How to Train Your Dragon (USA, 2010)

Despite getting on the proven dragon-flying bandwagon, How to Train Your Dragon is a fascinating animation. We have already seen this theme a dozen times from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to Avatar, yet the film has a good story, a well developed boy-pet and boy-father, even a boy-girl relationship. What steals the show, however, is the imaginatively created flying dragons, which do not seem to get old.

On an island inhabited by Vikings (the adults speak with a Scottish and the children with an American accents, for some reason), dragons have been stealing sheep for years, and killing a dragon represents the rite of passage. Hiccup, the chief’s son and the boy everyone makes fun of, befriends a Night Fury, the fiercest type of dragon no one has ever seen. A cross between Disney’s Stitch and a cuddly cat, this dragon proves to be a faithful pet as much as a fierce fighter. He teams up with the Vikings and a few other selected, domesticated dragons to kill the beast.

After a slow start, the story becomes exciting and free of unnecessary details. Animation is similar to Dreamworks latest projects, but unlike Monsters vs. Aliens it does not try too much to be funny, and it never becomes absurd. How to Train Your Dragon stays focused on the main character who tries to fit into his tribe and reconcile his love toward his pet, Toothless, and the incontestable Viking tradition. The motley variety of dragons, some resembling snakes and some giant bumble bees, contribute to the overall success of this animated joy ride. After Kung Fu Panda and the Shrek series, this is definitely the most memorable Dreamworks production so far.

V. Karaulac

Michel Foucault exclaimed “knowledge is power” 30 years ago. Thus, one can conclude, if one possesses a collection of “universal knowledge” of the world, one has ultimate power. Establishing comprehensive, global collections of knowledge has already been fascinating mankind for thousands of years. As Gerlinde Schuller pointed out two years ago, today, modern communication and information technologies offer quick and prompt collecting, high memory capacities and wide-ranging technologies. In addition, globalisation and the advance of internet produce a mentality that moves away from the local and regional towards the international and universal. As Paul Virilio said 10 years ago, we are like a glove inside-out, the local is placed under a magnifying glass and the global disappears. Collections of knowledge, such as archives, encyclopedias, databases, libraries, also follow the trend. They are engaged in the race against time in both technological and creative areas. We are so busy puting all our knowledge in the computers, maybe once computers learn how to multiply they won’t need us anymore and humans will become obsolete like Richard Dawkins ominously predicted 20 years ago. The clearly formulated aim of humankind is to establish a complete and up-to-date collection of “universal knowledge”.

At the same time, the way of life in today’s world is shifting creative and intellectual tendencies into more sincere, personal and immediate knowledge.  Art and communication are selling private memories, situations and feelings.  For, apart from those producing information, designers, scientists and academics have a great influence on how knowledge is conveyed. Just like Linnaeus did for natural history, they set standards for the classification and design of complex data that can go on for a long time to come. They can facilitate but also manipulate the transfer of knowledge. Harry Smith’s collection of American folk music (or even Ukrainian Easter eggs or paper planes), preserved invaluable knowledge and set the standards for future reference. Creative librarians design the strategies of collecting knowledge as well as their concepts of filtering and communicating complex information and content. Terminology and media tend to change and always appropriate new words, but the essence does not change: we all want to share our innermost predilections, express our gratitude to the ones who gave us knowledge, rejoice in the creative energy we were given and in communication and technical skills we are trying to develop.

On the Feast of St. Sergius of Radonezh

Today we are celebrating the venerable Sergius of Radonezh, a great among the saints, and that is why we read from the Gospel about beatitudes. The Lord is calling us to a higher perfection. He says: “Be perfect as your Heavenly Father.” And today’s Gospel shows what that means – “blessed are the poor in spirit,” blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are those who weep over their sins. When a person climbs on those steps of blessedness, he reaches perfection.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” An average person usually thinks he is good, or at least better than most. But the one who feels that way cannot achieve spiritual life. Its basis is spiritual poverty. A person does not only have to consider himself worse than other people, but worse than all creation. And not because he is imagining something or he is prone to self-suggestion. No, this awareness comes when he is given spiritual sight.

Really, let’s take any person and compare him to an insect. Of course, an insect does not commit such sins like a human does. He acts exactly according to the commandments given by God: he feeds on the things God provided for him; he eats as much as he needs; he multiplies the way he was ordered by God. All his life can serve as an example. Man is a lot worse than an insect: what disgrace he commits, how he deforms his own nature, how he harms himself. That is, in order to lift oneself up to the level of an insect, one needs to go through a very complex path of spiritual development. And an insect does not inherit the Kingdom of God.  And many people are truly good, they don’t do evil to anyone, and they even do some good to some people (to their children, relatives, to a colleague), but they will also not inherit the Kingdom of God, because that awaits only the holy.

Holiness – this means a person has received God’s grace. Only God is holy. So, if a person has God’s light inside him, he is holy. And how does one feel God’s grace in his heart? When a person starts leading a spiritual life, how is that manifested? Apostle Paul says: “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” That is, when a person aspires toward a spiritual life, then he bears those kinds of fruit. And if this lacks, then there is no spiritual life.

Further the apostle says: “Those who are Christ’s have crucified their flesh with its passions and lust.” There are all kinds of passions nesting in our flesh: envy, greed, vainglory, avarice. And the one who is Christ’s, i.e. holy, he crucifies his flesh. The Lord has given us the example. He voluntarily, having taken our sins unto Him, crucified his flesh on the Cross, thus showing how we are supposed to crucify our flesh. There are things you want. There are things you consider necessary. But one should act the way God commands. And his sinful desires have to be crucified – then you will be Christ’s.

“If we live in the spirit, let us also walk in the spirit.” If a person is spiritual, he acts spiritually –  he lives according to the Gospel, according to God’s commandments, i.e. he submits to God, who is a Spirit. And if a person contradicts God, he does not live a spiritual life.

“Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each other.” If a person is angered, if he dwells in anger, if he has envy, vanity, that means he has not spiritual life. But if he has vainglory, anger, and leads a continuous battle with these manifestations of his soul, that means he is leading a spiritual life. God’s spirit is opposed to the spirit of sin, the spirit of demons – and the person tries to destroy the sin in him with his spirit. The person who continuously opposes the sin that lives in him, is God’s co-warrior. Christ has come to overcome sin – that’s why everyone who ceaselessly fights with sin is Christ’s pupil, a warrior of Christ.

Unfortunately, our spiritual lives, as in all the novices, is black and white: we are either sinners of saints. We got up, said our prayers, started working. While everything is going well, we haven’t forgotten about God. But if we have to do something for our son or grandson against our will, we want to bang, yell, and that often happens. If we persevere in our temptation, if we don’t commit anything bad, even though it’s boiling in us and we are ready to kill the guilty party (how familiar we are with that feeling!), if we, in spite of everything, act according to the spirit of meekness, then we are fulfilling Christ’s law. As Apostle Paul calls on us: “Brothers, if someone is caught in a sing, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.” And if we give in to our sinful feelings, that means we are submitting to the devil who is sitting inside us. We will fall again, and our whole day will go down the hill, because only those “who endure till the end will be saved.” Saved from sin…

When an irritable person during an entire day, a week, month, year, decade, the entire life does not let  a word of anger come out of his mouth, that anger will disappear in him. The passion goes away, he smothers that passion. Fire can be extinguished with water and it can be covered with a blanket – and without oxygen it will be put out right away. It is the same with any passion: if you don’t give it free will, it will gradually diminish, diminish, and then it will be completely extinguished. But unfortunately, we sometime smother the passion, and sometimes give it free reign, we lift up that blanket again, and it starts burning with new power, and we have to do it all over again.

And the Lord says: “I will judge you in the state I find you.” When we die, where will the Lord find us, in what part of that black and white picture – in sin or in holiness? That does not depend on chance. In the process of life, a person grows either in sin or in grace. A third state is not given: it does not happen that he stops at a certain level, and he stays that way. A person either struggles, cultivates in him good deeds with perseverent labour, and through falls, temptations, and spiritual hardships increases the good inside him. Or it’s the opposite: his spiritual life increasingly weakens. For instance, he starts praying to God and he is fighting with constant thoughts, with absent-mindedness, he is straining his mind. A year goes by, the strain weakens, the person gets used to praying absent-mindedly, and he just starts reading the prayers. He’s read them – and that’s it, finished; and nothing has remained in the head. The question arises: what happened, the life is gone and it has passed you by.

For that reason one should practice every good deed; then the Lord, when he comes, will find us at the moment when we are in good spirit. The Lord says it thus: the good servant doesn’t know when the master of the house will come, he is always at work, and the lazy servant is asleep. How much labour do we invest in order to clean up the apartment, prepare a meal, arrange our earthly live in general, and we don’t even think about the heavenly life, everything passes us by. And one should do that too, of course, but not leave the other thing either. For spiritual life is heavenly life – it is a lot more important; here we live a short moment and over there we will live permanently.

Here is what Apostle Paul further says: “Do not be deceived: Lord is never put to shame. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.“ The person who has not tasted of God’s grace, even if he is thrice good, if he is the most likeable person on earth, he will never enter the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God was given to murderers, the adulterers, the bandits, the princes and the beggars – perfectly various people, of various states of the soul, but they were all saints. The crimes some of them have committed! But when they came to themselves and started a new life, they managed to overcome the sin in them and they acquired God’s grace.

A saint – that does not mean sinless. A saint – that’s the person who is ceaselessly fighting with sin. Sometimes, having received God’s mercy, sin completely leaves a person, but this happens with God’s chosen ones, who have great resoluteness and a great love toward God. And for us, ordinary people, this fight against sin has to be part of all our life, starting with our first steps and finishing with death bed. Otherwise, even though we have possibly never killed anyone, robbed anyone, we will not see the Kingdom of God, because we are not doing anything to deserve it. It’s as if we don’t need it, we are just trying really hard to organise our earthly life. But even if we perfectly arrange everything here, we will have to die anyway, and we will have to leave our perfectly organised setup. And spiritual life has permanent continuation. That is why it is stupid and futile to live in sin.

