The Fourth Man:
In Lieu of Rosebud, Part III

Posted on Fri, Oct. 11, 2002

Perhaps a little too active.

Arthur Koestler’s somewhat more respectable mystical thoughts about infinity may be found here.  Related material: my September 5 entry, Arrow in the Blue.

Added ca. 10 to 11:40 p.m. October 11, 2002:

A review of Castaneda seems in order… the bad Carlos, not the good Carlos.  (The bad Carlos being, of course, the bullshit artist who apparently died in 1998, and the good Carlos the publisher who died yesterday.)

From the LiveJournal site of fermina –

Today’s Public Service Message:

My comment:

From a review of Carlos Castaneda’s last book, The Active Side of Infinity:

“We wind up learning something more of Castaneda but not much at all about the active side of infinity, which is mystically translated as ‘intent.’ It appears that we ought to live with intent, never forgetting that we will die, regardless. Death (and the knowledge of it) should thus inform all of our actions and relationships, providing a perspective and enforcing our humility. This is hardly an original idea, and it can’t justify wading through Castaneda’s welter of self-indulgence, which might translate better to a bumper-sticker adage.”

Hmm… What adage might that be?

As for the good Carlos, see “In Lieu of Rosebud, Part II,” below… As was said of Saint Francis Borgia, whose feast is celebrated on the day good Carlos died, he

rendered glorious a name which, but for him, would have remained a source of humiliation.

        

In Lieu of Rosebud, Part II*

Posted on Fri, Oct. 11, 2002 

Bernard Ridder dies at 85
Publisher built newspaper empire

BY MARTIN MERZER

Bernard H. Ridder Jr., once one of the nation’s most influential publishers and the inheritor and protector of a family tradition of newspapering, died Thursday night. He was 85….

”If there is one thing he instilled in me,” [his son] Peter Ridder said, “it was to be honest. If you don’t know the answer, say so.”

His father had been publisher of the St. Paul newspapers; his grandfather, Herman Ridder, launched the family business in 1875 as publisher of The Catholic News in New York.

Though six-foot-five and with a commanding presence, he also was known as an honest, compassionate man and boss.

A private memorial service will be held at a date to be determined, the family said. In lieu of flowers, relatives suggested a contribution to a charity of the donor’s choice.

Karl J. Karlson of The St. Paul Pioneer Press contributed to this report.

* For “In Lieu of Rosebud, Part I,” see my entry of October 10, 9:44 a.m., below.

My contributions:

Harry Lime  –

“In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock …”

The Catholic Encyclopedia –

It is with good reason that Spain and the Church venerate in St. Francis Borgia a great man and a great saint. The highest nobles of Spain are proud of their descent from, or their connexion with him. By his penitent and apostolic life he repaired the sins of his family and rendered glorious a name, which but for him, would have remained a source of humiliation for the Church.

His feast is celebrated 10 October.

The New York Times of October 11, 2002 –

This year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for literature is Imre Kertész, a writer on Auschwitz.

http://auschwitz.dk/Orson.htm –

In honor of Orson Welles and Bernard Ridder (who both died on October 10), of  Imre Kertész (who won a Nobel Prize on October 10), and of the parent site of the Third Man site,

http://auschwitz.dk,

this site’s music is now the Third Man Theme.

Happy National Depression Day!

Welcome to Hilbert’s Hotel…

Moray Eel Desk Clerk by Ralph Steadman
(missing drawing from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
15″x 22″. Edition of 50. $175

“Although it’s always crowded,
you still can find some room…”

“Some of our patrons have
very SPECIFIC tastes.” 

In Lieu of Rosebud…

On this date in 1985, Orson Welles died

…sitting at his typewriter, working on the next day’s script changes for his movie,”The Other Side of the Wind.“

– Louis Bülow, The Third Man and Orson Welles

From a review of “Leaving Las Vegas” – a film starring Nicolas Cage that includes a tribute to Welles:

At least Cage dies without saying “Rosebud.”

To me, the musical equivalent of “Rosebud” in this film is a song that Sting sings on the soundtrack, “Angel Eyes,” which of course was rendered to perfection in Vegas by Sinatra long before Cage and Sting.

One visual equivalent, in turn, of “Angel Eyes,” is to me a sketch for a painting I did in 1976.  This has been likened to the many eyes of an angelic creature named Proginoskes in a novel for children and adolescents by Madeleine L’Engle.

