{"id":26310,"date":"2015-04-27T20:35:58","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T19:35:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/norkhosq.net\/?p=26310"},"modified":"2015-04-27T22:54:01","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T21:54:01","slug":"enchanters-of-men-lashed-to-the-mast-and-snow-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/?p=26310","title":{"rendered":"Enchanters of Men, Lashed to the Mast and Snow Storm"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"By Khatchatur \u00a0I. \u00a0Pilikian<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Khatchatur Pilikian, member of Labour Heritage national committee writes on art and society. His paper on William Turner, a painter with working class routes is sent out with <\/strong><\/em>Labour Heritage Bulletin Spring 2015.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Turner depicted a wide range of musical instruments (woodwind, brass, strings, keyboard, percussion, cymbals, castanets, bag-pipe, etc.). The metamorphosis of Turner\u2019s musical emotions into visual images were most probably initiated by synaesthesia \u2014 the \u2018joined sensation\u2019 impulses. 1<\/p>\n

Turner\u2019s 1842 Royal Academy exhibit Snow Storm<\/em> (B & J 398) is one among many such paintings.<\/p>\n

The clue, or better, the key to Snow Storm<\/em>\u2019s \u2018musical performance\u2019 is camouflaged with Turner\u2019s own words: \u2018I got the sailors to lash me to the mast to observe it\u2019 2 — sentence frequently quoted by Turner\u2019s scholars. One such mention belongs to Prof. Luke Herrmann in TSN 80 (Dec 98, p 6). He alludes to an excerpt from Roger\u2019s poem The Voyage of Columbus <\/em>and a vignette illustrating Columbus<\/em> titled A Tempest <\/em>(W 1207, R 403) Turner drew with twenty three other vignette illustrations for the 1834 edition of Roger\u2019s Poems <\/em>(which included Columbus <\/em>as\u00a0 its final item). Prof. Herrmann describes the Tempest<\/em> vignette thus: \u2018…galleons of a strong sea…enormous dark phantom holding a torch and surrounded by spectral archers.\u2019<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Prof. Herrmann thus wonders whether Turner was \u2018telling the truth\u2019 when he was talking about himself as being \u2018lashed to the mast\u2019, or perhaps Turner \u2018had the eerie lines [Columbus<\/em>] and his beautiful vignette [Tempest<\/em>] in mind\u2019.\u00a0 He also reminds us of the earlier and \u2018remarkably similar\u2019 story associated with the 18th century French marine painter Joseph Vernet.<\/p>\n

\"Joseph<\/h5>\n
Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour\u2019s Mouth making Signals in a Shallow Water, and going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night of the Ariel left Harwich<\/em><\/strong>. <\/em>Turners own label to his oil on canvas<\/span><\/h5>\n

Alongside our legitimate doubts concerning the reported accounts ascribed to Turner which are sometimes even referred to as \u2018myths\u2019, we might as well, I truly believe, dig deep down the path through a real myth, the Odyssey \u2014 <\/em>the most influential epic tale ever narrated by a Bard in the Western culture.<\/p>\n

Turner’s absorption by Homer\u2019s Epic had already produced in 1829 what Ruskin called \u2018the central picture in Turner\u2019s career\u2019, namely Ulysses Deriding Polyphemus-Homer\u2019s Odyssey <\/em>(B & J 330, Text p.184).\u00a0 Kathleen Nicholson has rightly observed that \u2018Stories drawn from ancient epic poetry held a privileged position in Turner\u2019s classical oeuvre.\u2019 3<\/p>\n

If delved to the core of Homer\u2019s narrative, one is overwhelmed by the frequent influx of sound-images which drive one to ponder whether the most plausible source of all the above mentioned eerie tales (\u2018lashed to the mast‘ and a \u2018hero struggling in a tempest\u2019, including Roger\u2019s Columbus<\/em>) <\/em>should not be considered the mythical tale of an eerie \u2018musical performance\u2019 followed by a Tempest in Odyssey.<\/em><\/p>\n

Beside Homer the Greek, the Latin Virgil was another \u2018privileged\u2019 Bard whose colourful and labyrinthine narrative ignited Turner\u2019s imagination. In an intriguing rendering of the encounter of Aeneas with Sybil, titled The Golden Bough <\/em>(B & J 335) of 1834, Aeneas amazingly is not even in Turner\u2019s picture, unlike a picture he had painted back in c.1798, Aeneas and the Sybil, Lake Avernus <\/em>(B & J 34) and then again in 1814-15, Lake Avernus, Aeneas and the Cumean Sybil <\/em>(B & J 226). Instead Turner has depicted a lyre on the floor, close by a couple of maidens, one seated, another reclining. In Virgil\u2019s original, the cavern is Apollo\u2019s ward, and Aeneas reminds Sybil how Orpheus with his Thracian lyre and tunes had reached \u2018the spirit of his bride\u2019. 4<\/p>\n

