Blake, Ludwig Meidner and Expressionism

Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966), who belonged to the mystical wing of German Expressionism, developed his existing interest in Blake when he was forced to leave Germany in 1939. It is during his exile years that Meidner’s new style matured, and this was partly due to his new appreciation of Blake. The article examines the British context of Meidner’s engagement with Blake and outlines how he understood Blake in a cultural setting dominated by Neo-Romanticism as well as the existential fear of exile experience

Characterization of the OSSN Microbiome in HIV-1 Infected Patients

Purpose: Ocular surface squamous neoplasia (OSSN) is a rare cancer previously seen in elderly men. In Botswana there is an increase in OSSN and pterygia among young HIV-1 infected patients. Factors that determine the course of this cancer have not been characterized. Recent studies identified HPV, EBV, KSHV, HSV-1/2, and CMV in patient samples. We now characterize the microbiome associated with the disease that may contribute to its course. Results: Pyrosequencing identified viruses, bacteria, fungus and parasites. Analysis of shotgun cloning sequences showed a majority of infectious agents identified by pyrosequencing. Conclusion: HIV patients with OSSN in Botswana are infected with a range of infectious agents which may represent a unique microbiome. The persistent expressions of gene products by these agents some of which are oncogenic are likely to contribute to the oncogenic process and suggest that treatment modalities of the cancer should involve the screening for endemic agents

Understanding the Field of Waterloo: Viewing Waterloo and the Narrative Strategies of the Panorama Programmes

The season of the Waterloo panoramas began in March 1816, about nine months after the battle on 18 June 18156. The Waterloo panoramas were exhibited in London as well as across the country. Focusing on the finale on the field of Waterloo and highlighting the human cost of the French Napoleonic wars, they brought the battle to life as late as 1842. This article, which is on the viewing experience inside the panorama, examines narrative techniques used in the surviving panorama programmes in order to determine how they address and involve spectators; it challenges the idea that visitors of a panorama were fully immersed and imagined to be part of the scene, and, therefore, unable to look or judge for themselves. The viewing of any battle inside a panorama facilitated a communal experience and helped to acknowledge national sacrifice, but, as this article will show, due to the growing distance between the battle as a historical event and the visit to a Waterloo panorama in real time, explanations about the visual response lost their power to persuade

‘How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe …?’: Frankenstein, Walton and the Monster

This essay reiterates the importance of Captain Robert Walton in Shelley’s novel. Walton is the addressee of Frankenstein’s story and drawing attention to his presence helps with unravelling the complexity of the creation scene. The focus is on physiognomical creation, i.e. not only on Frankenstein’s body-making but also his aesthetic response to both the immobile and animated body. Though the Creature’s physical ugliness may be a matter of degree, Frankenstein contradicts himself in his description of its effects. He also appears to have expected that animation would not substantially have interfered with the anticipated reality of the animated Creature. But it does. Shelley, it has been argued, revised Adam Smith’s ideas about sympathy, suggesting that – if a person inspires terror compensatory sympathy can be achieved through narrative. Is Walton able to handle the monster because he knows it? The essay discusses the dynamic between the visual and the auditory in Frankenstein to argue that Shelley responds to Johann Caspar Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy (1789-98)

“Blake was a phenomenon”: Artistic, Domestic, and Blakean Visions in Joseph Paul Hodin’s Writing on Else and Ludwig Meidner

WHEN Ludwig Meidner (1884–1966), the German- Jewish expressionist painter, printmaker, and writer, returned to Germany in 1953, he took what he could carry: personal belongings, books, and images, his prints, drawings, paintings, and watercolors.1 Refugees face difficult choices; they can take only what is absolutely necessary. Meidner never adjusted during the fourteen years of exile and there is a sense that he wanted to eradicate all that. Meidner arrived in London with three portfolios of prints, 2500 drawings, and eighty paintings (Sander 228). In a letter of 18 June 1953, he says that he created “a few hundred interesting watercolors” (“ein paar hundert interessanter Wasserfarbenbilder”) while there (Breuer and Wagemann 2: 486). reminded him of London—except for Blake. Thomas Grochowiak, who first noted the significance of Meidner’s encounter with “the painter, poet, mystic William Blake” (“Maler-Dichter-Mystikers William Blake”), suggests that he identified with Blake’s adverse living conditions and artistic neglect, and argues that the occult aspects and especially the Visionary Heads interested him: “For him the preoccupation with Old Testament figures and prophets, with mystical philosophers or religious ecstatics, was just as natural as the everyday, familiar dealings with ghosts.”2 Meidner took not only John Piper’s British Romantic Artists (1942) and Ruthven Todd’s edition of Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of Blake(1942), but also reproductions of William Blake by Thomas Phillips, the large color print God Judging Adam (then known as Elijah About to Ascend in the Chariot of Fire), and James Deville’s life mask. These images were part of a selection that were to adorn his studio in Marxheim (1955–63),3 where he shared his art with a small number of visitors who came to pay tribute to the old master of German expressionism

Introduction: To See the Worlds in a Grain of Sand – Blake and Reception

William Blake’s influence on modern culture is undeniable. Blake in contrast to, for example, P. B. Shelley, Wordsworth or Byron has a huge presence in literature, art and music. Striking parallels and historical evidence for connections between Blake and his modern audiences have been identified and discussed, determining why Blake matters. From the discussions of synergies existing in the intellectual and emotional climate of Blake’s time and our own arise two questions, which this special issue on Blake’s reception in Europe endeavours to address: one, what of Blake (person and works) bridges the gulf of time, appears universal and directly relevant. Two, what happens to Blake, if works (texts and images) are separated and taken up by audiences that have ostensibly - apart from shared values originating in Western culture - little in common. The latter, which is about ownership, leads to a further question: if there are too many, idiosyncratic interpretations of Blake, does the real Blake get lost