“If anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” This is again about humility. If God would set up everything justly, and if he would hold us responsible for every sin, we would not live a single hour on earth. According to our sins, we simply don’t deserve anything good. And if we are still alive, and the sun is shining, and we can buy bread in the store – that’s a miracle and God’s unspeakable mercy. It is simply remarkable how the Earth still produces bread, because when the earth is sown, it is not watered with prayer and tears, but with curses. We don’t sow bread our selves, with don’t reap it, we only eat it – isn’t that a miracle? We don’t weave, sew our shoes, yet we are clad and we have shoes – isn’t that a miracle? We are given everything, even though we haven’t deserved it at all, we haven’t made it, we haven’t earned it. Someone, uncles and aunts, are doing that for us, and we even judge it: yeah, this is bad, this is not good. If it’s bad for you – sew it, weave it yourself. We receive everything for free: we have received our life for free, and our faith too. According to our sins, we haven’t deserved to walk in our underwear and rubber boots, and we all have apartments, clothes, shoes, food. We are morally a lot lower than the insects, and we live in luxurious conditions, yet we are still not satisfied: you see, there is a draft here, you see, there’s no water, the elevator is broken.

And why are we dissatisfied with everything? Because due to our stupidity, lack of understanding, blindness and pride we think we deserve better. That’s why we ceaselessly demand – from our children, from grandchildren, from bosses at work, from residential circumstances. We are always dissatisfied, irritated. So, if we want to step on the path of holiness, on the path of acquiring God’s grace, we have to look first of all for humility. One has to consider himself not worthy not only of the Kingdom of Heaven, but also to go to church, even to open a prayer book, and in general to live among people. And if we don’t acquire humility, our life will turn out to be futile. If we instead of humility have pride and vainglory, then all our good works will be harmful.  Even if you make the whole world happy, even if a million people are indebted to you – it is not worth it. “What use does a person have if he wins the world and harms his own soul?” Humility is that basis of spiritual life without which salvation is impossible.

How does one look for humility? Primarily through long-suffering. One has to long-suffer through one’s anger, one’s dissatisfaction and always remind oneself that he is worse than everyone else. And in order to see oneself in that light, you have to ask God: Lord, reveal my sins to me. And when the Lord shows you your sins, you will not judge others anymore, you will not be angry with anyone. For how is it possible to be angry with a person when you are worse than he or she is. We will simply be wrong to be angry, and anger will truly leave you. Humility is medicine for many, many passions and sins. That’s why we have to try hard to acquire it.

Since we are evil according to our nature, we have to try to do good. And, as Apostle Paul calls on us “let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.” So, one should finish the work begun. Let’s imagine a person who has taken in a cripple, and for sixty years has washed, clad and fed him, and then he said: no, Lord, I can’t do it any longer, I will give him to someone or I’ll take him to the street from where I took him. Will that person receive the reward? No, he will not and all those sixty years will be lost in vain. Because if we ironed the shirt, and the collar remained dirty, will someone say that the shirt is clean? Of course not. Or a chandelier has hung for twenty years, and then fell and broke into a thousand pieces – that’s it, it’s not a chandelier anymore. If a person was holy all his conscious life, and then fell, has to start from the start if he wants to return all that is lost.  For that reason every spiritual work has to be finished. It is very important to keep that loyalty to God until the end, and not to despair when we are doing good works. And in order not to despair, humility is needed again. One should consider him/herself worse than everyone else and deserving of a worse fate all the time.

Then everything else can gradually be cultivated: trying pray, going church more often, reading the Gospel more often. If one has the opportunity to do something good to someone, the opportunity mustn’t be missed, but used with joy. For those who have just started going to church, usually the question arises: where do I start? Someone has given a book, the other gave a prayer to the Holy Virgin to be read. Went to the cathedral, over there they said to do prostrations – three hundred a day. And a person is usually confused. In the Gospel we read today, the Lord says: one shouldn’t poor new wine into old wineskins. Because the new wine will ferment, boil, and it will make a hole in the old wineskin. We understand better the other story , which the Lord said at the same time: put an old patch on the old clothes, because if we put a new patch on the old clothes, the new patch will tear the old clothes, and the hole will be even bigger. That story teaches us we should not take on things we are not capable of bearing. Before new wine of God’s grace is poured into us, our soul has to be prepared with struggles in order to make away with passions, with the old self. For that reason, spiritual labour has to be gradual. There is an old monastic rule: if you see a young monk aspiring with all his strength toward heaven, grab him by the legs and pull him down to earth. For if a person who cannot fly, goes too far up, he can fall from there and smash into smithereens.

