text:
This content requires Flash Player.
Nannette McDonagh was 20 weeks pregnant with her third child when she and her husband, Pat, went to the hospital for their first general ultrasound.
A blood test had prompted Nannette's obstetrician to prescribe a Level 2 ultrasound. While assuring her the blood test was probably nothing to worry about, the obstetrician said the Level 2 ultrasound would offer a more detailed view of the baby's anatomy.
The technician probed the outside of her belly with the wand of the ultrasound machine. Nannette watched the grainy images appear and dissolve and appear again on the screen. She had been through ultrasounds with her two girls but found it difficult to interpret what she was seeing on the screen.
"It's a boy," the technician said.
This was exciting news for the McDonaghs that July day in 2003. Their daughters would be getting a baby brother. Most of all, they were hoping for a healthy baby.
The technician kept probing and not saying much, taking what seemed to Nannette to be a long time. All of a sudden, without explanation, he put down the wand and left the room.
"I had a feeling something was up," Nannette said.
A few minutes later, the technician returned with a doctor. They resumed the ultrasound.
"Your baby has a congenital heart condition called hypoplastic left heart syndrome," the doctor said. "He will not be born here."
At first, Nannette thought, Of course, he won't be born here. They were almost 50 miles away from their home in McHenry, Illinois. The plan was he would be born in nearby Woodstock.
Then she thought - my baby has what?
"What is that?" Nannette asked.
"Basically, he only has half a heart," the doctor said. "He will most likely not make it."
Ian was born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), a rare heart defect where the left side of the heart is underdeveloped and cannot provide effective circulation. For babies born with HLHS to survive, a heart vessel called the ductus arteriosus (1), which normally closes shortly after birth, needs to remain open so that blood can pass from the baby's heart to the body. To keep the vessel from closing, doctors typically treat the baby with a medication called prostaglandin E1. Babies with HLHS also need to have a hole between the upper chambers of the heart (2) to allow oxygen-rich blood to pass into the heart so it can be pumped to the rest of the body. Ian's heart didn't have this hole, so there was no way for oxygen-rich blood to travel from his lungs and through his heart. In order to save Ian's live, Dr. Javois and his team would need to act quickly to create a hole in his heart.Learn more about HLHS here.This image is reprinted with permission from University of Michigan Congenital Heart Center.
Two weeks later, Nannette went to the Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Illinois, to have a fetal echocardiogram, which is a specialized ultrasound of the baby's heart.
The echocardiogram confirmed the baby had hypoplastic ("hypo" means underdeveloped) left heart syndrome, or HLHS.
After birth, in babies without a congenital heart defect, the right side of the heart pumps oxygen-poor blood from the heart to the lungs. The left side of the heart pumps oxygen-rich blood from the lungs to the rest of the body. In babies with HLHS, the left side of the heart does not develop properly - the mitral valve, left ventricle, aortic valve and the aorta are either too small or not formed at all. Birth defects of the heart happen in nearly 1 percent, or about 8 out of every 1,000 newborn babies.1 HLHS is among the rarest of them, affecting about one of every 4,344 babies born each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.2
Before birth when a baby is growing in a mother's womb during pregnancy, there is natural hole between the heart's upper chambers. For babies born with HLHS, the oxygen-rich blood from the lungs bypasses the poorly functioning left side of the heart through this small hole so that the right side of the heart can pump it out to the rest of the body. If the hole is too small, there is nowhere for the oxygen-rich blood to go. At that point, babies with HLHS develop trouble breathing, a weak pulse, and are ashen or bluish in skin color. Without emergency intervention, the condition is fatal.
The specialized ultrasound at Advocate showed Nannette's baby did not have this hole in his heart, a condition called intact atrial septum. By not having this hole, once he was born - and detached from the life-supporting placenta - there would be no way for Nannette's baby to get the oxygen-rich blood from his heart to the rest of the body.
Only about 6 percent of babies with HLHS also have an intact atrial septum (although up to 20 percent may have a small or obstructed opening).3, 4 The blood flow through the hole in the heart appears to indirectly promote normal growth of the left side of the heart. As a result, it's possible that in the case of Nannette's baby, the absence of the hole played a part in the underdevelopment of the left side of the heart, said Alexander Javois, MD, FSCAI, a pediatric interventional cardiologist at Advocate Hope Children's Hospital in Oak Lawn, Illinois.
Nannette's prenatal cardiologist at Advocate, Bettina Cuneo, MD, referred Nannette to an out-of-state hospital that was developing an experimental procedure to open the atrial septum while the baby is still in the womb.5
"Okay, we'll try it," Nannette said. In early October, Nannette made the trip to Boston.
Nannette had not yet told her girls - Madison, 7, and Breanne, 9 - that their baby brother had a very serious condition. She decided it was time.
"We wanted to let them have their childhood, as much as possible," Nannette said. "But since there was a possibility we would come home and not have a baby, we decided to tell them."
The procedure performed in Boston would use ultrasound to help pediatric interventional cardiologists guide a catheter through Nannette's abdomen, through the uterus and into the fetus. Through the catheter, a needle would be guided to the chamber wall of the baby's heart to create a hole. Doctors had to hit a moving target - a grape-sized beating heart.
Although it had worked in some cases, the procedure was tricky, to say the least.
"They tried it, but it didn't work," Nannette said. "The baby was moving around a lot, and I think my blood pressure was getting a little high."
They were back to square one. They would have to wait until the baby was born before they could begin to treat his heart.
The chances were not looking good, and they were about to get worse.
It was Halloween. Nannette was at her daughters' school, Riverwood Elementary in McHenry, taking photos for the school yearbook. She was also armed with a roll of toilet paper so her girls could play the "mummy game" in which the toilet paper was wrapped around them to make them into mummies.
Before anyone could say "Trick or Treat!" Nannette had quite a scare.
Her water broke.
She called her husband to come to pick her up and her mother to take care of the girls after school. On the way, they called Advocate to tell them what had happened and that they were on their way.
The 63-mile trip would normally take about 1½ hours. But traffic was backed up that day, especially on Interstate 290. If the baby came before they got to the hospital, he had little chance of survival.
"I had visions of a helicopter landing on the Tollway so they could fly me to the hospital," Nannette said.
She never did go into labor that day. But her doctors weren't taking any chances - Nannette would be staying at the hospital until Baby Ian was born.
Meanwhile, Dr. Javois was developing a plan.
He had reviewed the scientific literature on treating babies with HLHS and intact arterial septum, and the results were not promising. He found that the children were being delivered in the obstetrics suite, transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), then transferred to the catheterization laboratory (cath lab) for the emergency procedure to create the hole in the heart. Very few survived. In most of the cases, the babies died during or soon after the procedure, or they died after a heart transplant because their condition was poor from the very start. One of the problems was the whole process took too long.
A new approach would be needed to "get the hole created faster," Dr. Javois said. The answer, he thought, was to deliver the baby in the cath lab in order to minimize the transport time. One team would set up for the delivery in one cath lab while another team would be waiting to perform the interventional procedure in a second cath lab next door.
"It raised a lot of eyebrows in the hospital because it had never been done before. But we knew that even seconds counted in Ian's case," Dr. Javois said.
Since they had never done this procedure (called an "atrial septostomy") in this way before, Dr. Javois and his multi-disciplinary team walked through a mock procedure several times to help anticipate and address problems. The troubleshooting drill helped them understand what equipment they needed and anticipate the dynamics of the people in the room. They addressed procedural questions such as: How would the baby enter the room? Who would be putting in the breathing tube? Who would be placing the baby on the EKG monitor? Who would start the procedure? How would they get the catheters into the proper position?
"We wanted to make sure that not only things would move smoothly, but it would be very efficient," Dr. Javois said. "We wanted everything to go as quickly as possible."
Dr. Javois visited Nannette in the obstetrics ward, where he explained his plan to her. She seemed confused and scared. Ultimately, she would come to the conclusion it was worth the effort, and even if they couldn't save her son, what the doctors would learn from the attempt could help someone else.
She did have one pressing concern.
"Can I kiss him before you do the procedure?" Nannette asked.
"I'm sorry, but no - there just isn't enough time," Dr. Javois said. "The moment he is born, he will start to die."
Every day Nannette saw Dr. Javois, she asked the same question: "Can I kiss him when he is born?" And every day, she would get the same answer: "No, there isn't time."
The morning of the delivery, she asked one last time.
"Can I kiss him?"
"We'll make time. Yes, you can kiss him, but it has to be quick," Dr. Javois said.
On Nov. 20, Ian McDonagh was delivered by cesarean section in the cath lab at Advocate Christ Medical Center. He surprised everyone by crying - they didn't think he would be in good enough shape to do even that. Nannette kissed him on the head. As they brought him to the cath lab next door - a journey of some 10 feet - he was baptized on the way.
Nannette was a bit sleepy from the epidural anesthesia she had for the cesarean and didn't remember much about how Ian looked right after delivery. He had not been cleaned up, so he was a bit bloody, she said. That was all she could remember.
Dr. Javois, however, remembers very well.
"Ian looked absolutely terrible," he said. "He was just gray and limp and there was no motion."
In the neighboring cath lab Ian was greeted by a team of 36 people. Besides the cath lab team consisting of Dr. Javois, nurses, and technologists, there were also cardiac surgeons, cardiac anesthesiologists, neonatologists, cardiologists who specialized in critical care, associated nurses and respiratory technicians. The large team was needed in case Ian did poorly. For instance, the surgeons were there if the baby needed to be put on a heart-lung bypass machine, while the other specialists were there to help with other potential problems.
"It's a real team approach," Dr. Javois said.
As the lead interventional pediatric cardiologist, Dr. Javois performed the procedure to create the hole in Ian's heart. Dr. Javois passed a small tube (catheter) through the umbilical cord, up into the heart, placing it against the wall of Ian's heart. A wire was passed through the catheter and, using radio frequency energy, it was heated up to sear a hole through the wall. A progression of larger and larger balloons was passed over the wire to make larger the hole in Ian's heart.
They were done before Ian was an hour old. Previous attempts at other institutions to perform a similar procedure had taken several hours to complete.
"Every second that passed without the hole in the heart, he would be in worse shape," Dr. Javois said.
For Ian, it was so far, so good. But he faced three major surgeries, and a number of other corrective surgical procedures, to treat his HLHS. The first major surgery would be within two weeks, and it was the most dangerous one he would face.
While Dr. Javois was busy with Ian, Nannette was intermittently sleeping.
"I remember waking up - my husband said I did it several times - and asking, 'Is he okay? Is he alive?' " Nannette said.
