#whereas everything i say here is based on interpretation of solid existing material

[lilia-calderus-pet-goat]

The Self-Fulfilled Tragedy of Agathario - Study / Analysis.

Agatha met Rio over the bodies of her original coven. She was scared, at first. “I didn't do it.” She said. Rio simply said, “I saw.” In a soft voice, “your power is beautiful. Don't ever feel guilty about your talent. You survived.”

Death was the only consistent comfort in Agatha's life — “this is the me you fell in love with.” Agatha wasn't scared of it, not for a long time.

Why should Agatha value life, when death loves her so intimately? When only Death understands her sorrow? When Death is the only one who tells her that she wasn't born evil—because Death is the natural order of all things?

They did live together, in that cottage, for a while. Agatha, “took power from the undeserving—” who *she* deemed undeserving, as said in WandaVision—and Rio collected the bodies. They never had to be apart. Death was her satellite, orbiting around her endlessly, holding her hand because no-one else would. (“I hold Death's hand in mine.”)

But Rio cannot be present for long if there is no body to collect. She needs to be everywhere, in every place, all at once. So she'd be gone for long periods of time, back whenever Agatha would kill and stick around to see her. Split across the fabric of reality, always reaping, collecting, guiding the souls to their afterlife. She may not be the only reaper—but she's the personification of Death, not merely a deity who carries the title. She is finality. She is the “end,” the “goal” the “completion.” The “telos” where all roads lead to. She isn't “decay” but a cycle coming to an end. Transformation. New Beginnings. Change. Growth. She is thr Green Witch, as all living beings return to the earth that gave birth to them.

Nicky came from Agatha's love for Rio, just as Billy and Tommy came from Wanda's love for Vision. There was no spell, no need for incantation. Nicky came from Scratch. Life from Death, like the Green Witch's trial. And that, indeed, is why he was a stillborn.

And because Rio merely appears wherever there is death—the moment she appeared during the childbirth, even though no one else was around, no bodies to collect—Agatha knew immediately.

Rio was inevitable—and she could offer only time. She bent the rules for the woman she loved, because she couldn't bear the thought of Agatha hating her.

And suddenly, the form she fell in love with was terrifying. Because she now had something to love other than death. She didn't find it to be a beautiful comfort amidst her darkness anymore, but a cruel reminder of her son's mortality.

And though once she killed and stayed—to keep death close—like the protagonist of an ancient tragedy, seeing beauty and eroticism and peace and quiet and divinity in Rio—she was suddenly met with discomfort and fear and grief. And so she killed and ran—to keep Death busy. To keep Death occupied. To keep Death away. To earn more time, to delay the inevitable. To not see her face again. “Why do we kill witches?” - “To survive.”

The same Death that rescued her from her mother's cruel arms and cradled her in hers was now the very reason she couldn't be a mother herself. The very reason she couldn't see her son grow.

The very Death that once re-assured her that she wasn't born evil was now a cruel reminder that maybe she was. And you know why?

Her mother treated her as evil because her magick 'takes'—and 'gives' nothing. For Agatha, that's what evil means. That's why she insults Rio by telling her she gave nothing—she *took.* “And that's usually your move, right?”

And the real tragedy of Agatha Harkness is that her villainy was self-actualized. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Agatha hates her powers, even more so when looking at her son. Because, “I cannot heal you, (Jen) I cannot protect you from what's coming, (Alice) and I cannot divine (Lilia) when she (Death) will return.”

So she hates her power, because unlike the others, Agatha cannot—by design—give anything to her son. She can only 'take' from others. She can only 'give' to *Death,* and that's why only Death has ever loved her. And that, now, to her, verifies her mother's statement: “you were *born* evil.”

Not like other witches—like Jen—the 'deserving.' “I left you alone, because what you were doing was important.” “It was bind or burn.”

Because she couldn't save her son. She never could have. And to Agatha, that's because she was “born evil.” Because she never was living—she was surviving, with Death's hand in hers. Her power could only drain life, not better it. The very song that Lorna Wu used to protect her daughter was a cruel reminder that Agatha couldn't protect ber son.

Agatha could never see Rio the same. She could never face her like she had before. Because now, Death was her deepest shame. And she was Death's scar.

She left the world thinking that she sacrificed her son because it's better to be feared than pitied. Easier to blame herself and blame Rio than to admit and register that it was inevitable.

She slept that night without killing witches to spare Nicky's feelings—because he wasn't evil, like her, and she'd never let him think it like her mother did to her—and she assumee that Rio would wait. That she wouldn't strike in the night. What Rio saw as mercy, Agatha saw as the cruelest betrayal.

Rio never stopped pursuing her even as Agatha could never face her. And their love was so powerful, so passionate, but it couldn't overshadow the pain and the grief of something so human as losing a child. Though despite the baggage, they never could be too far from each other. Even within Wanda's hex, even when Agatha didn't remember her own name—she remembered her deep feelings for Rio. Her love, her hate, her passion. Even when she didn't remember why

Rio can't understand why Agatha doesn't want her. “No-one in history has had special treatment like you“ - “Why don't you want me?” - “this is the me you fell in love with” - Because as The Green Witch, the personification of Death—she is the natural outcome of all things and cannot conceive the human aversion to death. “Evil? You're calling me evil?” She doesn't **get it.** She doesn't find her nature cruel, just as she doesn't find Agatha as “born evil.” She sees her as she always had—affectionately. She bent the rules of the universe for her sake. And so she doesn't understand the aversion at all. She feels rejection. And all she wants is to have Agatha again, who keeps evading her for something she couldn't help. And she's devastated, because once, Agatha loved her for the very thing she now hated her for.

So Death can't fathom humanity finding her cruel. Because she knows she can be gentle, and kind, and patient. Because she has been, a million times over. Because she's the one thing that everyone has in common, as Lilia's Maestra said. But what she *can* fathom is grief—because she knows love—“because what is grief, if not love persevering?” And so grief is a feeling of longing, beyond Death. More powerful than her.

