Great Lady Research Articles

The ultimate home: “a home in the sky”

Khatereha-ye parakandeh (scattered memoirs), from which “KhanehDi dar asman” (A Home in the Sky) has been selected and translated here, was the first original book of Goli Taraqqi (b. 1939) that appeared in Iran since the publication of her novel Khab-e zemestani (Winter Sleep) in 1973. (“Khaneh3i dar asman” itself had been published earlier in the November 1991 issue of the literary journal Kelk.) In 1979 Goli Taraqqi moved to France with her two sons and began a new phase of her literary career. A French translation of her short story “Bozorgbanu-ye ruh-e man” (The Great Lady of My Soul) won the Contre-Ciel literary award in 1985, and a year later, with her own cooperation, a French translation of Khab-e zemestani (Winter Sleep) was published in Paris.

Reading Notes, Winter 1996

The good news is that the Queen Mother, at the age of 95, has undergone a successful hip replacement operation. The great lady is indeed a phenomenon of vitality. We can only wish that it will continue for many years to come, for she is, and recent events have proved it, an example of a monarchy which is popular without being populist. She is adored by the crowds, but she has never gone and never goes beyond the limits of her position. Incidentally, it was learnt recently that she has not given an interview to the Press since 1923. This is, to my mind, a sign of monarchical discretion. The populist style of monarchy, on the contrary, affects great familiarity with the media and finds itself, afterwards, the worse for it. But the Queen Mother is not only needed as a symbol of pure monarchy. Her presence is still very badly needed by the Queen who does need now as much help as she can get.

Nostalgia of the Body

Shortly after Lygia Clark's death in 1988, I was asked to write her obituary, and, despite my initial acceptance, given immediately and without the slightest hesitation, Ifound it impossible to do. Once again asked to write a short critical article on her work five years later, and despite my feeling that, should Ifail to do so, I would somehow be shirking a duty, I cannot find a way of doing it. For the time being it is impossible to don my professional robes with regard to her and play the university scholar. That may come later, once my mourning is over and once I am able to abstract my imagination from the huge burst of laughter with which she would have greeted this notion. What I can do today, however, is provide a few memories of Lygia as I knew her. I am not in the habit of dwelling on the personalities of artists or on my personal relations with them, but, although her entire oeuvre aims in some way at the disappearance of the author, it seems justified to me in this case. I believe that Lygia lived her art like no one has ever done. Flash One: I met Lygia Clark for the first time in her studio apartment in the Citi des Arts, a building on the banks of the Seine where the City of Paris houses foreign artists. It was in 1968, shortly after the events of May, and she had just returned from the Venice Biennale, where she had represented Brazil. The excellent dossier ean Clay had devoted to her in Robho had not yet appeared, and I had no idea what I was going to find. The studio was filled with boxes of all sizes, and Lygia was visibly very depressed (depression for her assumed a monumental, oceanic character; it was not rare but abrupt, falling like a bag on her head and quite out of proportion to its apparent reason). Very quickly, however, I witnessed a kind of transfiguration: touched perhaps by my youth (I was sixteen), irritated no doubt by my respectful attitude (I had heard her spoken of too often as a great lady), Lygia began to show me her things, that is, to let me feel them, handle them, inhabit them. First what was scattered over the tables, then the contents of the boxes she began to open for me one by one. I saw, yes, I literally saw the dark specter of depression vanish in a matter of minutes: I think that was what sealed our friendship and later made me one of her most called-upon (and most faithful) resources at times when the figure of melancholy would again swoop down on her

