Vikings - Season 3, Episode 8 - See Paris and Die - NO SPOILERS

Vikings' "To the Gates!" may be the best, and certainly among the very best, prolonged battle scenes put up on screen.*  It's certainly the best ever made-for-television battle.

Even knowing some of the historical background on which the last episodes of season three are drawing there were moments when it was impossible to not to think:

"See Paris -- and Die."

Those were deeply disturbing moments.

Now Ragnar knows the weak places and strong places of Paris's defenses.  He knows how the Francia soldiers fight, and their variety of weapons.  He's got a sense of the commander who directs the defense.  He also knows how much religious faith matters in the battles. However, Ragnar's lost . . .  how many men?

O Lagertha!  At least you promised to kill him . . . sometime . . . .

A very great deal happens in this episode beyond the hewing, hacking, bleeding, burning, drowning and dying, but I will not speak of them for fear of spoiling.**

However, this can't be a spoiler, or much of one anyway: The writer(s) made magnificent use of the Oriflamme, as it played such a big role in some of the wars and battles of the English-Normans and France at times during the Plantagenet reign.  Which means descendants of the Norse will still be dealing with the banner of St. Denys in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries.  Not the same banner-textile, obviously, after hundreds of years, but there's always an Oriflamme since about the 6th century.  In terms purely of the episode the Oriflamme's presence underscored how much this season has been about conflicting religions and how these conflicts inevitably play out by fire and sword.

The last two episodes, judging by this one, will be killers.

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*  Among these very best battle scenes this watcher would include more than one battle and siege from the 1961 film,  El Cid (this film also has the best castles).  Recall too, there was no blue / green screen or CGI then.  Every once in a while, in the days before digitization and dvds and streaming and all the other ways we revel in our watching now, El Cid would show up in a local art theater.  This film was done in the days of cinemascope and alas the days of theaters with one of those screens made for that were long gone before I got to learn of El Cid.  But I have watched in theaters like the Film Forum several times.

**  One of these involved the Francia princess, Gisla, daughter of Charles the Bald (who is not historically an emperor though they call him that in Vikings) whom I always wish to call by her historic name, Judith.  But there's already Judith in the series. She's not used in her historical position either, since by the historical record, Judith was Æthelwulf's second wife, and she had no children by Æthelwulf', or anyone else .  However, when it comes to the liberties Vikings takes with history, this doesn't bother me.  First because Ragnar himself probably didn't exist outside the sagas, but rather was a composite figure.  Which is why the timeslips don't generally bother me either.  Sagas didn't necessarily progress in any careful linear narrative line in which every point between getting between A and G is described much less even mentioned.

What Romantic Art Means - "Critique of Reason"

This is a "sweeping, 300-piece survey of the movement at the Yale University Art Gallery."  The majority of the pieces were produced by English artists as it's a collaboration between the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art.

 

The first major collaborative exhibition between the Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art, The Critique of Reason offers an unprecedented opportunity to display together treasured works from both museums’ collections. The show comprises paintings, sculptures, medals, watercolors, drawings, prints, and photographs by such iconic artists as William Blake, Théodore Géricault, Francisco de Goya, and Joseph Mallord William Turner. The broad range of work selected challenges the traditional notion of the Romantic artist as a brooding genius given to introversion and fantasy. Instead, the exhibition’s eight thematic sections juxtapose arresting works that reveal the Romantics as attentive explorers of their natural and cultural worlds. The Critique of Reason celebrates the richness and range of Yale’s Romantic holdings, presenting them afresh for a new generation of museumgoers.

 

Since seeing the film, Mr. Turner, last year, Romanticism has again been much on my mind, and wondering how much, if any impact it had upon the thought of the new United States and her political - intellectual classes.
 

The War for Independence has been profiled as a product of the Enlightenment, without considering that continental and British Romanticism might have had equal or even contradictory influence. For instance, see the successive religious waves of  The Great Awakening, and their huge footprint in American history.

The Whitney Plantation Museum

CBS News did a segment about it. Their commentary afterwards isn't the usual empty drivel.  Among what the segment includes is the mother of of someone we know learning that her first American ancestor was brought from Africa to the Whitney.

