#Washington Codex | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

justforbooks · 3 months ago

Text

Nothing but the truth: the legacy of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four

Every generation turns to it in times of political turmoil, and this extract from a new book about the novel examines its relevance in the age of fake news and Trump

December 1948. A man sits at a typewriter, in bed, on a remote island, fighting to complete the book that means more to him than any other. He is terribly ill. The book will be finished and, a year or so later, so will the man.

January 2017. Another man stands before a crowd, which is not as large as he would like, in Washington DC, taking the oath of office as the 45th president of the United States of America. His press secretary says that it was the “largest audience to ever witness an inauguration – period – both in person and around the globe”. Asked to justify such a preposterous lie, the president’s adviser describes the statement as “alternative facts”. Over the next four days, US sales of the dead man’s book will rocket by almost 10,000%, making it a No 1 bestseller.

When George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four was published in the United Kingdom on 8 June 1949, in the heart of the 20th century, one critic wondered how such a timely book could possibly exert the same power over generations to come. Thirty-five years later, when the present caught up with Orwell’s future and the world was not the nightmare he had described, commentators again predicted that its popularity would wane. Another 35 years have elapsed since then, and Nineteen Eighty-Four remains the book we turn to when truth is mutilated, when language is distorted, when power is abused, when we want to know how bad things can get. It is still, in the words of Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange, “an apocalyptical codex of our worst fears”.

Nineteen Eighty-Four has not just sold tens of millions of copies – it has infiltrated the consciousness of countless people who have never read it. The phrases and concepts that Orwell minted have become essential fixtures of political language, still potent after decades of use and misuse: newspeak, Big Brother, the thought police, Room 101, the two minutes’ hate, doublethink, unperson, memory hole, telescreen, 2+2=5 and the ministry of truth. Its title came to define a calendar year, while the word Orwellian has turned the author’s own name into a capacious synonym for everything he hated and feared.

It has been adapted for cinema, television, radio, theatre, opera and ballet and has influenced novels, films, plays, television shows, comic books, albums, advertisements, speeches, election campaigns and uprisings. People have spent years in jail just for reading it. No work of literary fiction from the past century approaches its cultural ubiquity while retaining its weight. Dissenting voices such as Milan Kundera and Harold Bloom have argued that Nineteen Eighty-Four is actually a bad novel, with thin characters, humdrum prose and an implausible plot, but even they couldn’t gainsay its importance.

A novel that has been claimed by socialists, conservatives, anarchists, liberals, Catholics and libertarians of every description cannot be, as Kundera alleged, merely “political thought disguised as a novel”. Orwell’s famously translucent prose conceals a world of complexity. Normally thought of as a dystopia, Nineteen Eighty-Four is also, to varying and debatable degrees, a satire, a prophecy, a warning, a political thesis, a work of science fiction, a spy thriller, a psychological horror, a gothic nightmare, a postmodern text and a love story. Most people read it when they’re young and feel bruised by it – it offers more suffering and less reassurance than any other standard high-school text – but don’t feel compelled to rediscover it in adulthood. That’s a shame. It is far richer and stranger than you remember.

Orwell felt that he lived in cursed times. He fantasised about another life in which he could have spent his days gardening and writing fiction instead of being “forced into becoming a pamphleteer”, but that would have been a waste. His real talent was for analysing and explaining a tumultuous period in human history. Written down, his core values might seem too vague to carry much weight – honesty, decency, liberty, justice – but no one else wrestled so tirelessly, in private and in public, with what those ideas meant during the darkest days of the 20th century. He always tried to tell the truth and admired anyone who did likewise. Nothing built on a lie, however seductively convenient, could have value. Central to his honesty was his commitment to constantly working out what he thought and why he thought it and never ceasing to reassess those opinions. To quote Christopher Hitchens, one of Orwell’s most eloquent admirers: “It matters not what you think, but how you think.”

I first encountered Nineteen Eighty-Four as a teenager in suburban south London. As Orwell said, the books you read when you’re young stay with you for ever. I found it shocking and compelling, but this was circa 1990, when communism and apartheid were on the way out, optimism reigned and the world didn’t feel particularly Orwellian. Even after 9/11, the book’s relevance was fragmentary: it was applied to political language, or the media, or surveillance, but not the whole picture. Democracy was on the rise and the internet was largely considered a force for good.

In 2016, the world changed. As Trump took the White House, Britain voted for Brexit and populism swept across Europe, people took to talking anxiously about the upheavals of the 1970s and, worse, the 1930s. Bookshop shelves began filling up with titles such as How Democracy Ends, The Road to Unfreedom and The Death of Truth, many of which quoted Orwell. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism merited a new edition, pitched as “a nonfiction bookend to Nineteen Eighty-Four”. So did Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel about American fascism, It Can’t Happen Here. Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale was as alarming as a documentary. “I was asleep before,” said Elisabeth Moss’s character, Offred. “That’s how we let it happen.” Well, we weren’t asleep any more. I was reminded of something Orwell wrote about fascism in 1936: “If you pretend that it is merely an aberration which will presently pass off of its own accord, you are dreaming a dream from which you will awake when somebody coshes you with a rubber truncheon.” Nineteen Eighty-Four is a book designed to wake you up.

