Tag Archives: Books

1883: The Armed Goddess

Posted on June 14, 2017 by corvusfugit

THE ARMED GODDESS I dreamed that I sat reading in my study, with books lying about all round me. Suddenly a voice, marvellously clear and silvery, called me by name. Starting up and turning, I saw behind me a long … Continue reading →

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1895: A Forest of Colossal Fungi

Posted on June 11, 2017 by corvusfugit

Along the chamber through which we now passed I saw by the mellow light great pillars, capped with umbrella-like covers, some of them reminding me of the common toadstool of upper earth, on a magnificent scale. Instead, however, of the … Continue reading →

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1904: A Nightmare

Posted on June 10, 2017 by corvusfugit

In 1904…I was staying at the Hotel Scholastika, on the borders of the Aachensee, in Austria. I dreamed one night that I was walking down a sort of pathway between two fields, separated from these last by high iron railings, … Continue reading →

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1692: Water Color

Posted on June 9, 2017 by corvusfugit

A page from A. Boogert’s Traité des couleurs servant à la peinture à l’eau [A Treatise on the Colors Used in Watercolor Painting] (1692). Found here.

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1940: A Strange Way for an Animal

Posted on May 28, 2017 by corvusfugit

“The most common voluntary activity….is, by a long shot, participating in experiences that we know are not real. When we are free to do whatever we want, we retreat to the imagination—to worlds created by others, as with books, movies, … Continue reading →

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5th Century AD: Wings of Parchment

Posted on May 22, 2017 by corvusfugit

Two pages from the Cologne Mani Codex, “a lump of parchment fragments the size of a matchbox,” that tells the story of the early life of Mani, the Persian prophet and the founder of Manichaeism. The work—made in 5th century … Continue reading →

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1979: Eric Lanzetti Tells You What a Communist Is

Posted on May 17, 2017 by corvusfugit

In 1938, after a childhood in a West Virginia mining town and a bright college career at Brown and Oxford, Eric Lanzetti —radicalized by the revolutionary fight against fascism in Spain—became a communist organizer on the Lower East Side of … Continue reading →

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1987: A Book Comes from the Sky

Posted on May 16, 2017 by corvusfugit

Xu Bing’s A Book from the Sky (1987) is a 604-page volume in the style of the Song and Ming dynasties—but it contains no actual Chinese characters; instead, the symbols—4,000 of them—are “meaningless glyphs designed to resemble traditional Chinese characters.” … Continue reading →

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1550: A Book Is a Heart

Posted on May 13, 2017 by corvusfugit

“The Heart Book is regarded as the oldest Danish ballad manuscript. It is a collection of 83 love ballads compiled in the beginning of the 1550’s in the circle of the Court of King Christian III. Shown above is the … Continue reading →

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