And the longing never stops, even for death. And so Agatha tries to kiss her on the road after the “she's my scar” scene. She can't stop herself. Is it because she's desperate to convince herself that Nicky's soul lives on in Billy, meaning perhaps that Rio allowed it to? Is it because, despite knowing it's not her son, she's vulnerable, and thankful that Rio didn't take him too? Is it because she's reminded of the past—and love is beyond death? Beyond fear? Because grief is love persevering?

Regardless—because I could not stop for death, she kindly stopped for me. And Rio doesn't take advantage of the vulnerability. She reminds Agatha of the raw, cruel, heavy truth. “That boy is not your own.” Nothing is better. Nothing is fixed. Agatha isn't kissing Rio here because she's accepted Death, but because she's denying it. And so it's not real. They can only kiss when Agatha finally accepts Death.

So in the finale when Agatha turns to Rio and kisses her, at first Rio doesn't believe it—that she finally wants her again, that she finally accepts her. As if finally letting her grief settle, accepting it as natural, sharing it with Rio.

She forgives Death, but she doesn't necessarily forgive herself. Because she HAS become a villain, because she has used her sweet boy's innocent song to kill, tainting it as to not face Death all these years, when she was stuck in limbo between blaming Rio and Herself.

Now, she only blames herself. She doesn't let it happen again, with Billy. Agatha embraces Death just as Nicky once did, because she wouldn't.

But she's still not ready to pass on. And maybe she never will be. She is a tragic figure with no catharsis, even as she's faced both hubris and nemesis.

And that is the real tragedy of Agatha Harkness, who loved Death above all and feared it all the same.

[jewlwpet]

Let’s dissect the titles of each track on Seazer’s upcoming new Utena album!!

(EDIT: IMPORTANT UPDATE: J. A. Seazer made some last-minute changes to the tracklist after I made this post; I discussed those changes here).

1) 青銅製の人形俳優譚 オルフェウス洞窟劇場/Chant of Bronze Puppet Actors: Orpheus Grotto Theatre

There was a famous real-life “Grotto of Orpheus” that Seazer is most likely referencing! It doesn’t exist anymore, but you can see a detailed engraving of it here. It was made by Tommasso and Alessandro Francini for Henri IV of France. You can read about it and see another engraving here.

My guess as to what the song will be about: The grotto of Orpheus existed to glorify the prince by showing that he had so much power at his command, he could create a marvel like this. However, the object of wonder was a mechanical illusion: empty movement, so to speak. This was around the same time that some scientists began voicing the idea that perhaps the whole cosmos was like a machine built by God. This suggests the question, though it went unvoiced, of whether we ourselves are merely puppet-actors upon a cosmic stage.

(More under the cut--this will be long).

2)  宇���卵プロトゴノス ―すなわちアンドロギュヌスのポラリザシオン(分極作用)―/Cosmic Egg Protogonos ―Namely Androgynous Polarization (Polarizing Action)―

This one is actually pretty straightforward if you understand Seazer’s language.

This song makes use of the Orphic creation narrative. Seazer used it before in a now lost version of Absolute Destiny Apocalypse (original source now here). Note: At the time when I posted that translation, I was under the mistaken impression that it was the same as the version on the Ohtori Kuruhi CD (because Seazer frequently does use pronunciation totally different from how something’s written). It is not; that set of lyrics is in fact the one used again more recently in the “complete version” in the Barbara CD.

Protogonos (literally “first-born”), also called Phanes (“bring to light”) ( "You scattered the dark mist that lay before your eyes and, flapping your wings, you whirled about, and throughout this world you brought pure light. For this I call you Phanes.") was described by Damascius as “the first [god] expressible and acceptable to human ears.” They hatched from the primordial Cosmic Egg, generated by Time (Chronos) and sometimes also Inevitability (Ananke).

Another tradition claims that a triad of the first three “intelligible principles” hatched from the egg. “What is this triad, then? The egg; the dyad of the two natures inside it--male and female--[Ouranos... and Gaia... Heaven and Earth], and the plurality of the various seeds between; and thirdly an incorporeal god with golden wings on his shoulders, bulls' heads growing upon his flanks, and on his head a monstrous serpent, presenting the appearance of all kinds of animal forms . . . And the third god of the third triad this theology too celebrates as Protogonos (First-Born).”

Another fact about Protogonos: They were a dying-and-rising god.

Since the title seems to focus on the severance of male from female (androgynous polarization), here are some passages that focus on that (source).

And he [Epicurus] says that the world began in the likeness of an egg, and the Wind [the entwined forms of Khronos (Chronos, Time) and Ananke (Inevitability)] encircling the egg serpent-fashion like a wreath or a belt then began to constrict nature. As it tried to squeeze all the matter with greater force, it divided the world into the two hemispheres, and after that the atoms sorted themselves out, the lighter and finer ones in the universe floating above and becoming the Bright Air [Aither (Aether)] and the most rarefied Wind [probably Khaos (Chaos, Air)], while the heaviest and dirtiest have veered down, become the Earth (Ge) [Gaia], both the dry land and the fluid waters [Pontos the Sea]. And the atoms move by themselves and through themselves within the revolution of the Sky and the Stars, everything still being driven round by the serpentiform wind [of Khronos and Ananke].

Ere land and sea and the all-covering sky were made, in the whole world the countenance of nature was the same, all one, well named Chaos, a raw and undivided mass, naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds of ill-joined elements compressed together.... Though there were land and sea and air, the land no foot could tread, no creature swim the sea, the air was lightless; nothing kept its form, all objects were at odds, since in one mass cold essence fought with hot, and moist with dry, and hard with soft and light with things of weight. This strife a God (Deus) [probably Phanes], with nature's blessing, solved; who severed land from sky and sea from land, and from the denser vapours set apart the ethereal sky; and, each from the blind heap resolved and freed, he fastened in its place appropriate in peace and harmony. The fiery weightless force of heaven's vault flashed up and claimed the topmost citadel; next came the air in lightness and in place; the thicker earth with grosser elements sank burdened by its weight; lowest and last the girdling waters pent the solid globe. So into shape whatever god it was reduced the primal matter and prescribed its several parts.