Video here.

The word is getting out.  People are being as deeply affected as Mr. Cummings, the creator of this slavery memorial art, has wanted.

Other Foxhome entries about the Whitney Plantation Museum here, and here.

BBC / PBS Wolf Hall - First Episode, "Three Card Trick"

PBS broadcast the first of Wolf Hall's six episode this past Sunday. So much had been written about it earlier this year when it ran in the UK.  Many viewers / reviewers seemed to think the characters mis-cast, the lighting too dim, and the pacing far too slow, while Cromwell, whose story this is, is not ruthless and dangerous enough.

The impression I have taken away from the first episode is rather different.  That it is not afraid to take its time is a pleasurable relief.  The dimness of scenes at night or in enclosed, windowless spaces contrast not only dramatically in terms of light and cinematography, but in terms of the narrative and characters up on the screen.  This flows naturally out of how the visual adaptation meshes these period light and dark realities with Mantell's third person intrusive narrative style, and her Cromwell's memory sweeps back-and-forth through time. I'm guessing that the scenes featuring King Henry or Anne Boleyn in this first episode will, as the series progresses, become darker for them both.

Claire Foy as Anne Boleyn with Damian Lewis as King Henry VIII. Lewis is a terrific choice for King Henry as I've never gotten over him as the loathsome Soames in The Forsyte Saga. This is a terrific still from "Three Card Trick" because one of the exaggerated cods of the period is evident, which are part of the series' costuming, though they were all hidden under the skirts and voluminous layers designed for the actors.

The way Anne was played in "Three Card Trick", she was unlikeable and not strikingly different from the other women around her. One wonders what she possesses to so obsess the King, other than the fact that he was not allowed to possess her body entirely without marriage. To keep a king dangling for so many years Anne Boleyn had to have other features, one would think. (The Tudors, to give that much criticized series its due, did do this, and did it very well, with no little credit to Natalie Dormer; this makes Claire Foy a most courageous actress, following Dormer's Anne.) Henry, with all his flaws, faults, foolishnesses and paranoia, was not unintelligent, nor ignorant, and he was a personality possessed of great curiosity.  Perhaps a clue can be found in this first episodes most perceptive line, which further indicates a great deal about Cardinal Wolsey, King Henry and Thomas Cromwell -- and Anne Boleyn.  It is suggested to Cromwell the reason for Wolsey's fall from the king's favor is due to the Cardinal having overreached in his pride, thus the king punished him -- this was Wolsey's error.  Cromwell responds -- the words are not 100% exact, merely recalled: "The only mistake the Cardinal made was making an enemy of Anne Boleyn."

Claire Foy as Kate Balfour in Crossbones.

Personally, I don't care for Claire Foy as Anne, disliking her character's style  in Crossbones.  Her style is equally abrasive in Wolf Hall.

However, though Cromwell rode to success and power the king's and Boleyn's obsession to be married legally, I'm not sure he particularly liked Anne, or cared about her at all. He couldn't afford to, of course.  It was the king he served. Second, Wolf Hall is Cromwell's story, not Boleyn's or even King Henry's. So Boleyn and the king -- and Thomas More -- are as Cromwell perceives them within his own arc, which I, as viewer, must keep in mind.

Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall

As for Rylance not projecting the coiled threat and danger that Cromwell must have been, with his first decades so infused with violence committed upon him and violence he himself committed -- watch his Cromwell's eyes watching everyone and everything while no one looks at this nobody. Watch how still he is in his watching, how his seemingly affectless remarks in response to his enemies' such

Anton Lessor, playing Thomas More in Wolf Hall.

as Thomas More lets out the bile of their insults to him like a stiletto thrust lets out blood from flesh. He's so still, that the king, Anne, More -- anyone who doesn't know him as his family knows him -- can see anything they wish in his delivery -- even humor, which is not lacking in Cromwell, if one is paying attention -- and we see early that the Henry does pay attention. All three of these trump cards of the three card trick, Cromwell, Henry and Boleyn, are always paying attention to everything and everyone. Their personal survival more than anyone else's depend on on seeing what is really there.

