Ubi sunt and the snows of yesteryear

from the vanitas series (2007) by Guido Mocafico (b. 1962),
an Italian-Swiss photographer living in France.

Song of Love, Giorgio de Chirico, 1914

Pennsylvania Station

Ozymandias
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
— Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818 

“Where are the snows of yesteryear?” is a line taken from the Ballade des dames du temps jadis ("Ballad of the Ladies of Times Past") by the medieval French poet François Villon. It expresses the sentiment of ubi sunt, a term I came across the other day and was surprised that I hadnt learned years ago. Latin, meaning “Where are....[they]?", it comes from a longer phrase, "Ubi sunt qui ante nos fuerent?" [Where are those who went before us?]*.

The phrase is used as a literary term: a meditation on the transience of life, youth, beauty, and human achievement. A common motif throughout literature and song**, Hamlet's soliloquy in the graveyard is an example:

"Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio, a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath bore me on his back a thousand times, and now how abhorr'd in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kiss'd I know not how oft. Where be your gibes now, your gambols, your songs, your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar?..."

Shelley's Ozymandias is, I think, an ubi sunt once removed.

In its emphasis on the brevity and ephemeral quality of existence, ubi sunt is on a spectrum between carpe diem's almost jocular parry against the implied futility of existence and memento mori's blatant corpse waving. Unlike carpe diem, there is no exhortation to embrace the now. Yet ubi sunt, I believe, stops short of the grim rumination and extravagant, hand-wringing denial of life of memento mori. It is a softer rueful awareness.

In this way it is like mono no aware, a Japanese term for the mindfulness of the transience of things. Mono no aware incorporates both an immediate wistfulness at their passing as well as a more prolonged and resonant sadness about the reality of life. Significantly, in mono no aware, as wikipedia notes, “awareness of the transience of all things heightens appreciation of their beauty.” I think this engagement with and affirmation of the world as it is is also true with ubi sunt and further distances it from memento mori.

I find myself falling into an ubi sunt frame of mind all too often, which then leads to a bad case of sehnsucht, but that is for another post...

* I cannot track its source, if anyone out there knows.
** Wikipedia gives two interesting examples of 20th century popular music which incorporate the ubi sunt motif: the 1960s folk song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" by Pete Seeger and Joe Hickerson and the final verse of the Simon and Garfunkle song "Mrs. Robinson" which asks, "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" 

Hartsdale Pet Cemetery

 

 

photo by keridiana chez 

 

2 photos above by keridiana chez

A few friends and I made a trip up to the Hartsdale Pet Cemetery near White Plains. The first cemetery of its kind in the US, Hartsdale, also called The Peaceable Kingdom, was established in 1896 by a New York City veterinarian. Its five acres are home to 80,000 pets (rabbits, guinea pigs, birds, and a lion cub among the vast numbers of cats and dogs) and quite a few humans as well. The rambling, hilly terrain is packed with so many tiny stories: laconic grave markers, floridly effusive epitaphs, bronze and granite bombast, the kitschy pathos of makeshift memorials, the discomfit of shared graves—owner and beloved friends. What really impressed itself upon me was how fervent and true the sentiments were. Unlike human cemeteries, where the epitaphs are often stilted and tradition-bound, laced with religious boilerplate, Hartsdale was filled with colorful outpourings of love, of yearning and grief, of disbelief and the hope that “gone” was not forever.

The Peaceable Kingdom, Edward Hicks, 1826

Sexiest Men (no longer) Alive (UPDATE)

Baron von Richthofen, c 1917

80 direct hits. Need I say more?

Early aviator Harry Atwood, c 1910

Not exactly my type but flyboy's got something, too.

 Reverand Rollin Heber Neale, 1850
That is one nasty preacherman.

William Sydney Mount, 1853
A dastardly lout, a cad, a rogue. Tell me more.

Julius Caesar
Proving that sexy is ageless even at 2000+. Vici indeed.

