#prerevolutionary

[newhistorybooks]

“This deep dive into the 1785 Parisian archives offers readers an illuminating panorama of same-sex encounters in the prerevolutionary French capital. By translating and contextualizing over two hundred police records, Jeffrey Merrick has provided anglophone scholars and students of the history of sexuality with an extraordinary resource.”

[grandhotelabyss]

I know it's too early to be considering The Invisible College II: Electric Boogaloo, but nevertheless — I think an ancient Athens-Renaissance London-prerevolutionary Moscow trajectory would be incredible, along the lines of your review of Steiner's 'Tolstoy or Dostoevsky' book, tracing the ley lines of the epic/novelistic in parallel to the dramatic/tragic*.

Semester I: Homer & the Greek tragedians; plus maybe Aristophanes/Plato/some of the Romans

II: Shakespeare; plus maybe Marlowe, Jonson, Montaigne, and other environs

III: Dostoevsky/Tolstoy; plus a smattering of Chekhov/Gogol/Pushkin

*For those who haven't read it, one of John's best paragraphs: "But Steiner has a bigger point to argue, namely, that these modes—epic and tragedy—are not merely aesthetic but metaphysical, ethical, and political, bearing within themselves two very different attitudes toward life. In the Homeric-Tolstoyan epic, we find a land-based evocation of natural rhythms, of the vast movements of the seasons, an ultimately hopeful sense that vitality surges on through and past the individual, who would do well to join him- or herself to the motions of the earth. In the Shakespearean-Dostoevskian tragedy, on the other hand, we see a deracinated court-and-city world of mistrust, suspicion, demonic urges, weird passions, perverse convictions, pervasive violence, cruel comedy, an underground perspective that ends in chastened humility before the suffering mystery of things."

Thank you! This is superb; I hope you write syllabi for a living! I'd already planned to get to Shakespeare and the Russians, but this is an exciting structure, a path through the whole tradition I'd never conceived in quite these terms. I will absolutely keep it in mind.

(And for the rest of you, have you enrolled in The Invisible College yet? It's in session all year round. Please join me for the current semester, Modern British Literature from Romanticism to Modernism, to be followed by a summer of Ulysses and Middlemarch, and then a fall semester on the American Renaissance culminating in Moby-Dick. The first lecture, "William Blake: The Poetic Genius Is the True Man," is free to all.)

[elektramouthed]

 Once they abandon their initial extremism, revolutionary elements become irremediably reformist. The well-nigh general abandonment of the revolutionary spirit in our time is a soil in which reformisms of survival thrive. Any modern revolutionary organization must identify the seeds of transcendence in the great movements of the past. In particular, it must rediscover and carry through the project of individual freedom, perverted by liberalism; the project of collective freedom, perverted by socialism; the project of the recapture of nature, perverted by fascism; and the project of the whole person, perverted by Marxist ideologies. This last project, though expressed in the theological terms of the time, also informed the great medieval heresies and their anticlerical rage, the recent exhumation of which is so apt in our own century with its new clergy of “experts” (2). People of ressentiment are the perfect survivors people bereft of the consciousness of possible transcendence, people of the age of decomposition (3). By becoming aware of spectacular decomposition, a person of ressentiment becomes a nihilist. Active nihilism is prerevolutionary. There is no consciousness of transcendence without consciousness of decomposition. Juvenile delinquents are the legitimate heirs of Dada (4).

