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The battle of Vienna

The Ottoman Turks' unsuccessful siege of Vienna in 1529 marked the beginning of the long decline of their empire. It also stopped the advance of Islam into central and western Europe, and ensured that the Christian rather than the Muslim religion and culture would dominate the region.

In 1520, Suleiman II had become the tenth sultan of the Ottoman Empire, which reached from the Persian frontier to West Africa and included much of the Balkans. Suleiman had inherited the largest, best-trained army in the world, containing superior elements of infantry, cavalry, engineering, and artillery. At the heart of his army were elite legions of Janissaries, mercenary slaves taken captive as children from Christians and raised as Muslim soldiers. From his capital of Constantinople, the Turkish sultan immediately began making plans to expand his empire even farther.

Suleiman had also inherited a strong navy, which he used with his army to besiege the island fortress of Rhodes, his first conquest. Granting safe passage to the defenders in exchange for their surrender, the Sultan took control of Rhodes and much of the Mediterranean in 1522. This victory demonstrated that Suleiman would honor peace agreements. In following battles where enemies did not surrender peacefully, however, he displayed his displeasure by razing cities, massacring the adult males, and selling the women and children into slavery.


By 1528, Suleiman had neutralized Hungary and placed his own puppet on their throne. All that now stood between the Turks and Western Europe was Austria and its Spanish and French allies. Taking advantage of discord between his enemies, Suleiman made a secret alliance with King Francis I of France. Pope Clement VII in Rome, while not allying directly with the Muslim Sultan, withdrew religious and political support from the Austrians.


As a result, by the spring of 1529, King Charles and his Austrians stood alone to repel the Ottoman invaders. On April 10, Suleiman and his army of more than 120,000, accompanied by as many as 200,000 support personnel and camp followers, departed Constantinople for the Austrian capital of Vienna. Along the way, the huge army captured towns and raided the countryside for supplies and slaves.


All the while, Vienna, under the able military leadership of Count Niklas von Salm-Reifferscheidt and Wilhelm von Rogendorf, prepared for the pending battle. Their task appeared impossible. The city's walls, only five to six feet thick, were designed to repel medieval attackers rather than the advanced cast-cannon artillery of the Turks. The entire Austrian garrison numbered only about 20,000 soldiers supported by 72 cannons. The only reinforcements who arrived in the city were a detachment of 700 musket-armed infantrymen from Spain.


Despite its disadvantages, Vienna had several natural factors supporting its defense. The Danube blocked any approach from the north, and the smaller Wiener Back waterway ran along its eastern side, leaving only the south and west to be defended. The Vienna generals took full advantage of the weeks before the arrival of the Turks. They razed dwellings and other buildings outside the south and west walls to open fields of fire for their cannons and muskets. They dug trenches and placed other obstacles on avenues of approach. They brought in supplies for a long siege within the walls and evacuated many of the city's women and children, not only to reduce the need for food and supplies but also to prevent the consequences if the Turks were victorious.


One other factor greatly aided Vienna: the summer of 1529 was one of the wettest in history. The constant rains delayed the Ottoman advance and made conditions difficult for the marching army. By the time they finally reached Vienna in September, winter was approaching, and the defenders were as prepared as possible.


Upon his arrival, Suleiman asked for the city's surrender. When the Austrians refused, he began an artillery barrage against the walls with his 300 cannons and ordered his miners to dig under the walls and lay explosives to breach the defenses. The Austrians came out from behind their walls to attack the engineers and artillerymen and dig counter-trenches. Several times over the next three weeks, the invaders' artillery and mines achieved small breaches in the wall, but the Viennese soldiers quickly filled the gaps and repelled any entry into the city.


By October 12, the cold winds of winter were sweeping the city. Suleiman ordered another attack with his Janissaries in the lead. Two underground mines near the city's southern gate opened the way briefly for the mercenaries, but the staunch Viennese defenders filled the opening and killed more than 1200. Two days later, Suleiman ordered one last attack, but the Viennese held firm once again.


For the first time, Suleiman had failed. Scores of his never-before-defeated Janissaries lay dead outside the walls. The Turkish army had no choice but to burn their huge camp and withdraw back toward Constantinople, but before they departed they massacred the thousands of captives they had taken on the way to Vienna. Along their long route home, many more Turks died at the hands of raiding parties that struck their flanks.


The loss at Vienna did not greatly decrease the power of the Ottoman Empire. It did, however, stop the Muslim advance into Europe. Suleiman and his army experienced many successes after Vienna, but these victories were in the east against the Persians rather than in the west against the Europeans. The Ottoman Empire survived for centuries, but its high-water mark lay somewhere along the Vienna city wall.


Following the battle for Vienna, the countries of the west no longer viewed the Turks and the Janissaries as invincible. Now that the Austrians had kept the great menace from the east and assured the continuation of the region's culture and Christianity, the European countries could return to fighting among themselves along Catholic and Protestant lines.


