The Feminine in the Artes Liberales | Muses Incorporated/title> <link rel="shortcut icon" href="images/favicon(3).ico" type="image/x-icon" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="css/muses.css"/> </head> <body bgcolor="#fef7fa" text="#615f8a" link="#615f8a" vlink="#7578ab" alink="#7c61ff"> <div align="top"><img src="images/svheader.gif" alt="Muses Incorporated" height="120" width="1024" border="0" /></div> <table width="1024" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td> <table class="one" width="1024" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr height="25"> <td align="center" valign="middle"> <a href="home-en.html"><img src="images/home.png" alt="Home" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></a> </td> <td align="center" valign="middle"> <a href="design-en.html"><img src="images/design.png" alt="Design" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></a> </td> <td align="center" valign="middle"> <a href="foto-en.html"><img src="images/photography.png" alt="Photography" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></a></td> <td align="center" valign="middle"> <a href="transl-en.html"><img src="images/trans.png" alt="Translation" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></a></td> <td align="center" valign="middle"> <a href="essays-en.html"><img src="images/essay.png" alt="Essays" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></a> </td> <td align="center" valign="middle"> <a href="poetry-en.html"><img src="images/poetry.png" alt="Poetry" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></a> </td> <td align="center" valign="middle"> <a href="misc.html"><img src="images/misce.png" alt="Miscellanea" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></a></td> <td align="center" valign="middle"> <a href="contact-en.html"><img src="images/contact.png" alt="Contact" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></a></td> </div> </td> </tr> </table> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top" width="128"> <table class="cellcolor" width="128" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="o" background:transparent height="540"> <tr> <td align="center" valign="top"> <div align="left"> <div align="center"> <br> <br> <div align="middle"> <img src="images/language.png" alt="language" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></div> </div> <div align="center"> <hr noshade="noshade" size="1" /> <br /> <br /> <a href="contact-nl.html"><img src="images/nederlands.png" alt="Nederlands" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></a><br /> <br /> <a href="contact-en.html"><img src="images/english.png" alt="English" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></a><br /> <br /> <a href="contact-es.html"><img src="images/espanol.png" alt="Español" height="23" width="128" border="0" /></a><br /> <br /> <br /> <a class="a_type_color" href="(EmptyReference!)"></a><br /> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </td> <td valign="top"> <table width="896" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="10"> <tr> <td> <table border="0" width="876" cellpadding="10"> <tr> <td width="5%" valign="top"> </td> <td width="86%" valign="top"> <div align="center"> <font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br /> <br /> </font><font size="3" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><strong>The Feminine in the <em>Artes Liberales</em></strong><br /> <br /> </font></div> <div align="left"> <p><font size="3" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><strong>1 | <em>In Principio Erat ... </em>— Intro<br /> </strong></font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">In Western History, in theories of religion, philosophy, and the history of art, several representations of the nature of the feminine, of what characterizes woman as woman, have emerged. Those representations however, should not makes us blind to the fact that there would be no women if there were no men: such definitions reciprocally limit each other, so that every definition of the female must implicate something of the male. Our culture usually is characterized as a world ruled by men, in which women have played a subjugated role for the largest part, and where she hardly can be found in official functions. But is this general perception of the woman's place and power in society right? And haven't things changed a lot in recent times?</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">What are the differences between the sexes exactly? Can we point at something typically female or male or do people generally have the characteristics of both? In the past 10 years or so, the magazines and media have been talking about "girl power": in this slogan girlishness, innocence, compliancy and seductiveness have been represented as force. In what extent such representations have been culturally induced? Are they a reaction that another phenomenon we see more and more often in our society where women now have social positions that used to be characterized as typical male, like manager in an office, or secretary of state... while men stay at home to tend the kids. In the big department stores there were eau de toilettes which labels we scrutinized for discovering the usual "Pour L'Homme" or "Pour La Femme", but which suddenly was absent --is this 'unisex'? --and is 'uni-sex' trans-gender, sex-neutral, or androgyne? Or does it simply mean the blurring of the characteristics of the sexes? Do the differences between the sexes disappear or do they manifest themselves in different, new ways? Do women adapt themselves within typical male power structures, or do they add to these their own specific way of seeing things?</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Everything that happens in our society has it roots in the past and still continues to carry that past within itself. The question, therefore, is: how was the present formed in the past, and how did the past influence our changing perceptions (if there is a real change) of our image of the Female? In what follows I will present a few examples of the Feminine in which the interaction between the sexes, their mutual attraction and repulsion, are central. They do not give a complete answer on the questions as these have been put, because the actual interplay between the sexes cannot be determined scientifically, but only socially. Given are a few instructive examples, meant to provide some different directions to the mind. In these, a few important historical points of view will be brought to attention, which have been decisive influences within our western culture. Naturally, eroticism plays an important role in them, because it embodies what in life, and therefore in the Arts, is the major influence: the love for beauty in other things. Concretely, we are driven in our search for this experience of beauty by our curiosity, by the attraction of the Other, and Otherness. For in the 'other', in what is alien to ourselves, and how strange it may sound, it happens exactly there every time again, that we find that road that returns us to ourselves --and that is: past duality.