Progress in spiritual life has to be gradual, from the simple to the complex, and one should never take up more unto himself than one can accomplish. And a lot of people take on a lot, and then drop everything, and they can’t do anything anymore. Do that which you have grasped, what you have adopted, what you have already tested. If a year has passed and works have become an easy habit, you can add a bit. And thus in everything: in fast, in prayer, in Bible reading, and in good works. In everything a measure is needed, and we, due to our pride, vainglory, misunderstanding, stupidity still aspire somewhere. They are reading the Psalms in turns – I’ll do it too. I was given a praying rope – that means I will pray with the rope. I read a chapter from the Gospel, and I found out someone has been reading five – that means I will read as many. Someone has taken a trip – I am going there too. And as a result the person does not accomplish anything.

A tree cannot grow from the top, but from the root, gradually. At first a green bud, then it is covered in bark, then it grows for a long, long time, while it doesn’t acquire fruit. Look how long an oak tree grows until it starts bearing acorns. It is the same with a Christian. We shouldn’t wonder why our prayers are absent-minded, why we can’t reach anything, why we trip and fall. Many say: look how much time has gone by, and I haven’t budged. What’s strange about that? We are only beginning, we haven’t understood anything, we haven’t created anything. This process has to be gradual. If it comes out differently, a crack is due to appear and the wine will be spilled – the young wine of God’s grace will tear our sinful, old flesh.

For that reason holy fathers have said: if someone starts theologising or aspiring toward a pure prayer not having freed his heart from passions – that’s the road to insanity. It’s not that Jesus’ prayer leads to insanity – no, it cannot lead to insanity – but to an incorrect way of life. Let’s say, a person reads “Our Father” every day: “And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” And there he gets offended at someone and cannot forgive him. He had just told God: forgive me my sins the way I forgive – and you haven’t forgiven. That means he puts himself in such a position not to be forgiven by God. And what does that mean? That means that the sin he has committed will stay with him. And under the burden of sins the person very quickly falls and then wonders: what is the matter? And the matter is that he is supposed to be praying and pleasing god, and in reality he is not living the way God has commanded.

So, if we go to church, we take the Holy Sacrament of Christ, and our life does not change, we continue to live in our sins, do not fight with them, we are preparing a horrible fate for ourselves. For the one who does not know and does not do will be beaten, and the one who knows and does not do will be beaten even harder. From us, the faithful, the demand is a lot greater, because we know, we read, we listen. That is why it is necessary to try hard to experience that graduate movement toward sainthood, toward the grace of God, to always have that spiritual labour in our souls. Then everyone – not like the venerable Sergius, but at least according to one’s effort – will achieve grace and will manage to reach the Kingdom of Heaven. In the Kingdom of Heaven there are many rooms, everyone has his own: Sergius has one, Seraphim another, the Mother of God has a room even higher. Let us have one somewhere on the edge, at least the last one, but at least it would be there, for between the Kingdom of Heaven and the underworld there is a vast abyss no one can cross. For that reason it is better to be last, yet there, in the Kingdom.

And if we prove faithful to God, if in spite of tiredness, of our ignorance, the weakness of the soul we still show zealousness, if we aspire toward Kingdom of Heaven, struggle for it, the Lord will help us because of his mercy. He knows our weaknesses better than we do. Moreover, He wants to save us all. And for every person who is born on earth there is a room in heavens. Only because of his own love toward sin man does not enter it. And the Lord then waits for a new person to appear on Earth: maybe he will inherit that room. All mankind lives only to fill that tenement created by the Lord.

For that reason everyone who struggles enters it, and who is lazy for the spiritual goes to the underworld, to Hades. They are building a house, bringing material, cutting planks, making the floor, the roof, walls – and only scraps are left. What should be done with them? They are cut, dried and then burned because they are not good for anything else. And the person who has not struggled for the grace of God – he, strictly speaking, is not good for anything. He has only sin and rotten flesh, and that’s it. You can only throw that into a furnace, nowhere else. So, it is not surprising the burning Hades exists. Everything good, everything nice is already used up for the house, for the construction of human salvation. And what is rotten, what cannot be used, what has destroyed itself – that has to be cut of, dried and burned.

We are not planks, we are not logs, we are live beings. And each one of us can either know his place in that house prepared for him by the Lord, or rot – and then only the furnace is left. So, each one of us decides his fate by himself. The venerable Sergius decided his fate – he left the world, started praying to God and purified himself from sin. He became “the struggler of virtues,” he acquired all the possible virtues. And he didn’t only save himself, but he saved hundreds and hundreds of people. A great number of his pupils became saints, and the pupils’ pupils became saints. He filled Russia with his holiness. He covered Russia with monasteries, he gave it back the spiritual pivot. For that reason Russian managed to free itself from the Tartars. And if it weren’t for that, everything would have rotted, we would have turned into Tartars’ serfs.

That’s what we have to do, like Sergius. And around us there is evil, curses, hatred, envy, empty chatter, judgments, cries. Why is that? Because we are burning in that cauldron. And if we would shine with God’s grace, people would be turning into saints around us, right here on Earth. For it is impossible to utter a bad word in front of a holy man, because the presence of God’s grace has the power to regenerate a person. Recently I was told: a priest came to visit a woman in the hospital. And her roommate in the hospital somehow felt he was a priest. And it’s interesting how it made an impression on her. She went right away to her husband, who was lying in the same hospital and with whom she had an argument – and she asked for forgiveness. No one told her anything, no one talked her into anything, but God’s grace itself came into her and see how effectively influenced her.

