Carl Jung’s Hand-Drawn, Rarely-Seen Manuscript The Red Book

in Art, Literature, Psychology | March 4th, 2025

Despite his one-time friend and men­tor Sig­mund Freud’s enor­mous impact on West­ern self-under­stand­ing, I would argue it is Carl Jung who is still most with us in our com­mu­nal prac­tices: from his focus on intro­ver­sion and extro­ver­sion to his view of syn­cret­ic, intu­itive forms of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and his indi­rect influ­ence on 12-Step pro­grams. But Jung’s jour­ney to self-under­stand­ing and what he called “indi­vid­u­a­tion” was an intense­ly pri­vate, per­son­al affair that took place over the course of six­teen years, dur­ing which he cre­at­ed an incred­i­ble, folio-sized work of reli­gious art called The Red Book: Liber Novus. In the video above, you can get a tour through Jung’s pri­vate mas­ter­piece, pre­sent­ed in an intense­ly hushed, breathy style meant to trig­ger the tingly sen­sa­tions of a weird phe­nom­e­non called “ASMR.” Giv­en the book’s dis­ori­ent­ing and often dis­turb­ing con­tent, this over-gen­tle guid­ance seems appro­pri­ate.

After his break with Freud in 1913, when he was 38 years old, Jung had what he feared might be a psy­chot­ic break with real­i­ty as well. He began record­ing his dreams, mys­ti­cal visions, and psy­che­del­ic inner voy­ages, in a styl­ized, cal­li­graph­ic style that resem­bles medieval Euro­pean illu­mi­nat­ed man­u­scripts and the occult psy­chic jour­neys of Aleis­ter Crow­ley and William Blake.

Jung had the work bound but not pub­lished. It’s “a very per­son­al record,” writes Psy­chol­o­gy Today, “of Jung’s com­pli­cat­ed, tor­tu­ous and lengthy quest to sal­vage his soul.” Jung called this process of cre­ation the “numi­nous begin­ning” to his most impor­tant psy­cho­log­i­cal work. After many years spent locked in a bank vault, The Red Book final­ly came to light a few years ago and was trans­lat­ed and pub­lished in an expen­sive edi­tion.

Since its com­ple­tion, Jung’s book—a “holy grail of the uncon­scious”—has fas­ci­nat­ed artists, psy­chol­o­gists, occultists, and ordi­nary peo­ple seek­ing to know their own inner depths. For most of that time, it remained hid­den from view. Now, even if you can’t afford a copy of the book, you can still see more of it than most any­one else could for almost 100 years. In addi­tion to the whis­pered tour of it above, you can see sev­er­al fine­ly illus­trat­ed pages—with sea ser­pents, angels, runes, and mandalas—at The Guardian, and read a short excerpt at NPR.

And for a very thor­ough sur­vey of Jung’s book, lis­ten to the lec­ture series by long­time Jung schol­ar Dr. Lance S. Owens, who deliv­ers one set of talks for lay peo­ple and anoth­er more in-depth set for a group of clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gists. Vis­it the Gnos­tic Soci­ety Library site to stream and down­load the remain­ing lec­tures.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Enter an Archive of William Blake’s Fan­tas­ti­cal “Illu­mi­nat­ed Books”: The Images Are Sub­lime, and in High Res­o­lu­tion

How Carl Jung Inspired the Cre­ation of Alco­holics Anony­mous

Carl Jung on the Pow­er of Tarot Cards: They Pro­vide Door­ways to the Uncon­scious & Per­haps a Way to Pre­dict the Future

Carl Jung’s Fas­ci­nat­ing 1957 Let­ter on UFOs

The Famous Break Up of Sig­mund Freud & Carl Jung Explained in a New Ani­mat­ed Video

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

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Message to Young People: “Learn to Be Alone,” Enjoy Solitude

in Film, Life | March 3rd, 2025

I remem­ber the first time I sat down and watched Andrei Tarkovsky’s lyri­cal, mean­der­ing sci-fi epic Stalk­er. It was a long time ago, before the advent of smart­phones and tablets. I watched a beat-up VHS copy on a non-“smart” TV, and had no abil­i­ty to pause every few min­utes and swing by Face­book, Twit­ter, or Insta­gram for some instant dis­trac­tion and dig­i­tal small talk. The almost three-hour film—with its long, lan­guid takes and end­less stretch­es of silence—is a med­i­ta­tive exer­cise, a test in patience that at times seems like its own reward.

I recall at the time think­ing about how didac­tic Tarkovsky’s work is, in the best pos­si­ble sense of the word. It teach­es its view­ers to watch, lis­ten, and wait. It’s a course best tak­en alone, like the jour­ney into the film’s mys­te­ri­ous “Zone,” since the pres­ence of anoth­er, like­ly per­plexed, view­er might break the qui­et spell the movie casts. But while watch­ing a Tarkovsky film—whether Stalk­er, Andrei Rublev, Solaris, or any of his oth­er pen­sive cre­ations (watch them online here)—may be a soli­tary activ­i­ty, it need not at all be a lone­ly one.

