The Gadfly, Vol. XXXV, Issue 8

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The Gadfly

02 The student newspaper of St. John’s College 60 College Avenue Annapolis, Maryland 21401 sjca.gadfly@gmail.com Founded in 1980, the Gadfly is the student newsmagazine distributed to over 600 students, faculty, and staff of the Annapolis campus.

Opinions expressed within are the sole responsibility of the author(s). The Gadfly reserves the right to accept, reject, and edit submissions in any way necessary to publish a professional, informative, and thought-provoking newsmagazine.

The next Gadfly will appear March 25, 2014. Submissions are due by Friday, March 21. The next meeting will take place Sunday, March 23, at 7 PM on the first lower level of the BBC. Articles can continue to be sent to sjca. gadfly@gmail.com.

Outgoing Staff Nathan Goldman Ian Tuttle Hayden Pendergrass Transition Staff Sebastián Abella Sebastian Barajas Noé Jimenez Allison Tretina Contributors Eva Brann Lucinda Dukes Edinberg Formaggio Elettrico Leslie May Howard Patricia Locke Esa Sclafani

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t’s been awhile, Johnnies, so welcome back to the pages of the Gadfly! We remain in a period of transition, but we are pleased to present the first issue of the spring semester, and we look forward to printing a few more before our seniors walk the stage.

If you are interested in helping out, please contact sjca.gadfly@ gmail.com, and don’t miss our next meeting, Sunday, March 23. The next issue will be out March 25, so get writing!

— The New & Improved Gadfly Team

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!"#$%&'()*$+&,,-.-$/(0$1-("/,$2,,(-** Esa Sclafani

I

A’12

was diagnosed with a mental illness during my Freshman year at St. John’s College.

Throughout the next three and a half years, my life—personal and academic—was colored by depression and instability. I know this is not uncommon. St. John’s is an intense and difficult college and individual problems are magnified by academic demands. My time as a student was difficult and I would love for others to have an easier time. I don’t know how helpful I can be, but I need to at least try. With that in mind, I would like to share some personal advice. This advice is not exclusive to students with diagnosable mental illnesses, though there may be some information specific to them. One doesn’t need to have a disorder to have a hard time.

In my experience, treatment for my illness was extremely helpful. Therapy is always your decision, as is medication. Neither helps everybody, but it helped me.

Therapy and medication are not for everyone. Still, I need to stress that treatment is an option and it can be effective. Unfortunately, To anyone therapy and medicine aren’t magic. Treatment was only able to help me if I took care of myself. That’s struggling: You not easy. If you are not seeking treatment because of are strong. You financial reasons, keep in mind that the school will pay are brave. Don’t for three hours with a psychiatrist per semester. If you give up. Have can’t get there, the school has an arrangement with faith in yourself.

Diamond Taxi to charge cab fare with the money you You can do it. pay to the school each semester. There is also an option to meet with psychiatrists in the Health Center.

A professional is not the only person that can help you, however. The person that can help you most is yourself. There were long periods of time when my sleep patterns, eating habits, and, most importantly, ability to consistently prepare for or attend class went out the window. The amount of sheer willpower needed merely to take care of oneself can be extremely difficult to muster up when you feel awful.

I understand that. Despite the difficulties, however, YOU NEED TO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF. Sometimes it can feel impossible, but if you just get yourself out of bed, eat some food, and do your Greek, it makes a huge difference. In fact, the mere feeling of exercising that will power can make you feel better. Incentivize yourself.

Set alarms and reminders on your phone. Push yourself to do what you need to do. I know this can feel impossible but it helps. It helps more than I can say.

If your state of mind is affecting you academically, don’t isolate yourself. Let your tutors know if your problems in class are due to medical or personal circumstances.

Talk to the Assistant Dean if you need. Make it clear to the College that you aren’t lazy or uninterested.

This next part is very personal, and may be touchy. I feel the need to share my own experiences with how my mental and emotional difficulties affected my personal relationships. I ended up creating a vicious cycle: I would have difficulties and look to friends for support; they would not know what to do, which overwhelmed them.