Each time, her husband would respond: "Yeah, he's holding his own, he's doing okay."
Ian made it through his birth day with flying colors, but he still had a long way to go. He was sent to the hospital's NICU, where he was hooked up to a complex array of tubes and monitors.
His sisters, who were so anxious to see him, were too young to visit him in the NICU. All they could do was gaze at him through the window.
Since Ian was essentially missing the left half of his heart, his existing heart had to be reconfigured so that the right side could do the entire work of the heart on its own.
The first procedure, called the Norwood, had to be done within the first 10 days to two weeks of his life. Before he could undergo this procedure, his lungs needed time to recover.
Of the three major surgeries he was facing, this would be the most dangerous. The goal of the Norwood procedure was to create a "new" aorta and connect it to the normal right ventricle (the right lower chamber), which essentially replaced the function of Ian's left ventricle. A bypass tube was placed from the right ventricle to the pulmonary arteries that take the oxygen-poor blood from the heart to the lungs. As a result, the right ventricle pumps the oxygen-rich blood to the body, although through the bypass it still also pumps oxygen-poor blood to the lungs.
The surgery was a success, and Ian was sent to recover to the adjacent Hope Children's Hospital.
One way Nannette monitored Ian's progress during his stay in the hospital was by the number of tubes, wires, machines and monitors attached to him.
"I knew he was getting better when stuff started to disappear," she said. That was capped on the day they were able to completely wean Ian off of the ventilator that helped him breathe.
More than a month after he was born and two days before Christmas, it was time for Ian to go home.
As they were getting ready to bring Ian home, a host of reporters and camera crews from Chicago area media assembled at the hospital. The family did interviews in the hospital room. Some of the media reports would dub Ian the "miracle baby."
But the biggest surprise was waiting for Ian's two sisters at home.
"It was quite a surprise for the girls. We didn't tell them he was coming home," Nannette said.
What a surprise! Ian's sisters got the best Christmas present ever. Their baby brother came home just in time for the holiday.
Ian needed much more care than the typical newborn. Babies off to a rough start due to their heart disease can often have problems with eating. Ian had a continuous feeding tube that allowed him - and his parents - to sleep through the night, since he would never wake up hungry, Nannette said. But things went well and by March he was off the feeding tube completely.
In June of 2004, Ian underwent the second major surgery, the bidirectional Glenn procedure, to directly send oxygen-poor venous blood from the upper part of the body to the lungs to be re-oxygenated, reducing the work the right ventricle has to do. This rerouting would allow the previously placed surgical shunt to be removed.
"That went wonderfully - it didn't slow him down at all," Nannette said. Ian was back home in three days.
Things weren't quite so wonderful in Ian's eyes. It was about this time that Ian had developed a strong case of "white coat syndrome" - he had had enough unpleasant experiences with doctors that he hated the sight of their white coats.
"All he had to do was see someone in a white coat or scrubs, and he would just start screaming," Nannette said.
Visiting Dr. Javois to do periodic echocardiograms to check his heart was a nightmare, Nannette said
"It took three of us to hold him still," she said.
Dr. Javois admits: "He hated me!"
In October 2005, just before his second birthday, Ian had the last of the three major surgical procedures to restructure his heart. Called the Fontan, this procedure directs the oxygen-poor blood from the lower part of the body directly to the lungs (remember, the previous bidirectional Glenn procedure did this for the upper body). Now oxygen-rich and oxygen-poor blood would no longer mix in Ian's heart and his oxygen levels would be nearly normal.
Ian spent 10 days in the hospital.
"It hurt so much when he walked that he had to relearn how to walk again," Nannette said.
But, for the most part, getting through that final major surgery was a relief for the whole family. Despite reassurances from Dr. Javois that Ian was "very strong, except for his heart," the McDonaghs were on pins and needles for the first two years of Ian's life.
"We just tried to live the best we could each day," Nannette said.
In Dr. Javois' eyes, however, Nannette was a strong and fearless source of energy and support for Ian.
"She's been a rock, really, for him throughout all his life," Dr. Javois said.
Although Ian would face other non-invasive procedures, life settled down for Ian and his family. Soon Ian even stopped shrieking every time he saw a white coat, even lying still for his echocardiogram when he saw Dr. Javois.
But would he be able to lead a normal life?
Today, Ian is a typical 11-year old boy. He loves to play with his friends. He loves to play outside. He loves video games, Legos, making stop-action animations and playing the drums.
"If you saw him walking down the street you would never know he had anything wrong with his heart," Nannette said.
He is a little smaller than your average 11-year-old. When his friends start running around at recess, Ian sometimes can't keep up.
"He's pretty energetic," Nannette said. "He gets winded, but when he does, he just stops."
Dr. Javois discourages him from playing contact sports. Fortunately, Ian does not appear to have a strong desire to play sports. Ian's older sisters were into the theater and music, not sports, and Ian seems to have followed suit.
One day, when Ian was playing Little League baseball, he asked his dad how many scenes were left. That is when they realized Ian was not cut out for sports.
"We had to explain that plays had scenes, but baseball games had innings," Nannette said.
To be sure, Ian likes football games - but more for the marching band performance at halftime than the game. Ian wants to be in band when he gets older, but his lungs aren't strong enough to play a wind instrument. So he took up the drums.
"I like the drums because you don't have to blow," Ian said.
Ian has undergone numerous procedures to improve his heart and lung functions. In 2012, he received a stent to enlarge the blood vessel to his left lung. He will need to have this stent stretched open more as he grows.
Ian takes it all in stride as well as an 11-year-old can.
"When I was born, the left side of my heart wasn't there and the hole in my heart wasn't there," Ian said. "So the doctor had to open the hole so the blood could go through. It was serious because if they didn't do that, the blood wouldn't go through and I would die."
His case still gets attention. There was a flurry of stories on television and in newspapers and magazines about him just after he was born. Then came Grey's Anatomy. The producers of the popular television show had learned about Ian from an old magazine account they found on the Internet. They decided to incorporate a version of Ian's story into an episode that aired April 25, 2013, with "Dr. Yang" playing Dr. Javois' role. The Grey's Anatomy episode spawned a new batch of media stories on Ian.
At 11, Ian has plans for a future making movies. He's a natural in front of and behind the camera. The SecondsCount team can't wait to "like" his YouTube channel.
Ian still sees Dr. Javois every six months for a heart check-up.
"It's never going to be perfect or normal, but it's better than we thought it could ever be," Dr. Javois said. "To watch Ian run around like the crazy little guy that he is is incredibly rewarding."
Since Ian has gotten over his "white coat syndrome," he and Dr. Javois have become good friends. Ian seems to like the visits, and they enjoy talking with each other, Dr. Javois said.
"He teases a lot and he's also serious," Ian said.
Dr. Javois and his team wrote a study of Ian's case that was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.6 Since the case was published, this approach of delivering the HLHS baby without a heart hole in the cath lab for immediate intervention is being done internationally. In fact, Dr. Javois gets regular calls from interventional cardiologists from around the world who want to talk through the process.
"They ask how to get all the specialists involved in the delivery. How do I do it? Exactly what's the conduct in the cath lab?" Dr. Javois said.
As this approach gains popularity, the prognosis for babies like Ian has improved. But there are still babies, especially those who were not diagnosed before birth, who don't make it out of the delivery room, Dr. Javois said.
Meanwhile, Ian aspires to be a film maker. He has already made several stop-motion videos, in which objects - Legos, for instance - are moved from frame to frame so that they appear to be in motion when the frames run in continuous sequence.
"I want to have my own YouTube channel with lots of stop-motion videos and soon, hopefully, my own show on TV," Ian said. Someday, perhaps, Ian could make a movie about his life.
After all, Ian is lucky to be alive and he knows it. He said if he ever has a baby with the same condition he had, "I'm going straight to Dr. Javois."
Restarting Curtis Broome's Damaged Heart
How Fire Hero Tony Survived a Heart Attack
1 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Congenital Heart Defects: Data and Statistics. Page last reviewed: July 9, 2014. Page last updated: July 9, 2014 http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/heartdefects/data.html2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Congenital Heart Defects: Facts about Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. Page last reviewed: June 17, 2014. Page last updated: June 17, 2014 http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/heartdefects/hlhs.html3 Vlahos AP, Lock JE, McElhinney DB, van der Velde ME. Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome With Intact or HighlyRestrictive Atrial Septum Outcome After Neonatal Transcatheter Atrial Septostomy. Circulation. 2004; 109: 2326-2330.4 Divanovi A, Hor K, Cnota J, Hirsch R, Kinsel-Ziter M, Michelfelder E. Prediction and perinatal management of severely restrictive atrial septum in fetuses with critical left heart obstruction: Clinical experience using pulmonary venous Doppler analysis. J Thorac Cardiovasc Surg. 2011 Apr;141(4):988-94.5 Marshall AC, et al. Creation of an Atrial Septal Defect In Utero for Fetuses With Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome and Intact or Highly Restrictive Atrial Septum. Circulation (2004); 110: 253-258. http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/110/3/253.full.pdf+html6 Javois AJ, Van Bergen AH, Cuneo BF, Husayni TS. Novel approach to the newborn with hypoplastic left heart syndrome and intact atrial septum. Catheter Cardiovasc Interv. 2005 Oct;66(2):268-72.
SecondsCount hosts the Unbroken Hearts program to raise awareness of cardiovascular health and wellness, including prevention, management and treatment of cardiovascular disease. SCAI, the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions gratefully acknowledges the following companies for their generous support of the Unbroken Hearts program while taking sole responsibility for all content developed and disseminated through this effort.
Learn how SCAI is advancing patient care »


text:
Российский Рок-портал
Новости рок-музыки
- The Revealing Science of God - Dance of the Dawn
С альбома
Tales from Topographic Oceans
SHRUTIS: The Revealing Science of God can be seen as an ever-opening flower
in which simple truths emerge examining the complexities and magic of the past
and how we should not forget the song that has been left to us to hear. The
knowledge of God is a search, constant and clear.
Dawn of light lying between a silence and sold sources,
Cahsed amid fusions of wonder, in moments hardly seen forgotten
Coloured in pastures of chance dancing leaves cast spells of challenge,
Amused but real in thought, we fled from the sea whole.
Dawn of thought transfered through moments of days undersearching earth
Revealing corridors of time provoking memories, disjointed but with
Craving penetrations offer links with the self instructor's sharp
and tender love as we took to the air, a picture of distance.
Dawn of our power we amuse redescending as fast as misused
Expression, as only to teach love as to reveal passion chasing
Late into corners, and we danced from the ocean.