The dis­tinc­tion between healthy soli­tude and lone­li­ness is one Tarkovsky is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in. It’s a cin­e­mat­ic theme he pur­sues, and a ped­a­gog­i­cal one as well. In the video above from The Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion, Tarkovsky offers some thought­ful insights that can only seem all the more rel­e­vant to today’s always-on, mul­ti-screen cul­ture. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the sub­ti­tles trans­late his words selec­tive­ly, but Maria Popo­va at The Mar­gin­a­lian has a full trans­la­tion of the filmmaker’s answer to the ques­tion “What would you like to tell young peo­ple?” Like some ancient Pan dis­pens­ing time­less wis­dom, Tarkovsky reclines in an old, gnarled tree—on what may very well be one of his wild, wood­ed film sets—and says,

I don’t know… I think I’d like to say only that they should learn to be alone and try to spend as much time as pos­si­ble by them­selves. I think one of the faults of young peo­ple today is that they try to come togeth­er around events that are noisy, almost aggres­sive at times. This desire to be togeth­er in order to not feel alone is an unfor­tu­nate symp­tom, in my opin­ion. Every per­son needs to learn from child­hood how to spend time with one­self. That doesn’t mean he should be lone­ly, but that he shouldn’t grow bored with him­self because peo­ple who grow bored in their own com­pa­ny seem to me in dan­ger, from a self-esteem point of view.

Though I speak as one who grew up in an ana­logue world free from social media—the only world Tarkovsky ever knew—I don’t think it’s just the cranky old man in me who finds this advice com­pelling­ly sound. As a Tom Tomor­row car­toon satir­i­cal­ly illus­trat­ed, our rapid-fire, pres­sure-cook­er pub­lic dis­course may grant us instant access to information—or misinformation—but it also encour­ages, nay urges, us to form hasty opin­ions, ignore nuance and sub­tleties, and par­tic­i­pate in group­think rather than digest­ing things slow­ly and com­ing to our own con­clu­sions. It’s an envi­ron­ment par­tic­u­lar­ly hos­tile to medi­ums like poet­ry, or the kinds of poet­ic films Tarkovsky made, which teach us the val­ue of judg­ment with­held, and immerse us in the kinds of aes­thet­ic expe­ri­ences the inter­net and tele­vi­sion, with their non­stop chat­ter, push to the mar­gins.

Tarkovsky’s gen­er­al advice to young peo­ple can be paired with his chal­leng­ing advice to young film­mak­ers, and all artists, in par­tic­u­lar—advice that demands focused atten­tion, patience, and com­mit­ment to indi­vid­ual pas­sion and vision.

Props to The Mar­gin­a­lian for the trans­la­tion.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s Films Free Online: Stalk­er, The Mir­ror & Andrei Rublev

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Advice to Young Film­mak­ers: Sac­ri­fice Your­self for Cin­e­ma

Andrei Tarkovsky Cre­ates a List of His 10 Favorite Films (1972)

The Mas­ter­ful Polaroid Pic­tures Tak­en by Film­mak­er Andrei Tarkovsky

Andrei Tarkovsky Calls Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey a “Pho­ny” Film “With Only Pre­ten­sions to Truth”

Where The Simpsons Began: Discover the Original Shorts That Appeared on The Tracey Ullman Show (1987–1989)

in Animation, Comedy, Television | March 3rd, 2025

When it first went on air in the late nine­teen-eight­ies, Fox had to prove itself capa­ble of play­ing in a tele­vi­su­al league with the likes of NBC, CBS, and ABC. To that end, it began build­ing its prime-time line­up with two orig­i­nal pro­grams more the­mat­i­cal­ly and aes­thet­i­cal­ly dar­ing than any­thing on those staid net­works: the sit­com Mar­ried… with Chil­dren and the sketch com­e­dy series The Tracey Ull­man Show. Before and after com­mer­cial breaks, the lat­ter treat­ed its ear­ly view­ers to a series of irrev­er­ent ani­mat­ed shorts cre­at­ed by an acclaimed car­toon­ist and fea­tur­ing the vocal tal­ents of Dan Castel­lan­e­ta, Julie Kavn­er, and Nan­cy Cartwright. I speak, of course, of Dr. N!Godatu.

On an alter­nate time­line, per­haps the per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al adven­tures of that near-unflap­pable psy­chother­a­pist were spun off into their own hit series that broke every record for prime-time ani­ma­tion and is now in its 36th sea­son.

Here in our real­i­ty, how­ev­er, that’s been the des­tiny of The Simp­sons, which also began as The Tracey Ull­man Show’s bumper enter­tain­ment. Dr. N!Godatu van­ished after a few weeks, nev­er to be seen again, but the Simp­son fam­i­ly remained for two full years, mak­ing their final short-from appear­ance in May of 1989. Sev­en months lat­er, The Simp­sons made its Christ­mas-spe­cial debut — an event that, if you don’t remem­ber watch­ing, I can’t count you as a mem­ber of my gen­er­a­tion.

