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THE DIARY OF FRIDA KAHLO, AN INTIMATE SELF-PORTRAIT -- NOTES ON CARLOS FUENTES' INTRODUCTION |
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by Tara Carreon [1] What is that supposed to mean, "all of these splendors and distractions came to naught"? Do you mean that no matter how many beautiful things were around, they couldn't distract you from the horrible sight of Frida Kahlo? You speak with more interest about the "Italianate mausoleum in white marble, fashioned in the purest wedding-cake style" and the "magnificent glass curtain by Tiffany with its subtle play of lights from aurora to crepusculum" than you do about Frida Kahlo, who you are supposedly here to praise. [2] That's a peculiar sentence, "the apparition that announced herself with an incredible throb of metallic rhythms and then exhibited the self that both the noise of the jewelry and the silent magnetism displayed." That is not English. Who is your retarded translator, or is it just you, Carlos? [3] Is that where we end up with this argument? Let's go through it again: "The body is the temple of the soul" -- so Frida Kahlo has a broken soul to go along with her broken body -- "The face is the temple of the body" -- her face must be broken too, as is her body and soul -- "And when the body breaks, the soul has no other shrine except the face" -- her face is a shrine of her broken body and soul. Okay, it's clear you want to destroy her. You can't find it in yourself to say anything nice about her, like she is beautiful, sweet, smart, talented and loving. Only blood on her hands, pectorals eating her breasts, and a broken body, soul and face. [4] What are you talking about, "mysterious sisterhood between the body of Frida Kahlo and the deep divisions of Mexico"? Are you going to reach out now and compare Frida with every sick, suffering, and feminine "thing" in Mexico? Are you a sadist? You remind me of Richard Bandler and Robert Anton Wilson. [5] From Spain to Mexico to Italy. I knew we would end up talking about the Mafia.
answers.com
wrote: [6] The Virgin restored "pure motherhood" to the orphaned Indian? What kind of consolation is that? It's okay to make Indians orphans, because the Virgin will restore them with pure motherhood? Are you blaming the orphaned Indians on Cortes's mistress? My husband says in Mexico, La Malinche gets blamed for everything. [7] Freedom without equality? What a dumb idea. As if a country could be free. As if a corporation could be a person. There is no freedom in a country without equality, because freedom goes to the individual. [8] You're putting Frida up on a cross and crucifying her. As if her accident wasn't enough punishment for her. Are you one of those disgusting elite you talk about? [9] You turn everything into the most violent imagery possible. Now you want to visualize Frida being raped by a streetcar. Do you have a sick mind? [10] I think this is excellent text to put in one of Diego's art catalogues. I'm sure all of Diego's admirers will love it. NOT! "Diego paints an endless, depressing repetition of masks and gestures ..." But don't worry all you Diego lovers, there's still something to salvage in Diego's art -- "There is something that shines there behind the plethora of ..." [11] Yeah, nail her to a cross and laugh at her. You are not a friend of either Frida or Diego. [12] Get the pathology in there wherever possible. Turn all of her beauty into sickness. [13] A better description of your strategy we'll never find. [14] Now, which Ariel are you talking about? Shakespeare's mischievous airy spirit in The Tempest, or Uranus' twelfth satellite? If you have malice in your heart for Frida, which I believe you do, then probably the latter, with a joke on "your anus" to go with the bloody claws and pectorals eating her breasts.
[15] Sure, after those million people died, Mexico City was a lovely, crystalline, and unpolluted city. Those were the days! [16] Beautiful to a cannibal. [17] A real aficianado of pain, aren't you? Now you're calling Frida Kahlo a dog, courtesy of Nietzsche. [18] Uh, maybe because these times are not modern, progressive and civilized! [19] Did you hear that, all of you million dead Mexicans? Your bloodshed is small beer indeed. No one can kill like Hitler and Stalin. So remember that the next time you want to complain! Here comes the nihilism. What a philosopher you are, Carlos! [20] You're more interested in painting your Illuminati god realm than you are about Frida Kahlo and her paintings. You're just using her as your canvas. [21] How about a little mind-fuck? [22] Now you're attacking her father, saying his art is rigid and stilted, [22a] and at the same time attacking Frida for retaining some of that stilted flavor. That makes attacks now on Frida, her husband, and her father. Who of Frida's loved ones is next? [22a] Here is an example of her father's RIGID 19th century portrait art. Frida, photographed in 1932 by her father, Guillermo Kahlo.
[23] Curse that face-giving camera that has robbed the rich and powerful of their privilege of being the only ones with faces! [24] Carlos, you are a death cultist. Listen at how you wax eloquent about murder, suicide, strangulation, mayhem, brawls, monstrosities, and revolutions. [25] See footnote number 22. [26] So you did break her soul! What kind of a person breaks someone's soul, Carlos? [27] You're obsessed with killing, Carlos. Now you're killing the 20th century vanguard with a fitting epitaph! [28] Now you're tearing apart her Self. What will be left of her after you're done with her? [29] They are not anarchists. Anarchists are not innocent. Tell that to the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria and his wife, the Duchess of Hohenberg, and everyone else who was killed in World War I. And all of the other victims of anarchists throughout time. Propaganda for the Illuminati. You can tell as soon as someone starts talking fondly about anarchists. As if the serpents, misogyny and nihilism weren't enough. [30] Now you're saying that the truth is, Frida is ugly? I'm starting to hate you, Carlos. [31] WTH? [32] See footnote 30. [33] About that, I would agree.
[34]
Your
philosophy sucks! What is the absolute way of discovering the inner self?
What is your obsession with preventing self from being whole? "An
approximation of self, of becoming, of not yet, never a fulfillment,
always an approach, all changed" -- I wouldn't call that a terrible
beauty, but rather a terrible ugly.
[36] See how violent she is? Did she want to destroy Dorothy Hale with a pair of library scissors as well? [36a] [36a] At the very least, Clare Boothe Luce's cruelty had something to do with Dorothy's suicide. Still, I wonder where Clare Booth Luce was on the morning after the party at 6:00 a.m. http://members.aol.com/fridanet/suicide.htm wrote: The real life story behind this painting Dorothy Hale, a former Ziegfeld showgirl and friend of Frida Kahlo, experienced an unfortunate loss with the sudden death of her husband. The high life she was so accustomed to could comfort her no longer because she was left with very little money. From this point on, Dorothy suffered through one rejection after another. The first was her attempt at an acting career. Despite her beauty, Hollywood rejected her. The second came when she began seriously dating Harry Hopkins (political advisor of President Franklin D. Roosevelt). Dorothy expected to marry him, but was dumped when Mr.Hopkins was forced by Roosevelt to marry another woman. This left Dorothy out in the cold and again, in need of financial help. Clare Boothe Luce (managing editor for Vanity Fair magazine and close friend of Dorothy's) agreed to help solve some of Ms. Hale's money problems at this time. [36b] Unknown to everyone, however, Dorothy had just asked Bernard Buruch to use his influence to get her a job. Instead of the professional assistance she was hoping for, Mr.Buruch advised her to get a husband. She was told that she was too old to get a job that would allow her to live the way she used to. He then provided her with $1,000 on the condition that she buy the most beautiful dress she could find in NYC. Right around the time of Dorothy's meeting with Mr.Buruch, Clare Boothe Luce noticed a beautiful, but expensive dress in Bergdorf Goodman. She was annoyed to find that Dorothy had just ordered it, assuming her friend had been using her for extra money she did not need. When Dorothy called Clare on the phone a few days later, Ms.Luce was in a very bad mood and responded coldly to her long suffering friend. Dorothy called to announce she was going on a very long trip and was giving herself a farewell party that Clare was invited to. She wanted advice on what to wear. Clare responded with the fact that she could not make the party, but the dress to wear would be her Madame X black velvet. [36c] The day after the party, at about 6AM, wearing her Madame X black velvet dress, Dorothy Hale jumped out of the window of her top-story suite in the Hampshire House. [36b] Sure she did! Then why didn't she give her some money, or help her get a job? I thought she was her friend, and besides, Clare Boothe Luce was rich. The Henry Luce Foundation wrote:
THE HENRY LUCE FOUNDATION American Art Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX - Chimneys and Towers: Charles Demuth's Late Paintings of Lancaster. Exhibition and catalogue $50,000.
