"Above [the bench] on a bulkhead that shimmered slightly iridescent, was screened a picture she recognized: snowscape, three trudging peasants, a row of primitive houses, winter-bare trees, a mountain, all matching the grace of the music. Hiroshige had wrought it, twelve hundred years ago." (VI, p. 65)
(The music is Mozart. The "bulkhead" is an indication that this scene is set inside Dominic Flandry's private spaceship.)
Hiroshige created "Kanbara" about 1833-34, which gives us a fairly precise date for A Stone In Heaven, when Flandry is sixty-one. (III, p. 29) See Sean M. Brooks' article on the Technic History Chronology here.
I never knew that I would be delving into this stuff when I began to reread A Stone In Heaven.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Thanks for the nice mention of me and my proposed revision of Sandra Miesel's Chronology of Technic Civilization. Despite the apparently insoluble difficulty of determining a "correct" date for SATAN'S WORLD, I think my revision of Miesel's Chronology is about as accurate a chart as we are going to get.
It's good that Flandry appreciated Mozart and Hiroshige! And we see that arch enemy of the Empire, Aycharaych, quoting Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "A Musical Instrument" in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS.
Sean
Hiroshige is also interesting as one the Japanese artists (including his own teacher) who integrated European methods of perspective into his work.
And Japanese prints in turn became massively influential in European painting and the visual arts in general from the mid-Victorian period on. Whistler can't be understood without this, for example.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
That was interesting, about Hiroshige learning European methods of showing perspective and incorporating them in his own works. Yes, I see what you mean--Chinese and Japanese paintings and prints had a flatter, more one dimensional look to them when perspective was not used.
Interesting, that Whistler was affected or influenced by Hiroshige.
Sean
Japanese visual art in the post-Meiji period was a revelation to the artists of the West. Chinese painting and architecture had been known and admired for some time (take a look at the Regent's Pavilion in Brighton, for instance) but Japan's arts burst on the scene all at once.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I have some very slight idea of what Chinese art is like, but even less about Japan's art.
Sean
Is 'cultural appropriation' ever not a good thing?
Don't know.
Kaor, Jim!
Some forms of "cultural appropriation" are bad! Like, theoretically, ripping the hearts out of human beings as sacrifices to the Aztec demon gods.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment