Rose: An Interpretation of a Universal Language.Review (Géczi János Rózsa-monográfiái)

8/3/2019 Rose: An Interpretation of a Universal Language.Review (Gczi Jnos Rzsa-monogrfii)

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Rose: an interpretation of a universal language

Review

A rzsa kultrtrtnete. Az antik Mediterrneum. (Cultural History of the Rose. The Antique

Mediterranean) By Jnos Gczi, Gondolat, Budapest, 2006, 340 pages

ISBN 963 961 081

A rzsa kultrtrtnete. Keresztny kzpkor. (Cultural History of the Rose. The Christian

Middle Ages) By Jnos Gczi, Gondolat, Budapest, 2007, 286 pages

ISBN 978 963 961 099 6

A rzsa kultrtrtnete. Renesznsz. (Cultural History of the Rose. Rennaisance) By Jnos

Gczi, Gondolat, Budapest, 2008, 350 pages

ISBN 978 963 693 066 0Lajos Somogyvri

Introduction

Theres an old idea in the western civilization about a language a perfect and

universal one, in other words: about the Adamic language. It contains a lot of symbols and

stories one of them is the history of the image of the Rose. Jnos Gczis monographies

review this topic from the Antique Mediterranean through the Christian Middle Ages to the

Rennaisance publishing so far. This paper try to give approaches to the readers: how can we

(or how should we) read the language of the Rose?

Direct and indirect assumptions help us to orientate our investigation I think the aims

and scopes of the sciences and the opportunities of history-narration points to the books

theoretical background. The stories of history are construated by us, since Hayden White its

an obvious sentence. The author realized the fact that his narrative is one of the possiblevariations to describe our cultural grounds, and its supposed not to explain, but even more to

understand the past decades. So, which questions lead Gczis researching? His examination

starts to collect a plants (the Rose, of course) occurences, locuses in different texts, then to

explicate its meanings and functions in human interactions. Its a botanical and symbolical

journey through the epochs of the history of culture, meanwhile we can observe the

disassociation of sciences and arts, and the organization the previous ones. One of the most

interesting conclusion when we read the monographies together to see how started the

desacralisation and demagification of the western european world by the time of Rennaisance.

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Gczi creates connections amongst words, texts and images, develops in this way the

diversty of cultural patterns. This multidisciplinary method inherents advantages and

disadvantages too. One gain is to see common cultural phenomenas in different lights, to

explore how the european semantics and mentality constituted by such elements, as the Rose.

Differing fields of knowledge conjugate into each other the exact, descriptive scientific

research, like Botany and the History of Art, grounded by interpretation and generation of

meanings (some may say: semiosis). At first sight there is a discrepancy between sciences and

arts, but this contradiction made only by the Modernity. Before that perhaps by the time of

the Enlightenment these two spheres frame together the knowledge about the world and

within the world: the human. It means that we should see together things like everyday

practical activities and theory, visuality and verbality, the holy and the profane.

In the age of professionalization and specialisation this attitude easily can be blamed

by dilettantism. The question emerges: Which rules and formulas give the limits to the

interpretation and rendering meanings? We can produce infinite narratives from the same

corpus who can judge the validity of the legitimations and justifications of these stories?

Plenty of resources, allusions and references dissolve our possible prosecutions about

narrativism, but the author feel the problem too Gczi suggests to read the different

discourses and amalgamate our own narrative. Its a difficult question if theres a real problem

or we should only accept the limits of these cognitive constructions and mental

representations?

Iconology and iconography

The title of the books (Cultural History of the Rose) refers to the hypothesis, that

ideas, imaginations and symbols of our culture are objectivated in texts and images, and they

have temporaly constant and changing forms. We can research these mental representations,

cultural patterns, let them call semantics, by variable new methods of history and

historiography, like oral history, microhistory, or iconography and iconology. Gczis

monographies try to use mainly iconography and iconology in his researches.

The Rose is a universal and complex symbol of human culture and society, implicated

its botanical, historical, literary etc. aspects. The process to analyze images consists of several

mechanisms or steps. It begins by recognizing if the image has anthropological affinities. In

other words: subject of iconographical and iconological research can only be human bodies

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and their surroundings that restricts the possible corpus of the sources. Researchers always

have to attend to dissociate elements of the image. Some ones refer to the specific human

figure, and other ones point to the maker of image, and to the view of world, which dominates

the given epoch of history. Further scopes to study: spaces, interactions, characters and

attitudes, symbols etc. on the picture. Gczi researches numerous fields of knowledge:

literature, arts, botany, medicine, history of sciences - the images of the Rose unite these

elements. It seems that there are two conceptions about the Rose in the cultural history: the

holy Rose, and the natural Rose. These theories lived side by side in the Antiquity, the first

one (the holy) dominated the Middle Ages, the second one (the profane) started to dominate

in the Rennaisance. Its a rude separation but it has the explanation power to simplify the

complexity of the human culture.

