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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2013 7:19:25 GMT -5
"Mélusine, the titular fairy of the house of Lusignan, was the eldest daughter of the fairy Pressine, to avenge whose wrongs she shut up her father in a mountain in Northumberland. For this she was condemned to be metamophosed every Saturday into a woman-serpent - that is, to be a serpent from the hips downwards. She might, however, be eventually saved from this punishment if she could find a husband who would never see her on a Saturday. Such a husband was found in Raymond, nephew of the count of Poitiers, who became rich and powerful through the machinations of his wife. She built the castle of Lusignan and many other of the family fortresses. When at length her husband gave way to his curiosity, and saw her taking the bath of purification on a Saturday, she flew from the castle in the form of a serpent. Thenceforward the death of a member of the house of Lusignan was heralded by the cries of the fairy serpent."
Mr. Burnside has written in to tell us that "this is familiar selkie country, the ground of any number of traditional stories, not just about the seal folk and finmen but the psychology of possessive love, the impossibility of bridging the gap between one world, or one soul, and another." But the words "selkie" and "finmen" are not in my dictionary! Can any member assist? Anyway Mr. Burnside goes on to assert that "The real nature of tradition is not only to insist upon retelling old stories, but also to remake them in our own image, for our own time. That is what tradition means: constant renewal, astonishment arising out of material we thought would never surprise us again, the necessary reminder that our folk tales are timeless and universal."
Is tradition really "constant renewal" do members think?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2013 8:56:29 GMT -5
If I may address your question directly, Sydney Grew: " ... Is tradition really "constant renewal" do members think"? It should be, I suspect. The Anglo-American poet, Tom (TS) Eliot, broadcasting to a defeated Germany in 1945, described "the closing of Europe's mental frontiers" that had occurred in the years when nation-states had asserted themselves to the full. "A kind of cultural autarchy followed inevitably on political and economic autarchy." Europe should appeal as something organic. "Culture is something that must grow. You cannot build a tree; you can only plant it, and care for it, and wait for it to mature... " I, too, would argue, for example, that culture is organic. Culture, Sydney Grew, is really just the end-product of thousands of years of labour by our diverse ancestors. It is a tradition, and a heritage, which we spurn at our peril, and of which it would be a crime to deprive future generations. Rather, it is our task to preserve and renew it. So I would agree that culture, in its widest sense, is a tradition which is in need of constant renewal. As a scientist, I would add that the human family is actually pretty closely related, you are all, in a profound sense, my cousins (if not brothers and sisters), and many of us came out of Africa around 100,000 years ago. Our species has been remarkably successful, but in evolutionary terms, I naturally have my doubts about its longevity. With more than seven billion people on Earth, I suspect that we are heading for a mass extinction in the third millennium AD/CE. Stephen Hawking once wrote that he did not think the human race would survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. Like Stephen, I am an optimist, Sydney Grew. We will reach out to the stars. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 5, 2013 8:13:31 GMT -5
Stephen Hawking once wrote that he did not think the human race would survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. Actually none of the human race survives the next hundred and twenty years (as far as we know). |
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Post by ahinton on Mar 5, 2013 16:15:39 GMT -5
Stephen Hawking once wrote that he did not think the human race would survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. Actually none of the human race survives the next hundred and twenty years (as far as we know). Bring back Elliott Carter, who got as close to this as any working musician has yet done... |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2013 2:15:18 GMT -5
Time is still on your side, ahinton. Of course, if global warming turns out to be really serious and uncontrollable, we might all fry and die over the course of the third millennium AD/CE. Writing in the ' The Independent' in January 2006, James Lovelock argued that, as a result of global warming, "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st century. He has been quoted in ' The Guardian' that 80% of humans will perish by 2100, and this climate change will last 100,000 years. According to James Lovelock, by 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine. Indeed "[t]he people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain." Wikipedia - James Lovelock - ClimateLet us hope that James has got this particular prediction wrong, Sydney Grew. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2013 20:21:58 GMT -5
1. Tokyo (34,500,000) 2. Guangzhou (25,800,000) 3. Seoul (25,600,000) 4. Jakarta (25,300,000) 5. Shanghai (25,300,000) 6. Mexico City (23,200,000) 7. Delhi (23,000,000) 8. New York City (21,500,000) 9. São Paulo (21,100,000) 10. Karachi (21,100,000) Residing as I do in a pleasant old-fashioned town of just ten thousand inhabitants, all this seems quite new and indeed ominous. In the '-sixties of the last century, only a few cities had the grand metropolitan atmosphere: London, Paris, Berlin, New-York and Tokio. Possibly Peking as well, but in those days one was not permitted to go there since one's presence would have introduced a cultural pollution. . . . if global warming turns out to be really serious and uncontrollable . . . No doubt selfishly I would welcome a little local warming, since the winter winds here, coming off the Black Bluff when it has turned white, can be distinctly chilly. According to James Lovelock, by 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine. Indeed "[t]he people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain. Any day now we expect to see the Nipponese navy steaming round the point, and that will be that. I see myself obliged to pass my twilight years as a refugee in the desert or the jungle. All members are advised to acquire in anticipation a pedal generator, an assortment of seeds, and a dusky companion. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 7, 2013 0:22:54 GMT -5