If Vienna had fallen to Suleiman, his army would have continued their offensive the following spring into the German provinces. There is a strong possibility that Suleiman's Empire might have eventually reached all the way to the North Sea, the alliance with France notwithstanding. Instead, after Vienna, the Ottomans did not venture again into Europe; the Empire's power and influence began its slow but steady decline.

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Lump

Stendhal

When the rotund Henri Beyle dropped dead in a Paris street in 1842 – ‘of apoplexy’ – only three mourners accompanied the coffin to its resting place in the Cimetière de Montmartre: one of them was the younger writer Prosper Mérimée. Incensed by the fact that no words had been spoken at the grave at this ‘pagan funeral’, Mérimée wrote a short memoir of their friendship. In fact, he didn't know much about his friend other than that he had served in the Napoleonic campaign and been a mostly indifferent diplomat in Italy, and that he was known in Paris as an occasional wit (homme d'esprit) and writer with a mania for disguises; what he had read of his books didn't inspire him terribly. Perhaps because he didn't know so much about the social figure, the sketchy portrait he left, with the bare title HB, is a captivating one.


For a son of the post-revolution like Mérimée, Beyle (born 1783) had the traits of a man of the previous century, and a contradictory man at that, ‘All his life he was dominated by his imagination, and never did anything except abruptly and with enthusiasm. However, he got it into his head that he acted in conformity with reason. “One must be guided in everything by LO-GIQUE”, he would say, pausing between the first syllable and the remainder of the word. But he had no patience for those whose logic differed from his own.’1

In fact, Stendhal was every bit a fully-fledged 19th-century writer of self-exploration, and he anticipated his own discovery in the 20th (in his autobiography The Life of Henry Brulard2 he states that he is addressing the readers of 1935, not his contemporaries). Long before Flaubert and Proust, he was aware of the fitfulness and ambiguity of memory, its elusiveness when we try to snare it. Hence his famous digressive style, the comic zigzag he took from Sterne.

Stendhal had his mnemonic devices too. As a young boy in Grenoble he had been made to take drawing lessons by his father: this got him out of the house, which he found stifling. The 175 sketches which can be found scattered through the text of his autobiography, showing mostly street scenes or room arrangements, reminded him of that brief moment of freedom, and served as a visual framework for his writing. Feeling that there was truth in spontaneity, he wrote quickly (his autobiography was written over 4 months in the winter of 1835); and although he often presents exact dates in his writings (his early ability in mathematics had allowed him at 16 to quit the damp provincialism of Grenoble and enter the new Ecole Polytechnique in Paris), he was often slapdash in respect of chronology. What counted for Stendhal was the exact, discriminating account of motive or emotion. His famously dry book on love talked about it in terms of a ‘crystallisation’.

And there is the famous light, Mozartian touch: he was unsparing of himself as he was of others, the young provincial who hoped to cut a figure in the world and become a celebrated Don Juan even though he didn't have the physique (or indeed the inheritance) for it; writing his autobiography under an assumed name at 53 he is prepared to acknowledge that all he will be able to convey is the chasse au bonheur – the pursuit of happiness and not the experience itself. No cynicism is involved; only a serene wistfulness.

Stendhal's dedication to the brisk, discursive, associative feel of experience makes it an exhilarating experience to read his journals and travel books. Every situation in his life seems to lend itself to epigrammatic expression; and anecdotes themselves are occasions for expansive writing: on leave from his consular job at Civitavecchia and visiting his own country in 1837 and 1838, he dashed off a book called Memoirs of a Tourist.3 Here is a snapshot from Lyons, on May 19:


‘Three days ago Mr Smith, an English puritan who had been living here for 10 years, decided it was time to leave this life. He swallowed the contents of an ounce bottle of Prussic acid. Two hours later after being very sick he was anywhere but on the point of dying, and to pass the time was rolled about on the floor. His landlord, an honest cobbler, was working in his shop in the room beneath: startled by the odd commotion and fearing that his furniture was getting damaged, he went upstairs. He knocked on the door. No reply; so he entered the room through a boarded-up door. He was aghast to see his tenant prostrate on the floor, and sent for Mr Travers, well-known surgeon and friend of the sick man. The surgeon came, treated Mr Smith, and very quickly brought him out of danger. Then he asked him: “What the devil did you drink?”

“Some Prussic acid.”

“Impossible, six drops would have killed you in a jiffy.”

“Well, they told me it was Prussic acid.”

“Who sold it to you then?”

“The little chemist on the Quai de Saône.”

“But usually you get your prescriptions made up at Girard, your neighbour right across the street here, the best pharmacist in Lyons!”

“That's true, but the last time I bought some medicine from him, I had the impression he was overcharging me”.’