It was the first dystopian novel to be written in the knowledge that dystopia was real. In Germany and the Soviet bloc, men had built it and forced other men and women to live and die within its iron borders. Those regimes are gone but Orwell’s book continues to define our nightmares, even as they shift and change. “For me, it’s like a Greek myth, to take and do with it what you will – to examine yourself,” Michael Radford, the director of the 1984 movie adaptation, said. “It’s a mirror,” says a character in the 2013 stage version. “Every age sees itself reflected.” For singer-songwriter Billy Bragg: “Every time I read it, it seems to be about something else.”

After President Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway first used the phrase “alternative facts” on 22 January 2017, The Hollywood Reporter called Nineteen Eighty-Four “the hottest literary property in town”. Scores of cinemas across the US announced that they would be screening Michael Radford’s 1984 on 4 April, because “the clock is already striking 13”. And theatre producers Sonia Friedman and Scott Rudin asked British playwrights Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan to transfer their hit play 1984 to Broadway as soon as possible. “It went from zero to a hundred in the space of five days,” Icke said. “They said, ‘We think it’s important this play is on Broadway now.’”

When the play was in the West End, each of its three runs inhabited a different political context – the third opened during the Brexit referendum, just before the murder of Jo Cox MP by a far-right terrorist. During the run at New York’s Hudson theatre, which began on 18 May 2017, the directors noticed that the audience’s reaction each night was affected by whatever Donald Trump had done that day. The night after Trump tweeted the nonsense word covfefe, there was such a desire for humour that one actor was distraught: “I’ve been in comedies that have had less laughter than this.” On another night, the news was so bad that people passed out. At a third performance, when Winston Smith’s chief antagonist O’Brien asked: “What year is it?”, a woman shouted: “It’s 2017 and this is fucked up!”

It must be said that Trump is no Big Brother. Nor, despite his revival of such toxic phrases as “America First” and “enemy of the people”, is he simply a throwback to the 1930s. He has the cruelty and power hunger of a dictator but not the discipline, intellect or ideology. His closest fictional precursor is probably Buzz Windrip, the oafish populist from It Can’t Happen Here. In the real world, Trump’s forefather is Joseph McCarthy, who displayed comparable levels of narcissism, dishonesty, resentment and crude ambition and an uncanny ability to make journalists dance to his tune even as they loathed him. Still, Orwell would have recognised the type. “I think Dad would’ve been amused by Donald Trump in an ironic sort of way,” said Orwell’s son, Richard Blair, in 2017. “He may have thought, ‘There goes the sort of man I wrote about all those years ago.’”

There are precedents in Orwell’s writing. During Trump’s campaign against Hillary Clinton, it was hard to watch the candidate whipping supporters into a cry of “Lock her up!” without being reminded of the two minutes’ hate. The president also meets most of the criteria of Orwell’s 1944 definition of fascism: “Something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class… almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘fascist’.” Orwell contended that such men can only rise to the top when the status quo has failed to satisfy citizens’ need for justice, liberty and self-worth, but Trump’s victory required one more crucial ingredient.

He did not seize power through a revolution or coup. He was not potentiated by a recession or a terrorist atrocity, let alone a nuclear war or a fertility crisis. His route to the White House passed through America’s own “Versionland”, which is Russia expert Luke Harding’s name for the post-truth politics of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. In Versionland, flagrant lies become “alternative facts”. Trump creates his own reality and measures his power by the number of people who subscribe to it: the cruder the lie, the more power its success demonstrates. It is truly Orwellian that the phrase “fake news” has been turned on its head by Trump and his fellow authoritarians to describe real news that is not to their liking. Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani accidentally provided a crude motto for Versionland USA when he snapped at an interviewer: “Truth isn’t truth!” In the words of O’Brien, reality is inside the skull.

How did this happen? On the eve of 1984, the science-fiction writer Marta Randall argued that one thing Orwell didn’t predict was the spread of cynicism: “It would be very hard for ‘Big Brother’ to convince anyone of anything post-Watergate and post-Vietnam.” In the 1980s, she suggested, Orwell’s target would have been the trivialisation of the news media. “We may quit relying on ‘authoritative’ news stories entirely.” Over time, this distrust of establishment narratives led many people to seek the truth but many others to choose their own “truths”. Combining cynicism with credulity, people who were proudly sceptical of CNN or the New York Times were perfectly happy to take unsourced Facebook posts and quack science at face value. Social media made this process all too easy. Facebook’s former chief of security, Alex Stamos, pointed out that using the blunt instrument to eliminate fake news could turn the platform into “the ministry of truth with ML [machine-learning] systems”, but by failing to act in time, Facebook was already allowing “bad actors” such as Russia’s Internet Research Agency to spread disinformation unchecked.

