matroyshka

russian dolls - you know? - matroyshka dolls they first made in 1890 but have since become a quintessentially russian product. a doll within a doll within a doll within a doll, each doll becoming progressively smaller. you always have to crack the doll open to find the next one, all the way until the smallest one, right at the very centre, right at the very end.

when i see a matroyshka i can perhaps tell you all about it. its make, its vintage, its materials, the dyes and paints used (and also that, irrelevantly, purple dye was made in phoenicia of the shells of crushed sea snails - phoenica, for purple). i could make a guess at the style and period and place of manufacture, and what, most importantly, was all so special about it.

but i would never have the courage to open it - to find the smallest and yet most important doll, right at the very centre, right at the very end.

life is full of regrets sometimes.

4th july

The Patriot, fresh from freedom's councils come
Now pleased retires to lash his slaves at home.

american independence day. somehow these two lines summarize my thoughts about america - often so idealistic but also all too often falling short of its idealistic expectations.

if there is any nation on earth today founded upon universal values it is the USA. this is what makes it sometimes so oddly noble, its actions in history somehow transfigured by its founding principles.

and yet this fledgeling republic of the free had among its foremost citizens slaveowners. claiming to foreswear the corruption of old europe it was among the last countries in the world to abolish bond labour (only brazil was later, in 1881). it was also an expansionist and land hungry state, dispossessing and then exterminating the amerindians, swallowing up spanish colonies and bullying mexico, all in the name of manifest destiny. this was the country which saw the most horrific racial pogroms (in california 1860's) and racist segregation (in the south till the 1950's)

but still it is undeniable that america was a land of opportunity for many; that on its shores people found the freedom and equality lacking elsewhere.

this history is reflected in the american psyche today, and in american policy, and in american writing - this duality of thought and purpose, the selfish and the selfless. strategy with moral objectives. geopolitics and ethics. (just read anything by kissinger) sometimes the fusion is done effectively, sometimes it isn't; this leads to fiascos.

perhaps what describes america best today is the phrase "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" inscribed at the base of the statue of liberty - the traditional symbol of hope for immigrants escaping the squalor and poverty of the old country, and also of the oppressed peoples of the world who rally around the symbol of america - but it is a phrase that rings at once both hollow and resonant.

***

sometimes i think it's not the accumulation of a vast store of facts that matter but the way you draw lines between them. the more lines you draw the better - sometimes you just feel that these lines are an infinite pathway along strings of facts going on and on and on; quite often it's the discovery of some new connection somewhere that you'd overlooked before that really exhilarates, and not the discovery of uncharted waters in the limitless sea of facts.

and even more exciting, the feeling that these links overlap and overlay and affect each other in the most subtle ways, creating layers and layers upon layers of meaning over meaning such that a simple object can be seen in so many different ways from so many different angles.

http://inkpot.com/classical/images/Bachmonogram.jpg

how do you view this?

mass in b minor

friend bought me a very good CD of Bach's Mass in B minor from america where she was holidaying. performed by boston baroque, telarc digital recording.

and one word to describe it is, WHOA.

really regret not being able to have bought tickets for the live performance by viennese academie earlier this year. :( they were sold out.

BUT - now i know exactly why they were sold out.

because the mass in b minor is truly bach's magnum opus in sacred music, a work of stunning complexity, power, emotion, and faith.

a work like this, i think, could be a religious experience when performed.

***

it is said that when the pagan grand prince vladimir of kiev sent emissaries to constantinople they were overwhelmed by what they saw:

They led us to the buildings where they worshipped their God, and we knew not whether we were in heaven or on earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or such beauty, and we are at a loss to describe it. We know only that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty. Every man after tasting something sweet, is afterward unwilling to accept that which is bitter.

and this missive converted the russians to orthodox christianity.

many historians (who can be quite a cynical bunch - this comes of studying humans too much) attribute this quote to invention by later hagiographers romanticizing the conversion of a pagan prince much given to sexual debauchery. (incidentally he is now a saint of the russian church.) his conversion, they say, was more a result of cynical calculation; aligning himself with the growing power of basileus basil ii of the byzantine empire, and moving his principality into the orbit of civilized europe, thus earning recognition and respect from the foreign merchants who flocked to the prosperous city of kiev to buy russia's furs and honey.

but i'd like to think that the beauty of the hagia sophia - the great church of justinian, and the majesty of byzantine liturgy and church ceremony played a part in this; that aesthetics and not just pure calculations have the power to move men to courses which change the history of this world.