Symphony at The Cloisters, New York City, and Iconic Realism

The Cloisters, New York City

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The following excerpt is in the Introduction of my first book: The Theory of Iconic Realism. I'd like to thank my late friend and colleague, Professor Lionel Bascom, RIP, for telling me of this experience as his illustration of iconic realism.

A group of New Yorkers assembles in the Cloisters museum, which sits atop a hill overlooking the Hudson River, just outside of Manhattan. These individuals have come to listen to a concert, which will be presented just before sunset. Anticipating a traditional concert with musicians performing in front of a listening audience, they search for seating. They notice that chairs have been strategically placed throughout the museum, a few here, a few there, up the winding staircases, in the garden, along the walls of stone. Confused, the concert attendees seat themselves, waiting.

Soon, echoing through the interweaving chambers of the museum, low brass instruments create a resonating medieval drone, monotone voices chanting in Latin with sustained pitches, fill the damp air with a sound that transports the audience from the busy New York City museum to a medieval stone castle. The glow from the setting sun mixed with low lighting envelops the medieval tapestries, statuary and paintings while muted melodies fill the audience with an aural feast. Iconic melodies that signify this medieval period permeate the halls.

The medieval tones mingle with the realism in the works of art, architecture and presence of the audience, sensually transported to this era. When the concert ends, the members of this audience become aware of the cultural distinctions between the two worlds of medieval Europe and twentieth century New York City, now transformed in their perceptions of continuity of human interaction in time and space, having experienced iconic realism.

Bostonian, Mercy Otis Warren, "Muse of the American Revolution"

Mercy Otis Warren, photo from cover of book:

Mercy Otis Warren: The Muse of the American Revolution

Mercy Otis Warren was born in 1728 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was a successful businessman and an acquaintance of John Adams and his family and circle of friends. Warren observed the intensity with which her contemporaries had to live in order to receive the dignified respect that any human being would rightly expect to receive. Within her plays and essays, she included the concept of human rights advocacy and relevant themes of independence, juxtaposed with iconic characters and structures to bring awareness to her audience of the need for social and political transformation.

For example, in her 1773 play, The Adulateur, Warren described the issue of individual rights through the speech of her main character, Brutus:

            The change how drear! The sullen ghost of bondage

            Stalks full in view—already with her pinions,

            She shades the affrighted land—the insulting soldiers

            Tread down our choicest rights; while hoodwinked justice

            Drops her scales, and totters from her basis.

            Thus torn with nameless wounds, my bleeding country
            Demands a tear – that tear I’ll freely give her. 


[1] Mercy Otis Warren, The Adulateur, Act I, Scene I, Boston: New Printing Office, 1773.

        

'Harmony of the Spheres' and Iconic Realism

I took these photographs in Ireland.

The following is an excerpt from a paper I presented at the Mid-Atlantic Conference for Irish Studies, years ago. It was the initial introduction of my semiotic theory to a public audience. I've placed information about this same topic on my other blog, which can be reached by clicking on the photo to the right.  

Human beings have an inherent need to interact with one another. Yet, they often find themselves struggling with what appears to be the truth of their perceptions. This ambivalence leads to the categorizing of experiences as a way to manage personal reactions. Philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant and Carl Jung, as well as mathematicians, such as Pythagoras and Kepler, have clarified this management in terms of music, more specifically, the mystical music of the spheres.

This concept illustrates that human communication parallels strict mathematical components associated with harmonics. To clarify the concept of harmony (music) of the spheres, one can consider a musical tone that contains the original resonating frequency with overtones creating precise harmonic variations.

Pythagoras’s theory contained the idea that there was a distinct mathematical configuration, establishing a relationship of the harmonic distances between the planets. These harmonics were considered the substance of a planetary influence on the human psyche. Centuries later, Johannes Kepler clarified this theory with his discovery that harmonic energy emanates from the sun, and there exists an exact harmonic relationship between each planet. Philosophers of the eighteenth century, such as Immanuel Kant, connect Kepler’s theory to the concept of human consciousness.

Music of the spheres can also represent the harmonics of human thought whereby one idea, emanating from a human being, extends to another throughout the centuries, and overtones or nuances of thought create a new harmonic of the original conception. This new harmonic, then, resonates with another interpretation, and soon, there are many new concepts formed that connect with the original resonating thought.

Although the concept behind 'music of the spheres' illustrates that human communication parallels strict mathematical components associated with harmonics, iconic realism is a literary principle whereby an artist uses an iconic, yet real figure to represent another aspect of reality within the culture. This principle clearly resonates throughout literature as a means to express truth in a way that contains meaning while maintaining elements of the mysterious. Indeed, iconic realism intones throughout Sydney Owenson’s national tale, The Wild Irish Girl, written from a feminine cultural point of view shortly after the British Act of Union 1801.

Sydney Owenson engages in the construction of iconic realism through her interface with the concept of literary harmony elicited from the initial resonance of Irish revolution. She creates characters as iconic representatives of the consciousness that exists in her historical reality, leading her audiences to a recognizable semblance of truth and a basis for future writers to harmonize with the transitioning, historical significance of human consciousness.

Such resonance, which distinguishes between intense reality and strength of the human spirit through iconic realism, occurs in Owenson’s novel, demonstrating the necessity for humankind to relate to one another on a realistic rather than a symbolic level. As she reacts to her despotic environment, Owenson’s technique of using iconic structures in allegorical representations of Irish reality resonates through such 20^th century writers as William Butler Yeats and James Joyce. (Lakatos 2007)

Brian Friel's "Molly Sweeney" and Iconic Realism

In his play, Molly Sweeney, Brian Friel utilizes theatrical dialogue between his three main characters, situated in connection with Molly’s blindness. Her blindness enables her to ‘see’ the world in a way that the sighted cannot. She transports the other characters and thus, the audience, from ignorance to awareness of cultural expectations. 

Friel’s Molly Sweeney is a literary representation of the iconic figure of Cathleen Ni Houlihan, and he creates the icon as a realistic woman with real perceptions in order to bring the audience to an awareness of the cultural dilemma of the dichotomy within the Irish historical perception of self. Friel connects Molly’s new sight with an overall feeling of anxiety that could be the personal reactions of one individual’s yearning for courage... or a nation’s.

Jane Eyre and Iconic Realism

(Click HERE  to view the final scene from this 2006 BBC production of Jane Eyre.)

Charlotte Brontë's novel, Jane Eyre, illustrates the theory of iconic realism in that her title character, Jane, depicts a young woman who, although abused as a child, manages to maintain her inner strength and dignity as she responsibly carries out her iconic role as an honest, humble governess while placed in the midst of wealth and deceit. Through this character, Brontë brings awareness to her audience of the complex emotions and intelligence within the human mindset. Stalwart Jane, the epitome of inner strength, becomes the lens through which her former master, blinded in a fire, ultimately perceives and strives to understand his world.