Incidentally, the repeated severance and rejoining (solve et coagula) of male/female and above/below, was a key component of alchemy (of course, the materials they worked with were inanimate, but the alchemists insisted on gendering and even sexualizing them, always).

Protogonos bears some resemblance to the Gnostic demiurge, (shaper of the material world, creator of humans, associated with severance and procreation). However, the Gnostics denigrated the demiurge, whereas Protogonos was venerated. One could also make

3) ミッシング&ブーピープ ―快楽の園の修道院のイメージ―  /Missing and Bo-Peep -Image of the Monastery’s Garden of Earthly Delights-

Okay. Bo-Peep is, of course, a little girl in a nursery rhyme who’s lost her sheep but gets them back, wagging their tails behind them (wagging meant bringing). There’s an extended version where it’s specified that they’d actually lost their tails (but she found those too and reattached them). Before all that, “bo-peep” was used to refer to the children’s game of peekaboo, and in the Middle Ages, it was also a euphemism for being stood in a pillory. The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych by Bosch (viewable in detail here--arguably technically safe for work but only because it’s Art [tm]). From Wikipedia:

As so little is known of Bosch's life or intentions, interpretations of his intent have ranged from an admonition of worldly fleshy indulgence, to a dire warning on the perils of life's temptations, to an evocation of ultimate sexual joy. The intricacy of its symbolism, particularly that of the central panel, has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries. Twentieth-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych's central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost.

There’s also speculation that Bosch’s art (as a whole) is based on “esoteric knowledge lost to history.” The ambiguity is perfect for RGU.

I like this interpretation:

According to art historian Virginia Tuttle, the scene is "highly unconventional [and] cannot be identified as any of the events from the Book of Genesis traditionally depicted in Western art". Some of the images contradict the innocence expected in the Garden of Eden. Tuttle and other critics have interpreted the gaze of Adam upon his wife as lustful, and indicative of the Christian belief that humanity was doomed from the beginning...  Art historian Charles de Tolnay believed that, through the seductive gaze of Adam, the left panel already shows God's waning influence upon the newly created earth. This view is reinforced by the rendering of God in the outer panels as a tiny figure in comparison to the immensity of the earth. According to Hans Belting, the three inner panels seek to broadly convey the Old Testament notion that, before the Fall, there was no defined boundary between good and evil; humanity in its innocence was unaware of consequence.

This is of course very different from the traditional Christian view of Genesis, which is that before the Fall, there was no sexual desire. In many Gnostic texts, however, “original sin” is something that existed before the creation of the world; thus there was no innocence of any kind in Eden. The “original sinner” in this view was generally said to be Sophia (Wisdom, an Anthylike figure sometimes known as “the Bride,” who was both revered and maligned), an attribute of the Godhead, which was made up of syzygies, complementary pairs of principles, described variously as spouses and/or siblings, who (because they were God) reproduced without lust. But it was this same Sophia who breathed life and spirit into humanity, making them more than just bodies.

In this belief humans were inherently sinful creatures from the very beginning; it was also said that it was wrong for the demiurge to separate Eve from Adam (I believe this was the same text that said “This world is a mistake”--by the way, the demiurge was supposedly brought into existence by Sophia, but they’re enemies).

There’s also this idea that Bosch followed the ideas attributed to a Gnostic sect called the Adamites (unfortunately, the only contemporary sources we have on them are anti-Gnostic propaganda, so we cannot know how much of it is based in reality), which basically advocated freedom from all moral laws; the last image seems to suggest otherwise, but it certainly is, at least, a theme.

Incidentally, this triptych has been used for the covers of at least two books by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, whose works Seazer draws on extensively according to my research.

Anyway, for my attempt at putting the pieces of the title together... However you interpret the triptych, it’s not something you’d expect to see in a monastery. Wikipedia indicates a general consensus that it was probably commissioned by a lay person, not a member of the clergy. So the title suggests a contrast, or a confluence of opposites, rather like that title from his last Utena album, “Monastic Life is a Flesh Apocalypse.”

4) 幾何学とエロス/Geometry and Eros

This is, word-for-word, the title of a 1974 essay by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, whom, as I said before, I have known Seazer to draw from very frequently. It was published in this book, which also contains an essay on the “cosmic egg” concept and an essay on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

I have it from book reviews that “Geometry and Eros” discusses the 18th-century French Neoclassical architext Ledoux and the supposed “spiritual analogy” between his works and those of his contemporaries Fourier and Sade. Now, unfortunately, there are two different “Fourier”s from this time period that are both feasible candidates: the mathematician Joseph Fourier and the utopian socialist philosopher Charles Fourier. I lean towards the latter, however, because Shibusawa had published a translation of his essay “Archibras,” which Seazer drew on for Tsuwabuki’s duel song, Conical Absolute Egg Archibras. I suppose Ledoux would represent “geometry” and the other two “eros,” assuming I have the right Fourier.

Apparently, Shibusawa criticized Emil Kaufmann’s commentary on Ledoux, but I don’t know specifics on that.

5) 少女錬金術師/Girl Alchemist

The main question is whether this is Utena or Anthy, because the meaning would be different in either case. But alchemy is about unifying opposites, and they both do embody opposites, just in different ways. And they are opposites of each other, even though traditionally, in alchemy, the union of opposites is exclusively framed in heterosexual terms--think Angel Androgynous. This heterosexual union--often, incidentally, described as one of brother and sister--is meant to lead to the birth of the “philosophical child,” which can be interpreted as a new self. It’s kind of like Nanami’s Egg, actually, though that did not use the incest metaphor since one of RGU’s themes is how incest inhibits individuation.

