This year was the year I realized that I share a birthday with the Académie royale d’architecture. Founded Dec. 30, 1671.
Destiny, y’all!
30 Friday Dec 2016
Posted Architecture, Art, Beaux Arts, General, History
inThis year was the year I realized that I share a birthday with the Académie royale d’architecture. Founded Dec. 30, 1671.
Destiny, y’all!
28 Wednesday Dec 2016
Posted Culture, Liberal Education
inTags
Beauty, C.S. Lewis, Circe Institute, Classical Education, Devin O'Donnell, Education, Homer, Josef Pieper, Liberal Education, Rhetoric
https://www.circeinstitute.org/blog/real-and-fake-or-why-rhetoric-schools-matter
“For Christians, therefore, there are two responses to deluge of pop culture, bad art, and counterfeit beauty. One response is to shut one’s eyes and plug one’s ears. Another is to not only identify the real culture, good art, and true beauty, but also to create it. This is, I suggest, the ultimate purpose of the Rhetoric School. Not merely to love what is lovely, but to make it. Rhetoric itself is the art of persuasion by means of beauty, but this is not limited to speaking well. We communicate in everything we do. Students are learning to be points of radiance in the world, which communicate to others the beauty of holiness; from the overflow of their own transformation, they become conduits for others to taste and see that the Lord is good. This is why it is so important for students to complete their Rhetoric schooling: that they might learn how, to one degree or another, we are all artists and poets, making things that contribute either to the false beauty of sirens or to the divine beauty of muses.”
27 Tuesday Dec 2016
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Wir kannten nicht sein unerhörtes Haupt,
darin die Augenäpfel reiften. Aber
sein Torso glüht noch wie en Kandelaber,
in dem sein Schauen, nur zurückgeschraubt,
sich hält und glänzt. Sonst könnte nicht der Bug
der Brust dich blenden, und im leisen Drehen
der Lenden könnte nicht ein Lächeln gehen
zu jener Mitte, die die Zeugung trug.
Sonst stünde dieser Stein entstellt und kurz
unter der Schultern durchsichtigem Sturz
und flimmerte nicht so wie Raubtierfelle;
und bräche nicht aus allen seinen Rändern
aus wie ein Stern: denn da ist keine Stelle,
die dich nicht sieht. Du musst dein Leben ändern.
Translation 1 (Mitchell):
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
Translation 2 (Snow):
We never knew his head and all the light
that ripened in his fabled eyes. But
his torso still glows like a gas lamp dimmed
in which his gaze, lit long ago,
holds fast and shines. Otherwise the surge
of the breast could not blind you, nor a smile
run through the slight twist of the loins
toward that center where procreation thrived.
Otherwise this stone would stand deformed and curt
under the shoulders’ transparent plunge
and not glisten just like wild beasts’ fur
and not burst forth from all its contours
like a star: for there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.