Happy 2014

The Tempest

A post in progress...

Prospero, former duke of Milan, has been living on a desert island in the Mediterranean with his daughter Miranda since the day his brother Antonio usurped and exiled him.

Prospero is a wizard and he uses magic to provoke a tempest and the apparent sinking of Antonio's accomplice ship, king Alonso, on their way back to Naples from Tunis.

Antonio, the king and his son Ferdinand, his court and the mariners are thrown on different points of the island.
Each character is convinced that the others died, while the king's ship is "safely in harbour". 

Free icons for non-commercial use from: http://sweetclipart.com/ and http://www.clker.com/

On Prospero's arrival the island was inhabited by Caliban, the son of the witch Sycorax, and by a  magical being, Ariel. 

Prospero makes the half-human Caliban his slave and Ariel his magical helper.

Trinculo, a jester at king Alonso's court, on first seeing Caliban says: 

What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient fish- like smell; a kind of not the newest Poor- John. A strange fish!

 But soon he realizes the "fish" is: 

Legged like a man and his fins like arms! Warm o’ my troth! I do now let loose my opinion; hold it no longer: this is no fish, but an islander, that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt.

The spirit Ariel is invisible to common people, though they can hear his music.  
He helps Prospero in taking his - bloodless - revenge against his usurpers and getting his dukedom back. 
He is painted as a nymph (below).

William Hamilton, Prospero and Ariel, 1797

Or as a spirit with a somewhat animal face, like in Fuseli's painting (below). "On the bat's back I do fly".

Henry Fuseli, Ariel, 1800-1810

  
In William Hogarth's Scene from The Tempest, Ariel is an angel musician (below, left, on top of the rock), while Caliban (below, right) is a poor being, deformed, sentenced to hard labour.

William Hogarth, The Tempest, 1728.

It is Ariel's hypnotic music that guides the young prince and the other shipreck, in small groups, from different points of the island, towards Prospero's cave. 

While Ferdinando is following the path traced by Ariel's music, he meets Miranda. 

She is astonished at the sight of the young man: the only human being she has ever known is her father and she wonders if Ferdinando is of their same species.

The two young ones fall in love at first sight.

Before giving his consent to their wedding, Prospero tries Ferdinando charging him with hard work, that the young man dutifully carries on. 

Happy Christmas and Happy New Year!

An English Christmas song to wish you a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Happy Winter Holidays!

  

Besides the interpretation by the Muppets, the song is just as it sounds, featuring a "true love" presenting his/ her beloved one with an increasing number of weird gifts: a partridge, two turtle doves, three French hens, four calling birds, five golden rings, six geese a-laying, seven swans a-swimming, eight maids a-milking, nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers piping, twelve drummers drumming (the lyrics is here).

I guess these gifts are not your favourites and the whole text may appear surreal, so let's try to make sense of this 250-years-old song and see its connection with Christmas.

A religious interpretation of the symbolical meaning of the gifts can be read in The Voice, a website collecting biblical and theological resources. The article gives a general account on the "twelve days" of Christmas, from the 25th of December to the 5th of January. The cycle closes with the 6th of January, which in many cultures (in Italy, for example) is the day in which gifts are given, especially to the chidren. Then it analyses the twelve figures: the partridge is an image of Jesus Christ, the two turtle doves stand for the Old and the New Testament, etc.

An article on the tradition of Christmas carols (carol= choral song), questioning the previous interpretation, is on the BBC website, which finds the origin of the song in a game played on the Twelfth Night. In this case, the partridge would be the symbol of the devil! An example of "the way in which a popular song can be reworked as a hymn or carol".

Christmas is a celebration of new life. It falls in the days immediately after the winter solstice - in our hemisphere 21st December, with the shortest day and longest night - daytime becoming longer and longer from that date on. It is interesting to know more about other winter festivities with the same character - celebrating the light and new life, feasting, giving gifts, having fun  - held in the same period in other places and times on this page of the BBC.

Beowullf

The LEGO Beowulf video you are going to watch is a fast and fun summary of the epic poem... and yes, all the stuff is made up of colourful LEGO bricks.

Part one 

6th century - The young hero Beowulf comes from Scandinavia to help the Dane king Hrothgar against the attacks of the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills him. 

"Then from the moorland, by misty crags, with God’s wrath laden, Grendel came" 

"Then laughed his heart; for the monster was minded... to sever the soul of each, life from body, since lusty banquet waited his will!"

"... no keenest blade, no farest of falchions fashioned on earth, could harm or hurt that hideous fiend!" 

"To Beowulf now the glory was given..."  

Part two

"Grendel's mother... the death of her son to avenge" 

comes to the hall. Beowulf kills her.

Part three
Fifty years later, Beowulf is king, "old and gray".
He defeats a dragon, but

"The wound began,

which that dragon-of-earth had erst inflicted,

to swell and smart; and soon he found

in his breast was boiling, baleful and deep,

pain of poison"

Celtic Britain

Learn about the Celts and have fun with this BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation)
learning unit about the Celts. 

Click on the link and start the activities.  

21st-Century Creature

Bionics is the branch of scientific research based on the use of "models of living sytems... in order to find new ideas for useful artificial machines" (definition from the Encyclopaedia Britannica online).
An article in today's Excite News refers about a "man" walking and breathing with artificial parts. Actually, the "man" is a robot made up of sophisticated pieces of technology, with a face modelled after a real living person and dressed up with clothes form Harrods, London.
It's interesting to learn about the reaction of the creators at their first sight of their Creature.

"How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips." (Dr. Frankenstein).