I’m not saying that your friends will resent you if you go to them for support. It is extremely important to have a support network, and it is wonderful to have someone you can trust. My point is that friends aren’t professionals, and that can be an easy dynamic to stumble into. Communicate with your friends and understand what is healthy for both of you.

I have one last thing to say. To anyone struggling: You are strong. You are brave.

You are at a demanding college and you are fighting against the current to do well.

Don’t give up. I have faith in you. Have faith in yourself. You can do it.

This is all that I can give. I hope it helps. !

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The Gadfly

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!"#$%&!'$$'()&*+,A summer trip to Greece changed Annapolis alumna Betsy Bassan’s life by bringing her face-to-face with true poverty. Several decades later, as founder and president of Panagora Group, Bassan is bringing help to impoverished persons across the globe.

What is your current job?

I am President and CEO of Panagora Group, a business I founded in January 2011 to create a new platform for global health and development consulting. It was fun reaching back into my St. John’s Greek to come up with the name, now explained in my byline as: “Pan means all, agora is the city center. Panagora! An inclusive space where ideas bubble and the best thrive and spread.” I’ve been working in this field now for thirty some years which takes me all over the world. For more on Panagora, visit our website, www.panagoragroup.net. Panagora’s mission is to make the world a better place for good.

Did you attend other schools after St. John’s?

I got my masters at the School of International Affairs and the Division of Urban Planning at Columbia University in New York City, in a program called “Planning in Developing Countries.”

Did you know what you wanted to do while at St. John’s?

I figured it out in a gap year between sophomore and junior year, during which I studied in Greece for one semester. For the first time, I saw real poverty and realized that I wanted to dedicate my life to poverty alleviation.

Did St. John’s help prepare you for work in the field?

St. John’s prepared me in so many ways! I am always grateful for the training I received there before I specialized. St. John’s helped me cultivate the most invaluable skills for success in work by teaching me to listen, to probe, to read carefully, to think logically, to communicate carefully, and to work well in groups. I could not have wished for more relevant preparation. It takes getting into the workplace to realize how valuable these skills are. Employers are always on the lookout for them. There’s no better education than St. John’s for developing these fundamental building blocks for success in the workplace. I was thrilled when one of my children selected St. John’s and graduated from the Santa Fe campus just a little over a year ago.

How did you feel you compared, in graduate school or early jobs, to people from different educational backgrounds, particularly those with field-related degrees?

I worried a lot about this when I went to Columbia, especially in taking courses in subjects like economics. But it didn’t take too long to realize that I could be equally competitive in courses with subject matter that was new to me. I have always felt that this is due in large part to the fact that at St. John’s

we learned that we could tackle any subject or text through careful reading, thinking, and discussion. This has served me very well in work where I have been responsible for managing people and programs in very diverse technical subjects and geographical areas.

Can you describe a general track someone from St. John’s might take to get into a career in this field There are many tracks: agriculture, health, democracy/governance, business, environment, finance, education, and more.

The common thread for international development (also often called “foreign assistance”) is the international aspect. This requires going to the graduate schools with international programs that also have strong programs in the specialized area of your choice—for example, a school of public health, education, business, etc. Knowing a foreign language is also very important.

Any general advice, especially for an upperclassman who is interested in this field but is not quite sure what to do?

My advice would be to network with Johnnies in the field (a growing number of us!) and professional associations like the Society for International Development (SID) that are oriented to nurturing young professionals in our space. I also advise getting overseas field experience, which will make the graduate school experience much more worthwhile and will mean a lot to employers who want to see an understanding of the real context in which our work takes place. Peace Corps is most often cited for this purpose, but there are other, shorter routes to similar experience. Internships are also key ways to get the experience and contacts needed to get the best jobs.

How did you market yourself with a St. John’s degree?

Very much in terms I mentioned above: that we had an opportunity to study the evolution of Western thought with approximately equal weight to all the subjects, including some very hard ones like math and science, and in the process refined our ability to penetrate challenging material, think logically, communicate clearly, listen carefully, and work well in teams.