Interestingly, while almost(?) all the surviving alchemical texts (at least in the Western tradition, which is what I’ve studied) were written by men, many of them stated that the first alchemist was a woman, and a Jewish woman at that. Unfortunately, all we know of her is from what men wrote about her.

There’s a quotation attributed to her that has an interesting interpretation by Jung, which you can read about here. Alchemy as a metaphor for psychological individuation is something he wrote about extensively, and it definitely makes sense in this context although it’s not, imo, the only meaning alchemy has in RGU. Marie Louise von Franz wrote about it extensively also! The two of them worked closely together as well as individually.

6) 人間人形 ―空想・イン・ザ・架空―/Human Puppet -Fantasy in the Imaginary-

(I’ve got nothing, other than the metaphor of puppets which I already touched on).

7) 絶対天秤卵/Absolute Balance Egg

This is not a new song. It’s taken from 2006 Banyu Inryoku production, Illusion-Flesh Verse Drama “Black in the Dark.” Of course, this is nothing new; even the duel songs were recycled (and this was Ikuhara’s idea, not Seazer’s), so this is just an extension of that. I found its tracklist in this review; it’s described as an “improvised reverberation poem of flesh burning up in the dark,” which must be from a playbill or something because it’s such a Seazer description.

Apparently, the “intro” (written in katakana) to this song was taken directly from “Paint it Black.” I can’t guarantee this will carry into our version, but if you hear anything that sounds suspiciously like The Rolling Stones... I called it.

Actually, I should note: It’s possible that Absolute Balance Egg is from an even older Seazer production and was recycled in both this play and this CD. One can never rule that out.

8) 人間人形 ―空想・イン・ザ・架空―/Philosophical Bread (?) Seed

This sounds like an alchemy thing, and I’m not ruling that out, but the results that I found searching “philosophical bread” showed me it’s a very common metaphor used in many contexts. Generally it refers to “higher learning” of spiritual matters, sometimes specifically “to know the mind of God.” Sometimes it’s treated as the ultimate endeavor, sometimes as pointless. Seeds, I suppose, would be the beginning of that.

Note: "Bread,” in Japanese, is パン (pan) , and the Greek god Pan sometimes has his name written the same way. It’s very possible that  パン is actually referring to the god here and shouldn’t be translated as “bread,” but we don’t know at this point. Either is plausible.

9) 法王驢馬寓意画意オペレッタ1 ―その声は人間の鳴き声に似る―/The Pope Ass Allegory Symbolism Operetta 1 -That Voice Is Like the Cry of a Human Being

The Papal Ass or Pope Ass, known from its use in a highly influential pamphlet by Martin Luther and Melanchthon, is often described as a caricature of the Pope. However, it’s not satirical like most modern political cartoons.It’s in fact based on the “monstrous birth” reports that were very popular at the time; this genre was referenced in the Rose Egg Sophia CD. To fully understand what the Papal Ass meant to its original audience, it’s necessary to have some understanding of the genre, so I’ll go into that. 

It’s important to understand that such records are not always made-up, although they are frequently exaggerated. For instance, researching the term  クシュポデュメー (no, I don’t know how to spell it) from Rose Egg Sophia’s Puchibanshou song (doragon no kodomo, offspring of a dragon) led me to a description of a “dragon” born with two heads, four arms, two legs, and one pelvis, said to have been part of the court of James III of Scotland. As a matter of fact, this bodily description corresponds to contemporary reports of a pair of conjoined twins known as the Scottish brothers, who were part of this king’s court. Many so-called “monsters,” from medieval times up until the xth century, were people. This particular one, however, was an animal, an actual donkey (or ass).

Luther wrote this for an updated 1535 version of the pamphlet:

The Papal Ass is itself a dreadful, ugly, terrifying picture, and the longer one looks at it, the more terrifying it seems. However nothing is so completely terrifying as the fact that God himself made and revealed such a wonder and such a monstrous image. If a human had invented, carved or painted it, one would scorn or laugh at it. However since the highest Majesty himself created and depicted it, the whole world should be dismayed and quake, for from it one fully understands what he thought of and intended.

From Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany by Jennifer Spinks:

I was able to find a book, Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany, that goes into great detail on how this was used by the early Protestant movement and has an entire chapter on this pamphlet: “Monstrous births could be viewed in positive and sympathetic terms, as the previous chapters have demonstrated. Yet this 1523 pamphlet by the two most important figures of the Lutheran Reformation forms a decisive shift in attitude, in which interpretation and representation became not only more polemical – and particularly anti-papal – but took on a notably apocalyptic aspect.” Of the Papal Ass and one of its contemporaries, the moon-calf, the author says, “The bodies of the monsters became texts to be read and argumentatively decoded using highly visual language.”

Notably, Luther and his coauthor did not invent the Papal Ass; they only named it. As Jennifer Spinks writes in this book:

The Papal Ass, washed up on the banks of the Tiber in Rome in 1495, made its way to Germany in visual form via an engraving by the Bohemian artist Wenzel von Olmutz, published in the late fifteenth century. Several decades later, and perhaps prompted by his colleague Melanchthon... Luther first became intrigued by the then-nameless monstrous birth and sought to incorporate it into his eschatological world view. He wrote a homiletic epistle that year (on the second Sunday in  Advent, concerning Luke 21:25–33)  titled ‘A Christian and well-substantiated proof of the Day of Judgement, and of the signs that it cannot now be far off ’. Although they were not referred to in Luke, Luther explicitly added monstrous creatures to his list and framed this addition as an attack on Rome and the papacy.

As for the pamphlet that made the Papal Ass famous, however, the section devoted to the Papal Ass was written by Luther’s coauthor, not Luther himself. Spinks states:

Melanchthon analyses the creature one body part at a time, utilizing biblical references, and conveying a central message about the corruption of the church in Rome as revealed by its bizarre physical structure. He begins his analysis of the Papal Ass with a reference to the Book of Daniel: ‘God has always indicated his grace or wrath by many signs, and in particular He has used such miracles for speaking to the rulers, as we see in Daniel’.