As always, Turner never misses a \u2018musical\u2019 episode in a tale. His depiction of the lyre is a reference to Apollo and Orpheus. However Sybil is painted without Aeneas. She is standing in front of a gateway, with a \u2018golden bough\u2019 in her hand. The bough, an ancient symbol of life, was to protect and guide Aeneas to summon the spirit of his father Anchises. The absence of Aeneas in The Golden Bough <\/em>seems only to suggest, therefore, that Turner has depicted the legend of Aeneas also with himself in mind, seeking out — a fallacious hope indeed — his own beloved father, who had died five years earlier in 1829.<\/p>\n

A strikingly similar identification with another mythical hero is also discernible, when Turner painted one of his masterpieces, namely Snow Storm <\/em>(B & J 398) of 1842 in which no human figure seems to have been at all painted. But then, that is the crux.<\/p>\n

It is literally impossible for anyone reading Homer\u2019s Odyssey <\/em>to forget the tale about the Sirens, the bird-like creatures with the heads of women. Unforgettable it surely is also because of it being frequently retold, like a leitmotiv, <\/em>at the heart of Book XII of Homer\u2019s epic stretching to XXIV Books.<\/p>\n

Let us follow the frequency and the pattern of that tale as told in Book XII of the Odyssey, <\/em>not in Pope\u2019s translation which Turner read, but in a relatively more recent rendering into English by Ennis Rees. Rees has kept the original name of the hero, Odysseus, in the narrative, discarding the Latinised name, Ulysses, <\/em>which Turner sometimes used.<\/p>\n

First telling: The magician, Circe, advises Odysseus, king of Ithaca, how to proceed with his return voyage back to his home, leaving her house (Circe\u2019s island Aeaea) where the hero and his comrades were wined and dined for a whole year.<\/p>\n

Pay attention to what I shall tell you, and God himself \/ Will help you remember. First you\u2019ll come to the Sirens, \/ Enchanters\u00a0 of\u00a0 men. Whoever in ignorance comes near them \/ [\u2026] \/ With the clear liquid tones of their song, the Sirens bewitch him, \/ [\u2026] Here knead some sweet wax, stop up the ears of your comrades, \/ [\u2026] But if you yourself want to listen, have them tie you, \/ Hand and foot, upright on the thwart supporting \/ The mast and lash you securely to the mast itself. \/ That you may enjoy the dulcet song of the Sirens. \/ And if you implore and command your friends to release you, They must tie you still tighter with even more ropes. <\/strong>5<\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Second telling: Odysseus speaks to his comrades after listening to Circe\u2019s advice, informing them about her predictions.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] First she bade me avoid the song \/\u00a0 Of the Sirens [\u2026] \/ [\u2026] \/ But you must bind me fast with ropes so tight \/ [\u2026] And lash me securely to the mast itself, and if \/ I implore and command you to release me, tie me \/ Still tighter with even more ropes. <\/strong>6 <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Third telling: Odysseus informs Alcinous, king of the Phaeacians who gave him shelter, how he and his comrades prepared themselves for Circe\u2019s predictions.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

And they bound me hand and foot in the ship, upright \/ On the thwart supporting the mast and lashed me securely \/ To the mast itself.<\/strong>7<\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Fourth telling: Odysseus continues his tale to Alcinous, at the point when he hears the two Sirens singing.<\/p>\n

Most famous Odysseus, linger a while. . . \/ \u00a0And listen as we two blend our voices. . . \/ The honeyed tones of our song. <\/strong>8<\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Finishing his recollection of the Siren\u2019s duet song, Odysseus continues the story by repeating obsessively, yet again, the same episodes, albeit in different words.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

[\u2026] and I [\u2026] \/ [\u2026] ordered my men to release me, [\u2026] \/ [\u2026] And soon Perimedes and Eurylochus got up and drew \/ My bonds tighter and added still more. [\u2026] <\/strong>9 <\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

The leitmotiv <\/em>tale finally succeeds in lashing the reader\u2019s memory to the mast. . . Circe first told Odysseus that \u2018God himself will help the hero \u2018to remember\u2019 her tale. To assure its impact on the reader or the listener of the epic story, let alone its impact on Odysseus himself as Circe would wish, the tale is narrated twice as a prediction, and then twice while the prediction actually takes place, with the preparations preceding it. The impact itself thus becomes predictable – acquiring an unforgettable imprint, which exactly is the case with Turner. He is remembering, hence retelling the tale in his own way, never mind as his own experience: \u2018I got the sailors to lash me to the mast to observe it; I was lashed for four hours, and I did not expect to escape, but I felt bound to record it if I did.\u201910<\/p>\n

It seems obvious that Turner\u00a0 \u2018becoming\u00a0 Odysseus\u2019 is\u00a0 recording \/ remembering the four times\/hours leitmotiv<\/em> of the \u2018Enchanters of men\u2019 with the hero \u2018lashed to the mast\u2019, while he, Turner, was painting his Snow Storm <\/em>in 1842. As a latter-day Bard enacting to \u2018show\u2019 his narrative, Turner, performing his own story in colours, is also reported to have said that he \u2018did not paint to be understood\u2019, but \u2018wished to show <\/em>what such a scene was like\u2019(my italics<\/em>). Furthermore, Turner insisted that \u2018no one had any business to like the picture [Snow Storm<\/em>].\u201911\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Unless of course, we may well add with confidence, if that \u2018one\u2019 was capable of \u2018listening\u2019 and experiencing a \u2018live performance\u2019 of a storm, albeit a painted storm. Hence the painting in question is to be experienced as a colour-recorded \u2018show\u2019, first and foremost.<\/p>\n

