60.
infinity of Rembrandt's paintings : *
Rembrandt’s early career was successful; he married (1634) the daughter of a well to do
former mayor & lawyer. The couple moved into their own house & they enjoyed affluence;
his paintings sold well. However he had financial difficulties (perpetually spending more than
his income & poor investments); 3 of their 4 children died in infancy; in 1642 his wife died.
He became embroiled in a long struggle with a nurse hired to look after his dying wife.
Rembrandt had an affair with her but it all ended badly. He began living with his young
maid (20 years his junior). He continued to live beyond his means and in 1656 was near
bankruptcy; the sale of his collections of antiquities in 1657-58 failed to yield the prices
he wanted & he had to sell his house in 1660. The painters Guild passed decrees
banning him from trading as a painter. In 1661 Rembrandt was contracted to complete
work for the newly built city hall (only after, the artist previously commissioned had died). His
work, The Conspiracy of Claudius Civilis, was rejected & returned. He outlived his
common-law wife & son, dying alone in 1669. He ended his day’s poor & was buried in an
unmarked grave. Even this was eventually disposed of!
Self portrait (1660) age 54. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which
the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the utmost sincerity. Here we see a
reflection of stress, strain & problems. It gives a remarkably clear picture of the man, his
appearance and his psychological make-up, as revealed by his richly weathered face, as well
as the background shade & darkness, possibly reflecting his psychological state.
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61.
Beethoven's quartets: *
The String Quartet Number 14 (opus 131) was completed in 1826, the last-composed of a trio of string quartets, written in the order op. 132, 130 (with the Große Fuge ending), 131. Dedicated to Baron Joseph von Stutterheim for taking his nephew, Karl, into the army after a failed suicide attempt.
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Beethoven's favourite of the late quartets: he said: "a new manner of part-writing and, thank God, less lack of imagination than before"; Schubert remarked, "After this, what is left for us to write?”; Schumann said it had "...grandeur … which no words can express. They seem to me to stand...on the extreme boundary of all that has hitherto been attained by human art and imagination." Richard Wagner, when reflecting on Op. 131's first movement, said that it "reveals the most melancholy sentiment expressed in music".
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62.
Parthenon sculptures: *
east pediment: goddesses Hestia, Dione & Aphrodite waking on Athena’s birth. frieze: cavalry of the procession in the Panathenaia celebration
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east pediment: Selene’s Horse, goddess of the Moon, at dawn her
chariot disappears under the horizon
metope panel: battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs,
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63.
God idea of Aeschylus: *
Aeschylus conceives a scheme of divine government, the laws of eternal justice are administered by an all-powerful deity. Injustice can never prosper, the punishment of sin is certain and inevitable. This doctrine was not a new one. And punishment for crime is not confined to the criminal; the vengeance may fall upon innocent victims, visiting the sins of the father upon the children. The ancestral curse was an old idea among the Greeks. The Furies are the tools for this curse. They belong to an earlier order of deities &, represent that inexorable spirit of justice which executes to the full the letter of the law. The Zeus of Aeschylus is of more recent origin, his character is less severe, his justice tempered with equity. He promotes the supremacy of the spirit over the letter, equity over law; Aeschylus aims to reconcile these 2 opposing ideas. While he recognizes the effects of sin even upon remote victims, he never doubts the freedom of man's will, or his power to avert calamity by keeping free from evil. When a curse is upon a family, it predisposes them to crime; but there is no actual compulsion. He modifies its fatalistic rigor.
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This subtle distinction is illustrated in his tragedies. Following Clytemnestra’s murder of Agamemnon, she speaks with the Chorus, pleading that it is not her, but the Avenger (Furies) that have done the deed. The chorus reject the plea: all have seen her act, though the Avengers might have helped her; yet her own volition makes her guilty. Her conduct is also at fault: she is an adulteress. Agamemnon too is guilty (sacrificing his daughter for ambition- the sack of Troy). Orestes alone is pure in his motives. When he slays his mother, he acts in strict justice, after long hesitation, at the express bidding of the oracle. Hence in his person the curse is expiated, and the family henceforth relieved from its calamities. Again the chorus reflects Aeschylus; that the effect of hereditary guilt in a family was not so irresistible as to crush the free-will of its members, or to absolve them from responsibility.
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In the Oedipus trilogy, we see the operation of the curse upon the house of Oedipus, leading the brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, to their ruin. But they bring the curse upon themselves through their own conduct (one overborne by fraternal hatred, the other waging impious war against his native country). It is only guilt which is punished; innocence & justice, are protected and rewarded. "Zeus inclines the scales on either side, sending evil to the wicked, good to the just.". Aeschylus explicitly denies the old Greek opinion that the gods envy the prosperity & good fortune of men, and will bring arbitrary curses upon such: "It is an old saying that much prosperity begets misfortune. I hold a creed apart from this. It is the impious deed which brings forth an offspring of woe, like its parent stock. But the house that loves justice shall flourish from generation to generation.”
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64.
God idea of, Plotinus: *
The name ‘One’ is least inappropriate because it best suggests absolute simplicity. If the One is absolutely simple, how can it be the cause of the being of anything much less the cause of everything? The One is such a cause in the sense that it is virtually everything else. Similarly, an omniscient simple deity may be said to know virtually all that is knowable.
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Intelligence is an independent existent, requiring nothing outside of itself for subsistence. It is no accident that Plotinus also refers to the Intelligence as God for the Intelligence, by virtue of its primal duality, contemplating both the One and its own thought, capable of acting as a determinate source & point of contemplative reference for all beings. The Intelligence produces creative or constitutive action, which is the provenance of the Soul.
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65.
God idea of Dante *
The guiding principle of divine punishment is one of balance. Sinners suffer punishment to a degree befitting the gravity of their sin, in a manner matching that sin’s nature. Because this notion of balance informs all of God’s chosen punishments, His justice emerges as rigidly objective, mechanical, and impersonal; there are no extenuating circumstances in Hell, and punishment becomes a matter of nearly scientific formula and which follows strict doctrinal Christian values. His moral system prioritizes not human happiness or harmony on Earth but rather God’s will in Heaven. He considers neither the causes or psychology of evil, nor the consequences of bad behavior. Inferno is not a philosophical text; its intention is not to think critically about evil but rather to teach and reinforce the relevant Christian doctrines.