Archives of American Art,
Washington, DC - To support the Guide to Diaries in the Archives of
American Art. A one-time grant of $75,000. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD - For a curatorial sabbatical for the senior curator of paintings and sculpture. A one-time grant of $55,000. The Barnes Foundation, Merion, PA - For the first catalogue of the American paintings and works on paper collection. A three-year grant of $150,000. Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, CA - For a long-term American art collection installation and catalogue. A two-year grant of $100,000. Jack S. Blanton, University of Texas, Austin, TX - Support to reinstall and publish the American art collection. A two-year grant of $100,000. Buffalo Bill Historical Center, Cody, WY - William Ranney: An American Artist. Exhibition and catalogue $100,000. The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH - For a collection management system to catalogue the permanent collection. A three-year grant of $75,000. Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Cedar Rapids, IA - Grant Wood: The 5 Turner Alley Studio Years 1924-1934. Exhibition and catalogue $100,000. Central Park Conservancy, New York, NY - For the 150th anniversary publication Central Park, An American Masterpiece. A one-time grant of $90,000. Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH - To catalogue, research and present symposia on the Cincinnati artists collection for the Cincinnati Wing. A three-year grant of $250,000. Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH - Claude Raguet Hirst: Transforming the American Still Life. Exhibition and catalogue $50,000. The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC - For a scholarly catalogue of the pre-1945 American paintings and sculpture collection. A three-year grant of $150,000. The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI - To support American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts; Volume III: A Catalogue of Works of Artists Born Between 1848 and 1880. A two-year grant of $100,000 Exit Art, New York, NY - For a digital archive project. A three-year grant of $75,000. Fisher Gallery, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA - Scholarly catalogue accompanying exhibition of work by Peter Plagens. A one-time grant of $20,000. The Frick Collection, New York, NY - Whistler, Women and Fashion. Exhibition and catalogue $100,000. Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT - To reinstall and reinterpret the Griswold House. A two-year grant of $100,000. Heard Museum, Phoenix, AZ - For an expanded and reinterpreted exhibition of the permanent Native American arts collection. A two-year grant of $100,000. Heritage Preservation, Washington, DC - For the Heritage Health Index, a national survey of American art collection needs. A two-year grant of $100,000. The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA - For learning centers interpreting the American art collection. A two-year grant of $100,000. The High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA - Cecilia Beaux, 1855-1942. Exhibition and catalogue $200,000. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC - Earth/Body: Ana Mendieta, Sculpture and Performance, 1972-1985. Exhibition and catalogue $150,000. Louvre, American Friends of the, New York, NY - One-Year Fellowhip to Inventory & Study American Art in France. A one-time grant of $25,000. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA - For the American Art Collections Online project. A two-year grant of $100,000. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, MN - Seeking Light: The Artistic Odyssey of Beauford Delaney. Exhibition and catalogue $75,000. Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ - For the Morgan Russell Archives project. A two-year grant of $95,000. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI - Interior Drama: Aaron Siskind's Photographs of the 1940s. Exhibition and catalogue $50,000. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA - Robert Smithson. Exhibition and catalogue $200,000. National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC - Sanford Robinson Gifford. Exhibition $100,000. National Trust for Historic Preservation, Washington, DC - Renewed support to expand the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios Program. A five-year grant of $350,000. New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT - For the reinstallation and reinterpretation of the permanent collection. A two-year grant of $100,000. New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY — For Marcia Tucker Hall. A two-year grant of $1,000,000. New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY — For the Marcia Tucker collection. A one-time grant of $50,000. The Newark Museum, Newark, NJ - For enhanced American art collection scholarship, documentation, and programs. A two-year grant of $500,000. North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC - Conference for Southern Exposure: Photography in the South, 1860-2005. A one-time grant of $5,000. The Olana Partnership, Hudson, NY - For a touring exhibition and catalogue of works from the permanent collection of Frederic E. Church’s home at Olana. A one-time grant of $75,000. The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, NY - Augustus Saint-Gaudens, American Sculptor of the Gilded Age. A one-time grant of $25,000. Price Tower Art Center, Bartlesville, OK - Praire Skyscraper: Frank Lloyd Wright's Price Tower. Exhibition and catalogue $100,000. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA - For planning the expansion and reinterpretation of the American art galleries. A two-year grant of $300,000. The Pisano/Chase Catalogue Raisonné Project, New York, NY - For the William Merrit Chase catalogue raisonné. A three-year grant of $75,000. Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME - To reinstall and reinterpret the American art collection. A two-year grant of $150,000. The Saint Louis Art Museum, St. Louis, MO - Art of the Osage. Exhibition and catalogue $200,000. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA - Richard Tuttle. Exhibition and catalogue $200,000. Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA - Coast Salish Art and Artists: S'ABADEB ("The Gifts"). Exhibition and catalogue $100,000. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Smithsonian Institution , Washington, DC - Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination. Exhibition and catalogue $200,000. Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS - Aaron Douglas and the Harlem Renaissance. Exhibition and catalogue $100,000. Strawbery Banke, Portsmouth, NH - Support for planning a collection management center. A one-time grant of $75,000. Tate Gallery, London, England - Edward Hopper. Exhibition and catalogue $100,000. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT - Wallace Nutting and the Invention of Old America. Exhibition and catalogue $75,000. Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN - For a reinstallation of the permanent collection. A two-year grant of $100,000. Yale University Art Gallery, Yale University, New Haven, CT - For a sabbatical for the American decorative arts curator. A two-year grant of $170,000. Asia The Asia Foundation, San Francisco, CA - Planning grant for American Studies Program in Vietnam. A one-time grant of $28,000. Asia Society, New York, NY and Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA - For the exhibition and catalogue Ancient Arts of Vietnam. A one-time grant of $100,000. Asian Cultural Council, New York, NY - For a China art history initiative. A grant of $120,000. Asian Cultural Council, New York, NY - Further support for a China art history initiative. A two-year grant of $105,000. ASIANetwork, Rock Island, IL - For a project on Asian art and material culture in the undergraduate curriculum. A three-year grant of $370,000. Association for Asian Studies, Ann Arbor, MI - Publication of New Materials for Teaching about Asia. A one-time grant of $20,000. The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, Arlington, VA - Oral History Project with US Diplomats who have served in East Asia. A one-time grant of $25,000. Boston University, Boston, MA - For the Science and Civilisation in China volume on bronze metallurgy. A three-year grant of $190,000. The Bridge to Asia Foundation, San Francisco, CA - For a targeted books initiative in China. A two-year grant of $125,000. The Center for Khmer Studies, Inc., New York, NY - For a fellowship program in Cambodia for American scholars. A three-year grant of $150,000. Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC - Verifiable Dismantlement of North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Program. A one-time grant of $25,000. Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC - Chinese Images of the United States. A one-time grant of $30,000. China Institute in America, New York, NY - For educational programs on Chinese history, culture and contemporary society. A two-year grant of $250,000. Columbia University, New York, NY - For the Leila Hadley Luce Professorship in Modern Tibetan Studies and a program in modern Tibetan studies. A five-year grant of $3,000,000. East-West Center, Honolulu, HI - For a Southeast Asia fellowship program in Washington, DC. A three-year grant of $150,000. Eisenhower Exchange Fellowships, Inc., Philadelphia, PA - For the Southeast Asia Single Region Program. A grant of $250,000. Georgetown University, Washington, DC - For a project to strengthen U.S. policy studies on Southeast Asia. A two-year grant of $60,000. Huazhong Normal University, Wuhan, China - For a research library on the history of Christianity in China. A two-year grant of $120,000. Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC - For a project on East Asian regionalism and the world economy. A two-year grant of $180,000. Institute of International Education, New York, NY - For the Elisabeth Luce Moore Leadership Program for Chinese Women. A three-year grant of $110,000. The International Center in New York, New York, NY - For a new initiative for Asian communities in New York City. A three-year grant of $100,000. International Center of Photography, New York, NY - For an exhibition of contemporary Chinese photography. A one-time grant of $50,000. International Crisis Group, New York, NY - For the Indonesia Project. A two-year grant of $300,000. International Law Students Association, Chicago, IL - To support the participation of law students from Vietnam in the 2004 Philip C. Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition. A one-time grant of $10,000. Japan Center for International Exchange, New York, NY - Role of Philanthropy in Postwar US-Japan Relations. A one-time grant of $25,000. Japan Society and The Korea Society, New York, NY - For the exhibition and catalogue Transmitting the Forms of Divinity: Early Buddhist Art from Korea and Japan. A one-time grant of $100,000. Mansfield Center for Pacific Affairs, Washington, DC - Trilateral Retreats: Toward New Regional Relations in Northeast Asia. A one-time grant of $25,000. National Committee on United States-China Relations, New York, NY - For a program for a new generation of China policy specialists. A three-year grant of $375,000. Oberlin Shansi Memorial Association, Oberlin, OH - For teacher training workshops in China for American and Chinese teachers of English. A one-time grant of $25,000. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA - Exhibition of Japanese Artist, Ikeno Taiga. A one-time grant of $5,000. Princeton University, Princeton, NJ - Renewed support for the Chinese Rare Books Project. A three-year grant of $210,000. Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN - For a summer institute on the study of religion in China. A one-time grant of $35,000. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, London, England - Renewed support for a collaborative project with the Tibet Archives in Lhasa. A three-year grant of $85,000. Stanford University, Stanford, CA - For a program of dialogue, research and exchange with North Korea. A two-year grant of $110,000. Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY - For a research and training program with North Korea's Kim Chaek University of Technology. A two-year grant of $125,000. Temple University, Philadelphia, PA - For a scholarly exchange program on comparative religious studies with Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia. A three-year grant of $220,000. University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA - For an Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative project to create a digital cultural atlas of religions in China. A three-year grant of $160,000. The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI - For research fellowships for scholars from Burma. A three-year grant of $120,000. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA - For a summer training program for librarians of Chinese collections in the U.S. A one-time grant of $50,000. University of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA - For a research program on Christianity in China. A two-year grant of $110,000. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA - For a research project and digital resource on women and culture in early China. A three-year grant of $140,000. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington , DC - For the Cold War International History Project's China initiative. A three-year grant of $210,000. Luce Scholars Program The Asia Foundation, San Francisco, CA - Renewed support for management of the Luce Scholars Program. A three-year grant of $966,440. Higher Education Education Leadership Program, Inc., New York, NY - For seminars to provide intellectual renewal for academic leaders. A two-year grant of $150,000. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Princeton, NJ - For a program to enhance doctoral education in the humanities. A two-year grant of $250,000. Public Policy and the Environment PUBLIC POLICY Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Washington, DC - For an orientation Seminar for new House Members of the 109th Congress. A one-time grant of $235,000. ENVIRONMENTAL INITIATIVE Allegheny College, Meadville, PA - To support The French Creek Environmental Program. A five-year grant of $240,000. Bowdoin College, Brunswick, ME - For the Merrymeeting Bay Long-Term Ecological Research Program. A three-year grant of $365,000. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA - For the Greening of Early Undergraduate Education. A three-year grant of $585,000. College of the Atlantic, Bar Harbor, ME - To support Coastal Ecology and Integrated Marine Studies. A three-year grant of $200,000. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH - For the Sustainable New England Landscape. A three-year grant of $310,000. Dickinson College, Carlisle, PA - For the Integrated Watershed Based Field Seminars. A five-year grant of $460,000. Duke University, Durham, NC - To support The Continental Environmental Leadership Program. A three-year grant of $800,000. Environmental Defense, New York, NY - To conserve North Caribbean Biodiversity through Marine Protected Areas Sustainable Development in Cuba. A one-time grant of $250,000. Environmental Working Group, Washington, DC - For the project Persistent Pollutants in the Environment and People. A two-year grant of $350,000. Fauna and Flora International, San Francisco, CA - To save Asia's Lost World: Renewal of Wildlife Conservation and Sustainable Development in Cambodia's Cardamom Mountains. A three-year grant of $250,000. Hubbard Brook Research Foundation, Hanover, NH - To support the Science Links Program. A four-year grant of $240,000. International Crane Foundation, Baraboo, WI - To preserve wetland management in China. A three-year grant of $240,000. The Land Institute, Salina, KS - For the Natural Systems Agriculture Program. A three-year grant of $275,000. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA - For the Field Research Component for the Terrascope Program. A four-year grant of $440,000. Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH - To support International Perspectives in Environmental Studies. A five-year grant of $700,000. Rocky Mountain Institute, Snowmass, CO - For the program Transforming the Electric Utility Industry. A four-year grant of $375,000. Tuft University, Medford, MA - To support Graduate Education for International Environmental Solutions Governance. A four-year grant of $900,000. University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA - For the Green Governance project. A five-year grant of $640,000. University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA - To support the Environmental Decision-Making and Policy Initiative. A five-year grant of $560,000. Vermont Law School, South Royalton, VT - To develop an Environmental Law Clinic. A three-year grant of $340,000. Theology American Society of Missiology, Princeton, NJ - A History of Christianity in Asia, Volume 2: From 1500 to 1900. A one-time grant of $20,000. Auburn Theological Seminary, New York, NY - For the Center for Multifaith Education. A two-year grant of $180,000. Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA - To support programs of theological education for Korean and Korean-American students. A three-year grant of $270,000. Chicago Theological Seminary, Chicago, IL - To support an initiative in the arts and theology. A three-year grant of $150,000. Council for a Parliament of the World's Religions, Chicago, IL - Registration Scholarships for Younger Participants in the 2004 Parliament of the World's Religions. A one-time grant of $20,000. Foundation for a Conference on Faith & Order in North America, New York, NY - Operating Expenses for 2003. A one-time grant of $25,000. Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA - To support expanded programs in worship, theology and the arts. A three-year grant of $300,000. The Fund for Theological Education, Atlanta, GA - Renewed support for programs to recruit highly qualified candidates for the ministry. A three-year grant of $600,000. The Gallery at the American Bible Society, New York, NY - To support the exhibition Biblical Art and the Asian Imagination. A one-time grant of $75,000. Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, Evanston, IL - To develop collaborative models of planning and evaluation in theological education. A three-year grant of $225,000. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, MA - To support programs for new-immigrant language groups at the Center for Urban Ministerial Education. A three-year grant of $150,000. Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CA - To support an initiative on Asian theologies and perspectives in North American theological education . A three-year grant of $500,000. Hartford Seminary, Hartford, CT - For a new professorship in Jewish studies to augment the program in Abrahamic religions. A three-year grant of $180,000. Hood Theological Seminary, Salisbury, NC - To support library acquisitions and services for a new Doctor of Ministry program. A two-year grant of $100,000. The Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, NY - To support the Summer Institute for Jewish Art. A three-year grant of $225,000. Maryknoll Mission Association of the Faithful, Maryknoll, NY - To support a new research initiative exploring Muslim-Christian Dynamics at the grassroots in Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. A one-time grant of $20,000. Methodist Theological School in Ohio, Delaware, OH - For expanded programs of the Center for Christian Leadership. A two-year grant of $180,000. Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, Our Lady of Grace Monastery, Beech Grove, IN - Monastic Interreligious Dialogue Bulletin and for efforts to increase the dialogue between monasteries of other traditions and Muslims. A one-time grant of $10,000. Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA - The Howard Thurman Papers Project. A one-time grant of $20,000. Partners for Sacred Places, Philadelphia, PA - For a training academy for congregational partnerships and resources. A two-year grant of $100,000. Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, PA - To support the Center for Business, Religion and Public Life. A three-year grant of $180,000.
St. Mary's Seminary and
University, Baltimore, MD - For the Raymond Brown Professorship in
Biblical Studies and an international conference on Brown's work. A
three-year grant of $210,000. For the publication and dissemination of case-studies from the conference Peacemakers in Action. Trinity College, Hartford, CT - To support a conference, Religion and the 2004 Election, offered by the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life. A one-time grant of $5,000. The Tricycle Foundation, New York, NY - To support an expanded development program. A two-year grant of $100,000. Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education, Richmond, VA - To support the Institute for Reformed Theology. A three-year grant of $150,000. The United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, New York, NY - To support an initiative to strengthen theological education in Asia. A one-time grant of $50,000. United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, New Brighton, MN - Society for the Arts in Religious & Theological Studies, honoring John W. Cook and James L. Waits. A one-time grant of $20,000. The University of Chicago, The Divinity School, Chicago, IL - Renewed support for the Chicago Forum on Scholarship in Theology and Religion. A two-year grant of $150,000. University of Dayton, Dayton, OH - For distinguished visiting professors for a Ph.D. program in theology. A two-year grant of $120,000. Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Nashville, TN - To establish the Luce Chancellor's Chair in the History of Christian Worship and the Arts. A three-year grant of $750,000. Wake Forest University, The Divinity School, Winston-Salem, NC - To expand course offerings and support a theological librarian at the Divinity School. A two-year grant of $180,000. Washington Theological Union, Washington, DC - To support the Formation for Ministry Program. A three-year grant of $150,000. Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington, DC - To support the research and publication of the Sacrament of Serpent Handling book project. A one-time grant of $10,000. Wheaton College, Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals Wheaton, IL - To support a research project on the changing face of American evangelicalism. A two-year grant of $160,000. Woodstock Theological Center, Georgetown University Washington, DC - For a project on Catholicism and civic renewal. A three-year grant of $225,000. Yenching Graduate Institute, Beijing, China - Conference on the religious thought of T.C. Chao. A one-time grant of $12,000.
Clare Boothe Luce Program
Boston College, Chestnut Hill,
MA
Boston University*, Boston, MA
Carnegie Mellon University,
Pittsburgh, PA
College of St. Catherine, St.
Paul, MN
Colorado School of Mines,
Golden, CO
Computing Research Association,
Inc. Washington, DC
Cornell University, Ithica, NY
Creighton University*, Omaha,
NE
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
DePaul University, Chicago, IL
Fordham University*, Bronx, NY
Hope College, Holland, MI
Howard University, Washington,
DC
John Carroll University,
Cleveland, OH
Johns Hopkins University,
Baltimore, MD
Kansas State University,
Manhattan, KS
Marquette University,
Milwaukee, WI
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, MA
Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, PA
Purdue University, West
Lafayette, IN
Regis University, Denver, CO
Rice University, Houston, TX
St. John's University*,
Jamaica, NY
Santa Clara University*, Santa
Clara, CA
Seton Hall University*, South
Orange, NJ
Society of Women Engineers,
Chicago, IL
Stevens Institute of
Technology, Hoboken, NJ
Stoney Brook State University
of New York,
Trinity College*, Washington,
DC
University of Detroit Mercy,
Detroit, MI
University of Maryland,
Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD
University of Maryland, College
Park, College Park, MD
University of Notre Dame*,
Notre Dame, IN
Villanova University,
Villanova, PA
Xavier University, Cincinnati,
OH Henry R. Luce Professorship Program Barnard College, New York, NY - Migration and Social Order (Extension) George Washington University, Washington, DC - Human Origins (Extension) Occidental College, Los Angeles, CA - Urban Environmental Studies (Extension) Special Projects American Council for Capital Formation Center for Policy Research, Washington, DC - The CAPTAX Initiative. A one-time grant of $5,000. Centurion Ministries, Inc., Princeton, NJ - For advocacy on behalf of wrongly convicted prisoners. A one-time grant of $5,000. Council for a Community of Democracies, Inc., Washington, DC - Educational Programs About Emerging Democracies. A one-time grant of $25,000. Hospitality Committee for the United Nations Delegations, Inc., New York, NY - Orientation of New Delegates to the United Nations. A one-time grant of $5,000. Institute for Women and Technology, Palo Alto, CA - Development of New Technologies. A one-time grant of $10,000. Math\Science Network, Oakland, CA - For the training of workshop leaders for the Expanding Your Horizons Conferences. A one-time grant of $5,000. The National Center for Leadership, Inc., Washington, DC - For capacity-building project to assist staff expansion and programmatic development. A one-time grant of $15,000. New York Regional Association of Grantmakers (NYRAG), New York, NY - For the New York City Youth Funders Network. A one-time grant of $1,000. Public Conversations Project, Watertown, MA - Support of local interfaith initiatives. A one-time grant of $10,000. The Royal Oak Foundation, New York, NY - For the Spring 2004 Seeds for Thought Lecture. A one-time grant of $6,500. Sound Portraits Productions, New York, NY - For the StoryCorps Oral History Project. A one-time grant of $10,000. USA Committee for UNESCO, New York, NY - For the activities of the Committee. A one-time grant of $10,000. Women in Engineering Programs & Advocates Network (WEPAN), Austin, TX - For efforts to promote women in engineering careers. A one-time grant of $5,000. Women in Engineering Programs & Advocates Network (WEPAN), Austin, TX - For the 2003 National WEPAN Conference. A one-time grant of $10,000. Look at how they just pour the money into religion. Where did they get all of this money. A bunch of crooks. [36c] http://www.jssgallery.org/Paintings/Madame_X.htm wrote:
Madame X When Madame X was shown at the Salon of 1884 it became instantly a salacious painting and a scandal in French society as a result of its sexual suggestiveness of her pose and the pail pasty color of her skin. The "X" of Madame X was actually Madame Gautreau (1859-1915) who’s reputation was apparently destroyed and John left France shortly to never truly regain his former standing as the darling of Paris. The size of the painting is enormous, measuring 82 inches by 43 inches or nearly seven feet tall (2 meters) -- and with the underlying sensuality of the painting, in the time that it was done (if it isn't still to some degree today), almost threatening to the viewer. When I first read about this painting, I was struck by the notion that if the painting was so damning to her reputation, why hadn't Madame Gautreau nor her husband ever destroyed it; which seemed to tell me that she must have secretly loved it; but this was not the case. The uproar over the painting, especially from her family made her hate it. So what gives? On the 15th of November '98 I went to the library and ordered a number of books. The following is from John Sargent, by Hon Evan Charteris, first published by Benjamin Blom, Inc. NY, in 1927, two years after the death of Sargent: (Hon Evan Charteris) “In 1883 Sargent had begun a portrait which was to have a good deal of influence on his career. As far back as 1881 he met Madame Gautreau in Paris society, where she moved rather conspicuously, shining as a star of considerable beauty, and drawing attention as to one dressed in advance of her epoch. It was the period in which in London the professional beauty, with all the specialization which the term connoted, was recognized as having a definite role in social hierarchy. Madame Gautreau occupied a corresponding position in Paris. Immediately after meeting her, Sargent wrote to his friend del Castillo to find out if he could do anything to induce Madame Gautreau to sit [for] him. 'I have.' he wrote, 'a great desire to paint her portrait and have reason to think she would allow it and is waiting for someone to propose this homage to her beauty. If you are 'bien avec elle' [13] and will see her in Paris you might tell her that I am a man of prodigious talent.'