God’s grace regenerates a person, it makes him do good. So, if there are arguments in our family, fights, curses, other disorders – this doesn’t happen because all people are bad, they don’t listen, don’t understand, but because we don’t have God’s grace, there is no power that can regenerate everything. If in the world, a city, a building around us there is only evil, scandals, drunkenness, it’s because we have lost strength, we don’t have enough grace even for ourselves, not to mention children, grandchildren, relatives. So, it is not surprising we have non-believing children. Faith comes from grace, and if we don’t have, like those women in the Gospel, enough to lighten ourselves – we live in the dark, in sin, in envy, in evil, in judgment, in anger, in fornication – we cannot even mention someone else. What words can convince us? No, words do not convince, only grace convinces. So, no matter how well you speak, even if you are the greatest orator, it’s all in vain. Only grace is the true witness. So, the goal of our life is acquiring grace. Then we will be holy. And if we are saints – we will reach the Kingdom of Heaven. Amen.

Church of the Elevation of the Cross, October 8, 1986.

John Donne (1572-1631) received a Catholic education he later rejected in his anti-Jesuit polemic, Essays in Divinity (written in 1614, published posthumously). He became Anglican in 1602 and then a preacher, publishing ten volumes of sermons. He is considered modern and innovative because of his wit, new kind of obscurity, skepticism and rejection of the learning that depends on unaided human sense. Apart from his Songs and Sonnets, his best known works include Elegies and Satires, Juvenalia and two Anniversaries. Donne’s poetry represents a diary of the poet’s intellectual and emotional efforts to define his relationship to three basic points of his existence: Woman, God and Death.

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) was a bachelor, a man of violent temper and in his later years a powerful controversialist.  His satirical verse and prose belong to the Restoration period. For a long time his reputation was primarily as a patriot, satirist and prose writer, because lyric poetry was then out of fashion.  His collection Miscellaneous Poems was published in 1681. Marvell united the spirit of antique poetry with the “metaphysical” wit and puritan seriousness, achieving a perfect harmony between these seemingly irreconcilable currents.

Two concepts are important for metaphysical poetry. Conceit is a widened metaphor whose elements of comparison and description are taken from science, philosophy, mechanics and alchemy, fields not traditionally related to poetry. Conceits are also constructed with comparisons taken from everyday life, so the intimacy of the created image is in discord with the depth and power of the thought conveyed with that image. The main characteristic of wit is an unexpected combination of opposites whose original conjunction appears as a revelation.

Shakespeare’s Sonnets (written before 1598, published in 1609) contain 154 poems. Sonnets 1-125 are addressed to an unknown man, a blond young aristocrat. In the first 17 sonnets, the poet tries to convince the youth to marry, but later the mood changes and the sonnets become more intimate. The last group of sonnets (126-154) is related to an unknown woman, or the Dark Lady, who is married and physically attractive. One of the main themes of the collection is the passing time, the imminent ephemeris. Sonnets attracted a lot of critical attention because of the belief they were autobiographical.

Venus and Adonis (1593) was Shakespeare’s first published work. It achieved a great success, mostly because of its fashionable eroticism.  This narrative poem is Ovidian (borrowing from the Latin poet’s greatly popular Metamorphoses) and “etiological” because it provides a mythical explanation for the existence of a particular flower, for example. The seeming cause for its creation is thus to account for anemone, said to have grown out of Adonis’ blood after the boar has killed him. Shakespeare uses the version of the myth, presumably inspired by a Titian painting, in which Adonis is reluctant to accept the aggressive and passionate Venus as a lover. Apart from characteristics typical for this type of poetry, such as rhetorical wooing, the use of developed metaphors and decorative digressions, this poem differs from the convention because it is completely turned to realistic descriptions of nature and events.

Other notable Shakespeare poems are Rape of Lucrece and The Phoenix and Turtle.

One of the most prominent art works at the 2010 Joburg Art Fair was Paula Louw’s dismantled and framed hand gun exhibited by Everard Read Gallery.

Paula Margaret Maritz Louw is a famous, tall, charismatic, fifty-something Johannesburg artist that makes original, intricate, beautiful and striking works. She dissembles typewriters, pianos and guns, then mounts and frames their pieces.

Paula says: “In the days when manual typewriters were used, a slower form of communication demanded greater reverence and respect in our manner of addressing people. When I was a child, my late father was General Manager of Olivetti in South Africa, which created for me a very personal connection with typewriters. He had an analytical mind and a great love for words and language and read the Shorter Oxford Dictionary for pleasure.”…and: ”These typewriter works, in a sense, stop time.  My intention is that, caught by wire, the ancient typewriter pieces should seem to hold within them unwritten poems, memories, histories, and have a type of melancholy in a way that something temporary has, yet still have the sense of something lasting.”