Melanchthon, she writes, “presents God in the guise of an artist who uses his creations to convey visual messages.”

The Papal Ass... has an almost jarring, collage-like combination of sharply delineated but ill-matching body parts. Step by step, Melanchthon describes and interprets these individual elements. He begins with... ‘Firstly, the head of the ass represents the Pope’. The Pope, he indicates... has brought the church into a worldly and physical, rather than spiritual, state. The low state of the ass in the animal kingdom is underscored through a reference to Exodus 13:13, in which first-born children and animals are consecrated to God: ‘but every fi rst-born donkey you will redeem with a lamb or kid; if you do not redeem it, you must break its neck’. That is, God does not value donkeys (or asses) as he does other creatures. That the head of the Papal Ass is formed in this way is a true sign of the creature’s low state.

Next, Melanchthon addresses one hand, which ‘like an elephant’s foot rep-resents the spiritual regime of the Pope’. As forcefully as an elephant, the Pope’s ‘regime’ makes its way into and corrupts souls with innumerable and intolerable laws. Melanchthon adds, in a metaphor that it is easy to imagine seizing the imagination of audiences: ‘like the great heavy elephant it tramples and grinds down everything that it comes across’. The human-shaped other hand of the Papal Ass, in turn, represented the Pope’s worldly ‘regiment’; that is, those secular rulers who gave support to the papal office. In Cranach’s woodcut accompanying the text, these hands are neatly displayed one above the other, emphasizing through contrast the peculiarity of the elephant hand. The right foot of the creature, in the form of the foot of an ox, is aligned by Melanchthon with the elephant-shaped right hand. The foot represents the servants of the church: ‘the papal teachers, preachers, priests and confessors, and particularly the scholastic theologians’. That is, it refers to those responsible, in the Pope’s name, for oppressing the ‘poor folk’ (‘arme volck’) with their activities. Identifying papal supporters with the End Times, Melanchthon refers the reader to Matthew 24:4: ‘There will come false Christians and false prophets’. The other foot, in the shape of a claw, is aligned with the human-shaped hand. It represents canons, as worldly servants of the popes. Melanchthon’s language becomes still more physical in the next section, in which the female belly and breasts of the Papal Ass are described: “[these] represent the body of the papacy: that is Cardinals, bishops, clerics, monks, students ... their life is simply guzzling food, boozing, unchaste lechery, and leading the ‘good life’ on earth.”

Melanchthon’s understanding of the belly and breasts as especially potent symbols was to be intensified in a revised 1535 edition of the pamphlet... In this 1523 version, however, he turns fairly rapidly to the arms, legs and back of the creature, with a metaphor that is a little less obvious: the scales on these body parts represent secular rulers, who tolerate the failings of the papal system, effectively protecting it as they cling on to its ‘body’. This passage makes a particularly intriguing visual appeal to the reader or listener. The innocuous scales represented in the woodcut must be imaginatively reconfigured by the reader into a multitude of earthly rulers. Much more anthropomorphic in form are the faces of the old man and dragon (‘trach’) that emerge from the Papal Ass’s backside. The man represents the coming end of the papacy, already growing old; the dragon represents the bulls and books published by popes with the purpose of universally enforcing their will. Melanchthon’s tenth and final point shifts away from the body of the creature and to the location where it was found: Rome... The distinctive shape of the Castel Sant Angelo in Rome is carefully delineated, and for those not familiar with the famous tower, the fluttering flag with the crossed papal keys could inform even the least educated of the connection with Rome and the papacy. The tower to the right is the Tor di nona, used as the papal prison. Dramatically, in his final point, Melanchthon claims that finding the creature dead, ‘confirms that the papacy is coming to an end’.

Also:

In 1535 Melanchthon prepared a new edition of his text on the Papal Ass, still illustrated by the original Cranach image. Melanchthon’s expanded text takes sharper, more polemical aim at the papacy in a number of short new passages, including one on the ass’s head as a demonstration of the foolishness of the Pope, and another on the human hand as a sign the worldly, aggressive ambitions of the Pope. Two particularly substantial new sections dramatically increase the anti-papal and also the apocalyptic import of the Papal Ass. Several new pages on the breasts and belly of the creature emphasize the themes of whoring and sin (and implicitly, perhaps, refer to the whore of Babylon), while the ‘shameless female belly’ (‘vnuerschampt frawen bauch’) represents the Antichrist’s worst excesses.

More from Spinks about what made this method of symbolism unique:

Some pre-Reformation publications had ascribed specific meanings to individual body parts in monstrous births, like the conjoined foreheads of the Worms twins. Yet none had so rigorously and polemically done so as Luther and Melanchthon’s publication. This pamphlet is at the heart of a tangible shift in the representation and interpretation of monstrous births, and one that fitted the aggressively polemical culture of the early Reformation... This period saw the rise of vigorous debates and fundamental shifts in visual culture. The most famous of these developments was the wave of iconoclasm, which saw the destruction of religious images and objects. More moderate ‘reforms’ of imagery included a move to remove any hint of lasciviousness (especially in female figures) in the images on church walls. Martin Luther had a pragmatic attitude towards the use of religious images, and contributed to a culture of visual propaganda that stood on the borderline of the religious and the secular. One of the most important aspects of the visual culture of the Reformation was the vigorous use of printed propaganda, deployed.. with remarkable success. Robert Scribner observed that ‘Luther and other reformers spoke of pious images as masks (larvae) behind which the devil lurked, hoping to lure souls to damnation’. This did not mean that Luther rejected the use of images, and Scribner provided examples of how what he called the ‘semiology of arousal’ (which went well beyond the sensual) could be ‘employed also for its revelatory effect, especially in Reformation propaganda, putting into practice Luther’s notion of the masks of the devil disguising diabolical reality’... Religious imagery nonetheless increasingly moved outside relatively controlled environments like church walls and elite manuscripts, and into the turbulent new world created by the widely available printed image.... Luther’s ideas about visual images are closely bound up with his views on the apocalyptic Book of Revelation – a connection seen in microcosm in the 1523 pamphlet.