Opening of the workshop

It is my great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, to welcome you to Uppsala University for discussions on the very interesting subject of muon catalysed fusion. The University is 515 years old and the oldest in Scandinavia. It has about 20 000 students and a staff of 5 000 persons. One of the great scientists of our University was Carl yon Linn6, who lived in the 18th century and who conceived the sexual system of plants. His Systema Naturae from 1735, when he was 28 years old, classified plants, animals and minerals. In the 20th century the University has maintained a high standard and has seen six of its scholars receive the Nobel Prize. Today it is a modern university integrated in a wide net of international contacts. Among the 7 faculties, the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences is the largest, having 80 chairs in 6 different subject fields: mathematics, physics, chemistry, geosciences, biology and technology. About 60 doctorate degrees are awarded each year. There are four-year undergraduate study programs in computer science and natural sciences including mathematics. The engineering programs last four and a half year and presently cover engineering physics, material physics and a newly started program in molecular biotechnology. The latter program is unique for Sweden and profits from the strong research profile in the life sciences. In addition there is also a two-year engineering school. Altogether about 3 000 students are enrolled in the study programs. Material science is one of the strong interdisciplinary research fields that has profited from innovations in surface sciences such as the ESCA method developed to high precision by Kai Siegbahn and the next speaker Carl Nordling. One of the University's next priorities is a new center for material science named the Angstr6m laboratory after a well-known Uppsala scientist who lent his name to a unit defining length on the atomic scale. The name suits well the center where structures of carbon and silicon will be manufactured with atomic precision and microrobots will be developed for a variety of uses in the human blood vessels or in the pipes of a nuclear reactor. Fresh-water research is another interdisciplinary field of increasing importance. The Uppsala Water Center coordinates research in 20 different departments also coming from the neighbouring University of Agriculture and two national institutes, the National Environment Protection Board and the Geological Survey

HCMR interview: Carolyn C. Roberts

Carolyn C. Roberts--researcher, health care administrator, American Hospital Association board member--is a role model for women health care executives. As president of Copley Hospital in Morrisville, Vermont, Carolyn has provided national leadership on health care reform and the management of small and rural hospitals. Her creative and positive approach to life coupled with her sensitivity to serving patients and the community with quality service provides inspiration to many health administrators, physicians, and community leaders. The following interview is a tribute to a dear friend and a great lady.

The Humble Profile of the Regal Chariot in Medieval Miniatures

During the prehistoric and ancient periods in Western Europe, chariots furnished an essential part of the glamor surrounding gods and goddesses, kings, and heroes. Only in late Merovingian times did the prestige of ostentatious vehicles begin to fade, and towards the middle of the tenth century carriages no longer appear in our sources. Their use was revived only in the thirteenth century, and then only for great ladies, not for knights. In the intervening centuries artists continued to be commissioned to illustrate ancient texts, such as, for example, the Bible and Prudentius's Psychomachia. Many of these contain references to chariots. Artists might place a ruler in the only vehicles known to them--farm carts or wagons or, if they had access to ancient MSS or monuments, they might copy these. In any case, since illustrators lacked a sense of historical verisimilitude, they saw nothing inappropriate in placing a king in any vehicle which came to hand: a triumphal chariot, a racing car, a harvest wagon, a baggage cart. Pharaoh in the Red Sea appears in a wide variety of chariots, and those of Prudentius's Luxuria run the gamut from the sophisticated type used by high society in Late Antiquity to the jewel-encrusted baggage wagon, to the bedraggled homemade two-wheeler resembling those of the provincial Gallo-Romans. The object of the present paper is to show from what sources illustrators derived their chariots, to what extent these have medieval features, and to describe the phenomenon of the humble profile of the regal chariot from the Carolingian period to the thirteenth century.

