Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Jórsalaferðinn (The Journey to Jerusalem)


Thus appears
Thus walks past
And disappears
The Puy du Connétable, the stone grown upon stone.
A Puy is good, weary, slow, triumphant connétable,
But have you not thousands ? Each dune build upon dune, and hill gazed upon hill,
Your well is the desert - drink it to drunkenness
And well you'll have conquered, wayward crusader !

Ainsi paraît
Ainsi marche aux côtés
Et puis disparaît
Le Puy du Connétable, la pierre tirée de pierre.
Un Puy est bon, fatigué, lent, triomphant connétable,
Mais n'en as-tu pas mille ? Chaque dune bâtie sur dune, et chaque colline vue sur colline,
Ton puis est le désert - bois-le jusqu'à l'ivresse
Et puis tu conquerras, croisé égaré !



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This one is, perhaps, a bit far-fetched ; but consider it an exercise in far-fetching. It is an extract from "Humours of an Election" by William Hogarth, and, as you may guess, the actual subject has very little to do with Palestine or Crusader castles. William Hogarth is a well-known painter and satirist whose main subject is 18th century England.

This illustrates how Minute Wonderworking (and especially Orthodox Marginalism) often relies on a combination of detail (here, William Hogarth's background depiction of what is probably supposed to be a church, as an icon of rural England - note the cottage nearby in the original picture) and lack of the selfsame detail (here, the depiction is blurry enough that one may perfectly imagine some kind of hilltop crusader castle, akin to this one for instance).

Behold the power of Minute Wonderworking : from 18th century England to 12th century Palestine in a snap of... mind.

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