Dawn of love sent within us colours of awakening among the many
Won't to follow, only tunes of a different age, as the links span
Our endless caresses for the freedom of life everlasting.
Talk tothe sunlight caller
Soft summer mover distance mine
Called out a tune but I never saw the face
Heard but not replaced
I ventured to talk, but I never lost my place
Cast out a spell rendered for the light of day
Lost in lights array
I ventured to see, as the sound began to play
What happened to this song we once knew so well
Signed promise for moments caught within the spell
I must have waited all my life for this
Moment moment
The future poised with the splendour just begun
The light we were as one
And crowded through the curtains of liquid into sun
And for a moment when our world had filled the skies
Magic turned our eyes
To feast on the treasure set for our strange device
What happened to wonders we once knew so well
Did we forget what happened surely we can tell
We must have waited all our lives for this
Moment moment moment
Star light movements in seasons
Release forward
Tallest rainbow
Sun shower seasons
Life flower reasons
They move fast, they tell me,
But I just can't believe that I can feel it
There's someone, to tell you,
amidthe challenge we look around in unison with you
Getting over overhanging trees
Let them rape the forest
Thoughts would send our fusion
Clearly to be home
Getting over wars we do not mean
Or so it seems so clearly
Sheltered with our passion
Clearly to be home
They move fast, they tell me,
But I just can't believe they really mean to
There's someone, to tell you,
And I just can't believe our song will leave you
Skyline teacher
Warland seeker
Send out poison
Cast iron leader
And through the rhythm of moving slowly
Sent through the rhythm work out the story
Move over glory to sons of old fighters past.
Young Christians see it from the beginning
Old people feel it that's what they're saying
Move over glory to sons of old fighters past.
The move fast, they tell me,
But I just can't believe they really mean to
There's someone, to tell you,
A course towards a universal season
Getting over overhanging trees let them
Rape the forest, they might stand and leave them
Clearly to be home
Getting over wars we do not mean
We charm the movement suffers
Call out all our memories
Clearly to be home
We've moved fast
We need love
A part we offer is our only freedom
What happened to this song we once knew so well
Signed promise for moments caught within the spell
We must have waited all our lives for this
Moment moment
Past present movers moments we'll process the future, but only
To touch him we know, send flowered rainbows
That chased flowers of dark and lights of songs
To you, show all we feel for and know of, cast round,
Youth is the truth accepting that reasons will relive
And breathe hope and chase and love
For you and you and you
Тексты песен
Отчеты о концертах
Все о Легендах Века
Русский Рок
MP3 Коллекция
Молодые группы
Полезные Ссылки
Каталог рок-сайтов
Обратная Связь
Российский рок-портал
, 2001-2011
Веб-дизайн и основная идея -
Old Rocker
Программирование -
Алексей "rusty_angel" Михеев

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Thermador Appliance Repair Denver
Ultimately, as a house owner, having your fridge correctly repaired along with kept is certainly vital. At any supplied time, your refrigerator, which consists of many bucks in food things as well as supermarket, could grind to a stop at the most unfavorable time, supplying you forced to cleanse a terrible mess, wasting hrs of your beneficial time and many dollars of your very little resources. The truth is, properly maintaining your refrigerator is just simply be easier as well as less costly option on the whole.Your fridge has to be leveledThe feet below your fridge turn, enabling you to level your gadget for ideal effectiveness.
A level home device makes it possible for all of its interior elements to run appropriately. In case the device is tipped away at a severe angle, you could get in touch with Thermador Gadget Repair work to remedy any kind of home appliance mistakes you have, allowing your fridge to go for peak efficiency.Your Coils Are Filthy and likewise Had to be CleanedMake the effort to pull the fridge from versus the wall and likewise clean up the black coils filled with extreme waste and likewise dirt that is avoiding your fridge from sufficiently chilling.Is your refrigerator making trickling sounds?There are some natural events that take place with refrigerators, like the audios from your fridge or refrigerator freezer settling or crackling, all due to temperature variations, yet, if your fridge leaks, there are considerable issues that have to be handled. Pull the drip turn out as well as find if there are clogs or any kind of particles originating from your appliance. Condensation simply vaporizes.
Excessive dripping can indicate that A break or obstruction is sending your appliance on a quick, downhill spiral, eventually causing high electrical power expenses along with a refrigerator that barely works.To Stick or otherwise to Stick!Your door gaskets are brutalized as well as pounded by children as well as family over a hundred of times a year. Youngsters with undesirable hands can destroy your fridge device, which as quickly as had the spotless, flawless seal. The tiniest opening might permit cool air to get away, owning your heating as well as electric costs sky high, while being stuck with a bad refrigeration.Obtain Your Fridge Repair service Done RightCall Thermador Device Repair work, a decent Los Angeles house device repair service on the event that you have essential device issues that can not be quickly fixed. House home appliance specialists could quickly along with briefly fix any concerns that may need attention. The reality is: having your entire refrigerator changed perhaps isn't needed, especially when you have a home device expert who could fix it in hrs for an eighth of the cost.


text:
♥ add as favorite
Hatooa Mose Mosali started its operations in August 1990 in Teyateyaneng in the midst of many established weaving houses. In Teyateyaneng, weaving is considered a cultural heritage.
Hatooa Mose Mosali was formed by twenty-one Basotho women. It split in 1997 when fifteen women left and formed Elelloang Basali. We are now running it with five women. We hired ten women for weaving, four spinning women, two knitting women, to whom we will sell shares later on so that they can feel happy and proud when working at Hatooa Mose Mosali.
It was formed to be self-employed and to create jobs among other women and to fight against poverty.


text:
Institutional Review Board, Hospital for Special Surgery
November 07, 2013
The safety of study participants is our top priority. The trial is approved and periodically reviewed by an Institutional Review Board (IRB), which includes doctors, administrators, ethicists, and members of the general public. The safety of clinical trials is reviewed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Before enrolling in a clinical trial, the investigator will explain the purpose of the trial, its expected benefits, any possible risks or side effects, and what your role will be. This is the time to ask questions! If you want to join the trial, you must sign the informed consent documents. You can leave a clinical trial at any time without penalty.
For further information, see Understanding Clinical Trials.
Vivian P. Bykerk, MD
Susan M. Goodman, MD
Lisa A Mandl, MD
Mary K. Crow, MD
Caroline E. Reidy, MPH
Observational study of 70 subjects over a 2 year period.
Inclusion Criteria:
• Patients with SpA should have a BASDAI of > 4 without MRI or radiographic evidence of Sacroiliitis
• Patients with MRI or radiographic evidence of Sacroiliitis should have a BASDAI of >3.5
• No biologic therapy for 3 months. Patients may have had a TNFi > 3 months prior to study entry, but patients currently receiving, for example, adalimumab, etanercept, infliximab, golimumab, certolizumab pegol or who have taken any TNFis within the previous 3 months are ineligible.
• ≥18 yrs old
• Diagnosis of Spondyloarthritis (SpA) (per ASAS criteria and having sacroillitis as confirmed by radiographs or MRI at baseline), with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) (per the ASAS or CASPAR criteria). See Appendix for ASAS and CASPAR Criteria).
• Patients must have evidence of sacroillitis either by radiograph or MRI, or must have evidence of spine inflammation confirmed by radiographs or spine MRI
Exclusion Criteria:
• Age < 18
• Diagnosis of a systemic rheumatic disease or crystalline arthritis (i.e. RA, SLE, systemic sclerosis, gout, pseudogout, Lyme arthritis, reactive arthritis, viral arthritis)
• Pregnant or nursing
• Unable to give informed consent
• Lack of fluency in English. Unfortunately, we do not have the financial resources to offer full translation services
• Unwilling or unable to be followed as part of routine care
• Patients currently receiving biologic therapy (e.g. adalimumab, etanercept, infliximab, golimumab, certolizumab pegol)
Caroline Reidy, MPH


text:
Note: Qualcomm Innovation Center Inc. maintained
repositories have migrated to
git.codelinaro.org. QUIC
repositories on this site will not receive any updates after March 31, 2022,
and will be deleted on March 31, 2023. If your project depends on these
repositories, please adjust your tooling configuration to use the new,
up-to-date project location.
Note: NXP repositories have moved to github please see
this page
for additional information.
© 2021 Code Aurora Forum, a Linux Foundation Collaborative Project.
All Rights Reserved.
Linux Foundation and Code Aurora Forum are registered trademarks of The
Linux Foundation.
Linux is a registered
of Linus Torvalds.
Please see our
privacy policy,
antitrust policy
and terms of use.


text:
FLORHAM PARK, N.J. -- Rex Ryan's press conferences almost always begin with an opening statement that can take many twists and turns as the New York Jets coach searches for focus before fielding questions.
As part of a 10-minute, 1,003-word monologue this week, Ryan offered 17 compliments about the defense. He singled out the inside linebackers as "tremendous athletes, run-hit guys" and a tackle as "about as good as there is at D-line."
Later, when asked to characterize the challenge presented by such a unit, Ryan said simply, "Yikes."
Does this sound familiar? Rex boasting? A familiar refrain from a coach who doesn't shy away from self-congratulation?
"Going against San Francisco," Ryan said, " you almost have to be perfect."
So there.
Ryan is in the rare week, for him, where he has little choice but to admit without qualification that the opposing defense is, simply, good. And stout. Able to impose its will.
And though Ryan would never admit it, the truth is that San Francisco's defense -- led by inside linebackers Patrick Willis and NaVorro Bowman, defensive tackle Justin Smith, outside linebacker Aldon Smith, cornerback Carlos Rogers and strong safety Donte Whitner -- would compare more favorably to Ryan's vintage Baltimore Ravens units than would his current Jets.
"The style of play," Ryan said, "it's hard not to respect."
The Jets play the 49ers on Sunday in an intriguing game that should tilt on the physical battle. And it's fair to ask if the Jets are ready for it.
Especially with the 49ers coming off a surprising loss to the Minnesota Vikings and having spent the week holed up in a Boardman, Ohio, hotel and practicing at Youngstown State in order to avoid long travel days in consecutive weeks.
Defensive tackle Ray McDonald might be honest in saying coach Jim Harbaugh "isn't mad at us," but there is little doubt Harbaugh has his players' focus razor sharp. The 49ers just allowed the most rushing yards (146) in Harbaugh's two years as head coach and, for only the second time, did not record a sack.
"I think when you come off a loss, you want to get back to work," Harbaugh said, "and make darn sure it doesn't happen again."
Oh, boy.
