The Virtual Stoa

Luke 2:9: And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. [via]

Here, by Balakov. More over here [via ejh in comments below].

A very strange clip here combining the Stoa’s interest in Monday Marseillaise Blogging, and Lego…

Over here, at Tim Lambert’s.

Another opera in lego has been posted on YouTube. This time it’s Philip Glass’s La belle et la bête, written to accompany Jean Cocteau’s 1946 film.

Preview.

Act One.

Act Two.

Act Three.

Tosca also exists in a Lego version.

Act One, part one:

Act One, part two:

Act Two:

Act Three [a particularly fine firing squad]:

One of the best things about living in Oxford is that the Welsh National Opera pass through twice a year. Their productions are usually great fun, and Friday’s performance of Il Trovatore was no exception. For those who missed the show, however, here’s Verdi’s masterpiece abridged and performed in Lego:

Act One:

Act Two:

Act Three:

Act Four:

Acts 17:18: “Then certain philosophers of the Epicureans, and of the Stoicks, encountered him [St Paul]. And some said, What will this babbler say? other some, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods: because he preached unto them Jesus, and the resurrection.”

I’m going to guess that the Stoic philosopher is the one with the beard. (The Stoics liked their beards.)

Full story over here.

There’s a whole bunch of new Bible stories in Lego up at the Brick Testament. Of particular interest to Virtual Stoa readers will be “Accept Communism or Die!”, a rendering (in Lego) of Acts 4:32-5:11.

At least one Stoa-reader is interested in lottery voting; he should also consult this story.

Happy Christmas. Enjoy what’s left of the Winterval.

[Image from the Brick Testament, of course.]

Karl and Fred. More Communists over here [via].

Over here. [via]

And they found Mary and Joseph, and the baby was lying in the manger.

[via]

See also here.

Actually, I haven’t been dressed up like this since I did my finals, back in 1995. Although quite a bit of gown-wearing goes on among the academic staff here in Oxford, we hardly ever have to put on the all the contents of the academic dressing-up box; and on the rare occasions I’ve been officiating at university exams, somehow I’ve managed to discharge my duties without the aid of a mortar-board. Still, this is what I’d look like if (a) I were in full regalia and (b) were made out of Lego.

The facility for you to do the same is over here. [via]

(And if you’re interested in more pics of people in academic dress, Jo Salmon’s got the links. Apparently the university’s just matriculated thousands of new bloggers.)

UPDATE [4pm]: And the same Jo Salmon has produced a fantastic self-portrait of herself, in lego, too. It’s unmistakably her.

As he was being chased into exile in Switzerland following the condemnation of his book on education, Emile, Jean-Jacques Rousseau composed a short “prose poem” based on the Biblical story of the Levite of Ephraim in the Book of Judges. It’s one of his shorter and more obscure pieces of writing, obscure in both the sense of little known and also rather difficult to understand quite what he’s getting at in it. Still, modern scholarship — Thomas Kavanagh, Mira Morgenstern, etc. — is doing its best. He wrote in his Confessions that

In three days I composed the first three cantos of the little poem which I finished at Motiers, and I am certain of not having done anything in my life in which there is a more interesting mildness of manners, a greater brilliancy of colouring, more simple delineations, greater exactness of proportion, or more antique simplicity in general, notwithstanding the horror of the subject which in itself is abominable, so that besides every other merit I had still that of a difficulty conquered. If the Levite of Ephraim be not the best of my works, it will ever be that most esteemed…

I’m delighted to be able to report that this disturbing Biblical tale of violent rape and murder is now available to the contemporary reader in Lego, over at (where else), The Brick Testament. Read on, Rousseauists, read on…

Winterval Christmas Greetings from the Virtual Stoa; image taken from The excellent, excellent Brick Testament; sensible quotations over at SIAW and JAFA.