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Carl Lavoie
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Posted: Fri Jun 8th, 2012 07:26 pm |
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For once, Humidity overcomes Calidity ...
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Carl Lavoie
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Posted: Fri Jun 8th, 2012 07:57 pm |
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What a life do I lead with my master; nothing but blowing of bellowes, beating of spirits, and scraping of croslets! It is a very secret science, for none almost can understand the language of it. Sublimation, almigation, calcination, rubification, albification, and fermentation; with as many termes unpossible to be uttered as the arte to be compassed.
—LILLY’S GALLATHEA.
And I confess that I had never heard before of the play Gallathea (1585), by John Lilly, from which Irving use the above quote as the epigraph of his tale.
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Paul Ferguson
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Posted: Sat Jun 9th, 2012 12:17 am |
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Carl Lavoie wrote:
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What a life do I lead with my master; nothing but blowing of bellowes, beating of spirits, and scraping of croslets! It is a very secret science, for none almost can understand the language of it. Sublimation, almigation, calcination, rubification, albification, and fermentation; with as many termes unpossible to be uttered as the arte to be compassed.
—LILLY’S GALLATHEA.
And I confess that I had never heard before of the play Gallathea (1585), by John Lilly, from which Irving use the above quote as the epigraph of his tale.
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Seems to be the only one of his plays though that is still performed:
"An experimental performance was staged by Peter Lichtenfels in November 2010 at the University of California, Davis. The show featured a bare set, audience participation, and video projection... Modern commentators have praised the play's "harmonious variety" and "allegorical dramaturgy"."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallathea
Here's the Lego version for any 5-year-old infant prodigies on the forum:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugXDi692xUg
And a trailer for the Pleasaunce production:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJMCgSgRi_U
And here is the text:
http://www.letrs.indiana.edu/cgi-bin/eprosed/eprosed-idx?coll=eprosed;idno=P1.0161
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Paul Ferguson
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Posted: Sat Jun 9th, 2012 12:30 am |
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Carl Lavoie wrote:
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Are the footnotes about the lampes perpétuelles really from W. Irving, or the editor ?
http://www.telelib.com/authors/I/IrvingWashington/prose/bracebridgehallvol1/bracebridgehall026.html
It seems to be in all the on-line editions, so I assume it must be the author's own.
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Paul Ferguson
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Posted: Sat Jun 9th, 2012 12:36 am |
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adammclean wrote:
Great. I will reformat it for html and put it up on the alchemy website.
The story mentions the lead tablets called 'plomos', allegedly containing alchemical knowledge but now apparently debunked as forgeries. This dissertation mentions them and gives a reference in a footnote:
http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=history_diss
"Regrettably, Irving’s descriptions did not extend to one of the most interesting local aspects of Granada’s church traditions, the place of the plomos, a series of mysterious lead tablets, purporting to detail the history of the Christian underground during the years of Islamic rule, that had been discovered in the late sixteenth century. The same impulse that led Enlightenment-era Spanish
antiquarians to begin the process of surveying the Moorish antiquities in the late eighteenth century had rekindled a close study of the plomos, now understood to be an early modern forgery. Irving must have known something of the lore of the plomos, because in his “Scholar of Salamanca,” from the 1820 Bracebridge Hall he describes “Arabian tablets of lead, which had recently been dug up in the neighborhood of Granada, which, it was confidently believed among adepts, contained the lost secrets of [alchemy].”
"For Spanish Enlightenment-era research on the plomos, see A. Katie Harris, From Muslim to Christian Granada: Inventing a City’s Past in Early Modern Spain (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 149-152."Attached Image (viewed 820 times):
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Carl Lavoie
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Posted: Sun Jun 10th, 2012 01:33 am |
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In an exhibition held in 1842, the Scottish painter Alexander Christie (1807-1860), a contemporary of James Nasmyth (b.1808), had his painting “An Alchemist visited by a Familiar of the Inquisition” displayed to the public.
http://archive.org/stream/royalscottishaca00royarich#page/74/mode/2up
Only the nineteenth century could have generated such a theme.
Anyway, as anyone seen that painting ?