Thus a man whose wishes to become necessary to a king's administration and exchequer cannot be overtly projecting an image of himself as a weapon ready to strike anyone and anywhere anytime. This is particularly true if one is baseborn, surrounded by noble enemies.

I personally appreciate very much this approach of Rylance to Cromwell's character.

Yes, Wolf Hall, particularly because of Rylance, bodes well. I will also enjoy being able to watch it without a week's interruption when it's on dvd.

About the costuming:

This was an era of worse than usual cold, as well as when men were men, who supposedly exhibited their most manly of their manly selves in war and combat, so all the bulk of the clothes. But all those bare bosoms, FREEZING!

Ann Leckie - Ancillary Sword

Leckie, Anne (2014) Ancillary Sword. Orbit – Hachette. New York.

Why have the covers of these books been made so ugly while reflecting nothing of what's inside?

Ancillary Sword reads as fast as its predecessor, Ancillary Justice. I began reading it about 10 PM on Thursday night, and finished it during Friday night's reading hours. It's accidental that I read this book only hours before the Hugo awards short list was announced. 

Some readers have said Ancillary Sword wasn't up to the quality of Ancillary Justice. I don't agree. However, I think I can see why some feel this way. It's like traveling anywhere: you can only see it for the first time once.

Justice educated us into understanding the strangenesses of the world Leckie created.  The grammar is used as we currently usually employ English grammar. But it takes time to comprehend the vocabulary in which Sword of Justice is written. It is almost entirely Leckie's usage of gendered nouns and pronouns that creates the strange of Radchaai space and its citizens -- yet the full collective noun, is the non-gendered "human". Since Justice has educated us into seeing and hearing what was initially strange and puzzling, Sword is more immediately accessible to the reader than Justice was. As Sword is more immediately accessible some think it is a bit disappointing.

In terms of language driving the narrative, the plot and and dramatizing the narrator-protagonist Breq, even the titles of the books provide another sophisticated and intriguing dimension to the series.  In Justice, it was the sword on which we focus, i.e. how the ruler of a planetary empire employs organized military violence and war, to adjudicate the imperium's disputes and conflicts, even, literally within itself.  In Sword, it’s about how justice -- legal, political, social – can be employed to counter even Anaander Mianaai's imperial inner conflicts, as well as specific disputes in specific places.

In both books, the outcomes still depend upon how particular minds choose their own employment of violence and law, on behalf of individuals and collective entities. These collective entities are also themselves often individuals, so to speak, contained within a larger collective, such as the captive labor in generational perpetuity labor slavery within the larger collective of the empire, spiraling down through containment within the planetary system, the planet, the tea plantations and the administrations of all of them.

Though the second novel is titled Ancillary Sword, Fleet Commander Breq serves on a Radch imperium Mercy (of Kalr) ship, while being countered by a Sword (of Atagaris) ship, complete with the ancillaries, which Breq's Mercy ship doesn't have. But it is justice, strained through mercy, that Breq must wield, for the survival of her ship and mission, not the sword of military violence.

Ancillary Sword tackles other issues of an imperium's violence as well: colonization, exploitation and slavery, as well as wars of conquest and civil war for control that are not only inevitable to empire, but even, in many ways, an empire's raison d'etre (see: Napoleon's empire, to examine this signature of imperium from fairly close period in our own time, but one distant enough in history that we can see it more clearly than our own).

Leckie give us all this, not only through characters' dilemmas, but with language.  She creates an exciting work of fiction that interrogates the boundaries of civic responsibility for individuals whether AI, such Station Administrator Celar, or collective individuals such as the variety of ancillaries, and the variety of levels that make up the whole society of the Atohoek (ad hoc?) planetary system, at this moment, within the Radch imperium. This is an impressive achievement. 

So far the Ancillary novels are among the most original, most interesting writing achievements that has come out of science fiction in quite a few years.

