Book of Sand

From the Borges Center at U.Pitt we learn: Proteus, in classical mythology, prophetic old man of the sea who tended the seals of Poseidon and could change himself into any shape. Proteus emblem, Andrea Alciato, 1531 From The Odyssey, Book IV : With a shout we rushed at him, and grappled him, but he forgot none of his crafty tricks. First he turned to a bearded lion, then a snake, and a leopard: then a giant boar: then he became rushing water, then a vast leafy tree : but we held tight with unyielding courage. When at last that old man, expert in magic arts, grew tired, he spoke to me, saying: “Son of Atreus, which of the gods told you to lie in wait for me, and hold me against my will? What is it you wish?”’  Fishburn and Hughes elaborate: "In Greek mythology a prophetic sea god, the son of Oceanus and Tethys, who had the power of assuming any shape he wished in order to avoid capture. The Zahir: Homer describes Proteus as living in a cave near the island of Pharos: ...

Thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared – have appeared in Webb’s view for the first time. This slice of the vast universe covers a patch of sky approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length by someone on the ground.  https://petapixel.com/2022/07/12/the-first-five-stunning-photos-captured-by-the-james-webb-telescope/ Deep Field   To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower  Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand  And Eternity in an hour By William Blake   Southern Ring Nebula     St...

    I suspect that in Don Quixote , it does not rain a single time. The landscapes described by Cervantes have nothing in common with the landscapes of Castile: they are conventional landscapes, full of meadows, streams, and copses that belong in an Italian novel. ... the more writers develop their characters, the better they get to know them. So, that’s how we have a character who is sometimes ridiculous, but who can be serious and have profound thoughts, and above all is one of the most beloved characters in all of history. And we can say “of history” because Don Quixote is more real to us than Cervantes himself...   — Jorge Luis Borges Professor Borges: A Course on English Literature . New Directions Publishing, 2013.

Upon discovering that the first chapter of The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald contains many references to Sir Thomas Browne I procured a copy and set about reading the twenty odd pages, in which are contained the anecdote of the incident of Sir Thomas' skull and how it laid unburied for close to 300 years in the museum of the Norwich Hospital.  Browne himself said that to be gnaw'd out of our graves is a tregedy and that no man knows the fate of his bones or how many times he be buried.  Noting that Browne was a physician, Sebald speculates that he was in attendance at a famous anatomy lecture given by Sir Nicholas Tulp in Amsterdam which was recorded in a painting by Rembrandt. Some peculiarities of the painting are discussed as is the identity of the cadaver himself. From here the discussion shifts toward the Quincunx and the writings found in The Garden of Cyrus.  Browne finds all manner of analogues in Nature to this appearance of five among animals and plants.  ...

I am thinking now about the Quixote, prototype of the first novel, Bloom called it. But surely there were others before it, I wonder. The Golden Ass of Apuleius , A True Story of Lucian of Samosata , Amadis de Gaula , Tirant lo Blanch , Ariosto's Orlando ... Why is this considered the first novel?  Why the prototype? Borges is fascinated with the Quixote, he revisits it again and again, in fiction, essay and poetry. His Pierre Menard he sets out to recreate it, not copy it, but rediscover it independently and on his own, authentically, Quixotically - an impractical and idealistic endeavor. The line cited in the story: . . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future's counselor. Truly a remarkable line, is from Chapter IX, Part 1, wherein Cervantes(?) the Narrator finds a manuscript by Cid Hamete Benengeli, an Arabic historian, entitled History of Don Quixote de la Mancha. A pseud...

In "Poetry", Seven Nights , Borges discusses the concept of creation as memory. As is well known, in Latin the word for to invent and to discover is the same. All this is in accord with the platonic doctrine that to invent, to discover is to remember. Francis Bacon agreed that learning is remembering, not knowing is knowing to forget; everything is this way, only we don't see it. When I write something, I have the sensation that it existed before. I start from a general conception. I know more or less the beginning and the end, and then I discover the intervening parts. But I do not have the sensation of having invented them, that they depend on my free will. The things are as they are, but they are hidden, and my task as a poet is to find them. Borges used the following quote from Bacon as the epigraph of The Immortal (El Aleph, 1949): Solomon saith: There is no new thing upon the earth;   So that as Plato had an imagination, that all knowledge  was but...

Today I was introduced to  The Paston Treasure A historically rare cabinet of curiosities painting of the collection of objects belonging to the Paston family of Norfolk executed by an unknown Dutch artist in the early 1670's.  In 2018, the Norwich Castle Museum and the Yale Center collaborated to reunite for the first time in 350 years as many of the objects as possible. The Museum Wormianum (1655) One of the world's most famous cabinets of curiosities, it was created by a Danish physician named Ole Worm . The complete catalog was compiled and published in 1655.  The frontispiece is a large fold out engraving of the museum.   In 2004-5, the artist Rosamond Purcell created an extraordinary installation which recreated the engraving of Worm’s museum. This installation is now permanently housed at the Geological Museum at the Natural History Museum of Denmark. The Virtuoso (play by Thomas Shadwell)  This is a Restoration comedy first produced in 1676 s...