Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Category: book review

  • A reader lives a thousand lives

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    Seraphina Rabbite, the habitual reader, believes in the power of reading. It generates pleasure peculiar to the literary medium of communication, the magical realm of make-believe reality, the alchemy of imaginativeness and sensuousness, all in the artistry of the literary cunning folk called writers, casting spells on the readers to pass over to the minds of the creators and of the characters. She believes that writer and reader engage in a magical ritual of connectedness through vicarious experience in the moments of empathy, the epiphany of the Eureka moments when the third-dimensional wall between the writer and the reader tumbles down. That is why Sally thinks that all writers, professional and amateur, are in one way or another possessed of certain supernatural feats of spurring their restless spirits on writing.

    That said, Sally has scribed the effects of reading in a form of her self-professed credo as follows:

    1. Reading is both entertainment and stimulation of mind.
    2. It is in their appeal and in their power to bestow pleasure, self-satisfaction and the joy of mental growth to readers.
    3. It takes readers from the humdrum existence, the rut of life, to stimulate the minds to fresh endeavor, to give them a new viewpoint upon existential problems, to enable them to get a fresh hold upon themselves.
    4. It intends to show the progress of the human race within the historical times as depicted in books.
    5. It is an active force toward the sound mental equipment of reading people.
    6. It takes readers out of the rut of life in the town they live and makes them citizens of the world.
    7. Readers understand the minds of the writers by passing over to the inner world of the writers.

    Shakespeare said of reading thus: “This is true; there’s magic in the web of it.” If writing is akin to a literary witchcraft, reading is a voluntary intoxication of the witchery elixir in expectation of crossing over to the liminal zones, the in-between zones of our reality and imaginary world. The best summation on books and its effects comes from our contemporary Stephen King: “Books are a uniquely portable magic. You experience magic every time you read without knowing its influence on you. Go for it.

  • ‘Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling’ by Ross King – review

    Michelangelo and the Pope's CeilingMichelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    After Pope Julius II saw the Pieta installed for the tomb of a French cardinal, he wanted the same awe-inspiring adornment for his tomb. Hence, Michelangelo Buonarroti from Florence was summoned for the work. That’s how Michelangelo at age thirty-three reluctantly embarked on his Herculean task of frescoing the vault of the Sistine Chapel. This book by Ross King recounts such background stories of the making of the Sistine Chapel frescoes and descriptions of the personal traits of Michelangelo.

    Michelangelo’s work on the frescoes resulted from part Divine Providence of endowing the humanity with an awe-inspiring masterpiece of art to delight the senses of mankind throughout the ages, and part secular ambitions to mark the names of both the commissioner and the artist themselves. Pope Julius II also wanted to renovate the Sistine Chapel that had been used as a living quarter for the guards, a fortress against papal enemies, and a jail. As no one pours new wine into old wineskins as said in the bible, the pope’s plan to revert the chapel to its original place of worship, which made him drop his tomb project, was met by his idea of frescoing the vault in its entirety. Michelangelo, who was a breadwinner of his family, accepted the commission with good amount of salary and commenced four-year of labor of woes and dramas on the vault of the chapel.

    There are revealing truths that should be known concerning the process of frescoing the Sistine Chapel as follows: Contrary to popular belief that Michelangelo did the work while lying prone on his back, he worked with his upper body bent backward like a bow. Also, it wasn’t done by Michelangelo alone but by a team of his assistants chosen by Francesco Granacci, a close friend of Michelangelo, even though he was innately a solitary worker who had a strong distrust of others who worked with him.

    Michelangelo was said to be a man of  homely appearance without sociability in comparison with his contemporary and rival Raphael Santi whose beautiful look, even-tempered, and sweet character topped with artistic ingeniousness endeared him to the many. Also, Michelangelo’s direct altercation with Leonardo da Vinci as described in this book was amusing to discover. Both of the masters of the arts did not like each other publicly, but it was on the part of da Vinci who instigated such heated feud. He disregarded sculptors, including Michelangelo, as mechanics in the appearance of unkempt bakers.

    It is also interesting to pay special notes on the figures Michelangelo used for the frescoes, which shows his ingenuity of selecting unique subject matters distinguished from his contemporaries. To illustrate, he used 7 prophets from the Old Testament and 5 sibyls from pagan myth to decorate the Sistine vaults. He was fascinated with prophetic knowledge of the sibyls who had dwelt in sacred shrines and predicted the future in fits of inspired madness. This offered a riveting link between the sacred and the profane, the church and the esoteric pagan culture by reconciling pagan mythology with orthodox Christian teachings.

