A Deep Breath

It was quiet in the office last week. Not horrifically so, we hadn't resorted to braiding each other's hair and singing German folk songs, but quiet enough. In the absence of work and after taking stock and sorting everything on the desk alphabetically however, I decided to follow a winding road and explore Norway ... digitally of course. You can cover a great deal of the country on google maps, moreso than I actually imagined - I don't think there was a fjord missed or a hytta unseen - and it made for quite the questy afternoon.

Unfortunately this virtual escape did the opposite of making time pass by. Instead it instilled in me a longing to sit once more, cramped and stifled in the coach of Air China (or whatever similar airline my meagre savings could afford) and sharing my personal space with a rotund version of Gilbert Gottfried for barely an hour short of my breaking point, thence at last to be released into the wild, fresh air of the North once again. Freedom! Beautiful freedom!

I have this crazy idea of exploring the Scandinavian tip of the world by motorbike, and possibly not returning for a while, instead content to live in various seaside cottages of small towns, where I would pass my hours chatting to locals by evening at the pub, learning about their fishing exploits, and the days wandering the coastline and tundra with some awesome camera in tow to catch that perfect shot of ... whatever it is the North felt like providing. This in itself shows the thoroughness of my thought processes, and perhaps the fallibility of my plans. One can dream.

In any case, for now I'm just glad to have conjured up the money for a trip to Turkey and Berlin in the coming months. This particular e-ticket will land me first in Istanbul, capital of that mysterious, humid bastion of east & west which I'm eagerly awaiting to explore again, map in pocket, phrasebook in hand and with a small group of friends.

I will be posting some photos (taken with my less than awesome camera) on this blog, and hopefully some new articles will be inspired. Huzzah!
</excited rant>

Jimzip

Das Buch

Leaping again into the murky and ridiculously vacuous time vortex that is creative writing, I struggled for the longest time to get a chokehold on an idea I liked enough to expand on. I've never had a problem with writer's block (perhaps but hopefully not because my writing isn't intellectual or thought-provoking enough) but not having writer's block can also be a problem. I had a pile of papers, each one littered with notes and concepts for stories, some with accompanying drafts of the first chapter or two, some with a big question mark dotted over the title or main character's name. None of them really leapt out at me. I had a string of narratives and a chorus line of characters rampaging through the 'random' folder on my hard-drive in various text files, annoying me with their dramatic introductions and semi-formed personas, but I didn't really click with any of them.

Of course, as often happens, it was when I was not trying that the eventual 'worthwhile' idea presented itself, and now a year and a half later I have a draft of the first part of The Binding of Ciltari, a fantasy/drama set in another place, another time, and I'm really happy with how it's emerging.

I just had a number of copies printed and flung them into the postage system to test on some poor, unwitting subjects and so far the response has been interesting. Thankfully - and perhaps due to my friends and family being too nice to knock me down a few pegs - it's been mostly positive. The feedback has been astute and invaluable in helping me make a couple of decisions and pointing out what needs to be fixed up before the next draft is ready - in other words there are definite changes to make, but that's writing.

You can see what's happening at www.BindingOfCiltari.com, though updates aren't going to be too frequent for a while. Hopefully I can also post a few tidbits here too.

Jimzip

The Queen of the Adriatic - Part 2

Read Part 1 here

Though hundreds of churches seem to dot the skyline of this lagoon city, undoubtedly one of Venice's most beautiful monuments is the Basilica de San Marco, the decadent church constructed in honour of the city's patron saint.

Though the entire facade is a dizzying array of marble sculptures, finely polished columns and intricate stonework, it's upon the loggetta of the structure that one of the most mysterious sculptures still surviving from the ancient world stands, a quadriga which overlooks the grand Piazzetta and confronts visitors with curious tilted heads, proudly raised hooves and stoic expressions. These horses have been greeting people in the same manner for over a thousand years and though these statues are fakes, they nonetheless excude the same air of potent grandeur as their original cousins who in fact live only a few feet away, concealed in shadow.

Two of the four horses atop the loggetta.