The problem is likely to get worse. The growth of “deep fake” image synthesis, which combines computer graphics and artificial intelligence to manufacture images whose artificiality can only be identified by expert analysis, has the potential to create a paranoid labyrinth in which, according to the viewer’s bias, fake images will pass as real, while real ones are dismissed as fake.

During a speech in July 2018, Trump said: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.” A line from Nineteen Eighty-Four went viral: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

One might feel wistful for the days when Big Brother was a joke and Orwell had “won”, as many commentators thought after the fall of the Berlin Wall. An era plagued by far-right populism, authoritarian nationalism, rampant disinformation and waning faith in liberal democracy is not one in which Nineteen Eighty-Four can be easily dismissed.

Orwell was both too pessimistic and not pessimistic enough. On the one hand, the west did not succumb to totalitarianism. Consumerism, not endless war, became the engine of the global economy. But he did not appreciate the tenacity of racism and religious extremism. Nor did he foresee that the common man and woman would embrace doublethink as enthusiastically as the intellectuals and, without the need for terror or torture, would choose to believe that two plus two was whatever they wanted it to be.

Nineteen Eighty-Four is about many things and its readers’ concerns dictate which one is paramount at any point in history. During the cold war, it was a book about totalitarianism. In the 1980s, it became a warning about technology. Today, it is most of all a defence of truth.

Orwell’s fear, incubated during the months he spent fighting in the Spanish civil war, that “the very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world” is the dark heart of Nineteen Eighty-Four. It gripped him long before he came up with Big Brother, Oceania, newspeak or the telescreen, and it’s more important than any of them. In its original 1949 review, Life correctly identified the essence of Orwell’s message: “If men continue to believe in such facts as can be tested and to reverence the spirit of truth in seeking greater knowledge, they can never be fully enslaved.” Seventy years later, that feels like a very large if.

Incredible things are happening already❗ 👀 🤔

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

#just for books #Trump administration #Donald Trump #US politics #message from the editor

27 notes · View notes

restinpiss · 1 month ago

Text

My name is Safe Sleazy. I hang around Washington Square Park and pretend I'm in a Larry Clark film. I wanna be a graffiti artist and hang around at Codex Books where I get my Dennis Cooper fix at. I'm a DJ into Jersey club. I live at my Asian girlfriend's place. We love bars with aesthetics.

12 notes · View notes

mllemaenad · 1 year ago

Note

-it makes my poor European brain hurt just considering trying to cover that much territory, so how come the Brotherhood has outposts everywhere and, with a few exceptions, seem pretty unified in terms of ideology/general nastiness to everyone who isn't them.

Ha. :) The Doylist answer to this is that The Brotherhood are your last minute allies of convenience against The Master in the original Fallout, which means they've cemented themselves as essential to the franchise and have earned themselves at least a cameo in every game since. That, for example, is why they bent over backwards to ensure a version of them appeared in the original plot of Fallout 76 even though there was no practical way to get Roger Maxson's crew out to Appalachia that early.

The Watsonian answer is three part: the first is that they actually aren't unified at all. They're some of the most cantankerous bastards in the entire wasteland. They're incredibly dogmatic, and adhere to a sacred "Codex". Of course, being people, they immediately come up with different interpretations of their sacred text. And, being the Brotherhood of Steel, they can't agree to disagree on the matter – so they have schisms. So many schisms.

The funniest one is in Fallout 3. They have no means of high speed travel at this point, so the group calling themselves The Outcasts schism their way about four streets over to sulk in an old fort and utterly fail to get an old video game working. They also wear darker power armour to show how rebellious they are. I really have no words for how pathetic all this is. It's also really important to them that you understand that you are a wastelander and they are superior beings.

In this case, the argument was that their boss, Owyn Lyons, decided the Super Mutants then overrunning the Capital Wasteland constituted an existential threat to humanity itself and that he should probably do something about that. The Outcasts, led by Henry Casdin, contended that Lyons was way off mission: they're supposed to be hoarding anything you could put a battery in, not saving people from Super Mutants. The sad thing is that, in terms of the most commonly accepted version of Brotherhood dogma, Casdin is probably in the right here.

But usually the groups go further afield than that. The Mojave Brotherhood, in New Vegas, exists because their particular leader, Elijah, wanted to try to research new tech instead of just putting every laser rifle they can find in a broom cupboard (unfortunately Elijah is also a terrible person, so I can't endorse his research - but that's a whole other conversation). The Brotherhood could not handle the conflict, so - schism!

