Dario Rivarossa, Artist and Translator, Reviews The Bottomless Bottle of Beer

Gren Spider
Dario Rivarossa

Another five-star review of my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, has appeared on Amazon:

"In the beginning there was the Word," and rarely has the Word found such a captive fan as Prof. Horace Jeffery Hodges: a keen reader of both holy and horror texts, and a writer who weighs every term. Thank God, in an era like this in which words are sold in bulk! The novel -- in this version, illustrated by the well-known Surrealist and comic artist Terrance Lindall -- reinterprets the fundamental myth of Man's Fall on the basis of the Bible and western literature in what may look like a parody but, on closer inspection, is a refined tribute. Hodges is a king of puns, and his pun-theism provides here a brilliant new episode in a literary Fantasy-Christian tradition that includes Milton, Blake, Tolkien, and CS Lewis.

I suppose I must again offer full disclosure. Dario Rivarossa, another friend of mine, posted this kind review, but I do believe he means what he writes and isn't just being nice because we're friends.

Incidentally, if I'm king of puns, Dario is the emperor! He's also an artist, a translator, and an all-around Renaissance man . . .

Dario Rivarossa: Satan-s-coffin

Satan-s-coffin
Dario Rivarossa

I believe this is the last of Dario's repostings from his idiosyncratic illustrations of scenes in my story, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer." This scene 'depicts' Dan Webster defending the Naif by surreptitiously undermining Mr. Em's word(s) and thereby casting doubt upon the contract signed between Mr. Em and the Naif:

" . . . More relevant were the consequences for language following upon that dire revolt. According to one record, Mr. Em, who has gone by various names over his career, taunted the angelic loyalists by 'scoffing in ambiguous words' that misled them to think he intended an offer of peace, thereby gaining a tactical advantage. I do not imply any judgment by this reminder . . . But . . ."

- Horace Jeffery Hodges, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer," in Emanations: Second Sight, page 154

This is taken from the short story version of my tale, but the somewhat expanded, novella version can be previewed here -- and ordered here, if anyone is interested . . .

Dario Rivarossa's Reposting of "A Neat Net" for The Bottomless Bottle of Beer

A Neat Net
Dario Rivarossa

Dario is still reposting his idiosyncratic renditions of scenes in my story about the Naif and his cursed beer, along with a bit of dialogue between the lawyer -- a Mr. Dan Webster -- and the Naif:

" . . . and thereby spin a web of dissimulation to catch a falling star like a fallen, dim firefly . . . We must give the devil his due by playing Mr. Faland Em's name game, but in all innocence."
"That'll work?"
"It will, or it won't."

- Horace Jeffery Hodges, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer," in Emanations: Second Sight, page 143

This is taken from the short story version, but the novella version with Terrance Lindall's illustrations can be previewed here, and ordered here.

I presume the image shows "a fallen, dim firefly," i.e., "Mr. Faland Em." Well, go and catch a falling star . . .

Dario Rivarossa: "BBB: Drinking Culture"

Drinking Culture

Dario Rivarossa

My Italian friend Dario Rivarossa, artist and all-around Renaissance man, is still posting his idiosyncratic images inspired by my story about a bottomless bottle of beer -- images that regular readers have seen posted here before, but not with the accompanying words from my story, at least, I think not. The passage below has the Naif reading a review of a play that he doesn't realize is partly about his own life, in its consequences, anyway:

I turned to the entertainment pages . . . and noticed a review of some new play. That one caught my eye because of the weird title: The Call of Cthulhu. . . . Baffled, I read on, learning much about Cthulhu but nothing about a beer called Shoggoth's Old Peculiar.

- Horace Jeffery Hodges, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer," in Emanations: Second Sight, page 136

In Dario's accompanying illustration, note Cthulhu's bottle head with its emanating tentacles, one of which has captured a person, most likely the Naif in my tale. I'm unsure where to look for Cthulhu's eyes, nor do I know where to sniff out the location of Cthulhu's nose.

Dario's reference is to the short story version, but the somewhat expanded version with Terrance Lindall's many illustrations can be seen in part here . . . and ordered here.