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br /> </font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br /> </font><font size="3" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><strong> 2 || <em>Adam & Eve </em>— Tradition<br /> </strong></font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">The most important image in western culture that deals with the origin of man and woman, is of course presented in the Bible, and described in Genesis 2.7:" And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." However, we see, mankind is not yet created as Man and Woman. But man already receives a warming that only later, when Eve is created, will play a part: Gen.2.15 "And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: 17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Then God realized that Man certainly had to be very lonely on his own, so he created all the animals. But that was not enough yet; God saw, and, behold, that is was not very good. It had to be done in a completely different way. Adam was all by himself, and he did not have that Other in whom he could recognize himself and in order to become himself, So god created a mate to play with for the first man: woman. But in order to do that, God had to take away something from Adam --this is theft, mind you! So before humankind is really created, the first crime against humanity already has taken place. Gen.2.21: "And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; 22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man." 23 "And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man." And I cannot help but to think each time I read this passage "did God ever think of waking Adam up again?" If not, then the whole history that follows from here, the Fall from Grace, is just a dream, or a nightmare perhaps to some, from which human beings will, maybe one day, wake up again. According to Christians, Jews, and Muslims, this will only be at the Day of Judgment, at the End of Times.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">But if we look at the Hebrew version of this text, we see that the word used for rib' is 'tsala', and this means 'side' as is used in geometry, and 'hemistich' as used in poetry: one half of a line of verse. Not just a rib was taken away from man, but a whole side! He was parted in two: man and woman. From what was once one, one human, two come forth: man and woman. Thus human kind will exist from hence on. As man or woman. Or...? Perhaps 'human being' still exists in that unity man and woman have formed together, then in the Garden of Eden, and maybe even now. But then how does that explain the unity we see in couples that exist of two men, or two women? Isn't a big injustice done to them by that claim? We shall see later on, how by means of the Platonic doctrines a solution to that injustice can be found.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">The wonderful time humans were allowed to spend in that idyllic Garden of Eden, where everything still formed a fundamental unity, would soon come to an end. You all know the story: woman was seduced by a snake to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad, although her father had forbidden that when she formed still an integral part of man. In the image of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Bad we see for the first time a real opposition: something is either good or bad. To eat from that tree gives the power to make that absolute distinction. The world is literally split in two; from now on it is literally being a case of being pro or contra the things we encounter. From then on one thing does not simply have two sides, and things become absolute separated as opposites. Here duality begins, the inner cleavage of human beings; 'me' and 'you', 'us' and 'them' originate here. Things are no longer simply as they are, the world no longer forms a unity, only because from now on human beings will have some a priori knowledge about them.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br /> <br /> </font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"> </font><font size="3" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><strong>3 ||| <em>Plato's Symposium</em> — Myth</strong></font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><strong><br /> </strong></font><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"> Plato is first of all known as the philosopher who taught the immortality of the soul, even though he got that from Pythagoras. He supposed the human soul moves from body to body on its way through times immeasurable, and is born and re-born, again and again. Life on Earth happens to be organized in such a way that there are two types of body, so that also human kind can procreate itself. The human soul, according to Plato, in essence is immortal and immaterial, and in that respect can be understood to trancend the purely biological distinction of gender. Now try to imagine such a soul that is about to incarnate: what will it choose? A male or a female body? Once chosen, there's no way back --although modern medicine has found a solution for those who chose badly.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Yet, once upon a time it all was different, Plato lets us know in his Symposium. This work has the form of a report of a drinking-bout of a number of intellectuals in Athens around 400 BCE. They decide to make eulogies to Eros, the god of Love. In the eulogy by Erymachos, the physician, we read that 'love is a harmony'. In this we see that art of medicine and theory of music have a common ground. Not just in music, but also in the teachings of Asklepios we see that love is needed to bring about a harmony between opposites like 'cold' and 'warm', 'dry' and 'humid', etc.. According to the teachings of Pythagoras, 'harmony' is synonymous with 'health'. Aristophanes, the comic playwright, in another speech, tells the famous myth of the Androgyne. According to this myth human nature once was different then it is now. There used to be three genders: 'male', 'female' and 'male&female' or 'androgyne'. Males came from the sun, females from the earth, and androgynes from the moon, because this celestial body contains some of both the others. The members of this ancient race had 4 arms, 4 legs, and 2 faces. They moved like a hoola-hoop that you let roll over the floor, and they did this at an enormous velocity. They gathered a lot of power, but forgot to honor the gods, who upon that decided to cut the human beings into two. And thus is happened that each of these halves wandering the surface of the Earth, searching for his lost 'other half'. Love in people thus originated already a very long time ago. Love will conjoin them in their original shape, and tries to forge one out of two to restore and heal human nature. Therefore it can be said that each of us is