In the Labyrinth

People Inconvienced by Objects and Thoughts

I love these wildly imaginative graphite portraits by Stefan Zsaitsits of People Inconvenienced by Objects and Thoughts. They look almost exactly how my head feels right after a day of juggling too many things and trying to get some writing squeezed in somewhere. Though it does look like this may be the only writing I manage here for today anyway.

By the Work of Hands, We Heal Ourselves.

I am heading to the desert for a while and bringing new projects along....looking forward to the dry cool nights, and the stars high overhead.

And then I found these fall beauties from Madeleine Tosh! Let's see how fast I can knit while trying to finish preparing a second novel for re-release (Flight of Michael McBride) and spend time up in the mountains of the Mogollon Rim. Forget covid, forget elections, forget strife. Just be a maker....

How I See Myself In the Stones

Every morning we hike at sunrise to watch the sun lift in the east and light up the Flat Irons in the west. The path is full of river stones and rocks. And at this one, I stop and say hello -- for it seems to me a perfect description of my working life: weaving, writing, and knitting. And I think, yes, even broken into three fragments, it is still whole.

Tearing Up The Canals: The Women's Regatta in Venice, 18th Century

 I am rather in love with this painting of the Women's Regatta in Venice by Gabriele Bella, 1730-1799 (click on for a larger view). I had no idea that women were accomplished rowers, though it does on reflection make a certain amount of sense. If one lives on the waters and the canals, or course every woman would have to know how to manage her own small boat if she wanted to get any where important. (This is the problem of being a tourist in Venice -- one always assumes someone else will row one around). 

Here's a bit more information from a nice post in Seductive Venice (indeed it is).

"Women had raced in regattas (boat races) since 1493. An island community like Venice, where every nonna knew how to row a boat, allowed its women to enter the races and processionals (or at least the women from the working class). The priests even blessed them. Regattas were usually held when a visiting dignitary came to town, and rowers showed off their skills or challenged others in order to keep fit for their jobs, such as did the gondoliers or workers at the Arsenale where they made boats."

The post also includes a lovely painted portrait of an especially skilled woman, five-time regatta winner Maria Boscola: "Maria had first raced in 1740, winning the red pennant for first place, with her partner and friend Emma, nicknamed La Garbina. But 24 years passed before women participated in the races again. These may have been the years that Maria bore and raised her children. She also grew enough vegetables that she could bring in to the Rialto market to sell, keeping her rowing arms strong for the 25 kilometer trip each market day." 

So, she took a little time off to keep up with her produce business and raise children -- but she kept herself in shape and ready for the day she could return to race. Pretty remarkable and determined! 

I do recommend having a read through the Seductive Venice blog -- it has lots of historical gems about women lives and activities in Venice and it is a delight to read.  

When Heroines Write Their Own Stories

Penelope Writes to Odysseus

I am still in awe of these amazing little Medieval illustrations of the classical Greek and Latin heroines of Ovid writing imaginary epistles. Ovid's work was translated into French by poet Octavien de Saint-Gelais, and it so delighted Louise of Savoy (1476-1531), mother of the future king Francis I of France, that she commissioned artist Robinet Testard to decorate a sumptuous manuscript of Ovid with these beautiful miniature portraits of the heroines writing their own stories. Each one is so different ..caught in the unique drama of her life -- some beautiful, some rather violent. (And really...so many bad husbands and rotten boyfriends...) Here's a sample of some of my favorites ...but do, stop by La Folia Magazine and indulge in all the others. All these heroines writing their own stories provides fuel and words for my own characters who are impatient to write down their (mis)adventures.

Medea Writes to Jason

 

Ariadne Writes to Theseus 

 

Hypsipyle Writes to Jason (double rotter)

The Voynich Manuscript: Magic, A Garden of Women, and a Secret Language

*Please note that posters in the comments provide links to pages that no longer exist -- sadly! Yale at one point removed the archive of images from public view. 

 

I am sitting at my desk transported by the digital images of the Voynich Manuscript, created sometime between the late 15th century and early 16th century. It is a most magical text, written in an unknown language or perhaps a cipher. It is illustrated with botanical drawings of unknown plants, strange designs and patterns that suggest spiral and circular gardens. And most wonderfully it is filled with the alchemical activities of women who seem to be the life force of this strange and fecund world. The women often appear nude with rounded bellies, sometimes in bathtubs, other times connecting roots, seeds, and pods through tubes and rivers.

