French Rule Number Two

Today I finished reading M. Gable's book 'A Paris Apartment' (2014). What a lovely read! Continental Paris meeting USA East Coast. French style. Old continental furniture from France. The story, life and offspring of demimondaine Marthe de Florian and artist Giovanni Boldini. (With two different ancestral lines.) Marthe's face cream with lead (French 'De Plomb') that killed her.

I know this book is a work of fiction - "all of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously" - but now I am wondering what was in the real letters found at the apartment of Marthe de Florian that was unvisited for 70 years. 

I have to check out artist Boldini.

I love this (page 12): [April could almost pass for a French]. "Years ago, after she managed to snag the curator position at an eighteenth-century Paris furniture museum (now defunct), she read up on how to look Parisian. Or, rather, how not to look quite so American. Dress in smart, dark, tailored items, the literature told her; things easy to put together, to match, to throw on and look as if you'd hardly done anything at all. And that April thought, was more or less how she was thrown together. Straight, dark, tailored, made entirely of clean lines. The hair, the eyes, the nose: all casually assembled; unobjectionable basic pieces. To stand out all she needed was a jaunty scarf and a Bréton top, which was Impersonating-the-French Rule Number Two."

Boldini's card - "a present with compliments for madame M. de Florian" - as a proof of provenance of the painting.

 Picture of Marthe de Florian.

The painting Boldini made in 1898 of Marthe at the age of 24.

P.S. I wrote about her before in 2012. Remember: 'Unvisited for 70 years'?

Water, Land and Air Tumbling

'Sunny Drink for Mother Earth'

'The Life Force that strives for Eternity'

'Evening tune'

P.S. This beautiful art is made by artist Vasil Woodland from Ukraine.

Revolt Against

"Epicurus is a neglected philospher. (...)  In addition to clearing the ground of misconceptions, care has been taken to show the substantial contributions of Epicurus to the Western tradition: his popularization of the atomic theory of Democritus and the implications of this theory for human happiness, his propaganda against antiscientific superstition and popular religion, his revolt against Platonic rationalism and insistence on empirical methods of verification, and his new "peace of mind" gospel for the troubled intelligentsia of the Hellenistic period."

G. Strodach, 'The Philosophy of Epicurus' (New York 1993; unabridged republication 1963), vii-viii.

P.S. I bought three new Epicurus books one month ago. Yesterday, finally the last one arrived. Now I am ready for my Epicurus project; looking for an answer to my questions: 

• Epicurus who cares?
• Why should species 'homo sapiens' care?
• What is wrong with Plato according to Epicurus?
• What is Nietzsche his opinion on Epicurus?
• What would planet Earth look like when all 'homo sapiens' are Epicurian?

P.P.S. But first I've to finish M. Gable, 'A Paris Apartment' (New York 2014).

Them Niches

Food. Music. Poems. 

Food (local stuff), music (love songs and songs about simple life) and poems (love, sun, sky, sea, nature, languages-games etcetera) are the niches that remain for individual 'homo sapiens' when dictators - in their own Newspeak they call themselves "the real democrats" - take over control in a country. 

What is left ...

• when the going gets tough?
• when demonstrators (Newspeak: terrorists) go into jail, get tortured or be killed?
• when sentinel species stop to speak up (better: stop singing when a bird or stop swimming when a fish or stop living when a plant)?
• when a dialogue is no longer possible?
• when individuals are no longer able to distinguish between facts and fake news?

And books? All dictators have their own list of prohibited books. No safe haven!

And art? All dictators have their own definition of degenerated art. No safe haven!

A :E :AFIN :DO MUDO [upside down]

It's a 700 years old story of the impossible loves of Inês de Castro‎ and Peter I of Portugal. Their tombs are standing, feet against feet, in Alcobaça Monastery, Portugal.

On the left Peter

On the right Inêz

At his head is the Wheel of Life and Wheel of Fortune (inside the wheel)

 

At twelve o'clock in the Wheel of Life there is an inscription written upside down and from right to left: "A :E :AFIN :DO MUDO". Scientist translate this as 'A[té] :E[n] :AFIN :DO MU[n]DO', which is 'Até ao fim do mundo' (source). Portuguese for 'Until the End of the World'.

For the details of the Wheel of Life and Wheel of Fortune see Wikipedia article 'Túmulos de D. Pedro I e de Inês de Castro': here.