a failing other half. In this manner there are males looking for their female other half, but also female halves looking for their missing other female half, and male halves looking for their missing male half. If one of these halves meets their other halve, they become overwhelmed by feelings of friendship, familiarity and love. They don't want to be separated ever again, not for a second. This is what we all have been longing for: to come together, to melt together with the loved one, and to become one instead of being two. This we all feel because this is how things used to be, a very long time ago, and we all still bear the reminiscence of this earthly paradise within ourselves, where we formed a whole. The consequence of this story, if it is true, might well be that if we do not take love serious another one of these partitions may happen, and human beings will have to do with just one eye, one ear, and one arm, while hipping around on just one leg, searching for the lost other half... Therefore love should be taken very serious, just like love to the gods, like Eros, who will bring our missing other half on our way when he reconciles himselve with us.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Plato shows us an image of the relation between female and male and androgyne souls, and in this he gives us a pretty abstract idea, and warns us for the practical troubles ahead in finding the right partner. But now what exactly is the image that Plato can give us of the female? In Phaedo one can read how Xantippe, Socrates' wife, reacts just before his dead when she sees his friends: "When she saw us she uttered a cry and said, as women will: "O Socrates, this is the last time that either you will converse with your friends, or they with you."" ...As women will... This does not sound very friendly, and it makes a very bold generalization. Similarly, the image sketched of women in the 'Laws' isn't very encouraging either, for women are not allowed in higher functions. But then in the 'State' Plato gives us a quite contradictory vision: women are very well eligible to become pupils in his Academy (which, of course, is western history's very first institution where people were educated in scientific and political matters) and that they had to be considered equal to men. So Plato does not give us a univocal image of the woman. If we should expect to find a more unambiguous image of women, it would be with his pupil Aristotle, the inventor of science.<br /> </font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br /> </font><font size="3" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><strong> 4 |||| <em>Aristotle</em> — Science</strong></font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br /> Aristotle calls the female the 'hypokeimenon'. According to the tradition, this has been erroneously translated by the Romans with 'Subjectum', which literally means "that which is subjected", and which had a military connotation too. That sounds quite negative, and a better translation would be "that which stands below something else", in the meaning of "that which is supportive". In Aristotle's works the 'hypokeimenon' for a carpenter, would be wood from which he, guided by his knowledge and practical abilities, can build a house. For Aristotle, at the same time, a carpenter can only be in his element is he can develop himself as such and produce a perfect work of art, to which he has given his full attention and love. Only then he manifests himself to the full as that what he essentially is: carpenter in the true meaning of that word. But this he can only be if he is given the opportunity by the availability of the material needed. Out of this he produces the best possible work of art that his material potentially allows him to do. Without the necessary materials, no carpenter, without a 'hypokeimenenon', no human being:</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">So, what is the story with Aristotle about the subjectivity of women? If we take the analogy from the example of the carpenter, it means that if a man wants to be completely in his element, he needs material on which to develop his virility to the full. He needs knowledge and practice: knowledge of the feminine, and the skills to treat a woman as a woman, in order to present a perfect product: a family life, children, but also his woman who through his full attention and care, comes to realize her full potential. A man does not only need to know what it means to be a man, but also what it means to be a woman. And in this we see something surprising: self-knowledge at once implies knowledge of the Other, who is his opposite, but once a man finds the woman of his choice, she becomes his counterpart. 'Man' can only be as such owing to the existence of its counterpart 'woman'. The discovery that a woman is man's counterpart implies that we deal here with a relation of equality. And hence, a need for balance in that relation.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Until the 17th century Aristotle was considered as the absolute authority in matters of science, whereas how we should behave as good human beings was the dominion of Religion who considered women to be a lesser human beings than men; yet in a closer reading, Aristotle's vision a woman cannot at all be understood as a subjected being. Especially owing to the one-ness of the dialectical unity that is formed by counterparts, both woman and man can reach their full potential, and can be who they truly are in full essence.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">In his "Politics" Aristotle writes that all partnerships aim at some good. Now the Politics, of course, deals with the 'Polis', the political association of man. But there are a few things we can learn from this text about how Aristotle saw relationships between people, and hence, how he saw the relationship between man and woman. Household management is the key to the polis, and there are three kinds of household: master and slave, husband and wife, and father and children. Slaves are no part of the Polis, because the Polis is made up of free men. "Woman are a half of the free population," he says (and the children of free men and women are part of that too, of course). Although he says women are ruled by men by nature, as well as his children, like "a king by nature is superior, but in race he is the same as his subjects". So what does that mean? A woman and children have the same right to education, and man has to make sure there is enough money and goods coming in to make family life run smoothly. Gathering wealth should never be a means in itself, because it corrupts the soul. The main focus should be on keeping a healthy family-life. What is most important for a man is his ethical behavior towards his surroundings, and to maintain healthy relations to other persons around are a very important part of social life. "While a man who is incapable of entering into partnership, or who is so self-sufficient