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.

Afdölum (Hidden valleys)

The hill is climbed, the forest ended -
Is there no more, is it all done ?
No, for there stands a house on the hill beyond,
And walk towards it, I will.
And a valley, and another, and a valley once more -
Should I hear a voice saying, "This is the end, I'll settle here",
I will stifle it, stifle it with the infinite void of the valleys beyond.

La colline passée, la forêt traversée -
Est-ce tout, est-ce achevé ?
Non, car voici un toit sur la colline au loin,
Et vers ce toit, je marcherai.
Et une vallée, et une autre, et une vallée encore -
Si j'entends une voix disant, "Voici la fin, ici je m'établis",
Je l'étoufferai, je l'étoufferai avec le vide infini des vallées au loin.

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Now this is true, orthodox marginalism, of the strict minutiaephile kind. The minute wonder above is from "The Appearance of Christ before the People" by Alexander Andreievitch Ivanov, and as you can see here, it is indeed a very, very minute wonder in the whole picture.

So much that one wonders (you should pardon the pun) why master Alexander thought and bothered with including it. But apparently, this good man took twenty years to complete this piece, so he probably had lots of time to think about adding minutiae here and there. Why he did, thought, I'd be curious to know.

Below is a less minute, but still very endearing minutia - the scattered buildings in the first valley. Perhaps it was the initial goal of our restless traveller ?



(Yes, I know - the retouching is not professional. That's because I'm not a professional.)