Then there's the big question: do we talk to other people or not? The whole thing is laid out pretty well in the opening of Fallout Tactics, which I found for reference on Youtube. Now I should note that a lot of the stuff in Tactics has been pretty thoroughly retconned. The Brotherhood are not descended from Vault Dwellers, and while I don't know if Vault 0 is still a thing – Vault 31 seems to have replaced it in practice. But the business with the Brotherhood's internal conflict regarding their isolationism seems to now be canon: Roger Maxson, the Brotherhood's founder, references it in Fallout 76.

The main Brotherhood, in California, has traditionally been very isolationist, and just periodically kicks out anyone who doesn't agree with them. It's interesting that they're shown as definitely recruiting outsiders in the TV show but everything in California is pretty clearly on fire at the moment, so it's unsurprising that they're desperate.

Lyons's Brotherhood was sent out, in part, in search of the group they exiled in Fallout Tactics (who are in Chicago, if they're anywhere, not Washington DC, so that mission is going about as well as expected) and are less isolationist.

Which leads me to part two of the Watsonian explanation: the bastards can fly. You probably guessed this if you sat through the eight minute video: they've got airships and vertibirds. The airships aren't surprising if you remember they hail from California: that area has, until recently, been clawing its way out of the apocalypse, so there are resources available to build fancy machines. They've managed to crash them all by Fallout 3, because of course they have, but by the end of that game they (probably, unless the player sided with the Enclave and blew them up a lot) control most of the Capital Wasteland, so they've got the power to hoard and steal their way into building the monstrosity that is The Prydwen.

The vertibirds are, I regret to say, The Chosen One's fault: you steal the plans for them in Fallout 2. This has zero consequences in that particular game so there's no reason to think it's a problem. It's just something you kick yourself for later.

So the Brotherhood gets everywhere because they are one of the few groups with the power to travel relatively easily in the post-apocalyptic world.

And the third part, which builds on that, is that sometimes they're just the same guys.

The Brotherhood of Steel you meet in the original Fallout have cameos in some small bunkers in Fallout 2. They've built a few more installations but it's all still their original stomping ground.

Likewise, the Brotherhood that rolls in in Act 2 of Fallout 4 are the same people you'd have met in Fallout 3: Arthur Maxson appears as a child in Fallout 3, and has brought his chapter in to wreak havoc in the Commonwealth.

The original Appalachian Brotherhood is a dead branch: they were genuinely new people who were wiped out by the Scorched Plague. But their commander, Lizzie Taggerdy, was in direct contact with Roger Maxson. He was the only guy she could get on the phone post-apocalypse, so she signed up with the Brotherhood because it's not like she had anything else planned. Their ideology, in that case, came straight from the original source.

So, there you have it. Brotherhood everywhere, whether you like it or not. And probably Brotherhood everywhere for the foreseeable future, since Bethesda seems to love them.

#fallout #fallout 76 #fallout 2 #fallout 4 #fallout new vegas #fallout tv series #fallout tv spoilers #fallout 3

16 notes · View notes

rmelster · 9 months ago

Text

—𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐇𝐀𝐒 𝐀 𝐓𝐇𝐎𝐔𝐒𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐄𝐘𝐄𝐒.

CHAPTER TWO: FRIENDSHIPS IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT.

The storm had returned long hours ago.

Languidly reclining on one of the many couches that were gathered in the common room, Lawrance did not respond in humour to his calm position; his eyes had a restless glance. It seemed that the agitated state of nature had affected him in spirit. It was the dead of night and nor him nor his brother had been yet visited by the sweet Dream, and having been deprived by the Heavens and the strict rule that Sinclair had shared with them —never to leave Onstyles once the night had come— of the opportunity to wander around, they had made the oath to stay there until boredom or any major force forced them back.

Washington had been terribly disappointed to see the first drops of rain crashing into the narrow window of his room, soon after they had settled in their rooms; after a long and tedious journey, spent first in a dark ship and later in a horse-drawn carriage, he had the illusion of going out to explore before the inevitable start of lessons, walk around the forest and map every path, every stone and every cave that he is eyes saw, which he liked to do. But Lawrance, the always adventurous and lively Lawrance…

He preferred it that way.

"It is better that it rains" he thought, contemplating how the flash of a ray stained the once dark sky with a pale purple fog, and the distant rumble of thunder shook him to the bone, making him shiver "this place makes me uneasy"

Not many steps away of him, his brother dedicated himself to look at the books that rested on the slab above the fireplace in a dusty lethargy, softly muttering to himself as his fingers seemed to read some of the worn out, frayed spines. His little mouse, Cotton, the most faithful companion in his academic exile to English lands, played among some porcelain cups, cleaning the dust with his lustrous whiskers.

