April/May Newsletter Welcome to the Swedenborg
Society's e-newsletter. Read on to find out about our latest news and
upcoming events at the beginning of spring. These include: a musical philosophy lecture by Guy Dammann on 6th May; a talk by the author Scarlett Thomas on 'Imagining Heaven and Hell'; a reminder about our short film festival on the same theme, now open for entries; and a recommendation to get the bicentenary
edition of Gary Lachman's Into the
Interior: Discovering Swedenborg, recently published and in the
bookshop now.
Enjoy reading! We hope to see you here soon.
Best
wishes,
Nora Foster,
Marketing Representative,
The
Swedenborg Society.
News since February
We
have had a very busy couple of months! Swedenborg
House: Fourteen Interventions lasted eight days and over one thousand people
came to see the art and associated evening events. Since then we had an
enjoyable evening with the popular philosopher, Robert Rowland Smith;
and later welcomed the American neuroscientist and short fiction writer
David Eagleman to speak in Swedenborg Hall - to an audience of over
100, eager to see the author on a rare appearance in the UK. On 8th of April we
transformed the hall for the premiere of the
Swedenborg documentary, Heaven, Hell and Other Places. Again, the hall was filled to capacity. We hope to have as much success with our film showings throughout September and October. And last week, Simon Armitage led an engaging, and often witty discussion of interpretation and Middle English poetry, as he read from his fresh translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Meanwhile, in the publishing office, John Elliott's fourth edition of the Latin Heaven and Hell has been printed; and we are putting the finishing touches to volume one of the Swedenborg Bibliography recently completed by Norman Ryder. Both will be launched at the International Swedenborg Publishers Conference in June.
Event
Guy Dammann on Music Morality and Mysticism
 Talk
6:30 pm Thursday 6th May
Swedenborg Hall
No admission fee
Guy Dammann is a
critic and an academic: lecturer in aesthetics at the Guildhall School
of Music and Drama and writer on music and philosophy for the Guardian,
Economist, the Spectator and the New Statesman newspapers. On 6th May he
will trace our complex relationship
with music, in the context of morality and mysticism.
Music is a fascinating
medium because it is at once corporeal and ethereal. A musical
instrument is certainly a material object, but the effect it produces
cannot be fully described in words nor explained by science: it is the ineffable. When we listen to music, its
abstract forms appeal to our subconscious desires, forgotten experiences and
deepest beliefs. Music is therefore meant to be ‘good’ for us in a cognitive sense
because it is
proven to move and inspire us in unexpected ways. However Guy Dammann will argue that music also
makes us more sociable - and thus more human. Rousseau wrote 'birds whistle, man alone sings.
One cannot hear a song or an instrumental piece without saying: another
sensitive being is present.' Music demands extensive imaginative engagement, as we are forced into a dialogue with the mysteries of ourselves and the deeper mysteries implicit in our relations with others. In this way, listening to music can be a mystical and a moral experience - as indeed it was for Swedenborg. (See below.) You can read Guy Dammann's blog and past articles on similar subjects here.
If you would like to attend please contact
nora@swedenborg.org.uk or phone (020) 7405 7986 to book your place.
Doors will open at 6:00 pm and the lecture will start at 6:30 pm. You may be aware that 6th May is election day; so why not reward yourself for voting with an interesting talk and a glass of wine?
Feature
Swedenborg and Music
Music was a central
element
in Swedenborg’s mystical
experiences and spiritual maxims. The son of a hymn writer, he believed music to
enrich
human experience on Earth; but more importantly he argued that music
appeals to our 'inner ear', potentially allowing its participants to transcend
the representational world to a spiritual reality. In this realm,
music is part of a fundamentally sensory environment. Music is woven
through Swedenborg's descriptions of the afterlife, eliding the
mystical with the material and the spiritual with the scientific. In this way, music
informs Swedenborg's
theory of correspondences. He describes how faith can
be heard as a sound; the Bible is, in fact, a song; and deep
significance can be heard
in love, which is a melody. The
abstract nature of music helped Swedenborg to articulate the sublime in
his spiritual
world:
in heaven truth and goodness are expressed as polyphony and symphony but
he describes such harmonies as ineffable. Gerard de Nérval (1808-1855), the French surrealist
writer and keen
reader of Swedenborg, would later write about the creation of the
universe in
musical
terms. Similarly, in his Swedenborgian novel Seraphita, Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) describes the sound of a creative
word.
