Madame de Polignac's Lover?

Gareth Russell explores the matter of the Comte de Vaudreuil. More on Gabrielle, HERE.

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Orange

It's the color of the moment. According to the Wall Street Journal:

In the Netherlands, orange is the official color of royalty. In India, the flag's saffron band represents courage, and the hue is holy in Hinduism. Orange is also having a moment in the fashion zeitgeist. Mario Batali serves a fizzy pumpkin-colored drink called an "Aperol spritz" at his restaurants. "It's bitter, tangy, and not very strong," said Mr. Batali. "So you can drink a lot of them." Like the flame-haired chef, designers this spring have a particularly high tolerance for orange's sweet-and-sour charms.

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Marie-Antoinette and the Egyptian Revival

What flourished under Napoleon began with Marie-Antoinette.

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Paris Underground

The tunnels beneath the City of Light reveal the layers of the past.

Paris, City of Light, really is a tale of two cities. One of them is above ground, with its beloved Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe. That’s the city the world sees. And then there’s the city very few us will ever see — an underground Paris, the souterrain. Below the city, concentrated on the south bank of the river Seine, hidden limestone quarries dating back centuries provided the stone for Paris’ great monuments like Notre Dame. The mining left behind a labyrinthine maze — at least 180 miles of abandoned tunnels, secret rooms and caverns, odd wormholes barely big enough to wriggle through, running directly below some of the best-known city streets.

Exploring the Parisian underground is, of course, a French history lesson. On stone walls, there is graffiti from the French Revolution. More recently, there are former Nazi bunkers — and a few feet from them, hideouts for the French resistance and giant columns to hold up edifices above, like the military hospital Val de Grace....

As we crawled, walked and loped, Daniel talked about possible dangers, the most serious of them being a sudden fontis, or collapse. That’s exactly what happened in 1774 — when a street called Rue d’Enfer collapsed. (Interestingly, the name of the street meant “Hell Street” and has been rechristened Denfert-Rochereau.) King Louis XVI, who would later lose his head in the French Revolution, ordered his architect to the underground to assess the damage. Horrified, Charles Axel Guillaumot reported back that much of Paris could collapse; it was built over fragile quarries that stretched for miles.

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A Master in a Lesser Crowd

Here is a commentary, based upon an exhibition at the Whitney Museum, about Edward Hopper and modern art. To quote:

Our best artists absorb their influences rather than simply reflect them, which is why Hopper's work rises above so much of even the most admirable other art on display here. The show puts Hopper within a context that relates him to those of his contemporaries with whom he had an affinity in reflecting the unromantic realities of their increasingly modernizing and industrializing world. But that's not what happens when you actually look at the works on view. For one thing, most of the painters are hard-core romantics whose approach suggests a kind of tenderness toward the nitty-gritty world that they ultimately must manipulate to fit with their individual representational styles of painting....

The exhibition is introduced with selected clips from the 1920 Charles Sheeler-Paul Strand film collaboration "Manhatta," which best encapsulates the sensibility that the show is meant to evoke: transforming the 19th century's affair with the great new land into an even more intense romance with the wonders of urban modernism. Whatever the merits of the exhibition, this doesn't really happen in most of the paintings on view—as distinct from the much more evocative photographs by, for example, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen. Nowhere is this more starkly evident than in the juxtaposition of three street scenes—two fine etchings by Hopper and Martin Lewis, and a Strand photograph, in which the prints almost seem to mimic the camera's intensity. Perhaps the lesson is that as photography elbowed its way into art, a modern medium was the best means of truly describing modern life.

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The City

What makes a city?

One could make a reference to Aristotle, who says that having a group of people live in the same place, under the same laws, does not yet a society make; a society requires constant, everyday, physical meetings between its members. The city is nothing without its people. Banal-sounding, perhaps, but it also means that the true form of the city is given by its members in constant interaction (or, by the constant interaction of its members?). This is why I could feel instantly comfortable, the moment I came out from the subway and unto the streets of lower Manhattan; because I instinctively and immediately recognized the atmosphere, because I knew right away how to behave on a street busy with people pursuing their own business - stepping into a deli for a sandwich, waiting for the light to change etc.; it was Novi Sad, it was Rome, it was Karlsruhe (just taller).

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Eighteenth Century Children

Titillating Tidbits explores what life was life for children in the days of Marie-Antoinette. Share

A Silk Dress

Fit for a queen, worn by a merchant's daughter, it is much more elaborate than most of the clothes worn by Marie-Antoinette. Share

Alternate States of Unreality

Fr. Angelo offers an intriguing discussion on alchemy, magic, Renaissance Christian esotericism, Wicca, and occultism in general. I am looking forward to reading his book. To quote:

The origins of Western occultism are largely connected with the Christian Gnostic writings pseudonymously attributed to a pre-Christian magician by the name of Hermes Trismegestus.  The writings are largely mythological and philosophically connected with neoplatonism, an amalgamation of both Christian and pagan ideas.

The context of my research is the formulation of a critique of the Harry Potter series, a matter about which I have thought for more than ten years.  During that time I have been reading the books, and, for reasons I will mention in my own book on the subject, have until now remained silent.

One of the principle defenses of the Harry Potter series by Christians who are thoughtful readers is based on J.K. Rowling’s assertion that her own research for Harry Potter concerned, not magic, but alchemy.  This defense goes on to assert that alchemy was not principally about the transmutation of metals or the acquisition of the Elixir of Life, but about the purification and transformation of the soul.  According to this argument, the alchemical transformational process is consistent with Christian mysticism.  I do not accept this argument and will explain why in my book....

 Wicca and gothic, postmodern, occult culture is not in the least harmless.  Good faith has nothing to do with it.  The question of overt Satanism has little to do with it either.  The choice for Christ is not compatible with contemplative experimentation and Christian esotericism, because the light is not compatible with the darkness, and Christ can have no concord with Belial (cf.2 Corinthians 6:15).  We have allowed the bruised egos of the likes of Marilyn Manson to keep us making the most refined distinctions in regard to what actually belongs to the satanic.  This is the reasoning championed by Freemasonry, because the Craft is essentially militant occultism in a popular form.  Satan is king of the convoluted.

Just for the record, I have chosen not to draw any conclusions here with respect to Harry Potter.  That will come in due time along the lines of a reasoned argument which is not the burden of this post.  For now we can just say that Rowling deals with these issues and she takes them seriously.  Harry Potter is a serious work and not just a cartoon-like children’s story.  The issues at hand are about life and death.  May we all choose life and close the door to the spirits of darkness.

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