The Life of Demetrius

1 1 Those who first assumed that the arts are like the bodily senses, seem to me to have perceived very clearly the power of making distinctions which both possess, by which power we are enabled to apprehend opposites, as well in one case as in the other. For the arts and the senses have this power in common; though in the use to which we put the distinctions made, they differ. 2 For our sense-perception has no greater facility in distinguishing white objects than black, or sweet things than bitter, or soft and yielding substances than hard and resisting ones, but its function is to receive impressions from all objects alike, and having received them, to report the resulting sensation to the understanding. The arts, on the other hand, which proceed by the use of reason to the selection and adoption of what is appropriate, and to the avoidance and rejection what is alien to themselves, contemplate the one class of objects with direct intent and by preference, and yet incidentally contemplate the other class also, and in order to avoid them. 3 For instance, the art of healing has incidentally studied the nature of disease, and the art of harmony the nature of discord, in order to produce their opposites; and the most consummate arts of all, namely, temperance, justice, and wisdom, since their function is to distinguish, not only what is good and just p5 and expedient, 889but also what is bad and unjust and disgraceful, have no praises for a guilelessness which plumes itself on its inexperience of evil, nay, they consider it to be foolishness, and ignorance of what ought especially to be known by men who would live aright. 4 Accordingly, the ancient Spartans would put compulsion on their helots at the festivals to drink much unmixed wine, and would then bring them into the public messes, in order to show their young men what it was like to be drunk. And though I do not think that the perverting of some to secure the setting right of others is very humane, or a good civil policy, 5 still, when men have led reckless lives, and have become conspicuous, in the exercise of power or in great undertakings, for badness, perhaps it will not be much amiss for me to introduce a pair or two of them into my biographies, though not that I may merely divert and amuse my readers by giving variety to my writing. 6 Ismenias the Theban used to exhibit both good and bad players to his pupils on the flute and say, you must play like this one," or again, "you must not play like this one"; and Antigenidas used to think that young men would listen with more pleasure to good flute-players if they were given an experience of bad ones also. So, I think, we also shall be more eager to observe and imitate the better lives if we are not left without narratives of the blameworthy and the bad.

7 This book will therefore contain the Lives of Demetrius the City-besieger and Antony the Imperator, men who bore most ample testimony to the truth of Plato's saying1 that great natures exhibit p7 great vices also, as well as great virtues. Both alike were amorous, bibulous, warlike, munificent, extravagant, and domineering, and they had corresponding resemblances in their fortunes. 8 For not only were they all through their lives winning great successes, but meeting with great reverses; making innumerable conquests, but suffering innumerable losses; unexpectedly falling low, but unexpectedly recovering themselves again; but they also came to their end, the one in captivity to his enemies, and the other on the verge of this calamity.

2 1 To begin, then, Antigonus had two sons by Stratonicé the daughter of Corrhagus, one of whom he named Demetrius, after his brother, and the other Philip, after his father. This is what the majority of writers say. But some have it that Demetrius was not the son, but the nephew of Antigonus; for his own father died when the boy was quite young, and then his mother immediately married Antigonus, so that Demetrius was considered to be his son. 2 Well, then, Philip, who was a few years younger than Demetrius, died. Demetrius, the surviving son, had not the height of his father, though he was a tall man, but he had features of rare and astonishing beauty, so that no painter or sculptor ever achieved a likeness of him. They had at once grace and strength, dignity and beauty, and there was blended with their youthful eagerness a certain heroic look and a kingly majesty that were hard to imitate. 3 And in like manner his disposition also was fitted to inspire in men both fear and favour. For while he was a most agreeable companion, and most dainty of princes in the leisure devoted to drinking and p9 luxurious ways of living, on the other hand he had a most energetic and eager persistency and efficiency in action. Wherefore he used to make Dionysus his pattern, more than any other deity, since this god was most terrible in waging war, and on the other hand most skilful, when war was over, in making peace minister to joy and pleasure.

3 1 Moreover, Demetrius was also exceedingly fond of his father; 890and from his devotion to his mother it was apparent that he honoured his father also from genuine affection rather than out of deference to his power. On one occasion, when Antigonus was busy with an embassy, Demetrius came home from hunting; he went up to his father and kissed him, and then sat down by his side just as he was, javelins in hand. 2 Then Antigonus, as the ambassadors were now going away with their answers, called out to them in a loud voice and said: "O men, carry back this report also about us, that this is the way we feel towards one another," implying that no slight vigour in the royal estate and proof of its power were to be seen in his harmonious and trustful relations with his son. 3 So utterly unsociable a thing, it seems, is empire, and so full of ill-will and distrust, that the oldest and greatest of the successors of Alexander could make it a thing to glory in that he was not afraid of his son, but allowed him near his person lance in hand. However, this house was almost the only one which kept itself pure from crimes of this nature for very many generations, or, to speak more definitely, Philip was the only one of the descendants of Antigonus who put a son to death.2 p11 4 But almost all the other lines afford many examples of men who killed their sons, and of many who killed their mothers and wives; and as for men killing their brothers, just as geometricians assume their postulates, so this crime came to be a common and recognized postulate in the plans of princes to secure their own safety.

