Cenobites

Deir es-Salib, a monastery hermitage cave of the Qadisha Valley
with a notice one its Wall paintings.

The study of Deir es-Salib, a major site of the Qadisha valley, allows us to set the outlines of occupation modes of a region of Mount Lebanon by cultual sites. The structural analysis made it possible to understand the spatial organization and the components of the monastery and the evolution of the church construction. The observation of various techniques and materials used in the ancient building helped define the intervention methods. Thus, the restoration of the north wall of the church was conducted with mud bricks manufactured in the same way. After securing sealing of the wall by layers of clay plaster and hydraulic lime, the foundations and the extrados of the two apses were strengthened. This study set point on stylistic analysis of the Wall Paintings of Deir es-Salib allowing to identify a summary of influences identified, dating of the wall paintings and define the different states of development of the site.

Between 1724 and 1760, in the frontier area of the Habsburg empire waves of a hitherto unknown epidemic disease emerged: vampirism. In remote villages of southeastern Europe, cases of unusual deaths were reported. Corpses did not decay and, according to the villagers, corporeal ghosts were haunting their relatives and depriving them of their vital force. Death occurred by no later than three to four days. The colonial administration, alarmed by the threat of an epidemic illness, dispatched military officers and physicians to examine the occurrences. Soon several reports and newspaper articles circulated and made the untimely resurrection of the dead known to the perplexed public, Europe-wide. ‘‘Vampyrus Serviensis’’, the Serbian vampire, became an intensively discussed phenomenon within academe, and thereby gained factual standing. My paper depicts the geopolitical context of the vampire’s origin within the Habsburg states. Secondly, it outlines the epistemological difficulties faced by observing physicians in the field. Thirdly, it delineates the scholarly debate on the apparent oxymoron of the living dead in the era of enlightened reason. Fourthly, the early history of vampirism shows that ghosts and encounters with the undead are not superstitious relics of a pre-modern past, or the Enlightenment’s other, but intimate companions of Western modernity.

We still have a lot to learn about the permanent power of words as compared to the transient power of images. That is probably why some censors want to forbid some works of literature, whereas no one has ever suggested the blinding of a whole society in order to prevent them from seeing shocking images. That’s why any censorship on TV is nothing and useless, because it will not prevent anyone from telling, in secret if necessary, the dirty stories they have to tell to liberate themselves from their fears and frights.

If an old jewish friend of mine was shocked beyond belief by the image of her own mother walking into Auschwitz broadcast by French television for the fiftieth anniversary of the Shoah, it’s because it gave a pictural form to something she had always known, in words : her mother had died in Auschwitz. But millions of people were not shocked at all because those images were nothing but images. You zap, you turn off the TV or you wait for the end, and the repulsion will be finished.

That’s what I wanted to say about Clive Barker.