Dario's Hella: Idiosyncratic or Ideosynthetic?

Hell-ooooo

Dario Rivarossa

Readers have seen this before, but since Dario's only now posting these images of characters from my story on his blog, I figure I might as well post them again here, along with quotes from the short story version, which below has the vampiric witch Hella speaking to the demonic clown Koroviev, two characters some readers will recognize as borrowed from Mikhail Bulgakov's greatest novel, The Master and Margarita:

She looked up from her readjustments to give me a seraphic smile and say, "Koroviev, who's your friend?" . . .

"Hmmm," he mused. "I've no earthly idea."

- Horace Jeffery Hodges, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer," in Emanations: Second Sight, pages 130-131

Koroviev is not to be trusted, but neither is Hella, though Koroviev is perhaps forthright in his response since his acquaintance with the 'friend' (the Naif) is unearthly. The expanded, novella version of the story -- which doesn't differ in these lines, however -- can be previewed here, though not specifically these two interlocutors, for whose dialogue the novella must be ordered.

Dario's Hella, incidentally, is an idiosyncratic synthesis of Bulgakovian and Hodgesian ideas . . .

Dario Rivarossa: "BBB: Tell me narwhy"

Narwazazel
Dario Rivarossa

I'm still reposting Dario's idiosyncratic series of artworks based on my story, and here below, Dario quotes a line:

I suddenly recalled Azazello's tooth and shivered. But I didn't think he was a vampire.

- Horace Jeffery Hodges, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer," in Emanations: Second Sight, page 125

I agree. No vampire ever looked like that! But Azazello actually looked something like a vampire, as you can see from Terrance Lindall's rendition in the story's novella format here.

And order here.

Dario Rivarossa: "Beerie Tales"

Beerie Tales

Dario Rivarossa

Here's yet another image by Dario Rivarossa that regular readers have seen before, and he quotes my story:

[Wife:] "Show me the label. . . . Shoggoth's Old Peculiar. . . . It's Irish. See the leprechauns!"

[Husband:] "Leprechauns? . . . Aren't those horns and hooves? These aren't leprechauns. They're satyrs."

- Horace Jeffery Hodges, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer," in Emanations: Second Sight, pages 120-121

Dario quotes from the short story version, but the novella version doesn't differ on the details given above. If these exciting lines prick your curiosity, tickle your fancy, and stimulate your desire for great literature, you can still settle for less by accessing this "explosion in a cesspool" in its novella version for a preview here.

To purchase, go here.

Dario Rivarossa: Images for "The Bad Little Boy"

Some years ago, I came up with a story for my son, En-Uk, who was about three years old, maybe three-and-a-half, and rather difficult. Indeed, that difficult age between the Terrible Twos and the Formidable Fours: the Threatening Threes! The story was composed in the telling as I rapidly racked my brains for something to get En-Uk's attention and make him behave. The story caught his attention but failed to alter his behavior. He merely insisted that he was a good boy.

Well, recently, my friend Dario had opportunity to read this story -- and was inspired to illustrate it! Here it is below, with Dario's illustrations:

The Bad Little Boy

By Horace Jeffery Hodges

Illustrated by Dario Rivarossa

Once upon a time, there was a bad little boy. If his parents told him to go to the mountain, he went to the river. If they told him to go to the river, he went to the mountain.

He never did anything that his parents wanted.

But deep down inside, his skeleton wanted to be good.

So, one night, while the bad little boy was sleeping, the skeleton unzipped his belly and ran away . . . to be good.

Next morning, when the bad little boy woke up, he found that he couldn't move.

Able to shift his eyeballs slightly, he discovered that he was completely flat.

Downstairs, his parents waited, curious why their bad little boy was getting up so late.

Finally, up the stairs they went, only to find a flat boy in their son's bed.

Not recognizing their flat boy, and not knowing what to do, they sold him to the circus, which put him in its freak show as the star attraction.

"Come see the flat freak!" the barker cried as the circus traveled the world.