At Joburg Art fair her triptych gun sold for close to $20000. And the gallerist told Paula to make two more as soon as she can, because of the big demand.  Everard Reid is a well established gallery founded in the early 1900s. If you remember that Johannesburg was found at the very end of 1800s, this gallery is one of the oldest.

Paula bought the gun in 1993 when the tensions were rising in South Africa. She got the gun license a year later just when the great historical political changes were taking place. She never used the gun, but kept it in her home.  The government recently announced that the new legislation forbids bearing fire arms, but an amnesty period was given for owners to deactivate them.  It took Paula two weeks to go through the procedure. This included firing from the gun to get the bullet prints. After it was done, she made the triptych with the parts and named it “A Simple Piece”.

Paula says this piece for her was a symbol for dismantling the violence: “…taking aggressive attitudes and angry words and breaking them down, making something beautiful of them.  Flanked by Mr. Mandela’s words I trust that it will prod people to recall the incredible foundation of hope, tolerance and good will that our constitution in South Africa is based on!”

Harmony and Dischord, 2009

piano detail

Philip Sidney (1554-86)

Sidney did not publish anything during his lifetime, and this can be explained by his spezzatura, the aristocratic carelessness for one’s written work, which distinguishes a nobleman from a professional, a mere hired hand.  His most famous works are Astrophel and Stella, a sonnet sequence, Arcadia, a prose romance, the unfinished New Arcadia, and Defence of Poesie, the most distinguished work of Elizabethan criticism and literary theory.

Defence of Poetry was written as an answer to Stephen Gosson’s The School of Abuse, in which the author promoted the puritan view that all arts are morally pernicious. Following Horace, Sidney argues that poetry is designed to instruct and inspire (DULCE ET UTILE). It avoids the generalities of philosophy and insignificant particularities of history, and it can speak without making assertions. Poet, according to Sidney, is not only an imitator, a view promoted by Plato in The Republic, but he also creates second nature.

Edmund Spenser (1552-99)

Spenser was civil servant educated at Oxford, who spent part of his life in Ireland, where he first went with a royal expedition to quell the Irish rebellion. Beside The Faerie Queen, his most famous work, he also composed The Shepherds Calendar, a collection of pastoral dialogues in verse, and Amoretti, a sonnet sequence. Not appreciated as much by the wider public, Spenser is considered the “poet’s poet” because of the elegance of his verse.

The composition of The Fairy Queen was inspired by two famous works of Italian Renaissance, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1516) and Torquato Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered (1580). It is made up of five books.

Book I is based on the Revelation by St. John.  It describes the history of the world from the Fall to the final overthrow of Satan. The main hero is Red Cross, or St. George, patron saint of England, who embodies earthly powers and heavenly providence. At first he is a sinner, who later repents, redeems the parents of Una (Adam and Eve), slays the dragon and harrows hell. In it, the poet explains how universal history justifies the worship of imperial Elizabeth.

Book II represents the Legend of Temperance, and it describes the control of passions by the higher powers of the mind. Guyon, the main protagonist , represents a mix of temperance and continence. Spenser’s temperance is a mix of one of the four Christian virtues (the others are Faith, Hope and Charity) and Aristotelian elements. Guyons’s conflicts are purely internal.

Book III is the Legend of Chastity

Book IV the Legend of Friendship

and Book V is an examination of the nature of Justice with allusions to contemporary affairs.

Phases of the English Renaissance:

1.  Early 1485-1579, in which the initial ideas about humanism and renaissance were soon pushed by the religious reformation.

2. Ripe 1579-1625, after a longer period of literary bareness, abundant literature with typical renaissance features and content appear.

3. Late 1625-1660, in which only some characteristics of the renaissance remain, and which lasts until the restoration of the monarchy.

Rulers of the Tudor Dynasty (1485 – 1603)

1485 Henry VII defeated Richard III on Bosworth Field, and established a new dynasty.

1509 Henry VIII broke away from the Catholic Church and became the head of the Church of England

1547 Edward VI, a short-lived minor

1553 Mary Tudor reestablished Catholicism in England and persecuted Protestants

1558 Elizabeth I, during whose reign the golden age of English literature began

1603 James I, formerly Scottish king James VI, came to power after Elizabeth’s death.

Humanism

The movement originated in Italy as a renewal of interest in the classical heritage, the study of Greek and Latin languages and the imitation of great models of the antiquity. It was ideologically non-religious, but humanist teachings and ideas undermined the Christian doctrine because they promoted secular values and worldview.  Humanism replaced medieval God-centered convictions with anthropocentrism.  In Thomas More (1478-1535), the most celebrated English humanist, the conflict between the medieval ideal of meditative life (vita contemplativa) and life based on active inquiry (vita activa), which led to the development of science and the rise of individualism and exploitation of lands and people, can be well observed. He spent four years in a monastery and wore the penitent hair shirt all his life, but also founded the dynastic myth on which Henry VIII absolutism was based. Even though he supported the education of women, he believed in their inferiority.  A preacher of religious tolerance, he wrote about stepping on heretics like ants.  In spite of eloquently expressing ideas about religion that would resound long after his death, he sacrificed his life to the ideal of pope’s hegemony. His most famous works are A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation, a polemic about his beliefs, History of King Richard III, in its stance towards the monarch similar to the Shakespeare play, and Utopia, his most famous work, the first description of a perfect imaginary world.