Vernon Lee
"The necessary preliminaries were arranged, and the disillusionment seems to have begun quickly, for after the first few sittings he wrote to Vernon Lee from Nice on February 10 (1883): 'In a few days I shall be back in Paris, tackling my other 'envoi,' the Portrait of a Great Beauty. Do you object to people who are 'fardeés'[15] to the extent of being uniform lavender or blotting-paper colour all over? If so you would not care for my sitter; but she has the most beautiful lines, and if the lavender or chlorate of potash-lozenge colour be pretty in itself I should be more than pleased.' "In another letter, and again to Vernon Lee, he wrote: 'Your letter has just reached me still in this country house (Les Chêes Parramé) struggling with the unpaintable beauty and hopeless laziness of Madame Gaureau.' "Even when the picture was nearing completion he was assailed by misgivings. 'My portrait!' he wrote to Castillo, 'it is much changed and far more advanced than when you last saw it. One day I was dissatisfied with it and dashed a tone of light rose over the former gloomy background. I turned the picture upside down, retired to the other end of the studio and looked at it under my arm. Vast improvement. The élancée figure of the model shows to much greater advantage. The picture is framed and on a great easel, and Carolus has been to see it and said: 'Vous pouvez l'envoyer au Salon avec confiance.'[14] Encouraging, but false. I have made up my mind to be refused.' "The picture was accepted for the Salon of 1884. Varnishing day did nothing to assure the painter. On the opening day he was in a state of extreme nervousness. It was the seventh successive year in which he had exhibited. Every Salon had seen the critics more favorable, the public more ready to applaud. But without suggesting that the critics and the public of Paris are fickle, it is probably fair to say that popularity, fame and reputation are more subject to violent fluctuations there than other European capitals. This, at any rate, was to be Sargent's experience. "The doors of the Salon were hardly open before the picture was damned. The public took upon themselves to inveigh against the flagrant insufficiency, judged by prevailing standards, of the sitters clothing; the critics fell foul of the execution. The Parisian public is always vocal and expressive. The Salon was in an uproar. Here was an occasion such as they had not had since Le D'jeuner sur l'Herbe, L'Olympia and the Exhibition of Independents. The onslaught was led the lady's relatives. A demand was made that the picture should be withdrawn. It is not among the least of the curiosities of human nature, that while an individual will confess and even call attention to his own failings, he will deeply resent the same office being undertaken by someone else. So it was with the dress of Madame Gautreau. Here the distinguished artist was proclaimed to the public in paint a fact about herself which she had hitherto never made any attempt to conceal, one which had, indeed, formed one of her many social assets. Her sentiment was profound. If the picture could not be withdrawn, the family might at least bide its time, wait till the Salon was closed, the picture delivered, and then by destroying, blot it as an unclean thing from the records of the family. Anticipating this, Sargent, before the exhibition was over, took it away himself. After remaining many years in his studio it now figures as one of the glories of the Metropolitan Museum in New York." (pages 59-61) "The scene at the Salon is described in a letter written by Sargent's friend and fellow-painter, Ralph Curtis, to his parents. It will be noted that at a certain point Sargent's forbearance gave way and his pugnacity . . . burst out: (See Letter from Ralph Curtis to his family) "Sargent, who was twenty-eight, had been working for ten years in Paris. The Salon of 1884 was to have been a culmination of his efforts. He had painted what is now recognized as a masterpiece, displaying excellence which he was perhaps never to surpass. It had been received with a storm of abuse. Paris, which had been smooth and well-disposed and encouraging, had turned, and like a child splintering a plaything, had dealt a violent blow at its recognized favorite. He was not in the least in doubt of his own art, but he was always sensitive to atmosphere, always easily affected by unsympathetic environment. Paris had awaken suddenly one May morning in an uncongenial mood, its friendliness hidden in clouds; the accord which prevailed between painter and public was at an end." (Pages 63-64) "Vernon Lee summed it up this way: “ . . . it seemed as if for years, he was engrossed in perpetually dissatisfied (and, as regards to Parisian public, disastrous) attempts to render adequately the ‘strange, weird, fantastic, curious’ beauty of that peacock-woman, Mme. Gautreau.” (Page 250) By 1906 Madame Gautreau had changed her opinion of the painting. In a letter to Major Roller John writes: I think I know what Mme Gautreau wants . . . the Kaiser who was such a dear, thought her portrait the most fascinating woman's likeness that he has ever seen, and that he wishes me to have an exhibition in Berlin . . . (see letter) The 1890's saw la Belle Époque in full swing and accepted fashion, both in painting and in suggestive nature of Mme's gown and pose had caught up. In '91 Mme Gauthereau was again painted -- this time by Gustave Courtoi in an obvious attempt at recreating the essential elements of John's painting. As you can see, though the pose and dress is just as daring, it never reaches the same power. Times had certainly changed. The thought that such a painting would even be considered a scandal had faded to black and in its place these paintings were deemed flattering to the subject; but John had moved on and had turned his attention towards America for his work. In 1916, as the painting was being exhibited at the Worlds Fair in San Francisco, he wrote his friend Edward Robinson who was by then the director of the Metropolitan Museum in New York. Edward Robinson
. . . now that [the painting] is in America I rather feel inclined to let it stay there if a Museum should want it. I suppose it is the best thing I have done. I would let the Metropolitan Museum have it for £ 1,000 pounds . . . let me know your opinion . . . (see letter) I think we all know what his opinion was. John worked intensely harder on this painting than any other submitted to the Salon to that date. He did a number of studies and drawings in pencil, watercolors as well as oils. Even after the show, John began an unfinished copy of Madame X that now hangs at the Tate Gallery.
In order to fully understand the jeers from the public, it's important to note that the painting, as we have it today, is altered from the original version! To add to the salacious nature, the painting had been shown at the Salon with the right dress strap off her shoulder! A Photograph of the painting, as it was displayed, shows exactly how it looked. Numerous preliminary sketches also depicted her with the strap off -- it was clearly part of her personality. Sargent made the adjustment after taking it back to his studio. John Singer Sargent loved Beauty. "Indeed, [Vernon Lee would later say] I feel certain that his conscious endeavor, his self-formulated program, was to paint whatever he saw with absolute and researchful fidelity, never avoiding ugliness nor seeking after beauty. But, like most, though perhaps not all, supreme artists. John Sargent was not aware of what he was really about, nor in what manner his superficial verbal program was for ever disregarded by the unspoken, imperious synthesis of his particular temperament and gifts. Also like other painters of those . . . days, John Sargent did not know that seeing is a business of the mind, the memory and the heart, quite as much as of the eyes; and the valeurs which the most stiff-necked impressionist could strive after were the values of association and preference. Now to his constitution, ugliness and vulgarity were negative values, instinctively avoided. In theory, John Sargent would doubtless have defended Manet for cutting some of his figures in half, and even decapitating them by the frame, let alone choosing to portray bounders and sots in ballet stalls and bars. I can almost hear him [arguing] for Renoir's crowd of cads and shop-girls under umbrellas and for Degas's magnificent lady in her bathroom, under the ministrations of a corn-cutter." But what set him apart from others, according to Vernon Lee, was "Sargent's outspoken love of the exotic [and the] unavowed love of rare kinds of beauty, for incredible types of elegance like his Mme. Gautreau" (from pages 250-252) To me (Natasha), John Singer Sargent is a powerful and wonderful painter. He is a man who simply loved women in virtually each one of his portraits. His feelings radiates from them. But his complementary eye did not seem to have been just to women. The other portrait at the Nelson (Francisco Bernareggi) was years later of a friend of his. It is done in a style that the Gallery called “Free Form” and looks very impressionistic, maybe like Renoir. The portrait is a close-up of a man in his 20's. I can’t describe it other than to say the man in the picture is simply gorgeous. He has thick flowing dark hair, flowing not too unlike what we’ve all seen in the drawing of Edgar Allen Poe (although fuller) with a dark full but youthful mustache. I don’t know if Madame Gautreau ever fully realized just how lucky she was but certainly . . . certainly, if it were not for the consternation of her contemporary public and her family, she must have been exceptionally pleased that her boldness was captured so perfectly by John Singer Sargent. Now over a hundred years later, I chuckle to myself as I recall standing before his other work of Mrs. Wade, and remembering the grand size and powerfulness of it all, commanding the viewers attention, the Painting of Madame Gautreau (Madame X) which hung in the Salon of 1884 must have just blown those people away!!!!!!!!!!!!