Meanwhile, the skeleton was having problems of his own.

Although he tried to be good, offering to help old ladies cross the street or to change flat tires for women who couldn't, or other good deeds, even strong men ran off screaming in terror.

"Perhaps," he thought, "I should return to the bad little boy and offer a deal."

So, back he went and knocked on the bad little boy's door.

The parents answered the door, but looked aghast!

"Please," implored the good little skeleton, "hear me out. I am your little boy's skeleton."

And he explained everything. When they had heard his entire story, the parents were utterly distraught.

"You mean that we sold our own boy to the circus?" they asked.

"I will get him back," promised the skeleton, hoping to perform at least one good deed.

The skeleton searched all over the world, never seeming to arrive any place in time to rescue the bad little boy, until one day, unexpectedly, he came upon the circus in a small town.

Noticing a long line waiting for the freak show, he peeked inside the tent -- and saw the bad little boy, now a flat little boy, lying flat on a raised platform where the line was filing by.

Thinking that the boy was successful as the circus's main attraction, the skeleton considered leaving without speaking to him first.

But feeling that he should at least check, the skeleton stole into the boy's room late that night.

Awakened by the intrusion, the bad little flat boy rolled his eyes and saw his skeleton.

The skeleton explained why he had come. "So, here's the deal," he offered. "If you promise to be good, then I will crawl back under your skin. Do you want that? If so, blink."

The bad little boy blinked, and the skeleton unzipped his stomach and crawled back inside.

Together, they trekked back to their parents, who were overjoyed to have their boy again.

From that day on, the bad little boy was always good.

So, of course, they all lived happily ever after.

A longer version of this story was posted on this blog some years back, but this shorter version is the more original.

Dario Rivarossa: Wolf Imagery . . .

Some years back, I posted a "Just So Story" titled "Why Wolves Howl at the Moon" that explained where the moon comes from, and I recently showed my Italian friend Dario Rivarossa this little fable, which spurred his aesthetic imagination, prompting him to create three images to illustrate three of the scenes:

"Once a month, they would take the ball out and play with it.

Their games were simple -- throwing, catching, and chasing."

"In the course of time, however,

there arose a selfish wolf as leader of the pack.

He was strong and clever,

but his selfishness marred his character."

"The moon, however, belongs to no one now,

and sheds its borrowed light on the just and the unjust,

the wise and the foolish . . . the pack,

and the lonely leader of the pack."

The third image is rather mysterious . . . but that's Dario's "SighNature" style. Anyway, we'll see what comes of this little children's story if Dario feels inclined to create more images . . .

Dario Rivarossa and Terrance Lindall: Two Artists Draw Blood

SighNature

Dario Rivarossa

My Italian friend Dario continues to post his series based on my story, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, adding these words by way of explanation:

. . . so that the blood oozed forth and, much to my wonderment, into what turned out to be a hollow pin. Upon judging it full, he stopped and held the pin out for me to accept. I took it.

"Now," instructed Mr. Em, "sign your name."

- Horace Jeffery Hodges, "The Bottomless Bottle of Beer," in Emanations: Second Sight, page 117

Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.

- John Milton, Paradise Lost, IX: 782-784. This quote was a fitting key supplied by Jeffery while commenting on this picture in his turn.

In addition to these idiosyncratic images by Dario, you can also see the official images by Terrance Lindall in the published, novella version of the book, previewable in part here, and with a pre-previewable image below:

Pricking Scene
Terrance Lindall

Rather different from Dario's more spare, abstract style. If Lindall's version proves of interest, you can order the book with this scene and many more here.

As for Dario's idiosyncratic images, I've previously posted on each one, but I'm curious to see his own postings and remarks as he puts each one up on his own blog . . .

