#001 Wednesday (6/22/2022) solstice
Today I started with a poem of JLB, from El Hacedor (The Maker), in Spanish:
Dios ha creado las noches que se arman de sueños y las formas del espejo para que el hombre sienta que es reflejo y vanidad.
El Hacedor, Jorge Luis Borges
Translated as:
God has created nights well-populated
with dreams, crowded with mirror images,
so that man may feel that he is nothing more
than vain reflection. That's what frightens us.
(Translated by: A.Reid) from Los espejos (The Mirrors)
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Real Art Ways in Hartford put on a multimedia presentation project All things hushed celebrating the 100th anniversary of The Sonnets to Orpheus
by Rainer Maria Rilke. A multi-faceted arts experience, the production
includes dance, visual art, video, original music, and an
intergenerational cast ranging in age from 15 to 68.
From Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus, I found:
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It is left to interpretation whether "his mind" refers to the God or the man. From wikipedia.
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I have been reading Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery, currently on Chapter 5. I looked at Google Maps to identify the area of Paris in which it takes place and found Impasse Maubert, Place Maubert and Rue Maitre Albert. In the place identified as Simonini's shops, there is a restaurant called Le Reminet, a long thin building that connects the alley and the street at the corner of Rue Maitre Albert and Rue des Grands Desgres in the Latin Quarter. I think this must be the building that Simonini lives in. It has a view of Notre Dame just across the river.
The previous chapter mentions the novel Joseph Balsamo (another name for Cagliostro) by Alexandre Dumas, also a character in the Eco novel. In the wiki article, there is mention of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace in the court of Louis XVI, involving Marie Antoinette.
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Became distracted and read a short article on John Dee and the angelic language, Enochian. Thinking about a ConLang game involving cuneiform. (See also Eco's The Search for the Perfect Language.)
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Found an apt quotation from Sir Thomas Browne's (apocryphal) Fragment on Mummies:
Yet all were but Babel vanities. Time sadly overcometh all things, and
is now dominant, and sitteth upon a sphinx, and looketh unto Memphis and
Thebes, while his sister Oblivion reclineth semisomnous on a pyramid,4
gloriously triumphing, making puzzles of Titanian erections, and
turning old glories into dreams. History sinketh beneath her cloud. The
traveller as he paceth amazedly through those deserts asketh of her, who
buildeth them? and she mumbleth something, but what it is he heareth
not.
To which the webmaster of the page has appended perhaps an unnecessary footnote:
[4] Not, one would think, an easy accomplishment, even for Oblivion.
I emailed the following to the webmaster of the site (UChicago), just a bit of whimsy!
On Sir Thomas Browne's Museaum Clausum and divers notes appended thereto by J. Eason
Esteemed Sir,
I have only just recently and regrettably
late in (my) life, discovered the munificent bounty that is the work of
the venerable Sir Thomas Browne. You have my gratitude for making his
wisdom available to all and sundry. Especially cherished is the Musaeum
Clausum, a veritable treasure house; it reads like a catalog of wonders
scarcely to be dreamed. Yet, how much more enjoyable even were the
notes, that I only afterward realized were not his own, but rather had
been appended by yourself. The sweet juxtaposition of his imagination
with your perspicacity produced an encyclopedia of Borgesian
dimensions. However did you manage such a Herculean feat to discover
the diverse precursors to his ephemeral listing of errata and
apocrypha? You must yourself be a Titan of arts&letters! Bravo,
Sir!
M. Morphius, Doctor of the Sciences of ComputationThinking about the "Simpling in Cheapside" remark from the Thomas Browne documentary. Found the text of William Coles' The Art of Simpling (1656) from Internet Archive. To which is appended "The Lesser World" or "Microcosmologicum" -- Fascinating! This is just one of millions of scans of ancient texts available there. (See also Robert Hooke's Micrographia).
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Also, discovered that William of Rubruck, is also spelled Rubruquis, which when entered as a search term at the 1911 Encyclo. Brit. yields many interesting entries: Bashkirs, Andrew of Longjumeau, Carpini, Joannes de Plano, Cannibalism, Prester John, Crusades, China, Tibet, Geography...
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I happened to search on the term Lapidary at 1911 E.B. and the note says
The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure for 1749 states
that diamond dust, “well ground and diluted with water and
vinegar, is used in the sawing of diamonds, which is done with
an iron or brass wire, as fine as a hair.”—Ed.
This introduced me to The Universal Magazine of Knowledge and Pleasure, a periodical published in London in the period 1747–1814.
It advertised itself as dealing with "Letters, Debates, Essays, Tales,
Poetry, History, Biography, Antiquities, Voyages, Travels, Astronomy,
Geography, Mathematics, Mechanics, Architecture, Philosophy, Medicine,
Chemistry, Husbandry, Gardening and other Arts and Sciences; which may
render it Instructive and Entertaining. To which will be added An
Impartial Account of Books in several Languages, And of the state of
Learning in Europe; also Of the New Theatrical Entertainments." Available at the Internet Archive.
All this I did before noon...
How do I weave this together? There is plenty here. Lapidary and the Diamond Necklace go together. French aristocracy and French con artists, The Universal Magazine and The Art of Simpling; Sir Thomas Browne and Oh time, thy pyramids..., Rilke and Borges, Orpheus and Oblivion, mirrors and lyres, John Dee and the language of the angels.
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