A man's reach should exceed his grasp.

Appall?

I've heard said that a woman's always does . . . but is that not an insult?

Maybe, maybe not. The decision depends on one's re-reading:

1. A woman's reach exceeds her grasp.

2. A woman's reach exceeds his grasp.

Arguably, number one is insulting, but number two is not.

Arguably, both are insulting.

Arguably, neither is insulting.

Homework: Think!

"To Tell a Story"

Eve and Serpent
Phillip Ratner
The Ratner Museum

When I was a child in the Ozarks, the expression "to tell a story" meant "to lie." Of course, one could be a storyteller and tell a story without being accused of lying so long as there were no aspect of deception involved. Anyway, I don't hear that expression much anymore, but I see that its use in the larger English-speaking community still lingers, for the sociologist Francesca Polletta notes it in her book It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2006): "to 'tell a story' means to lie" (page 175). A certain Larry Winebrenner also notes - in an Amazon Customer Review - that "To 'tell a story' meant 'to lie.'" Also, a blogger writing in a blog titled ChiTown Girl notes that "telling a story means lying" (February 11, 2009). This sense of "story" as "lie" seems even stronger in the Appalachians (and Ozarks), as explained by A.L. Burge in his blog Appalachian English for the date July 29, 2005, "Illiteracy in Appalachia" (in which he cites the scholar Shirley Brice Heath):

Another cultural difference between the Appalachian dialect and the standard dialect of the educational system lies in the concept of lexical elements. For instance, Appalachians have one concept of the word story, while the school environment entertains another concept of the same word. Heath found that when teaching reading, teachers in Appalachia would occasionally ask students to “make up a story,” but students were sometimes reluctant to complete the task, which could have been interpreted by teachers as inability to complete to do so. However, the reason for the reluctance was a result of the lexical understanding of the word story in Appalachian English; in AE telling a story means lying, which is punishable in the Appalachian culture.

Burge cites pages 294 and 296 of Heath's Ways with Words: Language, Life, and Work in Communities and Classrooms (New York: Cambridge, 1996). I recall this strong meaning of "to tell a story" and always grew worried as a child when an adult accused me of "telling a story" because I felt guilty just by hearing the accusation and feared that I would sound guilty even if I denied the accusation!

I felt the same way as a child when being accused of 'sputin' some adult's word - i.e., "disputing" in the sense of challenging the adult's veracity.

Felix Culpa: More Images of Bien's "Colorful Satan"

The Filipino artist Bienvenido Bones Banez, Jr. has sent me more photos of his lost "Colorful Satan" masterwork offering more images of a Satan who adds color to the world, Bien's variant on a felix culpa soteriology. Here they are, starting with the entire installation:

I'm not sure what the body lying flat on its back signifies . . . perhaps fallen mankind? Or fallen woe-mankind? I don't know (though I speculate more below). Anyway, here's a focus upon the Colorful Satan alone:

Here, in a darker version of much the same focus, Satan appears to be feeling a little blue:

Or, given this detail of the head (note the obvious grimace), very blue:

And now a detail of the groin (an unpleasant-looking nether region of a nether-regional):

Hmmm . . . as I peer ever closer, Satan appears to be of ambiguous gender. Be that as it may, Bien titled this now-lost installation "666 Man's Heroes," and I notice the plural, "Heroes," so both Satan and the body beside him are being described, apparently. I've suggested above that the body might symbolize fallen mankind, but I've also, tongue-in-cheek, suggested woe-mankind, as the body itself appears feminine, given those large breasts, so perhaps we're intended to think of Eve, who would seem to be in Hell, for fiery, wiry flames writhe upward around her fallen body, also around Satan. But Eve is traditionally considered saved, so the female figure is possibly the Book of Revelation's Whore of Babylon, an eschatological image in Christianity.

Perhaps some bold reader could investigate at Bien's website and clarify this point . . .

Terrance Lindall's Lost Bifolia . . .

Terrance Lindall was rummaging through his earlier oeuvre and sent me some images of what he'd found, along with permission to post them. I'll include his remarks, posted in block-quote form beneath each image. First comes the room of his rummaging:

Note those black tea and coffee urns. That's silver that has nor been polished in 35 years. The coffee urn belonged to the Tiny Tim Society, whatever that was.

