Here are the beauties before the action gets hot:
And here, during.
And again, during (man with fag is master butcher/griller of the operation).
And again, about to come off…
(They were consumed too quickly for any presentation shots. But then again, life is a series of frustrations, in’nit?)
Ecce Quam Bonum, by Daniel Mitsui
(from Psalm 133)
The gifted and industrious artist Daniel Mitsui, a great favorite here at Korrektiv, has released the text (and illustrations) of a lecture he delivered earlier this month. The subject: Catholic religious art, and Mitsui’s approach to it as student and draftsman. This presentation is thought-provoking, edifying, and a pleasure to read. Here’s a taste, from near the conclusion:
You have undoubtedly seen [medieval 'drolleries'] in the margins of illuminated manuscripts: frolicking monkeys, marauding woodwoses, flirting peasants, anthropomorphized pigs playing bagpipes, funny monsters composed of various parts of men, birds, beasts and reptiles[...]. This grotesque, romantic, comical element is not limited to manuscript margins; it is found in almost every medium of medieval sacred art. [...]
This same element can be encountered in the worship of the medieval Church: a Festival of the Donkey honored the beast that bore the Blessed Virgin on the Flight into Egypt; during the Mass, certain responses were brayed rather than chanted. [...] Medieval sculptors and engineers introduced automation and puppetry into the church [...]. [An] example is the Boxley Rood of Grace, a crucifix whose Christ moved his arms and eyes and mouth by means of wires operated by a hidden puppeteer. For all that the Middle Ages can truly be described as a time of liturgical solemnity, monastic discipline, personal piety, scholastic disputation, crusading zeal and fleshly mortification, the faithful of those ages never lost their sense of humor or their spirit of romance.
I tend to keep the company of other traditional Catholics, and their reactions when hearing about these practices diverge; some think they are wonderful. Others are horrified, and see in them only a precedent for current liturgical abuse and artistic gimmickry. To my mind, they are very different.
To learn why Mitsui thinks they are different — and to help yourself to much more food for thought – click here for the lecture.
[Lecture link via Mr Mitsui's April 2013 newsletter, which is packed with art, including a commission for the American College of Surgeons; a preview of a forthcoming set of Stations of the Cross; and the Ecce Quam Bonum that illustrates this post.]
[For Korrektiv's previous coverage of medieval drolleries, click here.]
From Cell 25 of the Convent of San Marco, by Blessed John of Fiesole, OP (Fra Angelico), 15th Century
Think on the very làmentable pain,
Think on the piteous cross of woeful Christ,
Think on His blood beat out at every vein,
Think on His precious heart carvèd in twain,
Think how for thy redemption all was wrought:
Let Him not lose what He so dear hath bought.
–Pico della Mirandola (translated by St Thomas More)
From the Dominican Office of Tenebrae (‘Darkness’) for Good Friday, A.D. 2009, at Blackfriars, Oxford.
The text for this portion of the service is the Benedictus, or Canticle of Zechariah. Though this canticle, comprising Luke 1:68-79, is part of the Church’s morning prayer every day of the year (at the hour of Lauds), it has a special resonance on these days.
Because of the compassionate kindness of our God,
the dawn from on high shall break upon us
To shine on those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,
to guide our feet in the way of peace.
Credere adversario dedecet nos nihil iam superesse suadenti quod iniustitia coram ac violentia nencon malitia ipsa efficere queamus.
— Papa Franciscus (@Pontifex_ln) March 24, 2013
![By Ji-Elle (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons](http://korrektivpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Adrar-Reg_3-by-Ji-Elle.jpg)
By Ji-Elle (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
Not quite this anymore….
**** 
***
….thanks to the newest Korrektivkind:
Claudia Maureen. 9 lbs. 6 oz. 20 3/4 inches. Feb. 9. (4:50 a.m. (that’s right, A.M.)
Which for those with Irish Alzheimer’s (you forget everything but the grudges) means mnemonically that 2 had 9 on 2/9…
So, I might be looking for a new set of plates but then again I might not… You see, 9-9 just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
JOB
No, seriously, you are going to die.
Segregating the old and the sick enables a fantasy, as baseless as the fantasy of capitalism’s endless expansion, of youth and health as eternal, in which old age can seem to be an inexplicably bad lifestyle choice, like eating junk food or buying a minivan, that you can avoid if you’re well-educated or hip enough. So that when through absolutely no fault of your own your eyesight begins to blur and you can no longer eat whatever you want without consequence and the hangovers start lasting for days, you feel somehow ripped off, lied to. Aging feels grotesquely unfair. As if there ought to be someone to sue.
The wise men; Joseph; the tiny infant; Mary;
The cows; the drovers, each with his dromedary;
The hulking shepherds in their sheepskins — they
Have all become toy figures made of clay.In the cotton-batting snow that’s strewn with glints,
A fire is blazing. You’d like to touch that tinsel
Star with a finger — or all five of them,
As the infant wished to do in Bethlehem.All this, in Bethlehem, was of greater size.
Yet the clay, round which the drifted cotton lies,
With tinsel overhead, feels good to be
Enacting what we can no longer see.Now you are huge compared to them, and high
Beyond their ken. Like a midnight passerby
Who finds the pane of some small hut aglow,
You peer from the cosmos at this little show.There life goes on, although the centuries
Require that some diminish by degrees,
While others grow, like you. The small folk there
Contend with granular snow and icy air,And the smallest reaches for the breast, and you
Half-wish to clench your eyes, or step into
A different galaxy, in whose wastes there shine
More lights than there are sands in Palestine.
Wilbur, Richard. Anterooms: New Poems and Translations: 35-36. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
A nod to Kierkegaard and Walker Percy: existentialist tomfoolery, political satire, literary homage, word mongering, a year-round summer reading club, Dylanesque music bits, apocalyptic marianism, poetry, fiction, meta-porn, a prisoner work-release program.
This is a demo store for testing purposes — no orders shall be fulfilled.
A Little Vaguely Valentinish Irony…
…from across the pond.
And a bonus poem – in the spirit of Potter’s blotter:
The Anti-Valentine
Outside your zone
Away from my orbit
Out of your shadow
A moment alone –
No, rather – apart.
It’s what we know:
Alone.
Apart. A–
Lone. A–
Part.
A lone.
A part.
Our life has been
A mutual eclipse
Of heart from heart,
And the difference it
Makes between
These two distinct and lonely partings of lips.