Two Miles High

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

The Planets

The origins and meanings of the symbols for the Sun, Moon and planets are as shrouded in mystery as Venus itself. Certainly the Earth and Sun (and perhaps the Moon) look like shields and Mars is a shield with a spear. Some say Mercury's symbol shows his winged

Loki's Children

'The Poetic Edda'

Should you read The Poetic Edda, the original source for all the great Norse myths, in order to understand them? Not really, other than to satisfy yourself that ancient Norse poetry is three bridges too far: old, foreign and metaphorical. The Poetic Edda (I have the Lee M. Hollander translation)

The Woman in the Bower

'The Princess of Clèves'

La Princesse de Clèves (1678) was published anonymously, but its author is now thought to be Madame de La Fayette, who lived most of her married life in Paris, where she participated in the salons. The novel was very successful and it is still widely taught in French schools, if

Women in Trousers

The Rashōmon Gate

The stone marker shown below is all that remains of the Rashōmon Gate, made famous by Akira Kurosawa’s movie of 1950. How appropriate that Rashōmon or Rajōmon (literally “city walls" + "gate”), which was the great southern gate of the city of Kyoto (then known as Heian-Kyo), is

Women in Trousers

The Real Pope Joan?

There is no really satisfying explanation for how the legend of Pope Joan came into being, which is as it should be. It probably began as a folk tale that somehow got out of hand when the Polish Dominican writer, Martin of Opava (who died in 1278) enhanced the story

From Russia with Love

The Red and the Black

Where does White play on a Red and Black chessboard? At the moment it doesn't. White Russians go into exile in the West. (Blue doesn't either; blue was the color of the Romanovs.) Andrei Tarkovsky directed one of my favorite films, the leisurely 1966 masterpiece Andrei

Beauty & the Beast

The Red Rose

For the Beast the most moving metaphor in the film is the red rose, which he kept within sight, counting the petals as they fell. The rose is a symbol of many things: blood passion, fragility, an hourglass of one’s life and death within the grasp of the bedside.

Spinster

The Rice Portrait of Jane Austen

The Rice portrait of Jane Austen by English society artist Ozias Humphry. This is said to be the only known painting of Austen, dating from around 1788 or 1789 when Austen would have been about 14. It was kept in the family after that and was put up for auction

Life as Opera

The Rise of the 'Femme Fatale'

There was a sense of theatricality about bohemian life in Europe's cities in the late 19th century. At a time when imperialism was revolutionizing the arts, it seemed that writing and composing were not enough—one had to be larger than life to get attention. Lola Montez’s

Splendour in the Grass

The Rise of Vegetarianism as a Class Issue

Shelley and Byron defended and practiced vegetarianism. At the time they were called "Pythagoreans" (the word “vegetarian” appeared in the 1840's). They integrated their vegetarianism into a broader philosophy inherited from the Enlightenment, where eating meat was associated with aristocratic gluttony and consumerism, as well as

From Russia with Love

'The Rite of Spring'

Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring: Pictures from Pagan Russia Stravinsky's ballet is for cynics. It was designed to shock and awe when it debuted in Paris in 1913 and sure enough there was a riot. Diaghilev was delighted. The ballet itself was premised on a vision

Alice's Mirrors

'The Rokeby Venus'

This Velásquez painting was the victim of a celebrated case of art vandalism in 1914, when suffragette Mary Richardson took a meat cleaver to it. The question is: why this picture when there were others to choose from? The Rokeby Venus, otherwise known as The Toilet of Venus or La

A Tale of Two Women

The Saga of Where to Bury Hernán Cortés

We do not know when or where la Malinche died, but Hernán Cortés died in Spain in 1547. Since then his body has been moved eight times, but it was always his wish that he be buried in "New Spain" in a monastery at Coyoacán in what is

The Judgment of Paris

The Salons and Molière

For over a hundred years the arts and culture in France were controlled by aristocratic women and intellectual life was dominated by the salons. Initially the leading salon of the era was the Marquise de Rambouillet’s, from 1620 till 1645, but it became pretentious, as they all do eventually,

Sacred Prostitute

The Scallop Shell

The scallop shell is the traditional symbol for Christian pilgrimages. It is associated mostly with the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia (the other two main pilgrimage sites being Jerusalem and Rome). The shell can be seen as small badges worn on clothing or on signposts or on buildings

Splendour in the Grass

The Serpentine

Water symbolism occurs throughout this chapter: Shelley pursuing Rousseau's lovers on Lake Geneva or Rousseau himself hiding out on St. Petersinsel; Wordsworth lost in the Lake Country; my grandmother born in secret disgrace and borne away downriver. The Serpentine, in Hyde Park, is full of foreign students and

Homer's Women

The Sirens in painting

Over the centuries the Sirens have resisted easy definition. In the Odyssey, Book 12, when Circe is warning Odysseus about them, they are just creatures with a bewitching song. He has himself bound to the mast while all his crew have their ears blocked, and he gets past them unscathed.

From Russia with Love

'The Sleeping Beauty'

Arguably the most popular ballet in the world and one that changed people's lives (Diaghilev, Anna Pavlova to name two). Tchaikovsky's second ballet premiered in St. Petersburg in 1890 and he saw more success with it than with Swan Lake or The Nutcracker. Sexual metaphors aside

The Judgment of Paris

The Strange Tale of Louise Labé

In the century before Ninon de Lenclos, a strange figure emerges in the literary histories: Louise Labé, aka Louise Labbé, who was born in the early 1520's and who lived most of her life in Lyon, the French city most associated with the Renaissance. Records show she was

Women in Trousers

The Tale of Genji

The Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari) was written by Murasaki Shikibu in the early 11th century. The author is named after the character, not vice versa, since no one knows who really wrote it. The best we can do is assume that it was written by a woman of the

Angel Incarnate

'The Temptation of Saint Anthony'

The ultimate fable of sexual temptation. Saint Anthony was a Christian saint in Egypt who may have died around CE 356 (his monastery is here). His claim to fame is his sojourn in the desert, fending off Satan and all manner of monsters and demons. But it is difficult to

How to Look at a Naked Lady

The Tomb of Hafez

Islamic art and architecture are consistently under-appreciated in the West, not least of all because of the misunderstanding over why people or God are not to be shown in art, because that's considered idolatry. Is seeing believing? Does believing require seeing? Do we see everything we believe in?

Loki's Children

The Totem

The Baltic, German and Slavic gods resemble the Norse pantheon. Totems can be found everywhere dotted around the countryside and in the architecture. A pagan undercurrent flows through the area’s history. It is neatly captured in the sculpted head of a woman which appears on a Jugenstil (German Art

The Woman in the Bower

The Tristan and Yseult Legend

Tristan and Yseult (or Isolde) became popular when Henry and Eleanor were on the throne. French-English and German storytellers all took a crack at enhancing the older Celtic plotlines. As Joseph Campbell put it, the legend dramatizes a conflict between love and marriage, in an era when aristocratic families were

Alice's Mirrors

'The Ugly Duchess'

Possibly the nastiest painting ever produced, this is called A Grotesque Old Woman and it is attributed to Flemish Renaissance master Quintin Massys in Antwerp sometime between 1513-1530, with many favoring 1515. It served as a model for John Tenniel’s Duchess in Alice in Wonderland and the painting is