Walter Sickert, about 1918
Walter Sickert is bad news in the best possible way.

Commander in Armor, Anthony van Dyck, c. 1625
Long lush hair, beautiful features, armor. Winning!

Vsevolod Garshin, Ilya Repin, 1884
Ok he seems like a mess but you know you'd want to help him edit his work, get him some new clothes and cook for him.
Adrien Brody would play him in the movie.

Theodore Gericault, Horace Vernet, 1822-23
He painted severed limbs, ship wrecks and the insane and he had tuberculosis. Quite a handful. Then again he looked like this.

Three Men and a Boy, le Nain brothers, 1647-8
Dark, sketchy, satiny long-haired fellows—lets have a beer and discuss.

self portrait?, Michael Sweerts, 1656
Sensitive, moony, he'd leave you love notes and give back rubs. They dont all have to be bad boys.

Portrait of a man against flames, Isaac Oliver, about 1600
The flames, the shirt down to there, the jewelry, this guy is almost too showy for his own good.
Were women throwing their farthingales and drawers at him?

first cousins, the future Tsar Nicholas and King George V
Sporting fellows if ever there were! Double date!

Albert of Belgium, about 1917
Impeccably turned out for trench warfare; he can carry me to safety anytime.

Anton Chekhov, 1890s
Weasly, but then again...

a tailor, Giovanni Battista Moroni, 1565-70
Turbulence beneath the calm, no mere shopkeeper, he.
The heart of an artist strains beneath that finicky, micro-slashed doublet.
I see Jeremy Irons in the movie.

William Hogarth, Louis-François Roubiliac, c 1740
Hogarth is more of a runner-up but I do love this bust. 
He's got a laddish humor and pugilistic intensity that wouldnt be out of place in a Guy Ritchie film.

NEW! Daniel Trembly MacDougal (1865-1958), botanist and tree ring expert.
He'd go to the green market to get you flowers and fill you in on the taxonomical nomenclature

UPDATE! We have a new historical dead boyfriend! Thanks to Mia:

A lady could do worse than Daniel Trembly MacDougal!
MacDougal (1865-1958) began working at the New York Botanical Garden in 1899 as Director of the Laboratories and was promoted in 1904 to an Assistant Directorship. He was recognized as the leading American authority on desert ecology and one of the earliest botanists to research chlorophyll. He is also known as the inventor of the MacDougal dendrograph, an instrument used for recording changes in the volume of tree trunks.

I've been collecting them on and off, images of men that seem incredibly appealing to me despite the century or two (or several) that might separate us. It started with that photo of Chekhov. Something about the greatcoat and the reed slim cane and that cocky, short man sensibility...  You may remember the electrifying Reverend Neale and the darkly dangerous Mr. William Sydney Mount from my Sartorialist, 1850s Edition post.


This is merely a trifling survey and part of on-going research... A good Regency-era Romantic is a must and I am certainly forgetting some entrancing 18th century fellow so please do let me know who should be on this list.

Where is William Powell you might ask? Or Kurt Cobain? or any number of too-recent, too-recognized, or too-well-publicized men who could surely otherwise be on a list of Sexiest Dead Men? Well, this is an inexact science but I'd say they need to have been in their sexy heyday the better part of a century ago to make it to my list.


PS: Someone asked why I skipped Lord Byron. I have to report that his reputation always seemed more attractive to me than he did.

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire remembrance

The smoldering Asch Building-- The Triangle Shirtwaist Co. (sign circled) occupied the top 3 floors.
Today it is the Brown Building, part of New York University.

 

Bodies placed in caskets on the scene nearby

Identifying bodies at the 26th Street morgue.

Mass funeral procession and memorial on April 5th, 1911

Funeral procession and memorial on April 5th, 1911

Obituary I saved for one of last 2 survivors, from 1999. Oddly, the last survivor died two years later,
also at 107 years old and also in February.