“Lawrance!” he suddenly called him, “Look!”

The youth seemed to be pleased with not having to remain another moment resting in woe. He hastily stood up and came by his side, expecting a great revelation.

“What is it?”

“Do you remember that time we went to the Fairfax’s estate? With the big library in it?”

Almost immediately, his hopes for finding something to entertain those idle times vanished. Oh, his brother and his silly little head; he thought life was like one of those books of adventures and intrigues where the protagonists found centenary secrets between the pages of an forgotten, wizened codex, or hidden rooms behind walls that hid family heritages.

“Yes” he recalled, indolent, “The library and that old dusty encyclopaedia that your dearest friend made us see.”

“With the names of all those who read it, yes. James Fairfax I, his son Edward Harry Fairfax, his younger brother Lewis, then Edward’s son, James II…”

“And? Is somebody important’s name on it? The Queen’s perhaps? No.”

He prepared himself to go back to idly lay on the couch, when his brother said something:

“There is a name crossed out.”

He ceased to walk and came back to his side.

“Uh? A name crossed out?” a malicious gleam invaded Lawrance’s turquoise eyes, “Someone’s family’s black sheep?”

“I don’t know. See it by yourself…”

The book, a small volume about birds, which had a coat of arms engraved in black ink the first page, appeared to have belong, in better times, to a certain “Carmichael family”; however, only three people seemed to have read it and leave their name as a testimony of their existence for future readers. Someone, of tangled, almost unintelligible handwriting, named “Sir Malcolm Carmichael”. Someone, of sharp, heavy calligraphy, by the name of Aaron Everling. And someone, named…

“Lads?”

The brothers turned at the same time, their heart on their throat, as they saw themselves being interrupted by the monotonous, benevolent voice of Clarence Sinclair. The young man, pretty much ready to go to bed, wore an immaculate wool nightrobe; his brown hair was tousled, yet his posture wasn’t devoid of that solemnity they had seen in him that morning.

“What are you doing? The hour is late” he asked, in a gentle tone that did not lack judgement. Lawrance saw how Washington looked at his mouse, then hidden behind one of the teacups.

“Just… Finding something to read” Washington hastily replied, cradling the little book against his chest. Some from of tick seemed to make Sinclair’s gesture tremble, but he was quick to hide it. A small, shuddering smile took place on his face,

"I wouldn't touch those books much," he recommended benignly, his smile as painful as if he was forcing himself not to sneer, “Those are dirty, worn out… God will know that dirty hands will have touched them… What rats must have put their dirty little paws on those pages…”

"No rat has ever touched those books. Unless, of course, you consider me one of them…”

Only the inevitable creak of the ground under light footsteps announced his presence. The three late-nighters turned their faces to the threshold, to receive, with an expectant silence, an unexpected companion on that stormy night.

My Ladyship @lordbettany / @aneruinallday / @theboarsbride / @ricardian-werewolf / @nealsneen

#Part one #the raven volumes #the night has a thousand eyes #Lawrance Pemberton #Washington Pemberton #Clarence Sinclair #Dr Barnabas Allenbrought #R M Elster

11 notes · View notes

dairsmuids · 8 months ago

Text

some unreasonable gripes i have about assassin's creed iii after being 250 hrs in on a hunt for the ps platinum trophy: a list brought to you by aurora

• not enough fast travel points in the frontier. and that might be bearable, if only the horse mechanic didn't constantly feel like i'm riding around on a lego block

• i should be able to remove my notoriety in the frontier. the perma 1 star wanted level is fucking annoying when i'm trying to clean up post-main game side quests

• the glitch where sometimes when you catch a almanac page it won't register on your codex as collected and will show up on your map to go get it again :))))

• the 'encyclopedia of the common man' quest. having to go around and scan all the villagers doing multiple activities but sometimes some of them won't do that last activity you need. like ellen bestie pls stop doing the same two tasks every day and go do the laundry so i can scan you I AM BEGGING.

• the commitment to historical inaccuracy but in very odd and specific ways like don't piss me off LAFAYETTE DID NOT DRESS AS A WOMAN TO COME TO AMERICA THAT WAS DEBUNKED WHY IS HE HAVING A FULL CONVO WITH CONNOR ABOUT IT @ VALLEY FORGE

• ^ but also on the flip side of the accuracy gripe, why can't i lay the smack down on george washington???? if i can shoot charles lee for funsies in sequence 2 without consequence as haytham (in the benjamin church mission, try it, it's v cathartic and amusing) then i should be able to shoot georgie. just one bullet. pls.

• everything about the tyranny of king washington dlc. no really. everything about it. of all the alternate universes you could've made a dlc about why couldn't it have been 'if haytham had been an assassin not a templar'. trust me we don't need a dlc around the idea of georgie being a tyrannical leader. he owned hundreds of slaves and bought their teeth for his own benefits. that's enough proof of his actual tyranny for me thanks !!!