Vikings - Anniversary of Paris 845 Siege 'n Sack

In the 9th century, 845, when Paris was part of the kingdom given to Charles the Bald, one of Charlemagne's grandsons.*  I don't know though, exactly when 

Charles the Bald enthroned.

Easter took place in 845, but the siege began in March.

It surely has delighted the History Channel's Vikings team to begin their interpretation of the Siege of Paris with episode 7, which broadcast last night, three days before Easter.


As well as extracting an enormous weight of silver, the Vikings' siege of 845 taught Monsieur Bald to build fortified bridges leading up to, into, the city.

Nevertheless this was not the end of invasions from the Norse, attacks on Paris 
and danegeld (or, gafol, in 11th century sources).  For that matter this wasn't the first invasion of the Norse into Francia, but this one really brought the gafol home!

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*   Fans of the History Channel's Vikings series (of whom I am one), please take note this sentence in the above-link to the history of the siege:  

In March 845,^[5] a fleet of 120 Danish Viking ships^[1][6] containing more than 5,000 men^[7] entered the Seine under the command of a Danish chieftain^[8] named "Reginherus", or Ragnar.^[1] This Ragnar has often been tentatively identified with the legendary saga figure Ragnar Lodbrok, but the historicity of the latter remains a disputed issue among historians.^[5][7]

Dear Mother - a Misty Moisty Morning ....

Before, and after, the Battle of Antietam, the bloodiest single day of the war --

September 17th, 1862. Near Sharpsburg. On the field. Dear Mother, It is a misty moisty morning. We are engaging the enemy and are drawn up in support of Hooker who is now banging away most briskly. I write in the saddle to send you my love and to say that I am very well so far. Dearest mother, I am wounded so as to be helpless. Goodbye if so it must be I think I die in victory.... Dearest love to father and all my dear brothers. Our troops have left the part of the field where I lay -- Mother, Mrs. Wilder. All is well with those that have faith.

From This Republic of Suffering: Death and The American Civil War (2008), by Drew Gilpin Faust. This is the work upon which the PBS series, The American Experience, drew upon for its excellent -- as far as it goes -- 1 hour and 56 minutes Death and the Civil War program, produced by Ric Burns, narrated by poet and undertaker, Thomas Lynch, a variety of historians, including Drew Gilpin Faust, David W. Blight, George F. Will and -- as Faust is the single female head / voice -- there a single historian of color, Vincent Brown. The program is available on dvd, and currently streams on Netflix.  PBS has a transcript of the program available online and available as a pdf download.

Based on Faust's book, the program explores how the Civil War changed everything in our national attitude and practices about death, about the body and the relationship of service and obligation to the body of its citizens to the nation and the nation's and government's to the body.  No single aspect of the body and death remained unaffected by the War, from the comforting narrative of the "good death," to the previously uncommon practice of embalming the dead body, which grew out of the need of relatives reclaiming their dead from southern battlefields to bring home where they could be buried with their own loved ones, in their own ground.

Many years ago, learning that after the Battle of Gettysburg, on the battlefield were over 3,000 dead horses and mules, I wondered for the first time, "Who cleaned up these battlefields when the shooting stopped?" because I had no idea. I asked people, but none of them knew either, other than supposing in the south African Americans were given the job.*  Evidently we all supposed that battlefields in the Civil War -- and in all wars, even those of the Napoleonic era -- were handled the way we've learned from watching films and reading novels about WWI and WWII, with ambulances, nurses and doctors in the field performing triage, semi-orderly transfer after the battle to waiting hospitals, adequately staffed with medical and military personnel.  Inventories of persons dead and injured taken, against the records of their units, commanding officers relaying the information to whatever desk or agency to inform the relatives, and so on.  Bodies shipped home, the injured to safer hospitals and decent burials for those who were missing records and / or relatives.

The caption says:  "Wagons of the 57th New York's ambulance corps remove wounded from the field after the Battle of Fredricksburg." 