By: Natasha
Wallace Just out
"Strapless: The Rise of John Singer Sargent and the Fall of Madame X" by Deborah Davis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Footnotes: Exhibitions John Singer Sargent, An Exhibition -- Whitney Museum, NY & The Art Institute of Chicago 1986-1987
Road to
Madame X Philip Resheph has been doing some research of his own on Madame Gautreau (Madame X) who's maiden name was Virginie Avegno, and this is what he found:
Dear
Natasha, Her father seems to have led the most extraordinary regiment called the Avegno Zouaves, which included some Chinese soldiers and rather unwisely wore dark blue coats, as a result of which they were fired on by their own side! Shiloh seems to have been a bit of a massacre all round. Thank you Philip. One of the books I read, also confirmed this story in general terms. It said that it was Virginie and her mother. For those that don't know New Orleans -- a lot of French settled in New Orleans well before it was part of the United States and was/is a important port of trade located right at the mouth of the Mississippi (Virginie's birthplace). So it was probably natural that her family would flee to France. Also, I read a quote from one of the Paris local papers (in one of the books I read) that connected John Sargent and Madame Gautreau before he painted her. The quote was from a Frenchman Perdican about the "American invasion" of 1881 after a recent horse race in which an American horse won. It said: "Their painters, like Mr. Sargent, take away our medals, Their pretty women, like Madame Gauthereau outshine our own- and their horses thrash our steeds, as Foxhall ridden by Fordham did on Sunday" ("Sargent: The Early Portraits" by R. Ormand, p. 113). Madame Gautreau's Birthplace A travel log claims that Virginie was born on the Parlange Plantation near New Road, Lousiana, which is on the Mississippi river, 90 miles north of New Orleans. Her great grandfather Marquis Vincent de Ternant was the plantation's first owner. The plantation grew cotton and had slaves. The place is open for viewing. Parlange Plantation
Comparison of outrage to Manet and Sargent Early on, a Friends of the Gallery, Philip Resheph, and I discussed this painting and the way Hon. Evan Charteris' use of comparing the outrage of the public to the two paintings by Manet, notably Le D'jeuner sur l'Herbe, and L'Olympia, Philip was quick to point out that these were not similar events. First of all, in Manet's work, both paintings are of hired models, Sargent's is of a prominent society woman and she was not paid. Secondly, and very importantly, Manet's subjects were nude whereas Sargent's was not. Though I'm sure you caught this last distinction yourself, it is an important one and I think Philip raises some good points and it is worth noting here. What I think Charteris was trying to say was not that the outrage was the same exactly, but that Sargent had to face similar resistance to the nature of what beauty is in art and what is acceptable. Like Manet, Sargent pushed at the boundaries but more within the establishment. John dared to show the boldness of Madame Gautreau's beauty and manner. This was a real woman a here-and-now person not a goddess or a romanticized character. Sargent had made a critical miscalculation. Although he had previously taken Whistler’s controversial painting Girl in White and had turned it into a resounding success with Fumée d'Ambre Gris (see two studies in white) he had failed to understand that like Ingres' Odalisque with a Slave, the subject was an other-worldly place (see Olympia in juxtaposition) Madame X would not be. Sure, Sargent had toned it down, she was clothed and not naked; but the line of acceptability for portraiture is much more constraining than for subject paintings. And although he painted the truth, and although Gautreau may have powdered her skin and looked pasty, the attempt to show the core of Olympia -- the flirt and tease of Gautreau who after all is real person not just a model, was too much. It was this immediacy of the subject -- a contemporary and known person to the people viewing her along with her sexuality -- larger than life (seven feet tall and remember the painting, as it is now with the dress strap repainted, is a tamer version of the original) draws your attention -- no -- demands your attention! In the context of the hushed and whispered gossip of her reputation from the other women and the "in your face I'm beautiful" to the men standing looking at her -- this was more than society could bare; and just like Manet, they revolted against it.
Manet
cutting his figures in half Degas's magnificent lady in her bathroom Philip Resheph thinks that possibly Degas's Woman Bathing (1885), or The Tub (1886) might be the painting Vernon Lee is referring to. Thanks Philip : ) [37] My husband's reaction exactly when I read "rubbed out." But hold on, Carlos -- "A culture left without beautiful images of its own violence"? Do we have to call them "beautiful"? Can't we just call them "true"? Should we ever think violence is beautiful? I don't think so. [38] You are one twisted fellow. Are you saying that America is not innocent because its images of violence are ugly, factual, and lacking in aesthetic imagery? Setting aside whether that's true or not, and who would be the judge of such a sweeping cultural conviction, what has innocence got to do with ugly art? And what's wrong with factual art? You appear to be saying that America would be innocent if its death art was beautiful! You come up with any justification for violent imagery! [39] You said it again. If you want to talk about violence in society in relation to Frida Kahlo, why don't you talk about how automobiles kill so many people, and how maybe Henry Ford was a demon? Then you can talk about his claws, his pectorals eating his breasts, and his macabre cloak of sacrificial victims. But then, that would be violence by the corporate elite against The People, a thoroughly taboo subject. [40] Oh, I love that! If I was the student body at Pomona College, I wouldn't mind that they cut Prometheus' dick off. I think you misinterpret the meaning of the "graffito." "If you don't want it slipped in, then don't let it hang out," is what it's really saying. Count me in as a bird of prey wanting to cannibalize, Bobbitt-like, Prometheus' dick! [41] Now you're accusing Frida Kahlo of having a truly subversive mind. Forget about Frida Kahlo anyway, because "Marx and Freud are the two most intelligent and foolish men on earth who betrayed the rabbinical wisdom of silence." Rabbinical wisdom of silence? Are we talking about the Kaballah here? [42] The Illuminati want the gold, alright, but they don't want anyone else to have any. And if you are so into wholeness and unity, then why do you insist on breaking people's souls, selves and bodies up into little pieces? [43] You're talking about Saturn now; you could have been talking about Uranus before. [44] Now wait a minute! Just because she loves him doesn't mean his personality and actions are hers. Everyone is responsible for their own actions and personalities. [45] More potshots at Diego. "There is nothing new in his art, and he owes it all to the European vanguard." Why do you hate Diego and Frida so much? [46] You have a lot of nerve putting yourself up as a wall between the world and Frida Kahlo's diary. You twist everything to your own evil message. Just because someone draws, talks about, writes poetry about, obsesses about modern industry, steel and smoke, doesn't mean they glorify it. Did you ask Diego before you announced to the world on his behalf that he glorified steel and smoke, "that which was denounced by Blake and his dark Satanic mills?" You just wanted to pronounce Satan's name, didn't you? [47] I think you're talking about yourself. You couldn't be slandering Frida and Diego again! [48] HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! ROFLMAO! WHAT AN ILLUMINATI ASSHOLE YOU ARE, CARLOS!!!! Maybe everyone else can't see it, but I sure as hell can! [49] Yeah, so what? You're not saying anything. Let's talk about some other church in Russia, say a Mormon church, and claim that Communists are lapsed Mormons in need of reassurance, yearning for a communist shelter. I also love it how you throw all those big words around and drop names like they're going out of style, and pretend to say something when it's nothing. Have you been taking lessons from Robert Anton Wilson? I'll bet you have. Do you meet regularly on Friday nights for your weekly Satan session? [50] How much did the Pope pay you to say this, or are you part of the gang? [51] See footnote no. 48. [52] How did you decide what was outside and what was inside? [53] "Bridge fulfillment and allegiance by having a love affair with another man?" God forbid you should think you are saying something. Go see a psychiatrist right now! You are insane. [54] More slander on Diego. Yeah, he was just a piece of shit getting a laugh out of all of us. We get your message. So Frida was right, was she? Right about what? When did you previously say that she said Diego was like a lapsed Catholic who needed the final rites of the Communist Party? Your introduction is nothing but an excuse to reminisce about the Catholic church and slander Diego and Frida. [55] Look at how hard you try to establish a link between Catholicism and Communism. I think you're trying to tell us something true, without me admitting that you are right about Mexican communists being lapsed Catholics in need of shelter.
[56] Who said anything about humor "as the Strangeloves held sway
in Washington and Moscow"? Was that you, Carlos? Are you the one who's
laughing?
[57] Manichean demands of the Cold War? I don't think so.
Dictionary: [58] Critical retranslation of this sentence by my husband: manifestacion means demonstration; Carlos is saying Frida's last public appearance was at a demonstration for Guatemala. Whoo, you'd think the Bank of Mexico could afford a better translator. Gabriel Garcia Marquez didn't have any trouble getting his work translated nicely. What's the deal with you, Carlos? Or don't you give a shit?