• the fact that ubisoft packaged the dlc with the main game in the remaster so to get the playstation platinum trophy you have to 100% the dlc as well as the main story

#'do you take constructive criticism?' no :D #that's why i said they're probably unreasonable lol #also despite this list i assure u i do have a great deal of affection for this game lol #assassin's creed #ro.doc

9 notes · View notes

farsight-the-char · 11 months ago

Text

Double checking when Warhammer's next announcement stream is likely, and is probably Tacoma Washington Open on the 19th this month.

....

Predicting 40k Fall/Winter releases:

Agents of the Imperium (redacted summer codex), Imperial Guard, Leagues of Votann, Dark Eldar, Blood Angels, and maybe Thousand Sons or Emperor's Children.

#warhammer #EC is a maybe but i feel it is sooner then assumed #40k

8 notes · View notes

ayliamc · 2 years ago

Text

Italia

Day 4 - the Leonardo Era: Milano Edition

Steps walked: 19,011

Flights climbed: 13

Vehicles ridden: 3

Points of interest visited: 4

Leonardos spotted: the last supper, pages from the codex antlanticus, the portrait of a musician (but let’s be real, is that one truly a Leonardo?)

At three in the morning, we woke up to pack up and take a cab to the Napoli train station an hour drive away. Turns out we totally could have gone an hour later cuz we sat around the train station for quite a while but we didn’t have a super clear idea of how long things would take when plans were booked. Fortunately also Dan noticed that the driver tried to drop us off at the Napoli airport even though we had correctly listed the train station as our destination. So one crisis averted.

It’s a four hour train ride from Napoli to Milano and I had hoped to read “the Fragile Threads of Power”, a new book in my favorite series by my favorite author. I’ve been intentionally trying to read as slowly as possible to draw it out because it’s so rare to read a new book and know you love it before you even start. (It’s not disappointing so far. I’m delighting in every word.) But I could not keep my eyes open on the train. It was that strange feeling of a total energy drain where your eyelids close even though your brain is awake and wants to do things. (Hint: this is foreshadowing of the looming crisis that I had not yet had tea.) The train ride was made worse when someone got on the train next to me in Roma so I was now sitting by a stranger. Discomfort, I know thy name.

I made the mistake of not getting myself a tea on the train and was becoming increasingly grumpier. But I never panicked!

The Milano train station was an hour walk from our hotel so we took an Uber and were very lucky that they let us check in a few hours early so we could unload our bags in our room.

Gratefully lighter, we walked to the Bibliotecca Ambrosiana (and got an overpriced tea on the way! I try to refrain from buying tea as much as possible because they’re charging you for a 30¢ tea bag… but desperate times. And I did feel much better as a result.) ‘Twas a 25 minute walk and along the way we came across this beauty. (Look closely.)

The Bibliotecca was a relatively new discovery by me thanks to a recent article in the Washington Post. I had never heard of it. And as it turns out, neither have most people. But they hold the largest collection of pages from Leonardo’s Codex Antlanticus. We walked right in (after I chugged my tea of course because I couldn’t bring it in with me) and they have a pretty impressive collection of Italian renaissance paintings, displayed under spotlights in dark rooms.

Then - gasp! - a room dedicated to Raphael’s cartoon of his big philosopher painting-I-can’t-remember-what-it’s-called. This caught us completely by surprise and was staggering in its size and detail. Absolutely magnificent. Dan had to drag me away.

The Leonardos were all displayed at the end of the slightly confusingly laid out museum, but they had several copies produced by some of his students including Salai! Or as I like to call him, “the Little Shit.” It sounds harsh but Salai was the nickname Leonardo gave him which means “Little Devil.” Salai was not much of an artist, though commonly known as an apprentice of the master to justify his having lived with and off of Leonardo for so long. In reality, they were lovers. But Salai did produce copies of Leonardo’s works during his tenure in the workshop. So we saw Salai’s Salvatore Mundi and St John (which I thought was particularly funny since Salai is believed to be the model Leonardo used for his true St John). Also on display was the Portrait of a Musician, which I — as a non-scholar — believe Leonardo may have had a hand in but I don’t think it’s a true Leonardo composition. Still cool. Then the pages from the codex and the original binding of the codex the first time it was assembled from all of Leonardo’s notes.

We also got to spy on some scholars hard at work studying stuff. I got weirdly excited by that. To which Dan replied, “Nerds.”

They also have a crypt on display which is super old or something and Leonardo visited it before. I dunno. Anyway it was very well preserved and Leonardo had drawn maps of it and called it “the true heart of Milan” as it’s in the city’s center.