The Middle Years of Psychoanalysis: The Two Great Ladies and Others

The Middle Years of Psychoanalysis: The Two Great Ladies and Others

Politics and Piety in the Household of Lady Margaret Beaufort

The sermon which John Fisher preached at the month's mind of Lady Margaret Beaufort, on 29 July 1509, compared her with Martha, traditionally the woman of action and counterpart of Mary, the woman of contemplation. The virtues he stressed, in addition to nobility of character and lineage, were those of good order: the disciplining of Lady Margaret's body and manner of life through prayer and abstinence, her hospitality and charitable dealings with her neigh-bours. The bishop saw discipline also as the mark of her household: statutes for its government were read four times a year, her servants well cared for, her almsfolk regularly supported. Whenever factions arose among her servants she applied herself with great skill to keeping the peace and finding a solution to controversy. Fisher's account has recently been compared by Retha Warnicke with other memories of her household recorded by Henry Parker, Lord Morley. The same elements are found in both descriptions, but Morley complements Fisher's portrait of charity and able household management with a spectacle of splendid conviviality worthy of the great ladies of the past, Queen Elfleda and Matilda, wife of Henry 1. Morley's memories of the household he entered in the early 1490s are not all contemporary with Fisher's who did not become Lady Margaret's confessor until 1498 or later, and the bishop allocates more of her day to religious observance. But whether her piety grew more exacting and intense in her last decade, or was simply more closely observed by her confessor, she remained until her death the centre of a network of patronage and influence in which she took an active part. Her household was a society with many facets, defined not merely by the austere and charitable practices of its head, but by her importance as a tenant-in-chief of the Crown and mother of the king. It was the combination of all these elements that placed her so high in contemporary estimation. This article explores the life of her household not only as the home of works of charity and a pattern of worship whose special feature was devotion to the Name of Jesus, but also as a centre of justice and regional influence and as a source of support for the activities of the Crown.

Em memória de Joan Robinson: a grande dama da economia

In this note the author remember his meetings with Joan Robinson, remind us of her death and comments on the influence of this great lady on the Modern Economic Theory.

Honored guest presentation: abulia minor vs. agitated behavior.

The neurological analysis of complex behavioral states associated with serious brain disease not infrequently is a difficult task. In many such cases, the signs of minor degrees of akinetic mutism were found when deliberately looked for. Recognition of this feature greatly facilitated interpretation. The ancient term abulia is suggested for the specific neurological syndrome comprising slowness, decreased responsiveness, apathy, etc. Akinetic mutism is its extreme form. A lesser degree of abulia is here termed abulia minor. The attributes of abulia minor are described, and the neurological conditions with which it had been found associated are listed. Preliminary conclusions as to the anatomical localization of the syndrome are presented. The literature on akinetic mutism is reviewed, and a few special observations are commented on--paradoxical activity, the telephone effect, and reflex attention. The application of the newer knowledge of cerebral neurotransmitters to akinetic mutism is illustrated. At the beginning of the study the focus was on abulia, but it was natural that sooner or later the contrasting state of behavioral hyperactivity or agitation would have to come under equal scrutiny. A list of conditions in which psychomotor agitation was a feature has been compiled from personal files. The localization of the disease process in hyperactive states is compared with that in abulia. A few special observations on hyperactive states are presented, along with a note on a unique syndrome termed anideation. There has gradually emerged a concept of a continuum of behavioral activity extending from abulia at one end through eukinesia to hyperactivity at the other end. Involvement of specific fundamental integrative circuits is postulated. This morning we have been enthralled by Computers in Neurosurgery, Neurobiology in Neurosurgery, and Humanism in Neurosurgery. What could be more natural for a neurologist than to talk about Neurology in Neurosurgery. And how best to pay homage to the great lady of Medicine than by offering a modest example of her handiwork. Thus, I am led to discuss a neurological theme which has recently occupied my attention. To anticipate a little, I shall be talking about two somewhat opposite states: on the one hand there is abulia--slowness, apathy, and lack of spontaneity--and on the other hand, agitation and hyperactivity. By way of explanation, this study originated during the bedside examination of patients with brain damage and serious impairment of analysis appeared not only formidable but even impossible.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)