Dario Rivarossa: BBB Postings

BeheMoth
Dario Rivarossa

Back in December or so, I posted Dario's idiosyncratic renditions of several characters from my story The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, but Dario himself has only now gotten around to posting them one by one on his own blog, starting with his first illustration, BeheMoth, and since his interpretations are authoritative, I quote him here in full, including his lead-up:

Hopefully nobody will be offended by the opinion that in the recent US anthology Emanations: Second Sight the "book of revelation," or rather the revelation of the book, is Horace Jeffery Hodges' (not very) short story The Bottomless Bottle of Beer. Now also available as a separate novella illustrated by Terrance Lindall. A Milton-based history of a modern Faust who sells his soul to some strange Mr Em for a bottle of good beer that never dries up. Will our hero succeed, etc., and how? Here's a personal version of Mr Em's uncanny cat Behemoth -- playing on the word "moth" in his name.

Actually . . . a postmodern Faust. But thanks, Dario, for your kind words. I hope they are deserved. As Dario also notes, the 'short' story appears also as a novella, and as I've previously noted, previewable here and available here.

Incidentally, in asking, "Will our hero succeed?", Dario likely means "Will our hero survive?" There's just one way to find out . . .

Dario's Signature Sighting of the Sigh of Nature

SighNature

Dario Rivarossa

This very abstract artwork by my friend Dario reveals a very attenuated, displaced relation to a line in my story, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer: "feeling as though all of nature were as trembling with intoxication." Dario's connecting it to Milton's lines in Paradise Lost 9.782-784:

Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat
Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe,
That all was lost.

Or as Dario describes the image in his email: "the universal meaning of the SighNature." The image draws together several scenes in my story -- Azazello drawing blood, the Naif signing the contract in blood, and the Naif plucking the bottle from the table -- that collectively contribute to nature's own intoxication.

I'd never realized that the single-fanged Azazello connotes a mosquito, but that's a signature work by Dario, whose artworks are filled with bug-eyed monsters (or 'mansters'), and what better as a sign of fallen nature than the bloodsucking mosquito?

As for the various puns at work, they're in Dario's DNA.

Carter Kaplan's Anthology Published: Emanations: Second Sight

Emanations: Second Sight

Amazon

The anthology Emanations: Second Sight, edited by the poet and novelist Carter Kaplan, is now in print and available through Amazon! Despite reaching about 400 pages, the price is only about 13 dollars!

Unfortunately, there's no "Look/Search Inside the Book" -- not yet anyway -- so the stories, poems, and essays can't be previewed before ordering . . . though that may change after I check with Carter.

I haven't seen the hard copy yet, but when I receive one, I'll perhaps say more. For the moment, I can affirm that it has the short story version of my novella, The Bottomless Bottle of Beer, with three illustrations by Terrance Lindall, just in case any reader is interested.

Dario Rivarossa -- a regular commentator here -- has contributed many illustrations to the anthology, including his reinterpretation of Paradise Lost. See his announcements, here and here.

Pinokio: More Art from En-Uk

Pinokio


My artistically inclined son has recently posted an intriguing image and 'explanation' on his art blog. The image is the one above, titled "Pinokio" and thereby distinguished, sort of, from the literary figure Pinocchio, yet sharing with the latter some generic characteristics, as we see from En-Uk's description:

This drawing is called "Pinokio." I made this drawing because I read Pinokio a lot when I was young, and because it is kind of funny that if you lie then the nose gets bigger. The pinokio that I drew is blind. If you look at the eyes, then you can see that his eyes are closed. I think this pinokio is ugly. This pinokio is from En-Ukistan, and there are a lot of pinokios there. Ugly pinokios, and handsome pinokios . . . I think En-Ukistan is the best place to live. I wish some people would come to En-Ukistan. This pinokio is a boy, but pinokios are really hard to distinguish as man or woman. It's a hard life for pinokios. If a pinokio wants to become a person, it has to eat grass for 2000 years, but they usually die before the 2000th year. Well, I don't have anything to say anymore, so I guess bye!

Apparently, En-Uk read about Pinokio a lot when he was younger, but he must have been reading stories in Korean because I didn't know anything about this, which would also explain En-Uk's transliteration of the name, rather than the correct spelling "Pinocchio." Interestingly, En-Uk has worked in some Korean mythology, an allusion to the foundational myth of the Korean people, according to which, a bear and a tiger asked the god of the heavens for permission to become human, but only the bear succeeded in the assigned task of eating solely garlic and mugwort for 100 days and becoming a woman, who then married a son of the heavenly god and gave birth to Dangun, the first Korean.

