CREATE C OMPELLING SPECTACLES JUDGMENT Striking imagery and grand symholie gestures create the aura oJ power-everyone responds to them. Sta...
CREATE C OMPELLING SPECTACLES JUDGMENT Striking imagery and grand symholie gestures create the aura oJ power-everyone responds to them. Stage spectaeies Jor those around you, then, Juli oJ arresting visuals and radiant symbols that heighten your presenee. Dazzled by appearanees, no one will notiee what you are really doing. 309 ,\\TO,\ \\1) ( ,I ,i':( }J'\ rH,\ She re lied above all upon her physical presence and the spell and enchantment which it could create, , , , She came sailing up the river Cydnus in a barge with a poop of gold, its purpie sails billowing in the wind, while her rowers caressed the water with oars of silver which dipped in time tu the music of the f lute,
accompanied by pipes ami lutes, Cleopatra herself rec!ined beneath a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed in the character ofAphrodite, as we see her in paintings, while on either side to complete the picture stood boys costumed as Cupids who woled her with their fam: Instead of a crew the barge was lined with the most beautiful of her waiting-women attired as Nereids and Graces, some at the rudders, others at the tackle of the sails, lind all the while an indescribably rieh perfume, exhaled from innumerable censers, was wafted from the vessel to the riverbanks,
Great multitudes accompanied this royal progress, some of them following the queen on both sides of the river from its very mouth, while others hurried down from the city of Tarsus to gaze at the sigM Gradually the crowds drified away from the marketplace, 310 LAW 37 OBSERVANCE OF THE LAW I In the early 1780s, word spread through Berlin of the strange and spectacular medical practice of a Dr. Weisleder. He performed his miracles in an enormous converted beer hall, outside which Berliners began to notice ever longer lines of people-the blind, the lame, anyone with an illness incurable by normal medicine. When it leaked out that the doctor worked by exposing the patient to the rays of the mo on, he soon became dubbed The Moon Doctor of Berlin.
Sometime in 1783, it was reported that Dr. Weisleder had cured a wellto-do woman of a terrible ailment. He suddenly became a celebrity. Previously only the poorest Berliners had been seen waiting outside the beer hall in their rags; now magnificent carriages were parked outside, and gentlemen in frock coats, and ladies with enormous coiffures, lined the street as sunset drew near. Even folk with the mildest of ailments came, out of sheer curiosity.
As they waited in line, the poorer clients would explain to the gentlemen and ladies that the doctor only practiced when the moon was in its increscent phase. Many would add that they themselves had already been exposed to the healing powers he called forth from the rays of the moon. Even those who feIt cured kept coming back, drawn by this powerful experience. Inside the beer hall, a strange and stirring spectacle greeted the visitor: Packed into the entrance hall was a crowd of all classes and ethnic backgrounds, a veritable Tower of Babel. Through tall windows on the northern side of the hall, silvery moonlight poured in at odd angles. The doctor and his wife, who, it seemed, was also able to effect the cure, practiced on the second floor, which was reached by a stairway, at the end of the hall. As the line edged closer to the stairs, the sick would hear shouts and cries from above,
and word would spread of, perhaps, a blind gentleman suddenly able to see. Once upstairs, the line would fork in two directions, toward a northem room for the doctor, a southem one for his wife, who worked only on the ladies. Finally, after hours of anticipation and waiting in line, the gentlemen patients would be led before the amazing doctor hirnself, an elderly man with a few stalks of wild gray hair and an air of nervous energy. He would take the patient (let us say a young boy, brought in by his father), uncover the afflicted body part, and lift the boy up to the window, which faced the light of the moon. He would rub the site of the injury or illness, mumble something unintelligible, look knowingly at the mo on, and then, after collecting his fee, send the boy and his father on their way. Meanwhile, in the south-facing room, his wife would be doing the same with the ladies-which was odd, really, since the moon cannot appear in two places at once; it cannot have been visible, in other words,
from both windows. Apparently the mere thought, idea, and symbol of the moon were enough, for the ladies did not complain, and would later remark confidently that the wife of the Moon Doctor had the same healing powers as he. Interpretation Dr. Weisleder may have known nothing about medicine, but he understood human nature. Re recognized that people do not always want words, or rational explanations, or demonstrations of the powers of science; they want an immediate appeal to their emotions. Give them that and they will do the rest-such as imagine they can be healed by the light reflected from a rock a quarter million miles away. Dr. Weisleder had no need of pills, or oflengthy lectures on the moon's power, or of any silly gadgetry to amplify its rays. Re understood that the simpler the spectacle the better-just the moonlight pouring in from the side, the stairway leading to the heavens, and the rays of the mo on, whether directly visible or not. Any added effects might have made it seem that the moon was not strong enough on its own. And the moon was strong enough-it was a magnet far fantasies, as it has been throughout history. Simply by associating hirnself with the image of the moon, the doctor gained power. Remember: Your search for power depends on shortcuts. You must always circumvent people's suspicions, their perverse desire to resist your will. Images are an extremely effective shortcut: Bypassing the head, the seat of doubt and resistance, they aim straight for the heart. Overwhelming the eyes, they create powernd associations, bringing people together and stirring their emotions. With the white light of the moon in their eyes, your targets are blinded to the deceptions you practice. OBSERVANCE OF TRE LAW 11 In 1536 the future king Renri 11 of France took his first mistress, Diane de Poitiers. Diane was thirty-seven at the time, and was the widow of the grand seneschal of Normandy. Renri, meanwhile, was a sprightly lad of seventeen, who was just beginning to sow his wild oats. At first their union seemed merely platonic, with Renri showing an intensely spiritual devotion to Diane. But it so on became clear that he loved her in every way, preferring her bed to that of his young wife, Catherine de' Medicis. In 1547 King Francis died and Renri ascended to the throne. This new situation posed perils for Diane de Poitiers. She had just tumed forty-eight, and despite her notorious cold baths and rumored youth potions,
