User:Norwikian
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History and likes
I'm a Norwich-born and bred writer and scholar. I graduated from the University of East Anglia reading European History . During my twenties and thirties I visited at one time or another Amsterdam, Cologne, Heidelberg, Geneva, Verona, Venice, Rome, Athens, and the Mediterranean islands of Naxos and Sicily. I've worked in archaeology, wholefoods, hotels, bookmakers and teaching and am at present a porter in the A and E department at the new Norfolk and Norwich University hospital http://www.nnuh.nhs.uk/.
My passions include-
- Norwich and Norfolk's history, writers, intellectuals, social reformers, artists and cultural relationship to Europe.
Pages started on Iceni* Norwich School * Joseph Stannard * George Borrow* John Jenkins * William Taylor*James Edward Smith* Sid Kipper*
- The physician and philosopher Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82)
Pages started on Religio Medici * Pseudodoxia Epidemica * The Garden of Cyrus * Musaeum Clausum* Sir Thomas Browne on America* Library of Sir Thomas Browne* adipocere *
- Hermeticism , comparative religion and the esoteric in general; more specifically the largely unacknowledged influence of these subjects in the development of science, religion and the arts.
Pages started on Physiognomy * Macrocosm * Proteus*Vulcan of the alchemists* Arthur Dee author of Fasciculus Chemicus * Jacques Gaffarel *Guardian angel*Kingdom of Heaven * Oedipus Aegyptiacus* Tetramorph* Giambattista della Porta author of Natural Magic* Martin Ruland*
Ancient world contributions *sistrum*Athenaeus and the Deipnosophistae or Banquet of the Learned or Philosophers at Dinner
Pop culture contributions 200 Motels
I enjoy listening to viol consort music especially that of John Jenkins and to Baroque music in general especially lute, and those two composers over-shadowed by their father, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Christian Bach. But I also adore the music of Mozart, Sibelius, Carl Nielsen, as well as Frank Sinatra, Philip Glass and Frank Zappa as well as Kraftwerk, The Beatles, Laura Nyro, Bob Dylan and Kevin Ayers. Ah! the music of those heady days of the 70's now re-mastered onto CD.
I also sometimes enjoy perusing the weird world of Japanese anime, a little Bollywood, the Italian maestro Federico Fellini and cinema's first super-star Charlie Chaplin. If time permits I enjoy playing Chess and Golf. Here's a link for an excellent site devoted to Chess http://www.chessgames.com/
Novels I've read and 'lurrved', even if having to place one's trust in a translator or as another put it, eating chips (french fries) with gloves on.-
- Marcel Proust In Search of Lost Time
- Georges Perec Life: A User's Manual
- Hermann Hesse Steppenwolf
- Umberto Eco The Name of the Rose
- Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment
- Tolstoy Anna Karenina
- Goncharov Oblomov
- Yevgeny Zamyatin We
- Bulgakov The Master and Margarita
- Andrei Bely Petersburg
- Alfred Doblin Berlin Alexanderplatz
- James Joyce Ulysses
- William Faulkner The Sound and the Fury
- Robert Musil The Man Without Qualities
2004
William Faulkner The Wild Palms
William Faulkner Soldier's pay
Sylvie Matton 'Rembrandt's Whore'
John Fowles The French Lieutenant's Woman
P. D. Ouspensky Strange tale of Ivan Osokin
Marguerite Yourcenar L'Oeuvre au Noir translated title 'The Abyss'
Elias Canetti Auto-da-Fé Original German title 'Die Blendung'.
The last two titles are both slightly depressing novels in which the hero commits suicide. 'The Abyss' according to its author is partially based upon the biography of Paracelsus. Auto-da-Fé is a good study on the dangers of over-intellectualism and moral observations on the intellect's place in totalitarian society, i.e. nowhere . It's also a completely different novel from when last read way back in time, twenty years ago. Tempus fugit ! sigh!
2005
Favourite American T.V.
- The Simpsons But why does the minor character, the Jail-bird baddie Sideshow Bob have an upper-class English accent?
- Sex and the City The real and imaginary 'sufferings' of these poor little rich girls regularly crack me up; but at least Sex is discussed more maturely than anything on U.K. T.V.
- Third rock from the Sun The re-runs still seem fresh and fun.
Why Norwikian?
I call myself the Norwikian here because I hail from the ancient City of Norwich (U.K.) The etymology of this place-name originates from the Saxon of Nor = (North) and Wik, meaning a port or settlement, the Dutch equivalent being Noordwijk. Since ancient Roman times, and up until today I should technically be called a Norvicensian but I prefer the Saxon Wik as in Norwikian. Of greater relevance I coined it because Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82) the author of Pseudodoxia Epidemica (an early modern European encyclopaedia) was a distinguished resident of Norwich!
In April 2004 I aquired my very own edition of Sir T.B's Pseudodoxia, the 4th edition of 1658 with Urn-Burial and Cyrus appended. It was acquired courtesy of an ebay auction. This book has now completed an at least 6000 mile return journey from its penning, to publishing in London to purchasing somehow ending up in Charleston, South Carolina, USA, returning to its source, namely, Norwich some 347 years later.