that he has no need to do so, is no part of a state, so that he must be either a lower animal, or a god." [Pol. I.i.12/I.i-1253a 26-30]. The Gods have no needs to fulfill, have no potentials to realize; but man has. If a man wants to become what he truly is, he must treat himself and others with respect, especially when it comes to love, sexual relations and eroticism. Erotic love is aimed at beauty and therefore accompanied by a virtuous attitude, whereas 'just sex' is animal behavior devoid of anything that separates man from beasts. "Hence when devoid of virtue man is the most unscrupulous and savage of animals, and the worst regard to sexual indulgence and gluttony." [Ibid. I.i-1253a, 36-37]</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">If a man should provide his wife with the opportunity to develop her full potential through proper education and rule, it means he must see her as equal in rights, and treat her as such in that respect. It does not mean he should tell her to do exactly what he wants her to do, because what she has to do is defined by her natural place within family-life and nature. If a man rules his woman "by nature", than he must relate to her in such a way that she can develop the full array of her potential virtues and abilities to fulfill the essence of her whole being, take her right place within family and society, and provide her with the necessary conditions to make this possible. Aristotle always makes a difference between "by nature", and "for us"; I speak of the first. The second, "for us," is the way people see things, which more often than not is dictated by the society we live in. And this is exactly what has colored our perception of how Aristotle sees women during many many centuries, because we live in a society that still bears the traces of a world-view where women were considered lesser beings and denied their proper place in life for too long.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">For Aristotle thus, woman as 'hypokeimenon', as 'subject', is the bearing fundament that is needed by man, in order to only begin to be himself in full essence, to be a harmonious human being, which is again necessary in order to deliver one's full contribution to life, work, society, anything he dedicates himself to. It is not without a reason that Aristotle called that part of his doctrine from which all originating causes were derived, Sophia. It is a feminine word that can best be translated as 'Wisdom'. The word 'philosophia,' love for wisdom, implied an activity that is the highest form of self-realization for a human being to the ancient Greeks. Wisdom is considered as feminine, because it is a fundament, feeds, gives consolation. The ancient Greeks have symbolized her in the Goddess Athena, and the Romans after them, in the Goddess Minerva. Justitia, the Goddess of righteousness, also is a woman. Already Pythagoras considered the Goddess Mnemosyne, allegory for Memory, as the necessary condition for culture, harmony, science and wisdom. She was the mother of the Muses, and through them all inspiration for art, knowledge and wisdom comes to people and with that everything we call civilization and culture. Hindu culture has the Goddess Sarasvati as her equivalent, the mother of memory, speech and knowledge, wife of Brahma the creator --but his creative power is her dominion. With the ancient Egyptians and later with the Greeks and Romans too, we also see Hermes-Toth-Mercury who is represented of the God who brought literacy and science to the people. This God is considered androgynous, and maybe in this we find the recognition that women too can dedicate themselves to the arts, culture and education. Nearly all pre-Christian societies have known the reverence of a Mother Goddess in rituals for fertility, and fertility in those days meant 'life', 'food' and hence 'existence'. The Great Mother was the fundament of life. We can see how important women and how widespread the reverences to female divinities were in those ancient societies, and how much, according to those, we are indebted to her --although many of us probably have forgotten.<br /> <br /> </font></p> <p><font size="3" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><strong> 5 ||||| <em>Renaissance</em> — Culture<br /> </strong></font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">(Most of what I describe in this paragraph of this lecture, has been derived directly from Octavio Paz's 'The Double Flame'.)</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br /> In the Roman era love was nearly always seen as a tormenting passion, the burning love for the other. Within the literature of this era we encounter a lively tradition of love poetry. Famous are the poems by Ovid, Cattulus and who is not familiar with the unhappy love story of Aenas and Dido described in verse by Virgil? During the Middle Ages the perception of changed drastically, influenced by Christianity and its spiritual ideals. Platonic Eros became theoretic Eros, an element of play in the battle of definitions and academic faculties, of catching absolute truth within words. No longer could the eventual step to facing true, ideal beauty be made by looking at the beloved and experiencing the pure joy of his or her body, towards the stage of recognizing Eros in all beautiful human bodies and the growth of the soul towards wisdom and understanding of the truly timeless quality of love: an elevation from being imprisoned in material circumstances towards the liberation of the purely universal experience of the divine Eros. In the Middle Ages there is only the unmediated love for mental ideas that have nothing to do with physical existence; Eros was synonymous with the spiritual, and it coincided wit a disgust for the human body and everything that was related to it. In the visual arts we only see the feminine appear as the Holy Virgin, the Mother of God; and she could only be this chosen virgin because of a perfectly chaste life. She was the role model put forward by the Church to be followed by every woman. She was the Universal Woman, the Holy Woman. Rome was the city that dictated the fashion rules of those days, where the decisions were made of what was 'bon-ton' and what was not, published in papal decrees and preached in local churches. Adultery and other forms of bodily eroticism were not fashionable things to engage oneself in. The Church institutionalized its seven sacraments, and marriage was one of these: once the wedding had taken place it could only be undone by God himself, or by death (--although marriage was not given the official status of holy sacrament until the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215). Of course one can ask oneself in what extent people in their daily lives really lived up to these standards and ideals imposed upon them. Probably not, but we have very little material from these days that could give us a proper idea of how life was in those days, because physical life was only described in terms of its ideal: the afterlife. What we see occur is a schism between language and life, an alienation that begins by the exorcism of the body and of sexuality from the discourse. This results only in a twisted view of the relation between the sexes, and a distorted image of both the male and feminine.