P.S. I am wondering why 'Until the End of the World' is written upside down and from right to left. Why did Peter not want direct access to this message for its readers? Why hidden inside a riddle?  

Please Ignore

"Even in modern times, the critics of Epicureanism continue to misrepresent it as a lazy-minded, shallow, pleasure-loving, immoral, or godless travesty of real philosophy. In our day the world 'epicureanism' has come to mean its opposite - a pretentious enthusiasm for rare and expensive food and drink. Please have the courage to ignore two thousand years of negative prejudice, and assess this philosophy on its own considerable merits."

P.S. Quote is from Hutchinson in: Inwood and Gerson, 'The Epicurus Reader. Selected Writings and Testimonia' (1994). The painting is from Rubens, 'The Feast of Acheloüs' (around 1615).

1

If I could chose one and one only this would be my list #Choose1List

• 1 kitchen: Italian
• 1 wine: Barolo
• 1 writer: Gavin Maxwell
• 1 musical genre: fado
• 1 tv show: - (I never watch TV)
• 1 place: Nijmegen in The Netherlands
• 1 novel: Oek de Jong, Cirkel in het Gras
• 1 movie: Top Gun
• 1 God: Sisyphus
• 1 number: 8
• 1 color: blue
• 1 drink: martini white
• 1 poet: Jan Twardowski
• 1 death: in bed reading a book (I hope it is a decent one)
• 1 piece Greek: Epicurus' fragments
• 1 insecurity: I am not smart
• 1 piece of Shakespeare: Sonnet 18 (Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day)
• 1 fetish: I allways pick up money (regardless of currency or amount) I see on the ground. I think/ feel my good luck (not only financially) will end if I will not pick it up
• 1 sexual fetish: eyes - I want to see your eyes
• 1 fruit:orange
• 1 villain: Mafia
• 1 dimension: live like an earthworm
• 1 bus: - (I never travel by bus)
• 1 island: Corsica in France (I never went but I want to one day)
• 1 cabin: at a lake in Scandinavia
• 1 sport: flying a glider
• 1 animal: cat
• 1 camp taste: militairy fighters
• 1 prophet: Ton Lemaire
• 1 president: Maarten van Rossem as president for planet Earth
• 1 dance: tango
• 1 thinker: Epicurus
• 1 lie: I always tell that I've read 80% of the books in my library but I guess it's more like 40%
• 1 walk: West Highland Way in Scotland

What is your #Choose1List?

P.S. picture is from Maryann Townsley in Facebook-group ‎'Scottish Wanderlust'. Place: Ardnamurchan in Scotland.

Secretly Red

Between 1979 and 1988 - during the Cold War - the Americans flew with Russian MIG-17, MIG-21 and MIG-23 aircraft to train USA-pilots. Under the secret and classified project Constant Peg almost 6,000 pilots (in table: 5,930 exposures) learned to fight their enemy in air-to-air combat. This project was declassified in 2006.

In the book 'America's Secret MIG Squadron. The Red Eagles of Project Constant Peg' (2012) one of the 'Gang of Three' pilots who got things going for this secret MIG squadron, this is Gaillard Peck (callsign Evil), writes about its history:

1. Goal of Constant Peg was to give pilots ten missions that would be as close to combat as training would permit. Based on the notion that, "if a fighter pilot could survive his first ten combat missions of a war, he had a highly increased probability of survive his entire combat tour." Training to manage the rush of adrenalin and overcome "bug fever" that comes during actual combat with MIGs.
2. Maintenance was the true key to the success. "Tech data for [aircraft] parts, as we knew it, was almost absent, so our folks were in a constant cycle of identification, reverse engineering, reconditioning and substitution."
3. The product of this training contributed to the combat success of 170 kills by F15 and F16 pilots without a single loss in return to enemy aircraft.
4. After the Cold War the project was ended due to cost and reduced percieved need for the program.

 Another book with a lot of lovely details. Nothing beats a history book. Nothing beats the real thing.

After All

What a lovely read: Greenblatt, 'The Swerve. How the World Became Modern' (New York 2011). Did I already say that it is a must read?