The Apocalypse While Albrecht Dürer had created what many regard as the definitive illustrated series of the Apocalypse in 1498, a flood of other versions appeared in the first half of the sixteenth century.74 The increasing popularity of the Book of Revelation as a subject for illustration during the sixteenth century was evidently connected to the growth of an apocalyptic world view... In this environment there was a tangible value in giving shape to apocalyptic imagery, and a ready audience for the new editions that came onto the market. As Bernd Moeller has identified, the End Times (‘Endzeit’) were one of the four most popular subjects for sermons preached in German towns in the early Reformation period.

Another updated version was published in 1549 without Melanchthon’s permission, edited to include past writings of his that he had since renounced in favor of compromise.

Flacius... uses Melanchthon’s text on the Papal Ass... as a springboard to oppose any religious compromise... In an introductory text, Flacius argues that the papacy can be represented in both words and images as worse than the devil or the whore of Babylon from the Book of Revelation. He maintains the highly visual language used by Luther and Melanchthon, and even concludes by claiming that the arts of geometrical and arithmetical proportions are inadequate for the present times, which demanded instead a ‘new swinish art’ (‘newen Sewkunst’). Later in the pamphlet, Flacius adds additional texts that talk of the disastrous events leading up to the Last Days, specifically identifying the Pope as the Whore of Babylon, holding up her goblet, drunk on the blood of Christ, and seated on the back of the seven-headed beast which represented Rome itself (and also the ‘Roemische Reich’, or Roman Empire) and its support of the papacy. The increasingly voluptuous body of the Papal Ass accords with this emphasis on the Babylonian woman.

After this point, “wonder books,” which “collected together monstrous births and various other wonders and disasters across decades, centuries or even millennia,” became more and more common. Apparently, “negative and also apocalyptic rhetoric about monstrous births became still more deeply entrenched in this genre.” By 1569 (when Catholics started appropriating this trend for their counter-Reformation), “Monstrous births and the apocalyptic Book of Revelation were closely enmeshed, and overwhelmingly presented as such in German Reformation and Counter-Reformation print culture.”

Final note: The way “Pope Ass” is written in the title is nonstandard, which is why I went with the literal translation rather than the more common phrase “Papal Ass.” I did find one search result for this phrase that wasn’t about this album, indicating that it’s used in yet another Shibusawa book,  夢の宇宙誌 (this was also the only pre-Seazerian source I could find for  クシュポデュメー).

未来のヒユネロトマキア ―狂恋夢・薔薇物語・愛の秘法伝授―/The Future Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Love in a Dream・The Tale of the Rose・Love’s Secret Initiation -

So... there are many parts to this.

The Future Hypnerotomachia:

That's a reference to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (”The Strife of Love in a Dream” is included at the end of the title in some editions; it’s a translation of hypnerotomachia) and possibly also The Future Eve (referenced in the Rose Egg Sophia CD, specifically in its version of Saionji’s duel song). You can look in my tag on tumblr for my thoughts as to what that book might signify in relation to Utena.

As for The Tale of the Rose, we all know it as the play in episode 34, but there’s another “Tale of the Rose” I think Seazer is referencing here as well. Seazer mentioned “the medieval Tale of the Rose” as one of the inspirations for the Rose Egg Sophia in its liner notes (I’m working on a translation, off and on). It’s this book. The Japanese title is written the same was as the title of the play is written on the tickets in episode 34; it does not have much in common with the play, but you can think of it as “a way duelists look at Anthy.” You can also think of it as something possibly taught uncritically at Ohtori; you can certainly see its worldview reflected in, say, Miki.

The last part of the title isn’t a specific text, as far as I know, but it does have a traceable origin in, once again, Shibusawa, specifically his essay collection 胡桃の中の世界.

Since this title is about the themes of two or three entire books, I think I will make a Separate post for how those texts relate to Utena--and, of course, a new, updated one once we have the actual lyrics. And possibly another one several years from now when I inevitably translate 胡桃の中の世界.

[jasonmcgathey]

Riots Of Passage

  Well, like everything else, this book has taken much longer than expected. But Riots Of Passage is finally complete, and now available for Kindle. A paperback version will soon follow at all of your favorite retailers. So though it always feels tremendously awkward, I’m forcing myself to insert a little self-promotion here – although considering it documents a year of living on OSU campus, this book counts as legitimate Columbus history, and so might a little bit about its creation, too.

I finally got around to getting this in shape for publication in December 2017. The first draft was finished clear back in the fall of 1998 and the second in the summer of 2003. More than fourteen years would pass, then, before I even looked at this stuff again. Most of the delay was due to working on other projects, but any time I would think about this book, I was having a tough time mentally sorting out the length and the structure.

For eons I’ve been telling everyone that the campus years would be a trilogy (the first installment, One Hundred Virgins, was published in 2006). But I could never quite figure out a division point that felt right between two and three, so Riots Of Passage ended up being both. The most natural seeming break occurs after coming home from the New Year’s party, and that was always the plan, except I didn’t like where this meant starting off the last book. It would kind of leave the middle book as one long preamble, as just about all of the payoffs seem to happen in the last half of this finished project.

The major cuts all came with this third draft I began in 2017. That second draft from 2003 clocked in at over 900 full size (8 1/2 x 11″, that is) pages, something like 940, whereas the third one came in at exactly 500. So I wound up cutting out or condensing nearly half of the material. But even throughout this process, which took a year and a half almost to the day, I was still kind of stalling on the decision whether to split this into two books or not, telling myself I would know the answer and could make that call when the draft was complete.

But the truth is, you’re never entirely certain you made the right call on anything. In this instance, it felt too short for a pair of books yet too long for just one. It helps considerably with the editing process, though, that I would say – somewhat unexpectedly – that I really don’t care about any of the personal dramas now, stuff which seemed so important at the time. This is one advantage of taking so long to put something together, I suppose. In some instances entire people got the axe, along with subplots which dragged on for a month. The only consideration was whether or not it seemed essential to this central story, and if not, it got the heave ho.