Not that, giv­en my young age, I’d ever actu­al­ly seen The Tracey Ull­man Show at the time. But the hard pro­mo­tion­al push lead­ing up to that first real Simp­sons offered glimpses into an ani­mat­ed world that looked and felt com­plete­ly nov­el. (Hav­ing grown accus­tomed over gen­er­a­tions to the show’s aes­thet­ic, we eas­i­ly for­get how bizarre its yel­low-skinned, uni­ver­sal­ly over­bite-afflict­ed char­ac­ters once looked.) Many who tuned in would­n’t have been aware that that look and feel had­n’t been cre­at­ed out of whole cloth, but rather had emerged through the evo­lu­tion­ary process you can wit­ness in the 48 orig­i­nal Simp­sons shorts col­lect­ed in the Youtube playlist at the top of the post (and the hour-long con­sol­i­dat­ed video here).

To even a casu­al Simp­sons view­er, every­thing in these shorts will seem at once famil­iar and “off” in myr­i­ad ways. The design of the char­ac­ters looks both harsh­er and loos­er than it would lat­er become, and cer­tain of their voic­es, espe­cial­ly Castel­lan­e­ta’s Wal­ter Matthau-esque Homer, have yet to reflect the per­son­al­i­ties they would lat­er devel­op. The con­ven­tion­al­ly “car­toony” ani­ma­tion also dis­torts bod­ies and faces in ways that have long since been pro­hib­it­ed by the show’s offi­cial style guide­lines. Even so, there are occa­sion­al jokes and even haunt­ing moments of the kind we know from the first cou­ple of sea­sons, if noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar to fore­shad­ow The Simp­sons’ nine­teen-nineties gold­en age — or the three decades’ worth of episodes that have fol­lowed it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Rise and Fall of The Simp­sons: An In-Depth Video Essay Explores What Made the Show Great, and When It All Came to an End

Before The Simp­sons: Homer Groen­ing Directs a 1969 Short Film, The Sto­ry, Star­ring His Kids Mag­gie, Lisa & Matt

27 Movies Ref­er­ences in The Simp­sons Put Side-by-Side with the Movie Scenes They Paid Trib­ute To

Before The Simp­sons, Matt Groen­ing Illus­trat­ed a “Student’s Guide” for Apple Com­put­ers (1989)

The Simp­sons Reimag­ined as a Russ­ian Art Film

Thomas Pyn­chon Edits His Lines on The Simp­sons: “Homer is my role mod­el and I can’t speak ill of him.”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Story Of Menstruation: Watch Walt Disney’s Sex Ed Film from 1946

in Animation, Education | March 3rd, 2025

From 1945 to 1951, Dis­ney pro­duced a series of edu­ca­tion­al films to be shown in Amer­i­can schools. How to bathe an infant. How not to catch a cold. Why you shouldn’t dri­ve fast. Dis­ney cov­ered these sub­jects in its edu­ca­tion­al shorts, and then even­tu­al­ly got to the touchy sub­ject of biol­o­gy and sex­u­al­i­ty. If there was ever a com­pa­ny suit­ed to talk about “vagi­nas” in the 1940s in a fam­i­ly-friend­ly way, it was Dis­ney. Hence The Sto­ry of Men­stru­a­tion.

The film runs 10 min­utes, com­bin­ing sci­en­tif­ic facts with hygiene tips, and it was actu­al­ly com­mis­sioned by the Inter­na­tion­al Cel­lo-Cot­ton Com­pa­ny, the fore­run­ner of Kim­ber­ly-Clark, the mak­er of Kotex prod­ucts. An esti­mat­ed 105 mil­lion stu­dents watched the film in sex-ed class­es across the US. And, accord­ing to Tin­ker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny from the Inside Out, the film remained a main­stay in schools until the 1960s. It’s now in the pub­lic domain. When you’re done, you’ll also want to watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Fam­i­ly Plan­ning, Walt Disney’s 1967 Sex Ed Pro­duc­tion, Star­ring Don­ald Duck

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

Your Body Dur­ing Ado­les­cence: A Naked­ly Unashamed Sex Ed Film from 1955

Watch Dat­ing Dos and Don’ts: An Old-School Instruc­tion­al Guide to Teenage Romance (1949)

The Experimental Movement That Created The Beatles’ Weirdest Song, “Revolution 9”

in Music | February 28th, 2025

As of this writ­ing, the Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion 9″ has more than 13,800,000 plays on Spo­ti­fy. This has no doubt gen­er­at­ed decent rev­enue, even giv­en the plat­for­m’s oft-lament­ed pay­out rates. But com­pare that num­ber to the more than half-a-bil­lion streams of “Black­bird,” also on the Bea­t­les’ self-titled 1968 “white album,” and you get an idea of “Rev­o­lu­tion 9”’s place in the band’s oeu­vre. Sim­ply put, even ultra-hard-core Fab Four fans tend to skip it. Regard­less, as Ian Mac­Don­ald writes in Rev­o­lu­tion in the Head: The Bea­t­les’ Records and the Six­ties, “this eight-minute exer­cise in aur­al free asso­ci­a­tion is the world’s most wide­ly dis­trib­uted avant-garde arti­fact.”