[59]
First of all, Pantheism doesn't exist beyond being a name, an invocation,
because it means nothing and everything. Are you saying that
Pantheism is the deepest kind of politics? Well, if it meant something, I
think the Iluminati would agree. But how do we get from Pantheism,
that "philosophy" which supposedly says there is no God separate from
nature, to "an art that doesn't bow to reality but convokes another
invented reality?" And how do we get from there to Frida's art? Are
you saying that Frida invented her pain? I think you are. answers.com wrote: pantheism (păn'thēĭzəm) [Gr. pan=all, theos=God], name used to denote any system of belief or speculation that includes the teaching “God is all, and all is God.” Pantheism, in other words, identifies the universe with God or God with the universe. The term is thought to have been employed first by John Toland in the 18th cent., but pantheistic views are of very great antiquity. While all pantheism is monistic, it is expressed in different ways according to what is meant by the one whole that gathers up in itself all that exists, or what is meant by God. If the pantheist starts with the belief that the one great reality, eternal and infinite, is God, he sees everything finite and temporal as but some part of God. There is nothing separate or distinct from God, for God is the unierse. If, on the other hand, the conception taken as the foundation of the system is that the great inclusive unity is the world itself, or the universe, God is swallowed up in that unity, which may be designated nature. [59a] Some forms of pantheism have had their beginnings in religion; others have been based upon a philosophic, scientific, or poetic point of view. Noteworthy among the religious forms is Hinduism, in which the only reality, the supreme unity, is Brahman. This conception is closely connected with the idea of emanation. Pantheism had a place in the speculations of some Greek philosophers. Xenophanes taught that the one God could know no motion or change. The conception of Parmenides left no room for development or ethical meaning. Stoicism gave a more definite expression to pantheistic doctrine, emphasizing the identity of God and the world. There is pantheism in the teachings of the Neoplatonists and of such Christian philosophers as Erigena and such mystics as Eckhart and Boehme. The writings of Giordano Bruno of the 16th cent. carried such weight as to influence the development of modern thought, especially through Spinoza, in whose monistic system pantheism receives its most complete and precise expression. In it God is the unlimited, all-inclusive substance, the first cause of the universe, with innumerable attributes, two of which, thinking and extension, are capable of being perceived. Pantheism of a kind can be traced in the idealistic philosophy of Fichte and Schelling, Hegel and Schleiermacher. Together with mysticism, it fills a large place in literature, particularly in the poetry of nature. [59a] THAT IS HILARIOUS!!! [60] Yeah, it was really obscene of Frida to go out and get mutilated by a streetcar. She's such an obscene girl. [61] And let's not forget little Carlitos. But, "DISCOVERING THE CLITORIS OF PLEASURE?" Whoa, you are really out there, Carlitos. [62] NO THEY AREN'T! They are expressions of love. [63] Exposing yourself in public again? [64] Esteemed anti-Semite Henry Ford? I DON'T THINK SO! DICTIONARY.COM wrote: renowned. adj : widely known and esteemed [65] It is your obsession to imagine Frida's suffering, naked body underneath her supposedly funny, pornographic clothes, not anyone else's Carlos! Because you are a sick little bugger. [66] Yeah, her clothes were just to cover up the corpse of her body, making her presentable for her trip to paradise! Are you a cretin monster? [67] You reveal yourself too clearly with the Wagner reference, Carlos. Wagner is the Illuminati's favorite composer. A fascist, and Hitler's best friend. Are you a fascist, Carlos? [67a] [67b] [67a]
La Folia
Online Music Review wrote: The recent criticism of Daniel Barenboim after a performance of Wagner's music in Israel shows that this controversy is still very much alive. It does seem quite likely that some five million Jews and countless others died to achieve Hitler's and Wagner's jointly shared ideal of a world united in its admiration for Wagner's ethic and art. While Wagner's place in musical history is undisputed, his extraordinary, if unwitting, influence on world events is not fully appreciated. In his own lifetime, Richard Wagner's operas so obsessed the Bavarian King Ludwig that he summoned Wagner to his side immediately upon his accession to the throne. Even after Wagner's personal excesses and scandalous affairs alienated the bulk of Bavarian officialdom, King Ludwig, still mesmerized, continued his generous, if necessarily surreptitious, support. The Wagner motifs found in all of Ludwig's castles, including a large excavated grotto with a lake and swan boat, are testimony to the zealous devotion Wagner did and still does inspire in susceptible individuals. Although the root causes of Hitler's many prejudices can never be definitively established, the world has intuitively sensed that some sort of relationship existed between the mentor Wagner and the disciple Hitler. That Hitler was fascinated by all things Wagnerian is not difficult to document. Even before coming to power, Hitler was already paying court to Winifred and Cosima Wagner at Bayreuth. Hitler lost little time insinuating himself into the Wahnfried household and often stayed overnight with the Wagners in the 1930s. In an interview taped in England shortly before her death, Winifred, who was Wagner's English daughter-in-law, described at great length Hitler's frequent visits with her and how respectful, and even affectionate, he was with her and Wagner's grandchildren. Her comments suggest that in Hitler's mind the Wagners were his real family. Winifred has portrayed a man who, while not a passionate or critical listener to all forms of classical music, was nevertheless a "thoroughly modern major Wagnerite who could whistle all the tunes from that infernal nonsense Parsifal." (Actually, in his last years he took a fancy to Franz Lehár.) To Hitler, Bayreuth was sacrosanct and he shielded it from unpleasant realities. Winifred claimed to have successfully interceded directly with Hitler to save the jobs and lives of Jewish members of the Bayreuth Festival, and it is well documented that Bayreuth personnel were exempted from military service. Indeed, Hitler was very upset when Winifred insisted that opera performances finally cease because of insuperable wartime difficulties and the inappropriateness of singing while the Reich burned. Hitler's obsession was as strong as King Ludwig's. But it was expressed in despotism and anti-Semitism rather than in playacting, homosexuality, and castle-decorating. [67c] A reading of Cosima Wagner's diaries shows that any individual or group who did not enthusiastically embrace Wagner's music was branded as unworthy, contemptible, and probably Jewish. The despised ones included not only real and imagined Jews, but Parisians, Swiss opera impresarios, and hostile music critics. From the diaries and many of Wagner's own published diatribes, one could make a case that anyone who expressed any doubt as to the perfection of Wagner's talent, or who stinted in his financial support of the artist, was subject to being characterized as an inferior being, i.e., a Semite. The genesis of Hitler's extreme anti-Semitism and anti-Slavism appears to be in his belief that those whose support for Wagner's cause was less than absolute were justifiable candidates for extermination or enslavement. Thus Hitler set out as best he could to make the European world safe for Wagnerism by first eliminating German anti-Wagner elements, and then those rival artistic cultures such as the Jewish and Slavic, that seemed the most antithetical to Wagnerian ideals. Because Wagner liked the English, and the Englishwoman Winifred resembled the ideal Wagnerian heroine in appearance, Hitler expressed admiration and even a fondness for Great Britain and especially Ireland, which, after all, was the home of Tristan. Indeed, the invasion of Britain was constantly postponed by Hitler personally for no convincing military reason. Hitler (and Wagner) appeared to have little interest in obliterating black, Oriental, Moslem, or Indian cultures, because their arts, histories and opinions were too far removed from Wagner's to be relevant or reviled. Wagner's and Hitler's obsession was primarily to get at least the Germanic, Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon and Latin races irrevocably committed to the Wagnerian cause. I leave it to professional historians to perfect or disprove the thesis that the seductive power of Wagner's all-encompassing works of art led directly to the Holocaust and a world war. But Wagnerian rapture has already ensnared two Germanic rulers, and this consuming passion endures and continues to enthrall some people just as strongly as it repels others. The Wagnerian controversy does not endure just in Israel; Wagner's aesthetic has been a subject of debate for over a century now, with music lovers, conductors, singers, authors, and politicians as polarized today as they were during Wagner's own lifetime. The risk the ongoing availability of Wagner's music and writing poses is that one more deranged despot will come to power inspired to install yet another version of the Wagnerian agenda in the world. I would say that this particular risk is now vanishingly small in our MP-3, multicultural century. [67b] Richard Wagner Archive wrote: Introduction Richard Wagner (1813-1883) who regarded himself as "the most German of men", "the German spirit" is not only known because of his 13 operas and numerous other compositions but also because of his inevitable influence on our understanding of German culture and history. He has been classified as an anarchist and a socialist and, simultaneously, as a proto-fascist and nationalist, as a vegetarian and an antisemite... In fact, his name has appeared in connection to almost all major trends in German history of the 19th and 20th centuries.
[67c] What makes you so sure? Hitler sexually abused Richard Wagner's grandson, Wieland Wagner (Time magazine, August 15, 1994, p. 56).