How would you characterize your field as a whole? Is it accessible to newcomers or difficult to enter? Stable or fluid? Etc. The international development field is relatively stable and growing because, especially following 9/11, there is a clear realization among policy-makers, legislators, and the public that Continued on Pg. 4

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!"#$%&$!'$()*+$,'-$.&/0'12 Sebastian Barajas

W

A’17

hen I sat down to watch the silent film, East Side, West are spent on new projects, and movie studios are not charities.

Side (1927), I naturally expected it to be filled with Somehow, money is being contributed by viewers to fund new laughable anachronisms: lots of moustache twirling, fisticuffs, projects. Why? Why is the newness of movies so important, and captions reading, “Hey pal what’s the big idea?” More when we could so easily cut costs by watching ones that have than that, I imagined it would be amateurish from inexperi- already been made? ence with the (at that time) new visual medium.

There is no sense in the argument that the However, I was surprised to find—not only actual experience of going to the theater is Movies have no why people enjoy new movies, for it has little that the silence wasn’t distracting—but that the expiration date film had a perfectly intelligible storyline, tasteto do with the movies themselves, and more [and] require fully adorned with quips and one-liners. Why, to do with the culture and aesthetic pleasure.

I wondered, shouldn’t everyone watch movies How often, for example, does this conversamassive budlike this? After all, the characters’ problems tion take place: gets. So why were much the same as those of today’s charac“Hey, you wanna go see a movie?” should we make ters: love triangles, problems at work, and wor“Sure. Which one?” new ones when ries about the future. Many similar movies are “I dunno. Let’s see what’s playing.” we already have released every year, and the only changes are in It seems that one could replace all new thethe details: the phones the characters use, the a century’s worth atrical releases with titles from ten or twenty cars they drive, the clothes they wear, and peryears ago and hardly anyone would complain. of work to get haps one or two words or expressions. If it’s the Even if someone had already seen the most through? story and the characters that matter, why do we popular movies of, say, 1994 (The Lion King, care about details?

The Shawshank Redemption, Forrest Gump), Unlike other goods we consume, movies do not have to be thousands of other movies were made that year. In fact, no hufresh. Food, for example, must be continually made, because man being can see every movie that comes out every year (and we cannot eat food that was prepared 87 years ago. To a lesser no sane human being would want to). extent, our clothes and appliances must also be new (that is Similarly, we cannot accept the improvement of special to say, new enough to perform their basic functions). Movies effects as the sole reason new projects are funded. Plenty of have no similar expiration date, and unlike books or other art movies are released each year that do not require especially forms, they require massive budgets in order to be produced. modern technology in order to be executed well. Films like So why should we make new ones when we already have a The King’s Speech and Juno illustrate this point. The same century’s worth of work to get through? holds true for such recently accepted cinematic tools such as That’s not to wonder why artists create new things, for this nudity and explicit violence, neither of which is particularly is obvious. All artists have the drive to create, and I despise necessary for effective visuals. how the phrase, “There is nothing new under the sun,” is used We might more reasonably say that the appeal of new movto debase their efforts. Likewise, we might say nothing “new” ies is that they are specially tailored to our culture and appehas happened since the beginning of time, since the universe tites, whereas an older movie might fit us, but less well. At first is still filled with the same matter. What’s more, the act of be- it might seem absurd to spend so much money for such a small ing human and eating food is hardly an original one. Absolute amount of extra comfort, but it’s hardly abnormal, especially novelty is a standard that no one could or should aspire to. in America. In addition to the obvious suit analogy, this love Nor when I ask, “Why do we fund new movies?” am I intro- of tiny amounts of luxury is what makes us pay $150 for first ducing a debate about the ethics of piracy and the detrimen- class tickets on a 20-minute flight, or $35 to eat Domino’s in tal effects of lost revenue, or anything of that sort. The fact bed rather than swipe into the Continued on Pg. 6 is that new movies are funded. Billions of dollars each year dining hall 45 feet away.

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buttress the moral and economic argument for foreign assistance.

I think this field is penetrable, but having interlocutors to help illuminate the way in and open a few doors is important. There are many different paths to take within the field of international development—many different subject areas, different platforms (donor, busi-

Continued from Pg. 3

ness, non-profit, etc.), the possibility of working overseas or in a headquarters, policy versus practitioner, and so on. Each person has to sort that out for themselves and identify which strand fits them best.