    Readers will find that the position of a painter/sculptor was not esteemed highly; he was more of a skilled laborer, a craftsman given exact orders how to produce his work by his commissioner or patron. In fact, he image of a solitary genius who would wield his brush and pallets to portray his world of imagination from the fathoms of his soul was a romantic fable. In Michelangelo’s time, an artist’s creativity was fettered by the demands of marketplace or his patron. Nevertheless, Michelangelo often disagreed to the pope’s own artistic direction and even had a temerity of broaching the shipping charges incurred in transporting the marbles from Carrara for the aborted tomb project at a dinner table with the pope .

    All in all, this book has its magical way of transporting readers to Italy in the early 16th century and invites readers to meet with Michelangelo as he was without sprucing up his personal character. Upon reading this book, I avert that Michelangelo is an artist bizarre fantastico whose magnum opuses on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel have both the beauty and the sublime that produce in the spectator a kind of astonished wonder so formidable and so fantastic transcendent of time and place.

  • ‘Fairies: The Myths, Legends, & Lore’ by Skye Alexander – review

    Fairies: The Myths, Legends, & Lore

    Fairies: The Myths, Legends, & Lore by Skye Alexander

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars


    They are the hidden children of Adam and Eve. They are the minions of Lucifer fallen from Heaven into this terrestrial world when the gate was being closed by the Archangels at the time of the great celestial rebellion. No wonder they are neither good nor evil, although their amorality is felt more akin to treachery and terror to our mortal sense and sensibility. The ancient Greeks called them nymphs, and we call them fairies, frolicking and romping, feasting and dancing deliriously in their own fanciful realm: the slice of seacoast between tides, the deepening foliage between field and forest, and the sloping land between plain and mountain – a parallel universe existent in in their liminal four-dimensional world. Skye Alexander’s Fairies: The Myths, Legends, and Lore tells us all of it with her wealth of knowledge and introspection of these mystical beings as though it were her literary enchantment.

    The ambiguous nature of fairies endows the mystical folk with wonder and terror, glamour and danger, all in the veil of mysterious invisibility that has protected them since the time immemorial. They can be friends or foes, depending upon their moods. In fact, fairies have a status which fuses the capricious powers of demoted deities with the erotic charge of modern celebrity in the kingdom of myth and folklore. So much so that they have consistently appeared in literature and movies, such as ‘The Fairy Queen’ by Edmund Spencer, ‘A midsummer night’s dream’ by William Shakespeare, ‘Rip Van Winkle’ by Washington Irving, and ‘Peter Pan’ by Walt Disney. Unlike educated Christianity of angels and demons, these mystical celebrities have lived among humans because they embody our certain human traits, which are the good and the bad, and wishes that we cherish secretly to live better life. Take the case of glamour spells that will make a plain-looking lady beautiful to impress the onlookers in a favorable light. Fairies are the embodiment of our what-ifs in a land of imagination where our strains of existential life can be forgotten, if not eradicated. This also relates to historian Keith Thomas’s analysis of myth and magic as a mental analgesic. That the concept itself can account for such misfortune explains any conspicuous discrepancy between merit and reward and thus helps to reconcile anyone who believes it to the environment in which he lives. That is, it helps a man to take decisions when other agencies fail him, not jeopardizing his self-esteem because it does not relate existential dilemma to his ascribed social ranks and conditions.

    Changelings, Sleeping Beauty, Pixies, Brownies, Elves, Dwarfs, Selkies, Leprechauns, and Tinker Bell come alive pages upon pages of this enchanted book in an expense of the author’s charmingly kind guide to Fairyland we all have once believed. Since writing is also a peculiar alchemy of literature, this book is a magical concoction of the author’s knowledge of fairies and her alluring invitation to the liminal netherworld that will make the read even more enjoyable and lovable. Believers or unbelievers, this book is a good primer for the world of folklore and myths that we feel losing or lost.




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  • Legally Haunted, Really.

    1 Laveta Pl., Nyack, NY 10960

    I enjoyed reading “10 Horrifying Haunts,” from November issue of “BBC History Revealed” on my Kindle, which inspired me to share with my fellow readers the story of a “legally” haunted house here in the U.S. Compared to the famed haunted castles, pubs, or inns with colorful histories in the U.K, it might be deemed rather commonplace, but it is the real McCoy in the supernatural phenomena devoid of hoaxes and mass media hysteria. It’s so spellbinding and real into the bargain that it’s worth the noting.

