Tannhäuser

For all that pompous but small-minded Catholic clergymen like to condemn Wagner as "pagan" and even "dangerous", his music is very much in the Catholic tradition of Germanic art. His most Catholic work is almost certainly Tannhäuser.

The Golden Age of Comics blog has a selection of illustrations for it by the great Hungarian book illustrator Willy Pogany here. There is a picture showing the eponymous hero's begging for absolution from the Pope (presumably either Urban IV or Clement IV - but hey, it's Wagner, so actual history isn't that important)amongst the murals in the King's bedroom in Neuchwanstein Castle in Bavaria.

King William V of England?

The ridiculous and repulsive Simon Heffer presumably thinks he’s making a clever point when he defends primogeniture in his column in the today’s Torygraph.

Kaiser Bill could have been the king of England
As if there aren’t bigger priorities, the Government is apparently planning to change the law so that the monarch’s daughter, if she is the eldest child, inherits the throne automatically. I know all about our great queens, not least Her present Majesty: but this would be a needless complication and could send the Royal house in all sorts of dangerous directions. The last time this would have been an issue was in 1901, when the Dowager Empress of Germany would have become queen of England for the seven months between the death of her mother, Queen Victoria, and her own demise. Her son, Kaiser Bill, would then have become king of England, which would have become part of the Second Reich. Just think how much fun that would have been.

Absolutely! And think how many thousands of English lives could have been saved, you fat little xenophobic fool.

Happy St Sebastian's Day!

I know it's not good art, and it's probably not even particularly healthy. But there's a tacky charm of the late night McDonald's variety about Pierre and Gilles's work, and if you fancy a nice quick Ganymede (or two), just a bit more sunshine and colour in your life, or even something a bit more controversial, then many would ask where's the harm.

After all, it's mostly just good clean fun. They do deal with darker and sometimes painful themes as well, but normally this is with an ambiguity or lightness of touch that allows for thoughtfulness without ill feeling. Topics can be gruesome but still just about work in context. The artists have just about enough charm to get away with being cheeky from time to time. And they're also aware of their own limitations.

Their St Sebastian isn't actually one of their better works, but it is perhaps one of their most, er, "iconic". (In fact, they've done quite a few Sebastians, over the years. Other modern efforts have of course been less successful, though perhaps one should give credit for trying.)

There's a rather overly lengthy post about the appeal of St Sebastian in art down the centuries over at the "salvation through sodomy" blog The Wild Reed. The Crescat has a shorter but rather nicer post here.

Finally, whilst looking around for pretty pictures I found a fun-looking blog actually called Catholic Eye Candy. Again, obviously treating religion merely as spectacle is totally inappropriate. (Have a look at what this nitwit has to say if you wonder where purely "aesthetic" Catholicism will get you. On the other, this guy seems to have been a rum sort of cove but at least had most of the right ideas.)

But my, what a spectacle it is!

The White Dragon of England

The picture above my second links lists on the left is the White Dragon Flag of England. This was England's flag before the Norman Conquest, when St Edmund the Martyr was still England's patron saint. It is the counterpart of the Red Dragon of Wales.

I found this particular version of the image on a flickr site here. There is a website about it here.

It is possible, in fact, that England never actually used the White Dragon. But its origins almost certainly go back to the Golden Dragon on a scarlet background that was the banner of the Kings of Wessex, who went on to unite and rule the rest of England.

The House of Wessex was the oldest royal house of the English kings. Moreover the British monarchy traces its ancestry back to Wessex to this day.

On this day...

The unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated nation state officially occurred on 18 January 1871 at the Versailles Palace'sHall of Mirrors in France. Princes of the German states gathered there to proclaim Wilhelm of Prussia as Emperor Wilhelm of the German Empire after the French capitulation in the Franco-Prussian War. Unofficially, the transition of most of the German-speaking populations into a federated organization of states occurred over nearly a century of experimentation. Unification exposed several glaring religious, linguistic, and cultural differences between and among the inhabitants of the new nation, suggesting that 1871 really only represents one moment in a continuum of the larger unification processes. Historians debate whether or not Otto von Bismarck, the Minister President of Prussia, had a master-plan to expand the North German Confederation of 1866 to include the remaining independent German states into a single entity, or whether he simply sought to expand the power of the Kingdom of Prussia. They conclude that factors in addition to the strength of Bismarck's Realpolitik led a collection of early modern polities to reorganize political, economic, military and diplomatic relationships in the 19th century. By establishing a Germany without Austria, the political and administrative unification in 1871 at least temporarily solved the problem of German dualism. (more...)

[Wikipedia]

Proud to be British!

Thank God for Tom and Max! They at least provided one honest instance last year when seeing my national flag genuinely made me feel better.

Then again, super-fit 14-year-old boys in super-tight speedos can have that affect on me.

New Fantasy Comic

Online here, I feel I should have a proper look at it some time. It's actually quite sweet, and nicely drawn.

Heard and Not Seen

'Children should be seen and not heard' is one of those pseudo-old-fashioned sayings that probably no one ever said. Anywhere, here's a picture of the largely invisible and wholly fictitious Archer family - the eponymous heroes of a radio soap that has just celebrated 60 years on the BBC.

I only listen to it very occasionally. The little boy in the picture does look cute though.

Lust and Love in Wagner

Swimming naked is called "skinny dipping". I don't know what you'd call sleeping naked though. James Bond never wears pyjamas. Neither, if Homer Simspon is to be believed, did Thomas Eddison.

I have tried it a couple of times. The problem I find though is that I wrap myself up in the bedclothes to compensate and then wake up covered in sweat - and smelling! It makes the bedclothes damp and smelly too.

Well this morning as I got up and did a few household chores I listened to the first scene of Das Rheingold. It's simply glorious. It's a very neat little parable in an of itself, about sexuality, virginity and the foolishness of inexperience, and the desire that old age and ugliness has for youth, beauty and sex.

Crucially, the Rhinemaidens - being maidens - confuse love and lust. They imagine that the Rhine gold is perfectly safe because they cannot imagine that Alberich, a creature of such dark and potent sexuality, could ever renounce love, which he must do if he is to unlock the gold's power and wield the Ring. It is their encouragement and then rejection of Alberich, and his subsequent renunciation of love, enabling him to steal the gold and forge the Ring, that sets the tragedy of the whole cycle in motion.

Thematically it's actually a remarkably subtle start for a story whose overriding theme is the conflict between love and freedom (i.e. "free love", incest not excluded!) and authority and duty (albeit the essentially arbitrary authority of Wotan, whose laws are burdensome even to himself).

The piccie above is one of Arthur Rackham's. Obviously the Rhinemaidens are not normally naked on stage, and to date no one's actually found a way to make them actually swim either. But that doesn't mean the audience will necessarily be spared silliness of other kinds.