Mas­ter­mind­ed by John Lennon, “Rev­o­lu­tion 9” is not exact­ly a song, but rather an elab­o­rate “sound col­lage,” assem­bled in broad adher­ence to an aes­thet­ic devel­oped by such avant-garde cre­ators as William S. Bur­roughs, The Bea­t­les’ graph­ic design­er Richard Hamil­ton, John Cage, and Karl­heinz Stock­hausen. “While the cut-up texts of Bur­roughs, the col­lages of Hamil­ton, and the musique con­crète exper­i­ments of Cage and Stock­hausen have remained the pre­serve of the mod­ernist intel­li­gentsia,” writes Mac­Don­ald, “Lennon’s sor­tie into son­ic chance was pack­aged for a main­stream audi­ence which had nev­er heard of its prog­en­i­tors, let alone been con­front­ed by their work.”

In the new Poly­phon­ic video above, Noah Lefevre takes a dive into those prog­en­i­tors and their work, pro­vid­ing the con­text to under­stand how “the Bea­t­les’ weird­est song” came togeth­er. Points of inter­est on this cul­tur­al-his­tor­i­cal jour­ney include com­pos­er Pierre Scha­ef­fer­’s resis­tance-head­quar­ters-turned-exper­i­men­tal-music-lab Stu­dio d’Es­sai; Nazi Ger­many, where the ear­ly Mag­ne­tophon tape recorder was devel­oped; the BBC Radio­phon­ic Work­shop; avant-garde rock­er Frank Zap­pa’s Stu­dio Z; and the Mil­lion Volt Light and Sound Rave, a 1967 hap­pen­ing that host­ed “Car­ni­val of Light,” a Bea­t­les com­po­si­tion nev­er heard again since.

What did Lennon, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with George Har­ri­son and Yoko Ono (with whom he’d only just got togeth­er), think he was doing with “Rev­o­lu­tion 9”? “To the extent that Lennon con­cep­tu­al­ized the piece at all, it is like­ly to have been as a sen­so­ry attack on the citadel of the intel­lect,” writes Mac­Don­ald, “a rev­o­lu­tion in the head aimed, as he stressed at the time, at each indi­vid­ual lis­ten­er — and not a Maoist incite­ment to social con­fronta­tion, still less a call for gen­er­al anar­chy.” Indeed, as Lefevre points out, it expressed his ambiva­lence about the very con­cept of 1968-style revolt as much as the com­par­a­tive­ly con­ven­tion­al “Rev­o­lu­tion 1,” which comes ear­li­er on the album. The six­ties may be long over, but Lennon’s atti­tude has­n’t lost its rel­e­vance: we still hear an end­less stream of promised solu­tions to soci­ety’s prob­lems, and we’d still all love to see the plan.

Relat­ed con­tent:

How the Bea­t­les Exper­i­ment­ed with Indi­an Music & Pio­neered a New Rock and Roll Sound

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

Hear Paul McCartney’s Exper­i­men­tal Christ­mas Mix­tape: A Rare & For­got­ten Record­ing from 1965

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

How George Mar­tin Defined the Sound of the Bea­t­les: From String Quar­tets to Back­wards Gui­tar Solos

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Kate Bush, Annie Lennox and 1,000 Musicians Protest AI with a New Silent Album

in Artificial Intelligence, Current Affairs, Music | February 27th, 2025

The good news is that an album has just been released by Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, Damon Albarn of Goril­laz, The Clash, Tori Amos, Hans Zim­mer, Pet Shop Boys, Jamiro­quai, and Yusuf (pre­vi­ous­ly known as Cat Stevens), Bil­ly Ocean, and many oth­er musi­cians besides, most of them British. The bad news is that it con­tains no actu­al music. But the album, titled Is This What We Want?, has been cre­at­ed in hopes of pre­vent­ing even worse news: the gov­ern­ment of the Unit­ed King­dom choos­ing to let arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence com­pa­nies train their mod­els on copy­right­ed work with­out a license.

Such a move, in the words of the pro­jec­t’s leader Ed New­ton-Rex, “would hand the life’s work of the country’s musi­cians to AI com­pa­nies, for free, let­ting those com­pa­nies exploit musi­cians’ work to out­com­pete them.” As a com­pos­er, he nat­u­ral­ly has an inter­est in these mat­ters, and as a “for­mer AI exec­u­tive,” he pre­sum­ably has insid­er knowl­edge about them as well.

“The gov­ern­men­t’s will­ing­ness to agree to these copy­right changes shows how much our work is under­val­ued and that there is no pro­tec­tion for one of this coun­try’s most impor­tant assets: music,” Kate Bush writes on her own web­site. “Each track on this album fea­tures a desert­ed record­ing stu­dio. Doesn’t that silence say it all?”

As the Guardian’s Dan Mil­mo reports, “it is under­stood that Kate Bush has record­ed one of the dozen tracks in her stu­dio.” Those tracks, whose titles add up to the phrase “The British gov­ern­ment must not legalise music theft to ben­e­fit AI com­pa­nies,” aren’t strict­ly silent: in a man­ner that might well have pleased John Cage, they con­tain a vari­ety of ambi­ent nois­es, from foot­steps to hum­ming machin­ery to pass­ing cars to cry­ing babies to vague­ly musi­cal sounds ema­nat­ing from some­where in the dis­tance. What­ev­er its influ­ence on the U.K. gov­ern­men­t’s delib­er­a­tions, Is This What We Want? (the title Sounds of Silence hav­ing pre­sum­ably been unavail­able) may have pio­neered a new genre: protest song with­out the songs.