UPDATE: The 102nd anniversary of the Triangle Factory fire this week brings a call for entries to design a memorial to the victims and establish symbolic recognition for the changes in labor and safety laws. Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition is holding an international design competition, to be judged by Deborah Berke and Daniel Liebeskind and other notables, for a memorial on the facade of the Brown Building (see below).

On the afternoon of Saturday, March 25, 1911, the workday was ending at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, housed on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building off Washington Square. Pay envelopes had been handed out when fire flared up in a scrap bin under one of the cutters' tables on the 8th floor. As fire devoured the bolts of cloth and wicker baskets of trimming, many of the men and women working there panicked as a key exit door had been locked, and many didnt even know there was a fire escape. Not that knowing about the single fire escape helped: it was extremely narrow and rather flimsy and gave way under the strain of dozens of workers fleeing. The elevator operator was able to make 3 trips before the cables stopped functioning. A few women jumped onto the elevator cable and tried to slide down. Several people were able to make it to the roof. Sixty-two died by jumping or falling from the ninth floor. The fire department arrived quickly but was unable to stop the flames, as there were no ladders available that could reach beyond the sixth floor. Their safety nets tore as the jumpers hit them. In 18 minutes 146 people died.

The company's owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, had fled to the building's roof when the fire began and survived. They were later put on trial, but the jury acquitted. They lost a subsequent civil suit in 1913 and were held accountable for compensation in the amount of $75 per deceased victim. The insurance company paid Blanck and Harris about $60,000 more than the reported losses, or about $400 per casualty.
The Asch Building is now the Brown Building of science, a part of New York University (NYU).//

Cornell University has created an incredibly thorough and comprehensive site on the Triangle fire and the resulting union, safety and legal implications. Several of the images here are from the site. There are transcripts of interviews with survivors conducted 46 years after the fire, in 1957. So many small details that really make it real (italics are mine):

When we came downstairs, the firemen were not there yet but the first thing we saw were girls lying on the sidewalk. We thought they had fainted and one of my girl friends said, "Thank God we are not like them, we're alright. She went over to one of the girls lying on the sidewalk and bent over her and she was hit by another falling body and killed.

I remember my father was in a barber shop getting a shave and somebody ran in and said, "Your daughter is coming and her face is all with blood". You know, in those days when a fella asked a girl to marry him and she said no, they would cut up her face. So while we were walking down the block, rolling from side to side, Frank was a little drunk, we were hurt, my father came running out of the barbershop with the towels hollering who did it, who did it - I'll kill him. My mother upstairs looked out of the window and saw me with blood on my face and my father hollering I'll kill him and she came down running into the street wringing her hands and crossing herself and crying "Who, Who?"

The elevator had made several trips. I knew this was the last one but it was so loaded that the car started to go down. The door was not closed. Suddenly I was holding to the sides of the door looking down the elevator shaft with girls screaming and pushing behind me. It was the old style elevator -- cable elevator ... That cable was at the side of the elevator shaft. I reached out and grabbed it. I remember sliding all the way down. I was the first one to slide down the shaft. I ended up on top of the elevator and then I lost consciousness. Others must have landed on top of me. When the rescue workers came to the shaft they pulled me out and laid me out on the street. I had a broken leg, broken arm. My skull had been injured. One of my hands had been burned by friction. Editors NOTE: (apparently this is a case in which the victim, taken for dead, was removed with the other bodies but separated from them when life was detected in time.)

I think that the girl right in back of me had her hair singed by flames -- that's how close the fire was to us. I don't remember how I got down that narrow staircase but I was cold, wet and hysterical. I was screaming all the time. When we came to the bottom I could not get out of the building. The firemen held us back in the doorway. The bodies were falling all around us and they were afraid to let us go out because we would be killed by the falling bodies. I stood there with the other girls screaming until the men saw a chance for us to get across and I remember they let me across the street and took me into a Chinese importing house where they tried to quiet me down and gave me milk to drink. I could see through the window how the bodies were still falling and would hit the sidewalk with a bounce.

