London

I. Introduction

Writing about London means to me writing about my life out my hometown for the first time in my early twenties, seeking stories to tell and trying to write my own. Hyde Park, Notting Hill, Camden Town and Kentish Town were the places were we went out the most since Brixton and Shoreditch were for us mostly still unknown.

London in 2005 was different than nowadays but to me it still keeps its unique essence. I could write an entire book of inspiring characters only mentioning the people I met during that six months living in the Astor Leinster Inn in Bayswater that probably taught me something in a world still not so digitally connected. Back those days was not easy to find a multicultural microcosmos of people and my approximate level of english of course did not help. The rent was due week by week (70 pounds p/w) and certain guests stayed there for years. There were people from all over the world, most of them (me included) living out of casual jobs and carrying on with their artistical ambitions. For some reasons, we all had very common music tastes, mostly classic rock, switching from Led Zeppelin to the Stones, Beatles, Ramones, Sex Pistols and Black Sabbaths, all coming out from a pair of rusty speakers that were hanging down from the corners of the hall.

That place like many others in the city does not exist anymore, it has been eaten by the frenetic city rhythm and the gentrification and I guess most of those people live elsewhere nowadays, probably went back to their own countries or somewhere else in the world.

Coming back 10 years after for the first time and two more times last year and this year, was the occasion for me to do my own walk, walking around those that use to be familiar districts and somehow still are. I have always found fascinating to see people standing on a ladder in Speaker's corner to talk about whatever comes into their mind or hanging out in Hampstead looking at the heath because that very same picture was on my english book in secondary school and somehow belongs to my own London.

Camden Town hasn't changed that much except from a new Amy Winehouse statue standing there but nowadays for some reason I prefer other areas like Clapham, Camberwell or Peckham. Those areas are mostly new to me and are part of this new era I am living every time I visit London, with twice as many years in my pocket since my very first time.

II. Random facts in History

Saint George the English national hero was born in Cappadocia in the 3rd century AC. He was likely to be a Roman officer who was executed for refusing to make a sacrifice in honor of the pagan gods. The Saint George cross started to represent England under the reign of Henry VIII. The country of Georgia was also named after Saint George, due to the popularity that the saint raised amongst the people in this part of the world. The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group of German descendancy (Saxony), present in Britain from 455 to 1066. They got in touch with the pre-existing roman britain culture and got along with it. They lasted till the battle of Hasting of 1066 when they were defeated by the Norman French. The battle lasted only for one day. Normans ruled England for the next 300 years. The Hundred Years' War was a period of British history that saw the kingdom of England and France constantly fighting each other since the origin of the English royal family which was French-Norman. The French victory ended all English possession on the continent and led to the rejection of everything related to France in England (except the language, partly still used).
Henry the VIII was the king of England between 1509 and 1547. Mostly famous for 6 marriages, the execution of his wife and for having started Anglicanism and the English reformation when pope Clement VII refused to cancel one of his marriages. The consequence of the reformation was the separation of the English Church from the Catholic Church. The divine right of the king grew in exchange of papal supremacy.
English civil wars were mostly three political conflicts between the monarchists, represented by Charles I and the parliamentarians of the New Model Army, represented by Oliver Cromwell. Those conflicts affected the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. Monarchists were defeated in 1649 and the defeat led to the execution of Charles I and the foundation of the Commonwealth of England.
The East India company was settled around 1600 to trade commodities as cotton, silk, sugar, salt, spices and tea in the Indian ocean region and east Asia. With the company the British empire of India also sees its debut. The company gained more and more power, assuming direct control of India around 1868. The British empire “the empire of which the sun never sets” was probably the largest empire in history and became a fully global power involving around 400 millions people. The empire saw its decline after the world wars that affected Europe in the XX century.

III. Truth to nature

William Turner is probably the most famous painter of England of all the time. Born from a lower-middle-class family, he had a very complex, introverted and skeptical personality. In his life Turner traveled intensively through Europe and was recognised as a painter of superior level. As a romantic painter, he focused intensively on the force of nature, landscape and natural phenomena. Turner could be probably mentioned as one of the first impressionist and modern painters. John Ruskin was an and extremely influencial thinker, art critic and a huge fan of Turner. In his Modern Painters (1843), he affirmed that the main role of the artist is the truth to nature. He also supported the pre-Raphaelities, leaving them a strong influence on their works.

IV. pre-Raphaelites

The pre-Raphaelites movement was formed by a group of English painters in 1848. The group was standing for intensity and complexion of production, rejecting mannerism (distortion, asymmetry and tension), a movement that was born in contraposition to classical poses, mostly “corrupted” by the work of Raphael (at least according to them).

V. The beautiful deaths

Ophelia (John Everett Millais, 1851) can be seen as one of the most beautiful examples of this movement. The intensity, the brightness and the abundance of details in the picture are an example of pre-Raphaelites style same a the sweetness in which death is represented, the softness in juxtaposition to the hardness of life, the way Ophelia lets herself go slowly, compliantly and erotically into the abyss. The way her clothes are slowly filled by water, reminds me a bit of the defeated way in which Virginia Wolf decides to walk into the river with her pockets full of stones, for one last epic walk into the darkness. Another character who is very much related to Ophelia as a short of female hero victim of her own sensibility is Emma Bovary. Bovary is guilty of her own pleasure and every single time she makes a mistake in the strongly judgemental town she lives, she pays an excessive price that keeps pushing her to the edge, towards her final death. Both victims in this case could represent an archetype of self-destructive woman, who can't fight properly against her own destruction and prefer to let herself go poetically.

VI. William Blake and the Vala

Romanticism has a strong focus on the individual and his emotions and on the relation between the human and the nature. The movement was born partly as a reaction against industrialisation. William Blake had a very personal opinion on things and was sometimes seen as an eccentric madman. Blake was very much involved in social politics and despised religion, inventing his own mythology and creating a sort of a new age movement. Very interesting is also his concept expressed on Vala, where he sees every person with two identities one good and one bad.

VII. Chatterton suicidé, quant à moi Ça ne va plus très bien

Another important figure of Romanticism was the poet Thomas Chatterton. He lived a very short and miserable life, poisoning himself for not being able to earn enough to carry a decent life.

His death was beautifully represented by Henry Wallis in “The death of Chatterton” (Tate Britain, 1856). Chatterton was very inspiring between many artists, Serge Gainsbourg remembered him with the song “Chatterton”.

VIII. Bloomsbury Group

Prominent during the first half of the 20 century, the Bloomsbury group was a group of upper class poets and thinkers that became influential also for today's society, focusing on topics like feminism, pacifism and sexuality prioritizing individual pleasure and personal relationships. One of the most well-known figures between the members of the group was certainly Virginia Woolf.

IX. What should we do for rent?

The Camden Town Group was contemporary to the Bloomsbury group but it was mostly related to painting. Sources of inspiration were mostly the works of Van Gogh and Gauguin and the topics were often referring to scenes of everyday life as can be seen in “Camden Town Murder” (1906-1909) by one of the most famous exponents of the movement, Walter Sickert. Furthermore, Walter Sickert could have been the mysterious identity behind the serial killer Jack the Ripper and his victims could potentially be the subjects of his paintings.

These works were also inspiring other painters like Francis Bacon, a very brutal, dark, enigmatic, introspective painter who focused mostly on human shape, distortion and emotions.

KASTAZWA_:
sur/la/route: London