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">At the beginning of the 12th century things are slowly beginning to change. Europe went through a period of great prosperity due to increased trade. Men went on crusades and they often would be away from home for many years and the ladies would be alone in their lofty castles and manors for a very long time. Did they bore themselves being separated from their husbands? In any case it happened that in (the south of) Europe love was reinvented: courtly love.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">For too long love had lived and suffered a hidden life. It had formed a secret desire that lay dormant for centuries suppressed by rigid society, and now it started to blossom again in the form as a true and open cult of love. Courtly love however, did not come accompanied by instances of orgiastic excess: it was an art form and it comprised an edifying ideal. Besides, it was the creation of artists. A group of poets from former Gaul gave the first onset. They wrote in their Occitan vernacular, 'le langue d'Oc'. Dante gives us a very clear explanation of why they decided to do so in his "La Vita Nova": they wanted the ladies to understand them. They read their poems accompanied by music, like the Greek and Celtic bards used to do of ancient. In their style they used all sort of influences that had been derived from contacts with the Arabic culture during the upheavals of the reconquista. In this Moorish society they encountered a cult in which women were given attention that was completely unknown in their own world. In this newly discovered tradition women embodied the mysterious.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Guillaume d'Aquitaine, founder of the new poetic movement, had been himself on a crusade to Syria and had taken part in the 'reconquista' of Spain, where he had been introduced to the Andalusian court. There he would meet a number of Arabian singers and dancers whom he befriended. He immersed himself in their tradition, and deeply influenced he returned home. Countless new influences were incorporated in the new ideals of art, and women took a central place in them. Without the improved conditions of women that resulted by the changing social reality of those days, courtly love could never have existed. What exactly changed in the position of women in the late Middle Ages?</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Marriages of the nobility were a rather business-like transaction, and it was not very often based on eternal faithfulness --like the church would have wanted it. When on top of that men started to go on Crusades for considerable periods of time, the noble women became the lords of the castle: she controlled the whole household and the subservient estates. Suddenly she became a person of high importance --and these are always desirable. She was the boss and she took the place normally reserved for a man.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">What is most obvious in courtly love as it now arises, is the inverted relation between lover and beloved. In Moorish Spain, Emirs and other highly positioned persons who possessed harems, were declared the slaves of their lovers. Although this was maybe nothing more but a figure of style that served as the legitimizing and compensating inversion of reality, this was taken very serious by the troubadours who incorporated it within their ideals. The lady took the superior position and the man was her vassal: he depended on her. Moreover, the courted lady was spoken to in masculine terms of address. Love turned around all existing relations.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">The courtly romance or 'le roman courteois' had a spiritual element, although it is rather pagan in origin. Through this spiritual ideal, love became a journey to the infinite. The ideal was the 'Fin' Amors', refined or purged love. Probably everybody has heard of the love Dante Alighieri felt for his deceased Beatrice, which he meets in his Divine Comedy. This story, which is a journey in which the poet Virgil guides him through the realms of the imagination, shows how his love for her leads him on a heavy journey through the nine circles of Hell and Purgatory that eventually brings him at the gates of the Earthly Paradise. Here Beatrice awaits him to show him through the nine spheres of heaven, past angels and saints, to eventually enter the highest heaven, the Empyrean, where he ecstatically sees the face of the Divine, but of which he doesn't remember a thing afterwards. This love is an idealized love, and it is described on a purely spiritual level. Beatrice is an ideal woman, just like the Virgin Mary, but she differs from this universal ideal of the woman in this respect that she is this one particular real person who he had known, and if she had not died, they still might have been together. For Dante, who was married at the time when he wrote his Comedy, she embodied the ideal woman, and he had known her in real life. What makes Dante so special is that he gives the ideal back its place in real life: the ideal woman no longer is something that solely exists as the product of the imagination of art or religion, as an immaterial and unattainable object of desire: she can be found here and now, in this life. In its early stages, courtly love was a poetical fiction that only later on would come to life inside courtoisie and social reality. Woman re-incarnated: through the imagination she returned into the material world.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">The poets packed a number of rules by which to play the game inside their poetical fictions: these were ethical and aesthetical guidelines. The game is played according to rules that prescribe a social reality, that make this reality possible. The woman was a Lady and one had to long for her body as well for her soul. She remained in charge. The man, as her servant had to pay her his services of love. A man who wanted to have a Lady, had to play the game by the rules as set by the poets. The conquest of a Lady was a formly ritual, that had been divided into several stages which all were in service of an aesthetic ideal. First of all there was the stage of suitor: one composed beautiful poems and songs that were offered to the Lady. If she accepted them, one moved on to the second stage of supplicant: one had access to her court, performed many songs to her, and stuck to her prescribed code of conduct in order to win her love. If he succeeded he was promoted to the third stage of courtly love, that of accepted lover: the Lady would kiss him then, and most of the times this was where the story ended. But sometimes there was a fourth stage, that of the consummation of carnal love. Many of the troubadours had objected to this when courtly love was still in its early stages. And yet it happened then more often than later on in the development of the tradition. Later on the aesthetic rules and ideals became more refined, and the game more delicate. But if one reads the poetry pertaining to that later era, one can conclude that the eventual erotic exaltation that is described, cannot refer to anything else than the carnal pleasure between a man and a woman. Love was an initiation and a trial: it was a test of love, the assai.