Dan grabbed a wrap on the way back to the hotel and I ate my leftovers from Sorrento before we crossed the street from our hotel to the Last Supper. Not an exaggeration. We could literally see the church from our hotel. Our commute to the Last Supper was legitimately just crossing the street.

They’re very well organized to give us the best possible experience to see the painting. A small group is allowed in with a tour guide for fifteen minutes to see the work.

I cannot possibly convey how unprepared I was to see it. I thought I was ready. I knew it was big. But I could not have imagined how big. It’s painted above a door, so my scale was all based on that. But the door is huge! What had once been a regular sized door had been expanded by the idiot priests who used the room as a dining hall. They literally destroyed part of the painting to give themselves a bigger door. So in pictures it makes it seem like a smaller painting. But it is massive. And I also expected it to be in much worse condition but the restoration is quite impressive.

People were standing respectfully far back despite a barrier that prevents viewers from getting too close but I kept inching closer and closer because I wanted to see as much as I could, knowing I would never be back here. This is a big bucket list item and it’s very likely one-and-done. We may never come back to Milano.

Anyway. It was awesome. Next door to our hotel was something labeling itself as Da Vinci’s vineyard. Apparently a vineyard that was gifted to Leonardo. We tried to visit it but they closed on Saturday (four days prior!) due to new ownership and didn’t know when they would open again to the public.

We wandered back in the direction of the Bibliotecca to see the Duomo. I kept saying “but I thought this was in Florence!” And of course there is one in Florence because “duomo” is just the Italian word for “cathedral”, and the one in Florence is the one Michelangelo built the David for, so naturally that’s the one I knew more about. But there were tons of statues on this duomo, too, so it confused me for a hot minute. Incredible structure.

Super randomly, one of Dan’s coworkers also happened to be in Milano so we met up with them to say hi. They wanted to go to a very fancy pizzeria for dinner. I’m not gonna lie, I’m already sick of Italian food. When there’s no vegan cheese, I’m just eating marinara pizzas and pasta with olive oil. And like, that’s enough of that, you feel me? We were also pretty tired after such an early start to the day so we grabbed some poke on the way back to our hotel room (it weirdly hit the spot) and found a place that had vegan ice cream which we happily slurped on the way.

Our path had us pass by the Castello Sforzesco, the castle of the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. He was a major patron of Leonardo and I think Leonardo even lived in the castle for a period during Ludovico’s patronship. He was the one who commissioned the Last Supper. I knew his name from Leonardo’s history and our tour guide at the Last Supper mentioned him. When I talked to Dan about Ludovico afterward it was as though Dan had never heard the name. This became a recurring theme and still to this day Dan knows him only as the Duke of Milan. If you say “Ludovico Sforza” to Dan I swear you will see the words wash over him like he has been cursed to never remember the name. The castle was cool. I decided Leonardo lived there.

I will forever regret not building time into our visit to see the interior.

A few random observations:

* Bidets in every hotel room, but this one did not have a shower. So we got to hose ourselves off with a shower head in a bathtub instead. The bidet was the priority for whoever designed this bathroom.

* The toilets in Milano flush differently. They work more like a faucet than a traditional handle.

* I understand that American portions are too big, but the cups for tea are much too small. Even by my standards.

* How are they all still smoking? And in restaurants while people are eating?? It stinks everywhere and cigarette butts litter every corner.

* The stereotypes of Milan as the fashion capital whatever who cares can be identified by the shops, what they sell, how much they sell it for, and how highly they think of themselves. It does not appeal to me.

4 notes · View notes

snic93 · 1 month ago

Text

The Codex of Leicester

The possession of Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester by Bill Gates in 1994 offers insight into the intersection of art, private ownership, and public access to culture. At $30.8 million, the Codex became the most expensive manuscript ever sold, raising concerns about the privatization of important cultural artifacts (Sullivan, 1994). However, Gates’ handling of the manuscript has complicated the traditional narrative of elite ownership, offering an example of how private art stewardship can enhance rather than restrict public engagement with cultural treasures.

The Codex Leicester, a 72-page scientific notebook, reflects Leonardo da Vinci’s multifaceted genius. It includes sketches and reflections on astronomy, hydrodynamics, geology, and natural phenomena, and these are fields in which da Vinci’s artistic vision and scientific knowledge meet (Capra, 2007). As a unique merge of art, science, and history, the Codex is more than a manuscript, it is a cultural artifact of great significance. When Gates purchased it, fears arose that such an important document might be locked away from public view, inaccessible to scholars and art lovers. Yet, Gates has surprisingly challenged those expectations. Gates’ acquisition illustrates how private ownership can contribute positively to the preservation of cultural heritage. First and foremost, he ensured the physical conservation of the Codex, which is safer in the hands of a well-funded individual than it might be in a poorly resourced institution, as he does have the means to initiate and continue this preservation. More importantly, Gates made the content of the Codex widely accessible to people. He digitized it, allowed for its exhibition in museums around the world, and even incorporated some of its imagery into Microsoft screensavers and educational software (Carvajal, 1994). In doing so, Gates used his technological platform to introduce da Vinci’s work to millions of people who might never have encountered it otherwise. The implications of this approach are significant for the future of the arts. Gates’ digitization efforts demonstrate how technology can preserve fragile documents while broadening access to them. His stewardship of the Codex has served educational, artistic, and scholarly communities, setting a standard for how private collectors can support public knowledge the right way. The integration of the Codex into modern media also reflects a growing understanding of art as something to be experienced broadly, not hoarded by the rich few.