she was beginning to show her age; now that Renri was king, perhaps he would return to the queen's bed, and do as other kings had done--choose mistresses from the bevy of beauties who made the French court the envy of Europe. Re was, after all, only twenty-eight, and cut a dashing figure. But Diane did not give up so easily. She would continue to enthrall her lover, as she had enthralled hirn for the past eleven years. Diane's secret weapons were symbols and images, to which she had always paid great attention. Early on in her relationship with Renri, she had created a motif by intertwining her initials with his, to symbolize their union. The idea worked like a charm: Renri put this insignia everywhere- on his royal robes, on monuments, on churches, on the facade of the where Antony awaited the queen enthroned on his tribunal, unti! at last he was left sitting quite alone. And the word spread on every side that Aphrodite had come to revel with Dionysus for the happiness of Asia. Antony then sent a message inviting Cleopatra to dine with him. But she thought it more appropriate that he should come to her, and so, as he wished to show his courtesy and goodwill, he accepted and went. He found the preparations made to receive him magnificent bey(md words, but what astonished him most of all was the extraordinary number of lights. 50 many of these, it is said, were let down from the roof and displayed on all sides at once, and they were arranged and grouped in such ingenious patterns in relation to each other, some in squares and some in eire/es, that they created as brilliant a spectae/e as can ever have been devised to delight the eye. LlFE OF ANTONY. PLlJTARCH, C. A.D. 46-120 In the Middle Ages the symbolist attitude was much more in evidence . . . . 5ymbolism appears as a sort of short cut of thought. Instead of hJOking for the relation LAW 37 311 between two things by following the hidden detours of their causal connexions, thought makes a leap and disco vers their relation not in the connexion of cause and effects, but in a connexion of signijication ....
Symbolist thought permits an injinity of relations between things. Each thing may denote a number of distinct ideas by its different special qualities, and a quality may have several symbolic meanings. The highest conceptions have symbols by the thousand. Nothing is tao humble to represent and glory the sublime. The walnut signijies Christ: the sweet kernel is His divine nature, the green and pulpy outer peel is His humanity, the wooden shell between is the cross. Thus all things raise his thoughts to the eternal. ... Every precious stone, besides its natural splendour sparkies with the brilliance of its symbolic values. The assimilation of roses and virginity is much more than a poetic camparison, for it reveals their common essen ce. As each nation arises in the mind the logic ofsymbolism creates an harmony ofideas. THE WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES, JOHAN HUIZINGA, 1 928 312 LAW 37 Louvre, then the royal palace in PariS. Diane's favorite colors were black and white, which she wore exclusively, and wherever it was possible the insignia appeared in these colors. Everyone recognized the symbol and its meaning. Soon after Renri took the throne, however, Diane went still further: She decided to identify herself with the Roman goddess Diana, her namesake.
Diana was the goddess of the hunt, the traditional royal pastime and the particular passion of Renri. Equally important, in Renaissance art she symbolized chastity and purity. For a woman like Diane to identify herself with this goddess would instantly call up those images in the court, giving her an air of respectability. Symbolizing her "chaste" relationship with Renri, it would also set her apart from the adulterous liaisons of royal mistresses past. To effect this association, Diane began by completely transforming her castle at Anet. She razed the building's structure and in its place erected a magnificent Doric-columned edifice modeled after a Roman temple. It was made in white Normandy stone flecked with black silex, reproducing Diane's trademark colors of black and white. The insignia of her and Renri's initials appeared on the columns, the doors, the windows, the carpet. Meanwhile, symbols of Diana-crescent moons, stags, and houndsadorned the gates and facade.
Inside, enormous tapestries depicting episodes in the life of the goddess lay on the floors and hung on the walls. In the garden stood the famous Goujon sculpture Diane Chasseresse, which is now in the Louvre, and which had an uncanny resemblance to Diane de Poitiers. Paintings and other depictions of Diana appeared in every corner of the castle. Anet overwhelmed Renri, who soon was trumpeting the image of Diane de Poitiers as a Roman goddess. In 1548, when the couple appeared together in Lyons for a royal celebration, the townspeople welcomed them with a tableau vivant depicting a scene with Diana the huntress. France's greatest poet of the period, Pierre de Ronsard, began to write verses in honor of Diana-indeed a kind of cult of Diana sprang up, all inspired by the king's mistress. It seemed to Renri that Diane had given herself a kind of divine aura, and as if he were destined to worship her for the rest of his life. And until his death, in 1559, he did remain faithful to her-making her a duchess, giving her untold wealth, and displaying an almost religious devotion to his first and only mistress.
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