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">One the early poems in which the assai is described, the poem "Razón de amor", gives an image of an idyllic place where a couple who have been in contact through letters and poems meet for the first time: the first furtive glances at each other are cast, the first advances are made, they show the tokens of love they exchanged, and the first circumspect contact takes place. When we read this kind of poems we deduce that certain codes of conduct exist, like trading love tokens by which future lovers let the other know that they'll wait for each other, and that both of them know the rules of courtly love. She kisses him gently:<br /> </font></p> <blockquote><blockquote><blockquote> <em><font size="2" color="#8386b7" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"> tan gran sabor de mí había<br /> sol fablar non me podía<br/> <br/> Un grant pieza allí estando<br /> de nuestro amor ementando</font><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br/> <br /> she so relished their flavor<br /> she could not even speak to me<br/> </font></em> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><em>We tarried there<br /> speaking of our love</em><br/> <br/> </font> </blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">The caress each other, and she bids her lover farewell, offering him many declarations of love and excuses. Then the boy remains behind, alone:<br /> </font></p> <blockquote><blockquote><blockquote> <p><em><font size="2" color="#8386b7" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Deque la ví fuera del huerto<br /> por poco non fui muerto</font></em></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><em>Once I saw her outside the garden<br /> I came close to dying</em><br/> <br/> </font> </blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">In a poem by Azalais de Porcairagas, who was a Troibaritz (a court-lady who herself wrote poems) we read:<br /> </font></p> <blockquote><blockquote><blockquote> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><em>Beautiful friend...<br /> Soon we shall reach the test<br /> And I shall give myself to your Grace</em><br/> <br /> </font> </blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">The assai then, was divided into several phases, like: the lover had to help the Lady to get up from, or into bed; he had to look at her when she was nude (the body of a woman comprised a microcosm: in her forms the whole of nature was revealed, with hills and valleys, etc.,) but he was not allowed to touch her in any way; he had to try to find his way into her bed, where he had to surrender himself to her manifold caresses, but he was still not allowed to attain to his full satisfaction. The assai was both a mental and physical training. We all know that even a coitus interruptus asks an enormous mental effort.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Sometimes the Provencal poets made it quite clear that it did not always stayed limited to a superficial flirt. They spoke of a mysterious ecstasy they called "joi", and what at the same time was the highest ideal to attain in courtoisie. This "joi" was physical and spiritual simultaneously. It was the highest possible reward for love, an indescribable state of ecstasy and bliss. "Joi" was the result of a long period of suspension and the refinement of the senses, and in this respect it forms both an ethical and aesthetical ideal. The process of the proof of love was an ascetic education. As a period of abstinence and restraint, of dedication and purification it eventually leads to the ecstasy of the ultimate reward for tempered patience: touching the absolute. This was something that could not be directly expressed in words, but poetry could indirectly hint to the sentiment of it. This may seem reminiscent of the ecstasy of the great mystics. The difference is that those were celibates and usually received a reward for their abstinence only after their deaths. A woman however, was capable to grant that state of utmost bliss to her lover already in this life, as a token of grace, as a poetical deed --and she was the only one able to do so. In this we see another reversion of the social relation between man and woman: so far, only the patriarchal clergy had held the keys to the gate of heaven, but now this role was in the hands of the woman. From a subjected being she has turned around to be the carrying fundament. She is the seductress and conductress, the guru and mistress of happiness, she controls her subject, teaches how she can give him entrance to the heavenly exaltation of love.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">The elevation of woman within the poetical and ideal order of love eventually had its reverberations in the social order. What had started as a fiction now began to be real. The changing image of humanity however, did not imply yet that women would be granted their political and social rights: this would have to wait another five centuries. What we also see is that the individual starts to play a role of importance. The renaissance is not just the reincarnation of the woman, but also the rebirth of the individual as an independent person. The Church still tries to counter this swell that comes on, but eventually will fail. Where the clergy spoke of the Fall from Grace, poets touched upon the recognition of the uniqueness and divinity of that other person that can be recognized and recovered through love. Love gives people wings that can help him reverse his Promethesean fall into the flight of birds. Freedom lies in the complete recognition of oneself in the other.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">It may be clear that the Church was very critical towards courtesy. Not only because its holy supremacy was questioned, the subversive attitudes towards marriage as they were practiced, were considered as a direct attack on the sacredness of marriage, and thus considered as a grave heresy. The Holy Sacraments were decreed, and the rules were tightened severely. Yet the troubadours and their tradition of courtly love changed the image of the feminine that the people living in a Christian society had of women for the better. Only at the end of the 19th century some significant changes in the traditional western position of women would occur, because sometimes a changed perception takes centuries to become acknowledged by the powers that be.