However, this case also highlights continual conflict. The fact that such a culturally important artifact could only be secured by a billionaire underscores the inequality that exists in the art market. The privatization of heritage, however managed, risks reducing access if future owners do not share Gates’ vision. Moreover, high-profile procurements like this may drive up the market value of similar items, making it more difficult for public institutions to compete (Watson, 1994).

In conclusion, while the purchase of the Codex Leicester by Bill Gates initially raised concerns about elitism and privatization, his actions have largely served the public good in this example. By using technology to enhance access, loaning the Codex for exhibitions, and encouraging educational engagement, Gates has offered a powerful example of how private ownership can support, rather than weaken, the art culture.

References

Capra, F. (2007). The science of Leonardo: Inside the mind of the great genius of the Renaissance. Doubleday.

Carvajal, D. (1994, November 12). Gates buys da Vinci manuscript for $30.8 million. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/11/12/world/gates-buys-da-vinci-manuscript-for-30.8-million.html

Sullivan, P. (1994, November 12). Bill Gates buys rare Leonardo da Vinci manuscript. The Washington Post.

Watson, P. (1994). From Manet to Manhattan: The rise of the modern art market. Random House.

0 notes

brookstonalmanac · 3 months ago

Text

Events 2.4 (before 1950)

211 – Following the death of the Roman Emperor Septimius Severus at Eboracum (modern York, England) while preparing to lead a campaign against the Caledonians, the empire is left in the control of his two quarrelling sons, Caracalla and Geta, whom he had instructed to make peace. 960 – Zhao Kuangyin declares himself Emperor Taizu of Song, ending the Later Zhou and beginning the Song dynasty. 1169 – A strong earthquake strikes the Ionian coast of Sicily, causing tens of thousands of injuries and deaths, especially in Catania. 1454 – Thirteen Years' War: The Secret Council of the Prussian Confederation sends a formal act of disobedience to the Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, sparking the Thirteen Years' War. 1555 – John Rogers is burned at the stake, becoming the first English Protestant martyr under Mary I of England. 1703 – In Edo (now Tokyo), all but one of the Forty-seven Ronin commit seppuku (ritual suicide) as recompense for avenging their master's death. 1758 – The city of Macapá in Brazil is founded by Sebastião Veiga Cabral. 1789 – George Washington is unanimously elected as the first President of the United States by the U.S. Electoral College. 1794 – The French legislature abolishes slavery throughout all territories of the French First Republic. It would be reestablished in the French West Indies in 1802. 1797 – The Riobamba earthquake strikes Ecuador, causing up to 40,000 casualties. 1801 – John Marshall is sworn in as Chief Justice of the United States. 1810 – Napoleonic Wars: Britain seizes Guadeloupe. 1820 – The Chilean Navy under the command of Lord Cochrane completes the two-day long Capture of Valdivia with just 300 men and two ships. 1825 – The Ohio Legislature authorizes the construction of the Ohio and Erie Canal and the Miami and Erie Canal. 1846 – The first Mormon pioneers make their exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, westward towards Salt Lake Valley. 1859 – The Codex Sinaiticus is discovered in Egypt. 1861 – American Civil War: In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from six breakaway U.S. states meet and initiate the process that would form the Confederate States of America on February 8. 1899 – The Philippine–American War begins when four Filipino soldiers enter the "American Zone" in Manila, igniting the Battle of Manila. 1932 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Harbin, Manchuria, falls to Japan. 1938 – Adolf Hitler appoints himself as head of the Armed Forces High Command. 1941 – The United Service Organization (USO) is created to entertain American troops. 1945 – World War II: Santo Tomas Internment Camp is liberated from Japanese authority. 1945 – World War II: The Yalta Conference between the "Big Three" (Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin) opens at the Livadia Palace in the Crimea. 1945 – World War II: The British Indian Army and Imperial Japanese Army begin a series of battles known as the Battle of Pokoku and Irrawaddy River operations. 1948 – Ceylon (later renamed Sri Lanka) becomes independent within the British Commonwealth.

#Events

0 notes