cul­ture when anthro­pol­o­gist Alfred Kroe­ber met him in 1911. Kroe­ber record­ed near­ly 6 hours of Ishi’s speech on 148 wax cylin­ders, many of which are now bad­ly degrad­ed.

“The exist­ing ver­sions” of these arti­facts “sound ter­ri­ble,” says Berke­ley lin­guist Andrew Gar­rett in the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion video at the top, but through dig­i­tal recon­struc­tion much of this rare audio can be restored. Gar­rett describes the project—supported joint­ly by the NSF and NEH—as a “dig­i­tal repa­tri­a­tion of cul­tur­al her­itage.” Using an opti­cal scan­ning tech­nique, sci­en­tists can recov­er data from these frag­ile mate­ri­als with­out fur­ther dam­ag­ing them. You can see audio preser­va­tion­ist Carl Haber describe the advanced meth­ods above.

The project rep­re­sents a sci­en­tif­ic break­through and also a stark reminder of the geno­cide and humil­i­a­tion of indige­nous peo­ple in the Amer­i­can west. When he was found, “starv­ing, dis­ori­ent­ed and sep­a­rat­ed from his tribe,” writes Jes­si­ca Jimenez at The Dai­ly Cal­i­forn­ian, Ishi was “believed to be the last Yahi man in exis­tence because of the Three Knolls Mas­sacre in 1866, in which the entire Yahi tribe was thought to have been slaugh­tered.” (Accord­ing to anoth­er Berke­ley schol­ar his sto­ry may be more com­pli­cat­ed.) He was “put on dis­play at the muse­um, where out­siders could watch him make arrows and describe aspects of Yahi cul­ture.” He nev­er revealed his name (“Ishi” means “man”) and died of tuber­cu­lo­sis in 1916.

The wax cylin­ders will allow schol­ars to recov­er oth­er lan­guages, sto­ries, and songs from peo­ples destroyed or dec­i­mat­ed by the 19th cen­tu­ry “Indi­an Wars.” Between 1900 and 1940, Kroe­ber and his col­leagues record­ed “Native Cal­i­for­ni­ans from many regions and cul­tures,” the Berke­ley project page explains, “speak­ing and singing; recit­ing his­to­ries, nar­ra­tives and prayers, list­ing names for places and objects among many oth­er things, all in a wide vari­ety of lan­guages. Many of the lan­guages record­ed on the cylin­ders have trans­formed, fall­en out of use, or are no longer spo­ken at all, mak­ing this col­lec­tion a unique and invalu­able resource for lin­guists and con­tem­po­rary com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers hop­ing to learn about or revi­tal­ize lan­guages, or retrieve impor­tant piece of cul­tur­al her­itage.”

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 10,000 of the First Record­ings of Music Ever Made, Cour­tesy of the UCSB Cylin­der Audio Archive

Inter­ac­tive Map Shows the Seizure of Over 1.5 Bil­lion Acres of Native Amer­i­can Land Between 1776 and 1887

1,000+ Haunt­ing & Beau­ti­ful Pho­tos of Native Amer­i­can Peo­ples, Shot by the Ethno­g­ra­ph­er Edward S. Cur­tis (Cir­ca 1905)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Ancient Astronomy of Stonehenge Decoded

in Architecture, Astronomy, History | June 11th, 2018

The sum­mer sol­stice draws nigh, and many of us will spend it bemoan­ing the fact that we have yet again failed to make it to Stone­henge to view the sun ris­ing over its mas­sive Heel Stone.

Don’t beat your­self up too bad­ly.

Accord­ing to Vox’s Senior Edi­to­r­i­al Pro­duc­er Joss Fong, above, it’s like­ly that the win­ter sol­stice was actu­al­ly a far big­ger deal to the Neolith­ic builders who engi­neered the site.

While much of it is now in ruins, arche­ol­o­gists, his­to­ri­ans, astronomers, and oth­er experts have been able to recon­struct what the ancient mon­u­ment would have looked like in its hey­day. The place­ment of the mas­sive stones in care­ful­ly arranged con­cen­tric cir­cles sug­gest that its feats of astron­o­my were no acci­dent.

As Fong points out, the builders would not have known that the earth trav­els around the sun, nor that it tilts on its ver­ti­cal axis, thus effect­ing where the sun’s rays will strike through­out the year.