<br /> </font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br /> </font><font size="3" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><strong> 6 |||||| <em>The Double Headed Snake</em> — Modern Art</strong></font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Initially symbolism arose as a literary movement, but shortly it would also emerge as a leading trend in painting. The movement's magnitude is put on the same level as Classicism and Romanticism, according to some, while on the other hand it comprises both. The Classicists simply state that the artist should operate as a scientist, and Romanticists simply want to present the world more beautiful than it actually is. Symbolism responds to the questions about how someone can express his own ideas, and the essence of spiritual ideas. Important poets from this period are Mallarmé, Verlain, Baudelaire and Rimbaud. Symbolist painters are Gustave Moreau, Odilon Redon, Edvard Munch, and Gustave Klimt. Paintings are given titles such as "The Kiss," "Love," etcetera. Besides of all that, the field of attention of Symbolism includes art itself. Important recurring questions are: "What does 'Art' mean?" and "What is Art?", and "What does Art represent?" The position of the woman in Symbolist art directly has to do with what she symbolizes.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Symbolism presents itself as the enemy of the ostentative display of verbosity and objective descriptions. Paul Verlain writes his poem "The Art of Poetry":<br /> </font></p><blockquote><blockquote><blockquote> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">"<em>Seize eloquence, and<br /> twist its neck! You would do well,<br /> while you're about it,<br /> to mortify your rhymes a bit:<br /> watch out - they can lead astray</em>!" [Tr. James Kirkup]</font></p> </blockquote></blockquote></blockquote> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">It wants to bring poetry in a sensitive form. Form is subjected to ideas, because form can only be the vessel in which an idea is transported: it only serves the expression thereof. An idea can never be fully expressed logically, nor defined, nor fixated; because then its strength would be lost, and the idea would be killed. Mallarmé was deeply influenced by Dante, Victor Hugo, while his discovery of Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal" started his poetic aspiration. He has written many poems, but also much about art, poetry and aesthetics. He writes that poetry is a means of mystery that aims at the embodiment of the divine. In that there may be some unclarity, because that gives room for the suggestion of something deep to the public. Because in mentioning something directly, the pleasure of the gradual discovery is taken away. And this pleasure is something par excellence that should be discovered slowly. It is the secret of the indefinite, and this is what is represented as a symbol. Symbolism, therefore, deals with touching upon, not with naming things, and the same we see occur within the visual arts, when, influenced by literature, symbolism makes its appearance there. Here too we see that a symbol only touches upon what wants to be expressed. Not what one sees, but what one experiences upon seeing, is what is aimed at. And what the artist really wants to say, he can gladly keep to himself. Symbolist painters use visual elements to express feelings and ideas, because their aim is at emotions and perceptions. The more layers a work of art comprises, the more meaning it will convey, and the more suggestive it becomes. By giving secret hints, traces of reference and by affinity with the divine idea are communicated. The direct imitation of nature is abandoned, not just in the arts, but also in life itself: life should be lived artificially, and the artist should have an attitude of "art for art’s sake." There is the decadent dandyism of Baudelaire and of Oscar Wilde, who makes reference to a "third gender".</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">In the art scene of Paris the battle for the right to have homosexual relations begins, and the first naked ladies make their entrance on the stage. Voyeurism is another thing that takes root in this period: through the simple sensory perception of a woman suggestion is awakened, fantasy stimulated and we see the artificial or surrogate-experience make its entry. The artificial is pre-eminent. Together with the perversion of voyeurism we see the 'pars pro toto' experience of the fetish appear, where the indirect experience is the key to the divine.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">The female is seen as a ambiguous being: at the one hand she is the Holy Virgin, as was the case in 'Le Roman de la Rose', while at the other hand she is considered as a diabolic entity and a true 'Femme Fatal': She is a mysterious being; she is the Sphinx. We see how 'Venus Blanche' is positioned against 'Venus Noire'. In Joris-Karl Huysman's 'A Rebours', a symbolistic novel that was of great influence on Mallarmé and Wilde amongst others, Botticelli's painting in the Sistine Chapel of Jethro's daughter Zipporah, functions as a symbol. The main character sees in her a likeness to his Odette and this is the reason for him to let her enter into his private dream world. In brothels love is made according to the ancient recipes, methods, and the mystic of numbers that were discovered in an ancient oriental book that prescribes a number of sexual positions. In art too, we see oriental influences. Women are often depicted under a veil of oriental elusiveness: she is an exotic mystery.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Owing to her elusiveness woman becomes an agony to man. And he wants to know it too! Out of pure adoration and despair he wants to feel this torment physically as he suffers it mentally. He'll go to extremes for her, he will do anything for her, he will take anything from her--as long as he can be hers. Leopold von Sacher-Masoch writes about cruel women and submissive men. In his novel 'Venus in Furs' the female main character Wanda entices Severin into her trap, and suddenly appears before him wielding a whip. Lust becomes a burning pain, and the physical pain simultaneously inflicted by the instrument of dominance, becomes a soothing liberation from the craving and longing to be possessed by her.