Swedenborg Review 0.02 : Spring 2020

Description

The second issue of the Swedenborg Society’s new annual periodical featuring articles and reviews on contemporary events and books plus other cultural and literary activities.

A copy of the latest issue of the Swedenborg Review is free to all Members of the Swedenborg Society and Friends of Swedenborg House, along with other benefits, including a free gift of a notebook or sketchbook, and a 20% discount of titles in our bookshop (both at Swedenborg House and on the online bookstore). You can be a Friend of Swedenborg House for just £5 a year.

 

 

Contents

1. The Moveable Lusthus—Iain Sinclair. A preview extract from an upcoming book on Swedenborg’s famous summerhouse.
   
2. ‘The Devil’s Party’: Blake and Swedenborg in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials—Avery Curran. A reading of His Dark Materials involving its Blakean and Swedenborgian connections.
3. The Curious History of God and Coffee—Devin Zuber. The author contemplates the relation between mysticism, religion and coffee.
4. D T Suzuki and Swedenborg—Stephen McNeilly. A look at a rare historical document regarding the writer D T Suzuki and his work for the Swedenborg Society.
   
5. On translating Swedenborg—D T Suzuki. The address Suzuki gave at the 102nd Annual General Meeting of the Swedenborg Society in 1912.
   
6. Suzuki and Swedenborg: Tengai to Jigoku—Stephen McNeilly. An exploration of two handwritten manuscript notebooks by Suzuki containing his Japanese translation of Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell.
   
7. Peter Cartwright: works on paper and wood—Paul O’Kane. A review of the exhibition held at Swedenborg House in September 2019. With photographs by Jacob Cartwright.
   
8. Interview with Michelle Lindson about Swedenborg Gardens—Michelle Lindson. An interview with the Community Outreach Coordinator for Friends of Tower Hamlet Cemetery park and her work with and plans for Swedenborg Gardens.
   
9. Swedenborgs Lusthus—Anonymous Bosch with text by Willshaw Hughes. Anonymous Bosch’s pinhole camera photographs of Swedenborg’s summerhouse.
   
10. Dr Ebenezer Sibly and The Revd Manoah Sibly: Astrological Twins—Susan Mitchell Sommers. An adaptation from Professor Sommers’s book on the history of a remarkable family on the esoteric fringes of Georgian London.
    
11. Swedenborg’s London: Swedenborg Gardens—James Wilson. A look at how an historic area of Wapping has been connected to the Swedenborg family since as far back as 1710.
    
12. Cartography of the Brain—David Lister. The author examines the scientific and philosophical considerations behind his Summer 2019 seminar series.
    
13. The Civil Service of Memories and Dreams: The Afterlives of Kore-eda and Swedenborg—James Wilson. A new perspective on Hirokazu Kore-eda’s moving 1998 film After Life, illuminated by Swedenborg’s ideas.
    
14. Don Emanuel: Visionary Master—Michael Hampton. The author stumbles upon a striking Mexican comic book featuring Emanuel Swedenborg.
    
15. Let Us Record The Atoms As They Fall—Avery Curran. A report of Bridget Smith’s exhibition held at Swedenborg House in October 2019 at the conclusion of her Residency.
    
16. A Tribute to Patrick H Johnson 1931-2019—James Wilson. An obituary of the former President of the Swedenborg Society and editor of Things Heard and Seen, its long-running thrice yearly periodical.
    
17. Tube Maps c. 1910—Alex Murray. A look at part of the ‘accidental collection’ of the Swedenborg Society archive. With photograph by Maia Gaffney-Hyde.
    
18. Swedenborg and the Body: anatomy, alcohol & the soul—Avery Curran. A report on the symposium held in Swedenborg Hall in May 2019 featuring Vincent Roy-Di Piazza, John Lidwell-Durnin and David Dunér.
    
19. Swedenborg Doctoral Scholarship—An announcement of a new academic programme.
    
20. Our Late Familiars—Notice of a forthcoming event in collaboration with Goldmark for the launch of a new book by Iain Sinclair & Ian Wilkinson.
    
