Essay writing

Tomorrow I will be completely well again I think. I feel much better already.

Just carried off twelve kilos of paper from the library, one of which made up a second-hand collection of primary sources from Britain's Victorian years (second half nineteenth century) for which I paid next to nothing; and another kilo featuring a quite handsome and pretty dragking (that one's for my essay on Tipping the Velvet which I will be writing in a week or two).

But now I will concentrate first on an anthropological investigation into how the architecture of the concert-hall stimulates a certain mode of listening/transforms Visitors into Listeners and how, historically, it has been instrumental in constructing a romantic notion of music as the ultimate automomous, sacred art (which it hadn't been before!). My case? The Concertgebouw! (Well, yes, I do start to miss my Stad. Which explains below ode.)

Meanwhile, in everyday Exeter life it has been hard to concentrate on work or sleep the past few days/weeks. Above me live a boy that must surely eat a lot of raw eggs, and a girl with a great sense for the theatrical. I am really very happy for them... but I'm still grateful for Flogging Molly at top volume (and for L., E. and M.).

This morning BBC radio played the tune of an old, old Hilversum 4 program. Yup: memories...

Also, I finished The importance of being Earnest. Yep: "And how are we this morning? Miss Prism, you are, I trust, well?" and "I spoke metaphorically - my metaphor was drawn from bees" finally receive their well-deserved context. And an admirable one it is, too.

"Dr. Fisher" (but the name "Kate" fits her better) returned my sex education essay (I think I told you a bit about my public library visits and the strange things they advise us to (not) do? That's the essay I'm talking about), which assessment rather put me at ease about the academic outcome of this trip to Wonderland. (About the rest I never had any doubts. Complete and blissful mental aberration).

Which reminds me that I had promised myself to give you some conclusions of my latest medieval research ;-). I'll make it a blockquote so it's easy to skip. But basically, the essay is my attempt to get some grip on the essentialism- versus cultural constructionism-debate that has been upsetting gender and sexuality studies for some thirty years now. When it concerns the topic of homosexuality, the two extreme views are that
1. essentialists: some people are simply born to be homosexuals, no one can do anything about it, in any time and culture the proportion of homosexuals (and heterosexuals)* is the same as this division is a given feature of the human species (a genetical variation of the standard heterosexuality, which, some even argue, can be explained by evolution-theory as the non-procreative** homosexuals are to take care of the (children of) heterosexuals, thus making the species as a whole more fit);
2. constructionists: sexual categories are culturally determined, not biologically, the homosexual being a modern Western concept, while other times and cultures have (or don't have) their own sex-gender classifications of individuals.

Of course it gets more interesting as soon as you discern the many positions in between these extremes... So what I tried to find out is whether people of the High Middle Ages (AD 1000-1200) had a similar concept of "homosexuals" as we have (in this case I investigated only men, as medieval sources remain conspicuously silent about women >:-$ ). This is part of the (rather preliminary) answer I give:

In the course of this small research I ran into many problems. Definitions have been shifting back and forth which eventually made them include a range of possible meanings. Now I hope to be able to assess which parts of them might map onto medieval conceptions.It has become clear that no equivalent to the current (male) “homosexual” existed - which itself has an incomprehensibly diverse
content. For one reason, sodomita is too strongly connected to the penetrator in penal-anal intercourse. There is a wide spectrum even within (types of) sources from the conception of sodomitae as the wilful committers of a crime or sin who have alternatives to their disposal, via its conception as an addictive habit, to sodomia as an acquired or even inherited, incurable disease. It is only sometimes that we find sodomites assuming the morphology of women, while we also encounter effeminate men without any sign of homosexual behaviour. Earlier in our period the main point of distinction seemed to be the manner in which one had intercourse, later on it was the gender of the person(s) one had intercourse with. Still, apart from many accusations, historical cases of individuals with a clear, conscious predilection for persons of their own gender, in other words, with a homosexual constitution, are rare. Rather, people seemed to direct their romantic and sexual attention to those they happened to live in close contact with, which in (nearly) all-male communities would naturally result in emotional and physical affection between men, sometimes even evolving into solid,
marriage-like relationships. Even though these communities, and the networks between them, gave rise to distinctive cultural elements such as a set of homophilic literary topoi and a distinct language, I would see these as the features of an elite class of highly educated men living largely separated from women, rather than as signs of a homosexual subculture, although the fact that this culture lived with only part of the clergy, while an other part defended nicolaitism, does indeed point in the direction of a subculture.

A last random point: at Exeter's Picturehouse the children's animation classic The Snowman will be playing. Yup: waar blijft de tijd? (Explanation: M. and P. and some more people, an complete symphony orchestra to be precise, performed this piece in the Spinoza Lyceum, about ten years ago now...)

*Here we encounter the first flaw in the (extreme) essentialist position, for where are the other freaks?
** but perhaps "recreative"?

Sentimental Lady

Aan de Amsterdamse grachten
Heb ik heel mijn hart voor altijd verpand
Amsterdam vult mijn gedachten
Als de mooiste stad in ons land

Al die Amsterdamse mensen
Al die lichtjes 's avonds laat op het plein
Niemand kan zich beter wensen
Dan een Amsterdammer te zijn

Er staat een huis aan de gracht in oud Amsterdam
Waar ik als jochie van acht bij grootmoeder kwam
Nu zit een vreemde meneer in 't kamertje voor
En ook die heerlijke zolder werd tot kantoor

Alleen de bomen, de bomen, hoog boven het verkeer
En over het water gaat er een bootje net als weleer

Aan de Amsterdamse grachten
Heb ik heel mijn hart voor altijd verpand

Amsterdam vult mijn gedachten
Als de mooiste stad in ons land

Al die Amsterdamse mensen
Al die lichtjes 's avonds laat op het plein
Niemand kan zich beter wensen
Dan een Amsterdammer te zijn

Al die Amsterdamse mensen
Al die lichtjes 's avonds laat op het plein
Niemand kan zich beter wensen
Dan een Amsterdammer te zijn

~

Pieter Goermans