"I'm glad we're playing at home, because I think we're going to need our fans," Ryan said, completely unprompted. "Hopefully, that will be a big edge for us, to have home-field advantage, get our fans behind us."
Hmm. Playing the 12th-man card might seem a peculiar approach in Week 4 -- last we checked, this isn't college football -- but it's been an interesting week for Ryan, who's usually bent on telling us of the strengths within.
But Darrelle Revis is gone for the season with a torn ACL. And the Jets' defense, even while playing six of 12 full quarters this season with Revis, has been anemic against the run and abysmal on third down.
The Miami Dolphins, for example, rushed for 185 yards against the Jets, with 124 from players not named Reggie Bush. The Jets rank 28th in the NFL against the run.
And Miami, with a rookie quarterback, was 10-for-19 on third down, exploiting another Jets weakness. Their opponents have converted 56 percent on third down, which ranks last in the league.
"I don't think I've ever gone through a stage like this, where we're struggling to stop the run and struggling to get off the field on third down," Ryan said. "Those are two areas that are generally a strength, and right now, we haven't done a good enough job of that."
Jets defensive tackle Mike DeVito said the players know they have to play better; the numbers show it and so does their head coach's résumé. Defense, DeVito said, "is Rex's pride and joy."
It certainly is. Remember, Ryan told reporters in late July that he was the best defensive coach in football. In mid-August, he wasn't willing to characterize his defense as the NFL's finest, but he said being top five "is a given."
Unless, of course, we already know.


text:
In size, glitz and—especially—the amount of money at stake, the Outdoor Retailer Winter Market doesn't approach buy-and-sell fests such as CES or the Detroit auto show. But this event, now going on in Salt Lake City, more than makes up for it with a good vibe. And PM is here to check out the goods.
This is the world of new tents, backcountry skis, sports watches, hiking shoes, climbing gear and everything else outdoorsy. Around 35,000 people show up for the summer version of this show, according to the organizers, though crowds are someone lighter in the winter. Weathered tans, rock-climbing-hardened hands and scarred watches and sunglasses heavily outnumber pocket protectors and calculators. A bit less than 700 companies exhibit, and they bring a surprising amount of innovation: The outdoor and ski industries are where clothing products such as the now-familiar Thinsulate, Gore-Tex and Polartec fleece were introduced years ago, and, more recently, where products like GPS watches were first shown.
I'll be pointing out a few trends and some nifty new stuff in the next couple of days. The major thrust of the past couple of years continues: Make everything lighter and make it appeal to more people with better styling and more emphasis on short trips (smaller packs, more comfortable though less-supportive boots, etc.).—Jerry Beilinson
More From Popular Mechanics
Outdoor Retailer Winter Market 2006: The Wrap-Up
Outdoor Retailer Show 4: Next-Gen Avalanche Transceivers
Outdoor Retailer Show 3: The Civilized Camp
Outdoor Retailer Show 2: Wrist List
America's Biggest Outdoor Shop


text:
Land Rover Defender Estate2.0 P400e X-Dynamic S 110 5 Doors Auto [6 Seat]
Vehicle Highlights
- 360 Degree Parking Aid3D Surround Camera With 360 View, 180 Rear View, Front Traffic Detection, Forward Vehicle Guidance, Tow Hitch Assist And Clear Sight Ground ViewAdaptive Cruise ControlAndroid AutoApple CarplayAssisted Tailgate With Soft CloseBluetooth SystemBrake Pad Wear IndicatorConnected Navigation ProDriver Condition MonitorElectric Power Assisted Steering (Epas)Lane Keep AssistLess Ce Device ChargingPush Button StartTraffic Sign Recognition With Adaptive Speed LimiterTrip ComputerWade Sensing
- 7 Kw Onboard Charger8 Speed Automatic TransmissionAc/Dc ChargingAdaptive DynamicsAll Wheel Drive SystemElectronic Air SuspensionHome Charging Cable Mode 2 BasicPublic Charging CableTwin Speed Transfer Box
- Dab Radio (Digital Audio Broadcasting)Meridian 400W Sound Audio System With 11 Speakers And SubwooferPivi Pro Connected
- Auto High Beam AssistAutomatic Headlight LevellingAutomatic HeadlightsCentre High Mounted Stop LightClearsight Interior Rear View MirrorElectric Heated/Power Fold Door Mirrors With Approach Lights And Auto Dimming Driver SideElectric Windows With One Touch Open/Close And Anti-TrapFollow Me Home LightingFront Fog LightsHeated Rear Window With TimerHeated WindscreenLed Tail LightsP400e BadgePremium Led Headlights With Signature DrlPrivacy GlassPuddle LightsRain Sensing Windscreen WipersRear Fog LightsRear Side Wing DoorsRear WiperSide Hinged TailgateSolar Attenuating WindscreenTrailer Stability AssistX-Dynamic Badge
- 12V Power Socket In Loadspace3 Seat Bench In 2Nd RowAlpine LightsCabin LightingDurable Rubber Cabin FlooringDurable Rubber Loadspace FlooringFootwell LightsFront Head RestraintsFront Jump Seat And Folding Front Centre ArmrestLess Wireless ChargerLoadspace HookMultifunction Steering WheelOverhead Stowage For SunglassesRear HeadrestsRear IsofixRear Reading LightsStorage GloveboxSunvisors With Illuminated Vanity MirrorsTwo Front Passenger Seat
- Online Pack With Data Plan - Defender
- 6 X 3 Point SeatbeltsAbsBrake Hold FunctionCbc - (Cornering Brake Control)Customer Configurable AutolockDsc - Dynamic Stability ControlEbd - Electronic Brakeforce DistributionElectric Parking Brake (Epb)Emergency Brake AssistEmergency BrakingEsp + Traction ControlFront Airbags With Passenger Seat Occupant DetectorHdc - Hill Descent ControlHill Launch AssistLow Traction LaunchPower Operated Child LocksRemote For (E-Call,Optimised Assistance Call,Incontrol App,Climate,Beep And Flash And Door)Rsc - Roll Stability ControlSeat Belt ReminderTpms (Tyre Pressure Monitoring System)
- AlarmImmobiliserIntrusion SensorKeyless EntryLocking Wheel Nuts
- Minimum Kerbweight2562 kgGross Vehicle Weight3320 kgFuel Tank Capacity (Litres)90 litresMax. Towing Weight - Braked3000 kgMax. Towing Weight - Unbraked750 kgMax. Loading Weight758 kgLuggage Capacity (Seats Up)696 litresNo. of Seats6Max. Roof Load100 kgLuggage Capacity (Seats Down)1759 litresTurning Circle - Kerb to Kerb12.8
- Length5018 mmWidth2008 mmWheelbase3022 mmWidth (including mirrors)2105 mmHeight1967 mm
- EC Directive 1999/100/EC AppliesNo
- 0 to 62 mph (secs)5.6 secTop Speed119 mphEngine Power - BHP404 bhpEngine Power - PSYes0 to 60 mph (secs)NoEngine Power - KW297 kwEngine Power - RPM5500 rpmEngine Torque - LBS.FT472Engine Torque - NM640 nmEngine Torque - RPM1500 rpmEngine Torque - MKG65.3
- Cylinders - Bore (mm)83 mmCylinders - Stroke (mm)92.3 mmCC1997 ccCylinders4Cylinder LayoutIn-LineNumber of Valves16CamshaftDohcFuel DeliveryTurbo Direct InjectionCatalytic ConvertorYesEngine LayoutNorth SouthCompression Ratio9.5:1TransmissionAutoGears8 Speed
- Coin SeriesX-Dynamic S 110 [6]Coin DescriptionP400eStandard manufacturers warranty - Years3 yearsStandard manufacturers warranty - Mileage999999 milesManufacturers Paintwork Guarantee - Years3 yearsMan Corrosion Perforation Guarantee - Years6 yearsSafety Concerns?NoSpecial EditionNoSpecial OrderNoInsurance Group 1 - 50 Effective January 0743eService Interval Mileage21000 milesService Interval Frequency - Months24 monthsNCAP Adult Occupant Protection %85NCAP Child Occupant Protection %85NCAP Pedestrian Protection %71NCAP Safety Assist %79NCAP Overall Rating - Effective February 095Badge Power400Badge Engine CC2.0 ccVehicle Homologation ClassM1Generation Mark2Alternative Fuel QualifyingYes
- Tyre Size Front255/65 R19Tyre Size Rear255/65 R19Tyre Size SpareFull SizeWheel Type19" AlloyWheel Style6 Spoke Style 6010Alloys?YesSpace Saver?No
- Standard Euro EmissionsEuro 6
- Battery Charging Scenario 1 - Charge Time (Mins)120Battery Charging Scenario 1 - Power Supply - kW7Battery Charging Scenario 1 - Percentage Change0-80Battery Charging Scenario 2 - Charge Time (Mins)30Battery Charging Scenario 2 - Power Supply - kW50Battery Charging Scenario 2 - Percentage Change0-80Coupler/Connector TypeType 2Standard manufacturers Battery warranty - Years6Standard manufacturers Battery warranty - Mileage60000Battery Capacity in kWh15.4Battery LeasedNoBattery TypeLithium-IonWLTP - Equivalent AER (km) - Comb - TEL51WLTP - Equivalent AER (km) - Comb - TEH44WLTP - Equivalent AER (miles) - Comb - TEH27WLTP - Equivalent AER (miles) - Comb - TEL32Battery Capacity % guaranteed under warranty70Charging Port LocationLeft Side RearUsable Battery Capacity15.4Maximum Charging Rate - kW50
- Emissions Test CycleWltpRDE Certification LevelRde 2
- WLTP - CO2 Weighted (g/km) - Comb71WLTP - CO2 Weighted (g/km) - Comb - TEL58WLTP - CO2 Weighted (g/km) - Comb - TEH71
- WLTP - FC Weighted (l/100km) - Comb3WLTP - FC Weighted (l/100km) - Comb - TEL2.5WLTP - FC Weighted (l/100km) - Comb - TEH3WLTP - FC Weighted (mpg) - Comb94.2WLTP - FC Weighted (mpg) - Comb - TEL113WLTP - FC Weighted (mpg) - Comb - TEH94.2
Why Choose Vanarama?
Our unique Price Promise means we'll find you the very best deal on your chosen vehicle. And if you do find a competitors' quote we can't beat, we'll give you £100.Full terms and conditions can be found here.
If something changes unexpectedly with your personal circumstances, the last thing you want to be worrying about is your vehicle. That's why with Vanarama, if the worst happens, you can return it, hassle-free. Full terms and conditions can be found here.