1937, House of German Art Museum, Hitler and mussolini enjoy a homoerotic exhibit. [67d]
Ingrid H. Shafer,
Mary Jo Ragan wrote: Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination, by Marc A. Weiner. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995). It is difficult for me to be dispassionate about this review. I was born in Austria just before the beginning of World War II and grew up to the sounds of Der fliegende Holländer, Tannhäuser, and Parzifal. Almost as soon as I could read I began to devour the yellowing 1920s librettos in our library the way I gobbled up everything in print. My mother adored Richard Wagner, and she was very disappointed that as a teenager I began to prefer Bach and Gregorian chants to Wagner's Romantic exuberance, and Stefan Zweig or Sigrid Undset to Wagner's texts. A dark oil portrait of Wagner hung on the living room wall, next to our baby grand piano which my father played for hours on end. The painting had been damaged by a bomb fragment, and one day, as I tried to figure out a way of repairing it, I removed the canvas from the frame and discovered a photograph of Adolf Hitler stashed behind the composer. This was about eight years after the war, and my parents were not amused. To my frustration, Hitler disappeared, along with a savagely antisemitic biology text, complete with cartoon-like illustrations of misshapen Jewish "types" with vulture-like noses that reminded me of Wagner's bird beak beneath the modish cap. I had discovered the text in the bottom of a book case, and hoped to use it in my well-intentioned if clumsy attempts to discover why good people like my parents had allowed the slaughter of millions of fellow humans and why no one wanted to answer my questions about the Nazi era. At that time I did not yet have a name for antisemitism but "smelled" it as undefined fetor in odd places, such as Wagner's operas, legends and fairy tales with their occasional Jewish stereotypes, the cheap 19th century pulp novels I borrowed from our neighbors, and the way the story of the crucifixion was told, depicted, and re-enacted. I was beginning to grasp certain patterns, and they involved a combination of excessive patriotic fervor, religious fanaticism, and the inability to see others as fellow humans. My obsession with the Holocaust had begun two or three years after the war when I found death camp photographs in a magazine and asked my mother, "Why did the Nazis kill the Jews?" I did not believe her original insistence that no one knew; so I continued to nag and was finally emotionally shattered when she became quite angry and yelled at me that I would understand when I had children of my own; that even if people had known they would have done nothing in order to keep the Nazis from deporting and killing them and their families instead. It seemed at that moment that I (and Austrian children like myself) had an enormous debt to pay, for our very lives had been bought with the dying of countless Jews--a mysterious people, since I had not as yet knowingly met a single Jew. Years later my mother told me that her much older sister, my beloved aunt Elsa, was the only surviving child of my grandmother's twenty-year cohabitation before the turn of the century with the son of a prominent Jewish family until they separated so he could marry a Jewish bride. He continued to support her and their daughter, and she wore his ring until her death. Elsa was a mathematics and biology teacher and took early retirement shortly after Hitler marched into Austria to keep from having to teach the kind of poisonous nonsense I had discovered in the above-mentioned biology textbook. She escaped the hunt for Jews because she was illegitimate and because someone had cut all references to her paternity from official records. Even without knowing about Aunt Elsa's Jewish roots I continued to be haunted by the Holocaust as I began to practice and study my Catholic faith in earnest and came to see the swastika as the crooked shadow cast by the Christian cross, its evil twin, inextricably joined to it at the base--as are all shadows--and the Jewish people affixed to its twisted frame. I am still asking the same question, but after four decades I am now convinced that I have discovered at least part of the answer: the kind of gut-level, knee-jerk revulsion that permitted the genocide to be planned and implemented is more than anything else a matter of the imagination, the very attribute that is the most essential characteristic of being human. We engender our personal and communal sense of identity, our unique blend of customs, traditions, and values through our imagination--the stories, myths, metaphors, and rituals which simultaneously endure and change through and over time. We invest certain objects, events, seasons, persons, and types with special meanings, and in the process we create the very filters through which we then perceive, interpret, and create our worlds. In this sense we are embodied imagination. Douglas Hofstadter uses an apt analogy when he compares our ways of information processing to a tree whose mighty trunk and branches tower above ground but depend for their very existence on the invisible root system below the surface.2 The iceberg is another helpful image. "Real world thinking" takes place above the surface but is nourished by complex inaccessible processes in the mute depths of Michael Polanyi's tacit knowledge or Hans-Georg Gadamer's Vorverständnis or Carl Gustav Jung's personal or collective unconscious. These processes are below our awareness and control while they surreptitiously shape our attitudes, opinions, and behavior. It is in these hidden sub-strata that we are powerfully affected by music, dance, and image through direct and intuitive sense absorption rather than intellectual analysis. In other words, our actions are shaped far less by so-called objective truths than by that which we perceive and believe to be true after first having spun it on the loom of our imagination from the threads of experience. We live by our myths as we co-create them--from family tales to cultural master myths--archetypal yea-saying paradigms that inspire humaneness, respect, friendship, and even love for those who are different or archetypal nay-saying paradigms that teach us to approach others with fear, suspicion, envy, hatred, and violence. We are who we are and do what we do largely by following the proddings of our imagination and then rationalizing the result. Among the most effective such communal projections and shapers of individual and group imagination are pictures, music, re-enactments, and stories, especially in combination as they inform such religious ceremonies as the Passover Seder, Passion Plays, the Catholic Solemn High Mass and its secular counterpart, the opera. Hence we must focus on the imagination--in order to pursue and unmask as many of the strands as possible that combined into pervasive, cultural antisemitism which was at least a necessary condition of the Holocaust; in order to understand group psychology with such symptoms as homophobia, religious fanaticism, and ethnic hatred; and in order to anticipate and defuse some of the most deadly effects of the mythic monsters we thus create and propagate with their own iconography. For hundreds of years, in Catholic regions, passion plays and other folk culture dramatic productions that featured stereotypical Jews as Jungian shadows--physically malformed, infant-murdering, blood-sucking, plague-spreading Satan's seed--were among the most insidious opinion shapers of the illiterate or semi-literate masses. And when passion plays were out of season the faithful could go to church and admire a painting or stained glass window depicting the mother sow of Judaism suckling her Jewish brood. This odious image originated in 13th century Magdeburg, spread to France and Holland, and three centuries later was enthusiastically endorsed by Luther.3 No wonder Jews were considered the "accursed race," agents of unspeakable evil, the "Judas" people throughout Europe, slitters of throats and rippers-out of hearts who made martyrs of little Christian children. Incredibly, in the tiny Tyrolean community of Rinn with a chapel dedicated to one such "blessed" child, supposedly murdered five hundred years ago, a violently antisemitic play, written in the 1930s by Fr. Gottfried Schöpf, was still annually performed for local residents, tourists, and entire classes of primary school youngsters until 1953, against a backdrop of garish depictions of the supposed crime. During the same period movie houses in nearby Innsbruck were showing news reels of death camp horror. So powerful was the hold of that beloved calumny that as recently as the late 1980s a number of individuals appealed to Rome to keep Bishop Reinhold Stecher of Innsbruck from following the spirit of the Second Vatican Council by having the chapel repainted and officially re-dedicating to the commemoration of the sins Christian had committed against Jews over the centuries.4 In a response to E. D. Hirsch's challenge in Cultural Literacy, Patti Gillespie warns of the dangers of allowing theater education to become primarily "a means of developing cultural literacy, of promoting national cohesion, of enhancing public discourse."5 Her very comment, however, takes for granted the inevitable contextuality of theater, and both the tendency of drama--especially when it is popular--to reflect shared values held by the audience, and the power of drama to intensify or modulate those values. Clearly, Richard Wagner's operas, the 19th century equivalent of our most flamboyant multimedia productions, poured out of the German national imagination and nourished that very imagination. Wagner managed to tap into both the Christian and the Teutonic mythic groundwaters and do so precisely by weaving his stories and musical phrases round the common enemy, the eternally "other," the despised Jew who was so well known to the audience that he would be recognized even if he were never clearly identified. For all of these reasons I believe that Richard Wagner and the Anti-Semitic Imagination is a book that should become required reading not only for Wagner scholars but for anyone aspiring to understand 19th century European--and especially German--intellectual history, the complex relation of the arts and the world, and the roots of the Holocaust. In 439 pages, including 36 pages of notes and a 26 page exhaustive bibliography, Weiner meticulously builds a powerful, multi-faceted case for his central argument that antisemitism is at the very core of Wagner's operas--music as well as librettos--a pervasive leitmotif of Wagner's imagination that connects the artist with his cultural matrix and weaves itself in countless variations throughout his work. Quite apart from eminent standards of scholarship, Weiner's book is stylistically a joy to read, and his extensive translations from the German are both true to the original and reincarnated in graceful, idiomatic English. Weiner argues that "both Wagner and his contemporaries perceived his works through associations--linking a given set of values and beliefs to specific bodily imagery--that may no longer be automatically evoked in performance today; it will be my task to reconstruct hypothetically these associations within which Wagner's essays and music dramas could have, and indeed may have, resonated for the composer and his nineteenth century audience" (p. 13). He specifically addresses those scholars who (1) minimize Wagner's anti-Semitism, (2) refuse to link the private lives of artists with their work, (3) want to separate Wagner's essays from his operas, and (4) "refused to acknowledge any 'evidence' of racism 'in' Wagner's music" and limit the discussion of anti-Semitism to the libretti (p. 14). Consistent with this structuring theme of embodiment, the chapters of the book focus on (1) Eyes, (2) Voices, (3) Smells, (4) Feet, and (5) Degeneration symbolized by masturbation. Except for Chapter 5, all of the central body parts or functions are discussed in their sublime/healthy manifestations of the Aryan hero and their base/diseased Jewish shadow versions of the "malformed outcast" (p. 269). For me, Weiner's book represented something close to a dark and yet brilliant epiphany, a falling into place of numerous strands of conjectures and bits of evidence into a single meaningful configuration: the Jew of the Christian-Teutonic-Germanic imagination Wagner sensed in his world and co-created for his era and the future was the 19th century equivalent of a deadly pathogen, a social retrovirus that must be utterly annihilated lest it infect and destroy the world. Twentieth century technology and medicine with new notions of radical sanitizing, sterilizing, disinfection, and decontamination, attached themselves to earlier images of Jews and lepers as a menace to society who had to wear distinctive badges and were as much as possible banned from the company of Christians. Even today exterminators use the traditional colors of yellow and black to indicate toxic substances and to signal to the world their ability to rid decent homes of roaches and other