What is your favorite Program book?

Oh dear, so many books that I have loved in different ways. Just thinking of an answer takes me down many wonderful

pathways, thinking of the many books and how they present differently over one’s life. But I don’t land on just one favorite!

Do you find that you lead a philosophical life?

Of course. I can’t imagine a Johnnie that doesn’t continue to question, inquire, examine, and try to discern meaning in life. !

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!"##"$%& '()& !$**+(*%%& Patricia Locke

Tutor

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any are called to twist day into night, to argue, “all is pleasure of reporting in with friends. Though we are writing permitted,” including unlimited amounts of coffee and about different books, surely saying out loud and even arguother caffeinated drinks to guarantee heart palpitations. No ing about one’s ideas’ relations to one’s colleagues’ work is also washing of clothes and hair, no orderly regime at all. In search exciting, and perhaps helpful. Channeling Nietzsche, we might of intense experience, we seek the unhealthy spiral into dark- don black garments and take brisk walks alone—or together. ness, into genius. Never mind that Nietzsche himself wrote for several hours in the morning, had a decent lunch, and then Mental anguish: went for a long afternoon walk before returning to his desk to In my solitary cell, it crosses my mind to compare myself to write down his reflections. Emily Dickinson favored baking Kant. Hence, my ideas are shallow and not worth writing down. as a time to let her writing develop on the back burner, so to Or, if I write something down, I polish its hubcaps to a fine speak. What does one do with all the time NOT writing? Ought sheen before I move on to paragraph #2. Other people have we feel guilty that we are not writing? Ought many more pages than I have at this point. we plunge into panic or paralysis? Ought we . . . You know the script. What if I cut myTime off from mental self some slack; say, two hours off from to work more hours, so as not to waste time? anguish could yield Ought we play pool or seek other diversions personal harassment, and let my ideas run from being alone in our rooms? Are bodily suffree? What if I could pretend to be a tightdeep pleasure or at fering and mental anguish necessary for a sucrope walker, who is JOYOUSLY walking least clarity of mind. cessful essay? across the rope suspended over a large . . . You can write a To explore this question, start small. Divide pit? What if the high stakes of my main thoughtful and inter- question really ARE high (Does God exist? it into two sections: bodily suffering followed esting essay without Can people actually be in contact with one by mental anguish. Perhaps one will find that body and mind are inextricably intertwined another? Is the world coherent?? What exaggerated sufferand that it is quite simple to make oneself misabout death??? Mr. Darcy*?*?)? Then I ing. erable—hence, more interesting, intelligent could feel excited and glad to be wrestling and deep. (Sophomores: Does this conclusion with them. Time off from mental anguish stand?) could yield deep pleasure, or at least clarity of mind. Fretting and anxiety clog the mental pores, causing a buildup of sooty Bodily suffering: vapors that get in the way of thinking clearly about the issues Is this a sprint, or long-distance running? If the former, aban- at stake. If we could take a mental-anguish break, more might don all personal health practices and fully immerse oneself in get written that is meaningful to writer and reader alike. the writing process, as one who is “mourante et qui cherche à I claim that you can write a thoughtful and interesting essay mourir.” By interrupting sleep patterns alone, one will have without exaggerated suffering. You may be stymied from time the illusion of profundity and can move in incredibly slow mo- to time, unsure of which direction to turn in the writer’s labytion. Add disruptions to exercise, diet, and other good habits, rinth, but you have comrades with whom to sort things out. and one can be disoriented in both time and space. But isn’t You have a genuine question and desire. Just log the writing being human suffering enough? Do we need to deliberately hours, take breaks, let the pages pile up. Write the first draft make ourselves suffer from neglect in order to feel intellectual- for yourself, but remember the reader in your later ones. Don’t ly alive? Perhaps the drama of the starving artist/melancholic forget to spell check and include page numbers! I leave you, philosopher is a stereotype we ought to abandon as too cliché Gentle Readers, with Emily Dickinson’s guaranteed way to be for those who seek to examine our cultural presuppositions. popular and productive, when faced with a (transitory) writIf writing period is more akin to a long distance race, or per- er’s block. . . .