4 1 In proof that in the beginning Demetrius was naturally humane and fond of his companions, the following illustration may be given. Mithridates the son of Ariobarzanes was a companion of his, and an intimate of the same age. He was one of the courtiers of Antigonus, and though he neither was nor was held to be a base fellow, still, in consequence of a dream, Antigonus conceived a suspicion of him. 2 Antigonus dreamed, namely, that he was traversing a large and fair field and sowing gold-dust. From this, to begin with, there sprang up a golden crop, but when he came back after a little while, he could see nothing but stubble. In his vexation and distress, he heard in his dream sundry voices saying that Mithridates had reaped the golden crop for himself and gone off to the Euxine Sea. 3 Antigonus was much disturbed by this vision, and after he had put his son under oath of silence, told it to him, adding that he had fully determined to destroy Mithridates and put him out of the way. On hearing this, Demetrius was exceedingly distressed, and when the young man, as was his wont, came to share his diversions with him, though he did not venture to open his lips on the matter or to warn him orally, because of his oath, he gradually drew him away from his friends, and when they were by themselves, with the sharp butt of his lance he wrote on the p13 ground so that he could see it, "Fly, Mithridates." 4 Mithridates understood, and ran away by night to Cappadocia. And soon the vision of Antigonus was accomplished for him by fate. For Mithridates made himself master of a large and fair territory, and founded the line of Pontic kings, which, in the eighth generation, was brought to an end by the Romans.3 This, then, is an illustration of the strong natural bent of Demetrius towards kindness and justice.

5 1 But just as among the elements of the universe, according to Empedocles, love and hate produce mutual dissension and war, particularly among those elements which touch or lie near one another, so the continuous wars which the successors of Alexander waged against one another were aggravated and more inflamed in some cases by the close proximity of interests and territories, as at this time in the case of Antigonus and Ptolemy. 2 Antigonus himself was tarrying in Phrygia, 891and hearing there that Ptolemy had crossed over from Cyprus and was ravaging Syria and reducing or turning from their allegiance its cities, he sent against him his son Demetrius, who was only twenty-two years of age, and was then for the first time engaging with sole command in an expedition where great interests were at stake. But since he was young and inexperienced, and had for his adversary a man trained in the training-school of Alexander who had independently waged many great contests, he met with utter defeat near the city of Gaza,4where eight thousand of his men were taken prisoners and five thousand were slain. 3 He p15 lost also his tent, his money, and in a word, all his personal effects. But Ptolemy sent these back to him, together with his friends, accompanying them with the considerate and humane message that their warfare must not be waged for all things alike, but only for glory and dominion. Demetrius accepted the kindness, and prayed the gods that he might not long be indebted to Ptolemy for it, but might speedily make him a like return. 4 And he took his disaster, not like a stripling thwarted at the outset of an undertaking, but like a sensible general acquainted with reverses of fortune, and busied himself with the levying of men and the preparation of arms, while he kept the cities well in hand and practised his new recruits.

6 1 When Antigonus learned of the battle, he said that Ptolemy had conquered beardless youths, but must now fight with men;5however, not wishing to humble or curtail the spirit of his son, he did not oppose his request that he might fight again on his own account, but suffered him to do it. And not long after, up came Cilles, a general of Ptolemy, with a splendid army, intending to drive Demetrius out of all Syria, and looking down upon him because of his previous defeat. 2 But Demetrius fell upon him suddenly and took him by surprise, put him to rout, and captured his camp, general and all; he also took seven thousand of his soldiers prisoners, and made himself master of vast treasures. However, he rejoiced to have won the day, not by reason of what he was going to have, but of what he could p17 restore, and was delighted, not so much with the wealth and glory which his victory brought, as with the power it gave him to recompense the kindness and return the favour of Ptolemy. 3 And yet he did not do this on his own responsibility, but first wrote to his father about it. And when his father gave him permission and bade him dispose of everything as he liked, he sent back to Ptolemy both Cilles himself and his friends, after loading them with gifts. This reverse drove Ptolemy out of Syria, and brought Antigonus down from Celaenae; he rejoiced at the victory and yearned to get sight of the son who had won it.

7 1 After this, Demetrius was sent to bring into subjection the Arabs known as Nabataean, and incurred great peril by getting into regions which had no water; but he was neither terrified nor greatly disturbed, and his demeanour overawed the Barbarians, so that he took much booty and seven hundred camels from them and returned.

2 And now Seleucus, who had once been expelled from Babylonia by Antigonus, but had afterwards succeeded in recovering the realm and was now wielding the power there, went up with an army, designing to annex the tribes on the confines of India and the provinces about Mount Caucasus. Demetrius, accordingly, expecting that he would find Mesopotamia unprotected, suddenly crossed the Euphrates and invaded Babylonia before Seleucus could stop him. He expelled from one of its citadels (there were two of them) the garrison left there by Seleucus, got it into his power and established in it seven thousand of his own men. 3 But p19 after ordering his soldiers to take and make booty of everything which they could carry or drive from the country, he returned to the sea-coast, leaving Seleucus more confirmed than before in his possession of the realm; for by ravaging the country Demetrius was thought to admit that it no longer belonged to his father. However, while Ptolemy was besieging Halicarnassus, Demetrius came swiftly to the aid of the city and rescued it.