You can stream Is This What We Want? on Spo­ti­fy.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence, Art & the Future of Cre­ativ­i­ty: Watch the Final Chap­ter of the “Every­thing is a Remix” Series

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Cre­ativ­i­ty Machine Learns to Play Beethoven in the Style of The Bea­t­les’ “Pen­ny Lane”

Watch John Cage’s 4′33″ Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Chat­G­PT Writes a Song in the Style of Nick Cave–and Nick Cave Calls it “a Grotesque Mock­ery of What It Is to Be Human”

Noam Chom­sky on Chat­G­PT: It’s “Basi­cal­ly High-Tech Pla­gia­rism” and “a Way of Avoid­ing Learn­ing”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” (1969)

in Music | February 27th, 2025

In 1969, Ella Fitzger­ald released Sun­shine of Your Love, a live album record­ed at the Venet­ian Room in The Fair­mont San Fran­cis­co. Record­ed by music pro­duc­er Nor­man Granz, the album fea­tured con­tem­po­rary pop songs that show­cased Fitzger­ald’s abil­i­ty to tran­scend jazz stan­dards. Take, for exam­ple, a ver­sion of the Bea­t­les’ “Hey Jude” and Cream’s “Sun­shine of Your Love.” Below you can hear what the orig­i­nal (record­ed in 1967) sound­ed like in the hands of Jack Bruce, Gin­ger Bak­er and Eric Clap­ton, and then expe­ri­ence Ella’s own unex­pect­ed ver­sion above. It’s quite the jux­ta­po­si­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch Ella Fitzger­ald Put Her Extra­or­di­nary Vocal Agili­ty on Dis­play, in a Live Ren­di­tion of “Sum­mer­time” (1968)

Ella Fitzgerald’s Lost Inter­view about Racism & Seg­re­ga­tion: Record­ed in 1963, It’s Nev­er Been Heard Until Now

Ella Fitzger­ald Imi­tates Louis Armstrong’s Grav­el­ly Voice While Singing “I Can’t Give You Any­thing But Love, Baby”

What Makes Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas One of the Most Fascinating Paintings in Art History

in Art, History | February 26th, 2025

Diego Velázquez paint­ed Las Meni­nas almost 370 years ago, and it’s been under scruti­ny ever since. If the pub­lic’s appetite to know more about it has dimin­ished over time, that cer­tain­ly isn’t reflect­ed in the view count of the analy­sis from YouTube chan­nel Rab­bit Hole above, which as of this writ­ing has crossed the 2.5 mil­lion mark. So has this video on Las Meni­nas from Evan Puschak, bet­ter known as the Nerd­writer. What ele­ment of this par­tic­u­lar paint­ing has stoked such fas­ci­na­tion, gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion after gen­er­a­tion? Eas­i­er, per­haps, to ask what ele­ment has­n’t.

“Through the 36 years he worked for King Philip IV, Velázquez pro­duced dozens of paint­ings of the Span­ish roy­al fam­i­ly,” says the nar­ra­tor of the Rab­bit Hole video. But the large-scale Las Meni­nas is dif­fer­ent: “the paint­ing appears more like a snap­shot of dai­ly life than a typ­i­cal vis­age of roy­als pos­ing to be paint­ed.”

The fig­ures it depicts include Philip’s five-year-old daugh­ter Infan­ta Mar­garet There­sa and her entourage, as well as Velázquez him­self, at work on a paint­ing — which may be a por­trait of the king and queen, reflect­ed as they are on the mir­ror in the back wall, or per­haps the very image we’re look­ing at. Or could we pos­si­bly be Philip and Mar­i­ana our­selves?

On the rear­most plane of Las Meni­nas stands the queen’s cham­ber­lain Don José Nieto Velázquez (pos­si­bly a rela­tion of the artist), on whom it can hard­ly be a coin­ci­dence that all of the paint­ing’s lines con­verge, like a van­ish­ing point on the hori­zon. Diego Velázquez’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion of him­self bears an even more con­spic­u­ous detail: the knight­hood-sym­bol­iz­ing red cross called the Order of San­ti­a­go. Born a com­mon­er, Velázquez worked for most of his life in close prox­im­i­ty to the roy­als, and seems to have made no big secret of his aspi­ra­tions to join their ranks. Pre­sum­ably, the Order of San­ti­a­go was added after the paint­ing was com­plete, since Las Meni­nas is dat­ed to 1656, but Velázquez was­n’t final­ly knight­ed until 1659, close to the end of his life.