Continued on Pg. 6 haps a practice run towards the goal of arranging one’s life over the long haul, one has to carbo load, strength train, and so on.

So mindful meals and physical exercise sustain the long-term effort. The capacity to give attention to the cultivation of the mind and spirit rests upon these mundane grounds. now on the ground can mean only one thing—it’s a good By and large, we are very good at collaborative learning at time to make soup! Soup is the perfect comfort food, the board and at the seminar table. We aren’t as skilled in transforming an evening from frosty and cruel to warm and the articulation of our ideas in an extended way in writing— heartening. It’s also not nearly as daunting to make as it might seem. Check out gastrokitty.blogspot.com this week all by our lonesomes. So my current thought is that we need for simple and scrumptious recipes, fun facts, and tantalizto build bridges from what we do well to what we want to do ing photos of soup! well. Feeling like one is connected to others physically proximate in the writing experience helps ramp up the intensity. We — “Formaggio Elettrico” might follow a designated block of writing time alone with the

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style that has been preserved in cinematic history. If new films were not made, that cultural record would be discontinued and our decade would be left out. Think ! Leslie Howard, A’15 about decades like the 60s or the 80s, and O! to have a bag that fits! the marks they left on the world of film.

That never slides and never slips!

O! to have a bag that stays!

I’m glad to think that in 50 years society My garbage rots beneath your sags: That never rips or falls or frays! might similarly be able to recognize our You are despised, ill-fitting bags.

One time the bottom was a hole. decade by its work.

The CETs we cannot blame; I sense it’s out of my control, But this ever-increasing reservoir of No matter what, t’would be the same.

But is it too much to expect human achievement also bears with it Despite the corner-knot I tied, A garbage bag that isn’t wrecked? a kind of cost. For as time goes by, it beThis blasted bag does slip and slide. comes more difficult for the intellectual And though I’ve tried and tried and I speak for all the polity to fulfill his three traditional roles: to tried, When I proclaim this humble plee: study the past, to experience the presIll-fitting bags will not abide Please give us bags that do not slip. ent, and to build, that he might influence Inside my trash can (well, inside— Please give us garbage bags that fit. the future.

Each day more history is creCollapsed, not neatly ‘round applied). ated that must be studied. The present grows bigger and louder as social media But I think there’s also someexpands. To create anything noteworthy Continued from Pg. 4 thing more fundamental fuelamidst such a torrent is a task both Herculean and Machiaing our desire to see new movies: our collective fear of being vellian. Yet the would-be intellectual must fight this battle on cut off. We spend hours a day reading the news and checking every front. In the time it took for me to watch East Side, West our five different social media accounts, unable to stand the Side, I could have seen any of the twenty or so new releases I idea that something big and important might happen while still haven’t gotten around to watching. In the time it’s taken we’re not paying attention. And new movies certainly seem to me to write this article, I could have finally read The Catcher in “happen” in a way old movies no longer can. Even if the mov- the Rye, or watched Donnie Darko, or learned something about ies themselves are timeless, they are shrouded in a kind of ar- Indonesia, or filled any number of other gaps in my education. tificially created timeliness. For example, we can enjoy watch- Which is noblest? Which is most worthy of choice? ing The Lord of the Rings anytime, but only upon its release do East Side, West Side was silent on these matters. It contained the people parade in its honor. only a dance of characters and circumstances. Perhaps every Perhaps there is no one field of human interest is merely such a dance: every film, evaccount for why we fund ery book, every math problem, and every science experiment.

To create anynew movies. I myself could They are for us, and they are infinite. ! thing notewornot justify why I spent $12 to watch The Desolation of thy amidst the Continued from Pg. 5 Smaug, knowing perfectly torrent of the well how awful it would be. !"#$%&'#()#*+,*-+&.#*/0121034 present age is a This happens often. Is the entask both Hercu- tertainment industry someAs transcribed in Emily Dickinson: Profile of the Poet as lean and Machia- how exempt from—or at least Cook from Dickinson’s original manuscript: highly resistant to—human vellian.