Raoul Vaneigem, from Revolution of Everyday Life (tr. Donald Nicholson-Smith)

[idontwannabeyourmama]

"In the mid-twentieth century, the post-Holocaust world, it is common for men to find meaning in nothing: nothing has meaning; Nothing is meaning. In prerevolutionary Russia, men strained to be nihilists; it took enormous effort. In this world, here and now, after Auschwitz, after Hiroshima, after Vietnam, after Jonestown, men need not strain. Nihilism, like gravity, is a law of nature, male nature. The men, of course, are tired. It has been an exhausting period of extermination and devastation, on a scale genuinely new, with new methods, new possibilities. Even when faced with the probable extinction of themselves at their own hand, men refuse to look at the whole, take all the causes and all the effects into account, perceive the intricate connections between the world they make and themselves. They are alienated, they say, from this world of pain and torment; they make romance out of this alienation so as to avoid taking responsibility for what they do and what they are. Male dissociation from this life is not new of particularly modern, but the scale and intensity of this disaffection are new. And in the midst of this Brave New World, how comforting and familiar it is to exercise passionate cruelty against women."

Andrea Dworkin, Pornography: Men Possessing Women

[historycuba]

Social organization

In contrast to the prerevolutionary years, Cuba is attempting to create a society in which neither class nor circumstances of occupation, income, race, or sex define social opportunities and rewards. The most significant challenges for the Revolution since the collapse of the Eastern bloc are providing equal access to political and economic opportunities without creating a privileged group in society or loss of conscious socialist goals, and simultaneously moving the economy toward diversification and industrialization.

[itsnothingbutluck]

As the 25th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution approached, Abbas Milani realized that very little, if any, attention had been given to the entire prerevolutionary generation. Political upheavals and a tradition of neglecting the history of past regimes have resulted in a cultural memory loss, erasing the contributions of a generation of individuals. Eminent Persians seeks to rectify that loss. Milani’s groundbreaking portrait of modern Iran reveals the country’s rich history through the lives of the men and women who forged it. Consisting of 150 profiles of the most important innovators in Iran between World War II and the Islamic Revolution, the book includes politicians, entrepreneurs, poets, artists, and thinkers who brought Iran into the modern era with brilliant success and sometimes terrible consequences. The biographies and essays weave a richly textured tapestry of lives, ideas, and events that reveals the true story of these decades in the life of a nation. The two volumes are divided into sections on politics, economics, and culture, each accompanied by an introductory essay that places the individual stories in their broader historical context. Drawn from interviews, extensive archival material, and private correspondence, Eminent Persians is a treasure trove of original documents, many appearing in print for the first time. Detailed sketches of personalities and personal foibles offer a compelling and highly readable account of this remarkable period of history on a human scale.

[a-typical]

 There is something curious about the national flags of the planet Earth. The flag of the United States has fifty stars; the Soviet Union and Israel, one each; Burma, fourteen; Grenada and Venezuela, seven; China, five; Iraq, three; São Tomé e Príncipe, two; Japan, Uruguay, Malawi, Bangladesh and Taiwan, the Sun; Brazil, a celestial sphere; Australia, Western Samoa, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, the constellation of the Southern Cross; Bhutan, the dragon pearl, symbol of the Earth; Cambodia, the Angkor Wat astronomical observatory; India, South Korea and the Mongolian Peoples’ Republic, cosmological symbols. Many socialist nations display stars. Many Islamic countries display crescent moons. Almost half of our national flags exhibit astronomical symbols. The phenomenon is transcultural, nonsectarian, worldwide. It is also not restricted to our time: Sumerian cylinder seals from the third millenium B.C. and Taoist flags in prerevolutionary China displayed constellations. Nations, I do not doubt, wish to embrace something of the power and credibility of the heavens. We seek a connection with the Cosmos. We want to count in the grand scale of things. And it turns out we are connected—not in the personal, small-scale unimaginative fashion that the astrologers pretend, but in the deepest ways, involving the origin of matter, the habitability of the Earth, the evolution and destiny of the human species.

