Raphael Nadolny sent an art print titled “comet over the meadows” and two photos with a statement that reads:
“A city is a state of mind, a set of customs, attitudes and sentiments, its power can turn against him. The city is becoming independent, out of control. The viscera of Leviathan.”
This is an interesting position that reminds us of Victorian city poems. For example Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “The Cry of the Human”:
The plague runs festering through the town,
And never a bell is tolling,
And corpses, jostled ’neath the moon,
Nod to the dead-cart’s rolling.
The young child calleth for the cup,
The strong man brings it weeping ;
The mother from her babe looks up,
And shrieks away its sleeping.
Be pitiful, O God!
The plague of gold strikes far and near—
And deep and strong it enters:
This purple chimar which we wear,
Makes madder than the centaur’s.
Our thoughts grow blank, our words grow strange;
We cheer the pale gold-diggers—
Each soul is worth so much on ’Change,
And marked, like sheep, with figures.
Be pitiful, oh, God!
[Stanzas 4 and 5 of 14]
Thanks so much Raphael for your thought-provoking work.
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