1 quart flour 1 teaspoon soda logic? Or are our decisions 1⁄2 cup butter 1 teaspoon salt as consumers no less rational 1⁄2 cup cream Make up with molasses about movies than about cars, food, political candidates, fur1 tablespoon ginger niture, and knickknacks no reasonable person would ever buy, like beer funnels? We’re willing to pay upwards of four dolThe editors of the book add the following: “Cream the lars for a tiny amount of terrible coffee. We routinely shop for butter and mix with lightly whipped cream. Sift dry ingrecars—not based on each model’s performance or utility—but dients together and combine with other ingredients. The based on how we will be perceived as its owner. Every year, we dough is stiff and needs to be pressed into whatever pan spend billions of dollars on dieting programs and health prodyou choose. A round or small square pan is suitable. The ucts because we can’t figure out how to eat less food. Clearly, recipe also fits perfectly into a cast iron muffin pan, if you what is reasonable and prudent does not especially concern happen to have one that makes oval cakes. Bake at 350°F us. for 20-25 minutes.

Yet perhaps it is not a bad thing that, against reason, we “Guides at the Emily Dickinson House, who expericontinue to fund new movies. Otherwise our greatest minds in mented with the quantity of molasses, have generally film would have no way to realize their visions. More imporagreed that a ‘cup or so’ is just about right.” tantly, each decade of this past century has had a distinctive Bonne chance!!

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!"#$%&'(")'&"*+'$%',$-*.)/0'1.)23%4 Eva Brann

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imo Mackey, Annapolis alumnus (1976) also father, broth- was representing the er, uncle to alumni, is a racing sailor, boat restorer, and United States. All reader of the kind of book I love—books by and for sailors. (I the boys belonged to used to sail a little sloop of my own, which now belongs to the the working class of college.) When he’s finished he sends me a copy. With this last the Northwest. Here one, he hit the spot, big time, and I want to tell about it, espe- again, there’s a percially since St. John’s is a rowing school. sonal note: I spent a glorious year playing hooky from St. It’s about the nine boys who won the gold medal for the John’s, teaching at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washingmain rowing event in Berlin at the Olympics that the Nazis ton. There I fell in love with Northwestern scenic beauty and mounted three years after they seized power. The book has so learned to respect just that Northwestern character depicted many resonances that I hardly know where to start. That’s in in the book. America was then, and still is, blessedly regional. spite of the fact that competition plays a huge role in it – a pas- It’s what you might call cultural philistinism with a descant sion which leaves me baffled; at most, I’d go for “personal best.” of moral heroism and a continuo of plain decency. By “philis(Decades ago I read a joke, probably in an old Reader’s Digest, tinism” I mean those good old tunes sung to a plunky banjo on that describes my state perfectly: Father takes little daughter to weekdays plus Italian opera on Sundays; in other words, what football game. Watching her first scrimmage, she asks, “Daddy, I’m not so fond of. couldn’t we buy each team its own ball?”)

