Jantar Mantar

After being in Delhi for what’s hardly a short length of time, I finally went to the Jantar Mantar. It’s full of people during the day. And not one of them knows how exactly it works.

Although the Jantar Mantar was built only a few centuries ago, no records survive from the period when it was built which tell contemporary scientists how to use it. The only documents which are in existence are records of observations which are not especially useful in terms of understanding how the observations were conducted. What’s surprising is that in addition to none of the original blueprints being available, the records of subsequent restorations are not easily available either. This doesn’t mean that just the records of 19th century restorations are unavailable but also that records of just how the structure was reinforced with concrete sometime in the 1980s are unavailable.

What this effectively presumably means is that astrophysicists have no easy way of knowing what was a part of the original structure and what is a later addition (or removal).

The structures as they exist themselves are full of peculiarities and even if words like ‘declination’, ‘arc minute’ and ‘azimuth’ mean absolutely nothing to one, some of the peculiarities are visible to the naked eye. And if one doesn’t know what they mean, well, the experts aren’t sure themselves. They’ve made some comparisons with the Jaipur observatory and done some research themselves and, from what they have been able to figure out, it turns out that observations made using the Jantar Mantar are extremely accurate.

And that’s what the Jantar Mantar essentially is. For some reason though, every night, instead of being kept dark as it should be, the instruments are all lit up making the observatory unusable. To be fair though, if someone – meaning, presumably, someone with good credentials – does want to use the Jantar Mantar to observe the skies, the lights are switched off. Although, of course, there’s precious little that can be done about the light pollution in the area situated as it is in the heart of central Delhi’s commercial area.

For the lay person though, even if the thrill of actually using the instruments completely eludes one, just being there late at night is an experience in itself. The Jantar Mantar is surrounded by noisy streets and overlooked by big city buildings all lit up. The compound itself though is quiet and very peaceful. The symmetry and sheer beauty of the instruments is overwhelming. Sitting down on the lawns in the compound, it’s entirely possible to forget that one is in Delhi at all.

The Passions of the Mind

My latest addiction is Irving Stone. I’ve always enjoyed his work but somehow, rereading it has brought me more pleasure than any other author has in a long time. The last book I read was ‘Depths of Glory’ about Camille Pissarro. I think I particularly enjoyed it because I love Impressionism though.

At the moment, I’m reading ‘The Passions of the Mind’ about Sigmund Freud. And I’m bored almost out of my mind. The book seems to be similar to the last one except that instead of descriptions of numerous paintings, it’s filled with descriptions of endless neuroses.

I don’t claim to have ever understood Freud. I don’t think that I particularly want to understand him either. Somehow, the idea that every neurosis has its roots in human sexuality is a theory that I find very difficult to swallow.

What astonished me though is how badly Freud’s books did. Of the six hundred copies of ‘The Interpretation of Dreams’ which were initially printed, very few were actually sold, for example. When I read about his publisher complaining about only a hundred and twenty-three copies being sold despite the fact that books on the subject were popular, I could help but wonder how it was that such a large amount of his work actually survived.

Another thing which surprised me was the anti-Semitism in Austria. Earlier, I had only read about it in the most academic of terms and somehow, its portrayal in the book, fiction though it is, made it seem much more real. And for some reason, I couldn’t help but wonder how, or even if, all of Freud’s work survived WW II and what happened to his family.

Somehow, every time I think of anyone who belonged to the nineteenth century, it’s always in terms of their belonging to history books. Reading biographies has, however, made me realise in a way I never did before that these were not people who belonged to some long forgotten era. They are people who often lived into the twentieth century, whose children and grandchildren were almost certainly affected by the Holocaust.
Speaking of persons relegated to the pages of history texts, the book also contained a poignant description of the Hapsburgs: of the Emperor Franz Josef plodding on while the Empress, Elizabeth of Bavaria, who having developed a distaste for Vienna, toured Europe and was later assassinated, of the Crown Prince Rudolf who was forced into a marriage with Stephanie of Belgium and later had his attempt at obtaining an annulment thwarted by his father, of the untried Archduke Ferdinand who was to become Emperor after the Crown Prince died in a double suicide with the seventeen-year-old Baroness Marie Vetsera at Mayerling. Her body ‘was removed and buried without ceremony in the monastery of Heiligenkreuz’, his was placed in the Crown Prince’s apartment in Vienna till his coffin was placed in the crypt of the Capuchin Church.

