scholarly journals DOOR MEANINGS AND SYMBOLISM IN EUROPEAN TRADITION

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 149-156
Author(s):  
Edita Riaubienė
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Protective Measure ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Architectural Element ◽  
European Culture ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Double Nature

The paper is focused on the main architectural element – the door. The aim of this analysis is to reveal the door functions and its relations to the meanings and also the rich symbolism of the doorway. The research is done in the European cultural space, analysing its beginnings (Ancient Egypt, Greek, and Roma) and Christian tradition. The door is an object of a double nature that performs two contrary functions – to connect and separate – and at the same time it belongs to different substances – space and partition. The isolating function of the door conditions its protective meaning, and the function of connecting spaces implicates the communicative meaning. The dualistic character of the door indicates a rather complicated and diverse symbolism. As the door is an umpire between different and even reverse characters, it points to the weak place of a partition that must be protected not only by physical, but also symbolical means. The analysis reveals that petition, offerings and red coloring are prevailing as a protective measure in the European culture. The door acts as the symbol of crossing a boundary, the place of great changes, and this is very expressive in the Christian tradition. The symbolism of transformation is of great importance in the monotheistic religion, where the aim – God - is identified with the door. Durų reikšmės ir simbolika Europinėje tradicijoje Santrauka Remiantis architektūros sudėtinių dalių analizės principu dėmesys sutelkiamas ties pirminiu ir vienu iš svarbiausių architektūrinių elementų – durimis. Akcentuojamos glaudžios durų reikšminio lauko sąsajos su jų paskirtimi ir ypač gausi įėjimo vietos simbolika. Taikant chronologinį principą durų simbolika analizuojama Europos kultūrinėje terpėje, išskiriant Vakarų kultūros ištakas ir krikščioniškąją tradiciją. Durys yra dvejopos prigimties objektas, atliekantis dvi priešingas funkcijas – sujungimo bei atskyrimo – ir priklausantis dviem skirtingoms substancijoms – erdvei ir atitvarai. Izoliavimo paskirtis lemia apsauginę durų reikšmę, o erdvių sujungimo funkcija byloja apie jų komunikacinę reikšmę. Kaip architektūrinis elementas durys atlieka erdvės organizavimo ir informacijos teikimo paskirtį. Dualistinė durų prigimtis, leidžianti jungti ir skirti, lemia ypač turtingą ir sudėtingą jų simboliką. Durų buvimas tarpininku tarp priešingų charakteristikų erdvių implikuoja silpnąją atitvaros dalį, kurią reikia saugoti, stiprinti ne vien fizinėmis, bet ir simbolinėmis priemonėmis. Vakarų kultūrinėje tradicijoje tam daugiausia skiriamos maldos, aukos ir naudojamos raudonos spalvos apsauginės priemonės. Durims būdinga įveikimo, esminių pasikeitimų vyksmo vietos simbolika ryškiai skleidžiasi krikščioniškoje plotmėje. Transformacijos simbolika ypač reikšminga monoteistinės religijos tradicijoje, kur pati siekiamybė (Dievas) tapatinama su durimis.

Apartheid Aesthetics and Insignificant Art

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-69
Author(s):  
Stephanus Muller
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Secondary School ◽  
South African ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Art Songs ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Small House ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Selection Of