Competitive rowing is physically excruciating—real pain, Except for that, it’s a book I took personally but also a book and morally extreme—real self-sacrifice. But there is a huge refor us all. So first: I was born in Berlin, a German Jew in the ward, called being in “the swing;” we’d say “in the zone.” It’s a Nazi era. For the Olympics, Göbbels’ propaganda ministry had sort of ecstatic concentration—being at once beyond and withcleaned up the city; the “Jews not welcome” signs displayed in oneself. And the boat becomes a living unit, an organism. in most shops had been stored away. Now, To my mind, our college is one—of several the coxswain of the University of Washingpossible—model communities. Among the The element I liked ton shell, the Husky Clipper, was the, later topics we are all, students and tutors, in a best is the one that legendary, runt (that’s in the job description good place to reflect on, is this: What are the fills a lack in our lives for coxswains, as for jockeys), Bobby Moch. kinds of communion that may hold a comwith the Program: The coxswain is the practical wisdom (phmunity together, of which “the swing” is craftsmanlike produc- one, beautifully delineated in this book? ronesis) incarnate of a row boat. He receives tion, how it’s done the strategy from the coach and tweaks, even That brings me to my last item. Extremescraps it, in execution. That is, he calls the ly well-researched detail, put into batedwhen it’s done with strokes per minute, from a leisurely 28 to a breath order in visualizable language, is one expertise and love. flying 44. On the eve of the crew’s departure of the virtues of Brown’s book. Of these, the to Germany, Moch got a letter from his father element I liked best is the one that fills a lack revealing the family secret: They were Jewish. So when Moch in our lives with the Program. We are, after all, devoted to thestood on the podium to receive his gold, surrounded by swasti- ory and to amateurism—to living theory, to be sure, and to amakas, something was, unbeknownst to the world, being proved, teurism taken literally: “the lover’s way” (not to be confused an evil intention was being secretly nullified. Jesse Owens’ with amateurishness, that is, cluelessness). So much the more four golds in track were the more public counterpart, as was do I like to read about the ways of craftsmanlike production, heavyweight Joe Louis’s defeat of Germany’s Max Schmeling how it’s done when it’s done with expertise and love. The Boys a couple of years later. A Jew and two black men were under- in the Boat has a lot about building these slender marvels that mining the Nazi myth of Aryan racial superiority. “Whom the accommodate very skinny behinds and very long bodies. One gods would destroy they first make blind” say the Greeks; a less of the lovingly detailed heroes is George Yeoman Pocock, who deluded leadership would have read the omens: their nemesis built, with hand tools, these sleek shells, clad in paper-thin cewas readying in the West. One of the excellences of Brown’s dar shingles, and who was a fountain of rowing wisdom, from book is that, unlike some writers born in the later twentieth technical detail to transcendent insight. In his sayings you can century, he is vividly aware of the ominousness of these Olym- smell the pungent sweetness of the wood. pics and of that Germany, and so, of the service “the boys in A last delight: The Greek epigraph in front is from that most boat” did to human decency. magical of sailors’ books, the Odyssey: actually from Book V, And that’s the next point. It was the West of the West that Lines 220, 223. And all the accents are correct. !

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he Mitchell Gallery has opened Dialogues: Words and Images in Art, 1500-1924, an exhibition of 57 works that explore the rich and complex relationship of the word/image symbiosis from the Renaissance to the aftermath of World War I. Some of these images are simple titles for works of art; some incorporate words directly into the image; some are visual illustrations of texts or literary descriptions of objects (ekphrasis).

Johnnies are well acquainted with ekphrasis, in part from Plato’s Theory of Forms and, perhaps, through something Socrates says in the Phaedrus: You know, Phaedrus, that is the strange thing about writing, which makes it truly correspond to painting. The painter’s products stand before us as though they were alive, but if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the same with written words; they seem to talk to you as if they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever.

Seen in this exhibition is Plato’s Cave (1604), an engraving by the Dutch artist Jan Pietersz Saenredam, while Aeneas’ escape from Troy is seen in Giorgio Ghisi’s 1545 print, The Fall of Troy and the Escape of Aeneas. John Boydell’s collection of scenes from Shakespeare plays, Dore’s interpretation of Don Quixote, and the iconic raven of Edgar Allen Poe’s poem are but a few of the works which explore the literary description of objects. It is worth considering the number of visual artists who were also poets and writers, such as William Blake and his Book of Job, in addition to Hogarth’s social and satirical commentaries on society through A Harlot’s Progress (1731) and A Rake’s Progress (1735).

While this exhibition is not entirely devoted to ekphrasis, it does confront Horace’s famous claim: “as is painting, so is poetry” (ut pictura poesis). Furthermore, the collection asks: How does the history of language relate to the history of art? What is the relationship of words and images through time, and how do we process this verbal and visual information?

Dialogues: Words and Images in Art, 1500-1924, which is on view through April 6, is curated by David Gariff, Ph.D., Senior Lecturer at the National Gallery of Art. Lenders for this exhibition include the National Gallery of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Georgetown University Library Special Collections, Syracuse University Art Collection, the Greenfield Library, and several private collections. !

Plato’s Cave, 1604; Jan Pietersz Saenredam (Dutch, 1565-1607)

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