General Discussion

@Requacy

:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD I am so excited

Currently, I seem to be fixated on composers (Shostakovich...). I've started reading about the relationship between Chopin and Liszt. I have learned that both men had an amicable, yet rivalrous and at times contentious relationship and eventual separation until Chopin's death where Liszt ends up writing a memoir of his friend. Turns out at the time of their friendship, both men were with very similar women, George Sand and Daniel Stern respectively (these are their pen names, they were writing in 1800s Europe which did not take women super serious).

Anyway. I ended up reading more of George Stern specifically, birth name Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin. At the time, they were the most well revered Romantic Era French author, inspiring and being admired by names heralded as Classics now (Hugo, Dostoyevsky, Whitman), and yet I have heard nothing about this author? Additionally, recall how I mentioned 1800s Europe was not super friendly to women? This lead to many Feminists to adopt (contemporarily) male clothing, and George Sand was no different. I suspect, though, that Sand did not do this out of purely feminist intentions, but also out of a non-cissexual inclinations (I am deliberately not stating nonbinary or trans masculine identities for them as I cannot be sure, but I am almost certain they were not cis).

Reasons I believe this extend beyond the adoption of a male name for a pen name, which would have been more or less necessary at the time, but also adopted masculine pronouns outside of authorial context. Contemporaries referred to them with both feminine and masculine pronouns and adjectives. Upon writing their own memoir they would use of masculine themself in adulthood and purely feminine descriptors for their childhood (along with their birthname) and wrote extensively on gender ambiguity in the contemporary lens.

And it turns out, Liszt was dating a similar woman at the time! Now I am sat here thinking about the queerness of 1800s Europe. (I could talk about Tchaikovsky, but I won't due to controversy that can arise with a mishandled analysis of his character, past, and relationships.)

@Requacy

EUNUCH POST!!! YAAAY!

I think it's so tragic that there is no historical drive to study eunuchs:( I feel like there's such a good amount of historical enquiry one could derive from studying eunuchs, their ranks in hierarchies and histories. I'm glad they were able to adopt:') It's super touching.

@bbgummi

EUNUCH POST!!

Yeah, it's really saddening, since the majority of historical scholarship boils down to 1. ignoring them or 2. blaming them for everything. Which is absolutely bizarre considering how integrated they were into Byzantine politics and, over time, religion and stuff! I hope there will be more focus on them soon. It made me happy as well :}

This is a thing I only learned recently, and damn, this sure is something. Love a good old unsolved mystery. The following is just a quick summary, you can easily fall into rabbit hole about it if you choose to. So, pretty much everyone knows the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. It's a fairy tale about a ratcatcher luring away rats with his pipe to drown in a river, and eventually, after not getting payed by the mayor, children too. Or is it? The most commonly known variant of the story was from a story collection by the brothers Grimm. But it actually wasn't part of their fairy tale collection, it was part of a collection of sagas and folklore. Also, all of their fairy tales end with a moral. This one just ends with kids disappearing and maybe drowning. Very much not a Grimms' fairy tale ending. No, what this story really is seems to be a historic event turned into myth. The earliest known mention of it was a church window from ca. 1300, which has been restored in modern times. [img]https://www.marktkirche-hameln.de/_images/5439-sagenhaft.jpg[/img] Curch windows have not only used to chronicle myths and legends, but also important historical events for the town they're in. This is also mirrored by the official town records, which mention a tragic event happening. Also, notice how, in this wondow, we got the piper and the children here, but nowhere a rat a sight. Such an important part of the story would have to be somewhere, right? Well, the earliest known mention of rats in this story is from 1559. Quite a leap in time. Since then, a lot of the story has been told by inscriptions into the walls of houses. Famous among them is the Rattenfängerhaus, "rat catcher house". So anyway, something happened to this town. Lots of children disappeared at once. But what exactly? That much is a mystery. Theories include the children being lured away by pagan cults. Or they were sold off into the Transsylvanian army, which was fighting off Mongolian invasions at the time. But it could also be that the piper wasn't a literal person. Many the children died. Either by disease, natural disaster, or even a mass psychogenic illness like the dancing manias that were surprisingly common at the time. Because in that historic time period, many depictions of Death showed him as a piper. But nothing concrete can be gleaned from anything we got. It's a mystery that will probably continue to remain one. It's all very odd. I for one have gained a new appreciation of the story.