This art post received a couple of amusing comments, the first by our artistically gifted friend Dario Rivarossa:

Very nice story, and . . .

I read Pinokio a lot when I was young

. . . hope you will still be reading it now that you are an old man. It is a book full of wisdom.

My wife and I were also both amused that twelve-year-old En-Uk would wax nostalgic about his youth. As for the second comment, it comes from the warped mind of another artistically gifted friend, Kevin Kim:

I can imagine two Pinocchios telling lies for hours and hours, growing their noses longer and longer, and eventually engaging in amazing nose/sword fights.

Depend on Kevin for some image inventive and bizarre! For readers wishing to try their hidden hand at equally amusing remarks, click over to En-Uk's Art Blog and type away!

Dario Rivarossa inspires En-Uk Sequoya Hwang!

As I noted some days ago, my multitalented cyberfriend Dario Rivarossa has started his own art blog, and I wonder if he might have been inspired to do so by my son, En-Uk, who has been maintaining an art blog for over a year now and has caught Dario's attention with some of the images drawn. Whatever Dario's source of inspiration, his own blog has in turn now inspired En-Uk to post an art entry nominating Dario's blog, (He)Art by dhr, for a Liebster Award.

Here's the specific art blog entry by Dario, titled "Meek Hell Angel," that inspired En-Uk:


And below comes the image drawn by En-Uk in response, "Monster Grasshopper":

Moreover, I now see that Dario has already seen En-Uk's blog entry and blogged on it here! The art world moves fast -- so quickly that one must run as fast as one can just to stay in one place!

One just can't keep up, though maybe two can . . .

Dario Rivarossa starts to blog . . .

EkHeart in Eden

Dario Rivarossa

(Image from (He)Art by dhr)

My cyberfriend Dario Rivarossa, who posts comments here quite often, is an amusing, humorous, multitalented fellow, combining erudition with intellect, curiosity with discipline, and artistry with ethic, among other things, such as a talent for languages and skill as a translator.

He is also now a blogger, and his Blogspot blog is titled (He)Art by dhr.

Actually, I hadn't realized that he wasn't already a blogger. But I guess that I'll have to accept that he's a neophyte to the art of blogging, for here's the evidence from his initial post:

Hello?...

Why, hello. Or is it, "Hello?"

Dear Reader & Blogger

Gasp! How did he know that?! I am a reader, obviously, but how did Dario know that I also blog? Naturally, he knows that I am a blogger, but how did he know that I would visit and read his first entry? This man has preternatural foresight! Unless he was referring to the web host for Blogspot blogs, namely, Blogger, and for some obscure reason was apostrophizing it with a greeting . . .

welcome to my first attempt to start a Blog. I will know if it worked only after seeing it online.

It 'seems' to be working. Ah, here's some more:

Since I am no mother-tongue, the texts will contain several mistakes, but it doesn't matter: they will be outnumbered by the mistakes in the contents. E.g. I already registered this web address two times, and cannot delete the 2nd copy . . . I dunno-how skipped the Instruction page, so I am improvising . . . Now, will our hero one day succeed in modifying the Profile

I could probably give some advice . . . but what fun is there in that? Let this 'none-of-a-mother-tongue' struggle with the new medium of blogging. Why, blogging is the cutting edge of cyberspace, so one must blaze one's own path with that keen, avant-garde edge. Besides, I'll be overjoyed to see some other fellow's self-inflicted wounds, for the vanguard carry sharp, two-edged swords. Dario's careless cuts will make me feel so much better about my own wounded self.

Basically, the Blog aims at showing my drawings, mostly Fan Art devoted to classical Japanese Anime characters (reworked), and odd&ends freely based on the verses of poets like John Milton.