None of that happened during most of the Civil War years, or before the Civil War, anywhere. There was not even an ambulance corps before 1864. A system for an ambulance corps,whose duty was to take the wounded off the battlefield during the battle, if possible,  and after, to an aid station, and then to a field hospital, was instituted by a campaign waged by a civilian, Henry Ingersoll Bowditch (1808 - 1892) of Massachusetts (a fascinating fellow in his own right), in company with Clara Barton and several military physicians within the Army of the Potomac. It began work just in time for the bloodiest year of the war.  Two thirds of the Civil War casualties began in 1864.

Nathaniel Bowditch

Bowditch received a telegram that his son, Nathaniel, had been wounded,  He raced to Washington to give aid and assistance, only to learn his son was already dead.  Convinced that Nathaniel would have survived if he'd received medical attention more quickly, he harnessed the power of his grief and anger so that others might survive what his own son did not.  Yet, even in his own last days, Bowditch was never able to reconcile himself to his son's death.  The sheer scale of the dead and wounded, killed and maimed in mass slaughter, the sheer numbers of bodies never identified, never buried, never found, even after the war was finished, the nation failed to reconcile.

Within two months of Appomattox began the evolution of the National Cemetery Program, with an organized, concerted military program to recover from the south the Union dead of unburied bodies and those bodies buried en masse.  They recovered those buried by comrades who'd made careful notes with directions for the families of those who died from disease or other causes besides battle. The corps went to every battleground and quartered it and the surrounding landscape, gathering bodies, exhuming others. The southerners would not help and where possible hindered their work. Many Union dead were found mutilated, not by battle, but after death, and often, it appeared, before death too, thrown into ditches without even a stitch of clothing.  It was the local people of color who made possible many of these recoveries for reinterment in the national cemeteries, as they literally knew where the bodies were buried -- or not buried, as was often the case.

Gettysburg National Cemetery. When Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address nearly half the bodies that fell in the battle remained unburied.  The stench of decay and rot was pervasive and lasted into the winter.

The southern political class objected vociferously to this program which spent public funds for the decent burials of the invading army -- about four million by the time it was concluded in 1871. There ensued some discussion about unfair the former secessionist felt this treated them and their dead. The recovery program became the first vehicle and remained the most powerful one driving their conviction that they were the victims of the north, that the Union started the war and invaded them without pretext. Much generous admiration was expressed at the way the women of the south stepped in, as private individuals, to do the same for the confederate dead -- with only private donations, no government funding at all.

Vincent Brown refuted this neoconfederate justification by saying, "The South didn't fire on the North over the issue of respectable burials.  The South fired on the North in order to expand of slavery into the whole nation."

He didn't say it, but I thought, "The South fired on the North in order own the bodies as well as the service and loyalty of others without any obligation to even allow them food to eat.  So much did the South believe they owned those bodies  -- meaning the slavocracy power elite who made this war --  that many of them even expected those bodies to go to war and die to defend the slavocracy's ownership of themselves, and saw nothing delusional in believing that.  No wonder the neoconfederates and their allies whatever their names might be now -- tea baggers, religious freedom righters, etc. -- are equally delusional.    And none of them believe in funding for anything, and hate government."

None of the speakers on the program say anything like this, but one cannot help but think about this too --

Even 150 years later, the nation remain unreconciled, as to what the government and nation owes to our most common property, our selves, A primary reason there was no ambulance corps, no agency for accounting the dead and wounded and sick as to identity, family and home, is that it cost money, public money, and the south, which dominated all aspects of the federal government for so long, would not have it. It was something for the public good, and they did not believe in the public good. So much did they dominate Washington, that from Washington, 1789, to Pierce, 1853, in all those years there were only two presidents who did not own slaves; both of them were named Adams.  Then there was Buchanan, who allowed the South to plunder the government and take whatever they could carry, including the treasury and even the petty cash, back down south to fund their confederacy.  That's how they did / do things. They still believe they are the victims.

On April 14th it is the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's death.

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* Gettysburg happened too soon for African American troops to be delegated to that most horrible work detail -- that happened officially only when African Americans were able to join the Union army, after the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.  Though unofficially, after battles on southern soil, the Army of the Potomac again used African American "contrabands" -- i.e. the self-emancipated to came to the Union lines.  But in the western theater things moved too quickly and there was no clean-up generally at all.