As you live in a relatively mild part of the world, Sydney Grew, you might, paradoxically, find more tropical migrants joining you over the course of the twenty-first century. I must admit that global warming, and the weather, are sometimes very confusing! Writing in ' USA Today', Doyle Rice asks as Arctic ice melts, full steam ahead for shipping? Who said global warming is all bad? There will certainly be many more negative effects than positive ones from climate change. But most shipping routes across the Arctic Ocean — which have been ice-covered and impassable since humans invented ships millenniums ago — could be open to ships for the first time by midcentury, thanks to climate change, a new study suggests. This includes shipping directly across the North Pole -- which has never been done -- or through the famed Northwest Passage, a sea route from Newfoundland toward the Bering Strait. The study appears in Monday's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Plus.  Whatever the weather in March, if there is no (Ant)arctic ice in late summer for the first time in recorded history, this is surely evidence that the oceans are warming up? Some like it hot, Sydney Grew! |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2013 9:33:33 GMT -5
. . . The Anglo-American poet, Tom (TS) Eliot, broadcasting to a defeated Germany in 1945, described "the closing of Europe's mental frontiers" that had occurred in the years when nation-states had asserted themselves to the full. "A kind of cultural autarchy followed inevitably on political and economic autarchy." Europe should appeal as something organic. "Culture is something that must grow. You cannot build a tree; you can only plant it, and care for it, and wait for it to mature... " I, too, would argue, for example, that culture is organic. Culture, Sydney Grew, is really just the end-product of thousands of years of labour by our diverse ancestors. It is a tradition, and a heritage, which we spurn at our peril, and of which it would be a crime to deprive future generations. Rather, it is our task to preserve and renew it. So I would agree that culture, in its widest sense, is a tradition which is in need of constant renewal. . . . In a recent review by Mr. Parker, we read that Siegfried Sassoon married hastily, mistakenly and on the rebound, after being brutally dismissed by Stephen Tennant. Then when in 1940 F. R. Leavis described T. S. Eliot as "the greatest living English poet," Edmund Blunden protested that "my feeling is that to this day T.S.E. is an american and his verse is not part of our national production." Sassoon agreed, replying that whatever the merits of Eliot's poetry, it was "not the same thing that comes from essentially English feeling. A Herefordshire apple is itself, and so is a Burgundy vine. We write our lines out of our bones, and out of the soil our forefathers cultivated. Let Eliot write out of his New England ancestry." My own instinct is that literary works are best classified and compared according to language, not the nation to which their authors belong. And since the americans use a form of English, even though it is a debased form, a consideration of the quality as Art must take preference over a consideration of the participation in "national production." Much the same can be said of music. What do Members think? Do you write out of your bones? |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2013 10:04:42 GMT -5
If I may address both your questions directly, Sydney Grew: To the extent that I am British, what I produce is a product of my identity. I am a part of all that I have met. We all carry around with us multiple identities, in any case. I am a Londoner, for example, although I would hesitate to say that I am English. I am a scientist. I am kleines c. I don't think that it is necessarily possible or important to work out the country of origin of a piece of music, or a work of art, in order to appreciate it. Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, Sydney Grew, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before him are as nothing; and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity. Bible Gateway - Isaiah 40 (King James Version) |
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Post by neilmcgowan on Mar 14, 2013 1:10:08 GMT -5
I missed this when published, since I was away on holiday. As a note of peripheral interest only, it is perhaps worth noting the courage and determination by which the navigation routes of the Northern Sea Route were obtained. Tsar Peter the Great commissioned the great Danish navigator and mapmaker, Vitus Bering, to research Russia's Far East, and produce maps of what lay beyond. For in all truth, nobody knew for sure what was there, even in the C18th. Bering made two expeditions. He never returned from the second. The two ships of the expedition became separated. The second ship, commanded by Bering's second-in-command, Krashennenikov, succeeded in making shore on the Aleutian Islands, and confirmed Russia's hold of Alaska (which was later subsequently sold to the USA for a pitifully small sum). Krashennenikov eventually found Bering, whose ship had gone ashore on the grim territory of the Komandorsky Islands. Bering was fatally ill, and died on the islands -which were named after the great 'Komandor'. The crews managed to cobble together one seaworthy vessel out of what was left of the original two, and set off after winter ended, on a voyage back to St Petersburg that took a further three years. But when they came to St Petersburg - seventeen years after they had left - they were forgotten men. A new monarch was on the throne, and no-one cared less about their mission, or their maps. They had to struggle for months even to receive their back pay. The maps were never published. Krashennenikov's "Journal" is one of the most moving accounts of disaster at sea you might expect to read.  The book is in Russian, and I don't believe a modern translation has been made. However, an online transcript of the original edition is available here, and you can leaf through the text to at least view the engravings. |
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