A bit of alchemy will bring those 'Dorian Gray' urns to shine again, even while purifying the soul of its baser material. While Terrance contemplates those musings, let us go forth into the past and gaze into the outpourings of his amusing muse, what at first glance appears to stem from his days as illustrator for such magazines as Creepy . . . except for what Terrance tells us:

I once spent about a year writing notes for what I thought was going to be great philosophical short story. Recently in sorting my notes from the past forty years I came across it. It was about Beauty and the Beast. In it a man has a conversation with the animal side of his character. It is like Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov where the prince has a conversation with the devil. It was sort of like CS Lewis' Screwtape Letters too. The beast argued that all that is worthy comes about through desire passion and eagerness to possess, whether it is to possess beauty or love, or indulge in sensual pleasures, etc. The beast also argues that pursuit of knowledge also is by urge of the passions. Without desire, we desire nothing. Thus without the beast in us, our animal nature, life is empty and nothing. Fear is good too, we fear and run from pain and death. I have to go back and look at it. It is a jumble. It has some pen sketches of the beast too.

"A thing of Beauty is a joy forever." Is it? Or is it precious and beautiful because it is fleeting. Even if it is fleeting, is it still a joy forever? In what way? Is that just a poetic throw off or a philosophical truth? If one cannot believe it, is it good poetry?

Does not one become indifferent to beauty as one becomes indifferent to any stimulus? The animal in us becomes sated once glutted.

Interesting musings for a Beast. Perhaps alchemy is working its magic. I hope that Terrance returns to that story and reworks it. But let us turn to his Paradise Lost images. This one's titled "Satan Summoning His Legions" . . . but note the fullcaps caption:

SATAN SUMMONING HER TROOPS FROM OFF THE FIERY POOL

That's a bit unexpected, a differently gendered Satan! But why, after all, should we be sexist and always use the masculine for Satan? Anyway, on a sheet associated with this image are Terrance's musings on the theme of Paradise Lost -- and look, an alchemical trope!

No caption to that one, but you can click on the image and read what Terrance wrote. Let's move on to the next image, titled "Eve Sees Her Reflection" and reflect on its significance:

Again, no caption, but we can read of Eve's captured, captivating image below -- in the image of the writing itself as well as in Lindall's further musings, including remarks prefatory to the final image of Eve and the Serpent:

Eve is reflecting on her image in the pool. She is mesmerized by the beauty and yet is loathe to look, subconsciously aware that this is the fascination akin to that of a mesmerizing snake! Yes, there is fasciation and perhaps a bit of horror by the strong attraction she feels. Can this be lust? Horror and beauty are somehow related. Consider the swirling eddies of colliding star clusters in the galaxy -- creation and desctruction -- the beauty and the horror, Krishna and Kali, aspects of the same God! Notice in my final painting of Eve and the Serpent that they have the same blue irises for eyes! They are aspects of each other. Both are tempters. She is tempted by the Serpent and Adam is tempted by her. How many parallels are there?

Good questions about parallels between Eve and the Serpent, and these demonstrate something that I posted some years back, namely, that Terrance is an artist of ideas. Not all artist are, though all perhaps have conceptions of what they want to create, but Terrance has consciously thought-out ideas that fit together in a system of thought. He is an intellectual as well as an artist. And we see this all because he was cleaning house:

Looking behind a large piece of Victorian furniture I knew there was a shallow box standing upright that I thought contained our complete Fugaku hyakkei 'One hundred views of Mt. Fuji' by Hokusai.

No indeed, it contained my lost bifolia drawings of Paradise Lost. These were missing for about 20 years. The bifolia are \t 15 x 15 which, when you open the page, contains notes on the ideas illustrated on the first page.

"Bifolia," Terrance says.

"Biophilia," I say . . .

How do you like them apples, Mister Hiss?

Visionaire Issue 61: Larger Than Life

Marina Abramovic

If only Eve had been more like Lilith, she might have said, "Hell no, I don't want none of your stinkin' apples, Mister Hiss! I've a hunger of a different sort."

I saw this image of Marina Abramovic by Martin Schoeller in the New York Times, posted in a Suzy Menkes article, "Thinking, and Literally Looking, Very Big" (November 21, 2011), and just couldn't let pass an opportunity to bring in Milton's Paradise Lost . . . sort of.

The image comes originally from the magazine Visionaire, and you can click on a loud, flashly website to investigate further if you like that sort of thing.