Dif­fer­ent the­o­ries exist to explain who exact­ly added that red cross to the paint­ing, as cov­ered by YouTu­ber-gal­lerist James Payne in the Great Art Explained video just above. Like most works of art that have endured through the cen­turies, Las Meni­nas has its unsolv­able his­tor­i­cal mys­ter­ies, despite its unusu­al­ly well-doc­u­ment­ed cre­ation. But for seri­ous art enthu­si­asts, the most com­pelling ques­tion remains that of just how Velázquez pulled it all off. “Las Meni­nas, with all its splen­did effects, is a vig­or­ous argu­ment for the virtue of paint­ing,” says Puschak. “This gets at the heart of the mir­ror, the van­ish­ing point, and the mul­ti­ple cen­ters of focus. ‘See what my art can do,’ Velázquez is say­ing to the view­er” — whether that view­er is King Philip, or some­one across the world near­ly four cen­turies lat­er.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Short Intro­duc­tion to Car­avag­gio, the Mas­ter Of Light

The Pra­do Muse­um Dig­i­tal­ly Alters Four Mas­ter­pieces to Strik­ing­ly Illus­trate the Impact of Cli­mate Change

The Pra­do Muse­um Cre­ates the First Art Exhi­bi­tion for the Visu­al­ly Impaired, Using 3D Print­ing

Sal­vador Dalí Sketch­es Five Span­ish Immor­tals: Cer­vantes, Don Quixote, El Cid, El Gre­co & Velázquez

Great Art Explained: Watch 15 Minute Intro­duc­tions to Great Works by Warhol, Rothko, Kahlo, Picas­so & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

When William Faulkner Set the World Record for Writing the Longest Sentence in Literature: Read the 1,288-Word Sentence from Absalom, Absalom!

in Books, Literature, Writing | February 26th, 2025

Image by Carl Van Vecht­en, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“How did Faulkn­er pull it off?” is a ques­tion many a fledg­ling writer has asked them­selves while strug­gling through a peri­od of appren­tice­ship like that nov­el­ist John Barth describes in his 1999 talk “My Faulkn­er.” Barth “reorches­trat­ed” his lit­er­ary heroes, he says, “in search of my writer­ly self… down­load­ing my innu­mer­able pre­de­ces­sors as only an insa­tiable green appren­tice can.” Sure­ly a great many writ­ers can relate when Barth says, “it was Faulkn­er at his most invo­lut­ed and incan­ta­to­ry who most enchant­ed me.” For many a writer, the Faulkner­ian sen­tence is an irre­sistible labyrinth. His syn­tax has a way of weav­ing itself into the uncon­scious, emerg­ing as fair to mid­dling imi­ta­tion.

While study­ing at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, Barth found him­self writ­ing about his native East­ern Shore of Mary­land in a pas­tiche style of “mid­dle Faulkn­er and late Joyce.” He may have won some praise from a vis­it­ing young William Sty­ron, “but the fin­ished opus didn’t fly—for one thing, because Faulkn­er inti­mate­ly knew his Snopses and Comp­sons and Sar­toris­es, as I did not know my made-up denizens of the Mary­land marsh.” The advice to write only what you know may not be worth much as a uni­ver­sal com­mand­ment. But study­ing the way that Faulkn­er wrote when he turned to the sub­jects he knew best pro­vides an object les­son on how pow­er­ful a lit­er­ary resource inti­ma­cy can be.

Not only does Faulkner’s deep affil­i­a­tion with his char­ac­ters’ inner lives ele­vate his por­traits far above the lev­el of local col­or or region­al­ist curios­i­ty, but it ani­mates his sen­tences, makes them con­stant­ly move and breathe. No mat­ter how long and twist­ed they get, they do not wilt, with­er, or drag; they run riv­er-like, turn­ing around in asides, out­rag­ing them­selves and dou­bling and tripling back. Faulkner’s inti­ma­cy is not earnest­ness, it is the uncan­ny feel­ing of a raw encounter with a nerve cen­ter light­ing up with infor­ma­tion, all of it seem­ing­ly crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant.

It is the extra­or­di­nary sen­so­ry qual­i­ty of his prose that enabled Faulkn­er to get away with writ­ing the longest sen­tence in lit­er­a­ture, at least accord­ing to the 1983 Guin­ness Book of World Records, a pas­sage from Absa­lom, Absa­lom! consist­ing of 1,288 words and who knows how many dif­fer­ent kinds of claus­es. There are now longer sen­tences in Eng­lish writ­ing. Jonathan Coe’s The Rotter’s Club ends with a 33-page long whop­per with 13,955 words in it. Entire nov­els hun­dreds of pages long have been writ­ten in one sen­tence in oth­er lan­guages. All of Faulkner’s mod­ernist con­tem­po­raries, includ­ing of course Joyce, Woolf, and Beck­ett, mas­tered the use of run-ons, to dif­fer­ent effect.

But, for a time, Faulkn­er took the run-on as far as it could go. He may have had no inten­tion of inspir­ing post­mod­ern fic­tion, but one of its best-known nov­el­ists, Barth, only found his voice by first writ­ing a “heav­i­ly Faulkner­ian marsh-opera.” Many hun­dreds of exper­i­men­tal writ­ers have had almost iden­ti­cal expe­ri­ences try­ing to exor­cise the Oxford, Mis­sis­sip­pi modernist’s voice from their prose. Read that one­time longest sen­tence in lit­er­a­ture, all 1,288 words of it, below.