Uh-oh, people. Another Miltonist hawking his Miltonia. But at least Dario's blog will display art that hasn't been recycled from Wikipedia, unlike the found-art images supplied by yours truly. Dario will be recounting the future adventures of a certain "EkHeart," apparently a cyborg of the 23rd century.

This is the first drawing, sort of a Manifesto.

The revolution will be blogged.

Bye! --------- and, buy, in case ;-)

There it is, the initial double-punning, sales-pitching, counter-cultural dénouement, enclosed in case, yours for the low price of . . . free.

You can't do better than that.

Diogenes: Carter Kaplan

Diogenes

Carter Kaplan

(Image from Amazon)

Carter Kaplan, a fellow scholar of John Milton who sometimes visits here and offers comments, has published another creative work. Some readers might recall his novel, Tally-Ho, Cornelius!, for I blogged about that book. This time, Kaplan has written a play, Diogenes, set in Hellenic Greece precisely on the cusp of Hellenistic antiquity. It's actually a play within a play, a cross-dressing tragedy tricked out as comedy, with inside jokes on famous lines from antiquity and infamous philosophers from modernity, and it's both humorous and thought-provoking. In a scene where Tyrannosaurus and Demeter, the parents of an absent young Achilles, along with Ionedes and Chloe, the parents of an absent young Chrysis, query "[t]he very flower of Athens' intellectual power," a heady "bouquet of philosophers" (p. 54), concerning the whereabouts of the missing young couple, Kaplan pokes fun at continental philosophy in a send-up of two modern French thinkers:

Tyrannosaurus: What about that dancing fellow there with the white face? (Points to a philosopher in black leotard with white face makeup.)

Dean of Philosophers: That is Derridada. He does not speak because to him words refer only to other words.

Tyrannosaurus: But his movements communicate meaning. Look there, it looks like he is pressing his hands against a wall.

Dean of Philosophers: But there is no wall. It is but an illusion signifying nothing.

(Derridada's miming motions increase to a welter of confusion.)

Tyrannosaurus: What a silly fellow! How has he come to be among the philosopher if he cannot express himself?

Dean of Philosophers: (stares at Derridada and shrugs) He just seems to fit in.

Ionedes: What about this foreign-looking Johnny?

Dean of Philosophers: Ah, that is Foucaultes. He has plenty to say. Don't you, Foucaultes?

Foucaultes: It is about time you gentlemen called upon me, or rather my historic function, because my function has figured out everything. My function has reduced it all to a theory of interrogating dialogues, by which all affairs can be measured and explained. Where you have made your error is in not understanding the function of history and social force focused through the apparatus of punishment, which culminates in the apex of the human organism, at last liberated and transformed as unit-component in the totalized social system. You have failed to punish your children according to the punishment they should receive. Hand your children over to me and I shall make them independent of their disobedience; and thus independent of their selves they shall be. I will tie them up, place rubber masks over their heads, and press my convincing fists deep into their fluepipes.

(All stare at Foucaultes a full twenty seconds.)

Demeter: Unbearable! Bitter! Bitter! No mother can tolerate such words.

Chloe: (with dry and uncharacteristic sobriety) Ionedes, this one is a very unpleasant person.

Ionedes: Tyrannosaurus, I know Athens is a brave marketplace of braver ideas, but would it be possible to put this one to death? (pages 56-57)

And Tyrannosaurus proceeds to do just that for Ionedes, thereby providing empirical demonstration for the usefulness of having a tyrant as friend. But not everything is fun and games. The play goes on to make a serious point that I shall not reveal here so as to avoid divulging any plot-spoilers . . . but also because I've not yet quite figured out what that serious point is. I'll keep at it, though, till I understand, for that's the part I have to play.

Meanwhile, I recommend the play. I don't read a lot of dramas, for I'd generally prefer to watch them staged, but I enjoyed reading this one, finding it humorous enough at times to make me laugh out loud. My cyber-friend Dario Rivarossa, artist and erudite translator who visits here from Italian cyberspace, also likes the play, and in his amusing Amazon review, "Kaplan Plays the Oracle Well," says the following:

When someone speaks by a "double tongue", it means that "the gods' presence is making itself felt in the room". So, as you read this book, you can be sure that the gods are surrounding you, because no one is more double-tongued than Carter Kaplan. Meaning that he is a liar? Not at all: he is the sincere singer of that twisted and twisting mirror which, in fact, is our life. Something like the labyrinth in Dürrenmatt "Minotaurus", but here Kaplan has fun in playing with Greek traditions even more than that.