Survival/Revival: That's the Question

The opening years of the eighties may be remembered as an especially perilous time in public education for the arts and the humanities, already being squeezed in the general belt-tightening, and more recently victimized by the reactionary excesses of some interpretations of the back to the basics movement. As beleaguered art educators steel themselves to confront the uncertainties of a new decade, the one issue which regularly seizes their attention is: can we insure the survival of our art program in the eighties? Wherever art educators come together, this question is sure to be posed, and a variety of answers to be ventured. This article presents no answer to the question. While acknowledging the sincerity and depth of concern which prompt such a question to be raised, the writer finds it more useful to question the question itself. This rather contemporary reaction to entrenched issues may have had its beginnings in the final words of that free spirit and woman of letters, Gertrude Stein. On her deathbed, attended as always by Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude had been muttering again and again, the What's the answer? If Alice B. Toklas had learned anything at all from her years of helping Gertrude entertain the great names of art and literature in their Paris salon, it was that she knew a rhetorical question when she heard one. Alice therefore had the wisdom to keep silent. At length in a final burst of fervor, Gertrude called out, Well then, what's the question?-and with that the great lady expired. To call the issue of the survival of art programs into doubt is to ask, wrong with the question? What problems does the repeated posing of the question generate? How does relentless concern with the question of survival affect our consciousness and our performance? There is a real possibility that we art educators will do more harm to ourselves by adopting a survival mentality than any outside force, any unsympathetic administrators or tax-weary public can do to undermine our programs. We have all felt the tug to depict ourselves as struggling, enlightened martyrs, nobly striving to hold our own against the tide of technology, indifference, or what-have-you. There are distinct disadvantages, however, to operating in a state of siege indefinitely. Being the little Dutch boy-or girl-with your finger in the dike does tend to cramp your style. The survival mentality represents an escalating state of obsession, accompanied by narrowed perceptions, restricted flexibility, and drastically reordered priorities. The self-convicted survivor soon begins to act as if he or she is trapped within an unimaginably bad soap opera: Will Jennifer soften the hearts of the school board in time to prevent her kiln from being repossessed and her class size doubled? Tune in next week, and you will find that Jennifer's really big problems are just around the corner. The survivor mentality disposes us to make easy, quick distinction between necessities and luxuries, between what we think we need just to stay around a while longer and all those things that we never had, but thought were worth striving for. Political expediency starts taking prece-

A Gathering of Friends in Memory of Madeline Earle Stanton (1898–1980) held in the Historical Library, Yale University School of Medicine Saturday, 22 November 1980

This is a gathering of friends and colleagues to honor a great lady. I want to welcome Madeline's niece, Mrs. Joseph Wagstaff, and her husband and son, Donald, of Hingham, Massachusetts. We regret that Madeline's nephew, Richard Stanton Reid, of Ft. Pierce, Florida cannot be with us today because of illness. I am sure that Madeline would be pleased to know that two of her closest friends at Smith College, Margaret Wilson Hempstead and Margaret Winchester, are here as representatives of her Smith class of 1919. Madeline Stanton, like a well-cut diamond, had many facets, and she had a profound influence on many people both in this country and abroad. In order to be with us today, Dr. Leonard Wilson has traveled from Minnespolis, where he is now chariman of the Department of the History of Medicine at the University of Minnesota. Leonard came to Yale in 1960 to join Dr. John Fulton in the Department of the History of Science and Medicine. Unhappily, Dr. Fulton died shortly before Leonard arrived. Completion of Dr. Fulton's expanded revision of the volume on Selected Readings in the History of Physiology became one of Leonard's major responsibilities. In this work he became closely associated with Madeline and the Historical Library. He also joined the editorial board of the Journal of the History of Medicine and in 1972 assumed the editorship when Madeline and Elizabeth Thomson retired.

