Forgotten Cities and Lost Lands
The notion of lost cities is very appealing to the Western mind. It conjures up images of ancient ruins covered in lianas and jungle vegetation, concealing treasures forgotten by man or sometimes the opposite. Of course, lost cities in real life have more in common with archaeological finds. As distances shrank during the 19th century and intrepid explorers pushed back the frontiers of the unknown, the lost city and its treasures had to be moved farther still. Authors of fiction, such as Jules Verne, chose to keep his plots safe by relocating his lost cities beneath the Earth's surface. His British contemporary, H. Rider Haggard, sent his character into the heart of unexplored. Both of these novelistic endeavors were probably inspired to a certain extent by the writings of hollow-earth enthusiast John Cleves Symmes, who described a highly advanced technological society beneath the ice and snow of the Antarctic.
But while science fact and science fiction each endeavored to give us different kinds of lost, the esoteric tradition and crypto-archaeology held their own variety of forbidden kingdoms, accessible only to initiates or to those unlucky enough to come across them. While mysterious Iarchas may indeed have existed "beyond the circles of the world" (J.R.R. Tolkien), one could venture the guess that many would-be adepts have lost their lives searching for it. Yet there are other lost cities in which are endowed with an equally potent aura of mystery.
Forgotten Cities and Lost Lands 1992 year, Oil x Canvas, St. Petersburg, signed as Y. Gribanovsky
Private Collection
© Copyright | George Grie | Copying is permitted only with an active link to neosurrealismart.com
Forgotten Cities and Lost Lands