This book has for me three story-lines:

1. Book hunter Poggio Bracciolini who "discovered" in 1417 a copy of Lucretius 'De Rerum Natura' (English: On the Nature of Things) in a monastery. Probably the monastery of Fulda in Germany.
2. The message of Epicurus via the poem of Lucretius.
3. Lucretius' poem as the key on how the world became "modern" in the Renaissance.

What is the message of Epicurus (Ancient Greece 5th century BC) in the poem of Lucretius (Ancient Rome 1th century BC):

• Everything is made of invisible particles. Lucretius didn't use the Greek word 'atoms' but "first things", "first beginnings", "bodies of matter" or "seed of things".
• Elementary particles of matter are eternal. Greenblatt: "The invisible particles from which the entire univere is made, from the stars to the lowiest insect, are indestructible and immortal, though any particular object in the universe is transitory. That is, all the forms that we observe, even those that seem most durable, are temporary: the building blocks from which they are composed will sooner or later be redistributed."
• Elementary particles are infinite in number but limited in shape and size.
• All particles are in motion in an infinite void.
• Universe has no creator or designer.
• Everything comes into being as a result of a swerve. Latin words for 'swerve' are 'clinamen', 'declinatio' or 'inclinatio': an unexpected, unpredictable movement of matter.
• Swerve is the source of free will.
• Nature ceaselessy experiments. Greenblatt: "All living beings, from plants and insects to the higher mammals and man, have evolved through a long, complex process of trail and error. The process involves many false starts and dead ends (...)."
• Universe was not created for or about humans.
• Humans are not unique. We are made of the same stuff as everything else.
• Human society began not in a Golden Age of transquility and plenty but in a primitive battle for survival.
• Soul dies.
• There is no afterlife. When you grasp that your soul dies with your body, you also grasp that there can be no reward or punishment when you die. Greenblatt: "Life on this earth is all that human beings have."
• Death is nothing to us.
• All organized religions are superstitious delusions.
• Religions are invariably cruel.
• There are no angels, demons or ghosts.
• Highest goal of human life is the enhancement of pleasure and the reduction of pain.
• Greatest obstacle to pleasure is not pain; it is delusion.
• Understanding the nature of things generates deep wonder.

Life's ultimate goal is pleasure and not worshipping JWH, God, gods, ancestors, family, city or state. What a scandal it must have been for the Jews and later the Christians. Not only a scandal but above all a conflicting reason to be (French: raison d'être).

For me this book was above all a meditation on what is lost and the life-cycle of books before the invention of the printing press. So many pagan (read: non- or before-Christian) texts and so little survived over time. Books deteriorate over the centuries by water, fire, touching,  unrolling and rolling, bookworms, etcetera. Books deteriorate inevitable! The only way to preserve them is to read them and before they are worn out, copy them. A work that was done by scribes in monasteries. The copying of manuscripts turned out to be crucial to the survival of Lucretius and other pagan texts.

It reminds me that I've to educate my kids on Epicurus. Sometimes I think they are drowned too much into worldly delusions. Cut the crap and read Epicurus! I've bought two more books of my Epicurean-bible: a book with fragments (not all) of Epicurus translated into Dutch. The book that gave me the words, the worldview, the antidote against Christianity. In case you missed it: I am very Epicurean.

P.S. I wrote many times about Epicurus: here.

P.S. Did you know - not in this book - that Karl Marx's earned his PhD on Epicurus: here?

Golden Instant NOW

Orhan Pamuk in his book 'The Museum of Innocence':

“In fact no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that, in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant "now," even having lived such a moment before, but whatever they say, in one part of their hearts they still believe in the certainty of a happier moment to come. Because how could anyone, and particularly anyone who is still young, carry on with the belief that everything could only get worse: If a person is happy enough to think he has reached the happiest moment of his life, he will be hopeful enough to believe his future will be just as beautiful, more so.”

Manuscript Hunter

Checking out Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459). The rediscoverer of Lucretius' 1st century BC manuscript 'De rerum natura' (English: On the Nature of Things).

Sowhat? A little patience please, I almost finished reading Greenblatt, 'The Swerve: How the World Became Modern' (2011). 

Lucretius? Yes, the one who explained 4th century BC epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience. You remember Epicurus, right?

Sign of Becom.i..n...g

Dutch artist Berndnaut Smilde creates clouds. Nimbus clouds that last only a few seconds. Just long enough to be photographed. Cool!

