Category Archive: WRITING & LITERATURE
Ariadne & Theseus at the Mortlock Chamber
Picture courtesy of Dr Daniela Kaleva
To the Mortlock Chamber in the State Library of SA, to hear L’Arianna abbandonata e gloriosa and Lamento d’Arianna (1608), works reconstructed from Monteverdi’s fragmented scores, with solo voice and harpsichord, accompanied by the odd stage effect to evoke waves crashing on lonely Naxos, where (failed Argonaut) Theseus has parked Ariadne to show his gratitude for her help surviving the labyrinth on Minos. This paring away eschews the go-for-baroque approach that could overwhelm the purity of the harmonics, which are quite reminiscent of Purcell’s Dido pieces…
Continue Reading →Piercing the Arras of Canonical Poetry
Poetry is the line of guys doing a Mexican wave in school; the lady laughing in church; the breeze in the trees and your hair on a still day. First lines in poems are for indices only: here, TVC gives you some random, stellar lines from virtuoso poems. And down by the brimming river I heard a lover sing under the arch of a railway: ‘love has no ending’ (W. H. Auden, As I walked Out One Evening) I do not stir. The frost makes a flower, the dew makes a star, the dead bell, the dead bell. (Sylvia Plath…
Continue Reading →The Empire of Death
(B. Koudounaris) Those who have gone before well outnumber those of the transitory present and are more swiftly forgotten. It is now overwhelmingly the fashion in Australia to incinerate the dead – burial is a considerable ongoing expense and the real estate is rented (in due course, urban cemeteries will reclaim the space). This incredible book shows and tells us of the veneration of the dead in 17C-19C catholic Europe (and parts of South America and south east Asia) in ossuaries and charnel houses. The pictures have to be seen to be believed: mountains of bones; garlands of skulls, cages…
Continue Reading →Islamic Arts
(by J Bloom & S Blair) Despite ongoing conventions, Islamic Art (an extremely wide term, used here for convenience and coherence) flourished beyond the merely decorative or doctrinal. This sumptuous Phaidon edition is a good entrée to the flowers of the various Muslim empires in history.
Continue Reading →A Savage War of Peace
(by Alistair Horne) Terrific, informative, thrilling account of the French being kicked off the Barbary Coast. I don’t know if Algiers is better off, but at least they own it.
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