They would, how­ev­er, have had good cause to mon­i­tor any nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na as it relat­ed to their agri­cul­tur­al prac­tices.

The sum­mer sol­stice would have come at the height of their grow­ing sea­son, but if this year’s sun­rise cel­e­brants spin 180 degrees, they will be fac­ing in the same direc­tion as those ancient builders would have when they arrived to cel­e­brate the win­ter sol­stice with a sun­set feast.

These days, the win­ter sol­stice attracts a siz­able num­ber of tourists, along with neo-druids, neo-pagans, and Wic­cans.

Bun­dle up and join them, take a vir­tu­al tour, or at the very least, try your hand at assem­bling the nifty Aedes-Ars Stone­henge Mod­el Kit Fong glues togeth­er like a pro.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Artist Vis­its Stone­henge in 1573 and Paints a Charm­ing Water­col­or Paint­ing of the Ancient Ruins

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

Lis­ten to the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her solo show Nurse!, in which one of Shakespeare’s best loved female char­ac­ters hits the lec­ture cir­cuit to set the record straight opens June 12 at The Tank in New York City. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Chilling and Surreal Propaganda Posters from the NSA Are Now Declassified and Put Online

in History, Politics | June 6th, 2018

“Omg wow this is rly cool and unique like I nev­er knew the gov­ermnet was wac­thing me.”

So wrote an anony­mous inter­net com­menter on a Wash­ing­ton Post arti­cle about NSA mobile phone track­ing, jok­ing, or just emerg­ing from a bunker some­where off the grid. Every­one knows the gov­ern­ment is watch­ing or might be. Or at least we should since the infa­mous 2013 rev­e­la­tions about the mas­sive scope of NSA domes­tic sur­veil­lance. Reports of domes­tic spy­ing first appeared in 2005. In 2009, Alex Kings­bury at U.S. News and World Report described the Agency as “one of the most secre­tive fief­doms inside the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment… prob­a­bly famil­iar to most peo­ple only as the guys who may or may not be lis­ten­ing to your phone calls and read­ing your E‑mails as they sur­veil ter­ror­ists.”

As is often the case when gov­ern­ment over­reach, abuse, or cor­rup­tion become pub­lic knowl­edge, the ques­tion is not whether most Amer­i­cans know, but whether they care. An often-mis­used Ben Franklin quote pops up fre­quent­ly in argu­ments about a nec­es­sary bal­ance between “lib­er­ty” and “secu­ri­ty.” The lat­ter now seems to inevitably entail extra-con­sti­tu­tion­al spy­ing (as well as tor­ture, indef­i­nite deten­tion, police mil­i­ta­riza­tion and oth­er total­ly nor­mal gov­ern­ment oper­a­tions).

These days, as often as not, gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance takes place by proxy, by way of tech monop­o­lies like AT&T, Ama­zon, and Google (which the NSA helped cre­ate). Maybe, when it comes to the gov­ern­ment watch­ing, resis­tance is futile, as a species of out­er space cyborg total­i­tar­i­ans likes to say.

In any case, we might imag­ine that pub­lic debates about civ­il lib­er­ties and pri­va­cy are laugh­able to many a sea­soned intel­li­gence agent. A recent­ly declas­si­fied trove of pro­pa­gan­da posters aimed at NSA employ­ees, dat­ing from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, shows that in the mind of the Agency, there is no con­flict between lib­er­ty and secu­ri­ty. With­out secu­ri­ty (or total secre­cy), many of these posters sug­gest, all free­dom is lost. They do so in some “super freaky” ways, to quote Jason Kot­tke, look­ing like “they were cooked up by Sal­vador Dali or the Dadaists. Or even Mad Mag­a­zine.”

Some of the posters, espe­cial­ly those from the Cold War, look pret­ty chill­ing in hind­sight, with their theo­crat­ic over­tones and anti-Com­mu­nist apoc­a­lyp­ti­cism. Agency employ­ees were to under­stand that not only might they risk their jobs and clear­ances if they hap­pened to spill clas­si­fied info, but that every­thing they held dear—Christmas, prayer, fish­ing, free­dom of the press—might be destroyed. The posters get pro­gres­sive­ly groovi­er as things thawed between the super­pow­ers, and they stop allud­ing to spe­cif­ic ene­mies and threats to Chris­t­ian piety. Still, there’s some­thing a lit­tle creepy about an intel­li­gence agency co-opt­ing the Mona Lisa and Sat­ur­day Night Fever.

