#emblematics

"trust and distrust"

in a german ancestry book ('stammbuch des albrecht christoph gugel'), ca. 1686-1688

source: Nürnberg, GNM, Hs 84104 b, fol. 74v

glance out window, paused at Davis Square, 19 December 2017

...under emblematic subtitles. In aggregate, they form a continuous, or entirely serial, reflection. ex Tom Conley's introduction, to his translation of Jean Louis Schefer. The Deluge, The Plague : Paolo Uccello (1976; translation 1995)

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  sensory apparatus of the skin smooth fingers sensualist artists

soft or hard hands square hands synthesis and analysis

tactile corpuscles taking a sign thumb, the emblem of man

touch, sense of the fingertips truth unnatural to man uncertainty of exact science

Let the whole universe be for me, in relation to my body, what the stick of a blind man is in relation to his hand. His sensibility really no longer resides in his hand, but at the end of the stick. *

uses of the hand value of the science variation of hands

versatile talents villages of elementary hands writers on the hand

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selections — punctuated by passages from analogous texts — from index to The Science of the Hand; Or, The Art of Recognising the Tendencies of the human mind by the observation of the formation of the Hands. Translated from the French of M. Le Capitaine C[asimir]. S[tanislas]. Arpentigny and edited with an introduction, appendices, and a commentary on the text by Ed. Heron-Allen. With original plates and explanatory diagrams by Rosamund Brunel Horsley. 1886 Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh copy (archive.org)

* Simone Weil. The Notebooks of. Translated by Arthur Wills (1956) : 19

* back cover (90º cw; otherwise untreated) John Lemprière (c1765-1824 *), Universal biography (1808) University of California copy, digitized November 8, 2010

this volume containing the only hit for "philosophy of images" in pre-1923 Google Books — Menestrier, Claude Francis, a jesuit, of Lyons, 1633. He wrote history of Lewis XIV. by medals, emblems, &c. — consular history of Lyons — the art of heraldry — the philosophy of images, &c. He possessed a very astonishing memory, and it is said, that to try him Christina of Sweden pronounced in his presence 300 unconnected words, which he immediately repeated in the same order. He died 1705, aged 72.

Claude François Ménestrier (1631-1705 *) authored L'Art des Emblemes, which appeared in two editions (1662 and 1684), and is nicely discussed in David Graham, "Claude-Franços Ménestrier: the founder of ’early modern grounded theory’" in de Boer, Enenkel and Melion, eds, Jesuit image theory (2016) : 119-145 (138) — grounded theory — a way of arriving at theory suited to its supposed uses... in contrast to theory generated by logical deduction from a priori assumptions. (quoting B. G. Glaser and A. L. Strauss)

Every image is a form that is capable of flowing from one subject to another... The life of the sensible is the flow. — Emanuele Coccia, Sensible Life : A Micro-ontology of the Image (2010; 2016) : 77 (Chapter 25, "Influences")

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* (detail, reoriented, back cover) ex S(amuel) B(enoni) Beal. Plain Directions for Making and Fixing Paper Texts or Emblems, to decorate churches or rooms: with explanations of their significance. Fourth Edition, revised and enlarged. London, 1868 Bodleian copy, digitized April 25, 2007 *

  Gabarraje   41349     Method(s) ( See also "Ideal," "Lose." ) Gabathes   41350     New method Gabazola   41351     Old method Gabbanucci   41352     A new method for Gabbarono   41353     By a new method Gabberai   41354     By the old method Gabberesti   41355     By what method Gabbiate   41356     By this method — Gabelkette   41364     As the best method Gabellang   41365     Is the only method Gabellava   41366     Is extracted by the following method — Gaditanior   41391     Miasma

ex McNeill's Code (1908 edition) *

My method is to show my sources, pretty fully. I like to think that if there's sufficient mystery in the thing, references and citations won't dampen it — and might even lend some nuance.

It's a baroque practice.

Some time back, I drafted (but never completed nor posted) a rumination on "social emblematics." I had stumbled on and was amazed by the many reiterations (and mis-reiterations) of the expression "All the secrets of the world are contained in books. Read at your own risk." It's all over the place, in tumblr and flickr and many elsewheres, and is usually attributed to Lemony Snicket. I tracked it down to its first appearance in print ( not in a Lemony Snicket book! ), and even further (with Daniel Handler's help).

These reiterations were typically used as a caption to an image, either original or recycled. I wanted to demonstrate how these new re-usings were not unlike older combinatoric practices, emblem making among them.

I gathered and examined a few examples of the "All the secrets" aphorism, and then moved to the baroque precedent, by reflecting on the relationship to each other of two emblem books:

George Wither, his A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne, whose title continues : "quickened with metricall illustrations, both Morall and Divine: and disposed into Lotteries, that Instructions, and Good Counsell, may bee furthered by an Honest and Pleasant Recreation" (London, 1635);

and the engravings from Gabriel Rollenhagen (1583-1619) his Nucleus emblematum selectissimorum (1611), that Wither plundered/recycled.