The title-page of Browne's encyclopaedia bears this quotation-
- To cull from books what authors have reported is exceedingly dangerous;true knowledge of things themselves is out of the things themselves. -Julius Caesar Scaliger
Sir Thomas Browne on the Wiki ?
Sir T.B. is so eminently quotable I cannot resist! Note the humour of undivided and endless volumes as regards the Wiki!
The following may also be indicative of an would-be encyclopedist-
- I intend no Monopoly but a Community in Learning. I study not only for myself but for those who study not. from Religio Medici
- There is all Africa and her prodigies within us. We are that bold and adventurous piece of nature which he that studies wisely learns in a Compendium; what others labour at in an endless and divided volume. Ibid
- Would Truth dispense, we would be content, with Plato, that knowledge were but rememberance; that intellectual acquisition were but reminiscential evocation, and new Impressions but the colouring of old stamps which stood in the soul before. For what is worse, knowledge is made by oblivion, and to purchase a clear and warrantable body of Truth, we must forget and part with much we know.
- -from 'To the Reader', Pseudodoxia Epidemica
"Sir Thomas Browne is amongst my first favourites, rich in knowledge, exuberant in conceptions, and conceits, contemplative, imaginative: often truly great and magnificent in style and diction......he is a quiet and sublime enthusiast with a strong tinge of the fantast,- the humourist constantly mingling with, and flashing across, the philosopher, as the darting colours in shot silk play upon the main dye. In short, he has brains in his head which is all the more interesting for a little twist in the brains......Fond of the curious, and a hunter of oddities and strangnesses,.....- he loved to contemplate and discuss his own thoughts and feelings, because he found by comparison with other men's, that they too were curiosities..."
- -from a letter by Coleridge dated March 10th 1804 Sat. night 12 o'clock. Full letter available at http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_on_Browne
- Best quotations by Browne available at- http://quote.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Browne.
Alternatively, website of Browne's major writings at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/index.shtml
My dislikes
- War (what is it good for, absolutely nothing, sing it loud!)
- Jingoistic nationalism hey kids isn't about time you stopped waving those coloured rags you call flags about, to 'justify' your national pride; aren't they just a pretty excuse for 20% of the world to bully the other 80%??
- Christianity which is Jingoistic in other words of a Fundamentalist colouring. (Dictionary definitions of Jingoism include -War-like, boasting and chauvinistic, originating from a popular song from the 1870's -
We don't want to fight, but by Jingo if we do...)!
- Bank Charges - As the decrepit old man of capitalism gasps his last breath, aware he is dying and fearful of his death, he desperately invents new and extortionate ways to sustain his godless life.
- Meat- I've not eaten it for thirty years and am alive and healthy.
Just think how many animals an individual eats in a life-time. "Good morning sir how can I help?" "I'd like 200 chickens , 20 pigs, 12 sheep and 6 Cows , please." "To eat in your life-time Sir ,?" " That's right! I'll send someone round to kill them for me, 'cos I'm a little bit squeamish at the sight of blood and pain myself".
Hey Kevin ! it's time to get off your soap-box !
"No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another".
Photo
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Boating_97.jpg
Image:Boating_97.jpg
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Here I am on Barton Broad, one of the bootiful Norfolk Broads ,now known as The Broads National Park, Britain's newest National Park. The Broads are a series of artifical, inter-connected shallow lakes formed from a rise in sea-level after years of peat extraction during the Middle Ages.
- I continue to define myself as a hermetist with Christian sympathies
- Good-day yanni Evrim
What's New?
20005Go to http://sources.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Norwikian for a complete listing of all the many minor writings of Sir Thomas Browne I've contributed to Wikisource throughout 2004.
I hope in 2005 to contribute articles on * viol consort* Theatrum Chemicum*Quaternity* Hermetic phantasmagoria*Heart of a Dog and also to add book-titles to the controversial page barely relevant to an encyclopaedia, the Library of Sir Thomas Browne ( a list of American supermarkets IS however available) and whatever else is considered worthy of inclusion/ escapes VfD (Votes for Deletion) and/or not yet elucidated upon by fellow Wikipedians within the quite finite circle of my knowledge.
My web essays
- Alchemical and hermetic thought in the literary works of Sir Thomas Browne
By far the best thing I've written on Browne can be found at
A revision of a paper I delivered at UEA March 2002. A lovely animated phoenix, Mercurius figure and urn in the top margin. Please Adam, pump up the font-size! (Alternatively cut and paste). Boy was I nervous! Lots of eminent American academics visited for this conference.Excellent!
- Spiritual and literary affinity between Julian and Sir Thomas Browne.
- The two 'Norridge' mystics briefly compared in terms spirituality and literature, just as the title states.
- http://www.umilta.net/browne.html
- Prayer and Prophecy in Browne.
- Piety, oracular utterances about America and my chance to use Sir T.B.'s words to voice my dissent and disapproval upon the foreign policy of certain nations and present-day world events.
- http://www.umilta.net/thosbrowne.html
- Browne and the Zoroastrian religion :A page of allusions to Zoroaster/Zoroastrianism in science-fiction (mostly American novels). Scroll deep down, down, down to the bottom of a very, very long LIST. for just a v. small stub on the first reference to Zoroaster and his religion identified in English literature. Well a bit earlier than the OED claims anyway!