For a starter, the drama takes place no less than in Atlantis, where a comedy set in Athens is on stage. The showing of Athens within Atlantis would already prove interesting enough, but the writer doesn't stop here: besides a quite recognizable philosopher Diogenes, in fact, he introduces such characters as Tyrannosaurus, Derridada, Foucaultes, and hints at GMOs [i.e., genetically modified organisms] as the means by which ancient Greece solved the problem of food. However, there's much more than easy puns and updated satire against the American Empire and the Western Thought in all of this. The plot, if experimental, is well built; the basic, troubled love story follows "that Shakesperean Rag---". And the Commedia dell'Arte, much appreciated e.g. by Arthur Schopenhauer? Anyway, the events succeed in both catching our attention and making us "reflect". As well as laugh and dream.

I hope that it won't be only enjoyed as a book to be read privately, but that some company will actually stage it too. Meanwhile, tell us, Diogenes: What is Man? A plucked chicken . . . ahem . . . a featherless biped. Just, play your part! Until the goddess Athena emerges "at that shimmering break in conscience".

Break in conscience, or break in consciousness? Maybe both. But America as the Greeks? I thought we Americans were supposed to be the crude if pragmatic Romans! Well, as I said, I haven't yet figured out all of Kaplan's message.

But you should all be able to . . .

"Duck, I say."

Yesterday, on my En-Uk's Art Blog, my son drew a California surfer with a surfboard crammed into his mouth:


Just kidding. It's actually a drawing of a rude little boy sticking out his enormous, yellow tongue. Nah, still just kidding. That would be unforgiven.

He actually titled it: "The Strong Duck." I liked the image immediately upon seeing it when En-Uk asked me to proofread his English before he posted it to his blog, and I laughed out loud. Here's what my son wrote:

This drawing is called "The Strong Duck." I made this drawing because I like "The Strong Duck" comedy I made. Bye.

Dario Rivarossa liked it, too:

Wond-er-ful! I will draw him myself, then send you the picture by email through Daddy, ok?

Dario sent his own 'strong duck' drawing:


I think Dario's rendition deserves the title, "The Stronger Duck," for it's obviously more muscular, displaying those 'dukes of death', and even resembles a superhero . . . though I'm not sure that it fits the bill as a stand-in for En-Uk's duck. Dario, by the way, asked the question that's on all our minds:

What does the comedy deal with? (In brief.)

Yes, on all our minds is the topic of brevity! I debriefed En-Uk and briefly reported:

It's a divine comedy: The Strong Duck is searching through the universe for God because he holds God at fault for his appearance and is going to demand that He pay the bill, but the joke's on the duck because his looks don't stem from unnatural selection at all but from a natural process of adapting to being a bottom feeder, which strikes the duck as an insult, for he misunderstands God's description of the adaptation, so he challenges God to a duel, and . . . but I've already said too much.

As the Koreans say, "If you know too much, you will die." Or at least one Korean said that once, in a conversation class that I taught one time in an English Academy about ten years ago in Daegu. But no matter who said it, or how many times, or where it was said, it's true.

Think, for instance, of Adam and Eve . . .

Bluffing with Galileo . . .

The Cardsharps, c. 1594

Caravaggio

(Image from Wikipedia)

In yesterday's post, I sang the virtues of careful empiricism and rigorous logic, values I claimed Galileo had learned from his father, Vincenzo, but Dario Rivarossa called my bluff:

relying on empiricism and rigorous logic

Maybe not that much. See Paul Feyerabend, Against Method.

