The Air at the Top of the Bottle

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Bohemian Archaeology

September 4th, 2011 · 1 Comment

Step inside.

Some friends who, like me, frequent that bane of productivity, Facebook, alerted me to a piece recently published in the New York Times, about the short-lived Greenwich Village Bookshop and its very special door.

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas has created a wonderful website for this relic, so that curious types can explore the door in marvelous visual, cultural, and historical detail. That this artifact of Greenwich Village’s long-gone bohemian past resides in Texas and not on native ground seems to me nearly as outrageous as the British Museum’s 200-year exhibition of the Elgin Marbles (although they were better preserved as a result). The Ransom Center purchased this piece in 1960, when the Greenwich Village of the ‘teens and 20s had already become a new-fangled bohemia. It seems nobody here in NYC cared much about an old door back then, and since the iconic-for-us mid-century Greenwich Village has now been converted into a sort of brick-and-boutique Disneyland, and the mid-century bohemians themselves have died or are dying off, what remains of the counter-cultured neighborhood is more ephemeral than ever before. Photographs fade and are lost; old stories, vague memories, and vaguer memories of old stories are bound to change through years of retelling. Occasionally something a little less ephemeral surfaces at a flea market – many items in Doug Skinner’s growing collection of Bobby Edwards relics, for example.*  As historians and collectors are well aware, this pieced-together evidence that preserves (or revises, or suppresses) is the stuff of which “actual” history is made.

Ask any native or long-time New Yorker: few places are as here-today-and-gone-in-a-decade as a New York City neighborhood, and most especially these days. But step inside the archives and dig around, and you’ll find that this is the one story that never changes.

* It seems that Bobby Edwards did not himself grace the bookshop’s door with his signature, which would have kept company with those of his many friends and compatriots. His description of the bookstore, however, is briefly quoted  in the online exhibition.

(Posted by Lisa Hirschfield)

→ 1 CommentTags: Ancient History · Books · Ephemera · Literature · Memories · Places

The Spot an Angel Deigned to Grace

September 3rd, 2011 · 2 Comments

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The title of this stereoscopic card is “The Spot an Angel Deigned to Grace.”  It’s part of the Keystone Eye-Skill Training Series, and shows Loch Katrine, in Scotland.  Please click on it to see it full-size.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

→ 2 CommentsTags: Belief Systems · Misconceptions · Stereoscopy

Children’s Card Games (148)

September 1st, 2011 · 5 Comments

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“Concentration: Wildlife Edition” was “An Entertaining and Approved Educational Game” from the National Wildlife Federation.  It featured some lovely lush wildlife paintings, as well as a booklet giving details on the animals.  And, of course, you could play “Concentration” with the cards, turning them up two at a time to make pairs.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

→ 5 CommentsTags: Card Games · Ephemera

The Language of the Crows

August 31st, 2011 · 2 Comments

Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours (1739-1817) was an ardent naturalist, and earned a bit of notoriety in his time for his research into the language of birds.  In his 1807 work, Quelques mémoires sur différens sujets, la plupart d’histoire naturelle, ou de physique générale et particulière (Some notes on different subjects, mostly on natural history, or on general and particular physics), he noted the language of the crows.  Here’s a sample, in my translation.

“I will probably see some of my respectable colleagues, and those I hold dearest, smile at what I have to say about the dialogues of the crows, of which they know only a rather unpleasant cry.

“I wanted to live with them in the fields, to enlighten myself by their lights, and also to study them far from the village, in a rough shelter, quite immobile, quite silent, my eye watchful, my ear attentive, a pencil and a little white book in hand, neither crows nor other animals fear books…  It is a long labor.  Crows cost me two winters, and cold hands and feet.  This is what I have collected of their cry, which is thought to be always the same, when heard infrequently and distractedly.

“Cra, Cré, Cro, Crou, Crouou
Grass, Gress, Gross, Grouss, Grououss
Craé, Créa, Croa, Croua, Grouass
Crao, Créé, Croé, Croué, Grouess
Craou, Créo, Croo, Crouo, Grouoss

“There are twenty-five words, their similarity is quite grammatical… Their twenty-five words are enough to express “here, there, right, left, forward, stop, food, warning, man with gun, cold, hot, leave, I love you, me too, nest,” and ten or so others which they can draw upon according to their needs.

“They are quite reasonable and educated about that which concerns them. The reason and education of man are more valuable.”

I suspect the G’s in his lexicon are meant to be C’s, and are due to the vagaries of typesetting; but I’ve transcribed the passage as printed (it’s on Google Books, if you want to see for yourself).  Du Pont de Nemours, by the way, was the father of Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, who founded the DuPont chemical company in 1802, five years before all of this.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

→ 2 CommentsTags: Animals · Language

Children’s Card Games (147)

August 26th, 2011 · 3 Comments

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“Squadron Scramble” was an “Authorized Air Youth Game, Approved by the National Aeronautic Association.”  It was published sometime in World War II by Whitman.  American, British, Japanese, and German aircraft were shown from the top, side, and front.  You collected three of a kind; and tried not to get stuck with a “Keep ’em Flying” or “Victory” card.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

→ 3 CommentsTags: Card Games · Ephemera

Solrésol: The Phonetic Alphabet

August 25th, 2011 · 2 Comments

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Solrésol has had somewhat of a revival in recent years, due at least partially to a popular article by Paul Collins.