I rushed with the other girls but just as I came to the door of the elevator it dropped down right in front of me. I could hear it rush down and I was left standing on the edge trying to hold myself back from falling into the shaft....Maybe through panic or maybe through instinct I saw the center cable of the elevator in front of me. I jumped and grabbed the cable. That is all I remember. My next thing I knew was when I opened my eyes and I was lying on my back and I looked up into the faces of a priest and a nun who were trying to help me. I was in St. Vincent's Hospital. ...I don't know how long I stayed in St. Vincent's but when I was well the Red Cross came with my clothing which they got from my family and took me straight to the mountains for a rest. At the same time, the Red Cross paid my family $10 a week for 10 weeks. I never got a dime's worth of help from the company.

Dismal Days

 

Images from Liber Chronicarum, or Book of Chronicles, better known as the Nuremberg Chronicle, printed in both Latin and German in 1493. It is one of the first early printed books to successfully integrate illustration and text and is the best "preserved": approximately 400 Latin and 300 German copies survive. 645 discrete woodcuts were created for the book. Albrecht Durer was an apprentice to the artisans at the time. See incredible scans of an entire colored copy from the Munich Digitization Center (MDZ)/ Bavarian State Library.

Throughout the Middle Ages— and up til the 19th century-- it was commonly thought that certain days of the year were unlucky. Popularly known as Dismal or Egyptian Days these were times one was to avoid undertaking important activities such as travel or marrying, and were ill omens for health as well (if you got sick on one of these days you'd not be likely to recover). These were quite different from calendar days considered pivotal, inauspicious or notable for reasons to do with agricultural stages, astronomical alignments or lunar phases. Those had self-evident reasons for being (whether or not they were based on correct fact is another matter). Unlucky days were unlucky-- but they were traditionally so, no one actually knew why.

I first came across the term Egyptian days in Religion and the Decline of Magic by Keith Thomas, a brilliant, sprawling study of magic and the medieval church*. Analyzing how magic and supernatural folk traditions existed side by side with religion, with the church often mirroring aspects of folkways (miracles? bell-ringing? relics? check, check, and check), the book shows how magic even survived the Reformation, adapting its form and intermingling with scientific inquiry. Both fascinating and not easily described Religion and Decline deserves a separate post.

Etymologically, dismal means “bad day,” coming, via Anglo-Norman or Old French dis mal, from Latin dies mali. The phrase literally means “evil days” and it's documented that the Romans recognized these as dies nefastus. There is speculation that the Romans thought the days to have been computed by Egyptian astrologers, and were possibly related to the Egyptian plagues. Dies nefastus were therefore also referred to as Egyptian days or dies Aegyptiaci. (Because Egypt = cryptic, occult, and ancient even to the ancient Romans). By the fifteenth century dismal, having been “unlucky”, came to mean “gloomy” or “miserable”  and eventually “depressing to the spirit, or showing a lack or failure of hope.”

The list of days seems to have varied according to which source you happened to check since they were sometimes not recorded as dates but rather as "the last Monday in April, the second Monday of August, and the third Monday of December" etc. Different days had different degrees of bad luck; some were equivocal, others totally disastrous. Here's a list I've come across, and today is a Dismal Day:  
January 1 and 25
February 4 and 26
March 1 and 28
April 10 and 20
May 3 and 25
June 10 and 16
July 13 and 22
August 1 and 30
September 3 and 21
October 3 and 22
November 5 and 28
December 7 and 22

*This drily humorous and peculiar book also introduced me to "planet-struck" (similar to "moonstruck" it means adversely affected mentally or physically by the planets and was sometimes listed as a cause of death), "cunning folk" (wizards, soothsayers and healers) and "elf-shot" (bedeviled by elves, gremlins and other spirits).