The real horses of St. Marks have not always lived in Venice, they have a shaky history, one that has taken a deep plunge into the pool of historic puzzle-piecing and has emerged with a more than turbulent story. They have in fact traveled across the mediterranean and have presumably also witnessed some of history's most exhilarating moments, from adorning the triumphal arch in Emperor Constantine's newly created capital Constantinople, to being settled temporarily in Paris after Napoleon's wave of domination through Europe. They were spoils of war, and gifts of the most extravagant nature, but they have always found a home in some dramatic position no matter who their former owners might have been.

The originals are protected from the elements, nestled inside the basilica on the upper level and tucked into a corner behind glass. They are bronze as the fakes are, and were created utilising a lengthy process known as the 'lost wax' technique, which requires a sculpture to first be created in stone, clay or another material from which a cast is made and eventually used to produce the final metal reproduction. This of course means that even these bronze 'originals' aren't really originals .... at some point in history there was indeed a sculpture made of a less durable material, but unsurprisingly, this has been lost somewhere along the lines of the supposed two thousand years of the piece, in Rome, or Greece, or wherever they came from.

Part of the reason why these horses have remained such a tantalising puzzle for historians and archaeologists is that their past is so obscure, many have tried to place them originating from this or that city in the ancient world and many characters throughout history have mentioned them - or what is believed to be them - in various documents. The fact remains that their true story will most likely always be unknown, apart from what we can glean through the more recent accounts we have, paintings and historical writings being the largest source.

You can also glean things about the past just by looking, of course. A close inspection reveals that the horses were in fact bridled at some point, which could indicate the presence of a chariot or at least reins which were removed at some stage, and an engraving from 1740 shows that the horses once bore decorative collars as well, which have now been replaced by less-spectacular placeholders (1).

Napoleon himself saw great value in the quartet, and in December of 1797 had them removed from the basilica of St. Marks to be sent to Paris. Later after much difficulty on the part of a particular Italian artist (and by the Italian government themselves) the statues once more made their way back to Rome, and finally were settled back on their logetta in 1815.

Napoleon's troops assembled outside the Tuileries in Paris in the late 1700's.
The horses can be seen standing on the pillars of the outer fence.

No matter the past, the horses are as much today a symbol of power and elegance as ever, and Venice has a knack for procuring those sorts of items. Their re-introduction to the city was a great windfall for the populace, who hadn't been too keen on Napoleon comandeering the items in his plunderous sweep, but Venice it not the horses true home either. Will the Greeks one day rise up in protest to have them back? Probably not, but they're definitely worth the 2 Euros it costs to see them, if you're ever visiting the city and wish to witness some of history's most dramatic and lesser known artifacts.

You can read the most comprehensive history of the horses to date in Charles Freeman's 'The Horses of St. Mark's' (Abacus, 2007).

Jimzip

1. Freeman, Charles. The Horses of St. Marks p. 173

Artifact: Vasa

The Vasa at Vasamuseet, Stockholm

In 1628, Sweden's nautical power was at it's prime. Sweden had joined the devastating Thirty Years War with Denmark and had an interest in controlling the upper part of the Germanic territories bordering the Baltic Sea while all the confusion was going on below. It was a pretty good tactic, to jump in while whole regions of lower Europe were being devastated and everyone was in disarrary, much like the shrewd character who sneakily sidles over and pockets the crown-jewels while the other thieves are rolling around in a discordant dust cloud.

King Gustavus Adolphus (a stunningly original name for a Swedish monarch. By the by, if you ever have to guess the name of a Swedish King, Gustav is a fair bet) was one of the most successful Swedish monarchs in terms of military victory having ruled throughout the entire war, and decided near the end of the fiasco to comission a military vessel - another warship as grand in its scale as his percieved victory.

He would not be there when his ship was launched however. The king was abroad when the beautiful and mighty vessel 'Vasa' left the harbour, and whilst upon it's maiden voyage out of Stockholm foundered less than a mile from its fanfare-surrounded point of origin and sank.

The extremely detailed stern and aftcastle of the Vasa

Due to faults in design from rushed planning, an insufficient and cricial lack of ballast, and a rather strong wind straight off the bat, the great ship was doomed to founder and after its precious bronze cannons were retrieved in the 17th century, was forgotten, lying on the ocean floor until discovered again by chance in the mid 1900's.

