transitionrepeat

[transitionrepeat]

The History of Surrealism by Maurice Nadeau

Why are there so few women in your book? To refer to your text as a history but to omit undeniably central figures such as Leonora Carrington and Ithell Colquhoun, figures who participated in exhibitions alongside some of the men you mention in your nine-page index, people who you probably knew, is bizarre and indefensible. I would go so far as to say that your history, for so long known as a key reference text, is truly a fiction, a male fantasy, perhaps better described as ‘A Surreal History’.

Learn about Maurice Nadeau

[transitionrepeat]

Whose moon is it anyway?

I Watched the Moon Around the House

by Emily Dickinsen

I watched the moon around the house / Until upon a pane / She stopped - a traveller’s privilege - for rest / And there upon

I gazed as at a stranger / The Lady in the Town / Doth think no incivility / To lift her glass upon

But never Stranger justified / The Curiosity / Like mine for not a foot nor hand / Nor formula had she

But like a head - a guillotine / Slid carelessly away / Did independent - Amber / Sustain her in the sky

Or like a stemless flower / Upheld in rolling air / By finer gravitations / Than bind philosopher

No hunger had she nor an Inn / Her toilette to suffice / Nor avocation or concern / for little mysteries

As harass us like life and death / And afterwards or nay / But seemed engrossed to absolute / With shining and the sky

The privilege to scrutinise / Was scarce upon my eyes / When with a silver practice / She vaulted out of gaze

And next I met her on a cloud / Myself too far below / To follow her superior road / Or its advantage blue

The most widely accepted theory on the creation of the Moon is called The Big Splash. Early on in the history of the solar system there were a number of embryonic planets and two of them encountered one another. One of them was the proto-Earth and the other (possibly hypothetical) planet has been given the name Theia, who was the mother of the Greek Moon goddess, Selene. Each of these planets had an iron core, which fused together during this massive collision. That was the Earth. The resulting debris swirled and coalesced and condensed into a separate body and assembled itself in orbit around the Earth. That was the moon.

The question of whether humans will one day create a fixed lunar outpost has returned to prominence since 2018 when, for the first time in human history, China successfully landed a vehicle on the far side of the moon. China now plans to put astronauts in a lunar base within this decade.

There are various reasons to pursue and conquer the moon such as the mining of resources, further research and discovery about the moon and the solar system, or political one-up-manship, to name a few. But there are also theories about human nature and destiny which might suggest that lunar colonisation is not just an ambition or an ideal, but an inevitability. 

Evolutionary biologists and philosophers say that the intellectual capacity for humans to create environments, exploit energy and manufature beauty, all for their own sake, make us biologically pre-disposed to expansion and exploration beyond what is necessary. Karl Marx argues that human beings set themselves apart from animals by a tendency to produce beyond that which we require and master environments beyond our need or even our ability to inhabit them. One might say that our survival is subordinate to our urge to manifest the most compelling plans that have arisen in our minds. The cat is already out of the bag, so to speak.

We can also wonder about this pre-destination and yearning for the moon when reading Chinese mythology. Their space mission’s landing probe was named Chang’e 4 after their Moon goddess. The story goes that in the distance past, ten suns rose together in the skies and scorched the Earth, causing hardship for the people. The great archer Yi shot down nine of them, leaving just one Sun, and was offered an elixir of immortality in return. He gave it to his wife Chang'e to keep safe, because he did not want to live forever without her. One day, while Yi was out hunting, his apprentice broke into their house and tried to take the elixir; Chang’e resisted him and to keep him from imbibing the it, she drank it all. Chang’e was conveyed up into the heavens, to the Moon where she would reside for all time. By travelling no further than the Moon she could remain within sight of her husband. The bereft archer paid tribute to his Moon-wife with devotional fruits and cakes until he died an old man. In the story, re-unification with the Moon remains an unfulfilled wish.

We know because of tidal interaction between the Earth and the Moon they are incrementally drifting apart from each other, but in truth they are drawing closer and closer together and the mysterious, inscrutible stranger-Moon of Emily Dickinson’s poem may seem very different to us as we come to know her better. 

[transitionrepeat]

- there is a great deal she does not understand because she is moral.

Doris Lessing on George Elliot