Just exact­ly like Father if Father had known as much about it the night before I went out there as he did the day after I came back think­ing Mad impo­tent old man who real­ized at last that there must be some lim­it even to the capa­bil­i­ties of a demon for doing harm, who must have seen his sit­u­a­tion as that of the show girl, the pony, who real­izes that the prin­ci­pal tune she prances to comes not from horn and fid­dle and drum but from a clock and cal­en­dar, must have seen him­self as the old wornout can­non which real­izes that it can deliv­er just one more fierce shot and crum­ble to dust in its own furi­ous blast and recoil, who looked about upon the scene which was still with­in his scope and com­pass and saw son gone, van­ished, more insu­per­a­ble to him now than if the son were dead since now (if the son still lived) his name would be dif­fer­ent and those to call him by it strangers and what­ev­er dragon’s out­crop­ping of Sut­pen blood the son might sow on the body of what­ev­er strange woman would there­fore car­ry on the tra­di­tion, accom­plish the hered­i­tary evil and harm under anoth­er name and upon and among peo­ple who will nev­er have heard the right one; daugh­ter doomed to spin­ster­hood who had cho­sen spin­ster­hood already before there was any­one named Charles Bon since the aunt who came to suc­cor her in bereave­ment and sor­row found nei­ther but instead that calm absolute­ly impen­e­tra­ble face between a home­spun dress and sun­bon­net seen before a closed door and again in a cloudy swirl of chick­ens while Jones was build­ing the cof­fin and which she wore dur­ing the next year while the aunt lived there and the three women wove their own gar­ments and raised their own food and cut the wood they cooked it with (excus­ing what help they had from Jones who lived with his grand­daugh­ter in the aban­doned fish­ing camp with its col­laps­ing roof and rot­ting porch against which the rusty scythe which Sut­pen was to lend him, make him bor­row to cut away the weeds from the door-and at last forced him to use though not to cut weeds, at least not veg­etable weeds ‑would lean for two years) and wore still after the aunt’s indig­na­tion had swept her back to town to live on stolen gar­den truck and out o f anony­mous bas­kets left on her front steps at night, the three of them, the two daugh­ters negro and white and the aunt twelve miles away watch­ing from her dis­tance as the two daugh­ters watched from theirs the old demon, the ancient vari­cose and despair­ing Faus­tus fling his final main now with the Creditor’s hand already on his shoul­der, run­ning his lit­tle coun­try store now for his bread and meat, hag­gling tedious­ly over nick­els and dimes with rapa­cious and pover­ty-strick­en whites and negroes, who at one time could have gal­loped for ten miles in any direc­tion with­out cross­ing his own bound­ary, using out of his mea­gre stock the cheap rib­bons and beads and the stale vio­lent­ly-col­ored can­dy with which even an old man can seduce a fif­teen-year-old coun­try girl, to ruin the grand­daugh­ter o f his part­ner, this Jones-this gan­gling malar­ia-rid­den white man whom he had giv­en per­mis­sion four­teen years ago to squat in the aban­doned fish­ing camp with the year-old grand­child-Jones, part­ner porter and clerk who at the demon’s com­mand removed with his own hand (and maybe deliv­ered too) from the show­case the can­dy beads and rib­bons, mea­sured the very cloth from which Judith (who had not been bereaved and did not mourn) helped the grand­daugh­ter to fash­ion a dress to walk past the loung­ing men in, the side-look­ing and the tongues, until her increas­ing bel­ly taught her embar­rass­ment-or per­haps fear;-Jones who before ’61 had not even been allowed to approach the front of the house and who dur­ing the next four years got no near­er than the kitchen door and that only when he brought the game and fish and veg­eta­bles on which the seducer-to-be’s wife and daugh­ter (and Clytie too, the one remain­ing ser­vant, negro, the one who would for­bid him to pass the kitchen door with what he brought) depend­ed on to keep life in them, but who now entered the house itself on the (quite fre­quent now) after­noons when the demon would sud­den­ly curse the store emp­ty of cus­tomers and lock the door and repair to the rear and in the same tone in which he used to address his order­ly or even his house ser­vants when he had them (and in which he doubt­less ordered Jones to fetch from the show­case the rib­bons and beads and can­dy) direct Jones to fetch the jug, the two of them (and Jones even sit­ting now who in the old days, the old dead Sun­day after­noons of monot­o­nous peace which they spent beneath the scup­per­nong arbor in the back yard, the demon lying in the ham­mock while Jones squat­ted against a post, ris­ing from time to time to pour for the demon from the demi­john and the buck­et of spring water which he had fetched from the spring more than a mile away then squat­ting again, chortling and chuck­ling and say­ing ‘Sho, Mis­ter Tawm’ each time the demon paused)-the two of them drink­ing turn and turn about from the jug and the demon not lying down now nor even sit­ting but reach­ing after the third or sec­ond drink that old man’s state of impo­tent and furi­ous unde­feat in which he would rise, sway­ing and plung­ing and shout­ing for his horse and pis­tols to ride sin­gle-hand­ed into Wash­ing­ton and shoot Lin­coln (a year or so too late here) and Sher­man both, shout­ing, ‘Kill them! Shoot them down like the dogs they are!’ and Jones: ‘Sho, Ker­nel; sho now’ and catch­ing him as he fell and com­man­deer­ing the first pass­ing wag­on to take him to the house and car­ry him up the front steps and through the paint­less for­mal door beneath its fan­light import­ed pane by pane from Europe which Judith held open for him to enter with no change, no alter­ation in that calm frozen face which she had worn for four years now, and on up the stairs and into the bed­room and put him to bed like a baby and then lie down him­self on the floor beside the bed though not to sleep since before dawn the man on the bed would stir and groan and Jones would say, ‘fly­er I am, Ker­nel. Hit’s all right. They aint whupped us yit, air they?’ this Jones who after the demon rode away with the reg­i­ment when the grand­daugh­ter was only eight years old would tell peo­ple that he ‘was lookin after Major’s place and nig­gers’ even before they had time to ask him why he was not with the troops and per­haps in time came to believe the lie him­self, who was among the first to greet the demon when he returned, to meet him at the gate and say, ‘Well, Ker­nel, they kilt us but they aint whupped us yit, air they?’ who even worked, labored, sweat at the demon’s behest dur­ing that first furi­ous peri­od while the demon believed he could restore by sheer indomitable will­ing the Sutpen’s Hun­dred which he remem­bered and had lost, labored with no hope of pay or reward who must have seen long before the demon did (or would admit it) that the task was hope­less-blind Jones who appar­ent­ly saw still in that furi­ous lech­er­ous wreck the old fine fig­ure of the man who once gal­loped on the black thor­ough­bred about that domain two bound­aries of which the eye could not see from any point.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Nev­er Be Afraid’: William Faulkner’s Speech to His Daughter’s Grad­u­at­ing Class in 1951