If you change your mind up to 30 days after your vehicle has been delivered, you don't have to worry! As long as haven't exceeded your mileage by 50 miles, we'll collect it from wherever you are, free of charge.Full terms and conditions can be found here.
Unlike many of our competitors, we won't charge you anything to arrange your lease. You simply pay your initial payment and monthly rentals and we'll cover the rest.
Delivering a 5-star service to you is at the heart of everything we do. That's why we're rated excellent on Trust Pilot for our customer service.
There's no need to worry about the hassle of collecting your vehicle. Once it's ready, we'll get it delivered straight to your door, drama-free.
Why Choose Leasing?
Frequently Asked Questions
- How Long Will My Vehicle Delivery Take?Delivery time really depends on several factors, including the vehicle you choose, whether it's in stock & if you're having accessories fitted. If your vehicle is in stock, available & already kitted out the way you want it, it could take as little as 2-3 weeks to be delivered.Can I Lease A Vehicle With Bad Credit?Leasing is a form of vehicle finance or credit, which means funders will look into your credit history when you apply to lease. If you've missed payments or cancelled finance in the past, these can negatively impact your credit score. Vanarama works with more than 10 potential funders & we'll always try to match you with a funder to suit your needs.Can I Cancel A Lease Part Way Through?A lease contract can be cancelled by requesting an early termination. If you request this, the vehicle must be returned to the funder & you'll pay a penalty fee - the amount varies depending on the funder & the type of lease agreement you have, but it could be more than 50% of all remaining payments. If you lease a car with us, you will be covered by Redundancy Protection. This means if due to an unexpected life event you are suddenly unable to afford your payments, we may be able to help. See more about this here.Which Businesses Can Lease Vehicles?In general, any business can lease a vehicle & benefit from the cost savings leasing offers - even new businesses.Can I Change My Annual Mileage Limit Mid-Contract?Yes, although the process will depend on which funder your lease is with & if you are eligible to do so. If you think your mileage limit needs changing, call us straight away so we can discuss your options.What Is The Shortest Lease Contract I Can Take?The shortest lease term available from Vanarama is 2 years, up to a maximum term of 5 years.How Does Fair Wear & Tear Work?If your lease contract requires you to hand your vehicle back at the end, it will be inspected by the finance company for any damage that isn't considered 'fair wear & tear'. The odd bump, scratch or scuff is fine - after all, you could have been driving this vehicle for up to 5 years - excessive damage is not & penalties are often charged to repair it.


text:
William Blake and his Illustrations to The Divine Comedy
William Blake was the first writer of modern times to preach the indissoluble marriage of all great art with symbol. There had been allegorists and teachers of allegory in plenty, but the symbolic imagination, or, as Blake preferred to call it, 'vision,' is not allegory, being 'a representation of what actually exists really and unchangeably.' A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence, a transparent lamp about a spiritual flame; while allegory is one of many possible representations of an embodied thing, or familiar principle, and belongs to fancy and not to imagination: the one is a revelation, the other an amusement. It is happily no part of my purpose to expound in detail the relations he believed to exist between symbol and mind, for in doing so I should come upon not a few doctrines which, though they have not been difficult to many simple persons, ascetics wrapped in skins, women who had cast away all common knowledge, peasants dreaming by their sheepfolds upon the hills, are full of obscurity to the man of modern culture; but it is necessary to just touch upon these relations, because in them was the fountain of much of the practice and of all the precept of his artistic life.
If a man would enter into 'Noah's rainbow,' he has written, and 'make a friend' of one of 'the images of wonder' which dwell there, and which always entreat him 'to leave mortal things,' 'then would he arise from the grave and meet the Lord in the air'; and by this rainbow, this sign of a covenant granted to him who is with Shem and Japhet, 'painting, poetry and music,' 'the three powers in man of conversing with Paradise which the flood "of time and space" did not sweep away,' Blake represented the shapes of beauty haunting our moments of inspiration: shapes held by most for the frailest of ephemera, but by him for a people older than the world, citizens of eternity, appearing and reappearing in the minds of artists and of poets, creating all we touch and see by casting distorted images of themselves upon 'the vegetable glass of nature'; and because beings, none the less symbols, blossoms, as it were, growing from invisible immortal roots, hands, as it were, pointing the way into some divine labyrinth. If 'the world of imagination' was 'the world of eternity,' as this doctrine implied, it was of less importance to know men and nature than to distinguish the beings and substances of imagination from those of a more perishable kind, created by the phantasy, in uninspired moments, out of memory and whim; and this could best be done by purifying one's mind, as with a flame, in study of the works of the great masters, who were great because they had been granted by divine favour a vision of the unfallen world from which others are kept apart by the flaming sword that turns every way; and by flying from the painters who studied 'the vegetable glass' for its own sake, and not to discover there the shadows of imperishable beings and substances, and who entered into their own minds, not to make the unfallen world a test of all they heard and saw and felt with the senses, but to cover the naked spirit with 'the rotten rags of memory' of older sensations. The struggle of the first part of his life had been to distinguish between these two schools, and to cleave always to the Florentine, and so to escape the fascination of those who seemed to him to offer the sleep of nature to a spirit weary with the labours of inspiration; but it was only after his return to London from Felpham in 1804 that he finally escaped from 'temptations and perturbations' which sought to destroy 'the imaginative power' at 'the hands of Venetian and Flemish Demons.' 'The spirit of Titian'—and one must always remember that he had only seen poor engravings, and what his disciple, Palmer, has called 'picture-dealers' Titians'—'was particularly active in raising doubts concerning the possibility of executing without a model; and when once he had raised the doubt it became easy for him to snatch away the vision time after time'; and Blake's imagination 'weakened' and 'darkened' until a 'memory of nature and of the pictures of various schools possessed his mind, instead of appropriate execution' flowing from the vision itself. But now he wrote, 'O glory, and O delight! I have entirely reduced that spectrous fiend to his station'—he had overcome the merely reasoning and sensual portion of the mind—'whose annoyance has been the ruin of my labours for the last twenty years of my life…. I speak with perfect confidence and certainty of the fact which has passed upon me. Nebuchadnezzar had seven times passed over him, I have had twenty; thank God I was not altogether a beast as he was…. Suddenly, on the day after visiting the Truchsessian Gallery of pictures'—this was a gallery containing pictures by Albert Dürer and by the great Florentines—'I was again enlightened with the light I enjoyed in my youth, and which had for exactly twenty years been closed from me, as by a door and window shutters…. Excuse my enthusiasm, or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver in my hand, as I used to be in my youth.'
This letter may have been the expression of a moment's enthusiasm, but was more probably rooted in one of those intuitions of coming technical power which every creator feels, and learns to rely upon; for all his greatest work was done, and the principles of his art were formulated, after this date. Except a word here and there, his writings hitherto had not dealt with the principles of art except remotely and by implication; but now he wrote much upon them, and not in obscure symbolic verse, but in emphatic prose, and explicit if not very poetical rhyme. In his Descriptive Catalogue, in The Address to the Public, in the notes on Sir Joshua Reynolds, in The Book of Moonlight—of which some not very dignified rhymes alone remain—in beautiful detached passages in The MS. Book, he explained spiritual art, and praised the painters of Florence and their influence, and cursed all that has come of Venice and Holland. The limitation of his view was from the very intensity of his vision; he was a too literal realist of imagination, as others are of nature; and because he believed that the figures seen by the mind's eye, when exalted by inspiration, were 'eternal existences,' symbols of divine essences, he hated every grace of style that might obscure their lineaments. To wrap them about in reflected lights was to do this, and to dwell over-fondly upon any softness of hair or flesh was to dwell upon that which was least permanent and least characteristic, for 'The great and golden rule of art, as of life, is this: that the more distinct, sharp and wiry the boundary-line, the more perfect the work of art; and the less keen and sharp, the greater is the evidence of weak imitation, plagiarism and bungling.' Inspiration was to see the permanent and characteristic in all forms, and if you had it not, you must needs imitate with a languid mind the things you saw or remembered, and so sink into the sleep of nature where all is soft and melting. 'Great inventors in all ages knew this. Protogenes and Apelles knew each other by their line. Raphael and Michael Angelo and Albert Dürer are known by this and this alone. How do we distinguish the owl from the beast, the horse from the ox, but by the bounding outline? How do we distinguish one face or countenance from another but by the bounding-line and its infinite inflections and movements? What is it that builds a house and plants a garden but the definite and determinate? What is it that distinguished honesty from knavery but the hard and wiry line of rectitude and certainty in the actions and intentions? Leave out this line and you leave out life itself; and all is chaos again, and the line of the Almighty must be drawn out upon it before man or beast can exist.' He even insisted that 'colouring does not depend upon where the colours are put, but upon where the light and dark are put, and all depends upon the form or outline'—meaning, I suppose, that a colour gets its brilliance or its depth from being in light or in shadow. He does not mean by outline the bounding-line dividing a form from its background, as one of his commentators has thought, but the line that divides it from surrounding space, and unless you have an overmastering sense of this you cannot draw true beauty at all, but only 'the beauty that is appended to folly,' a beauty of mere voluptuous softness, 'a lamentable accident of the mortal and perishing life,' for 'the beauty proper for sublime art is lineaments, or forms and features capable of being the receptacles of intellect,' and 'the face or limbs that alter least from youth to old age are the face and limbs of the greatest beauty and perfection.' His praise of a severe art had been beyond price had his age rested a moment to listen, in the midst of its enthusiasm for Correggio and the later Renaissance, for Bartolozzi and for Stothard; and yet in his visionary realism, and in his enthusiasm for what, after all, is perhaps the greatest art, and a necessary part of every picture that is art at all, he forgot how he who wraps the vision in lights and shadows, in iridescent or glowing colour, having in the midst of his labour many little visions of these secondary essences, until form be half lost in pattern, may compel the canvas or paper to become itself a symbol of some not indefinite because unsearchable essence; for is not the Bacchus and Ariadne of Titian a talisman as powerfully charged with intellectual virtue as though it were a jewel-studded door of the city seen on Patmos?