For more on this, read 'Music, Metaphysics and Modernity' in Gallery of Mirrors: Reflections of Swedenborg's Thought by Anders Hallengren - available in the bookshop now.
News
International Swedenborg Publishers Conference
3rd - 4th June
Book your places now
The publishers conference aims to bring together organizations and individuals, worldwide, currently working in the field of Swedenborg publishing. Eminent institutions such as the Swedenborg Foundation will be present, as well as smaller publishers and independent writers. The conference is also open to the public ... Perhaps you have written about Swedenborg and would like to be published? Or perhaps you are simply curious! The conference will include talks about 'The Future of Swedenborg Publishing' and 'Swedenborg and Medicine' among other subjects. More information and a full timetable of events can be seen here. If you would like to attend please contact James Wilson.
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for reading.
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20 Bloomsbury Way, London, WC1A 2TH
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Upcoming Events
20106 May: Guy Dammann on 'Music,
Morality and Mysticism'19
May: Scarlett Thomas on
'Imagining Heaven and Hell'3-4 June: International Swedenborg Publishers Conference17 June: David Bindman on
'John Flaxman as a Religious Sculptor'19 June: Swedenborg
Society Celebrates New Church Day1 July: Roy Foster on 'Swedenborg
and the Irish Literary Imagination'Please contact Nora on (020)
7405 7986 to book your place at any event.
Bicentenary 2010 The Swedenborg Society is commemorating its bicentenary
year throughout 2010. We are pleased to present our next literary
speaker, Scarlett Thomas. Scarlett Thomas on Imagining Heaven and Hell
 Talk
19th May 2010 6:30 pm
Swedenborg Hall No Admission Fee
Scarlett Thomas is a celebrated writer of philosophical fiction. Like David Eagleman, who spoke here in March, Scarlett is signed to Canongate Books. She has already published seven books the most recent of which, Our Tragic Universe, will be launched in May. In the novel she imagines a heavenly afterlife created by humans which must, she argues, represent a hell. Whilst immensely readable, her work has been described as 'remorselessly intelligent'; Scarlett admits that she is very much someone who wants to work out the answers: 'I want to know what's outside the universe, what's at the end of time, and is there a God? But I think fiction is great for that - it's very close to philosophy.' The End of Mr Y was long listed for the Orange Prize for fiction in 2008; Douglas Coupland described the book as ' A masterpiece ... A brilliant, engaging story that makes you rethink the nature of existence and the true structure of the world.' On 19th May, Scarlett will examine what it means to imagine heaven and hell - and how this is, perhaps, the definitive task for any writer of fiction. More information can be found on our website here. Read more about Scarlett Thomas's work and her blog here.
Advanced booking is highly
recommended for this event. Simply contact nora@swedenborg.org.uk or phone (020) 7405 7986 if you would like to
attend.
News
Swedenborg Short Film Festival
 Submissions deadline: 31st July
Theme: Heaven and/or Hell
Festival: 29th-30th October
This new festival seeks to showcase the latest
emerging and established talent. Featuring films of fifteen minutes
or less in length, the works will be awarded in 6 categories:
Best Film, Best First Film, Best Animation, Best Editing, Best Sound
and Best Comedy. You therefore have a wide scope in which to present
your creative response to 'heaven and/or hell', the theme for this
year's festival. The entries will be judged by a distinguished panel,
before the winning works are shown over a period of two days, in our
grade II listed neoclassical hall in central London. All entries receive
a diploma. Please send submissions to Stephen McNeilly and do not
hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. You can find more
information here on our website. Remember that our current paperback edition of Heaven
and Hell is still only £1.00!
  Books
New Book in the
Bookshop:  Into the Interior:
Discovering Swedenborg
By Gary Lachman Swedenborg
Society 2010
£12.95 hardback Could this be the best introduction to Swedenborg for the general reader? We think so. Gary Lachman is a former member of Blondie who can now be described as a gifted writer and historian of the occult. This short and very readable book about Swedenborg manages to do the impossible: to capture the complexity and depth of Swedenborg's thought whilst communicating directly to the general reader. Lachman's is a thoroughly modern approach to Swedenborg studies. Into the Interior transcends the genre of biography to grasp at Swedenborg's place in the history of consciousness and Western esoteric practices. The Independent on Sunday enthused how 'Lachman identifies all the roles Swedenborg inhabited ... suggesting why this little known polymath deserves more substantial critical attention.' Beautifully produced by Stephen McNeilly, the bicentenary edition would make a perfect gift and is in the bookshop now. GET THIS BOOK.
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