    It’s the house built circa 1890 that sits right on the Hudson River in Nyack, New York. It had been used as both a boarding house and a family residence before one woman by the name of Helen Ackley moved in with her family, who soon realized that the house was also inhibited by the restless poltergeists of the supposedly Revolutionary War era. The Ackley family and the spirits began their tacitly mutual ghostly cohabitation until late 1980s when a young Yuppie couple from the New York City bought the house, not being aware of the haunted history of the house because neither owner Helen Ackley nor her real estate broker revealed the haunting to buyer Jeffrey Stambovsky before and at the time of a sale of the house. The aftermath of purchasing the house was all over but the shouting; the new Stambovsky family could not cope with the daily disturbances of poltergeist activities and wanted to rescind the contract with the former owner, who failed to inform them of such historicity of the house. Hence, the matter was eventually brought to the Appellate Divisions of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, which rescinded the contract, ruling that a seller was duly to let a buyer aware of all the information about the house at sale resulting in a proverbial case law entitled “Stambovsky v. Ackley”, aka the “Ghostbuster Ruling”.

    Bizarre or preposterous even the situation might seem, it was certainly a paramount case of a haunted house that a court of law, the authority of Reason and Judgment, officially declared it to be. The house with a spooky and celebrated litigious history still stands still at the same place but with a series of new residents always giving way to the old spectral residents. The story of the famed haunted Nyack house sends the chill down my spine because it even persuaded a solemn court of law to accept the phantasmal existence in this otherwise lovely old house in the ordinary landscape of everyday life that could be in my town and your town. By the way, the house is currently on the market. The address is: 1 Laveta Pl, Nyack, NY 10960.

  • ‘Thirty Seals & The Seal of Seals’ by Giordano Bruno – review

    Thirty Seals & The Seal Of Seals (Giordano Bruno Collected Works Book 4)Thirty Seals & The Seal Of Seals by Giordano Bruno
    My rating: 3 of 5 stars

    The art of memory has been a popular subject for occultism and academicism throughout the centuries. The subject deals with our incredibly flexible human intelligence with its general multipurpose learning strategies that can work wonders if the doors of imagination are opened to the mystery of the knowledge without constraints of religiosity and fears of the unknown territories of human possibilities. Of the intellectual trailblazers of the craft of memory, none other than the figure of Giordano Bruno stood out blazingly even at the burning stake as an accused wizard. For it was akin to a witchcraft of perfect knowledge as expounded in his Thirty Seals & the Seal of Seals, the book banned by the Church in fear of losing the faithful to the Power of Knowledge.

    The book illustrates a set of “basic” rules that reads more like Euclid’s Elements or Pythagorean Theorem, which means it is not written for general readers. This is because the book was part of a job application for a teaching post at the Oxford in the Elizabethan England, demonstrating his admirable erudition, superb command of the English language as a foreigner, and naked flattery to the academics at the university. Bruno got a few lecturing opportunities at the Oxford, but his cerebral mind devoid of wit in addition to his short, unprepossessing appearance was regarded as far-fetched and unfavorable to the attainment of the sought-after position at the Oxford. In fact, this book does not provide the reader with special spells for obtaining perfect memory but gives the method of encoding letters or syllables of the name of the thing into a set of predetermined images. It is magic in the sense that if this method is perfected, it works wonders. It’s a psychological mind game, the magic of psychology per se.

    This magical book, this banned book will betray anyone who expects it to be something of magical Rosetta Stone for obtaining the secrets of perfect or better memorization. But that doesn’t mean the book is entirely abstruse to enjoy; the idea of the intellectual trinity comprised of Pallas Athena (The Senses), Vulcan (Imaginations), and Mars (Judgment/Reason), all of whom are overseen by Jove (the Soul) is quite intriguing and related to Socrates’s idea of reasoning. As a matter of fact, this book is not so much an esoteric book as deeply psychological literature that boasts Bruno’s indomitable intelligence and recalcitrant individualism that stigmatized him as a renegade. Maybe that’s the reason this illustrious intellect was burned at the stake as a dangerous pagan.

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  • the music begins.

    Merry hearts, pleasant faces, light walks,

    Birds tweeting, dogs frolicking, people chatting;

    The sun’s risen, and the day’s at the morning.

    The weekend’s on Friday, and the joy begins.