To cover the imperishable lineaments of beauty with shadows and reflected lights was to fall into the power of his 'Vala,' the indolent fascination of nature, the woman divinity who is so often described in 'the prophetic books' as 'sweet pestilence,' and whose children weave webs to take the souls of men; but there was yet a more lamentable chance, for nature has also a 'masculine portion' or 'spectre' which kills instead of merely hiding, and is continually at war with inspiration. To 'generalize' forms and shadows, to 'smooth out' spaces and lines in obedience to 'laws of composition,' and of painting; founded, not upon imagination, which always thirsts for variety and delights in freedom, but upon reasoning from sensation which is always seeking to reduce everything to a lifeless and slavish uniformity; as the popular art of Blake's day had done, and as he understood Sir Joshua Reynolds to advise, was to fall into 'Entuthon Benithon,' or 'the Lake of Udan Adan,' or some other of those regions where the imagination and the flesh are alike dead, that he names by so many resonant phantastical names. 'General knowledge is remote knowledge,' he wrote; 'it is in particulars that wisdom consists, and happiness too. Both in art and life general masses are as much art as a pasteboard man is human. Every man has eyes, nose and mouth; this every idiot knows. But he who enters into and discriminates most minutely the manners and intentions, the characters in all their branches, is the alone wise or sensible man, and on this discrimination all art is founded…. As poetry admits not a letter that is insignificant, so painting admits not a grain of sand or a blade of grass insignificant, much less an insignificant blot or blur.'
Against another desire of his time, derivative also from what he has called 'corporeal reason,' the desire for a 'tepid moderation,' for a lifeless 'sanity in both art and life,' he had protested years before with a paradoxical violence. 'The roadway of excess leads to the palace of wisdom,' and we must only 'bring out weight and measure in time of dearth.' This protest, carried, in the notes on Sir Joshua Reynolds, to the point of dwelling with pleasure on the thought that 'The Lives of the Painters say that Raphael died of dissipation,' because dissipation is better than emotional penury, seemed as important to his old age as to his youth. He taught it to his disciples, and one finds it in its purely artistic shape in a diary written by Samuel Palmer, in 1824: 'Excess is the essential vivifying spirit, vital spark, embalming spice of the finest art. There are many mediums in the means—none, oh, not a jot, not a shadow of a jot, in the end of great art. In a picture whose merit is to be excessively brilliant, it can't be too brilliant, but individual tints may be too brilliant…. We must not begin with medium, but think always on excess and only use medium to make excess more abundantly excessive.'
These three primary commands, to seek a determinate outline, to avoid a generalized treatment, and to desire always abundance and exuberance, were insisted upon with vehement anger, and their opponents called again and again 'demons' and 'villains,' 'hired' by the wealthy and the idle; but in private, Palmer has told us, he could find 'sources of delight throughout the whole range of art,' and was ever ready to praise excellence in any school, finding, doubtless, among friends, no need for the emphasis of exaggeration. There is a beautiful passage in 'Jerusalem' in which the merely mortal part of the mind, 'the spectre,' creates 'pyramids of pride,' and 'pillars in the deepest hell to reach the heavenly arches,' and seeks to discover wisdom in 'the spaces between the stars,' not 'in the stars,' where it is, but the immortal part makes all his labours vain, and turns his pyramids to 'grains of sand,' his 'pillars' to 'dust on the fly's wing,' and makes of 'his starry heavens a moth of gold and silver mocking his anxious grasp.' So when man's desire to rest from spiritual labour, and his thirst to fill his art with mere sensation and memory, seem upon the point of triumph, some miracle transforms them to a new inspiration; and here and there among the pictures born of sensation and memory is the murmuring of a new ritual, the glimmering of new talismans and symbols.
It was during and after the writing of these opinions that Blake did the various series of pictures which have brought him the bulk of his fame. He had already completed the illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts—in which the great sprawling figures, a little wearisome even with the luminous colours of the original water-colour, became nearly intolerable in plain black and white—and almost all the illustrations to 'the prophetic books,' which have an energy like that of the elements, but are rather rapid sketches taken while some phantasmic procession swept over him, than elaborate compositions, and in whose shadowy adventures one finds not merely, as did Dr. Garth Wilkinson, 'the hells of the ancient people, the Anakim, the Nephalim, and the Rephaim … gigantic petrifactions from which the fires of lust and intense selfish passion have long dissipated what was animal and vital'; not merely the shadows cast by the powers who had closed the light from him as 'with a door and window shutters,' but the shadows of those who gave them battle. He did now, however, the many designs to Milton, of which I have only seen those to Paradise Regained; the reproductions of those to Comus, published, I think, by Mr. Quaritch; and the three or four to Paradise Lost, engraved by Bell Scott—a series of designs which one good judge considers his greatest work; the illustrations to Blair's Grave, whose gravity and passion struggle with the mechanical softness and trivial smoothness of Schiavonetti's engraving; the illustrations to Thornton's Virgil, whose influence is manifest in the work of the little group of landscape-painters who gathered about him in his old age and delighted to call him master. The member of the group, whom I have already so often quoted, has alone praised worthily these illustrations to the first eclogue: 'There is in all such a misty and dreamy glimmer as penetrates and kindles the inmost soul and gives complete and unreserved delight, unlike the gaudy daylight of this world. They are like all this wonderful artist's work, the drawing aside of the fleshly curtain, and the glimpse which all the most holy, studious saints and sages have enjoyed, of the rest which remains to the people of God.' Now, too, he did the great series, the crowning work of his life, the illustrations to The Book of Job and the illustrations to The Divine Comedy. Hitherto he had protested against the mechanical 'dots and lozenges' and 'blots and blurs' of Woollett and Strange, but had himself used both 'dot and lozenge,' 'blot and blur,' though always in subordination 'to a firm and determinate outline'; but in Marc Antonio, certain of whose engravings he was shown by Linnell, he found a style full of delicate lines, a style where all was living and energetic, strong and subtle. And almost his last words, a letter written upon his death-bed, attack the 'dots and lozenges' with even more than usually quaint symbolism, and praise expressive lines. 'I know that the majority of Englishmen are bound by the indefinite … a line is a line in its minutest particulars, straight or crooked. It is itself not intermeasurable by anything else … but since the French Revolution'—since the reign of reason began, that is—'Englishmen are all intermeasurable with one another, certainly a happy state of agreement in which I do not agree.' The Dante series occupied the last years of his life; even when too weak to get out of bed he worked on, propped up with the great drawing-book before him. He sketched a hundred designs, but left all incomplete, some very greatly so, and partly engraved seven plates, of which the 'Francesca and Paolo' is the most finished. It is not, I think, inferior to any but the finest in the Job, if indeed to them, and shows in its perfection Blake's mastery over elemental things, the swirl in which the lost spirits are hurried, 'a watery flame' he would have called it, the haunted waters and the huddling shapes. In the illustrations of Purgatory there is a serene beauty, and one finds his Dante and Virgil climbing among the rough rocks under a cloudy sun, and in their sleep upon the smooth steps towards the summit, a placid, marmoreal, tender, starry rapture.
All in this great series are in some measure powerful and moving, and not, as it is customary to say of the work of Blake, because a flaming imagination pierces through a cloudy and indecisive technique, but because they have the only excellence possible in any art, a mastery over artistic expression. The technique of Blake was imperfect, incomplete, as is the technique of well-nigh all artists who have striven to bring fires from remote summits; but where his imagination is perfect and complete, his technique has a like perfection, a like completeness. He strove to embody more subtle raptures, more elaborate intuitions than any before him; his imagination and technique are more broken and strained under a great burden than the imagination and technique of any other master. 'I am,' wrote Blake, 'like others, just equal in invention and execution.' And again, 'No man can improve an original invention; nor can an original invention exist without execution, organized, delineated and articulated either by God or man … I have heard people say, "Give me the ideas; it is no matter what words you put them into;" and others say, "Give me the designs; it is no matter for the execution."… Ideas cannot be given but in their minutely appropriate words, nor can a design be made without its minutely appropriate execution.' Living in a time when technique and imagination are continually perfect and complete, because they no longer strive to bring fire from heaven, we forget how imperfect and incomplete they were in even the greatest masters, in Botticelli, in Orcagna, and in Giotto.
The errors in the handiwork of exalted spirits are as the more phantastical errors in their lives; as Coleridge's opium cloud; as Villiers De L'Isle Adam's candidature for the throne of Greece; as Blake's anger against causes and purposes he but half understood; as the flickering madness an Eastern scripture would allow in august dreamers; for he who half lives in eternity endures a rending of the structures of the mind, a crucifixion of the intellectual body.
As Blake sat bent over the great drawing-book, in which he made his designs to The Divine Comedy, he was very certain that he and Dante represented spiritual states which face one another in an eternal enmity. Dante, because a great poet, was 'inspired by the Holy Ghost'; but his inspiration was mingled with a certain philosophy, blown up out of his age, which Blake held for mortal and the enemy of immortal things, and which from the earliest times has sat in high places and ruled the world. This philosophy was the philosophy of soldiers, of men of the world, of priests busy with government, of all who, because of the absorption in active life, have been persuaded to judge and to punish, and partly also, he admitted, the philosophy of Christ, who in descending into the world had to take on the world; who, in being born of Mary, a symbol of the law in Blake's symbolic language, had to 'take after his mother,' and drive the money-changers out of the Temple. Opposed to this was another philosophy, not made by men of action, drudges of time and space, but by Christ when wrapped in the divine essence, and by artists and poets, who are taught by the nature of their craft to sympathize with all living things, and who, the more pure and fragrant is their lamp, pass the further from all limitations, to come at last to forget good and evil in an absorbing vision of the happy and the unhappy. The one philosophy was worldly, and established for the ordering of the body and the fallen will, and so long as it did not call its 'laws of prudence' 'the laws of God,' was a necessity, because 'you cannot have liberty in this world without what you call moral virtue'; the other was divine, and established for the peace of the imagination and the unfallen will, and, even when obeyed with a too literal reverence, could make men sin against no higher principality than prudence. He called the followers of the first philosophy pagans, no matter by what name they knew themselves, because the pagans, as he understood the word pagan, believed more in the outward life, and in what he called 'war, princedom, and victory,' than in the secret life of the spirit; and the followers of the second philosophy Christians, because only those whose sympathies had been enlarged and instructed by art and poetry could obey the Christian command of unlimited forgiveness. Blake had already found this 'pagan' philosophy in Swedenborg, in Milton, in Wordsworth, in Sir Joshua Reynolds, in many persons, and it had roused him so constantly and to such angry paradox that its overthrow became the signal passion of his life, and filled all he did and thought with the excitement of a supreme issue. Its kingdom was bound to grow weaker so soon as life began to lose a little in crude passion and naïve tumult, but Blake was the first to announce its successor, and he did this, as must needs be with revolutionists who have 'the law' for 'mother,' with a firm conviction that the things his opponents held white were indeed black, and that the things they held black, white; with a strong persuasion that all busy with government are men darkness and 'something other than human life'; one is reminded of Shelley, who was the next to take up the cry, though with a less abundant philosophic faculty, but still more of Nietzsche, whose thought flows always, though with an even more violent current, in the bed Blake's thought has worn.