8 1 The glory won by this noble deed inspired father and son 892with a wonderful eagerness to give freedom to all Greece, which had been reduced to subjection by Cassander and Ptolemy. No nobler or juster war than this was waged by any one of the kings; for the vast wealth which they together had amassed by subduing the Barbarians, was now lavishly spent upon the Greeks, to win glory and honour. 2 As soon as father and son had determined to sail against Athens, one of his friends said to Antigonus that they must keep that city, if they took it, in their own hands, since it was a gangway to Greece. But Antigonus would not hear of it; he said that the goodwill of a people was a noble gangway which no waves could shake, and that Athens, the beacon-tower of the whole world, would speedily flash the glory of their deeds to all mankind. 3 So Demetrius sailed, with five thousand talents of money and a fleet of two hundred and fifty ships, against Athens, where Demetrius the Phalerean was administering the affairs of the city for Cassander and a garrison was set in Munychia. By virtue of forethought combined with good fortune, he appeared off Piraeus on the twenty-sixth of the p21 month Thargelion.6 4 Nobody knew beforehand of his approach, but as soon as his fleet was seen in the vicinity, everybody thought that the ships belonged to Ptolemy and prepared to receive them. At last, however, the generals discovered their mistake and came to the rescue, and there was confusion, as is natural when men are compelled to defend themselves against enemies who are making an unexpected landing. For Demetrius, finding the entrances to the harbours open and sailing through them, was presently inside and in view of all, and signalled from his ship a demand for quiet and silence. 5 When this was secured, he proclaimed by voice of herald at his side that he had been sent by his father on what he prayed might be a happy errand, to set Athens free, and to expel her garrison, and to restore to the people their laws and their ancient form of government.

9 1 On hearing this proclamation, most of the people at once threw their shields down in front of them, and with clapping of hands and loud cries urged Demetrius to land, hailing him as their saviour and benefactor. The party of Demetrius the Phalerean also thought they must by all means receive the conqueror, even though he should confirm none of his promises, but nevertheless sent ambassadors to supplicate his mercy. These Demetrius met in a friendly spirit, and sent back with them one of his father's friends, Aristodemus of Miletus. 2 Now the Phalerean, owing to the change of government, was more afraid of his fellow-citizens than of the enemy. Demetrius, however, was not unmindful of him, but out of regard for the man's p23 good reputation and excellence, sent him and his friends under safe conduct to Thebes, as he desired. As for himself, he declared that, although he desired to see the city, he would not do so before he had completed his liberation by ridding it of its garrison; meanwhile, after running a trench and a palisade round Munychia, he sailed against Megara, where a garrison had been stationed by Cassander.

3 But on learning that Cratesipolis, who had been the wife of Polyperchon'sa son Alexander, was tarrying at Patrae, and would be very glad to make him a visit (and she was a famous beauty), he left his forces in the territory of Megara and set forth, taking a few light-armed attendants with him. And turning aside from these also, he pitched his tent apart, that the woman might pay her visit to him unobserved. 4 Some of his enemies learned of this, and made a sudden descent upon him. Then, in a fright, he donned a shabby cloak and ran for his life and got away, narrowly escaping a most shameful capture in consequence of his rash ardour. His tent, together with his belongings, was carried off by his enemies.

8935 Megara, however, was captured, and the soldiers would have plundered it had not the Athenians made strong intercession for its citizens; Demetrius also expelled its garrison and gave the city its freedom. While he was still engaged in this, he bethought himself of Stilpo the philosopher, who was famous for his election of a life of tranquillity. Accordingly, Demetrius summoned him and asked him whether any one had robbed him of anything. "No one," said Stilpo, "for I saw nobody carrying away knowledge." 6 But nearly all the servants in p25 the city were stolen away, and when Demetrius once more tried to deal kindly with the philosopher, and finally, on going away, said: "Your city, Stilpo, I leave in freedom," "Thou sayest truly," replied Stilpo, "for thou hast not left a single one of our slaves."

10 1 Coming back again to Munychia and encamping before it, he drove out the garrison and demolished the fortress, and this accomplished, at last, on the urgent invitation of the Athenians, he made his entry into the upper city, where he assembled the people and gave them back their ancient form of government. He also promised that they should receive from his father a hundred and fifty thousand bushels of grain, and enough ship timber to build a hundred triremes. 2 It was fourteen years since the Athenians had lost their democratic form of government, and during the period which followed the Lamian war and the battle at Crannon7 their government had been administered, nominally as an oligarchy, but really as a monarchy, owing to the great influence of the Phalerean. And now that Demetrius had shown himself great and splendid in his benefactions, the Athenians rendered him odious and obnoxious by the extravagance of the honours which they voted him. 3 For instance, they were the first people in the world to give Demetrius and Antigonus the title of King, although both had up to that time shrunk from using the word, and although this was the only royal prerogative still left to the descendants of Philip and Alexander which it was thought that others could assume or share; p27 moreover, the Athenians were the only people to give them the appellation of Saviour-gods, and they put a stop to the ancient custom of designating the year with the name of the annual archon, and elected every year a priest of the Saviour-gods, whose name they prefixed to their public edicts and private contracts. 4 They also decreed that the figures of Demetrius and Antigonus should be woven into the sacred robe,8 along with those of the gods; and the spot where Demetrius first alighted from his chariot they consecrated and covered with an altar, which they styled the altar of Demetrius Alighter; they also created two new tribes, Demetrias and Antigonis; and they increased the number of the senators, which had been five hundred, to six hundred, since each of the tribes must furnish fifty senators.