Ms. Abramovic is a Serbian performance artist based in New York City . . .

Georges de Feure - Le fruit défendu: péché as pêche

Le fruit défendu (1895)

Georges de Feure

(MutualArt)

My reading in Ben Hale's novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, has turned my thoughts again toward forbidden fruit and its rare depiction as a peach, which Ben picks up on and works into his story. After reading John Milton's description of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge in terms better fitting a peach than an apple, as pointed out to me by Robert Appelbaum (who has written on this topic), I wondered about the possibility of a pun in French on pêche (peach) and péché (sin). I haven't confirmed that such a pun has been explicitly made, not in so many (or so few?) words, but the painting above by the French Symboliste painter Georges de Feure (real name: Georges Joseph van Sluÿters, 1868-1943) looks like a visual pun on Eve's biting of a peach as the original sin. Here's what the catelogue notes at Sotheby's Auction says about this painting:

Among the rare works created by de Feure during his sojourns in Bruges, this work is one of the most unusual for its symbolism and modernism. In the foreground, partially obscured by a floral border, a nude woman, Eve-like, holds the gaze of the spectator and proffers a peach she has already bitten. This fruit and its rich juice evoke the biblical temptation in Paradise, and mankind's ensuing fall from grace.

In the background, in the town streets moves a procession of nude women, dancing, applauding and caressing each other. Some wear black stockings while others brandish smoking amphoras above their heads. In front of them, a group of civil and religious dignitaries wave flags and an incense burner. An old bearded man and two naked boys with linked arms form the vanguard of the extraordinary march.

In creating this provocative work, De Feure was possibly inspired by two historical events associated with Bruges: the procession of Saint-Sang that occurs on the day of the Ascension in commemoration of the relic brought back in 1149 from the Second Crusade by Thierry d'Alsace, Count of Flanders; and a group of Anabaptists brutally persecuted in the sixteenth century. The Anabaptists believed that at the apocalypse, God would baptise them in fire (represented by the smoking amphoras in the composition), and consumed by religious fervor, they ran naked through the city streets. Whatever the veracity of these potential sources, De Feure accentuates the sexual and sensual, using the duality of the concept of blood and the underlying theme of Original Sin and redemption. (Lot 41, George de Feure, Le fruit défendu, Sotheby's 19th Century European Paintings (L09663), November 24, 2009, pages 74-75)

For its own source, Sotheby's cites Ian Millman work on George de Feure, Mâitre du Symbolisme et de l'Art Nouveau (Paris, 1992, p. 89, catalogued and discussed; p. 88, illustrated), which can be found among Google Books here (see Section 4 of the text) . As Sotheby notes, the illustration appears on page 88. Pages 89 and 90 are not shown in the preview, but page 92 (not 89!) is actually the page from which Sotheby gets its catalogue notes, having translated the French. The French original refers to the "pêche" (peach) and "Péché originel" (Original Sin), but does not explicitly note any pun.

Any knowledgeable individuals who might add to this query are welcome to post comments.

Eve's Confusion of Tongues in Paradise Lost

Substitution-Permutation Network

Confusion and Diffusion

(Image from Wikipedia)

I'm still investigating Eve's 'confusion of tongues' in Paradise Lost, initially broached in yesterday's post, for I think there might be something of minor interest that I can say about Milton's depiction of Eve's Fall.

In a poem of 1645, "At a Solemn Musick," Milton sings of heavenly choirs above harmonized by earthly choirs below, prior to the Fall:

That we on Earth with undiscording voice
May rightly answer that melodious noise;
As once we did, till disproportion'd sin
Jarr'd against natures chime, and with harsh din [ 20 ]
Broke the fair musick that all creatures made
To their great Lord, whose love their motion sway'd
In perfect Diapason, whilst they stood
In first obedience, and their state of good. ("ASM" 17-24)

Would the sin-occasioned "harsh din" limit itself to the notes alone . . . or overpower the 'lyrics' as well? At first blush, we might hazard that words elude the Fall's corruption, for Milton writes in The Art of Logic:

But languages, both the first one which Adam spoke in Eden, and those varied ones also possibly derived from the first, which the builders of the tower of Babel suddenly received, are without doubt divinely given. ("The Art of Logic," in Richard Arnold, Logic of the Fall: Right Reason and [Im]pure Reason in Milton's Paradise Lost, Peter Lang, 2006, page 21)

