Divine Mania: Alteration of Consciousness in Ancient Greece by Yulia Ustinova

What role did altered states of consciousness play in the life of ancient Greek society? With consummate skill and scholarship, Yulia Ustinova answers this question in her book, Divine Mania: Alteration of Consciousness in Ancient Greece. It appears that the secret of the extraordinary creativity of the ancient Greeks was their receptivity to, and approval of, a particular altered state of consciousness they cultivated. Mania is the name for this but it must be qualified as “god-given.” Mania is a word that touches on a cluster of concepts: madness, ecstasy, and enthusiasm, engoddedness, to use Ustinova’s more vivid coinage. It seems a paradox that this special, strange and often quite frightening state of dissociation should be so closely linked to one of the most creative civilizations. Unlike the Roman and Egyptian, the Greek approved and recognized the value of god-inspired mania. Plato makes Socrates say in the Phaedrus that through mania we may obtain the “greatest blessings.” Whereas resistance to divine ecstasy can end in disaster, as Euripides illustrates in The Bacchants when Pentheus, a repressive authoritarian, tries to inhibit a posse of women from their ecstatic mountain dances. He is torn to shreds by his mother and her maniacal cohorts. This mindset of the ancient Greeks may have long ago petered out, but similar tendencies are constants, expressed in one form or another, throughout history.

The Biographer as Literary Artist

This chapter focuses on Philostratus’ Apollonius. It begins by examining Philostratus’ explicit rhetorical claims and his curiously ambiguous narrative stance, before moving on to the anecdotal and doxographical material, and the overall characterization of the hero. The chapter then considers some key thematic strands of the work that seem to stretch normal generic parameters, these being its focus on foreign exoticism, Greek antiquarianism, and Roman political history. In all of these cases, the interplay between Philostratus’ stated aims and his grandiose means reveals much about the kinds of cultural work that biography could do in Antiquity. The Apollonius announces itself as a self-contained sort of work, neatly defined by the scope and extent of a single human life, and that rhetorical position is never fully abandoned. Much of the rest of the text, however, will sorely test the limits of biographical form as its author strives to display his own consummate skill by piling the largest conceivable variety of Hellenic cultural topics into the life story of one man and creating an outrageously over-sized literary hero whose story is capable of bearing such a weight.

JOSEPH HOROVITZ (b. 1926)Lady Macbeth (1970)

This chapter considers Joseph Horovitz’s Lady Macbeth scena. This short, through-composed dramatic scena is extracted and compiled from different scenes of Shakespeare's play. It presents a vivid, multifaceted portrait of Lady Macbeth, showing her progression from lofty pride and ruthless ambition to guilt-ridden madness. The piece is meticulously crafted and the music’s flexible, chromatic tonality is cohesive and highly accessible. A faint tinge of Scottishness can be detected in the choice of rhythmic gestures. Extremes of range are eschewed: most of the work lies in middle register, avoiding any jarringly exaggerated chest-voice sounds. Accordingly, high notes are used sparingly. The palette of conflicting moods and emotions is conjured with consummate skill and rhythmic vitality. Rapid babblings are interspersed with bursts of outraged scorn and frustrated passion.

HANS WERNER HENZE (1926–2012)Three Auden Songs (1983)

This chapter studies songs for the tenor repertoire by Hans Werner Henze. Henze’s three songs, based on texts by the poet W. H. Auden, are a key example of his fastidious and beautifully-crafted vocal writing. Henze sets these three contrasting poems with utmost sensitivity. The fast-moving texts contain layers of subtlety, couched in a concise, freely chromatic musical language which sits easily in the voice. The settings build cumulatively in proportion and weight. A tiny, poignant tribute to a dead cat leads to a powerfully intuitive, four-verse portrait of the poet Arthur Rimbaud. This is followed by a substantial love song, full of tenderness and passion, yet controlled with consummate skill. The work is written in standard notation (without bar-lines) and should prove a rewarding vehicle for singers of relatively modest attainment as well as mature artists.

JOHN CASKEN (b. 1949)Ia Orana, Gauguin (1978)

This chapter explores one of John Casken’s more demanding cycles, Ia Orana, Gauguin. This is an enthralling and rewarding showpiece for both singer and pianist. The soprano's full range is deployed with consummate skill and flair, incorporating some highly original technical feats. In keeping with the subject matter, the atmosphere is exotic and colourful. The composer has evolved an ingenious and evocative amalgam of French and English words, employing painterly images with much alliteration. Syllables are used to striking vocal effect: bocca chiusa (humming) reiterations and elisions of nasal French consonants are especially telling. Text and music are pleasingly blended in true Lied tradition, and variable phrase lengths give added flexibility. The modernistic musical idiom also pays homage to French impressionism.

