Dietrich / GLOSSARY

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GLOSSARY

GLOSSARY: Mythologies of Small Things

Apple, poisoned:

I thought that, under A, we should have a reminder that ›small things‹ are not necessarily ›nice things‹ (yet compare ›Small is Beautiful‹, below).

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Bonsai wisteria:

See here: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/VanGoghOnConnoisseurship

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Clue:

Like for example a Mexican hairless dog (also called Xoloitzcuintle), depicted in a painting in Nino Filastò’s 1990 crime fiction novel Incubo di signora, a painting that is taken as being by Boltraffio, who died in 1516, when yet there were (probably) no or only very few Mexican hairless dogs to be found in Europe (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Hairless_Dog and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_conquest_of_the_Aztec_Empire).
The fake is not being found out until the transvestite Bice, who is also rendered in that picture, is being murdered.

»Clues« is, moreover, the (short) English title of an epoch-making essay by historian Carlo Ginzburg (see: http://www.princeton.edu/~ereading/Ginzburg%20Clues.pdf and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Ginzburg).

PS: The above reads also as a clue that connoisseurship is deeply intertwined with historical knowledge (it was Columbus, who apparently noted the presence of strange hairless dogs on his First journey), another clue that it is not about the mere looking (and one may call this the ›Mexican hairless dog-fallacy‹).

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Detail, Beatification of:

Interesting formulation by German writer Navid Kermani (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navid_Kermani), actually referring to the delicacies of Persian culture and to be found in his marvelous (Moby Dick-size) novel Dein Name. And one might raise the question here (without actually answering it) why it is the detail that we love, and very in particular? Why not the particular combination of details, the half or the whole?

PS: As opposed to, or in combination with: the ›Devil in the Detail‹.

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Dew (from the stormy Bermuda islands):

William Shakespeare, The Tempest, 1,2 (Ariel speaking):

»Safely in harbor
Is the king’s ship. In the deep nook where once
Thou called’st me up at midnight to fetch dew
From the still-vexed Bermoothes, there she’s hid.

Small things might be extravagant things. The philosopher Peter Sloterdijk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sloterdijk), by the way, made much out of this image.

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Finger Cup Espresso:

Thing I encountered in the United States. I am suggesting, in case it is strong enough, to call it ›Dew From the Stormy Bermuda Islands‹.

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Fragment:

How would one love to have a full score of Bruckner’s Finale to the Ninth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._9_%28Bruckner%29), and not only sketches! (May one, by the way, call him the Captain Ahab of symphonic literature, for his monumental-size scores?) But this is probably why we love fragments: because they are stimulating, because they lead other composers, humbly, to attempt a completion. And also, yes, because one may think that the whole is in the fragment (or at least work with the suggestion).
I don’t know if the whole of the unfinished Finale is in the sketches, but I also like the idea of indirectly referring to things, and this is what a something that has been defined as a fragment (otherwise it doesn’t work) actually does.

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Galaxy:

As in ›the Galaxy is on Orion’s belt‹: see: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/VisionsOfCosmopolis

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Global Village:

As in the slogan (probably one of the most mendacious and misleading slogans ever created)

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God of Small Things, The:

Referring to the novel by Arundhati Roy that, by the way uses a motto by John Berger as its motto (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_of_Small_Things and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Berger).
Is it, by the way, a god that is in the detail?

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Landscape:

To see landscape, German connoisseur Erich Steingräber (see: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/TwoMuseumSMenThomasHovingAndErichSteingr%E4ber) reminds us, it is not enough to see the detail. One has to link the details and to synthesize a mental map. – And one might add that to think society, it is not enough to think the individual. Though I don’t know if the discipline of sociology is still a relevant discipline, one should remind that it proceeds from the individual (in its social relations) to the dyad and the triad (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triad_%28sociology%29) etc.

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Manuscript L:

This is a really, really small notebook used by Leonardo da Vinci. Literally pocket-sized (although I have not tried, to stick it in my pocket). One of the notebooks kept at Paris. Maybe Leonardo had it fixed at his belt.

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Microcredit:

See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcredit (the microeconomics of virtual museums and art journals are also very worth studying).