Luckily the freezing waters (and thus lack of woodworm) preserved the ship remarkably well, and today it sits in a museum for all to see, Stockholm's Vasamuseet. It's a definite to-do if you're visiting the city.

Jimzip

The Queen of the Adriatic - Part 1

The Piazzetta San Marco, Venice

Few cities on Earth rival the sheer splendour, history or mystery of Venice. It's piecemeal development has been shaped by numerous owners, and influenced by it's major role in the history of Europe over the last thousand years, from it's origins as a supposed fishing colony on swampy marshland, to a town built up by fleeing Romans, it has been slowly and at times turbulently transformed into one of the most beautiful cities ever built.

Though the city itself could be considered a relic and piece of art, within its labyrinthine twists and turns lie a number of artifacts the city has collected from both Italy and abroad, two of the most famous including the beautiful Horses of St. Marks, and the striking bronze statues of St. Theodore and the winged-lion (and symbol of Venice) sitting atop their columns. Today I wish to start this series by talking about one of these two columns.

In particular the lion of St. Mark may have more of a story behind it than initially strikes the visiting traveler. Very little in Venice originated in the city itself, the origins of its treasures as varied as the city's various historical custodians and this statue has lived a life in line with that past.

It is comprised of various different bronze pieces held together by metal braces. The wings, added by restorers, which were originally created to look like individual feathers (1) were later modified to become solid blocks. The body itself is argued to have come from Constantinople as a spoil of war and was originally a chimera, not a lion, which then had the wings added to fit the character of Venice's patron saint St. Mark. Preceding its life in Constantinople, the lion (or chimera) has a possible origin in Persia and it thought to have been created somewhere around 300BC (2). That's an old statue.

The tail is debatably the original, but if the chimera assumption is correct it has been modified heavily or replaced, the original would have been in the form of a snake (traditionally chimeras have the body of a lion, the tail is a snake, and to make things more uncomfortable and just generally perplexing also have a goat's head emerging from their back).

Looking closely at the face of the statue one can imagine that its original form was different, the face doesn't quite match like what any modern observer would call a lion though by historical accounts, lion's faces were rarely rendered very accurately in art (understandable as … well have you ever tried to sketch a lion's face up close?), but does have unforgiving traits for ancient depictions of the chimera. The 'Chimera of Arrezzo' is an Etruscan bronze sculpture currently housed in the Archaeological Museum in Florence which carries remarkable familiarities to the St. Marks lion sculpture, especially the shape of the ears and face.

The Lion of St. Mark atop its column in the Piazzetta

Under its front paws, the statue stands proudly on a book, which in other depictions of the lion of St. Mark can be seen front on and contains the text 'Pax tibi, Marce, Evangelista meus'. This Latin phrase, translated to 'Peace be upon you Mark, my evangelist' is the line supposedly delivered to Mark by an angel (legend tells that St. Mark visited Venice before he died, and was told that the city would be his final resting place). The book cannot be seen when viewing the sculpture from below, but from the Doge's Palace alongside, or even St. Marks Basilica in the nearby Piazza it is clear.

The final piece of this puzzle of a grab-bag relic is the very pillar upon which it sits. Like the matching column a few meters away carrying St. Theodore, this granite monolith is supposedly another spoil of Venetian plundering. In any case it certainly wasn't made in Venice nor for the purpose it's now used for, and its origins extend from the island of Chios in Greece (which early on was one of the most prosperous of the Greek islands) to Alexandria.

The Alexandrian theory is generally favoured, as the style and material supposedly matches that used in royal and administrative structures in the ancient Egyptian city. How the pillars were taken is unknown, but the old Venetians had an eye for such things and when Alexandria was in social and financial decay due to the silting of the Nile and the Arab invasion they went in for the valuables. It was not a unique case, half of Venice could be built on stone columns from distant cities thanks to the city's bold sea-faring and militarised past.

The columns were of course transported by sea and found their way into the Piazzetta where they remain to this day. Originally they would have welcomed visitors who arrived by water, but with today's train station depositing entering tourists the city at the opposite end, their effect is somewhat diminished. Nonetheless, the statues and their platforms are still a beautiful sight to anyone lucky enough to see them.

Jimzip

1. Ackroyd, Peter. Venice Pure City p. 255/256
2. Freeman, Charles. The Horses of St. Marks p. 87/88