The agency was offi­cial­ly cre­at­ed in 1952 to mon­i­tor for­eign elec­tron­ic sig­nals, which at the time meant radio and tele­phone traf­fic. The com­par­a­tive­ly bronze-age tech­nol­o­gy avail­able in the decades these posters were print­ed makes them seem all the more quaint, with their ref­er­ences to care­less­ly dis­card­ed doc­u­ments and get­ting too chat­ty in the car pool. Is the gov­ern­ment still war­rant­less­ly spy­ing on Amer­i­cans? There may have been sev­er­al recent “inad­ver­tent com­pli­ance laps­es,” the NSA admits, but sure­ly a secret court and trust­wor­thy Con­gress will keep every­one hon­est.

See many more of these bizarre posters here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Han­nah Arendt Explains How Pro­pa­gan­da Uses Lies to Erode All Truth & Moral­i­ty: Insights from The Ori­gins of Total­i­tar­i­an­ism

“Glo­ry to the Con­querors of the Uni­verse!”: Pro­pa­gan­da Posters from the Sovi­et Space Race (1958–1963)

When Sovi­et Artists Turned Tex­tiles (Scarves, Table­cloths & Cur­tains) into Beau­ti­ful Pro­pa­gan­da in the 1920s & 1930s

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Ralph Steadman Creates an Unorthodox Illustrated Biography of Sigmund Freud, the Father of Psychoanalysis (1979)

in Art, Books, History, Psychology | June 6th, 2018

Sig­mund Freud died in 1939, and the near­ly eight decades since haven’t been kind to his psy­cho­an­a­lyt­i­cal the­o­ries, but in some sense he sur­vives. “For many years, even as writ­ers were dis­card­ing the more patent­ly absurd ele­ments of his the­o­ry — penis envy, or the death dri­ve — they con­tin­ued to pay homage to Freud’s unblink­ing insight into the human con­di­tion,” writes the New York­er’s Louis Menand. He claims that Freud thus evolved, “in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion, from a sci­en­tist into a kind of poet of the mind. And the thing about poets is that they can­not be refut­ed. No one asks of ‘Par­adise Lost’: But is it true? Freud and his con­cepts, now con­vert­ed into metaphors, joined the legion of the undead.”

The mas­ter of a legion of undead psy­cho­log­i­cal metaphors — who, in the ranks of liv­ing illus­tra­tors, could be more suit­ed to ren­der such a fig­ure than Ralph Stead­man? And how many of us know that he actu­al­ly did so in 1979, when he pro­duced an “art-biog­ra­phy” of the “Father of Psy­cho­analy­sis”?

Sig­mund Freud, which has spent long stretch­es out of print since its first pub­li­ca­tion, tells the sto­ry of Freud’s life, begin­ning with his child­hood in Aus­tria to his death, not long after his emi­gra­tion in flight from the Nazis, in Lon­don. It was there that he met Vir­ginia Woolf, who in her diary describes him as “a screwed up shrunk very old man: with a monkey’s light eyes, par­a­lyzed spas­mod­ic move­ments, inar­tic­u­late: but alert.”

There, again, Freud sounds like one of Stead­man’s draw­ings, some­times out­ward­ly unap­peal­ing but always pos­sessed of an unig­nor­able vital­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by a sol­id core of per­cep­tive­ness. Ear­li­er chap­ters of Freud’s life, char­ac­ter­ized by intel­lec­tu­al as well as phys­i­cal vig­or­ous­ness aid­ed by the 19th-cen­tu­ry “mir­a­cle drug” of cocaine, also give the illus­tra­tor rich mate­r­i­al to work with. One can’t help but think of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which forged a per­ma­nent cul­tur­al link between Stead­man’s art and Hunter S. Thomp­son’s prose. How “true” is the drug-fueled desert odyssey that book recounts? More so, per­haps, than many of Freud’s sup­pos­ed­ly sci­en­tif­ic dis­cov­er­ies. But as with the work of Freud, so with that of Thomp­son and Stead­man: we return to it not because we want the truth, exact­ly, but because we can’t turn away from the often grotesque ver­sions of our­selves it shows us.