11 1 But the most monstrous thing that came into the head of Stratocles (he it was who invented these elegant and clever bits of obsequiousness) was his motion that envoys sent by public decree and at public expense to Antigonus and Demetrius should be called sacred deputies, instead of ambassadors, like those who conducted to Delphi and Olympia the ancient sacrifices in behalf of the cities at the great Hellenic festivals. 2 In all other ways also Stratocles was an audacious fellow; he lived an abandoned life, and was thought to imitate the scurrility and buffoonery of the ancient Cleon in his familiarities with the people. He had taken up with a mistress named Phylacion; and one day when she had brought p29 in the market-place for his supper some brains and neck-bones, "Aha!" he cried, "thou hast bought just such delicacies for me as we statesmen used to play ball with." 3 Again, when the Athenians suffered their naval defeat near Amorgus,9 before the tidings of the disaster could reach the city he put a garland on his head and drove through the Cerameicus, and after announcing that the Athenians were victorious, moved a sacrifice of glad tidings and made a generous distribution of meat to the people by tribes. 894Then, a little later, when the wrecks were brought home from the battle and people in their wrath called him out, he faced the tumult recklessly and said: "What harm have I done you, pray, if for two days ye have been happy?" Such was the effrontery of Stratocles.

12 1 But there are things hotter even than fire, as Aristophanes puts it.10 For some one else, outdoing Stratocles in servility, proposed that whenever Demetrius visited the city he should be received with the hospitable honours paid to Demeter and Dionysus, and that to the citizen who surpassed all others in the splendour and costliness of his reception, a sum of money should be granted from the public treasury for a dedicatory offering. 2 And finally, they changed the name of the month Mounychion to Demetrion, and that of the last day of a month, the "Old and New," to Demetrias, and to the festival called Dionysia they gave the name of Demetria. Most of these innovations were marked with the divine displeasure. The sacred robe, for instance, in which they had decreed that the figures of Demetrius and Antigonus should be woven along with those of Zeus and p31 Athena, as it was being carried in procession through the midst of the Cerameicus, was rent by a hurricane which smote it;11 3 again, all round the altars of those Saviour-gods the soil teemed with hemlock, a plant which did not grow in many other parts of the country at all; and on the day for the celebration of the Dionysia, the sacred procession had to be omitted on account of severe cold weather that came out of season. And a heavy frost followed, which not only blasted all the vines and fig-trees with its cold, but also destroyed most of the grain in the blade. 4 Therefore Philippides, who was an enemy of Stratocles, assailed him in a comedy with these verses:—12



"Through him it was that hoar-frost blasted all the vines,

Through his impiety the robe was rent in twain,

Because he gave the gods' own honours unto men.

Such work undoes a people, not its comedy."

The Watergate Lock

Walter Gropius

A native of Berlin, Gropius came from an upper middle-class background. His great-uncle was the architect Martin Gropius, a student of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, whose best-known work was the Königliche Kunstgewerbemuseum (royal museum of applied art) in Berlin, which now bears his name. In 1908, after studying architecture in Munich and Berlin for four semesters, Gropius joined the office of the renowned architect and industrial designer Peter Behrens, who worked as a creative consultant for AEG. Other members of Behrens's practice included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. Gropius became a member of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation) as early as 1910.

The same year, Gropius opened his own company. He designed furniture, wallpapers, objects for mass production, automobile bodies and even a diesel locomotive. In 1911, Gropius worked with Adolf Meyer on the design of the Fagus-Werk, a factory in the Lower Saxony town of Alfeld an der Leine. With its clear cubic form and transparent façade of steel and glass, this factory building is perceived to be a pioneering work of what later became known as modern architecture. For the 1914 exhibition of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation) in Cologne, Gropius and Adolf Meyer designed a prototype factory which was to become yet another classic example of modern architecture.Monument to the March Dead, Walter Gropius, Weimar 1921. Klassik Stiftung Weimar / © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Gropius served on the Western front in WW I and experienced this war as a catastrophe. In 1918, he joined the November Group, which aimed to incorporate the impulses of the revolution in art. From 1919, Gropius was the head of the Work Council for Art, a radical group of architects, painters and sculptors. In addition, he contributed to the Gläserne Kette (crystal chain), a chain letter initiated by Bruno Taut that called for the 'dissolution of the previous foundations' of architecture and the 'disappearance of the personality' of the artist.

