Suffumigations

I want to tell you about three things.

  1. “Agrippa was not unfamiliar with inns; on the contrary, he frequented them willingly and a few small stones were sufficient to pay his bills because, as Del Rio says, he gave them the appearance of good money in the eyes of the landlord. This time, however, he had lost his magic powers and was abandoned by all except his dog. Realizing that the end was drawing near, Agrippa himself grew tired of even this last, faithful companion, and brusquely cast him away. Giovio gives his exact words: ‘Get away, damned beast, you have who brought me to utter damnation!’ The meaning of the anecdote is clear: the dog, which was of course black, was no less than the incarnation of the devil. As soon as his victim came to his senses and realized the damnation brought him by his companion, the pet ran and plunged headlong into the River Saone, splashing and giving off sulphurous fumes.”

  2. “Even compressed, folded, and enveloped, elements are powers that enlarge and distend the world. It hardly suffices to speak of a succession of limits or of frames, for every frame marks a direction of space that coexists with the others, and each form is linked to unlimited space in all directions at once. It is a broad and floating world, at least on its base, a scene or an immense plateau. But this continuity of the arts, this collective unity in extension, goes out and beyond, toward an entirely different unity that is comprehensive and spiritual, punctual, is indeed conceptual: the world as a pyramid or cone, that joins its broad material base, lost in vapors…”

  3. “But more curious than anything was a low cloud of yellow-grey smoke or vapor, and, underlying everything, a dull confused murmuring” (Ypres Salient).