vermin. In 1989 Zygmunt Bauman published Modernity and the Holocaust for which he received the European Amalfi prize.6 Bauman argued that the Holocaust in all its unspeakable horror is the result of modernity's tendency towards "rational management of society" (p. 72) coupled to "concentration of power, resources and managerial skills" (p. 77) and such mundane elements as "bureaucratic division of labor"(p. 195), and hence at least theoretically repeatable as long as we live in the modern world. He denies that the Shoah can be explained sufficiently as a uniquely Jewish event and/or the culmination of prior European-Christian antisemitism. While he makes no reference to Bauman, Weiner's focus on Wagner's depiction of the Jewish-body-as-essentially-defective presents the possibility of reconciling Bauman's model with those he rejects. Bauman argues that a judenreines Europe (a Europe cleansed of Jews) could not be achieved until Jews had ceased to be seen as fellow humans to whom, no matter how different or sinful, one naturally owes at least some moral responsibility (such as the attempt to convert them to Christianity to save their souls). Wagner set the stage [pun intended] among the middle and upper classes of society for the kind of depersonalization and debasement Ian Kershaw notes that would allow the transformation of Jews from beast to vermin and finally cancer. Bauman writes, "Only in modern, 'scientific', racist form, the age-old repellence of the Jews has been articulated as an exercise in sanitation; only with the modern reincarnation of Jew-hatred have the Jews been charged with . . . an immanent flaw that cannot be separated from its carriers. . . . Cancer, vermin, or weed cannot repent. . . . By the nature of their evil they have to be exterminated" (p. 72). Weiner reminds us that Wagner makes sure that his audience becomes aware of the foul stench, the foetor judäicus, emanating from the Jewish parasite. "The associative connection between scent, sex, anti-Semitism, and patriotism pervades his work in much the way such dramatic concerns as redemption and constancy recur with only slight variation throughout his artistic development" (p. 196). The association of putrid rotten egg fetor with such Jewish stereotypes as the avaricious "sulfurous dwarf" [67e] [67f] Alberich (p. 211) further supports my argument that Wagner contributed to an already culturally prefigured medical model of the Jew as pathogen that would be fully developed in the twentieth century. In fact, the dual theme of corruption/redemption can be restated as pestilence/healing. The smell of sulfur had long been linked to Satan's horde along with the plague--and the Jews who were routinely suspected of spreading the Black Death. In Chapter 5 Weiner discusses Wagner's association of sterile masturbation with Jewishness and his acceptance of the pervasive medical theories of his age which linked masturbation and homosexuality to mental debility, sterility, insanity, amd a Darwinian "devolution" into beastliness (p. 343). Weiner points to the subsequent, post-Freudian transvaluation of masturbation (p. 347) as an excellent example of shifting iconography which may make it impossible for us to fully grasp the meaning of Wagner's musical motifs for Hagen or his negative evaluation of his former friend Friedrich Nietzsche. It is regrettable that Weiner fails to draw attention to another important variation on the same theme, Immanuel Kant's horror of "onanism" which the philosopher describes in his lectures on ethics and Metaphysical Foundations of Morals as the most disgraceful conduct of which humans are capable, degrading humans to a sub-beastly level, crimes against nature. For Kant, masturbators ceased to be persons with the rights of persons. At this point I see a clear chain that leads from Wagner to the cattle cars of the Final Solution, the shearing of body hair, the mass showers and delousing of naked bodies, the branding of fore-arms, the electric fences, the whips, the gassings, the medical experiments, the disposal of bodies in pits and in ovens: The "Aryan masters" justified their actions by considering the Jews not merely below the beasts, to be used, abused, and discarded like garbage, but as staphylococci in human disguise. In that perspective, quarantine and efficient extermination became a sacred duty, as sacred in the world understood in terms of the modern medical body paradigm as the battle against demons and witches had been in the medieval world of the theological paradigm of the mystical body of Christ. Weiner unmasks icons, metaphors, signs, and subliminal hints that are opaque for us who do not share the conscious and preconscious context of the era, who live in a different interpretive community, and who may not even realize that music qua music (not merely as accompaniment to words) is a language that is uniquely capable of communicating with those levels of people's psyche that are unconscious or not fully conscious. Citing Alexander Ringer, Weiner calls Wagner's music an "associative code system" (p. 27). Consequently, it is precisely through music that people can be most deeply and permanently affected, especially if the music is combined (as we now do on MTV) with emotionally charged images and words. Musical themes and "phrases" are not merely capable of affecting people's emotions in general (as Plato already recognized), but they can also carry discrete packets of specific meaning, and Wagner was a master at manipulating these elements. While Weiner's "cultural archeology" (p. 2 seeks to reconstruct a past culture to show how the works were intended to be received he does not argue that contemporary listeners should therefore reject Wagner's music. In fact he asserts that awareness of Wagner's agenda may permit authentic appreciation of his "breathtakingly beautiful and stirring musical-dramatic accomplishments" (p. 29). On the other hand he also asks the far more disturbing question whether we might continue to respond positively to Wagner precisely because we still subconsciously subscribe to the "very images of race, sex, and nation that continue to underscore and perpetuate the notions of difference so fundamental to Western culture" (p. 30). As for me, I refuse to separate moral outrage and revulsion from my aesthetic sense, and I now find Wagner's music (or Ezra Pound's poetry) about as enticing as the scent of a Venus Flytrap. I do not subscribe to the critical school that insists that we must separate artistic genius from moral depravity, even if the depravity involves the subversion of the most fundamental human values, a betrayal of humanity that is made particularly heinous because it is perpetrated by a person of genius who commands respect and whom others will follow. At the same time, I see no justification for banning the publication or performance of material, no matter how offensive, as long as there is public debate to explore the issues raised, and as long as members of the audience are made aware of the potential for being subliminally affected. Notes I dedicate this essay to the memory of Abraham and Rifka Polenzweig from Warsaw and four of their children whose future was stolen more than fifty years ago, all of whom I have come to know and love through the eyes of the oldest son Leizer who alone lived to tell the story. Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Vintage Books, 1980), pp. 569-571. Hyam Maccoby, Judas Iscariot and the Myth of Jewish Evil (New York: The Free Press, 1992), pp.111-112. The story of the demise of the Anderl cult is recorded in Werner Kunzenmann, ed., Judenstein: Das Ende einer Legende (Innsbruck: Diözese Innsbruck/Medieninhaber, 1994). The skeleton of the supposed victim was that of a considerably older child, and according to Kunzenmann, had been supplemented with the bones of a young goat.
Patti P. Gillespie,
"Theater Education and Contextualism" in Ralph A. Smith, ed. Cultural
Literacy and Arts Education (Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
1991):31-47, p.38. [67e]
The Avaricious Sulfurous Jewish Dwarf [67f]
"From the horror of Auschwitz, an astonishing story of survival has emerged after almost six decades. It concerns a troupe of Jewish travelling musicians named Ovitz, comprising seven dwarfs and their two full-sized sisters. They actually heard the gas chamber door clang shut on them, and smelled the poison seeping in. But their lives were saved by Dr Josef Mengele, the Polish death camp's evil doctor. He acted not from compassion, but because he saw in them the chance to further his research in creating an Aryan master race. The nine became human guinea pigs for the Nazis, enduring a succession of agonising and degrading experiments. In the end, however they lived - the only family to emerge intact from the SS killing complex." -- Bernardo [67g] Philip K. Dick, in "The Preserving Machine," wrote: Labyrinth went ahead, feeding the music of many composers into the Preserving Machine, one after another, until the woods behind his house was filled with creeping, bleating things that screamed and crashed in the night. There were many oddities that came out, creations that startled and astonished him. The brahms insect had many legs sticking in all directions, a vast, platter-shaped centipede. It was low and flat, with a coating of uniform fur. The brahms insect liked to be by itself, and it went off promptly, taking great pains to avoid the wagner animal who had come just before. The wagner animal was large and splashed with deep colors. It seemed to have quite a temper, and Doc Labyrinth was a little afraid of it, as were the bach bugs, the round ball-like creatures, a whole flock of them, some large, some small, that bad been obtained for the Forty-Eight Preludes and Fugues. And there was the stravinsky bird, made up of curious fragments and bits, and many others besides. So he let them go, off into the woods, and away they went, hopping and rolling and jumping as best they could. But already a sense of failure hung over him. Each time a creature came out he was astonished; he did not seem to have control over the results at all. It was out of his hands, subject to some strong, invisible law that had subtly taken over, and this worried him greatly. The creatures were bending, changing before a deep, impersonal force, a force that Labyrinth could neither see nor understand. And it made him afraid. *** I nodded absently. "What's this?" I lifted up a heavy, moldering branch, particles of fungus breaking from it. I pushed it out of the way. A mound lay outstretched, shapeless and indistinct, half buried in the soft ground. "What is it?" I said again. Labyrinth stared down, his face tight and forlorn. He began to kick at the mound aimlessly. I felt uncomfortable. "What is it, for heaven's sake?" I said. "Do you know?" Labyrinth looked slowly up at me. "It's the schubert animal," he murmured. "Or it was, once. There isn't much left of it, any more." The schubert animal-that was the one that had run and leaped like a puppy, silly and wanting to play. I bent down, staring at the mound, pushing a few leaves and twigs from it. It was dead all right. Its mouth was open, its body had been ripped wide. Ants and vermin were already working on it, toiling endlessly away. It had begun to stink. "But what happened?" Labyrinth said. He shook his head. "What could have done it?" There was a sound. We turned quickly. For a moment we saw nothing. Then a bush moved, and for the first time we made out its form. It must have been standing there watching us all the time. The creature was immense, thin and extended, with bright, intense eyes. To me, it looked something like a coyote, but much heavier. Its coat was matted and thick, its muzzle hung partly open as it gazed at us silently, studying us as if astonished to find us there. "The wagner animal," Labyrinth said thickly. "But it's changed. It's changed. I hardly recognize it." The creature sniffed the air, its hackles up. Suddenly it moved hack, into the shadows, and a moment later it was gone. We stood for a while, not saying anything. At last Labyrinth stirred. "So, that's what it was," he said. "I can hardly believe it. But why? What-" "Adaptation," I said. "When you toss an ordinary house cat out it becomes wild. Or a dog." "Yes." He nodded. "A dog becomes a wolf again, to stay alive. The law of the forest. I should have expected it. It happens to everything." I looked down at the corpse on the ground, and then around at the silent bushes. Adaptation-or maybe something worse. An idea was forming in my mind, but I said nothing, not right away. [68] Hey all you Mexicans out there! Did you know that your conception of death is that it is your greatest companion? Did you know you have a group mind, and you think the exact same way as Carlos Fuentes? [69] You're describing Frida Kahlo's death as humorous and distinguished. I'm ready to organize a lynch mob to get you. Just kidding. [70] "Her brother Jew from Prague"? You hate Frida Kahlo because she is a Jew. Your writing reeks of fascist propaganda and Jew-hating. The whole world should condemn you.
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