The system is an early attempt at an auxiliary artificial language, developed by François Sudre in the 19th century, and based on the seven notes of the diatonic scale.  He spoke it with solfeggio syllables, and wrote it on a three-line staff.  It could also be used as a manual language for the deaf, by assigning the seven notes to places on the hand.

There is some material on Solrésol on the internet, but there are some notable omissions, due to the rarity of the original source material.  I have a copy (in very bad condition) of Sudre’s 1866 edition, which I discovered in a used bookstore a few years ago.  Sudre’s method for spelling names seems to be unavailable, so I’ll post it here.

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The “Phonetic Alphabet” was to be used for “proper names, names of cities, names of streets, and technical terms.”  Black notes are repeated: M, for example, is pronounced sol-sol.  Notes preceded by a point are accented (“with a rinforzando“).  Black notes with a point are repeated, and the accent placed on the first syllable.  He also stipulated that all words are to be spelled phonetically: a double s is spelled as a single, “au” is spelled “o,” etc.  This seems to me an unnecessary complication; many English names don’t break down easily into French phonemes, for example.  But there you have it, in all its Sudresque beauty.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

→ 2 CommentsTags: Language · Music

Children’s Card Games (146)

August 18th, 2011 · 2 Comments

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“Animalloys” was a set of cigarette cards from the Imperial Tobacco Company, of Great Britain and Ireland.  Each card had 1/3 of an animal on it; you could combine them to produce new and unusual creatures.  This is an alligator, armadillo, and buffalo.  I assume that Dad was supposed to give these to the kids, but you never know.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

→ 2 CommentsTags: Card Games · Ephemera

On the Absence of Acrostics in Raymond Roussel

August 15th, 2011 · 1 Comment

Raymond Roussel does seem like the kind of writer who would write acrostics.  His works are steeped in wordplay.  The procédé is based on homonyms; “Parmi les noirs” throws in a rebus and a cryptogram; there’s a sonnet with a hidden message in La Poussière de Soleils; and so on.  Acrostics seem inevitable.

[Read more →]

→ 1 CommentTags: Language · Literature

Children’s Card Games (145)

August 2nd, 2011 · 2 Comments

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In 1953, the Albany Times-Union published a set of “Lucky Safety Cards.”  If you got the right number, you won $5000, which I suppose taught children about the numbers racket.  Hans and Fritz were probably not the best spokesmen for safety and obedience.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

→ 2 CommentsTags: Card Games · Ephemera

Jules Verne’s Sonnet On Morphine

July 31st, 2011 · 1 Comment

Unfortunately, Jules Verne’s nephew, Gaston, was mentally ill. In 1866, Gaston tried to murder Verne, leaving his uncle lame for life. While recuperating, Verne wrote a sonnet in praise of morphine. I don’t blame him.

A LA MORPHINE

 Prends, s’il le faut, docteur, les ailes de Mercure
Pour m’apporter plus tôt ton baume précieux!
Le moment est venu de faire la piqûre
Qui, de ce lit d’enfer, m’enlève vers les cieux.

Merci, docteur, merci! qu’importe si la cure
Maintenant se prolonge en des jours ennuyeux!
Le divin baume est là, si divin qu’Epicure
Aurait dû l’inventer pour l’usage des Dieux!

Je le sens qui circule en moi, qui me pénètre!
De l’esprit et du corps ineffable bien-être,
C’est le calme absolu dans la sérénité.

Ah! perce-moi cent fois de ton aiguille fine
Et je te bénirai cent fois, Sainte Morphine,
Dont Esculape eût fait une Divinité.

Verne’s ardent admirer, Raymond Roussel, also rhymed “piqûre” and “Epicure” (in both Nouvelles Impressions d’Afrique and Les Noces). Did he know Verne’s sonnet?

For my translation,  I kept Verne’s rhyme scheme, although with only masculine rhymes; and followed the usual practice of rendering alexandrines as iambic pentameter.

TO MORPHINE

Take if you must, physician, Hermes’ wing
To hasten to me your narcotic prize!
The time has come to tender me that sting
That floats my hellish sick-bed to the skies.

I thank you, doctor! Though my treatment bring
Long days I’d find oppressive otherwise,
Your precious balm is there, a fitting thing
For Gods, which Epicurus might devise!

I feel it circulate, it penetrates
My soul and body, calm now permeates
Me: this is blessed rest, unqualified.

Ah! Needle me a hundred times, and, yes,
A hundred times, Saint Morphine, I will bless
You, whom Asclepius would have deified.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

→ 1 CommentTags: Literature