The Legend of Lady Godiva

THE legend of Godiva was recalled to our minds and flared up for a while in the press in 1967, when the City of Coventry celebrated the 9ooth anniversary of her death. It is a legend which offers a challenge both to historian and folklorist, for the problem it presents is that of the relationship between historical events, written records and popular tradition. It is the more complicated and the more interesting for us because the folklore does not end with the Middle Ages, but has continued to develop in Coventry up to the present day. For all the Godiva Cafes and Cinemas, and the small, flesh-pink figure on a horse which rushes madly round the balcony in the main square every time the clock sounds the hour, there is something here beyond mere commercialism. The eleventh-century Godiva is still reverenced by the people as a great lady, the founder and benefactor of their city, whose story should not be doubted or tampered with. In the Godiva legend we have a complex and fascinating problem of folk tradition, to which this paper offers no more than an introduction; much further remains to be done.

A Mistress and a Master: Madame Cavé and Delacroix

The issue of the Revue des Deux-Mondes that appeared on September 15, 1850, contained an essay by Eugene Delacroix on “the teaching of drawing,” in which he reviewed a recent book titled, Drawing without a Master. It had been written by Marie-Elizabeth Cave, the attractive wife of the former Director of Fine Arts.1 Although the eminent master was seldom unmindful of the professional value of political tact, there were deeper, more personal commitments that would have drawn him to this particular task. Briefly his mistress and for long after that affair a devoted friend of the great painter, that bright and enterprising lady had a special call upon his loyalties. As a person of longstanding interest in the arts—she had herself gained some reputation as a painter— Mme. Cave had, moreover, discussed her ideas with him as a colleague and close friend who was himself much given to speculation about the nature of the arts. He must certainly have detected therefore echoes of his own precepts and sentiments as he...

Elizabeth Garrett Anderson

The first woman physician in England came to medicine through chance. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson (1836-1917) was first of all a social reformer. When she thought of studying medicine, she intended simply to open a new profession to women. But once she began her struggle to win a medical education, she became dedicated to that profession. Her commitment dominated the rest of her life and altered the lives of many others. This fine biography, based largely on family papers and the unpublished records of hospitals and medical schools, will interest the reader both as a social document and as a readable account of a great lady. Dr. Anderson's achievements appear impressive: She was the first woman dean of a medical school, the first woman to earn the MD degree from the University of Paris, and the first woman mayor in England. Somehow she also managed to combine marriage with her career.

Yeats as Dramatist

The hallmark of Yeats’ dramatic writing is a pattern of profound complexity within a Spartan simplicity and brevity. Brevity is easily enough established: most of the plays are quite short. Even the few exceptions indicate that the full-length play was not a form Yeats found sympathetic. Of the two longest plays in the current Collected volume, one is The Countess Cathleen, Yeats's first stage-piece. This work straight forwardly dramatizes the efforts of Satan's agents to buy the souls of Irish peasants and their defeat at the hands of the great lady of the district, who sacrifices her own soul to save the peasants. The conflict is mainly external. Here is none of that spiritual and intellectual subtlety that marks the later plays; every thought and every emotion seem no more than reflections of stock peasant and Christian attitudes. Lady Cathleen gives up her soul; the sacrifice is great but conventional.

The Social Causation of the Courtly Love Complex

How to account for the courtly love complex of the troubadours and minnesingers has been an unsolved puzzle ever since the romanticists discovered it as a scholarly problem. For about three generations, in the 12th and 13th centuries, Provençal and German lyrical poetry was preoccupied with a strangely uneven love pattern. In the classic version of this poetry, the male lover presents himself as engrossed in a yearning desire for the love of an exceedingly beautiful and perfect woman whose strange emotional aloofness and high social status make her appear hopelessly distant. But the frustrated and sorrowful lover cannot overcome his fascination and renders faithful “love service” to this “high-minded” and exacting lady who reciprocates in a surprising manner: She does not grant him the amorous “reward” which he craves, but she gives him what immeasurably increases his “worth”: She rewards him with approval and reassurance. The great lady accepts him as being worthy of her attention, but only at the price of behavioral restraint and refinement of manners, that is, at the price ofcourtoisbehavior. As the contemporaries put it,courtoisieis the result of courtly love.