With the founding of the Bauhaus, Gropius was able to translate various ideas from the radical artists’ associations into reality. As the successor of the Belgian artist Henry van de Velde, he became the director of the Großherzoglich-Sächsische Kunstgewerbeschule (Grand Ducal Saxonian school of arts and crafts) in Weimar, which he renamed Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar. Gropius explained the idea of the Bauhaus in the founding Manifesto, a four-page booklet with the famous Cathedralwoodcut by Lyonel Feininger on its cover. The school’s most innovative educational aspect was its dualistic approach to training in the workshops, which were codirected by a craftsman (master of works) and an artist (master of form). The crafts-based work was understood as the ideal unity of artistic design and material production. According to Gropius’s curriculum, education at the Bauhaus began with the obligatory preliminary course, continued in the workshops and culminated in the building. Sommerfeld House in Berlin is considered to be the first joint endeavour undertaken in the sense of the Bauhaus. It was designed by Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer (1921–1922), and it integrated furnishings made by the students.House Sommerfeld, Berlin, entrance, architecture: Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, 1920–1922. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

For Gropius the Bauhaus was a laboratory of the arts where the traditional apprentice and master model was maintained, but where diverse disciplines were interconnected in a completely new way. The outcome of this approach was not established from the start but was to be discovered in the spirit of research and experimentation, which Gropius called 'fundamental research' that was applied to all the disciplines and their products, from the high-rise to the tea infuser.

In Weimar itself, Gropius left very few traces as an architect and artist. In 1922, his controversial design for the monument Denkmal der Märzgefallenen was unveiled at Weimar’s main cemetery. Destroyed by the NSDAP, it was rebuilt after WW II. The director’s office of the Bauhaus, which was furnished by Gropius in 1923–1924, was also reconstructed.Chicago Tribune, draft: Walter Gropius and Adolf Meyer, 1922. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

In 1923, Gropius initiated a change of course at the Bauhaus with a major exhibition under the motto 'art and technology – a new unity'. The school now turned towards industrial methods of production. As a result, the highly influential master, Expressionist painter and first director of the preliminary course, Johannes Itten, left the Bauhaus. Gropius appointed the Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy as his successor.

With the politically motivated move to the industrial city of Dessau in 1925, a new era began for the Bauhaus. During this period, which is seen as his best and most productive, Gropius designed not only the Bauhaus Building (opened in 1926) but was also intensively involved in the development of the large-scale residential building and the rationalisation of the construction process. The buildings created in Dessau included the Masters’ Houses (1925–1926) that were built for the Bauhaus masters, the Dessau-Törten housing estate (1926–1928) and the Employment Office.Bauhaus building Dessau from north-west, architecture: Walter Gropius / photo: Lucia Moholy, 1926. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

In 1928, Walter Gropius – unnerved by the quarrels in local politics about the Bauhaus – handed the post of director over to the Swiss architect and urbanist Hannes Meyer, whom Gropius had brought to the Bauhaus the previous year as the head of the newly founded architecture class. After moving to Berlin, Gropius dedicated himself completely to his architectural practice and the promotion of New Architecture. The most important completed buildings of this period include the Dammerstock housing estate in Karlsruhe (1928–1929) and the Siemensstadt housing estate in Berlin (1929–1930).

In 1934, Gropius emigrated to England and then on to the USA in 1937. He worked there as a professor for architecture at the Graduate School of Design of Harvard University. In 1938, he organised the exhibition Bauhaus 1919–1928 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York together with Herbert Bayer. From 1938 to 1941, Gropius maintained an office partnership with Marcel Breuer. He became an American citizen in 1944.Masters' Houses, semi-detached house Kandinsky-Klee from north-west, architecture: Walter Gropius / photo: Lucia Moholy, 1926. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

In 1946, Gropius founded the young architects’ association The Architects Collaborative (TAC), a manifestation of his life-long belief in the significance of teamwork, which he had already successfully introduced at the Bauhaus. One work produced by this office is the Graduate Center of Harvard University in Cambridge (1949–1950).

During the last years of his life, Gropius was once again frequently active in Berlin. Among other projects, he built a nine-storey residential building in the Hansa district in 1957 within the scope of the Interbau exhibition. In 1964–1965, Gropius designed plans for the Bauhaus Archive in Darmstadt. These were realised in a modified form in Berlin from 1976 to 1979 after Gropius’s death.Dessau-Törten Housing Estate from south-east, architecture: Walter Gropius, around 1928. Bauhaus-Archiv Berlin / © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.

Even beyond his official term as the Bauhaus director from 1919 to 1928, Gropius was emphatically committed to the recognition and dissemination of the Bauhaus idea. When he died in 1969 in Boston, the Bauhaus was at least as famous as its founder.