Perhaps the dark cynicism of Leaving Las Vegas (the book) might be somewhat counterbalanced by the looney religiosity of A Wind in the Door, L’Engle’s novel.

At any rate, here are links to the “Angel Eyes”

music and picture.

© 1976 Steven H. Cullinane

Also, “Angel Eyes” is now the background music for this site; one night of the Bach midi was enough.

Annie’s Song

In honor of Apollo (see entries below) and of the Red Mass celebrated tonight on the TV drama “The West Wing,” this site’s music is, for the time being, Bach’s

Mass in B minor  (BWV.232) 
   § 17. Et in spiritum sanctum (10k) (arr. for 2 guitars by Richard Yates) (David Lovell)

from the Classical Guitar Midi Archives.

ART WARS:

Apollo and Dionysus

From the New York Times of October 9, 2002:

Daniel Deverell Perry, a Long Island architect who created the marble temple of art housing the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., died Oct. 2 in Woodstock, N.Y…. He was 97.

From The Birth of Tragedy, by Friedrich Nietzsche (tr. by Shaun Whiteside):

Chapter 1….

To the two gods of art, Apollo and Dionysus, we owe our recognition that in the Greek world there is a tremendous opposition, as regards both origins and aims, between the Apolline art of the sculptor and the non-visual, Dionysiac art of music.

Chapter 25….

From the foundation of all existence, the Dionysiac substratum of the world, no more can enter the consciousness of the human individual than can be overcome once more by that Apolline power of transfiguration, so that both of these artistic impulses are forced to unfold in strict proportion to one another, according to the law of eternal justice.  Where the Dionysiac powers have risen as impetuously as we now experience them, Apollo, enveloped in a cloud, must also have descended to us; some future generation will behold his most luxuriant effects of beauty.

Notes: 

• On the Clark Art Institute, from Perry’s obituary in the Times:
  

  “When it opened in 1955, overlooking 140 acres of fields and ponds, Arts News celebrated its elegant galleries as the ‘best organized and most highly functional museum erected anywhere.’”

  
  
• The “Nymphs and Satyr” illustration above is on the cover of “CAI: Journal of the Clark Art Institute,” Volume 3, 2002.  It is a detail from the larger work of the same title by William Bouguereau.
  
  
  
• Today, October 9, is the anniversary of the dedication in 28 B.C. of the Temple to Apollo on the Palatine Hill in Rome.  See the journal entry below, which emphasizes the point that Apollo and Dionysus are not as greatly opposed as one might think.

See also
The Angel in the Stone

“Everything is found
and lost and buried
and then found again”
– Tanya Wendling

“The main character is Maurice Castle, the head of the Africa station for a branch of British intelligence….  [the] writing is sparse and neat rather than languid or flowery….”
– Kevin Holtsberry 

From Chapter I: 

“Castle could see that telling the truth this time had been an error of judgement, yet, except on really important occasions, he always preferred the truth.  The truth can be double-checked.”

On fiction and truth: 

Here is a short story that is
tight, focused, sparse, and neat.

The story is also true.

Mate in 2  V. Nabokov, 1919

This problem embodies the “starflight” theme;
for details, see Tim Krabbé’s
 Open Chess Diary, entry 9.

As the example of Nabokov shows, a taste for truth (as in chess or geometry) may accompany a taste for fiction.  This applies also to Krabbé, as shown by the following reviews of his novel The Cave:

New York Times
“Krabbe’s carefully constructed narrative has a geometry so precise that the patterns buried under the surface emerge only in the final pages.”

Library Journal
“A diamond of a book- perfectly proportioned, multifaceted, and containing not one wasted word”

Music for R.D. Laing

In honor of the birth in Scotland on this date in 1927 of R. D. Laing, author of The Facts of Life, this site’s music is today taken from the classic film “The Piano.”

From the 1991 4th draft of Jane Campion’s screenplay for
                     “The Piano”:

Twenty-first Century Fox

On Sunday, October 6, 1889, the Moulin Rouge music hall opened in Paris, an event that to some extent foreshadowed the opening of Fox Studios Australia in Sydney on November 7, 1999.  The Fox ceremonies included, notably, Kylie Minogue singing “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend.” 

For the mathematical properties of the red windmill (moulin rouge) figure at left, see Diamond Theory.