IDYLLOPUS PRESS IS A VALIANT LITTLE ROWBOAT

The Humiliation of Aristotle by Phyllis
Metropolitan Museum of Art
2007 December

The above was one of the more startling (and riveting) pieces of art I saw. First glance and I was transfixed by Aristotle’s seeming ecstatic yet serene expression and his surreal proportions. If there’s any humiliation involved with his plunge from the intellectual world into unreflective nature, he doesn’t seem too bothered by it.

At MMoA, we spent a good portion of time in the Knights in Shining Armor galleries, H.o.p. ogling metal and me taking dozens of photos for him since he’s been knight crazy for a year and I knew he’d want to be able to later study the different styles of armor…which is amazingly wrought but insane stuff dedicated to the game of battle as prescribed by the self-aggrandizing elite. At least that’s what kept running through my mind, the metal screaming at me the huge chunks of change devoted not only to their physical protection but the aesthetics of it. Fashion! These weren’t just tin cans.

Fashion!

Fashion!

Fashion!

My plan right now is uploading all these pictures and coupling them with links to essays at the MMoA website so H.o.p. will have them on hand for study. And doing this as well with many of the other things we saw. Which will take me some time (really is a labor, working on the pics then seeking out info at the respective museum’s website and linking to it) but seems a good way of integrating this wonderful trip and all its museum excursions into his homeschooling. We did some preparation before going up, but over the next few months we can can return to, for instance, the American Museum of Natural History website and review the literature and podcasts on the special Mythic Creatures exhibit which he’s seen and his experience will augment the material just as the material augments the excursion. Which is what we did the other day, reviewed the material on the Mythic Creatures exhibit.

Then H.o.p. came down WHAP with what seems to be the same cold that his grandmother and one of his uncles picked up while we were in New York. I had planned on an outing to the High Museum on Saturday (as I learned that Fulton county residents get free admission the first Saturday of every month) and hopefully that will still happen. He was over the low fever in a day but is now all congested.

By the way, before our trip I had looked up visitor info for each museum, for directions and what they allowed concerning photography, what special exhibits were going on, and I had read that a couple of the museums didn’t allow backpacks of ANY size, they must be checked. So our first day in New York I ran to Duffy’s (before our Macy’s outing) and found a huge purse, one that wasn’t all gaudied up with metal studs and buckles, because I certainly didn’t want to waste time standing in locker lines. I’d wanted a messenger bag but not finding one that I liked (in other words, not finding one exactly like I saw on the shoulder of a guy when I was getting my ID renewed the day before heading up to New York…and I still want it because it looked great for carrying around camera stuff) I settled on a great big bag that would house all my junk and camera etc. The bag is larger than my small back pack, but since it wasn’t a back pack I didn’t have to check it in. We were at MoMA and women around me were being stopped and asked to go check their back packs while I sauntered right in with my bag which was every bit as large, but by virtue of its being a BAG didn’t have to be checked.

This is like the first purse I’ve purchased in decades. I’m not joking. All for sake of museum going.

Marilia Vargas singing Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasilerias No. 5. To listen is to breathe more deeply, it is that affecting. Vargas’ voice strikes me as alternative, faithful yet modern, and I’m not even sure yet how so. Something in her expressiveness that is as open to the concert hall as the corner food mart, as if she wants that voice to leap over the seats to the street, bypassing the turgid conceits of the classical/pop bin.

Marilia Vargas sings “Et Incarnatus Est” from Mozart’s Mass in C Minor. An unabashed, unembarrassed joyous marriage of the sacred and mundane in this beautiful, even mesmerizing, performance by Vargas. And though I feel compelled to say that the wonderful performance makes up for the poor quality of the audience member recording, I actually enjoyed it just as it is.

Vargas’ styling and sense of presence make me feel as though I’m in Mozart’s head listening as he realized the music, that this is how it came to him, this is how he meant it to be. This is how it was before performed.

How I came across Marilia Vargas was looking up Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” at Youtube.

“Mom, look up some opera for me,” H.o.p. said. He meant something like Mozart’s “Requiem” but he’s never seen Ponnelle’s 1978 staging of “Orfeo”.

Instead I found clips from the Jordi Savall/Brian Large 2002 production. The opening is promising…

Marilia Vargas as a nymph blessing the marriage of Orpheus and Eurydice…

I love Vargas! I believe her. When she turns and retires I want to follow off the stage into that mythic realm, but she conveys the impossibility of doing so, that she’s a nymph…and as nymph originally meant bride, it is peculiarly right that she should leave us as she does, as if the nature of the bride, Eurydice, preceding Eurydice into the Underworld, abiding fate acting unconscious of itself as is sung into being the fearsome cloud which causes the earth to quake and will destroy the happiness of Orpheus and Eurydice, first with the heel-nipping snake when their happiness was so great (and perhaps self-obsessed) that tempering and humiliation were inescapable, and second when Orpheus broke the law, losing Eurydice absolutely…

Or so we are told in this story that purports to do with Orpheus’ loss of his wife and his attempt to revive her, when the Orphics believed the physical body a tomb to the soul, its Titanic nature preventing one from attaining Elysium, and strove to escape from the wheel of reincarnation, drinking deep of the waters of memory.

Bees, for the Orphics, symbolized souls swarming toward the divine unity, and Eurydice was caught by the snake when (seemingly) attempting to escape the bee-keeper.

And what about that snake?

But, never mind. We all suffer loss and can relate to the story at face value. The hero, Orpheus, suffers along with us, and, incredibly, with his song, charms death into giving him a second chance at happiness with Eurydice, an unparalleled victory , only to then forget compliance with the single demand set upon him.

There is some correspondence with the tale of Lot, though it is his wife who is saddled with the sin of looking back and throughout history has been designed as bitter, contemptible, unthankful, undisciplined.

So people are told to not reflect on the past, to not hold too tightly, to look ahead and disdain loss.

If I remember correctly, Jean Cocteau had Orpheus turn intentionally.

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I’ve not seen Ponnelle’s “Orfeo”, except for several stunning clips about 15 years ago on a VHS recording, and since then I’ve longed for a copy. As I find it is now available on DVD, I have put it in my wish list and hope to buy it soon. Wouldn’t mind getting a copy of the Savall either.