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Paul Ferguson
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Posted: Mon Jun 11th, 2012 07:58 am |
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Carl Lavoie wrote:
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In an exhibition held in 1842, the Scottish painter Alexander Christie (1807-1860), a contemporary of James Nasmyth (b.1808), had his painting “An Alchemist visited by a Familiar of the Inquisition” displayed to the public.
http://archive.org/stream/royalscottishaca00royarich#page/74/mode/2up
Only the nineteenth century could have generated such a theme.
Anyway, as anyone seen that painting ?
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I've had a good root around on the Internet and elsewhere and cannot find anything about it, except that it was priced at £60, quite a substantial sum, at the 8th AGM of the Scottish Art Union:
http://books.google.com/books?id=trTlAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA167&lpg=PA167&dq=%22visited+by+a+familiar+of+the+inquisition%22&source=bl&ots=rPU24s6Nif&sig=ICyqBJhLl88MVI31b6-bth3quNA&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=G5bVT5_rLYfE0QWA0_DzAw&ved=0CCgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%22visited%20by%20a%20familiar%20of%20the%20inquisition%22&f=false
Judging by some of the sardonic comments about his other paintings I imagine it may have ended up as firewood.
But surely it also was inspired by the same Washington Irving story? See page 133 here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=HDcZBfBTRNYC&pg=PA133&lpg=PA133&dq=%22familiars%22+%22the+inquisition%22+alchemists&source=bl&ots=aSF5UqGuvi&sig=AgHiYK1y5ZdBhJAvWwuD_gou_54&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=SJXVT__aO-G50QXwktiTBA&ved=0CEsQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22familiars%22%20%22the%20inquisition%22%20alchemists&f=false
I imagine he moved in the same circles as David Scott, who painted the famous picture of Paracelsus lecturing:
http://www.levity.com/alchemy/dscott.htmlLast edited on Mon Jun 11th, 2012 07:59 am by Paul Ferguson
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Carl Lavoie
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Posted: Sat Oct 19th, 2013 06:28 am |
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Regarding alchemical laboratories and the XIXth century, is there a review of this exhibition?
Huysmans n’aimait guère les médecins; (...)
Parmi ceux qui l’ont approché et qui sont devenus ses amis, il faut citer le docteur Michel de Lézinier d’Anglade, marquis de Corlieu (3), alchimiste et mathématicien, qui avait reconstitué un cabinet d’alchimie dans la galerie des Arts libéraux à l’Exposition de 1889 et à qui Huysmans doit beaucoup sur les questions d’occultisme (par certains gestes et propos il revit dans le docteur des Hermies de Là-Bas
http://huysmans.org/bibliophiletexts/jacquinot2.htm
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Paul Ferguson
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Posted: Sat Oct 19th, 2013 10:28 am |
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Carl Lavoie wrote:
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Regarding alchemical laboratories and the XIXth century, is there a review of this exhibition?
Huysmans n’aimait guère les médecins; (...)
Parmi ceux qui l’ont approché et qui sont devenus ses amis, il faut citer le docteur Michel de Lézinier d’Anglade, marquis de Corlieu (3), alchimiste et mathématicien, qui avait reconstitué un cabinet d’alchimie dans la galerie des Arts libéraux à l’Exposition de 1889 et à qui Huysmans doit beaucoup sur les questions d’occultisme (par certains gestes et propos il revit dans le docteur des Hermies de Là-Bas
http://huysmans.org/bibliophiletexts/jacquinot2.htm
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The Marquis wrote a book about his friendship with Huysmans under an abbreviated name, but I haven't found a complete copy online.
http://tinyurl.com/nppkj3h
S/hand copy here:
http://tinyurl.com/nmrbwb6Last edited on Sat Oct 19th, 2013 05:10 pm by Paul Ferguson
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Carl Lavoie
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Posted: Sat Oct 19th, 2013 05:02 pm |
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S/hand copy here:
Exept that this very copy from W&B has been mailed Wednesday. But Abebooks still have five or six available.
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=michel&tn=avec+huysmans
The 'cabinet d'alchimie' at the Exposition of 1889 (talk about alchemy going mainstream) might have create some vocations.