Coming back to Irving Stone, the dedication on the book says that he’s written twenty-five books. I’d like to begin collecting them.

Chaucer

Geoffrey Chaucer – widely credited as being the father of English Literature – is believed to have been born around 1343. the image his poetry gives us of him is that of a dreamer but even a cursory glance at his life reveals that he was anything but an idealistic dreamer with his head in the clouds: history reveals that Chaucer led a busy official life as a bureaucrat, a courtier, a diplomat and for a time as the Comptroller of Customs.

The name Chaucer is a French form of the Latin ‘Calcearius’ which means a shoemaker. Both Chaucer’s father John and his grandfather Robert appear to have been wealthy merchants though. Chaucer’s birth was earlier said to have been in 1328 but legal proceedings show that his father was about twelve years old in 1324 and that he was till unmarried in 1328 which makes it highly improbable that Chaucer was, in fact, born in 1328. What is undisputed is that Chaucer was born in London.

Chaucer’s Official Life:
The information that has come down to us about Chaucer’s life is primarily from documents of an official character. As a result, there are virtually no known facts about his early life and education. He first appears in the household accounts of Elisabeth, Countess of Ulster whom he served as a page. The accounts show that she paid for small items of clothing for him in April, May and December of 1357.

In 1359, Chaucer travelled to France with Lionel of Antwerp, Elisabeth’s husband, during the early stages of the Hundred Years’ War when Edward III invaded the country. He had the misfortune of being taken prisoner while he was in France and was ransomed with the help of a ₤ 16 contribution from the king in March 1360. Soon after, he joined the Royal Service.

Chaucer married one of the ladies-in-waiting to Phillipa of Hainault, Edward III’s queen, around 1366. Her name was Phillipa (de) Roet and in 1367, the king granted him a pension of twenty marks. His wife, Phillipa had been granted a pension of ten marks the year before and Phillipa’s sister, Katherine Swynford married John of Gaunt after the death of her first husband, Hugh de Swynford in 1372. This marriage may account for the many favours and the patronage which John of Gaunt accorded to Chaucer although the two knew each other even before the marriage had taken place: in 1369, Chaucer wrote a poem after the death of John’s wife, Blanche called The Book of the Duchesse. It had 1334 lines in octosyllabic couplets.

It is obvious that Chaucer used his personal connections to advance his career. He travelled abroad several times with the earliest recorded official trip being in 1372 as one of three commissioners sent to Genoa, Italy to negotiate special maritime facilities for trade. He has also travelled to Italy in 1368 to attend the wedding of Lionel of Antwerp to Violante, the daughter of Galeazzo II, Visconti in Milan. It was during this trip that he probably met Jean Froissart and Petrarch.

In 1372, John of Gaunt granted Chaucer’s wife, Phillipa and annuity of ₤ 10 and in 1374, he granted Chaucer himself a like annuity. Further, the king granted Chaucer an annuity and he was appointed ‘Comptroller of Custom and Subsidy of Wools, Hides and Woodfells’ as well as of ‘Petty Customs of Wine in the Port of London’ in the same year.

Chaucer appears to have moved to Kent while he was still working as Comptroller. Around this time, he was appointed ‘Commissioner of the Peace’ and two large windfalls came his way in the form of the wardships of two heirs. He was sent abroad in the king’s sevice in 1376 and 1377 while he was living in Kent and is also believed to have begun writing Canterbury Tales around this time since his fictional characters pass through Kent.

Chaucer became a Member of Parliament for Kent in 1386. England had a new king by this time – Richard II – and Chaucer’s wife, Philippa had died. Richard II confirmed Chaucer’s pensions and offices. Nonetheless, he seems to have been in a financially precarious situation for a while; he inter alia asked for the grant of a butt of wine annually and in 1398 obtained letters of protection against his creditors.

Henry IV became king after Richard II. He not only granted a new pension of 40 marks to Chaucer but confirms all of Richard II’s grants. However, having no ready money himself, he appears not to have paid him – the poet himself hints at this in Compleynt to his Purs.

Chaucer died soon after this and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Although the exact date of his death is uncertain, it is presumed to have been on October 25, 1400. his remains were transferred to a more ornate tomb – in what is now called Poets’ Corner – in 1556.