Intriguingly, the latest Scientific American (11/2000) has an article, pp.
32-4, on Olga Soffer, an archaeologist who studies prehistoric textiles.
Included is a photo of the Venus of Willendorf, Austria and the Venus of
Kostenski, Russia, both famously plump "fertility" figurines from the Ice
Age, ca. 27,500 years ago. Both wear woven caps, and the Russian a twined
bandeau, and nothing else.
--Tom Herron
>The relation of hats to passion, in Arcadia or out, might be intriguing to
>think about further. What do passionate nymphs wear? Spenser's, in book
>VI, don't wear anything, although perhaps in 1596 one could be naked and
>still sport headgeat. True, they may be non-passionate despite their
>"dancing in delight." Cranach gives a sleeping waternymph at least a thick
>gold hairnet, which is half-way to a hat. But maybe she's too sleepy to be
>passionate. Maybe lshe isn't Arcadian. Venus knows about passion, though,
>and she wears a hat in Cranach's Judgment of Paris. Of course she isn't a
>nymph. When I think of Arcadian nymphs I guess I don't imagine them with
>hats, but Cranach was on to something important: nakedness can be made
>more "passionate" (another problematic term, to be sure), or at least more
>enticing, by something that complicates the nudity--a hat in Cranach,
>black stockings and shoes in Paris. I am not being wholly frivolous. What
>counts as passionate nymphery in early modern times might not be the way
>either the (archaic) Greeks and Romans imagined it or as we would
>now. Perhaps Spenser thought that a little greenery here, a ribbon there,
>even a hair net--even a hat?--might add to a (passionate) nymph's charms
>and hint at her interest in local satyrs or gods. Anne P.
>
>On Wed, 25 Oct 2000, shirley sharon-zisser wrote:
>
>> passionate nymphs dancing in Arcadia do not have hats, Professor Willett,
>> but like many thinkers of the archaic (a psychoanalytic, not only
>> historical category, on which see the brilliant work of Montrelay I have
>> already mentioned to you in relation to quantum physics), they have
>> bewitching magic which grants them access to insight into what is hidden,
>> not spoken on the semantic surface, and not empirically verifiable. The
>> truth of the mysteries of the unconsious.
>>
>> very best, as always,
>>
>> Dr. Shirley Sharon-Zisser
>>
>>
>>
>>
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