But I would be curious to read even a description of it.
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Paul Ferguson
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Posted: Sat Oct 19th, 2013 05:11 pm |
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Carl Lavoie wrote:
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S/hand copy here:
Exept that this very copy from W&B has been mailed Wednesday. But Abebooks still have five or six available.
http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=michel&tn=avec+huysmans
The 'cabinet d'alchimie' at the Exposition of 1889 (talk about alchemy going mainstream) might have create some vocations.
But I would be curious to read even a description of it.
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Other copies available here:
http://tinyurl.com/nglep6r
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Paul Ferguson
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Posted: Sat Oct 19th, 2013 05:19 pm |
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Another 'piste'?
"Théodore Tiffereau adressa plusieurs mémoires à l'Académie des Sciences. Et dans une autre lettre, d'ajouter : " L'or obtenu par moi à Guadalajara constitue un fait palpable que j'ai tenu toujours à la disposition des savants et dont l'existence réelle n'a pas pu être niée. Il a été analysé et reconnu comme un or vrai par M. Silva, ancien président de la Société chimique et professeur à l'Ecole Centrale. Cette analyse a été confirmée par celles d'autres chimistes, entre autres par celle de M. Itasse. " " /.../ Cet or a figuré à la grande Exposition de 1889, soumis aux membres de la Commission."
http://60gp.ovh.net/~alchymie/articles/rayonnement.htm
There was also an article in Mercure de France in 1926:
http://gallica.bnf.fr/searchInPeriodique?spe=Michel+de+L%C3%A9zinier+et+l%27alchimie&arkPress=cb34427363f%2Fdate&lang=ENLast edited on Sat Oct 19th, 2013 05:34 pm by Paul Ferguson
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Carl Lavoie
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Posted: Sun Oct 20th, 2013 03:24 am |
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Yes, page 458: "Leurs relations commencèrent en 1889, lors de l’ouverture de l’Exposition Universelle de Paris. M. de Lézinier y avait reconstitué un laboratoire d’alchimie qui « intéressa extrêmement Huysmans ». Cet intérêt fonda une grande amitié entre les deux hommes."
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Carl Lavoie
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Posted: Sun Oct 20th, 2013 03:36 am |
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http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/weltausstellung1889a/0128/image?sid=7cba955a6cf47f8700f0dd69de477322
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And we learn here that the alchemist at work is Maier!
« M. Délézinier avait minutieusement reproduit l’aspect d’un laboratoire d’alchimiste au commencement du XVIIe siècle en y plaçant la figure du fameux alchimiste Michael Maier, fondateur de la véritable théorie de l’ébullition [?!]»
http://books.google.ca/books?id=raci5pxMeiEC&pg=PA304&lpg=PA304&dq=exposition+universelle+1889+laboratoire+alchimiste&source=bl&ots=yd8azWtmrm&sig=a-SC3UyLdXxM113IykMhP3dx_Oc&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=3D9jUsfRNbGyygHYpYFI&ved=0CDoQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=exposition%20universelle%201889%20laboratoire%20alchimiste&f=falseLast edited on Sun Oct 20th, 2013 03:49 am by Carl Lavoie
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Carl Lavoie
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Posted: Tue Oct 29th, 2013 07:20 am |
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Following up on Lézinier’s Avec Huysmans (1928). On chapter IV, thinks that he deciphered the alchemical treatises of Maier by positing that ‘Mercure’ stands for Hg and ‘Soufre’ for S :
Makes one wonder what could be found in the pages of his other book published the same year as the Exposition :
- Michael Maïer et la vulgarisation scientifique,(!) Paris, Chamuel, 1889.
Beside his positivist/contemptuous views on alchemy, he also, on a few occasions, throws the blame for the national woes on "les empoisonneurs judéo-germaniques"(p. 161), and on freemasonry for his own setbacks; as in chapter XI, when he gets fired, but finds out later that his lab director was “un haut gradé de la Maçonnerie — il était chevalier kadosch” (p.196).
Yep, that kind of guy.
.Last edited on Tue Oct 29th, 2013 07:22 am by Carl Lavoie
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