5 Won­der­ful­ly Long Lit­er­ary Sen­tences by Samuel Beck­ett, Vir­ginia Woolf, F. Scott Fitzger­ald & Oth­er Mas­ters of the Run-On

Sev­en Tips From William Faulkn­er on How to Write Fic­tion

William Faulkn­er Out­lines on His Office Wall the Plot of His Pulitzer Prize Win­ning Nov­el, A Fable (1954)

Rare 1952 Film: William Faulkn­er on His Native Soil in Oxford, Mis­sis­sip­pi

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

The 48 Laws of Power Explained in 30 Minutes: “Never Outshine the Master,” “Re-Create Yourself,” and More

in Books, Politics | February 25th, 2025

Robert Greene’s The 48 Laws of Pow­er has been a pop­u­lar book since its first pub­li­ca­tion over a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry ago. Judg­ing by the dis­cus­sion that con­tin­ues among its fer­vent (and often pros­e­ly­tiz­ing) fans, it’s easy to for­get that its title isn’t How to Become Pow­er­ful. Grant­ed, it may some­times get filed in the self-help sec­tion, and cer­tain of the laws it con­tains — “Nev­er out­shine the mas­ter,” “Always say less than nec­es­sary,” “Enter action with bold­ness” — read like straight­for­ward rec­om­men­da­tions. Yet like Machi­avel­li, one of the book’s many his­tor­i­cal sources, it’s much more inter­est­ing to read as a study of pow­er itself.

In the video above from Greene’s offi­cial YouTube chan­nel, you can hear all 48 laws accom­pa­nied by brief expla­na­tions in less than 30 min­utes. Some of them may give you pause: are “Get oth­ers to do the work for you, but always take the cred­it,” “Pose as a friend, work as a spy,” and “Crush your ene­my total­ly” real­ly meant to be tak­en straight­for­ward­ly?

Per­haps they both are and aren’t. Descrip­tive of the ways in which indi­vid­u­als have accrued pow­er over the course of human his­to­ry (images of whom pro­vide visu­al accom­pa­ni­ment), they can also be metaphor­i­cal­ly trans­posed into a vari­ety of per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al sit­u­a­tions with­out turn­ing you into some kind of evil mas­ter­mind.

When The 48 Laws of Pow­er came out in 1999, we did­n’t live on the inter­net in the way we do now. Re-read today, its laws apply with an uncan­ny apt­ness to a social-medi­at­ed world in which we’ve all become pub­lic per­son­al­i­ties online. We may not always say less than nec­es­sary, but we do know how impor­tant it can be to “court atten­tion at all costs.” Some of us “cul­ti­vate an air of unpre­dictabil­i­ty”; oth­ers “play to peo­ple’s fan­tasies,” in some cas­es going as far as to “cre­ate a cult-like fol­low­ing.” The most adept put in work to “cre­ate com­pelling spec­ta­cles” in accor­dance with “the art of tim­ing,” tak­ing care to “nev­er appear too per­fect.” Though Machi­avel­li him­self would under­stand prac­ti­cal­ly noth­ing about our tech­nol­o­gy, he would sure­ly under­stand our world.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Machiavelli’s The Prince Explained in an Illus­trat­ed Film

What Does “Machi­avel­lian” Real­ly Mean?: An Ani­mat­ed Les­son

How Machi­avel­li Real­ly Thought We Should Use Pow­er: Two Ani­mat­ed Videos Pro­vide an Intro­duc­tion

Salman Rushdie: Machiavelli’s Bad Rap

Allan Bloom’s Lec­tures on Machi­avel­li (Boston Col­lege, 1983)

The Nature of Human Stu­pid­i­ty Explained by The 48 Laws of Pow­er Author Robert Greene

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.