 |
| © National Geographic |
Which reminds me, I'd must do a post on that most marvelous of sewerage pioneers, Sir Joseph Bazelgette, one day.
Tuesday 31 July 2012
Lost rivers
What happens to once-thriving freshwater ecosystems when the rivers they depend on are entombed in sewer pipes beneath layers of concrete and soil? National Geographic explores some of the world's lost rivers including London's Fleet and Westbourne and Moscow's Neglinnaya.
As this photo shows, some of these buried rivers are now fascinating architectural wonders in their own right: manmade cave systems with graceful brickwork vaulting and columns in place of stalagmites. No doubt also rats the size of cats, and ghostly, troglodytic denizens. But Nat Geo doesn't go there!
Which reminds me, I'd must do a post on that most marvelous of sewerage pioneers, Sir Joseph Bazelgette, one day.
Which reminds me, I'd must do a post on that most marvelous of sewerage pioneers, Sir Joseph Bazelgette, one day.
In a word: Homunculus
ho·mun·cu·lus [huh-muhng-kyuh-luhs, hoh-]
noun, plural ho·mun·cu·li
- an artificially-made dwarf, supposedly produced in a flask by an
alchemist - a fully formed, miniature human body believed, according to some
medical theories of the 16th and 17th centuries, to be contained in the spermatozoon - a diminutive human being
- the human foetus.
 |
19th century engraving of Homunculus from Goethe's Faust part II
|
It's a tricky word to slip into a sentence unless, perhaps, you were talking to Umberto Eco or channelling John Dee. This is a crying shame, because it's a peculiarly pleasing word to say out loud. Especially, I think, if you pretend you're a 1940s British bobby (the kind that probably only ever existed on the telly and in Enid Blyton stories), in which case you might well say:
"'ello 'ello 'ello. What we gort 'ere then? An 'omunculus, eh?"
Go on, try it! I'm sure you'll find it as pleasing as I do.
I also like this word because it conjures up such wonderfully arcane images of secret societies carrying out ancient, esoteric rites in hidden chambers lined with dusty tomes. But before I get all Dan Brown on you, I also like it because it sounds a bit like 'monkey' - another very appealing word. And it's such a damned wacky concept. I mean really...
According to one source*, the way to make a homunculus was "to take an egg laid by a black hen, poke a tiny hole through the shell, replace a bean-sized portion of the white with human semen, seal the opening with virgin parchment, and bury the egg in dung on the first day of the March lunar cycle. A miniature humanoid would emerge from the egg after thirty days, which would help and protect its creator in return for a steady diet of lavender seeds and earthworms."
How bloody wonderful!
More reading:
Wiki (of course) has got heaps of fascinating stuff about homunculi, including some modern usages of the word I didn't know about like its use in medicine (to describe rather creepy things called teratomas) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus
*Dr. David Christianus. University of Giessen c18th
According to one source*, the way to make a homunculus was "to take an egg laid by a black hen, poke a tiny hole through the shell, replace a bean-sized portion of the white with human semen, seal the opening with virgin parchment, and bury the egg in dung on the first day of the March lunar cycle. A miniature humanoid would emerge from the egg after thirty days, which would help and protect its creator in return for a steady diet of lavender seeds and earthworms."
How bloody wonderful!
More reading:
Wiki (of course) has got heaps of fascinating stuff about homunculi, including some modern usages of the word I didn't know about like its use in medicine (to describe rather creepy things called teratomas) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus
*Dr. David Christianus. University of Giessen c18th
Monday 30 July 2012
Why Wunderkammer?
Apart from the fact that its a delightful word in its own right? Well, as both an inveterate hoarder and compulsive encyclopaedia-reader, I suppose I've always had a close affinity with the concept of the Wunderkammer.
Wunderkammern have been described as "a microcosm or theatre of the world"* - an encyclopedic collection of objects whose categorical boundaries were yet to be defined. First assembled in private by the architects of the Renaissance, slowly evolved into the great public museums of natural history, science and anthropology.
Thankfully, many of the world's greatest Wunderkammer survive to this day. Happy hours spent sketching rongorongo in Peter the Great's spectacular Кунсткамера (Kunstkamera); creeping myself out by the shrunken heads in the Pitt Rivers Museum; and fossicking around amongst Sir John Soane's dusty plunder have all helped to mould my magpie instinct and inspire wonder in worlds I will never see.
This blog is my very own Wunderkammer; an ever-expanding cabinet where I can showcase some of the weird and wonderful things that make this world such an extraordinary place to live. Images, sounds, stories...if it can be digitised it can be displayed.
At some stage, I'd like to dig out some of my childhood hoardings; the pressed flowers and postcards; the skulls and stones and birds' nests and bottles that entertained me for many years and which, I hope, are still languishing like a (slightly unwelcome) Wunderkammer in my mum's attic!
But I will also be unashamedly plundering the world wide web. Whereas the expeditions of our ancestors were confined by time and money and the very limits of the known world, the web is an almost boundless resource for curators of contemporary Wunderkammern.
May the fossicking commence!
*The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology Horst Bredekamp. 1995
Wunderkammern have been described as "a microcosm or theatre of the world"* - an encyclopedic collection of objects whose categorical boundaries were yet to be defined. First assembled in private by the architects of the Renaissance, slowly evolved into the great public museums of natural history, science and anthropology.
 |
| An early 18th-century GermanSchrank with a traditional display of corals (Naturkundenmuseum Berlin) Image: LoKiLeCh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Berlin_Naturkundemuseum_Korallen.jpg |
Thankfully, many of the world's greatest Wunderkammer survive to this day. Happy hours spent sketching rongorongo in Peter the Great's spectacular Кунсткамера (Kunstkamera); creeping myself out by the shrunken heads in the Pitt Rivers Museum; and fossicking around amongst Sir John Soane's dusty plunder have all helped to mould my magpie instinct and inspire wonder in worlds I will never see.
This blog is my very own Wunderkammer; an ever-expanding cabinet where I can showcase some of the weird and wonderful things that make this world such an extraordinary place to live. Images, sounds, stories...if it can be digitised it can be displayed.
At some stage, I'd like to dig out some of my childhood hoardings; the pressed flowers and postcards; the skulls and stones and birds' nests and bottles that entertained me for many years and which, I hope, are still languishing like a (slightly unwelcome) Wunderkammer in my mum's attic!
But I will also be unashamedly plundering the world wide web. Whereas the expeditions of our ancestors were confined by time and money and the very limits of the known world, the web is an almost boundless resource for curators of contemporary Wunderkammern.
May the fossicking commence!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)