The holy Rose

Every periods of time have different methods to collect and share informations about

the world and the human generating and producing knowledge before Modernity was very

divergent from nowadays. According to the sacred worldview the created beings are

evidences to an eternal cosmic order made by God(s): so people could only discoveragain the

knowledge which compose the essence of the things. However latter decades organises this

order in the chaotic world from an outside point of view: people acted new knowledge, rival

interpretations about human world.

If we want to understand how an everyday person in the Medieval (by way of

example) looked at the image of the Rose we should reconsider our ideas about the picture

and the correspondence amidst text and image. Our european culture has two main principles:

the jewish-christian tradition assign definitive importance to the Book which contains the

revelation of God, which idea should contrast to the connection of Microcosm with

Macrocosm and the Metaphysics of Aristotle in the Greek thought. I think these two

mentalities are analogous to each other in some ways. There is a harmony and order behind

the world of senses and mortality - every image and text evoke this divine world, within the

primary meanings of beings.

Image of the Rose incorporate various senses sight, taste, smell and touch. When we

face a picture about a rose, it should be not only a visual experience people of old times saw

together these fields of senses. Another distinction: we simplify pictures too much when we

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appreciate them only as illustrations or artworks. The image is part of a narrative, causality

of causes and effects and every reception should consider this. The ideal reader of the picture

reproduce these meanings, find out the attributes of Holy Mary, Jesus Christ, the martyrs or

the inside, invisible and substantive world, which correlates the surface. The image proves the

ubiquity of God, the cosmic order, but in the decade of Rennaisance a definitive alteration

occured.

The natural Rose

The Rose as a symbol and a concrete plant domesticated and came into the

civilisation in the Antique Mediterranean use it in the medicine and hygiene, in ritual andsacral occasions or as an edible plant. This practical usage partially disappeared in the

Christian Middle Ages, the decades thinking ruled by the symbolic sphere. After that, the

sacralic approach revaluated and transformated in the Rennaisance.

The sign of the Rose began to refer not only to the spiritual beauty, but to secular

pleasures, like a beauty of a human body, love, or a decorative garden. The procedure of the

desacralisation attached with the images individualisation and the standardisation,

specialisation, formalisation of the sciences, for example the botany. New kind of sources

emerges here: medicinal books (Herbariums), descriptions of gardens, scientific writings,

catalogues etc some of these existed in the Antique, just renewed them in the Rennaisance.

Gczis researching always adapt to the circumstances and the mentality of the given epoch,

thats the key to the changing topics (symbol story, cultural history, botany, aesthetics,

medicine, agronomy, sociology Im not sure if every of the practised methods I recite here)

of the monographies.

An important notice about the changing times: represantations of the Rose began to

diverge from the traditional (symbolical and ethical) approach. Two different manners of

speech formated about the Rose: the allegoric-symbolic one and the other is the scientific-

illustrative. Its an another interesting development how turned the idea of hortus conclusus

into a decorative park gardeners of the Rennaisance deprived the Rose from its primary,

emblematic function and meaning. The Rose was used (again) in the pharmacology, humoral

pathology and medicine as in the Antiquity. Story of the Rose hitherto finished in the third

monography with the Rose-symbols of the Carpathian Basin.

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Summary

I think that idea of the language can help us to understand more deeply the main

objectives of the monographies. A language has got a system which consists of different, but

qualified signs, related to each other. Each sign has got meanings in the context of actualrealizations of the language. According to the structuralism (and not just structuralism) binary

oppositions are fundamental organizers of human philosophy and thought including

language and culture. Topics of the books and adopted methods present the recognition that

seemingly meaningless elements of the cultural space still have got denotations if we see them

like parts of more wide structures.

To read the languages of our culture, and understand our cultural constructions we

have to make real our knowledge, and see all phenomenas of human existence in its historical

temporality. Using iconography and iconology (and sociology, history of arts, botany etc.) as

auxiliary sciences has got a lot of implications: research the images of arts, religion, and

culture; demise of the values, conventions of the individual and the civilization; and first of

all: the unique images in the history of culture. The Rose lived and lives only in its given

epoch, with representative methods of transmission the knowledge the decade and the

methods determined each other.

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Rose: An Interpretation of a Universal Language.Review (Géczi János Rózsa-monográfiái)