“I Write to Please my Self,” Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of New
castle, declared in her “Orations of Divers Sorts” (1662). A shy, solitary woman with a passion for poetry and scientific inquiry—what did she see when she peered inside “Natures Cabinet, the Braine”? She saw “Fans of Opinion,” “Gloves of Remembrance, Veiles of Forgetfulnesse,” “Pendants of Understanding” to adorn the ears of the wisest women. She saw “Black Patches of Ignorance, to stick on/The Face of Fooles.” Brightest of all were the “Ribbons of Fancies.” By “fancy,” she meant the wild, inventive faculty of the mind which allowed her to see forgetfulness as a veil or
the brain as a cabinet in the first place. From her cabinet tumbled some of
the strangest prose and verse of the seventeenth century, beginning, in 1653, with her “Poems, and Fancies”:
When Nature first this World she did create, She cal’d a Counsell how the same might make; Motion was first, who had a subtle wit, And then came Life, and Forme, and Mat
ter fit.
Do not be fooled by these sweet couplets. They were the prelude to an enormously ambitious philosophy of nature’s diffuse, uneasy vitality. Across almost three hundred poems, Cavendish speculated about how atoms joined
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 05, 2024-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der February 05, 2024-Ausgabe von The New Yorker.
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GREAT MIGRATIONS
\"Home\" and \"What Became of Us.\"
SICK, SAD WORLD
What COVID did to fiction.
MOVE IN FOR THE CULL
The complicated calculus of killing some wild creatures to protect others.
EVERYTHING IN HAND
The C.I.A.'s covert ops have mattered-but not in the way that it hoped.
CHICAGO ON THE SEINE CAMILLE BORDAS
I used to tell myself stories on the job, to make it feel exciting—spy stories, exfiltration stories, war stories. I used to come up with poignant little details that turned the repatriation cases I worked on into “Saving Private Ryan,” into “Johnny Got His Gun.”
A SEMBLANCE OF PEACE
How life in a co-living community changed after October 7th.
HIS BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED FANTASY
Ye bought a masterpiece by Tadao Ando-and gave it a violent remix.
SCREEN GRAB
How CoComelon conquered children's television.
FOND OF FLAGS
My wife is fond of fast food. I am not. My wife is particularly fond of the Wendy’s Baconator. I argue that it’s less expensive to order a Dave’s Double with a side of bacon, then put your own pretzels on top. (I’m fond of the Rold Gold Tiny Twists Original.)
TROPHY ROOM
Going on safari.