Not much is known about its origin and what is known is as mysterious as the manuscript itself. It has been carbon tested and found to have been produced in late 1400's; it gets it's name from the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller, Wilfrid M. Voynich who purchased it in the 1920s; it was owned by the Emperor Rudolph II of Germany (1576-1612) who believed it to be the work of Roger Bacon (it wasn't --he's 13th century). There is Jesuit involvement -- the correspondence of 17th c. Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher who wrote references to it after receiving it from a Prague physician Johannes Marcus Marci. And much later in 1912, Voynich purchased the manuscript from Joseph Strickland S. J. at the Jesuit College at Frascati, near Rome. (Why does this all remind me of Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose?). And then there are about 150 years where no one knows who had it or where it was hiding.

And as far as the language goes -- no one has been able to translate it into any language. Some scholars thought it might be the work of an insane author -- but other linguists suggest there are two authors and the language appears too "organized" to be the work of a crazy person. Potential authors range from Leonardo da Vinci, Antonio Averlino, a 15th century Italian architect, English occultist John Dee, and an underground sect of Cathar heretics. Strangely, at least to me-- no one has suggested it might have been written and created by women.

Enjoy these few pages I pulled from the online collection -- and marvel at all that beautiful, mysterious work and give thanks to the internet. You can also read more about the Voynich manuscript here.

I want these to be plans for a garden -- circular, spiral, filled with female fertility connected to the moon, the stars, and the zodiac calendar.

The Splendor Of Shopping: Emile Zola and Au Bonheur Des Dames (The Ladies' Delight)

I have just finished a conference where we read and discussed in great depth Emile Zola's novel, Au Bonheur Des Dames (The Ladies Delight.) The novel, set in the late 1860's, centers on the invention of the department store (based on the historical store Bon Marché in Paris). The owner Mouret -- a scoundrel and womanizer -- is also a creative genius, gathering together all the different trades under one roof, creating "departments" and then using price incentives, advertizing, and spectacular displays (worthy of Alexander McQueen) to draw women from all the classes ("democratizing luxury") into the store to shop in a sensual frenzy. But the writer in me is astonished by the "texture" of the novel -- the feel of the fabrics that comes through in Zola's writing, adding a very sensual experience to the reading itself. 

The silk department:

"... a display of summer silks lit the hall with a burst of surprise, like a star rising amid the most delicate shades of light: pale pink, soft yellow and limpid blue -- Iris's drifting veil in all its glory. There were foulards as soft as clouds, surahs lighter than down floating among the trees, moiré, and Peking silks as supple as the skin of a Chinese virgin. There were pongees from Japan, tussores and corahs from India, not to mention our own light silks in stripes, checks and flower patterns, every design imaginable, conjuring up ladies in furbelows walking beneath great trees of some park on a May morning.

The lace room -- my favorite in the novel.

"Situated near ladies' ware, this was a luxurious room, where store cases had drawers of carved oak that would fold back. Spirals of white lace wound around the columns, which were covered in red velvet, and festoons of guipure lace hung from one end of the room to the other, while on the counters were cascades of large cards completely enveloped in Valenciennes, Mechlin and needlepoint...It was hot in the lace room. The customers, with pale faces and shinning eyes, were stifling. It was as though all the seductive powers of the store had been leading up to this supreme temptation: in this remote alcove was the Fall, this was the corner of perdition in which even the strong would succumb. Their hands buried themselves in the overflowing lace and came away trembling like a drunkard.

And this, the lingerie department unlike any I could imagine:

"Here were camisoles, little bodices, morning dresses, dressing gowns, linen, nansouk, lace, long white clothes, free and thin, in which one could feel the stretching and yawning of idle mornings after amorous evenings. Then the underclothes appeared, arriving one by one: white petticoats of every length, the petticoat tight around the knees and the petticoat that drags its train along the floor, a rising sea of petticoats in which ones legs were lost; bloomers in cambric, linen and pique, wide white bloomers in which a man's hips would have room to dance; and finally the under blouses, buttoned up to the neck for the night, revealing bust by day, held only by narrow straps and made of simple calico, or Irish linen, or cambric, the last white veil slipping from the breasts across the hips.

"Then, woman was dressed again, the white wave of this cascade of linen slipped behind the quivering mystery of skirts, the chemise stiffened by the dressmaker's fingers, the cold bloomers keeping the folds from their box, all this dead percale and dead muslin scattered across the counters, thrown aside, and piled up was about to become alive with the flesh, warm and redolent with the smell of love, a white cloud sanctified, bathed in the night, the slightest flutter of which to reveal the pink glimpse of a knee which in the depths of this whiteness would devastate the world. "

This is really a wonderful novel -- even with some of its 19th century quirkiness -- it is astounding to think that the marketing techniques of big department stores ala Walmart and Target are nothing so new after all. In fact this novel is often required reading in business management and advertising courses for its over the top descriptions of how to seduce the consumer. And while I appreciate the new "department store" of the internet, I must confess I would give it up for the chance to be surrounded by so many beautiful textiles -- to touch everything and to linger.