 

For Smilde those clouds are a "sign of loss or becoming", "just a fragment" or "something that happened on a specific location and is now gone".

Source: here and here.

Box with Butterflies

In 1925 it was found like this near the Great Pyramid of Giza, Cairo, Egypt:

After reconstruction of the jewel box:

In color:

These objects are silver bracelets from Queen Hetepheres I (around  2600 BC) inlaid with turquoise, lapis lazuli and carnelian in the form of a butterfly. More details of  'G 7000X' at Digital Giza: here and here.

Wondering:

• Are all bracelets identical? 
• Why does someone want to have 20 identical bracelets? (Assuming that all two rows are full.)
• Did the bracelets belong to one person? For her use only?
• Did Hetepheres I - her mummie is missing - wear the four missing bracelets?
• What did the Ancient Egyptians "read" when they "saw" - mark that we have more senses - an butterfly? According to Haynes in 'The Symbolism and Significance of the Butterfly in Ancient Egypt' (Stellenbosch University 2013): freedom, re-birth and safe passage to the after-life. Source: here.

I found these on The Internet. They don't look like the originals. Copies? 

I Will

"You know I think your skin is the perfect color
But it's always your eyes that pull me under"

Song: here.

Room With a View

"From the start they didn't know exactly why, why
Winter came and made it so all look alike, look alike
Underneath the grass would grow, aiming at the sky
(...)
Tell me now of the very souls that look alike, look alike"

Song: here

Dutchness

Not a bad map on Dutchness. Source: DutchReview.

Hands with Rings

 

In the Klosterkirche in Blomberg, Lippe, Germany are Bernhard VII. zur Lippe (1428-1511) and his wife Anna Gräfin von Holstein-Schauenburg burried. (Mark, the pictures above are from the Martinikirche and not from the Klosterkirche.) Their grave is on the choir inside the church. Pontifical!

For me is remarkable that his hands are down. I read: at rest. Her hands are up. I read: praying.

Next to that she only has a ring on her left forefinger. He has a ring both on his left and right ring finger. What would this mean?

I love the wisdom on this shield on one of the Blomberger houses (located at the Weinberggasse):

10

Well... what to say, 10 years after date? Today, it is exactly ten years ago I started this webblog. To share me with you or me4you.

You! You brought back the happiness of writing and sharing me. Too long I was a kid playing alone in a sandpit. Not interested in the world outside my own sandpit with books and projects. A long list of books and projects tumbling over each other. For the viewer outside it must seem inextricable and random but for me it all makes perfect sense.

Between 17 and 21 I kept a personal handwritten diary. Last week I checked it out for what exact images I used before I went for six months to the Sinai, Egypt in 1987. I couldn't find what I was looking for. A bottleneck for me is that I don't want to read too deep and close because I dislike the younger version of me ... I was so over the top and intense. Unbearable lightness of being. 

I want to share with you today some of my #Sinai experiences: 

#Minefield. Remember the two stones I sent to you? I found those handmade artifacts while being trapped in a minefield. I realized I was in a minefield when I saw the back of the minefield-sign hanging on barbed wire. Just a split second after my first thought: which moron turned over the signs and why? Realizing that we had walked too long on the beaches and clambered over rocks and lost our situational awareness. I was more a tourist than being a soldier who takes each step carefully.

#Ouch. Remember the biting animal that came out of the 'Conus Textile' shell I found in the Red Sea? I wrote about it before in this post: 'Ouch'. I realized a couple of years ago, I was lucky that day because this shell is the house of the predatory and venomous species of sea snail named 'Conus'. Venomous!

#Adventure. It's more than 30 years ago I went to the Sinai as a drafted Dutch soldier. I wanted to have an adventure and feel - yes feel - the colours of the desert, Egypt and Israel. Away from the girl that caused me back than so much frustration: I wanted her but she didn't want me as her lover. In retrospect I am so glad I went to the yellow of the sun, the brown and red and black of the desert and the blue of the sea and sky. Happily submerged in a world of Others.

#Movie. I remember the countless evenings we went to the "theatre" for watching a movie on a big screen. Together with 100 other soldiers watching a movie, drink a cold soda and behind the screen the island of Tiran in the setting sun or light of the moon. And a cool wind from the sea.

#Postman. I remember the empty roads while driving for hours in a Jeep from one (sector control center) post to another of our sector. My Dutch colleagues being happy to receive snail-mail from home. Being me their post-man.

