Pflanzen - Tiere - Anatomie.

Beyond Vision is the first English-language collection of essays on art by Pavel Florensky (1882–1937), Russian philosopher, priest, linguist, scientist, mathematician – and art historian. In addition to seven essays by Florensky, the book includes a biographical introduction and an examination of Florensky’s contribution as an art historian by Nicoletta Misler. Beyond Vision reveals Florensky’s fundamental attitudes to the vital questions of construction, composition, chronology, function and destination in the fields of painting, sculpture and design. His reputation as a theologian and philosopher is already established in the English-speaking world, but this first collection in English of his art essays (translated by Wendy Salmond) will be a revelation to those in the field. Pavel Florensky was a true polymath: trained in mathematics and philosophy at Moscow University, he rejected a scholarship in advanced mathematics in order to study theology at the Moscow Theological Academy. He was also an expert linguist, scientist and art historian. A victim of the Soviet government’s animosity towards religion, he was condemned to a Siberian labor camp in 1933 where he continued his work under increasingly difficult circumstances. He was executed in 1937.

This book explores examples of this process of invention and addresses the complex interaction of past and present in a fascinating study of ritual and symbolism.

In Unfamiliar England is a book by Thos. D. Murphy. A fascinating travelogue where the author takes the reader on an all-England tour by car, with excursions into Ireland as Scotland as well. Excerpt: "Ipswich, though a city of some seventy thousand people and of considerable activity, is by no means shorn of its old-time interest and picturesqueness. There are many crooked old-world streets where the soft, time-mellowed tones of the gray walls and antique gables are diversified by carved beams, plaster fronts and diamond-paned windows, each of which has its box of brightly colored flowers."