802
biology, and the eventual New Synthesis, might satisfy the prime engine of change,
regardless of any purpose or degree of complexity (e.g., our species). And if not our
species, then, at least, our species’ behavior. This connotes a major shift in the history of science in terms of who and what we are.
For some, like the earlier referenced Thomas Huxley, complexity in Nature met
her match in humanity. For others, though, evolution has no mandate to ordain any
one species. It is an open-ended enigma between cause and effect, chance and repetition, singularities and convergence.
As in the writings of the poet Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von
Hardenberg, 1772–1801) and in the Romantic outpourings of other contemporaries
of Friedrich, there was, in the aesthetic totality, particularly landscape painting, a
“conceptual conflation of the eye”
3
that, both inside and outside the injunctions and
latitude of religion, invited a profound correspondence between the agencies of life
and death, such that, in an undated fragment, Friedrich had written, “In order to live
forever once, One must give in to death often.”
4
This rallying cry of German Romanticism reaches back to the subjective brilliance of such religious sagas as that most famed depiction of the hunter’s vision of
the crucified Christ, by Antonio Pisano, known as Pisanello (1395–1455) in his
work, “The Vision of St. Eustace” (?c. 1435, The National Gallery, London).
5
Eustace invites a revolution of animal liberations from the dark forested heart of an
otherwise fixated and inert objectivity. Albrecht Dürer in his own engraved version
of Pisanello’s painting (“Vision of St. Eustace,” ca. 1501) (Fig. 92.1). Celebrates
this divine instant (enshrining the much more ancient Eastern Orthodox Church and
its own veneration of St. Eustathios the Great Martyr) and lends it to the history of
our dialectical relation to all Others at the very moment that Western Civilization
had become fixated upon the capture of life forms for every version of dissection—a
prelude to the ramping up of the mass slaughters. As echoed in Edward Young’s
“Night Thoughts” (“The Complaint: or, Night-thoughts on Life, Death, &
Immortality,” 1742, 1745): “Fond man, the vision of a moment made / Dream of a
dream, and shadow of a shade”
6
.
3 Amstutz, p.138.
4 Amstutz, p.190, in the chapter, “The Change of Seasons.”
5 See “The Vision of St. Eustace,” https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/pisanello-thevision-of-saint-eustace, Accessed June 27, 2020.
6 See Places of Delight – The Pastoral Landscape, by Robert Cafritz, Lawrence Gowing and David
Rosand, The Phillips Collection in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.,
Clarkson N. Potter, Inc./Publishers, Distributed by Crown Publishers, Inc., New York 1988, p. 217,
cited from David Cecil, Visionary and Dreamer, Two Poetic Painters: Samuel Palmer and Edward
Burne-Jones, Bollingen Series, no. 15, 1966, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1969,
p. 10. See also, Viennese Watercolors of the Nineteenth Century, by Walter Koschatzky, Harry
N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1988; See also, Salzburg und das Salzkammergut – Die
Künstlerische Entwicklung Der Stadt Und Der Landschaft In Bildern Des 19. Jahrhunerts, by
Heinrich Schwarz, Verlag Galerie Welz Salzburg, 1977.
92 A Lost Species
biology, and the eventual New Synthesis, might satisfy the prime engine of change,
regardless of any purpose or degree of complexity (e.g., our species). And if not our
species, then, at least, our species’ behavior. This connotes a major shift in the history of science in terms of who and what we are.
For some, like the earlier referenced Thomas Huxley, complexity in Nature met
her match in humanity. For others, though, evolution has no mandate to ordain any
one species. It is an open-ended enigma between cause and effect, chance and repetition, singularities and convergence.
As in the writings of the poet Novalis (Georg Philipp Friedrich Freiherr von
Hardenberg, 1772–1801) and in the Romantic outpourings of other contemporaries
of Friedrich, there was, in the aesthetic totality, particularly landscape painting, a
“conceptual conflation of the eye”
3
that, both inside and outside the injunctions and
latitude of religion, invited a profound correspondence between the agencies of life
and death, such that, in an undated fragment, Friedrich had written, “In order to live
forever once, One must give in to death often.”
4
This rallying cry of German Romanticism reaches back to the subjective brilliance of such religious sagas as that most famed depiction of the hunter’s vision of
the crucified Christ, by Antonio Pisano, known as Pisanello (1395–1455) in his
work, “The Vision of St. Eustace” (?c. 1435, The National Gallery, London).
5
Eustace invites a revolution of animal liberations from the dark forested heart of an
otherwise fixated and inert objectivity. Albrecht Dürer in his own engraved version
of Pisanello’s painting (“Vision of St. Eustace,” ca. 1501) (Fig. 92.1). Celebrates
this divine instant (enshrining the much more ancient Eastern Orthodox Church and
its own veneration of St. Eustathios the Great Martyr) and lends it to the history of
our dialectical relation to all Others at the very moment that Western Civilization
had become fixated upon the capture of life forms for every version of dissection—a
prelude to the ramping up of the mass slaughters. As echoed in Edward Young’s
“Night Thoughts” (“The Complaint: or, Night-thoughts on Life, Death, &
Immortality,” 1742, 1745): “Fond man, the vision of a moment made / Dream of a
dream, and shadow of a shade”
6
.
3 Amstutz, p.138.
4 Amstutz, p.190, in the chapter, “The Change of Seasons.”
5 See “The Vision of St. Eustace,” https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/pisanello-thevision-of-saint-eustace, Accessed June 27, 2020.
6 See Places of Delight – The Pastoral Landscape, by Robert Cafritz, Lawrence Gowing and David
Rosand, The Phillips Collection in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.,
Clarkson N. Potter, Inc./Publishers, Distributed by Crown Publishers, Inc., New York 1988, p. 217,
cited from David Cecil, Visionary and Dreamer, Two Poetic Painters: Samuel Palmer and Edward
Burne-Jones, Bollingen Series, no. 15, 1966, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1969,
p. 10. See also, Viennese Watercolors of the Nineteenth Century, by Walter Koschatzky, Harry
N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1988; See also, Salzburg und das Salzkammergut – Die
Künstlerische Entwicklung Der Stadt Und Der Landschaft In Bildern Des 19. Jahrhunerts, by
Heinrich Schwarz, Verlag Galerie Welz Salzburg, 1977.
92 A Lost Species