Nuclear Weapons and Defence: Comments on Kissinger, Kennan, and King-Hall

IN view of the millions of words which have already been written on all aspects of nuclear weapons, some justification is required for adding some more. Almost every aspect has been ably argued and equally ably refuted, and it is not unusual to find oneself convinced one week by an advocate of some specific policy, only to remember later that the week before one had been equally convinced by some advocate of its exact opposite. So when I hear the words 'the Great Deterrent', 'Massive Retaliation', 'Graduated Deterrence', 'Limited Nuclear War', etc., I sometimes share the feelings of Eliza Doolittle: 'Never let me hear another word again! There isn't one that I haven't heard: say one more word and I'll scream.' So if any of you feel like screaming I shall sympathize. May I remind you, however, that sometimes, as another great lady, the White Queen, knew so well, it is better to scream before one is hurt than after: with atomic warfare one is unlikely to scream afterwards. The three authors enumerated in the sub-title of this address have been chosen as having written the books which seem to me to be the most suitable now available to stimulate a critical diagnosis of our present defence position. If the authors of these three books were here today, I would tender my apologies for any unintentional imputation that they thought alike. They do not, on many vital issues: that is why I have chosen these books for detailed comment. In a real sense, however, they are complementary to each other. Dr Henry A. Kissinger's book Nuclear Weafons and Foreign Policy merits attention because of its great length, wide erudition, and keen analytic power. It arose out of the serious deliberations over many months of a study group sponsored by the American Council on Foreign Relations. In this group were many of the most distinguished American military and political writers, and its Chairman was Gordon Dean, former Chairman of the American Atomic Energy Commission. Thus the arguments in the book must be taken as commanding a substantial amount of influential support in the United States. Indeed Mr Foster Dulles' article in

Mattia Preti

Mattia Preti1 was born in 1613 at Taverna, Calabria, among the high mountains of the southern Sila, and baptized on February 26 under the name of the apostle whose day it was. His people were above the peasantry, yet below the nobility strictly speaking, with plenty of ecclesiastical connection. He was a big man, full-bodied, dark and brilliant-eyed, with heavy hair, and a kind of personal dignity that made him respected at sight; and he was an admirable fencer. One time in Rome Donna Olimpia, Princess of Rossano, asked him, not in vain, to defeat an arrogant German who had sent out a general challenge. Another story, vague, of the cape and sword type, also went the rounds, but no woman's name came in. Donna Olimpia, of course, was a great lady, who had simply suggested him for a feat of arms. She had done plenty of kindness to him when he first came up to Rome, at seventeen, to join his brother Gregorio, who was already an established painter. She probably recommended him to the papal legate at Bologna. The legate apparently sent him to Guercino at Cento, and Mattia, keeping always a special feeling for Guercino's painting, came back occasionally to a mood rare with him, that of romantic epic. Guercino's St. William of Aquitaine is like a canto of Ariosto, so is Mattia's St. George in Valletta.

Opera in the Eighteenth Century

Perhaps the story had better begin with a letter which Swift received one morning at his Deanery in Dublin, in the spring of the year 1729. It was from his old friend Dr. Arbuthnot, formerly physician to Queen Anne. He writes that he has just been attending poor John Gay, and has pulled him through a very severe attack of fever, from which “a physician who had not been passionately his friend could not have saved him. I had beside my personal concern for him” the doctor goes on, “other motives of my care. He is now become a public person, a little Sacheverell;. … one of the obstructions to the peace of Europe, the terror of ministers. He has got several turned out of their places, the greatest ornament of the court banished from it for his sake, another great lady in danger of being chassée likewise, about seven or eight duchesses pushing forward who shall suffer martyrdom upon his account first. He is the darling of the city. If he should travel about the country he would have hecatombs of roasted oxen sacrificed to him … and I can assure you this is the very identical John Gay—the inoffensive John Gay—whom you formerly knew and lodged with in Whitehall two years ago.”