Fin-de-Siècle Yeats: Artistry and affect in “The Cap and Bells”

There have been various interpretations of W. B. Yeats’s “The Cap and Bells”, but little attention has been paid to those elements of its organization which make it effective as poetry. This article is concerned less with what the poem means than with how it means, through the choice and placement of words, phrases, and images in a sequence that not only tells a story but shapes it so as to engage our feelings. The essence of this verbal artefact lies in the emotional progression, conveyed with consummate skill, from frustrated longing to fulfilment. Comparison between the version that Yeats first published in The National Observer in 1894 and the revised version included in The Wind Among the Reeds (1899) reveals Yeats’s increased technical skill.

Marketing artistic careers: Pablo Picasso as brand manager

Purpose – In recent years, scholars have begun suggesting that marketing can learn a lot from art and art history. This paper aims to build on that work by developing the proposition that successful artists are powerful brands. Design/methodology/approach – Using archival data and biographies, this paper explores the branding acumen of Pablo Picasso. Findings – Picasso maneuvered with consummate skill to assure his position in the art world. By mid-career, he had established his brand so successfully that he had the upper hand over the dealers who represented him, and his work was so sought-after that he could count on selling whatever proportion of it he chose to allow to leave his studio. In order to achieve this level of success, Picasso had to read the culture in which he operated and manage the efforts of a complex system of different intermediaries and stakeholders that was not unlike an organization. Based on an analysis of Picasso's career, the authors assert that in their management of these powerful brands, artists generate a complex, multifaceted public identity that is distinct from a product brand but shares important characteristics with corporate brands, luxury brands and cultural/iconic brands. Originality/value – This research extends prior work by demonstrating that having an implicit understanding of the precepts of branding is not limited to contemporary artists and by connecting the artist to emerging conceptualizations of brands, particularly the nascent literatures on cultural, complex and corporate brands.

‘I Have Got the Seat’

When Phineas returned to London, the autumn Session, though it had been carried on so near to Christmas as to make many members very unhappy, had already been over for a fortnight. Mr Daubeny had played his game with consummate skill to the last....

Ovid's Portrayal of Briseis in Heroides 3

The third letter of the Heroides has long been appreciated for the consummate skill with which Ovid takes the Briseis of Homer's Iliad, where she is virtually a nonentity, and presents her in a new guise. By his masterly transformation of the enslaved girl into a lonely and desperate elegiac puella who is lost and bewildered in an epic world, he skilfully exploits the literary gulf between the two genres to produce a subtle masterpiece which can arouse only compassion for his heroine. There is, however, much more to appreciate in this letter than its poetic artistry.

From Narmouthis (Medinet Madi) to Kellis (Ismant El-Kharab): Manichaean Documents from Roman Egypt

In 1968, Peter Brown read at the Society's Annual General Meeting a paper entitled ‘The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire’. Delivered at a time when little research was being carried out by British scholars either on Manichaeism or on the cultural and religious relationship between the Roman and the Sassanian Empires, it was for many a complete revelation. With consummate skill and vast erudition Brown placed the history of the diffusion of the sect against a background of vigorous and dynamic interchange between the Roman and the Persian Empires. He also mounted a successful challenge on a number of popularly held views on the history of the religion in the Roman Empire. Manichaeism was not to be seen as part of the mirage orientale which fascinated the intellectuals of the High Empire. It was not an Iranian religion which appealed through its foreigness or quaintness. Rather, it was a highly organized and aggressively missionary religion founded by a prophet from South Babylonia who styled himself an ‘Apostle of Jesus Christ’. Brown reminded the audience that ‘the history of Manichaeism is to a large extent a history of the Syriac-speaking belt, that stretched along the Fertile Crescent without interruption from Antioch to Ctesiphon’. Its manner of diffusion bore little or no resemblance to that of Mithraism. It did not rely on a particular profession, as Mithraism did on the army, for its spread throughout the Empire. Instead it developed in the common Syriac culture astride the Romano-Persian frontier which was becoming increasingly Christianized consequent to the regular deportation of whole communities from cities of the Roman East like Antioch to Mesopotamia and adjacent Iran. Manichaeism which originally flourished in this Semitic milieu was not in the strict sense an Iranian religion in the way that Zoroastrianism was at the root of the culture and religion of pre-Islamic Iran. The Judaeo-Christian roots of the religion enabled it to be proclaimed as a new and decisive Christian revelation.