[arquipetrus]

Patria o Muerte por Berny Sackl Por Flickr: Sugar mill no 517 of Cuba, prerevolutionary name "Patria", now it's partly a museum. MINAZ no. 1747 to the left was built by Vulcan Iron Works (Wilkes-Barre) in 1920, constr. no. 3134, wheels 2-8-0. It worked at sugar mill Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, Camaguey, before. MINAZ no. 1461 was built by Baldwin Locomotive Works in 1920 (construction no. 54247), wheels 2-8-0. It worked in Contramaestre before. MINAZ no. 1836 to the right was built by Vulcan Iron Works (Wilkes-Barre) in 1922 (construction no. 3148), wheels 2-8-0 and worked at sugar mill "Orlando Gonzales" before.

[kaxen]

damn, since Parz's 30th birthday is kind of important…..

is he a spring, summer, fall, or winter baby

what holiday were people most likely to fuck during in prerevolutionary france

[elephile]

In the mid-20th century, American historian Crane Brinton analyzed the tendencies of a society prior to a major revolution. He saw a prerevolutionary society as having a combination of social and political tensions, caused by a gradual breakdown of the society’s values. This leads to a fracture of political authority, as the governing body must rely upon an increasingly desperate use of force to remain in power. Commensurate with this is the emergence of reform elements that serve to emphasize the corruption of the political authority. As the existing political order begins to lose its grasp on authority, momentum builds among the diverse forces of the opposition. As the government becomes more precarious, the splinter groups that form the threat to the existing order band together to topple the authority. #womanlifefreedom #lofotenislandsnorway #lofotenislands (at Lofoten Islands, Norway) https://www.instagram.com/p/Clpj86jLxYT/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[lyubochkablogger-blog]

Филфак ЗабГУ в этом здании сейчас.Улица Бутина. Old Chita

[amyasgothique]

|Princess Zinaida Nikolayevna| •1894• François Flameng _____________________________________________ Yusupova (Russian: Зинаи́да Никола́евна Юсу́пова; 2 September 1861 – 24 November 1939). Was an Imperial Russian noblewoman, the only heiress of Russia's largest private fortune of her time. Famed for her beauty and the lavishness of her hospitality, she was a leading figure in pre-Revolutionary Russian society. In 1882, she married Count Felix Felixovich Sumarokov-Elston, who served briefly as General Governor of Moscow (1914–1915). Zinaida is best known as the mother of Prince Felix Yusupov, the murderer of Rasputin. She escaped revolutionary Russia and spent her remaining years living in exile. _____________________________________________ #princess #princesszinaidanikolayevna #1894 #francoisflameng #imperialrussian #rasputin #prince #princefelixyusupov #noblewoman #prerevolutionary #exile #count #revolutionary #revolution #murderer #mypersonaltripaboutart #mypersonalselection #be_amyas @be_amyas #🎩 https://www.instagram.com/p/CB9xn2YHTrI/?igshid=1hvp4l2cvsyw

[denisenelsondesign]

Bits and pieces in the window overlooking Tohickon Creek @millfleursgardens millfleursgardens #interiors #mills #restoration #prerevolutionary #creekside #creeklife #interiorstyling #interiordeco #ptpleasant #buckscounty #delawarerivertowns https://www.instagram.com/p/BsJNu_-Dq9E/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=14w18t94hvh8r

[lovegamer206]

A doodle I did on a whiteboard in class one day before all this started!

[historycuba]

Literature

The Catholic Church estimates that 60 percent of the population identifies as Catholic. Membership in Protestant churches is estimated at 5 percent. According to some observers, Pentecostals and Baptists are probably the largest Protestant denominations.

Art:

Incredibly versatile and diverse, Cuban art encompasses colonial iconography, European Cubism and Impressionism, Mexican muralism, and African and North American elements. The beginnings of the Cuban rich artistic legacy can be traced back to its colonial-era and modern Prerevolutionary art movements.

[starsailorstories]

I know I always describe them as relatively human-like compared to astraeas but for some reason today it’s on my mind to stress that the Cadrians are like...barely even primates, biologically they’re like weird bipedal cow-bears who can live for sixty thousand years and sleep for a month. Anyway. They’re adorable and i love them