daemon@ucbvax.UUCP (05/23/84)
From @MIT-MC:rhc%ucbpopuli.CC@Berkeley Wed May 23 10:39:11 1984 To tell the truth, artifice was in Des Esseints' philosophy the distinctive mark of human genious. As he used to say, Nature has had her day; she has defi- nitely and finally tired out by the sickening monotony of her landscapes and skyscapes the patience of refined tempera- ments. When all is said and done, what a narrow, vulgar affair it all is, like a petty shopkeeper selling one article of goods to the exclusion of all others; what a tiresome store of green fields and leafy trees, what a wearisome common- place collection of mountains and seas! In fact, not one of her inventions, deemed so subtle and so wonderful, which the ingenuity of mankind cannot create; no Forest of Fontainebleau, no fairest moonlight landscape but can be reproduced by stage scenery illuminated by the electric light; no waterfall but can be imitated by the proper appli- cation of hydraulics, till there is no distinguishing the copy from the original; no mountain crag but painted pasteboard can adequately represent; no flower but well chosen silks and dainty shreds of paper can manufacture the like of! Yes, there is no denying it, she is in her dotage and has long ago exhausted the simple-minded admiration of the true artist; the time is undoubtedly come when her productions must be superseded by art. Why, to take the one of all her works which is held to be the most exquisite, the one of all her creations whose beauty is by general consent deemed the most original and most per- fect, -- woman to wit, have not men, by their own unaided effort, manufactured a living, yet artificial organism that is every whit her match from the point of view of plastic beauty? Does there exist in this world of ours a being, conceived in the joys of fornication and brought to birth amid the pangs of motherhood, the model, the type of which is more daz- zlingly, more superbly beautiful than that of the two locomo- tives lately adopted for service on the Northern Railroad of France? One, the Crampton, an adorable blonde, shrill-voiced, slen- der-waisted, with her glittering corset of polished brass, her supple, catlike grace, a fair and fascinating blonde, the per- fection of whose charms is almost terrifying when, stiffening her muscles of steel, pouring the sweat of steam down her hot flanks, she sets revolving the puissant circle of her elegant wheels and darts forth a living thing at the head of the fast express or racing seaside special! The other, the Engerth, a massively built, dark-browed bru- nette, of harsh, hoarse-toned utterance, with thick-set loins, panoplied in armour-plating of sheet iron, a giantess with dishevelled mane of black eddying smoke, with her six pairs of low, coupled wheels, what overwhelming power when, shaking the very earth, she takes in tow, slowly, deliberately, the ponderous train of goods waggons. - J K Huysmans - A Rebours (Against the Grain)