Hanshan Deqing

Just Finished Reading: Wish Lanterns

Flower Ornament Depository 華嚴藏

The Star of Bethlehem and Magi in Tang China (618–907) 

http://huayanzang.blogspot.com.au/2017/12/the-star-of-bethlehem-and-magi-in-tang.html

As Christmas approaches, I thought we might again discuss Christianity in Tang China (618–907). In an earlier post (see here), we surveyed the basic history of this religion during the period in question, so I will direct readers to this earlier discussion if they are not already familiar with the topic. What I want to discuss in the current post is the references to the Star of Bethlehem and the Magi in Chinese sources from the Tang period. I believe these references can tell us something about how Christianity was first transmitted and what sort of direction it took over the course of its maturation in medieval China.


The earliest reference to the Star of Bethlehem – and to Jesus himself – is found in the Xuting Mishi suo jing 序聽迷詩所經 (T 2142), i.e., the Jesus-Messiah Scripture. This curious text was apparently rediscovered in the twentieth-century and purchased in China by Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎. Although its authenticity is not entirely accepted by all modern scholars, I tend to think the text itself is authentic based on its content and vocabulary.


To give some background to the text, the so-called “Nestorian Stele” erected in 781 explains that in the year 635, a mission led by Aluoben 阿羅夲 from the country of Daqin 大秦 (a general term for the Levant) arrived in the Chinese capital Chang’an 長安. We also know that in 638, the “Persian monk” (波斯僧) Aluoben presented his scriptural teachings (經教) to the court as tribute. These new teachings were considered beneficial, and thus the court ordered the construction of a monastery in Chang’an, which marks the beginning of formal Christian activity in China. The Jesus-Messiah Scripture as it presently exists is not fully extant, although there is still ample content. This text describes the life of Jesus including the Virgin birth, his baptism by John, his miracles, arrest, crucifixion and resurrection, in addition to general Christian precepts for daily life. It also uses various foreign names and terms in Chinese apparently translated from Syriac (Jehovah 序娑, Messiah 彌師訶, Mary 末艶, Jesus 移鼠, Jerusalem 烏梨師𣫍, Jordan 述難, John 若昏, Pilatus 毘羅都思, Golgotha 訖句). The author of this text continually insists upon the virtue of filial piety, as well as including frequent respectful addresses to the Chinese Emperor, indicating a conscious adaptation to Chinese values.

Reuben Wu

https://www.behance.net/gallery/59016929/Love-Is-Metaphysical-Gravity

Computer chess program ratings

http://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/4040/

The Scofield 3.1: Kōbō Abe

Winter in Beijing II

“TOTO’S ‘AFRICA’” BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY

At the airport the young man heard far-off drums echoing in the night. He imagined the young woman in the plane sitting still, hearing whispers of a quiet conversation near the rear of the fuselage. He glanced down at his father’s wristwatch—12:30. The flight was on time.

The plane’s wings were moonlit and reflected the stars. The moonlight had guided him there, toward this salvation. He had stopped an older man along the way, hoping to find some long forgotten words, or perhaps an ancient melody, for such an occasion. The old man had said nothing at first, and instead stared cryptically into the sodden earth. Then he raised his head and turned slowly.


The plane was almost gliding. The young man looked at the wristwatch again. His head spun from whiskey and soda. She was a damned nice woman. It would take a lot to drag him away from her. It was unlikely that a hundred men or more could ever do such a thing. The air, now thick and moist, seemed to carry rain again. He blessed the rains of Africa. They were the only thing left to bless in this forsaken place, he thought—at least until she set foot on the continent. They were going to take some time to do the things they never had.“Hurry, boy. It’s waiting there for you,” the old man had said.

He stood on the tarmac and watched as the plane came in for its landing. He heard the sound of wild dogs crying out into the night. The man thought the dogs sounded desperate, perhaps having grown restless and longing for some company. He knew the feeling. The crying of the dogs reminded him that he would need to do what he knew was right now that she was here. Of this he was as certain as Kilimanjaro rising like Olympus above the Serengeti. He had traveled and sought to cure what was deep inside him, what frightened him of himself.

The plane landed and stopped. He hurried. She would be waiting there for him.

ANTHONY SAMS

Autumn

The leaves are falling, falling as if from afar,
as if withered in the distant gardens of heaven;
with nay-saying gestures they fall.

And in the nights falls the heavy earth
from all the stars into loneliness.

We all are falling. This hand there falls.
And look at the other: it is in all of them.

And yet there is one, who holds all this
falling with infinite gentleness in his hands.

- Rilke

Yoshito Hasaka

In Memory Of Jane Fraser

When snow like sheep lay in the fold
And wind went begging at each door,
And the far hills were blue with cold,
And a cloud shroud lay on the moor,

She kept the siege. And every day
We watched her brooding over death
Like a strong bird above its prey.
The room filled with the kettle's breath.

Damp curtains glued against the pane
Sealed time away. Her body froze
As if to freeze us all, and chain
Creation to a stunned repose.

She died before the world could stir.
In March the ice unloosed the brook
And water ruffled the sun's hair.
Dead cones upon the alder shook.

Geoffrey Hill

Eagle Eyes