tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post5533108261873083040..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: I Scare Myself: Marguerite Yourcenar: Exploring the Dark Brain of Piranesi's PrisonsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-86668812757521679022017-09-10T14:51:33.172-07:002017-09-10T14:51:33.172-07:00Thank you, Richard. Something so familiar -- "...Thank you, Richard. Something so familiar -- "contemporary?" -- in this: "...either leaning on staffs, oppressed, or expounding with arms outstretched, oppressing others with their opinions." TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-4103319346561364962017-09-10T00:48:43.292-07:002017-09-10T00:48:43.292-07:00I found this post after viewing a comprehensive Pi...I found this post after viewing a comprehensive Piranesi exhibit in Rome. Thsnk you for retyping key elements of the Yourcenar essay that capture the prison series so well. I particularly like the phrase "victims found crouching." In Piranesi's other work, figures are either leaning on staffs, oppressed, or expounding with arms outstretched, oppressing others with their opinions. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10654813320632973953noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-50850050221054528202014-09-23T12:24:14.048-07:002014-09-23T12:24:14.048-07:00Thank you for the further links, Tom! The video is...Thank you for the further links, Tom! The video is especially satisfying. There's something about being able to sink inside the image that creates an almost dream-like sensibility (a bit nightmarish, sure, but also compelling -- the kind of dream that keeps you turning back onto your pillow in the hopes that it will continue).<br /><br />And for the record, the un-garbled soundtrack is Bach's Cello Suite #2 in D Minor, which I think I might just listen to for the rest of the afternoon.Norahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14439557611640319928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-15112912336179701192014-09-22T14:30:37.230-07:002014-09-22T14:30:37.230-07:00Nora,
Thanks very much for your response, after a...Nora,<br /><br />Thanks very much for your response, after a couple of days it was feeling a bit freefallish with this one...<br /><br />Yourcenar, always as impeccably thorough in her researches as she is original and poetic in her critical perceptions, very helpfully stages the commercially successful artisanal work of the generic *Views* and *Antiquities* as backdrop for approaching the extremely spooky *Prisons*. <br /><br />"But these images, which in many respects refer to a fashionable genre, deliberately depart from it by their intensity, their strangeness, their violence -- as if struck by the rays of a black sun. If, as asserted, the delirious *Prisons* was created in a fit of fever, the Campagna's paludism favored Piranesi's genius by momentarily releasing certain elements which seem to have been repressed to the last, merely hinted at in his work.<br /><br />"We must define the word 'delirium'. Supposing his legendary malaria of 1742 to be authentic, fever did not open for Piranesi the door to a world of mental confusion, but to realms dangerously vaster and more complex than the one the young engraver had hitherto lived in, though composed after all of virtually identical materials. It increased the artist's perception to the point of erethism, and almost to torment, making possible on one hand the dizzying energy, the mathematical intoxication, and on the other the crisis of agoraphobia and claustrophobia combined, the anguish of captive space from which the *Prisons* certainly resulted."<br /><br />The whole of the essay is a wonder, I'd have typed up more of were not that the advance of degenerative arthritis now turning wrists and hand into unmanageable faulty knobs, resulting in a slow procession of blundering keystrokes that is as depressing to squint upon as it is painful to produce.<br /><br />The full set of plates may be seen at various sites. The Romanians are usually very numerous in these waters.<br /><br />This set of all the plates will get a bit bigger if you click the thumbnails: <br /><br /><a href="http://gravures.ru/photo/dzhovanni_piranezi/tjurmy/10" rel="nofollow">Piranesi: Carceri</a><br /><br />And, extremely interesting, this Vimeo animation. It runs a bit slow in our ancient player, with the musical soundtrack garbled (the muffled sound of ambient madness?), and a few jumps -- but still, a compelling ten minute 4D trip through six different scenes, merged together into a single continuous tour of a vast, nearly-empty Bedlam:<br /><br /><a href="http://vimeo.com/36757486" rel="nofollow">Grégoire Dupond: Carceri d'Invenzione</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-49584635185434655242014-09-22T10:16:48.659-07:002014-09-22T10:16:48.659-07:00I know Piranesi for his views of Rome, which show ...I know Piranesi for his <a href="http://www.wikiart.org/en/giovanni-battista-piranesi/another-view-of-the-temple-in-the-city-of-paestum-believed-dedicated-to-juno#supersized-artistPaintings-261466" rel="nofollow">views of Rome</a>, which show people going about their lives among the ruins of ancient Roman buildings. I never knew about his Prisons, but it makes sense -- he had a gift for capturing views of hidden-in-plain sight behemoths.Norahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14439557611640319928noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-41046407734742248922014-09-21T17:48:47.862-07:002014-09-21T17:48:47.862-07:00Not in any way to imply that the claustrophobic pr...Not in any way to imply that the claustrophobic prison universe of Piranesi's prophetic nightmare vision bears any resemblance to our own timeless Happy Valley.<br /><br />Yourcenar, oddball that she was, was for some odd reason prompted to see some obscure link.<br /><br />The essay on Piranesi's terrifying Imaginary Prisons came late in a very long life. It did not represent a strictly "academic interest".<br /><br />She draws the connection explicitly enough.<br /><br />"We cannot help thinking of our theories, our systems, our magnificent and futile mental constructions in whose corners some victim can always be found crouching."TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-29794351726373728552014-09-21T17:27:23.176-07:002014-09-21T17:27:23.176-07:00Ah well. A private interest it seems.
All the sam...Ah well. A private interest it seems.<br /><br />All the same: more magnificent Yourcenar sentences:<br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/marguerite-yourcenar-on-dream-of-durers.html" rel="nofollow">On a Dream of Dürer's</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/marguerite-yourcenar-school-of-seville.html" rel="nofollow">The School of Seville</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/margaret-yourcenar-zenos-ending-from.html" rel="nofollow">Zeno's Ending, from the Abyss</a><br /><br />Piranesi saw through things. Pictures of the way it is to live in the world -- what the world really looks like -- baroque-leaning doodlers everywhere, beware.<br /><br />A fellow removed from an Ozzie passenger airliner two days ago when a fellow passenger snooped and saw him drawing curious cartoons in his notebook. Threat level high. Retardation level advancing. Last faint signals of human intelligence disappearing Down Under. So what else is new.<br /><br /><a href="http://gumshoenews.com/2014/09/22/crouching-tiger-hidden-propaganda/" rel="nofollow">Crouching Tiger. Hidden Propaganda</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-82812278101229593252014-09-21T04:06:30.448-07:002014-09-21T04:06:30.448-07:00I Scare Myself: Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks, liv...<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZXzifzsDHg" rel="nofollow">I Scare Myself: Dan Hicks & the Hot Licks, live at Warfield Theatre SF, 9 December 2001</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.com