LIFE IS SO FRUSTRATING, ARG!

Warning: boring catalog of research complaints

If I were to make a list of the things that have caused me frustration in life, these things would be near the top of the list:

1) Dealing with the incomprehensible nature of Russian thought and action
2) Following footnotes
3) Writing footnotes
4) Reading in Russian, which is, like, totally a different language than the one I speak

Writing this thesis tends to combine these things in horrible ways. I am currently looking at a page of a much-respected and cited book, Leonide Ouspensky's Theology of the Icon. This page includes an interesting passage, antiquated in style, about the redecoration of the Kremlin after the fire of 1547, and I would really like to quote it in my thesis. The problem is that I don't know if the passage is antiquated in style because it is from the chronicles of the sixteenth century, which would be great, or if it is merely the wording of the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities of 1847: Ouspensky's footnote doesn't really make it clear. Usually this society's journal (which is not, apparently in any US libraries) is a publication of old manuscripts, so the former seems likely, but then O. doesn't cite it as such.

But what's really annoying is that the footnote continues: quoted in N. Andreev, "The Affair of Diak Viskovatyi" (in Russian). This article, which is central to my research, is sitting on my desk, and I have read it many times, and it is simply untrue that any such thing is quoted in its many pages. What the heck?! This is even worse than when Soviet writers don't cite at all, which they generally didn't, since intellectual property was seen as collective and all (Ouspensky was writing in Paris).

Since I don't know if I can include the passage in my thesis at all, not having much of an idea where it came from, I will at least reproduce it here:

"The sovereign Orthodox tsar... sent people to Novgorod the Great, Smolensk, Dmitrov, and Zvenigorod to find holy, precious icons. Numerous holy and wondrous icons were brought from several cities. They were placed in the Cathedral of the Annunciation to be venerated by the tsar and all the Christians, until new icons could be painted. The sovereign sent for iconographers from Novgorod the Great, Pskov, and other cities. The iconographers arrived, and the sovereign tsar ordered some to paint icons, others to decorate the walls of the palaces..."

In an unrelated note, I really like it when Ivan Viskovatyi complains that the new icons depict the Holy Spirit as an "incomprehensible bird."

Wanted: Counsel

I told someone the other day that my notes for my thesis consist largely of questions. I know that this is good, that it is honest and interesting to admit uncertainty in a scholarly work, etc., but seriously, that can't be the whole paper. And interesting questions aren't ends in themselves: they owe their interest to the possibility of trying to answer them. They are interesting, I mean, because it would be interesting to know the answer.

Here is one of my questions:

In the sixteenth-century icons I'm writing about, there are lots of symbols. A ladder in the hands of Mary symbolizes, by synecdoche, Jacob's ladder, and by extension symbolizes a link between heaven and earth (=Mary), and the fact that the Old Testament prefigures the New. Complex geometrical aureoles symbolize a Burning Bush, and also, by means of Pythagorean number theory, eternity, and also the energies of God, and maybe Divine Wisdom.

Lots of theologians and art critics object to these piles of symbols-- they say things like "the realism of the Gospel is replaced by allegorism," and "a tragedy for Russian painting, which lost the true depth of its spiritual image and acquired in exchange an external beauty and a ritual formula," and complain that "revelation in the world [is] a series of events and not only a chain of symbols."

This all seems very true, and I'm all ready to look sternly upon religious allegory and symbolism, demanding portraiture and historical prototypes. But then the symbols are often cool, and I don't really see why prophets and mystics should get to write in symbols but painters shouldn't be allowed to paint in the same way. In answer to a rather puritan Ecumenical Council's edict forbidding depictions of Christ as a lamb, or as anything but the historical Jesus, this 14th-century patriarch writes: "And then in the age of the new covenant when the shadow of the Law has passed and all is fulfilled in grace and truth, then we find that the Lord himself speaks indirectly and through parables and teaches the apostle the divine mysteries through sacred symbols."

The question is: does an increase in symbolism in art signal spiritual and cultural decline, a sort of diffusion of the intensity necessary to represent ultimate truth in simple portraits, with only harmony of line and color? The question seems generalizable: in writing, in other art forms, even in thought itself, is there an intrinsic danger in symbolism? I don't think I can categorically deny the potentially great power of a symbol, whether based on a historical prototype or not, but it certainly seems the case that one can go overboard with symbols, and the results are cluttered and confusing. Look at this icon, and try to figure out what the heck is going on:



Here is an icon more admired by theologians and art historians, supposedly without allegory:



When do accumulations of metaphors not equal the sums of their subtleties? The question is not rhetorical, I expect everyone who reads this to answer.

HUGE IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT

URGANT NEWS CONCERNING THE VOCATIVE CASE IN ENGLISH!!!!!!

We don't have one. That's the news. I'm emerging from my state of humble virtual reticence to address this burning issue. Because you know what? This is about the children: the children who are growing up in a cultural, linguistic abyss, in an English language without that subtle adornment, that grammatical concession to human interaction, the stately acknowledgment of personal address of the vocative case.

And so I hereby issue a decree: The English language shall hereby include a vocative case for nouns, and the form of that case shall be the ending "u," pronounced "oo."

I will now answer some common questions.

Q: What is the vocative case, o illustrious Susanna? When do we use it?

A: O respected readero, your very question calls out for the vocative case! The vocative case, for those of you whose education was unfortunate enough not to include Latin or Serbo-Croatian, is used for direct address. A grammatically appropriate form of your question would include the words, "O illustrious Susannu."

Q: Susanno, how do we affix the "u" to the nouns that we wish to decline in the vocative?

A: For words ending in a consonant, simply add "u". For words ending in a vowel, replace the final vowel with "u". Final "y" is replaced by "iu." Examples: "Americu, Americu, God shed His grace on thee!"; "Ceciliu! You're breaking my heart!"; "Hey, babiu, it's the 4th of July"; "Hey hey, good-lookingu, what you got cooking?"

Note in the final example that an adjective used substantively, as a noun, can receive the vocative ending. The judges are still out on this one, though; feedback would be welcome.

Q: I read the response to the last question; won't this mess up the rhyme scheme of a lot of English poetry and music?

A: Pre-existing verbal art will be grandfathered in. We will not change old sentences, just take care, when creating new ones, to give appropriate weight to the circumstances of direct address, a valued commodity in our increasingly impersonal world.

Q: What is being done to educate the English-speaking population about this valuable and important development, Susannu?

A: I thought the best way would be to publish it on this blog that no one reads.

NOTE: This post has been edited from its former version, which favored the "o" ending. An experimental period found the final "o" to be displeasing to the ear. I think the "u" will be more sonorous, and simultaneously more soft, more natural for the tongue.

maintenance post

I became concerned that if I didn't post for too long the blog would be taken down. I should just print out the Russia entries, and then it wouldn't matter.
Also I became concerned that I was doing too much work on my religion paper.