You can pick up a copy of Stead­man’s illus­trat­ed Sig­mund Freud here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sig­mund Freud, Father of Psy­cho­analy­sis, Intro­duced in a Mon­ty Python-Style Ani­ma­tion

Sig­mund Freud’s Psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic Draw­ings Show How He First Visu­al­ized the Ego, Super­ego, Id & More

How a Young Sig­mund Freud Researched & Got Addict­ed to Cocaine, the New “Mir­a­cle Drug,” in 1894

Ralph Steadman’s Wild­ly Illus­trat­ed Biog­ra­phy of Leonar­do da Vin­ci (1983)

Gonzo Illus­tra­tor Ralph Stead­man Draws the Amer­i­can Pres­i­dents, from Nixon to Trump

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Winston Churchill’s List of Tips for Surviving a German Invasion: See the Never-Distributed Document (1940)

in History | June 5th, 2018

More than half a cen­tu­ry after his death, Win­ston Churchill con­tin­ues to draw both great admi­ra­tion and great fas­ci­na­tion. Inter­est in the wartime Prime Min­is­ter of the Unit­ed King­dom has even increased in recent years, as evi­denced last year by Joe Wright’s high­ly praised film Dark­est Hour. Star­ring Gary Old­man as Churchill, it tells the sto­ry of his assump­tion of the office in May 1940 and nav­i­ga­tion of the dire glob­al geopo­lit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion (includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to the Bat­tle of Dunkirk, also cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly recre­at­ed last year by Christo­pher Nolan) into which it imme­di­ate­ly plunged him.

“We get the great­est hits, out loud,” writes the New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane on Old­man’s per­for­mance in a piece on why actors love to play Churchill. “We get the blood and the sweat, barked to the House of Com­mons, and, need­less to say, we get the most cel­e­brat­ed speech of all, unleashed on June 4th, when the Prime Min­is­ter informed the world that Britain would fight the Ger­mans on the beach­es, in the streets, and wher­ev­er else they chose to intrude.”

Churchill could issue a com­pelling com­mu­niqué on the sub­ject not just in speech but in writ­ing, and he even pre­pared one for dis­tri­b­u­tion in the event of a Ger­man inva­sion. Its char­ac­ter­is­tic title: “Beat­ing the Invad­er.”

“If inva­sion comes, every­one – young or old, men and women – will be eager to play their part worthi­ly,” Churchill pro­claims in the leaflet, which you can read in full at Abe­Books. “If you are advised by the author­i­ties to leave the place where you live, it is your duty to go else­where when you are told to leave. When the attack begins, it will be too late to go; and, unless you receive def­i­nite instruc­tions to move, your duty then will be to stay where are. You will have to get into the safest place you can find, and stay there until the bat­tle is over. For all of you then the order and the duty will be: ‘STAND FIRM’.”

Churchill pro­vides more specifics of his expec­ta­tions in a Q&A sec­tion, address­ing such con­cerns as “What do I do if fight­ing breaks out in my neigh­bour­hood?”, “Is there any means by which I can tell that an order is a true order and not faked?” (“With a bit of com­mon sense you can tell if a sol­dier is real­ly British or only pre­tend­ing to be so”), and “Should I defend myself against the ene­my?” To that last he assures his read­er that “you have the right of every man and woman to do what you can to pro­tect your­self, your fam­i­ly and your home.” Thanks to those who gave their all to win the war, it nev­er came to that. And even now, though Britain faces no appar­ent dan­ger of immi­nent inva­sion, many still gov­ern their con­duct in the spir­it of Churchill’s “sec­ond great order and duty, name­ly, ‘CARRY ON’.”