Some of the decisions were pure pacing ones. In the beginning and the end especially, I was going for more of a breezy clip, therefore condensing was unavoidable. This meant that often highly interesting occasions were reduced to single sentences, or maybe even deleted altogether. In two instances I can think of, complete paragraphs which were among my top five favorites, I had to conclude didn’t fit, however painfully, and got rid of them. It sucks, but you can always console yourself with the knowledge that they might find use in other projects down the road.

These decisions, though, make you realize that you can’t really term anything the “definitive” history of an era or a subject. This is just one minuscule slice of history from that time and place. For a while, and this was true of the first book as well, this whole notion of cutting out people completely was bothering me. It feels like you’re trying to alter history based on personal preferences. Except one day I had an epiphany of sorts – I happened to be reading a Civil War book at the time, though it could have been anything – that, you know, they couldn’t possibly mention every single soldier who fought in a war, in the course of the narrative. Attempting to shoehorn in every name even if you have nothing interesting to say would make it clunky and unreadable. This doesn’t make it untrue, or mean that you are attempting to alter history.

One great example of this would occur near the end of this third draft, when I realized that an extremely entertaining cook we worked with at Damon’s hadn’t been mentioned at all. His name just hadn’t come up in any of my writings. Some of his specific episodes I had in my head the whole time, and kept thinking they were going to crop up at some point – after this many years, it’s hard to remember what you included and what you left out of a previous draft – but they never did. Instead of backtracking, though, and attempting to figure out where they belonged, I took this as a sign that these detours probably weren’t needed. And nothing personal against the guy, they just weren’t essential to these particular chapters.

Other times the opposite policy applies, where you figure, you know, I’ve got fifteen scenes at Woody’s in here, or whatever, and these are the ones which felt most crucial. There’s no reason to mention every trip you made to the bar for a solid year. In this sense, some of the lengthier scenes were paradoxically easier to cut out entirely, or categories where I was able to make some kind of broad editorial decision – so for the most part, major concerts, sporting events, and movies attended were easily gotten rid of. Writing sex scenes, too, has always been awkward, and I couldn’t imagine anyone wanted to read about these icky details either.

So it is that, paradoxically, smaller decisions somehow become the most agonizing. These open up philosophical angles that are often unexpected and fascinating. Though this admission might seem monstrous, I can honestly say that while some of the things I did in these pages should bother me, none of it does. Instead what proves cringe inducing is to look back upon what music you were listening to, the dumb stuff you were talking about, and your inane sense of humor at the time.

Somehow we have all grown accustomed to the notion that our clothing and hair choices of the past were usually questionable, and this we are okay with, dismissing them with wry, morbid humor as a fitting commentary on those hilarious times. Other details prove trickier to navigate, however, and among these I would count a) things you no longer find funny, as well as b) things you no longer believe, and c) things you said, but turned out to not be true.

To leave out these sorts of things, you are then wrestling with the notion that you’re trying to make yourself and your friends seem smoother than you actually were at the time. But I think our various personalities are well established and accurate. Omitting some of the goofier, poorly aged wisecracks or whatever isn’t distorting anything. Also, to include them produces the thought, why would I intentionally write a bad book? Sometimes, particularly with point B up above, you can maybe weave around this by explaining, “here’s what I thought at the time, but I now believe this.” Unless this insight actually occurred during the period in question, though, this is also technically assigning yourself a wisdom you didn’t have.

Thornier still are questions of how you’re going to handle behavior and/or remarks which let’s just say haven’t aged so well, yet they are important if you want to be truthful about these times. You can’t just delete them and pretend they never happened…even though including such makes it seem as though you’re endorsing them. I think you just have to try and keep yourself in the mindset of that time frame as much as possible. It always bugs me when you’re watching something that’s supposedly set in an earlier era, but they’re using slang and catchphrases which didn’t exist back then. I tried to avoid that as much as possible, true, but also more importantly to avoid putting a current spin on these old situations. It’s probably not entirely possible, but I really don’t want to ascribe what I (or anyone else) thinks about these episodes now, only what we actually thought about them back then.

Even so, of course, you end up agonizing over specific words. Some of these sentences remain intact as-is from the late 90s, but there are others, I can tell you, I was still tinkering around with yesterday. Some were bugging me as I went to sleep last night. But at some point you have to tell yourself, good enough. Let it go.

But what really has you in knots most of all, is how you say anything negative whatsoever about your friends. You’re trying to write your interpretation of events, which everyone might not agree with. You don’t want to be unnecessarily mean, but at the same time, if you’re going to excise every negative, then it’s whitewashed and toothless and no longer accurate. It’s easy to fall down additional rabbit holes from there and begin thinking, hey, maybe I’ll just leave in unflattering comments if the person in question was a jerk to me, and on the flipside, delete everything less positive if they were cool. Of course, once you start rationalizing like this, you are doomed. Maybe it’s a tie breaker, if someone is in your good graces, determining how hard you try to paint them favorably, but you cannot just start wiping out every unkind comment about your friends.

Basically I think you just have to ask yourself, is this fair? And is this a necessary reference, or can I cut it out? Have I said this as tactfully as I can manage? It does help that, by this point, hopefully everyone understands this stuff falls in the good natured ribbing department, anyway – as mentioned earlier, I don’t actually “care” about this material on a personal level after this many years, none of it. The only question is if it’s important to this book, this little slice of history I’m covering.

In many of these cases, it’s often an accidental blessing to have not captured a ton of concrete information. Sometimes I am being deliberately vague for dramatic purposes within the structure of the book, other times as some kind of strategic decision I’ve stumbled onto in the real world. But far more common are the instances where I just don’t have the details at this point. You can’t exactly Wikipedia who was at some campus keg party, or what was said at the Out-R-Inn on such and such night from 1998. Work schedules are for the most part toast or would never be made available to you, especially if canned from a place, and you can’t trust memory all that well after this many years.