21. Internship Review—Alex Rowe. The Swedenborg Society’s latest intern looks back at their experience.
    
22. Residency Announcement—Avery Curran. A report on the Swedenborg Residency undertaken by writer Chloe Aridjis.
23. Bookshop—Some new titles available online and at Swedenborg House.

Author bios

ANONYMOUS BOSCH has worked extensively with the filmmaker Andrew Kötting and the writer Iain Sinclair, and is known for his work on Sea Fever (2012), By Our Selves (2015) and Aisling Sheòrais Mhicdhòmhnaill (George Macdonald’s Dream) (2015). His photographs also feature in Several Clouds Colliding, a book by Iain Sinclair and Brian Catling (2012).

JACOB CARTWRIGHT is an artist and filmmaker.

PETER CARTWRIGHT is one of the leading artists to emerge from the Royal College of Art, a contemporary of David Hockney and R B Kitaj, he has exhibited widely throughout the UK, and his work has been purchased by the Arts Council England and East Midlands Arts.

AVERY CURRAN is undertaking an MA in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She has experience in publishing and gallery curation. Her research interests lie in late nineteenth-century gender and cultural history, in particular the gendered aspect of spiritualist mediumship.

MAIA GAFFNEY-HYDE is the Publishing and Press Assistant for the Swedenborg Society.

MICHAEL HAMPTON is a writer and critical theorist based in London. Especially interested in the dynamic play of art and literature, his Unshelfmarked: Reconceiving the artists’ book was published by Uniformbooks in 2015. A new collection Talking Statues and Other Defacements will be launched by Ma Bibliothèque later in 2020..

WILLSHAW HUGHES is a freelance writer and photographer.

MICHELLE LINDSON has been the Community Outreach Coordinator at the Friends of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park since July 2018. Part of her role is leading the ‘Nature and Us’ Community Cohesion project, funded by Tower Hamlets council, which aims to get the community together through nature. Her background includes field research studying the spotted hyena and delivering conservation education in zoos.

DAVID LISTER is a retired surgeon and Chair of the Swedenborg Society and author of The Feeling of what Happens/Smile or Die (2012).

STEPHEN MCNEILLY is the Executive and Museum Director of the Swedenborg Society. He has curated numerous exhibitions at Swedenborg House and is series editor of the Swedenborg Archive Series and the Journal of the Swedenborg Society.

ALEX MURRAY is the librarian and archivist at the Swedenborg Society. His research interests have included spiritualism; James John Garth Wilkinson (1812-99); and Samuel Wilderspin (1791-1866). He is currently researching late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century social reform movements, with particular emphasis on Swedenborgian involvement.

PAUL O’KANE is an artist, writer and lecturer. He completed a Ph.D. in History at Goldsmiths, University of London in 2009. He now lectures in Critical Studies at Central St Martins and University of the Arts London. His art focuses on the mechanized image, and he is a founder member of the artists’ book publishing imprint eeodo, with whom he published Where Is That Light Now? (2014).

ALEX ROWE is a science fiction writer.

IAIN SINCLAIR is a writer and filmmaker based in East London. He has published extensively, particularly on the subject of psychogeography. His works include Lud Heat (1975), London Orbital (2002), Blake’s London: The Topographical Sublime (2012) and Swimming to Heaven: the Lost Rivers of London (2103).

SUSAN MITCHELL SOMMERS is a Professor of History at Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. She earned her Ph.D. at Washington University in St Louis. Dr Sommers’s most recent book, The Siblys of London: A Family on the Esoteric Fringes of Georgian England, was published in 2018 by Oxford University Press.

D T SUZUKI (1870-1966) was a Japanese academic, writer and translator. His work helped spread interest in Zen and Shin Buddhism across the world. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1963.

KESSLER VOGES is an artist, designer and photographer.

JAMES WILSON is the author of a novel Three Bridges (2014) and two collections of prose poems, All the Colours Fade and The Song Remains the Same (both 2012). He has also translated two books by the French writer Guy de Maupassant, To the Sun and The Foreign Soul & The Angelus (both 2008).

DEVIN ZUBER is Associate Professor of American Studies, Religion & Literature, Graduate Theological Union and author of A Language of Things (2019).