Lemons, Writing, etc.

The other day, for no reason in particular, Old Ken found himself reading some of the cultural criticism of early eighteenth century writer Joseph Addison. Most famous for his magazine The Spectator, Addison was a clever, sophisticated character. Take, for example, his distinction between true and false wit from Spectator 62 (May 11, 1711):

As true wit generally consists in the resemblance and congruity of ideas, false wit chiefly consists in the resemblance and congruity, sometimes of single letters, as in anagrams, chronograms, lipograms, and acrostics ... and sometimes of whole sentences or poems, cast into the figures of eggs, axes, or altars.

I'm sure our friend, the great Carolingian encyclopedist Hrabanus Maurus (whose work we see above), would have had a bone to pick with Mr. Addison on these claims! As indeed does Old Ken. For what Addison goes on to critique is, I think, one of the most witty pieces of Restoration English poesy—a period with no shortage of cleverness.



Let me back up for a moment and tell you about a friend named Abraham Cowley. Then, you'll finally see what Old Ken was on about with all the business about lemons from the get-go. Above, we see Cowley depicted by the irrepressible Peter Lely in around 1666-7 as a genteel philosophe in rural retirement. Yet, being a man cut from the Royalist cloth, Cowley had spent much of the Civil War era acting as a spy, communicating messages in cipher and other encryptions between members of England's exiled, Stuart-supporting community.

This context certainly informs one of his most clever poems called "Written in Juice of Lemmon." The poem opens with the narrator penning a letter to his mistress, and doing so in blindness:

Whilst what I write I do not see,
I dare thus, even to you, write Poetry.
Ah foolish Muse, which do’st so high aspire,
And know’st her judgment well
How much it does thy power excel,
Yet dar’st be read, they just doom, the Fire.

Writing in the invisible medium of lemon juice, the poet pens a secretive missive that will have to be burned to reveal its truth. Destroyed by the flame that makes its message perceptible, the letter will either prove "an Heretick" in this auto da fe or a true martyr if the mistress reciprocates the feelings it bears.

But, as the sun’s vernal heat produces vegetation on earth — "A sudden paint adorns the trees/ And all kind Natures Characters appear" — so the warmth of flame to paper slowly causes individual written characters to flower into legibility: "Here buds an A, and there a B / Here sprouts a V, and there a T /And all the flourishing Letters stand in Rows." What is more, in a lovely fantasy addressed to the paper itself, the act of burning required to render the text visible is imagined as making the mistress-reader into the author or the agent behind this seduction:

Silly, silly Paper, thou wilt think
That all this might as well be writ with Ink,
Oh no; there’s sense in this, and Mysterie;
Thou now maist change thy Authors name,
And to her Hand lay noble claim;
For as She Reads, she Makes the words in Thee.

Ultimately, then, the poet calls upon the paper to consume itself in open flame before the mistress's eyes as a sacrifice to the gods of love. I don't know about you, but Old Ken is pretty smitten by all that.



Not so Mr. Addison. Part of Addison's beef was probably political. He was a big advocate of the Whig-identified cult of politeness to which Cowley's crytograms and Royalism would have likely appeared tarred with the thick brush of Toryism. But, putting aside these speculations, what does he actually say about Cowley? Critiquing the monotonous obsession with symbolics of fire in Cowley's poetry, Addison complains of the mixing of metaphors: "Cowley, observing the cold regard of his mistres's eyes, and at the same time their power of producing love in him, considers them as burning-glasses made of ice; and, finding himself able to live in the greatest extremities of love, concludes the torrid zone to be habitable. When his mistress has read his letter written in juice of lemon, by holding it to the fire, he desires her to read it over a second time by love's flame ..."

Here, then, is the substance of the critique: "The reader may observe in every one of these instances, that the poet mixes the qualities of fire with those of love; and, in the same sentence, speaking of it both as a passion and as real fire, surprises the reader with those seeming resemblances or contradictions that make up all the wit in this kind of writing." Ultimately, these strange slippages offen Addison's sense of literary form. Ambiguous shifting between symbolism and object-reference should, he claims, be confined to epigrams and not allowed to spread through the range of poetic form at which Cowley tried his hand.

Not surprisingly, this is where Old Ken and Mr. Addison part company. Surely, one of the most delicious features of seventeenth century wit—and thinking more broadly—is this ubiquitous mingling (dare I say generative confusion) between the idea being explored and the objective vehicle used to pursue that exploration. In other words, Addison: don't be such a sour-puss!

Adventures in Greece and Italy

Where has Old Ken been, you ask? Not that anyone has really been asking; but, I'll tell you anyway, friend. I've seen some some places that would knock your socks off. Places where you'd want your glasses to take it all in—but maybe they got stolen (don't worry, I'll get to that story!). First, though, let's start on the Greek island of Amorgos where the missus and I went for a family wedding.



What we're looking at here is the monastery of Hozoviotissa, which dates to the eleventh century.



As the pictures may suggest, we made our visit there on a pretty hot day. And after the steep climb up this paved goat path, visitors (such as myself!) who happen to be wearing shorts or other skin-revealing clothing are required to put on more modest attire. Thankfully, I can't share with you any images of the XXL khakis I was required to wear over my shorts to make the visit ... and encourage you to take on some sense of the majestic views outside instead.



From Amorgos, we carried on to the island of Chios. Unlike the extremely rocky and arid Cycladic islands like Amorgos, Chios is richly agricultual. A key crop—a crop, in fact, apparently unique to the island—is the dried sap of the mastic tree seen above.



The branches of the trees are sliced and the sap that oozes out dries on the ground as these little sugary crystals. Mastic has a flavor something like peppermint or maybe eucalyptus. In any case, it was regarded as a delicacy by the nearby Turks, invading Genoese and others. So the story goes, the southern half of Chios is the only place in the world where mastic will naturally coagulate in this way.



After some sun and relaxation on the lovely, pebbly beaches of souther Chios, we made our way to the village of Pyrghi where the beautiful Mrs. Digby has family roots. Among the many cool things about this literally maze-like village are the elevated walkways used to move between houses (and to pour boiling oil on marauding pirates) ...



... and the ubiquitous geometrical wall painting, visible at right.



Walking around the town, Old Ken was fascinated to see various places where these geometrical forms seemed to be carved in process ...



... and inscribed in materials other than plaster as in the case of the wooden door seen in the photograph above. I'll look forward to sharing some more thoughts with you on the graphic stylings of this fascinating village in the future.



But, from a world of graphic inscription, we were then on to the land of sculpture: the village of Pietrasanta in Tuscany where the marble quarries of Carrara—where Michelangelo cut stone for the tomb of Pope Julius II—loom in the distance.



Pietrasanta itself is a very picturesque and pleasant place; the central piazza in the early evening is visible in the photo above.



From Pietrasanta, we made a brief excursion to the walled city of Lucca ...



... where I found this convenient map of the world.



Also in Lucca, I was pleased to see that they had an important collection of sculptures by Donald Judd ...



... that were finally being asked to do an honest day's work in holding up this old wall!



Mrs. Digby unfortunately had to return home at this point, but yours truly continued on to Florence ...



... and then to Rome. As I did in fact have my glasses stolen there, my vision of the place was a little blurred. So, I recommend that you might want to check out these very characteristic sketches of Roman environs that I happened across in a random web search.



From Old Ken's point of view, this was one of the most pleasant scenes in Rome—walking to the Vatican Museums along the Tiber early in the morning in Trastevere. Maybe a hint of autumn in the air and just takin' it all in.