An optimistic reading of Milton's words here, however, is undercut by the words of Sin personified spoken to an equally personified Death in Book 10 of Paradise Lost:

To whom th' incestuous Mother thus repli'd.
Thou therefore on these Herbs, and Fruits, and Flours
Feed first, on each Beast next, and Fish, and Fowle,
No homely morsels, and whatever thing [ 605 ]
The Sithe of Time mowes down, devour unspar'd,
Till I in Man residing through the Race,
His thoughts, his looks, words, actions all infect,
And season him thy last and sweetest prey. (PL 10.602-609)

Note Sin's explicit promise to infect "words," implying that the 'lyrics' mentioned above also suffer corruption. Thus Milton's further words in The Art of Logic:

But as to those words that are derived or composite, either their origins are to be sought in other languages ancient and now obsolete, or by their own antiquity and the usually corrupt pronunciation of the lower classes are so changed, and by the habit of writing them falsely are so obliterated as it were that a true notation of words very seldom may be had. ("The Art of Logic," in Richard Arnold, Logic of the Fall: Right Reason and [Im]pure Reason in Milton's Paradise Lost, Peter Lang, 2006, page 21)

Milton reveals his hierarchy of class distinctions, but from the perspective of God, fallen human beings are all from the "lower classes," and what goes for composite words goes as well for composite grammar:

Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint,
And knew not eating Death: (PL 9.791-2)

Yesterday, with respect to these lines, I stated:

As previously noted, the use of the participle "eating" mimics the use in Greek of the nominative participle after verbs of knowing. The irony here is that Eve does not know that she is eating death . . . or that death is eating her.

We see in process a fall of language here as Eve eats the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, a confusion of tongues prefiguring the biblical story about the Tower of Babel, a confusion suggested by Milton in mixing Greek with English.

This 'confusion' of tongues receives emphasis in Book 12, where the Archangel Michael prophesies to a fallen Adam of fallen humanity's attempt to construct the Tower of Babel and the ensuing, large-scale linguistic "confusion" (PL 12.62) inflicted upon humanity:

But God who oft descends to visit men
Unseen, and through thir habitations walks
To mark thir doings, them beholding soon, [ 50 ]
Comes down to see thir Citie, ere the Tower
Obstruct Heav'n Towrs, and in derision sets
Upon thir Tongues a various Spirit to rase
Quite out thir Native Language, and instead
To sow a jangling noise of words unknown (PL 12.48-55)

Verse 44 of Book 12 makes explicit that these fallen human beings are intent upon building the Tower of Babel to reach up to heaven, which recalls Eve's desire to attain divinity through her own illegitimate efforts. Upon hearing of mankind's wicked ways, Adam criticizes his descendents but is reminded by the Archangel Michael that original sin is to blame:

Since thy original lapse, true Libertie
Is lost, which alwayes with right Reason dwells
Twinn'd, and from her hath no dividual being: [ 85 ]
Reason in man obscur'd, or not obeyd (PL 12.83-86)

Milton may well believe that "[t]he end . . . of learning is to repair the ruins of our first parents" and "that language is . . . the instrument conveying to us things useful to be known," as he writes in his treatise Of Education, yet his very words denote that something is to be repaired, and an effort must be strenuously made for education to be "recovered from the scholastic grossness of barbarous ages." An ultimate recovery might have been Milton's educational attempt in his epic Paradise Lost, for he must recover Edenic language to present to his readers the discourse of the prelapsarian couple, but the poem is centrally about loss, not recovery, and Milton would have to acknowledge that for the vast majority of mankind (i.e., perhaps everyone but Milton himself), learning has not repaired that ruin of our first parents, and that ruin would include the confusion of language.