Stephanus Le Roux Marais (1896−1979) lived in Graaff-Reinet, South Africa, for nearly a quarter of a century. He taught music at the local secondary school, composed most of his extended output of Afrikaans art songs, and painted a number of small landscapes in the garden of his small house, nestled in the bend of the Sunday’s River. Marais’s music earned him a position of cultural significance in the decades of Afrikaner dominance of South Africa. His best-known songs (“Heimwee,” “Kom dans, Klaradyn,” and “Oktobermaand”) earned him the local appellation of “the Afrikaans Schubert” and were famously sung all over the world by the soprano Mimi Coertse. The role his ouevre played in the construction of a so-called European culture in Africa is uncontested. Yet surprisingly little attention has been paid to the rich evocations of landscape encountered in Marais’s work. Contextualized by a selection of Marais’s paintings, this article glosses the index of landscape in this body of cultural production. The prevalence of landscape in Marais’s work and the range of its expression contribute novel perspectives to understanding colonial constructions of the twentieth-century South African landscape. Like the vast, empty, and ancient landscape of the Karoo, where Marais lived during the last decades of his life, his music assumes specificity not through efforts to prioritize individual expression, but through the distinct absence of such efforts. Listening for landscape in Marais’s songs, one encounters the embrace of generic musical conventions as a condition for the construction of a particular national identity. Colonial white landscape, Marais’s work seems to suggest, is deprived of a compelling musical aesthetic by its very embrace and desired possession of that landscape.

scholarly journals The Reconstruction of the European Mind: T. S. Eliot’s Criterion and the Idea of Europe

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Vanheste
Keyword(s):  
Interwar Period ◽  
Specific Role ◽  
The Political ◽  
European Identity ◽  
Hugo Von Hofmannsthal ◽  
Jose Ortega Y Gasset ◽  
European Culture ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Political Events ◽  
European Values

T. S. Eliot was the founder and editor of the Criterion, a literary and cultural review with a European focus that was published during the interwar period. The Criterion functioned as a platform for intellectuals with a shared perception of European culture and European identity. It was part of a network of European periodicals that facilitated an intellectual exchange between writers and thinkers with a common orientation. Examples of other reviews in the Criterion network were the Nouvelle Revue Française from France, La Fiera Letteraria and Il Convegno from Italy, the Revista de Occidente from Spain (edited by José Ortega y Gasset), and Die Neue Rundschau, the Europäische Revue, and the Neue deutsche Beiträge (edited by Hugo von Hofmannsthal) from Germany. In this article, I investigate the specific role the Criterion network of reviews and intellectuals played as an infrastructure for the dissemination of ideas about European culture during the interwar period. I also discuss the content of these ideas about the ‘European mind’. As to the latter, I suggest that Eliot positioned himself as well as his magazine in the European tradition of humanist thinking. Unfortunately, the Criterion’s ambition for a reconstruction of the European mind would dissipate as the European orientation of the 1920s was displaced by the political events of the 1930s. Eliot and his Criterion network expressed a Europeanism that has often been overlooked in recent research. The ideas discussed in this network remain interesting in our time, in which discussions about European values and European identity are topical. What is also highly interesting is the role cultural reviews played during the interwar period as a medium for exchanging such ideas.

Taylorism, the European Science of Work, and the Quantified Self at Work

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 600-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Quantified Self ◽  
Management Consultants ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
European Science ◽  
Social Rhythms ◽  
Accurate Comparison ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Working Day ◽  
Mode Of Production

While the Quantified Self has often been described as a contemporary iteration of Taylorism, this article argues that a more accurate comparison is to be made with what Anson Rabinbach has termed the “European Science of Work.” The European Science of Work sought to modify Taylor’s rigid and schematic understanding of the laboring body through the incorporation of insights drawn from the rich European tradition of physiological studies. This “softening” of Taylorist methods had the effect of producing a greater “isorhythmia” or synchronicity between the bodily rhythms of workers and those of the mode of production itself and was embraced by employers as a way to dampen worker militancy. Through a discursive analysis of the promotion of sensor analytics by management consultants VoloMetrix and Humanyze, I argue that the contemporary quantification of the workplace represents a similar project of “soft domination,” as the intimate, bottom-up mode of surveillance it fosters seeks to more closely mold workers’ physiological and social rhythms to the structure of the workplace and the working day.

scholarly journals Proclaiming the Divine Logos to the Man of the Future

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-154
Author(s):  
David Torrijos-Castrillejo
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Christian Doctrine ◽  
New Evangelization ◽  
The Future ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The One

This paper studies the cooperation of theology in the new evangelization in societies of ancient Christian tradition which are suffering an advanced process of secularization. It begins with Spain, where a recent debate on the influence of Christian intellectuals on social life suggests the ineffectiveness of ecclesiastical resources in transmitting the rich Catholic doctrinal heritage. Then the author deals with the idiosyncrasy of contemporary man, which lies near the one of the immediate future’s man: an uprooted subject who does not believe that life has any meaning, is deeply marked by emotivism and attaches little significance to truth. The theology of tomorrow cannot feed this emotivism but must be proactive in its own way. The proclamation of the Gospel is not different from the exposition of the Church’s doctrine. To detach evangelization from the teaching of Christian doctrine cannot help the encounter with Christ. In order to succeed in transmitting this doctrine by making it suggestive, theologians should work together with experts in communication.

scholarly journals Martin Luther’s Interpretation on Magnificat. Vademecum of Christian Education for Rulers

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 371-393
Author(s):  
Maria Curtean
Keyword(s):  
Christian Education ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Political Anthropology ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Human Being ◽  
European Culture ◽  
Reactive Center

Abstract Considering the ethical, anthropological and theological perspectives on the institution of a secular leader, as they are presented in Martin Luther’s writing “Das Magnificat verdeutschet und ausgelegt”, (1521) this paper aims to emphasize his contribution to the contemporary political anthropology and European culture. Presenting Mary’s canticle as a vademecum of educating secular leaders, Luther highlights the need of spiritual substantiation of the education of the secular leader and identifies mens cordis as the active and reactive center of the human being, from which all counsels and all reigns must be derived. While still preserving parts of mysticism, mystical and ascetic sources for the Christian education of rulers, thus a fragment of the universal Christian tradition, as they were developed and contextualized in Western Europe, this work by Luther could be a significant impulse for the renewal of the dialogue between Lutheran tradition and Orthodoxy.

scholarly journals EUROPEAN CODES OF CONTEMPORARY UKRAINIAN SYMBOLISM

2020 ◽  
pp. 94-98
Author(s):  
S. P. Stoian
Keyword(s):  
Visual Art ◽  
Symbolic Space ◽  
Stage Of Development ◽  
European Culture ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Artistic Images ◽  
Symbolic Images ◽  
The One ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Universe

The article analyzes the specifics of contemporary Ukrainian symbolism in visual art in the context of a relationship with the European tradition. By drawing parallels between contemporary works by Ukrainian authors and symbolic images created in different historical periods of European culture from ancient times to nowadays, their deep kinship in their motives and meanings is demonstrated. This indicates that modern Ukrainian symbolism, on the one hand, is organically included in the European tradition, and on the other hand, contains unique, authentic features inherent in Ukrainian culture. Numerous works by contemporary Ukrainian authors, close to the idea of creating images, far from the principles of realism, images. It always hides multilayered, undiscovered meanings, testifies to the significant relevance of symbolism in contemporary art. At this stage of development, it demonstrates a crisis of form and radical conceptuality, in contrast to which artists are beginning to develop an interest in deeper, meaningful and multi-vector artistic images. It is noted that human is immersed in the world of symbols from birth, and it is this ability to symbolize even in primitive times begins to distinguish it from the animal world, because only human consciousness can create a symbolic space of culture. Art is also born in the bosom of symbolism because even the first rock paintings contain symbolic and mythological meanings. After all, man can see in the image of a tree, not just a plant that is a source of food or shelter, but a symbol of the universe, which combines three levels of the universe: underground, earthly and celestial. Symbolism is a much broader phenomenon than just an artistic direction, because the desire to generate symbolic images in art was present in all periods of human development, retreating to the periphery in times of powerful rationalization of culture and returning to the forefront of appealing to transcendent, irrational, unconscious of our existence. Only by conducting a thorough analysis of this phenomenon from the birth of art in primitive times, going through all stages of development of European culture, we can fully understand the origins, specifics and relationship of modern Ukrainian symbolism with European tradition, as well as its authenticity and originality. It distinguishes the phenomenon from all that has already been created in the space of visual art.

