Month: August 2008

Madeleine de Scudéry’s quarrel with human nature

In studying the long tale, I came across some questions from Madeleine de Scudéry to the gathered men of a seventeen-century French salon. She was regarded as not beautiful. She asked:

Why can’t you spend fifteen minutes talking to a woman who isn’t beautiful?  Why must you leave abruptly simply because an unattractive woman arrives on the scene?  It seems that all young men commit this sort of injustice — even those who are ugly, incredibly ugly, can’t endure a woman’s ugliness.  In fact, they want the fairest eyes in the world to look favorably upon them while they look upon beautiful women with the ugliest eyes in the world.

{ vous ne puissiez parler un quart d’heure à une Femme si elle n’est pas belle : et que vous sortiez mesme d’une visite, où il en arrivera quelqu’une qui sera laide. Cependant tous les jeunes gens ont presques cette sorte d’injustice : et il y en a mesme qui sont laids, de la derniere laideur, qui ne peuvent souffrir celle d’une Femme. En effet ils veulent que les plus beaux yeux du monde, les regardent favorablement : et ils veulent de plus quelquesfois ne regarder que de belles Femmes, avec les plus laids yeux de la Terre. }

Humans, throughout history, have been shallow and self-absorbed.  Extensively networking and communicating doesn’t change those characteristics and may even exacerbate them.

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Notes:

Quoted text: Madeleine de Scudéry, . Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus (Paris: 1653), p. 6957. In site Artamene. Institut de Littérature Française Moderne. Université de Neuchâtel. [on line: http://www.artamene.org/cyrus10.xml?page=6957].  English translation: Scudéry, Madeleine de, and Karen Newman. 2003. The story of Sapho. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 37.

video review of the Cinema Effect

The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image, Part II: Realisms, is on view at the Hirshhorn Museum through September 7, 2008. Just as for Part I: Dreams, no photography or recording is allowed. That makes reviewing and discussing the exhibit rather difficult.

Fortunately, human imagination is wonderful.  Look at your screen and hear the first two paragraphs from the exhibit brochure. Your sense of the exhibit will be good sense if you are moved to move.

(the above video features my mom and me)

millennium bomb

A single spore sticks to bark,
and moss grows to dampen
the sound of sap rising.
One false word runs down hose,
and smoothly curving beauty frays
to suspicion of treachery.
We laughed at the wartime poster:
“Loose lips sink ships!”
only to learn later
that a few bits
make the millennium
bomb.