Early Renaissance Poetry

Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) is remembered for adopting certain European features of Renaissance poetry, but his best poems are those with elements of the traditional English verse.

The Petrarchan characteristics of his poetry are its main theme, unrequited love, pleading with the beloved to hear out his complaints, the description of love miseries and the feeling of abandonment.

Non-Petrarchan, “male” features in Wyatt’s poetry include: the realisation of the futility of his love, a demand of a response from the object of his love, and the expression of unwillingness to die of love.

He replaced the 8+6 stanza Italian sonnet and the rhyme scheme abbaabba cdcdcd with his own two quatrains + a couplet stanza sonnet with a rhyme scheme abbaabba cddc ee.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1517-47) is significant for introducing images from nature in his poetry. He is more reconciled with the unrequited love, and he adopts from Petrarch and his followers a certain strain of mysticism and idealisation.

Surrey further changed Wyatt’s rhyme scheme into abab cdcd efef gg. In contrast to the Italian culmination in the 8^th verse, and a subsequent pause with a quiet ending, called the wave, the pause in Surrey’s sonnets come after every four verses, and a complete reversal takes place at the end.

Wyatt and Surrey are often grouped together because their poetry was published together in a collection entitled Tottel’s Miscellany. If we try to compare the two, while Wyatt’s verses are simple and transparent, Surrey’s are adorned and obscure. Wyatt is a realist and Surrey idealist. Wyatt is perhaps more gifted, but Surrey sounds more modern.

St. Nikita was born and educated in the city of Pereslavl Zalessky, found about a 100 miles north-east from Moscow. From the early age he was characterised by cruel and aggressive nature, he often offended people and participated in robberies with his disreputable friends. Once he came to church and during vespers he heard the following words by Prophet Isaiah: “Your hands are full of blood; wash and make yourselves clean. Take your evil deeds out of my sight!” Terror overcame Nikita when he heard those words, and he spent the entire night thinking about them. The next day, he went to see his friends, as was his habit, and in their company he forgot the words he heard. He invited his friends to his home, and went to the market to buy meat. Upon coming home, he told his wife to prepare dinner. When she started washing the meat, blood started flowing out of it, and when she put it into a pot to cook it, a bloody foam appeared, and a human head, an arm and a leg came out to the surface of the boiling water. The wife, in horror, told everything to her husband, and he came to see it himself. When he saw the sight, he was overcome by terror, and he exclaimed: “Woe is me, for I am unclean.”

After those words, he came out of his house crying, and walked to the monastery of the great martyr Nikita, outside of the city walls. There he fell on the ground in front of the abbot’s feet and said: “Save the perishing soul.” Surprised by such a strange change in Nikita, the abbot told him to reexamine himself and to stay in front of the monastery’s gate, crying and confessing his sins in front of everyone coming in and out of the monastery.

Nikita did just that. For three days he cried and prayed, confessing his sins in front of everyone he saw. On the last day, next to the monastery he saw a muddy pond with a lot of insects hovering above it. He took off his clothes, sat into the mud and started praying to God. Since three days had passed, the abbot sent a monk to see what Nikita was doing. Not having found him in front of the gate, the monk started looking for him, and finally found him lying in the pond. The mosquitoes and other insects gathered above him. He returned to the monastery and told the abbot what he saw. The abbot came out with other monks, and, seeing Nikita’s bloody body, cried to him: “My son, what are you doing to yourself!” Nikita kept repeating the same words: “Father, save the perishing soul!”

The abbot took him to the monastery, tonsured him and gave him a cell, where Nikita started spending sleepless days and nights in continuous prayer. The devil started frightening him with various apparitions, but he protected himself with the sign of cross, calling the great martyr Nikita for help. Soon, he made himself a hole in the ground near the church, where he spent all his time in silence, and a tunnel leading to the church where he would occasionally come to take part in the service. For these struggles, he obtained from God the gift of miracle working, so many sick people started coming to him, and he healed them.

At that time, the pious Prince of Chernigov, Michael, became ill and, having heard about Nikita’s healing powers, set out to Perslavl to seek him out. On the road, a demon met him in the form of a monk, and told him that Nikita is a deceiver, and then a little later in another form telling him the same thing. Michael was saddened by this, but he continued his trip nevertheless. When the prince made a camp in front of the monastery and sent out a messenger to announce his arrival, the demon acquired a form of an undertaker who told the messenger Nikita had died and he had just buried him. The man understood the demon’s deception, approached St. Nikita’s hole and told him about the prince’s illness. Nikita send his scepter to Michael, and the prince, having taken it, stood up completely cured. He then came to Nikita’s hole, took the saint’s blessing and told him about the demon’s deception.