Chased, chastened, and thereby more chaste, I acknowledged the overstatement:

Also, see Heilbron, further on in the biography. Galileo learned to appeal to empiricism and rigorous logic, and even use them, but he was often bluffing, which he learned from his love of gambling, and acting out in his intellectual battles the part of the proud and adventurous knight Orlando, whom he knew well from Ariosto, having memorized large sections of the poem.

Speaking of romantic heroes, I once danced with Feyerabend's inamorata and had her smiling . . .

Of course, she was also laughing at me as she smiled. But let that be. Today, I want to back up my admission on Galileo's 'more-than-rigorous' empirical rationality:

A calculation by Galileo of the relative frequencies of specific throws with three dice has survived. Its main operative result is that 10 turns up more frequently than 9 once in 108 throws. Only a frequent player could hope to use this information to advantage. As a good gambler Galileo occasionally bluffed by raising the stakes on a losing hand -- a technique he later identified with the propensity of his philosophical opponents to add reckless worthless arguments to bad ones. The criticism better applied to him. His later claims about experimental results and theoretical insights contained a quantity of bluff. (John L. Heilbron, Galileo, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, page 24)

Unfortunately, both Galileo and I got caught bluffing, and we've both now faced our separate Italian inquisitions.

But I'm not currently under house arrest. My wife and I today went out to explore her childhood neighborhood here in Daegu and took an opportunity to peer through the cracks in a gate to see the house where she lived until she began high school. We head tomorrow for Busan, which might put me offline until Sunday, but we'll see what transpires. I might manage to locate an internet connection . . .

The Newer Model Geryon of 1902

Some readers will recall a series of posts on Dante's Geryon: 1. "Dante's Geryon and a 'Serpentine' Adam?"; 2. "Joseph Anton Koch: Geryon"; 3. "Speaking of Gustave Doré's Geryon . . ."; and 4. "Rivarossa's Jeffryon." Those who do recall will also perhaps recall that the image on the left is Gustave Doré's Geryon, borrowed from Wikipedia. But what of the image on the right? It comes to me by way of Dario Rivarossa, a translator and illustrator in Italy who continues to come across delightful finds and who tells us:

while viewing one of my books on sci-fi illustration, I found this drawing that -- in my opinion -- was surely inspired by Dante's Geryon. It refers to a book published in 1902, "L'automobile volante" (The Flying Car) by Luigi Barberis, whose name is absolutely no more remembered one century later. The artist was a certain Fortunino Matania, another 'unknown' guy. Since I haven't read the book, I cannot say whether any clear hint at Geryon was meant by the writer too.

And for those interested in pronouncing "Geryon," Dario tells us:

Btw, I just discovered that my dictionary includes the word "Geryon": it gotta be pronounced with a hard G, as you supposed.

Good to know. By the way, Dario is right about Luigi Barberis, for I've found only a handful of online references to this writer and his book, but my friend was surely speaking tongue in cheek about Fortunio Matania, for this artist has a Wikipedia entry. Since he was born in 1881, he would have been a young artist of merely 21 years when L'automobile volante appeared in in 1902. Was he inspired by Dante's Geryon? Several of his later works of illustration suggest an interest in the art and literature of earlier eras, as well as an interest in historical topics: Six Stories from Shakespeare, retold by John Buchan (1934); Raphael and Stella. A Baker's Delight Immortalised in Paint, by Matania (1944); Great Stories from History, ed. Edward Horton and Peter Shellard (1970). Since he died in 1963, that third book was either posthumous or a later edition.

Matania became very popular in the English-speaking world, as he settled in Britain and grew famous for his early depictions of the Great War, among other works of art. According to Wikipedia, he began contributing to the British woman's magazine, Britannia and Eve, soon after it was launched in 1929 and continued contributing for nearly 20 years! There's an amusing anecdote about his work for this magazine:

Generally he managed to include one or two voluptuous nudes in each picture. "The public demanded it," says Matania. "If there was no nude, then the editor or I would get a shower of letters from readers asking politely why not."

I infer from this that British women weren't the only ones looking through Britannia and Eve. Their husbands must have furtively perused its pages and secretly sent those disappointed 'fanny' letters.