</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Oscar Wilde writes his play "Salomé": he does this with great circumspection, in French, for he does not want to cause a scandal. Princess Salomé, stepdaughter of Herodes, asks her father to deliver her the head of John the Baptist on a silver tray, as we know from Scripture, after she performs the "Dance of the Seven Veils". He paints this princess as a perverted lady who does not yield way to no one who gets in her path to have things her way. Wilde suggests a relation between her and the moon, the cold mistress of the night, keen on preserving her virginity, which lead her to take wicked pleasure in destructing male's sexual inclination. Sara Bernard was to play the main character at the opening night, but the play never made it on the stage: the authorities forbade its performance. Two years later the play appears in print, illustrated by Aubrey Beardsley. Lord Alfred Douglas translates it into English, and it is generally assumed that Oscar Wilde distanced himself from his "obscene creation"... Until it becomes public that he and 'Bosie' (Douglas), have a sexual relationship, and then all hell breaks loose. Wilde describes his Bosie: "He is quite like a narcissus - so white and gold... he lies like a hyacinth on the sofa and I worship him." What followed were three trials held in the Old Bailey in 1895: a showcase full of intrigue, clever remarks, and fascinating dialogues on the morals of a rigid society and the place art takes within it. They fascinated the minds of the public and of the literary world, and they continue to do so even now. Oscar Wilde has remarked in Dorian Gray "There is no such thing as an immoral work, books are well written, or badly written."</font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">The play would influence many other versions, one of the most famous being Richard Strauss's opera Salomé which very much breathes the same atmosphere of symbolist intrigue. Gustave Moreau paints Salomé holding a lotus flower in front of her face. This is an exotic image that cannot be found in the original story in the New Testament, and later on in history, we will see Magritte blink back at it with his painting 'The Son of Man'. Beardsley depicts Salomé wearing a peacock feather dress; but most of all in the symbolist imagination of the feminine we are presented with an exotic lady with a translucent air of orientalism, that should point to the mysterious: the mystery that woman is.<br /> </font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br /> </font><font size="3" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><strong> 7 ||||||| Conclusion</strong></font></p> <p><font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">In this lecture I have presented some of the important instances of the conception of the feminine within Western history, to end with the Symbolists, who in their turn handed over the flag to the Avant-Garde, especially the Dadaists and Surrealists, who in their turn played their part in the formation of a shifting image of the feminine, and thus altering of the position of women in society in our era--but this is a subject to explore some other time. Presently, the differences between man and woman seem to have become nihil or marginal. Are we at the end of an era, or are we at a turning point? Are we at the end of the History of Sexuality, and are the differences between male and feminine only digitalized in binary code of cybersex? Will the remaining differences fall away in a consumption-driven society where nothing really matters anymore, because everything should be allowed and everything is possible, and where individuals become more and more the same, or will it be in the privatization of relations between people where mutual understanding and respect of one another's individuality means that man and woman must find themselves by themselves as we can see happening all around these days? Or will the diversity of characters persist and people keep on searching for their perfect match? Right now we are facing a social reality where people watch with only one eye, listen with only one ear, control their 'click-on-demand'-world by the move of only one arm, while navigating their personalized world by hipping around on only one leg. Hopefully this will be only a brief interlude, because it is in people's nature to look for someone else to mutually confirm one's being,</font></p> <font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br/> </font></div> <div align="center"> <blockquote> <blockquote> <font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><a href="misc.html">Back to Miscellanea</a></font></blockquote> </blockquote> </div> <div align="left"> <blockquote> <blockquote> <font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br /> </font> <div align="center"> <font size="2" face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"> © 1998 Ingrid van der Voort<br/> <br/> <a href="contact-en.html">Muses Incorporated</a></font></div> </blockquote> </blockquote> </div> </td> <td width="3%" valign="top"> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <tr> <td width="1"></td> <td> <div align="center"> <font face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><br> <br> <br </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <hr noshade="noshade" size="1" /> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> <table width="100%" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0"> <td width="156"> <img src="images/shade.jpg" alt="Muses Incorporated" height="112" width="156" border="0" /> </td> <td width="10"></td> <td> <p> <blockquote> <p></p> <p align="center"><b><font face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Rubén Figaredo: 18 HOLM OAKS DON’T MAKE A FOREST</b> </font> <p align="justify"><font face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">A shepherd without sheep mixes in with the weathered adobe walls, passes in front of the disintegrating church that teaches heaven inside its naked rib cage, with an altar full of chalked down signs and absent little virgins like the emigrated conscripts like the village romances, dying of sadness in some diocesan museum, piled up with its likes without another unction but the boredom of a lay brother who lost faith when touching what he was not supposed to. Sad.</font> <div align="center"> <p><font face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><font face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><font face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">© 2007 Ingrid van der Voort </font></font></font></p> <p><font face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><font face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif"><a href="contact-en.html"><font face="Helvetica, Geneva, Arial, SunSans-Regular, sans-serif">Muses Incorporated</font></a></font></font></p> </div> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> <p></p>  <script type="text/javascript"> var sc_project=5278986; var sc_invisible=1; var sc_partition=59; var sc_click_stat=1; var sc_security="fec96e08"; </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js"></script><noscript><div class="statcounter"><a title="free hit counter" href="http://www.statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img class="statcounter" src="http://c.statcounter.com/5278986/0/fec96e08/1/" alt="free hit counter" ></a></div></noscript>  <script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? 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