#Petra. I remember the permission I asked to travel to Jordan to visit Petra. Disappointingly, I never got this permit!

#AloneInCairo. I remember travelling in a bus to Cairo. For ten days alone in this big city. So much to see and check out in a city with as many people as live in my whole home country. At the first evening in my hotel I met a girl from Australia while I was having dinner. We chit-chat a little. Nothing happened. The next morning I met her again at breakfast. We agreed to see Cairo that day together. So we did. That evening we made love for the first time. For the next 9 days we were inseparable. Visit musea and other sightseeings. Make love. Listen to German music (Marlene Dietrich) on my taperecorder. At the last evening together we agreed not to keep in touch. She would travel alone for another week in Egypt and after that to her boyfriend and work in a hotel in Switzerland. I had to take up my telephone-operator work ("Operator, can I help you?") again. Next to not keep in touch we agreed too that if I wouldn't ask she wouldn't tell if she got pregnant during one of our endless making love sessions. I never asked her! So, out there, there could be a child who would be 32 years old now. Being out of touch with me as his or her father.

#SharpTurn. I remember the accident we almost had with our car driving from Eilat to Tel Aviv during a weekend. I was the official driver. One of my colleagues asked: can I drive please? OK for me. On the straight road everything went well. At the first sharp turn we almost crashed. I scolded him and out of breath I asked him: "where did you learn to drive?" His reply, "I can't, I don't even have a drivers licence." I was speechless because it never crossed my mind that someone without a driver’s licence, could or would ask to drive.

#Poet. I remember two colleagues who told me over lunch that I was a poet. The way I spoke and the way I played with images and metaphors... just like a poet. Where did that come from?

#ComingOut. I knew that I was going to study Philosophy after my time in the army but in my time there I never told anyone. I always told that I was going to study History. It was a lie but I didn't want to justify again and again why I wanted to. The strange thing is that in retrospect I did both.

#Shifts. All the above are high- and lowlights. The days in between, most days, were in shifts: 6 hours on and 6 hours off duty. Live in airconditioned rooms. Lunch and dinner in a mess with 99% men. If there was a woman - rare - you could always tell where she walked by all the faces that "followed" her behind. Like a school of fish that change direction time and again as if through an invisible hand. Men!

P.S. I wrote about the Sinai before in 'Gavin Maxwell. My fascination' (February 2010)  and 'It Must Be Wrinkles' (May 2017).

Que Reste (2)

Remember my post 'Que Reste-t-il?' (May 16, 2017)? I always thought it was a Stacey Kent song but yesterday I heard a "cover" from 'Tess et les Moutons' on the radio where Tess told that it was a Jacques Brel song. Brel?

Back to the sources! The lyrics are written by Charles Trenet and its music by Léo Chauliac (source). First recorded by singer Lucienne Boyer in 1942: here.

P.S. Mark that the poem inside the "song" in my 2017 post is from me4you.

Plunging

Golden ear-rings in the form of dolphins. 3rd - 2nd century BC, Mediterranean Sea. More details:

P.S. Item from British Museum, London: here.

Der Meister

Look a this "tool" from 3rd century AD.

Details:

"In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister". In that case: ...

P.S.  Item from The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, UK: here.
P.P.S. Quote from Goethe, 'Natur und Kunst' (1800): here.

Favorite Day

A part of the Winnie-the-Pooh stories are situated at Cotchford Farm (UK). The country house of writer  Alan A. Milne (1882-1956). Lovely house.

The Navigator of Print

Books, pamphlets, pictures and music. 

Printed books, pamphlets, pictures and music. 

Printed books, pamphlets, pictures and music in libraries. The birth of libraries confronted its owners, in the 16th century in Europe, with new challenges: how and where to put them on a shelf, how to avoid buying the same book, pamphlets, pictures and music twice, how to make good use of their content? Hernando Columbus (1488–1539) was one of the first (or the first?) to give an answer to these challenges. He solved it with four books and an umbrella process (“root system”). Four books:

Process:
Every year a small bookstore will send worth five “ducados” from printed material (books, pamphlets, pictures and music) from Rome, Venice, Nuremberg, Antwerp, Paris and Lyon to Hernando’s universal library (“Hernandina”) in Seville, Spain.  The bookstore will start first with buy as much “ephemeral” or “dunghill” pamphlets as possible and only then moving to larger printed books. They will collect, "all books, in all languages and on all subjects, which can be found both within Christendom and without" (page 316).
Every sixth year an agent from the Hernandina will sweep through a smaller series of cities to seek out titles that had been missed based on the catalogues of the Hernandina.