If you want to pur­chase an orig­i­nal copy of the doc­u­ment, find some here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Oh My God! Win­ston Churchill Received the First Ever Let­ter Con­tain­ing “O.M.G.” (1917)

Ani­mat­ed: Win­ston Churchill’s Top 10 Say­ings About Fail­ure, Courage, Set­backs, Haters & Suc­cess

Win­ston Churchill Gets a Doctor’s Note to Drink “Unlim­it­ed” Alco­hol in Pro­hi­bi­tion Amer­i­ca (1932)

‘Keep Calm and Car­ry On’: The Sto­ry of the Icon­ic World War II Poster

The Moon Dis­as­ter That Wasn’t: Nixon’s Speech In Case Apol­lo 11 Failed to Return

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Mother of All Maps of the “Father of Waters”: Behold the 11-Foot Traveler’s Map of the Mississippi River (1866)

in History, Maps | June 4th, 2018

Image cour­tesy of the David Rum­sey Map Cen­ter

Every­body knows a fact or two about the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, even those who’ve nev­er set foot there. At the very least, they know the US is a big coun­try, but it’s one thing to know that and anoth­er to tru­ly under­stand the scale involved. Today we offer you an arti­fact from car­to­graph­ic his­to­ry that illus­trates it vivid­ly: a 19th-cen­tu­ry trav­el­er’s map of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er that, in order to dis­play the length of that mighty 2,320-mile water­way, extends to a full eleven feet. (Or, for those espe­cial­ly unfa­mil­iar with how things are in Amer­i­ca, dis­plays the river’s full 3,734-kilometer length at a full 3.35 meters.)

With a width of only three inch­es (or 7.62 cen­time­ters), the Rib­bon Map of the Father of Waters came on a spool the read­er could use to unroll it to the rel­e­vant sec­tion of the riv­er any­where between the Gulf of Mex­i­co and north­ern Min­neso­ta. First pub­lished in 1866, just a year after the end of the Civ­il War, the map “was mar­ket­ed toward tourists, who were flock­ing to the Mis­sis­sip­pi to see the sights and ride the steam­boats.” So writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Cara Giamo, who quotes art his­to­ri­an Nenette Luar­ca-Shoaf as describ­ing the riv­er as “a source of great awe. That kind of length, that kind of spa­cious­ness was incom­pre­hen­si­ble to a lot of folks who were com­ing from the East Coast.”

Luar­ca-Shoaf describes the map, an inven­tion of St. Louis entre­pre­neurs Myron Coloney and Sid­ney B. Fairchild, in more detail in an arti­cle of her own at Com­mon-Place. “The com­plete­ly unfurled map extends beyond the lim­its of the user’s reach, won­drous­ly embody­ing the scope of the riv­er in the time it took to unroll it and in the eleven feet of space it now occu­pies,” she writes. “At the same time, the care required to wind the strip back into Coloney and Fairchild’s patent­ed spool appa­ra­tus reit­er­ates the pre­car­i­ous­ness of human con­trol — either rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al or envi­ron­men­tal — over the mer­cu­r­ial Mis­sis­sip­pi.” We still today talk about “scrolling” maps, though we now mean it as noth­ing more than a dig­i­tal metaphor.

Unwieldy though it may seem, the Rib­bon Map of the Father of Waters must have struck its trav­el-mind­ed buy­ers in the 1860s — some 150 years before tech­nol­o­gy put touch­screens in all of our hands — as the height of car­to­graph­ic con­ve­nience. Despite hav­ing sold out their Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er map quick­ly enough to neces­si­tate a sec­ond edi­tion, though, Coloney and Fairchild did lit­tle more with their patent­ed con­cept. You can see a sur­viv­ing exam­ple of the Rib­bon Map in greater detail at the Library of Con­gress and the David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion. The cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of riv­er tourists yearn­ing for an under­stand­ing of the sur­pris­ing breadth of Amer­i­ca’s land and depth of its his­to­ry may even con­sti­tute suf­fi­cient mar­ket for a repli­ca. But what hap­pens when it gets wet?

via Atlas Obscu­ra and Slate

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All the Rivers & Streams in the U.S. Shown in Rain­bow Colours: A Data Visu­al­iza­tion to Behold

William Faulkn­er Draws Maps of Yok­na­p­ataw­pha Coun­ty, the Fic­tion­al Home of His Great Nov­els

Learn the Untold His­to­ry of the Chi­nese Com­mu­ni­ty in the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta

Down­load 67,000 His­toric Maps (in High Res­o­lu­tion) from the Won­der­ful David Rum­sey Map Col­lec­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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