the internet and everyone
john chris jones
(ellipsis, 2000)
Jacques
le fataliste et son maître Denis Diderot (1786)
Comment s’étaient-ils rencontrés? Par hazard, comme tout le monde. Comment s’appelaient-ils? Que vous importe? D’où venaient-ils? Du lieu le plus prochain. Où allaient-ils? Est-ce que l’on sait où l’on va? Que disaient-ils? Le maître ne disait rien ; et Jacques disait que son capitaine disait que tout ce qui nous arrive de bien et de mal ici-bas était écrit là-haut.
LE MAITRE
C’est un grand mot que cela.
JACQUES
Mon capitaine ajoutait que chaque balle qui partait d’un fusil avait son billet.
LE MAITRE
Et il avait raison…
Hawksmoor
Peter Ackroyd (1985)
I was thinking on Sir Christopher, and I was considering our new Church of
Spittle-Fields.
And what does a green-head say of these Matters? (I do not give a Fart for Sir
Chris, says I secretly to myself)
Master, says Walter, We have built near a Pitte and there are so vast a Number
of Corses that the Pews will allwaies be Rotten and Damp. This is the first
Matter. The second Matter is this: that Sir Chris. thoroughly forbids all Burrials
under the Church or even within the Church-yard itself, as advancing the rottennesse
of the Structure and unwholesome and injurious for those who worship there.
Then he scratch’d his Face and look’d down at his dusty Shooes.
This is a weak little Thing to take up your contemplations, Walter, I replied.
But he gaz’d up at me and would not be brought off, so after a Pause I
continu’d: I know Sir Chris. is flat against Burrialls, that he is all
for Light and Easinesse and will sink in Dismay if every Mortality or Darknesse
shall touch his Edifices. It is not reasonable, he will say, it is not natural.
But, Walter, I have instructed you in many things and principally in this –
I am not a slave of Geometrical Beauty, I must build what is most Sollemn and
Awefull.
Le
città invisibili
Italo Calvino (1972)
Le città e la memoria. 2.
All’uomo che cavalca lungamente per terreni selvatici viene desiderio
d’una città. Finalmente giunge a Isidora, città dove i palazzi
hanno scale a chiocciola incrostate di chiocciole marine, dove si fabbricano
a regola d’arte cannocchiali e violin, dove quando il forestiero è
incerto tra due donne ne incontra sempre una terza, dove le lotte dei galli
degenerano in risse sanguinose tra gli scommetitori. A tutte queste cose egli
pensava quando desiderava una città. Isidora è dunque la città
dei suoi sogni: con una differenza. La città sognata conteneva lui giovane;
a Isidora arriva in tarde età. Nella piazza c’è il muretto
dei vecchi que guardano passare la gioventù; lui è seduto in fila
con loro. I desideri sono già ricordi.
Invisible Cities
tr. William Weaver (1974)
Cities & memory 2
When a man rides a long time through wild regions he feels the desire for a city. Finally he comes to Isidora, a city where the buildings have spiral staircases encrusted with spiral seashells, where perfect telescopes and violins are made, where the foreigner hesitating between two women always encounters a third, where cockfights degenerate into bloody brawls among the bettors. He was thinking of all these things when he desired a city. Isidora, therefore, is the city of his dreams: with one difference. The dreamed-of city contained him as a young man; he arrives at Isidora in his old age. In the square there is the wall where the old men sit and watch the young go by; he is seated in a row with them. Desires are already memories.