Hernado wanted his library to become a universal library, where the thoughts of the world were stored, all of the possible fields of knowledge covered and making all terrains one. This library needed to be guarded, ordered, arranged and tended like a garden. The universal library was an engine for extracting the writing of all mankind. To order things in such a way that all new things are sought out and gathered forever. Not bounded by language, subject or religion. A place of pleasure, magic and astonishment (page 84, 240 and 314-317).

Hernando’s father – Christopher Columbus – navigated to and discovered new, unknown physical lands on planet Earth. A navigator of oceans. Hernando wanted with his universal library a place in history equal to his father’s. A navigator of print.

In the book The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books. Young Columbus and the Quest for a Universal Library (London 2018) all the tiny little elements of a personal live that preceded his universal library is worked out with great detail by Edward Wilson-Lee. Lovely! Perfect read!

P.S. Did 'The Book of Authors' consist of one or two lists? (1) list from A to Z from Author with title(s) and year of publication; (2) list from A to Z from Title with its author(s) and year of publication? Did list 2 exist too?
P.P.S. I don't comprehend the relation between 'The Book of Authors' and 'The Book of Sciences' and 'The Table of Authors and Sciences'. Is the table based on the two books? How to order infinitely with physical catalogue or index cards? Catalogue or index cards bearing (hieroglyphic) symbols?
P.P.P.S. The universal library never got the name Hernando wished 'Hernandina' but was and is named 'Biblioteca Colombina'. Today housed in 'Institución Colombina' together with other libraries under one roof.
P.P.P.P.S. I get the impression the process of the universal library never started. The book doesn't tell if it did or not.

Tending Like Garden & Begin Magic

In 1522 Hernando Columbus, son of explorer Christopher Columbus, lost 1,637 of his books in a shipping disaster. Losing these books taught him an important lesson:

"his was not an imaginary library, like the storied one at Alexandria (...). It was a library of flesh and blood - or rather paper, inkt and vellum - and needed to be housed, guarded, ordered and arranged, tended to like a garden that must be restrained from the wilderness to which it always wishes to return. For the first time in his itinerant life, Hernando needed to put down roots, to find a place where his books could be safe; and one whence the library could begin to work its magic upon the world."

He found a house for his books in Seville (Spain):

P.S. Quote from Edward Wilson-Lee, 'The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books' (London 2018), 240.

Counting

I count four birds and three snakes. You?

History of Snob Taste or Dandy in Age of Mass Culture or A "Sweet" Cynicism

Sunsan Sontag (1933-2004) wrote in 1964 the article Notes on "Camp" (here). Her 58 notes in  sometimes pollarded quotes (bold is added by me):

56. "Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges."

50. "The history of Camp taste is part of the history of snob taste."  

45. "Camp is the answer to the problem: how to be a dandy in the age of mass culture. One can be serious about the frivolous, frivolous about the serious."

35 and 36. Bosch is camp. Rembrandt is not.

6. "The personality and many of the works of Jean Cocteau are Camp, but not those of André Gide."

8. "[Camp] is the love of the exaggerated, the "off," of things-being-what-they-are-not. The best example is in Art Nouveau, the most typical and fully developed Camp style. Art Nouveau objects, typically, convert one thing into something else: the lighting fixtures in the form of flowering plants, the living room which is really a grotto." 

 

10. "Camp sees everything in quotation marks. It's not a lamp, but a "lamp"; not a woman, but a "woman." To perceive Camp in objects and persons is to understand Being-as-Playing-a-Role. It is the farthest extension, in sensibility, of the metaphor of life as theater."

19. "The pure examples of Camp are unintentional; they are dead serious. The Art Nouveau craftsman who makes a lamp with a snake coiled around it is not kidding, nor is he trying to be charming."

28. "Again, Camp is the attempt to do something extraordinary. But extraordinary in the sense, often, of being special, glamorous."

55. "Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. It only seems like malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it's not a ruthless but a sweet cynicism.)"