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Microhistory:

See: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/LEMMATA

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Microstory:

See: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/LEMMATA

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Microstory of Art:

See: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/LEMMATA and http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/MicrostoryOfArtINDEX

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Mikrogramme:

Texts by Swiss writer Robert Walser (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Walser_%28writer%29 and http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/RobertWalser), and written in his miniature pencil script. (I am, by the way, also told, that the Marquis de Sade had, for economical reasons (to spare paper), a very small handwriting as well. Yet the reasons behind the Mikrogramme by Walser were probably different ones, and psychological reasons).

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Mikromachie:

Term coined by the Swiss literary critic Stefan Zweifel (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan_Zweifel). As opposed to ›Gigantomachie‹ (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigantomachie).

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Moby-Dick:

With or without hyphen, if referring to the title of the novel? I have chosen to write it with, like most whale connoisseurs do now. Yet if I am referring to the whale, I spare the hyphen.

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Monster-size:

If in need for a synonym, replacing ›big‹, one might use this.

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Nanosecond:

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanosecond. I have recently read that Biblical Hebrew lacked notions to refer to really short time units like split seconds, nanoseconds, whatever.

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Nanostory:

See: http://www.seybold.ch/Dietrich/MicrostoryOfArtPINBOARD

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Nuce, in:

In a nutshell. The idiom, apparently, goes back to Pliny the Elder (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_nuce), while nutcracking goes not. Proof: the Nutcracker Man (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OH_5).

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Pluto:

Dwarf planet (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluto), but largest object in the Kuiper belt.

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Punctum:

Term coined by the French essayist Roland Barthes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Barthes), and opposed to the notion of studium (see: http://barthesglossar.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/punctumstudium/).
In simple terms the notion of punctum means that a work of art might get you for some reason, in a sense that you are taken in. And if it gets you and you are taken in, if you are hit by that arrow and your interest is raised, one may speak of punctum, like being tapped, and as opposed to any encounter with a work of art without that sort of inner commitment, which is instigated by something, possibly a mere detail for which you might be sensitive, so that you, as a result, deal with that particular work of art on an existential, and not only on an intellectual level.

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Quark:

A fascinating journey into the building blocks of our physical universe, or something (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark). Note that only the specialists do know these things well, and they still come up with new elementary particles. Yet without their deeper understanding of physics you would certainly not being reading this (having said this – this spares me the entry for the ›Microprocessor‹).

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Short People:

Song by Singer-songwriter Randy Newman (listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NvgLkuEtkA) that has been controversial. If a something is meant to be ironical, this doesn’t work if signs of irony are lacking (or if people do not perceive or do not want to perceive the signs).

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Small is Beautiful:

As opposed to ›Big is Better‹. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_Is_Beautiful

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Small-printed, the:

Still easy to overlook (compare also ›Mikrogramme‹, above), but we live in times of yet another danger: the agreeing to terms (we do not read) by clicking (not on this website, though).

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Smalltown Boy:

A Pop Song by 1980s Pop band Bronski Beat, expressing deepest despair (listen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xuz94ZIPfJk; the video is nevertheless also displaying some hope). Note the giant-size cornflakes box at 1:27 (and also the egg). Or is it to be called a ›family-size‹ box? But that’s part of the problem.

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Story, ultra-short:

Writer Italo Calvino (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italo_Calvino), in his Lezioni americane, made the following by Augusto Monterroso known (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Monterroso):

»When he awoke the dinosaur was still there.«

(Under the circumstances we might also come back to the good old ›Veni, vidi, vici‹.)

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Streichholzbriefe:

German title for a series of blogs (excuse me, of columns or glosses) by Umberto Eco (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streichholzbriefe). Originally assembled under the title La bustina di Minerva. Streichholzbriefe can be understood as letters that fit into a matchbox, or, as the original title suggests, refer to this kind of notepad (see also under ›Mikrogramme‹, above):

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Trojan Horse:

Might be called a key detail of the Trojan War although probably not actually being very small (right, it’s about relativity).

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Vertigo by Transfer of Dimension:

See the beginning of poet Wallace Stevens’ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stevens) Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteen_Ways_of_Looking_at_a_Blackbird):

»Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

(…).«

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