Milton laments in Of Education that so much of what passes for the learning of classical languages produces little more than educated fools whose linguistic efforts are a "wretched barbarizing against the Latin and Greek idiom, with their untutored Anglicisms," actual instances of a confusion of tongues that results from fusing languages divided at Babel. The confusion of tongues at Babel is a large-scale confusion, one in which human language in its totality is confused. The plethora of languages occasions more confusion, as one language influences another, 'barbarizing' it in the process. Perhaps this is what Milton is showing in Eve's Fall:

Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint,
And knew not eating Death: (PL 9.791-2)

As already noted in the discussion of the Greek nominative participle following verbs of knowing, Greek grammar influences the English used here to describe Eve's Fall, and this is a 'barbarism' possible only after Babel's confusion of tongues, but it is retrojected upon Eve's act of eating, such that Eve's Fall prefigures Babel through a proleptic confusion of languages, specifically, Greek and English. In both Book 12's confusion of tongues and Book 9's confusion of grammars, therefore, Milton presents the effects of the Fall upon language -- the mixing properly called "con-fusion."

I'm afraid that I've been far from clear myself on this matter, but that's due to the ruin of our first parents and therefore not entirely my own fault . . .

Milton's Polyglottal Irony of Eating Death . . .

The Confusion of Tongues (1865)

Gustave Doré

(Image from Wikipedia)

The lines of Milton's Paradise Lost that speak of Eve's Fall offer an ironic contrast between the semantic content and the grammatical analysis:

Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint,
And knew not eating Death: (PL 9.791-2)

As previously noted, the use of the participle "eating" mimics the use in Greek of the nominative participle after verbs of knowing. The irony here is that Eve does not know that she is eating death . . . or that death is eating her.

We see in process a fall of language here as Eve eats the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, a confusion of tongues prefiguring the biblical story about the Tower of Babel, a confusion suggested by Milton in mixing Greek with English.

The lines thus threaten to break down into two separate languages, and the knowing reader must consciously analyze in both Greek and English to hold Milton's synthesis together. Eve's disobedient act is already causing trouble for her descendents, for knowledge comes dear, as we must work to know both Greek and English if we want to understand Milton's words.

Eve for the time being remains unknowing despite the verb of knowing required by Greek grammar to explain in English her complex action in eating deadly knowledge, an ironic ignorance emphasized by Milton polyglot lines.

Today's babbling 'Babel' of voices is brought to you by Gypsy Scholar . . .

Milton's Eve: "Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint"

Gaping Gorge

(Image from Wikipedia)

Yesterday, I borrowed from a paper by Ryan Marrinan that seemed to imply similitude between Eve and Death, and I offered that I might explore this a bit further. I don't have a lot of time this morning, so I'll just post a few suggestive points, borrowing passages from the online edition of Paradise Lost edited by Thomas H. Luxon: The Milton Reading Room (January, 2011).

Eve grows hungry at the smell of the forbidden fruit while being tempted by Satan toward her first taste:

Mean while the hour of Noon drew on, and wak'd
An eager appetite, rais'd by the smell
So savorie of that Fruit, which with desire,
Inclinable now grown to touch or taste,
Sollicited her longing eye; (PL 9.739-743)

She falls for the temptation and eats, engorging on Death without restraint:

Intent now wholly on her taste, naught else
Regarded, such delight till then, as seemd,
In Fruit she never tasted, whether true
Or fansied so, through expectation high
Of knowledg, nor was God-head from her thought.
Greedily she ingorg'd without restraint,
And knew not eating Death: (PL 9.786-792)

About the same time, Death, always ravenous and now expecting his first meal, scents the effect of the Fall:

. . . such a sent I draw
Of carnage, prey innumerable, and taste
The savour of Death from all things there that live:
Nor shall I to the work thou enterprisest
Be wanting, but afford thee equal aid,

So saying, with delight he snuff'd the smell
Of mortal change on Earth. (PL 10.267-273)

God, watching the progress of Sin and Death as they cross chaos immediately after the Fall, describes the two as cramming their gorges with dead things:

My Hell-hounds, to lick up the draff and filth
Which mans polluting Sin with taint hath shed
On what was pure, till cramm'd and gorg'd, nigh burst
With suckt and glutted offal . . . (PL 10.630-633)

If we ignore Sin for the moment and focus on Death, then we see some commonalities between Eve and Death. Both savor (9.741; 10.269) the smell (9.740; 10.272) of death (9.792; 10.269), take delight in it (9.787; 10.272), and gorge themselves on it without restraint (9.791; 10.632). There's thus something of a similitude.

We would do well, however, to note a crucial difference, for whereas Eve "knew not eating Death" in Paradise Lost 9.792, Death himself was "Sagacious of his Quarry" in Paradise Lost 10.281.

But Eve will learn to experience that sagacity soon enough . . .