scholarly journals Similarities between festivals ‘Diwali’ in India and ‘Samhain’ in European civilizations

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 52-56
Author(s):  
Surendra Mathur
Keyword(s):  
European Countries ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
European Culture ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
The World ◽  
European Civilization ◽  
The Way

Diwali is an Indian festival which is still alive in European tradition in a different form. The ritual for celebrating the Diwali and its cultural significance has close similarities with Samhain in Europe to that of India. The present perspective looked into available evidences for similarities of ‘Diwali’ with Samhain in  European civilization.  The study has been analyzed by dividing this topic into four parts, 1) Name Similarities between Samhain and Diwali, 2) Dates similarities between Samhain and & Diwali, 3) the similarity in the way these both festivals are celebrated even today and, 4) lastly Similarities of ‘Samhain’ in European countries. It has also been the New Year of many sects of the world. These festivals are in the heart of all societies and sects in India and Europe and thus they can help re-emerge the mythological cultures of the world. Will India look its relation with European culture in the light of Diwali?

Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Crawford Gribben ◽  
Graeme Murdock
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Cultural Environment ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
Linear Fashion ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
European Culture ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
The World ◽  
Truth Claims

Calvinism did not develop as a uniform Christian tradition across early modern Europe. Nor did Calvinism make a discrete, standalone impact on the development of European culture. This introduction does not seek to establish or to reinforce a set of unambiguous arguments about what Calvinist culture was, is, or ought to be, nor is it concerned with outlining how, in some linear fashion, Calvinism shaped European and global cultures or contributed to the cultures of modernity. Instead, this introduction offers a portrait of Calvinism and Reformed religion, understood as a sociocultural phenomenon as well as an expression of truth claims about God and the world, to examine how this form of Christian religion developed in different cultural settings. This introduction also supports an analysis of the ways in which Calvinism related to the multi-confessional cultural environment that prevailed in Europe after the Reformation.

Spuścizna świata antycznego w życiu politycznym Europy

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (0) ◽  
pp. 55-62
Author(s):  
Tomasz Lenkiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Spatial Dimension ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Ural Mountains ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Eastern Border

The precise conceptualization of a spatial dimension of Europe is highly controversial. Taking the diversity of criteria, factors and determinants into account, one may tell that Europe is perceived as a geographic, cultural, meta-political, political and civilization space. The arbitrary indication of Ural Mountains as an eastern border of Europe is still being questioned. Common roots of European tradition and identity are being found in Greek, Roman and Judeo-Christian tradition. Europe as geographical identificator emerged in ancient Greece and had axiological content from its very begining.

The American Giant

Worldview ◽  
1972 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 47-48
Author(s):  
Richard Neuhaus
Keyword(s):  
International Economic ◽  
Marshall Plan ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Essential Ingredient ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Rich ◽  
American Society

Mr. Peter G. Peterson, Assistant to the President for International Economic Affairs and frequently called the President's “economic Kissinger,” must be credited at least with candor when he recently stated: “I believe we must dispel any ‘Marshall Plan psychology’ or relatively unconstrained generosity that may remain. This is not just a matter of choice but of necessity.” In a hungry world, unfortunately, an American imperial policy of unmitigated self-interest is not made more morally palatable by the candor with which it is proclaimed. Mr. Peterson's recommendations would remove the ethical linchpin of the Jewish-Christian tradition (and of the American experience at its best), namely, the belief that the rich are accountable to the poor and the strong to the weak. As “idealistic” as they may seem, it is the better part of realism to recognize that such ideals are an essential ingredient in holding together the experiment that is American society.

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