The kingdom that was passing was, he held, the kingdom of the Tree of Knowledge; the kingdom that was coming was the kingdom of the Tree of Life: men who ate from the Tree of Knowledge wasted their days in anger against one another, and in taking one another captive in great nets; men who sought their food among the green leaves of the Tree of Life condemned none but the unimaginative and the idle, and those who forget that even love and death and old age are an imaginative art.
In these opposing kingdoms is the explanation of the petulant sayings he wrote on the margins of the great sketch-book, and of those others, still more petulant, which Crabb Robinson has recorded in his diary. The sayings about the forgiveness of sins have no need for further explanation, and are in contrast with the attitude of that excellent commentator, Herr Hettinger, who, though Dante swooned from pity at the tale of Francesca, will only 'sympathize' with her 'to a certain extent,' being taken in a theological net. 'It seems as if Dante,' Blake wrote, 'supposes God was something superior to the Father of Jesus; for if He gives rain to the evil and the good, and His sun to the just and the unjust, He can never have builded Dante's Hell, nor the Hell of the Bible, as our parsons explain it. It must have been framed by the dark spirit itself, and so I understand it.' And again, 'Whatever task is of vengeance and whatever is against forgiveness of sin is not of the Father but of Satan, the accuser, the father of Hell.' And again, and this time to Crabb Robinson, 'Dante saw devils where I saw none. I see good only.' 'I have never known a very bad man who had not something very good about him.' This forgiveness was not the forgiveness of the theologian who has received a commandment from afar off, but of the poet and artist, who believes he has been taught, in a mystical vision, 'that the imagination is the man himself,' and believes he has discovered in the practice of his art that without a perfect sympathy there is no perfect imagination, and therefore no perfect life. At another moment he called Dante 'an atheist, a mere politician busied about this world, as Milton was, till, in his old age, returned to God whom he had had in his childhood.' 'Everything is atheism,' he has already explained, 'which assumed the reality of the natural and unspiritual world.' Dante, he held, assumed its reality when he made obedience to its laws a condition of man's happiness hereafter, and he set Swedenborg beside Dante in misbelief for calling Nature 'the ultimate of Heaven,' a lowest rung, as it were, of Jacob's ladder, instead of a net woven by Satan to entangle our wandering joys and bring our hearts into captivity. There are certain curious unfinished diagrams scattered here and there among the now separated pages of the sketch-book, and of these there is one which, had it had all its concentric rings filled with names, would have been a systematic exposition of his animosities and of their various intensity. It represents Paradise, and in the midst, where Dante emerges from the earthly Paradise, is written 'Homer,' and in the next circle 'Swedenborg,' and on the margin these words: 'Everything in Dante's Paradise shows that he has made the earth the foundation of all, and its goddess Nature, memory,' memory of sensations, 'not the Holy Ghost…. Round Purgatory is Paradise, and round Paradise vacuum. Homer is the centre of all, I mean the poetry of the heathen.' The statement that round Paradise is vacuum is a proof of the persistence of his ideas, and of his curiously literal understanding of his own symbols; for it is but another form of the charge made against Milton many years before in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. 'In Milton the Father is destiny, the son a ratio of the five senses,' Blake's definition of the reason which is the enemy of the imagination, 'and the Holy Ghost vacuum.' Dante, like other medieval mystics, symbolized the highest order of created beings by the fixed stars, and God by the darkness beyond them, the Primum Mobile. Blake, absorbed in his very different vision, in which God took always a human shape, believed that to think of God under a symbol drawn from the outer world was in itself idolatry, but that to imagine Him as an unpeopled immensity was to think of Him under the one symbol furthest from His essence—it being a creation of the ruining reason, 'generalizing' away 'the minute particulars of life.' Instead of seeking God in the deserts of time and space, in exterior immensities, in what he called 'the abstract void,' he believed that the further he dropped behind him memory of time and space, reason builded upon sensation, morality founded for the ordering of the world; and the more he was absorbed in emotion; and, above all, in emotion escaped from the impulse of bodily longing and the restraints of bodily reason, in artistic emotion; the nearer did he come to Eden's 'breathing garden,' to use his beautiful phrase, and to the unveiled face of God. No worthy symbol of God existed but the inner world, the true humanity, to whose various aspects he gave many names, 'Jerusalem,' 'Liberty,' 'Eden,' 'The Divine Vision,' 'The Body of God,' 'The Human Form Divine,' 'The Divine Members,' and whose most intimate expression was art and poetry. He always sang of God under this symbol:
'For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God Our Father dear;
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is man, His child and care.
For Mercy has a human heart;
Pity a human face;
And Love the human form divine;
And Peace, the human dress.
Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine—
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.'
Whenever he gave this symbol a habitation in space he set it in the sun, the father of light and life; and set in the darkness beyond the stars, where light and life die away, Og and Anak and the giants that were of old, and the iron throne of Satan.
By thus contrasting Blake and Dante by the light of Blake's paradoxical wisdom, and as though there was no important truth hung from Dante's beam of the balance, I but seek to interpret a little-understood philosophy rather than one incorporate in the thought and habits of Christendom. Every philosophy has half its truth from times and generations; and to us one-half of the philosophy of Dante is less living than his poetry, while the truth Blake preached and sang and painted is the root of the cultivated life, of the fragile perfect blossom of the world born in ages of leisure and peace, and never yet to last more than a little season; the life those Phæacians, who told Odysseus that they had set their hearts in nothing but in 'the dance and changes of raiment, and love and sleep,' lived before Poseidon heaped a mountain above them; the lives of all who, having eaten of the Tree of Life, love, more than did the barbarous ages when none had time to live, 'the minute particulars of life,' the little fragments of space and time, which are wholly flooded by beautiful emotion because they are so little they are hardly of time and space at all. 'Every space smaller than a globule of man's blood,' he wrote, 'opens into eternity of which this vegetable earth is but a shadow.' And again, 'Every time less than a pulsation of the artery is equal' in its tenor and value 'to six thousand years, for in this period the poet's work is done, and all the great events of time start forth, and are conceived: in such a period, within a moment, a pulsation of the artery.' Dante, indeed, taught, in the 'Purgatorio,' that sin and virtue are alike from love, and that love is from God; but this love he would restrain by a complex eternal law, a complex external Church. Blake upon the other hand cried scorn upon the whole spectacle of external things, a vision to pass away in a moment, and preached the cultivated life, the internal Church which has no laws but beauty, rapture and labour. 'I know of no other Christianity, and of no other gospel, than the liberty, both of body and mind, to exercise the divine arts of imagination, the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow, and in which we shall live in our eternal or imaginative bodies when these vegetable mortal bodies are no more. The Apostles knew of no other gospel. What are all their spiritual gifts? What is the divine spirit? Is the Holy Ghost any other than an intellectual fountain? What is the harvest of the gospel and its labours? What is the talent which it is a curse to hide? What are the treasures of heaven which we are to lay up for ourselves? Are they any other than mental studies and performances? What are all the gifts of the gospel, are they not all mental gifts? Is God a spirit who must be worshipped in spirit and truth? Are not the gifts of the spirit everything to man? O ye religious! discountenance every one among you who shall pretend to despise art and science. I call upon you in the name of Jesus! What is the life of man but art and science? Is it meat and drink? Is not the body more than raiment? What is mortality but the things relating to the body which dies? What is immortality but the things relating to the spirit which lives immortally? What is the joy of Heaven but improvement in the things of the spirit? What are the pains of Hell but ignorance, idleness, bodily lust, and the devastation of the things of the spirit? Answer this for yourselves, and expel from amongst you those who pretend to despise the labours of art and science, which alone are the labours of the gospel. Is not this plain and manifest to the thought? Can you think at all, and not pronounce heartily that to labour in knowledge is to build Jerusalem, and to despise knowledge is to despise Jerusalem and her builders? And remember, he who despises and mocks a mental gift in another, calling it pride, and selfishness, and sin, mocks Jesus, the giver of every mental gift, which always appear to the ignorance-loving hypocrites as sins. But that which is sin in the sight of cruel man is not sin in the sight of our kind God. Let every Christian as much as in him lies engage himself openly and publicly before all the world in some mental pursuit for the building of Jerusalem.' I have given the whole of this long passage because, though the very keystone of his thought, it is little known, being sunk, like nearly all of his most profound thoughts, in the mysterious prophetic books. Obscure about much else, they are always lucid on this one point, and return to it again and again. 'I care not whether a man is good or bad,' are the words they put into the mouth of God, 'all I care is whether he is a wise man or a fool. Go put off holiness and put on intellect.' This cultivated life, which seems to us so artificial a thing, is really, according to them, the laborious re-discovery of the golden age, of the primeval simplicity, of the simple world in which Christ taught and lived, and its lawlessness is the lawlessness of Him 'who being all virtue, acted from impulse and not from rules,'
And his seventy disciples sent
Against religion and government.