One thing you may notice is that I do have slightly greater detail as the book progresses. This actually did occur to me at the time, and was an unintended benefit of buying a computer about halfway through this epoch. The whole mindset for acquiring one was that it would help me type up my first novel, yet it would soon turn out that detail and speed in future projects like this were of far greater importance. I was doing an okay job handwriting various facts in my journal, what we did and where we went on such and such day. It helped, too, that I had a job – waiting tables – where standing around scribbling things into a tiny notepad was totally normal. I just often wasn’t writing what they might have expected. But the level of detail is missing beyond this, until able to type it up and capture it quickly with a decent word processing program. And the biggie here is actual quotes, real life soundbites from people, which are somewhat lacking early on.

So if I don’t really care about any of these piddly dramas at this point, beyond their structural purpose in my history, what I do find fascinating now is specific details about anything whatsoever from the distant past. Things said, yes, but also prices, menu items, songs on a band’s set list. Which business existed at a certain address. It does make me lament my focus and choices at times, that I hadn’t concentrated more in certain areas and less in others, but there’s really nothing you can do about that.

Ultimately, this is what a book like this ends up being about: the city itself. Although by the nature of this project forced to insert myself into the middle (fun fact: I did try writing this campus period as a novel with invented character names at one point, many years ago. It didn’t work), it helps considerably to recognize that I am not the story. These experiences on the personal level are for the most part anonymous and commonplace. Though some of this weird behavior I guess is sort of amusing in sports, for the most part, I’m just melting into the background – and that’s exactly as it should be. So while it’s easy for all of us to trick ourselves into thinking, which we probably all have at times, “wow, I’m kinda like the Forrest Gump of this scene or something, all this wild stuff seems to happen when I’m around!” that’s not really not how it is at all. It’s more accurate to realize, well, I was present for 100% of the stuff I was present for. That’s why it seems amazing. But there were a million equally crazy things happening all over the place, which I missed. And this swirl of activity, this flood of information and colliding personalities, mixed in with the era and the locale itself, this is really what all such stories are about.

In the end, all you can really control is making a historical record as accurate as possible. Try to make it match what that period felt like as best as you are able to, and move on. The first time around, with One Hundred Virgins, this manifested itself in me thinking I wanted to get the timing right on a typical day. As I was working on that project, it’s true that there were almost no hard decisions whatsoever, as the pacing and flow and questions about which scenes to include almost seemed to be snapping themselves into place, in a way that hasn’t happened before or sense with anything I’ve written. But the one area I made a determined effort to focus upon then was to not include only the fireworks, to deliberately insert some boring stretches because this was more realistic. I do regret some of the florid language used in that book – to read some passages now, even I have no clue what I was trying to say there – but otherwise think it accurately captured, you know, that we weren’t partying nonstop, that there were nights I’d sit at the kitchen table alone for hours with the radio and a crossword puzzle.

The period covered in this second volume, however, is completely different. There is much less information about what else is going on around the city, because our lives have gotten more action packed, and I’m also not exactly sitting around reading article after article about Angsto The Clown or whatever, as I had been in our earlier days. Here I think the length of the book is actually more beneficial and accurate, and if I’ve decided to focus less this time around on making every sentence as artfully complex as possible, I do believe that some situational confusion serves it well, because this is how it was to live it. Therefore if you think it’s a bit brain scrambling that there are five or six Carries in this book and most of them have dark hair but no last name, are often explained away as a coworker, well, trust me, this neatly matches our experience. If sometimes you can’t quite decipher what happened or what’s really going on, yeah…welcome to the club.

Even so, I’ve never been nearly this nervous about anything else I’ve written. There are conversations I’ve successfully avoided having for over twenty years now and am dreading to some degree, once a couple of these episodes are revealed. The reception itself otherwise seems almost not nearly as important – as any of you other writers out there know, though you feel compelled to crank this stuff out for some reason, there are always conflicting emotions about it anyway. Am I hoping that nobody reads it? Of course not. Am I hoping that people do read it? I think so…yet it’s still kind of a terrifying prospect to actually sit around and ponder. I mostly try to block out that thought, too.

That last “S” fell off: original cover for “Similar Shapes” as it looks now.

Regarding the title, and the picture above, it’s true that I’ve been wrestling off and on with these names for over two decades. At one point, I intended to call that first book Similar Shapes. There are still times I wish I had. But somewhere along the line that name began to seem too generic to me, and I also became enthralled with this idea, based around this running joke that Robert Smith (from The Cure, not the legendary OSU running back) always had, whenever asked about the title of their next album: he would say One Million Virgins, though they never wound up calling any of them that. When still intending this as a trilogy, I planned to run with that concept in tying them all together, starting with Hundred and then Thousand, finally Million. 

Though loosely based upon discussions we were actually having at the time, this numbering pattern eventually lost its luster. True, I could always pull an Agatha Christie and rename that first book. But really, I think I’m saving Similar Shapes for a day down the road, when I might decide to combine these two projects and issue them as one. Half the time I think that will probably happen at some point. It actually makes the most sense of all, and kind of comes full circle to that maroon binder full of pages.

Anyway, if you’re really worked up into a mad fervor and can’t wait to get your claws into a copy, as I mentioned, the Kindle version is now available on Amazon for 99 cents. I basically plan on jacking up the price by a dollar every week, as some sort of cheap stunt to inspire you to order a copy right now.  So here is the link for that:

Riots Of Passage 

Let me know if you spot any errors, of course. If caught early enough I might be able to squeak in corrections before the paperback version goes live. Otherwise, I guess they will wait for the inevitable revised edition. As always, thanks for reading this or anything else that pops into my head. It still seems amazing to me that anyone would do so, and I hope to never lose sight of that.

            The post Riots Of Passage appeared first on Love Letter To Columbus.

from WordPress https://lovelettertocolumbus.com/riots-of-passage/