One night Nikita’s relatives came to him to ask him to pray for them, but having seen the saint’s heavy chains, which shone after long attrition, they thought them to be made out of silver. They entered the hole, killed Nikita and took his chains. In the morning, the monks found the saint’s body still warm and emanating a sweet smell. Singing psalms, they solemnly buried him in the church of the Great Martyr Nikita next to the altar. At that time, all the ill people who were present at the service were healed.

When Nikita’s murderers reached the Volga, they looked at their loot and realised that it was made out of iron, not silver, so they threw it into the river. That night, a monk from the nearby monastery of St. Peter saw three glowing columns connecting the earth with heavens.  Many people came to the place where the light was shining from, and found the chains of St. Nikita floating above water. They took it to the church, healing many sick on the way. Soon afterward, Nikita appeared to the monk who found his chains and told him they should be taken to his grave. They have been healing people in the glory of Christ God ever since.

26-28 March, Johannesburg, South Africa

South African art community had the most interesting event this weekend.  Organised by Artlogic at Sandton Convention Center, 23 participating galleries featured the work of about 400 artists and 40 designers from South Africa and the greater Continent. This rich northern Johannesburg suburb was crowded with people, most of them white. Since 1994, when the apartheid dissolved and the inner city deteriorated, the white and the rich moved their center to a safer area.  Art in South Africa is predominantly white, but hopefully and most probably less so in the future.  The central square in Sandton is called Nelson Mandela Square, the international symbol for racial and class peaceful reconciliation.  The upcoming world football cup will have to prove that as well and establish South African position as the leader of black African resurgence.

The Joburg Art Fair showcased the cream of contemporary artistic production, and represented a critical platform for positioning African artists as players in the international art arena. Compared to other similar events around the world’s big cities, this Art Fair was surprisingly non-commercial in its look, very contemporary, innovative, authentic and progressive, local and relevant at the same time.  In the third consecutive year, the Joburg Art Fair has established itself as a key event in the dense schedule of galleries, artists, buyers, sellers, collectors. The only event of it’s kind in Africa, a smaller substitute for the unsuccessful biannual, this 2010 Fair’s theme was “Art & Industry,” and it featured 11 special projects.

One featured artist was Durban-born, US-based Siemon Allen, well known for the way he draws unseen meanings out of his collections of ordinary objects. Operating from an external vantage point, he systematically accumulates mass-produced printed material, which he ultimately catalogues and displays. The most current collection, an archive of South African audio, is made up of about 2000 items, including 500 rare 78 rpm shellac discs. Records (2009) is a series of 12 large format prints on velvet archival paper selected and scanned from artist’s large LP collection. The scans of the records produce remarkable detail capturing not only the grooves, but also the accumulated historic traces of sketches and damage that speak about memory of the object. These prints are considered by Allen to be part of his audio collection and speak to the primacy of music in South African cultural history; they are silent. Allen today lives and works in Baltimore, USA. For this occasion, he bought an expensive Epson ink-jet printer and paper to make a highly achievable material. He mounted and framed the prints in New York for about $5000. The work was presented by Gordon Schacha Collection in collaboration with Artlogic.

Another work I thought was very clever, beautiful and funny was a video piece by Goddy Leye entitled, “The Beautiful Beast”, presented by Peter Hermann Gallery from Berlin.  Peter Hermann, one of the many gallerists and producers form Berlin who work in Johannesburg, as an expert on African Art also serves as a consultant on relevant political and economic matters. Goddy Leye is a Cameroonian artist from Bonendale, Doula and a studio called “ArtBakery”. The video is shown on the floor of a dark room, and it features the artist himself laying on the floor, eating fruit around him and singing a song “We Are the World.” Since he munches on fruit the lyrics are not always clear, but there is a superimposed text following his singing. I think it shows a stereotype of an African in a very direct but also aesthetic and inventive way.

The last work I would point out was a South African veteran and international contemporary art star William Kentridge’s photo object installation presented by The Goodman Gallery and curated by Jane Taylor. These small photo-collage figures mounted on cardboard and displayed on a shelf are actually costume designs for an opera he is directing. The invitation to direct “The Nose” follows Kentridge’s productions of Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’ Ulisse and Mozart’s The Magic Flute, both of which had seasons in South Africa. There is a considerable excitement in the global art community about this new production, and much interest in Kentridge’s experimental studio preparations these figures are part of. His designs, drawings, and projections add a powerful third dimension to this complex and enigmatic opera, Shostakovich’s interpretation of a short story by the great Russian writer and satirist, Nikolai Gogol. His famous drawings, drawn animation and prints share the same style and feeling.  Some of the other reoccurring themes at the Joburg Art Fair were wildlife, soccer, documentary photography from the violent past and poverty. But the variety of work was great and the attendance impressive. The architect that designed the space was Miriam Wolf and the main curator Kobbie Loubschangni.

Sinakho Sadhikge