The historical Christ was indeed no more than the supreme symbol of the artistic imagination, in which, with every passion wrought to perfect beauty by art and poetry, we shall live, when the body has passed away for the last time; but before that hour man must labour through many lives and many deaths. 'Men are admitted into heaven not because they have curbed and governed their passions, but because they have cultivated their understandings. The treasures of heaven are not negations of passion but realities of intellect from which the passions emanate uncurbed in their eternal glory. The fool shall not enter into heaven, let him be ever so holy. Holiness is not the price of entering into heaven. Those who are cast out are all those who, having no passions of their own, because no intellect, have spent their lives in curbing and governing other people's lives by the various arts of poverty and cruelty of all kinds. The modern Church crucifies Christ with the head downwards. Woe, woe, woe to you hypocrites.' After a time man has 'to return to the dark valley whence he came and begin his labours anew,' but before that return he dwells in the freedom of imagination, in the peace of the 'divine image,' 'the divine vision,' in the peace that passes understanding and is the peace of art. 'I have been very near the gates of death,' Blake wrote in his last letter, 'and have returned very weak and an old man, feeble and tottering but not in spirit and life, not in the real man, the imagination which liveth for ever. In that I grow stronger and stronger as this foolish body decays…. Flaxman is gone, and we must all soon follow, every one to his eternal home, leaving the delusions of goddess Nature and her laws, to get into freedom from all the laws of the numbers,' the multiplicity of nature, 'into the mind in which every one is king and priest in his own house.' The phrase about the king and priest is a memory of the crown and mitre set upon Dante's head before he entered Paradise. Our imaginations are but fragments of the universal imagination, portions of the universal body of God, and as we enlarge our imagination by imaginative sympathy, and transform with the beauty and peace of art, the sorrows and joys of the world, we put off the limited mortal man more and more and put on the unlimited 'immortal man.' 'As the seed waits eagerly watching for its flower and fruit, anxious its little soul looks out into the clear expanse to see if hungry winds are abroad with their invisible array, so man looks out in tree, and herb, and fish, and bird, and beast, collecting up the fragments of his immortal body into the elemental forms of everything that grows…. In pain he sighs, in pain he labours in his universe, sorrowing in birds over the deep, or howling in the wolf over the slain, and moaning in the cattle, and in the winds.' Mere sympathy for living things is not enough because we must learn to separate their 'infected' from their eternal, their satanic from their divine part; and this can only be done by desiring always beauty, the one mask through which can be seen the unveiled eyes of eternity. We must then be artists in all things, and understand that love and old age and death are first among the arts. In this sense he insists that 'Christ's apostles were artists,' that 'Christianity is Art,' and that 'the whole business of man is the arts.' Dante, who deified law, selected its antagonist, passion, as the most important of sins, and made the regions where it was punished the largest. Blake, who deified imaginative freedom, held 'corporeal reason' for the most accursed of things, because it makes the imagination revolt from the sovereignty of beauty and pass under the sovereignty of corporeal law, and this is 'the captivity in Egypt.' True art is expressive and symbolic, and makes every form, every sound, every colour, every gesture, a signature of some unanalyzable imaginative essence. False art is not expressive but mimetic, not from experience but from observation, and is the mother of all evil, persuading us to save our bodies alive at no matter what cost of rapine and fraud. True art is the flame of the last day, which begins for every man, when he is first moved by beauty, and which seeks to burn all things until they 'become infinite and holy.'
The late Mr. John Addington Symonds wrote—in a preface to certain Dante illustrations by Stradanus, a sixteenth-century artist of no great excellence, published in phototype by Mr. Unwin in 1892—that the illustrations of Gustave Doré, 'in spite of glaring artistic defects, must, I think, be reckoned first among numerous attempts to translate Dante's conceptions into terms of plastic art.' One can only account for this praise of a noisy and demagogic art by supposing that a temperament, strong enough to explore with unfailing alertness the countless schools and influences of the Renaissance in Italy, is of necessity a little lacking in delicacy of judgment and in the finer substances of emotion. It is more difficult to account for so admirable a scholar not only preferring these illustrations to the work of what he called 'the graceful and affected Botticelli,'—although 'Doré was fitted for his task, not by dramatic vigour, by feeling for beauty, or by anything sternly in sympathy with the supreme poet's soul, but by a very effective sense of luminosity and gloom,'—but preferring them because 'he created a fanciful world, which makes the movement of Dante's dramatis personæ conceivable, introducing the ordinary intelligence into those vast regions thronged with destinies of souls and creeds and empires.' When the ordinary student finds this intelligence in an illustrator, he thinks, because it is his own intelligence, that it is an accurate interpretation of the text, while work of the extraordinary intelligences is merely an expression of their own ideas and feelings. Doré and Stradanus, he will tell you, have given us something of the world of Dante, but Blake and Botticelli have builded worlds of their own and called them Dante's—as if Dante's world were more than a mass of symbols of colour and form and sound which put on humanity, when they arouse some mind to an intense and romantic life that is not theirs; as if it was not one's own sorrows and angers and regrets and terrors and hopes that awaken to condemnation or repentance while Dante treads his eternal pilgrimage; as if any poet or painter or musician could be other than an enchanter calling with a persuasive or compelling ritual, creatures, noble or ignoble, divine or dæmonic, covered with scales or in shining raiment, that he never imagined, out of the bottomless deeps of imaginations he never foresaw; as if the noblest achievement of art was not when the artist enfolds himself in darkness, while he casts over his readers a light as of a wild and terrible dawn.
Let us therefore put away the designs to The Divine Comedy, in which there is 'an ordinary intelligence,' and consider only the designs in which the magical ritual has called up extraordinary shapes, the magical light glimmered upon a world, different from the Dantesque world of our own intelligence in its ordinary and daily moods, upon a difficult and distinguished world. Most of the series of designs to Dante, and there are a good number, need not busy any one for a moment. Genelli has done a copious series, which is very able in the 'formal' 'generalized' way which Blake hated, and which is spiritually ridiculous. Penelli has transformed the 'Inferno' into a vulgar Walpurgis night, and a certain Schuler, whom I do not find in the biographical dictionaries, but who was apparently a German, has prefaced certain flaccid designs with some excellent charts, while Stradanus has made a series for the 'Inferno,' which has so many of the more material and unessential powers of art, and is so extremely undistinguished in conception, that one supposes him to have touched in the sixteenth century the same public Doré has touched in the nineteenth.
Though with many doubts, I am tempted to value Flaxman's designs to the 'Inferno,' the 'Purgatorio,' and the 'Paradiso,' only a little above the best of these, because he does not seem to have ever been really moved by Dante, and so to have sunk into a formal manner, which is a reflection of the vital manner of his Homer and Hesiod. His designs to The Divine Comedy will be laid, one imagines, with some ceremony in that immortal wastepaper-basket in which Time carries with many sighs the failures of great men. I am perhaps wrong, however, because Flaxman even at his best has not yet touched me very deeply, and I hardly ever hope to escape this limitation of my ruling stars. That Signorelli does not seem greatly more interesting except here and there, as in the drawing of 'The Angel,' full of innocence and energy, coming from the boat which has carried so many souls to the foot of the mountain of purgation, can only be because one knows him through poor reproductions from frescoes half mouldered away with damp. A little-known series, drawn by Adolph Stürler, an artist of German extraction, who was settled in Florence in the first half of this century, are very poor in drawing, very pathetic and powerful in invention, and full of most interesting pre-Raphaelitic detail. There are admirable and moving figures, who, having set love above reason, listen in the last abandonment of despair to the judgment of Minos, or walk with a poignant melancholy to the foot of his throne through a land where owls and strange beasts move hither and thither with the sterile content of the evil that neither loves nor hates, and a Cerberus full of patient cruelty. All Stürler's designs have, however, the languor of a mind that does its work by a succession of delicate critical perceptions rather than the decision and energy of true creation, and are more a curious contribution to artistic methods than an imaginative force.
The only designs that compete with Blake's are those of Botticelli and Giulio Clovio, and these contrast rather than compete; for Blake did not live to carry his 'Paradiso' beyond the first faint pencillings, the first thin washes of colour, while Botticelli only, as I think, became supremely imaginative in his 'Paradiso,' and Clovio never attempted the 'Inferno' and 'Purgatorio' at all. The imaginations of Botticelli and Clovio were overshadowed by the cloister, and it was only when they passed beyond the world or into some noble peace, which is not the world's peace, that they won a perfect freedom. Blake had not such mastery over figure and drapery as had Botticelli, but he could sympathize with the persons and delight in the scenery of the 'Inferno' and the 'Purgatorio' as Botticelli could not, and could fill them with a mysterious and spiritual significance born perhaps of mystical pantheism. The flames of Botticelli give one no emotion, and his car of Beatrice is no symbolic chariot of the Church led by the gryphon, half eagle, half lion, of Christ's dual nature, but is a fragment of some mediæval pageant pictured with a merely technical inspiration. Clovio, the illuminator of missals, has tried to create with that too easy hand of his a Paradise of serene air reflected in a little mirror, a heaven of sociability and humility and prettiness, a heaven of women and of monks; but one cannot imagine him deeply moved, as the modern world is moved, by the symbolism of bird and beast, of tree and mountain, of flame and darkness. It was a profound understanding of all creatures and things, a profound sympathy with passionate and lost souls, made possible in their extreme intensity by his revolt against corporeal law, and corporeal reason, which made Blake the one perfectly fit illustrator for the 'Inferno' and the 'Purgatorio': in the serene and rapturous emptiness of Dante's Paradise he would find no symbols but a few abstract emblems, and he had no love for the abstract, while with the drapery and the gestures of Beatrice and Virgil, he would have prospered less than Botticelli or even Clovio.


text:
0 Items (Empty)
Recently Viewed Items
Your Shopping Cart
Your shopping cart is currently empty. If you would like to make a purchase today, add items to your shopping cart.
Still the preferred trap for mountain beaver control. Reliable "Duke" Brand all steel construction. Sold 12 per carton.
Video below illustrates how to set this trap. The #55 trap in the video is the same set-up as the #110 that we sell below. It is recommended to use gloves to protect your hands.


text:
Turkish Hemp Rugs
by jolevitan
It's the feeling I got years ago when I first saw Moroccan rugs thrown all over the sealed cement floors at the Shore Club in Miami. Paired with low slip covered linen furniture, to me it was just right. Though the Moroccan rug has risen to the top and trickled its way down to West Elm- I still adore that lobby. I've been looking for something a little different, still muted, and natural. These Turkish rugs fit the bill. I think they'd look great layered with black and white stripes, or other sisal like natural materials they'd also go quite nicely with my olive jar dreams. Love the patches, and antique washes.


text:
Maria J. Turecamo (1968) and Hercules (1961), side by side, and my psychic tells me Hercules may be about to set out on a long cold journey, over water. Given the name, I'm inclined to wonder what Hercules 12 labors were/are and where on that list this journey fits.
Reinauer Twins (2011) wait with their respective barges. Twins holds the distinction of being the newest tug in the sixth boro.
Norwegian Sea (1976) waits, but
Meredith C. Reinauer (2003) is on the move, as
And most of them could carry Augie on davits as a tender. Anyone know the age of Augie, here at a dock upriver?
Finally, another foto of Byrce Kirk operating Patty Nolan (1931) and still running.
Foto of Augie by Dave Williams, Patty Nolan by Seth Tane, and all others by Will Van Dorp.


text:
Join Our Mailing List!
Join our mail-list today and receive our weekly newsletter filled with polar news & weather, just released travel offers, and exclusive discounts.
We stand behind the products we sell. If you are not satisfied when you receive your purchase simply return it for a full refund.
We want to make sure you're happy with the items you buy from us. If not, simply return them for a full refund or exchange, your choice. See details...
FREE Shipping on any order over $49 within the continental US.
© 1998- Antarctic Connection, LLC. All rights reserved. antarcticconnection.com is a registered trademark of Antarctic Connection, LLC.
Home | Customer Service | 100% Guarantee | Easy Returns | Free Shipping | Privacy Policy | Contact Us