"I thought it was rather revolting to be honest," he says. "It was quite a shock to see a face that closely resembles what I see in the mirror every morning on this kind of dystopian looking machine." (Bertolt Meyer).

Ugliness is not the only motive for these reactions. Can you imagine any other?

Punctuation matters!

The 24th of September in the USA every year they celebrate punctuation. Can't believe that? Then visit the site National Punctuation Day. 
There's even a contest on "how punctuaction changed my life"...
Well, seriously, the contest is on "how National Punctuation Day® has affected the way you think about punctuation (or not), and how the holiday has affected your writing (or not)."... that's much the same as changing your life, since the right punctuation can save lives :)
"Let's eat grandma" or "Let's eat, grandma": guess which one the wolf in the story of Little Red Riding Hood would find appropriate.

Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus

A Gothic novel by Mary Shelley, first published 1818. 

Here is a short biography of the writer.

The picture summarises the plot:

But the structure of the novel is more complex:

Caspar David Friedrich, The Sea of Ice, 1823-1824

Friederich's painting has no direct relation to Mary Shelley's novel, but it is a beautiful illustration of the environment in which Captain Walton meets Dr. Frankenstein and the Creature. 

The wanderings of the protagonists can be followed on the map:

A long hunt through Europe and a meeting at the North Pole

Do you love dogs?

Revise the If-clauses with your pet. Watch this veeeery nice clip from BuzzFeed:

Today it's Earth Day!

The Earth Day is celebrated on April 22nd each year to promote awareness of environmental issues. since 1970. The first celebration  represented the culmination of a decade of discussions triggered by Rachel Carson's book Silent Spring (1962). It was conceived by Senator Gaylord Nelson, American environmentalist, and was attended by 20 million Americans. Today it has become the Earth Week, celebrated in approximately 200 countries, with educational activities, conferences, events, encouragement to environmentally sustainable behaviour.

The Earth seen from NASA expedition Apollo 17, 1972

The Earth Day is the first "truly human" celebration according to anthropologist Margaret Mead, since it exceeds the national, ethnic, cultural, religious limits of other celebrations.

Theis year's Earth Day is devoted to Climate Change. The Earth Day Network encourages you to upload your photos to document the changes you detect in your area. 

In our Country, the FAO (Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations) supports the annual concert for the Earth Day in Milan.

Yet, even if we're not there, we're all here on this - so far - unique Planet and can calabrate the Day raising awareness of global issues like the use of renewable energy sources, the necessity of education to new behaviors ranging from recycling and energy efficiency, to reduction and reuse consumption objects. 

Jonathan Swift: a very special social reformer

* It is a melancholy object to those, who walk through this great town, or travel in the country, when they see the streets, the roads and cabbin-doors crowded with beggars of the female sex, followed by three, four, or six children, all in rags, and importuning every passenger for an alms. [...] their helpless infants [...], as they grow up, either turn thieves for want of work, or leave their dear native country, to fight for the Pretender in Spain, or sell themselves to the Barbadoes.   

The "great town" is Dublin, Ireland, where Jonathan Swift (1667 - 1745) was born of English parents.

His most famous prose work is the novel Gulliver's Travels (1726), but he was also an essayist and a pamphleteer**.

A Modest Proposal (1729) is the social pamphlet in which he exposes a shocking suggestion to solve the problems of Ireland. Read the passage in which he exposes his proposal in detail.

[...] But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars: it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age, who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them, as those who demand our charity in the streets.

As to my own part, having turned my thoughts for many years, upon this important subject, and maturely weighed the several schemes of our projectors, I have always found them grossly mistaken in their computation. It is true, a child just dropt from its dam, may be supported by her milk, for a solar year, with little other nourishment: at most not above the value of two shillings, which the mother may certainly get, or the value in scraps, by her lawful occupation of begging; and it is exactly at one year old that I propose to provide for them in such a manner, as, instead of being a charge upon their parents, or the parish, or wanting food and raiment for the rest of their lives, they shall, on the contrary, contribute to the feeding, and partly to the clothing of many thousands. [...]

The number of souls in this kingdom being usually reckoned one million and a half, of these I calculate there may be about two hundred thousand couple whose wives are breeders; from which number I subtract thirty thousand couple, who are able to maintain their own children, [...] but this being granted, there will remain an hundred and seventy thousand breeders. I again subtract fifty thousand, for those women [...] whose children die by accident or disease within the year. There only remain an hundred and twenty thousand children of poor parents annually born. The question therefore is, How this number shall be reared, and provided for? which, as I have already said, under the present situation of affairs, is utterly impossible by all the methods hitherto proposed. For we can neither employ them in handicraft or agriculture; we neither build houses, (I mean in the country) nor cultivate land: they can very seldom pick up a livelihood by stealing till they arrive at six years old [...] .

I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.

I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that [the children of parents too poor to bring them up] may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter. [...]

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar’s child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend, or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight shillings neat profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child. [...]

* This and the following extracts: Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal, 1729. Web edition published by eBooks@Adelaide. Rendered into HTML by Steve Thomas. Published by eBooks@Adelaide, 2012. Licensed under Creative  Commons Licence.

** An unbound publication (that is, the pages are not stitched the one to the other), made of one page, printed on both sides, or of a larger page folded in half, thirds, fourths, and without a cover. Especially in the 16th-18th century they were used to diffuse political, social, religious ideas in a more rapid and extensive way than books.
Girl with a Basket of Pamphlets, oil on paper, by French School.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Girl_with_a_Basket_of_Pamphlets.jpg