It is also quite indicative that the episodes of the Sirens and the \u2018lashed hero\u2019 are followed by a crescendo of adventures throughout Book XII, which eventually culminate in a mighty storm. Odysseus is adamant to let Alcinous hear about that devastating storm from the mouth of the sole survivor, himself, Odysseus, the mighty hero.<\/p>\n

The West Wind came shrieking upon us, a blow of hurricane \/<\/strong> <\/strong>[\u2026] \/ Then, with a great clasp of thunder, Zeus hurled his bolt. <\/strong>12<\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

When all was lost to the storm \u2014 the ship destroyed and comrades drowned \u2014 it is worth underlining the fact that the image of \u2018lashing the mast\u2019 was nevertheless still preserved by Homer as an essential metaphor to bring his hero to a safe haven eventually. It is precisely this which Turner has targeted in Homer to express his own life\u2019s predicament.<\/p>\n

[\u2026] I lashed \/ The keel and mast together, and aboard these two \/ I was driven on by the havocking winds.<\/strong>13<\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

Homer\u2019s modern translator E. Rees has this to say about Odysseus: \u2018[\u2026] he seldom tells strangers anything literally. He prefers to fabricate, to speak in metaphor and say precisely what his experience has been like. These stories and fabulous tales, he says in effect, are like <\/em>what I have been through, [\u2026]\u201914 \u00a0(Translator\u2019s italics<\/em> )<\/p>\n

One wonders whether the profile of Homer\/Odysseus sketched by Rees might not be reflected into Turner\u2019s own silhouette!<\/p>\n

It is beyond any reasonable doubt that Homer\u2019s flashy and luscious sound-images in Odyssey<\/em>, Book XII, are the stuff Turner\u2019s own \u2018lashed to the mast\u2019 tale is made of, as is his painting of 1842 which he \u2018narrated\u2019 bard-like as: Snow Storm – Steam-Boat off a Harbour\u2019s Mouth making Signals in a Shallow Water, and going by the Lead. The Author was in this Storm on the Night of the Ariel left Harwich. <\/em>(B & J 398)<\/p>\n

We should not be surprised then to discover that: \u2018Despite Turner\u2019s title, no ship called Ariel <\/em>is known to have been lost or involved in a storm in the years immediately preceding 1842, nor is any ship of that name known to have operated out of Harwich at this time.\u2019(B & J Text, p.247)<\/p>\n

Surely, Turner might well have witnessed a few storms by then.<\/p>\n

But then, of course, once upon a time there was Greece, and Greek culture became\u00a0 the logos <\/em>of Western Civilisation. There was Homer and his Odyssey, with Hermes at his service. Then Shakespeare\u00a0 came and his Tempest, with Ariel in Prospero\u2019s service, before Turner rose to greet them both with a Snow Storm, with his Memories at his own service \u2014 conducting with a brush their Enchanting Symphonies.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

—————————————————-<\/p>\n

Notes<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em>1\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Richard E, Cytowic, Synaesthesia: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology<\/em>, reprinted from Psyche<\/em> (1996). In Synaesthesia:\u00a0 Classic and Contemporary Readings,<\/em> ed. S. Baron-Cohen and E. Harrison, 1997, p. 17.<\/p>\n

2\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Turner\u2019s alleged conversation with Rev. W. Kingsley, reported by J. Ruskin, in the latter\u2019s fifth\u00a0 edition\u00a0 of\u00a0 notes\u00a0 on Turner\u00a0 pictures\u00a0 on\u00a0 view\u00a0 at\u00a0 Marlborough\u00a0 House.\u00a0 In\u00a0 B & J, Text, 1984, p. 247.<\/p>\n

.3\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Kathleen Nicholson, Turner\u2019s Classical Landscapes: Myth & Meaning, <\/em>1990, p.264.<\/p>\n

4\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 John Jackson, trans., VIRGIL – The Aeneid, <\/em>1995, p. 92.<\/p>\n

5\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ennis Rees, trans., The Odyssey of Homer<\/em>, 1977, p. 196.<\/p>\n

6\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rees, op. cit., p. 200.<\/p>\n

7\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid., p. 201.<\/p>\n

8\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n

9\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n

10\u00a0\u00a0 B & J, Text, 1984, p. 247.<\/p>\n

11\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid.<\/p>\n

12\u00a0\u00a0 Rees, op. cit., p. 209.<\/p>\n

13\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid..<\/p>\n

14\u00a0\u00a0 Ibid., Introduction, p.x.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n


\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Khatchatur \u00a0I. \u00a0Pilikian Khatchatur Pilikian, member of Labour Heritage national committee writes on art and society. His paper on William Turner, a painter with working class routes is sent…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26310"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26318,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26310\/revisions\/26318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/norkhosq.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}