caillois/ the writing of stones
warner on caillois Roger Caillois among the Nonhumans
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheySeKkZY8Po3wj6oM2lWySZbv__-4lTYQi7qJBuV6Ew3seqkqqqlQK1T8twuuwUKjjuYus6Oap3S-ulIAz1sM8KGJtbNq8anHTr6mCFQWVnoOOX9VBtWwf0Em2dZAf3ZCJesN1hh61wY/s400/pietra.jpeg)
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDrKP7Die1LMF2SkwqJsnd-fv-tiZbItlLlZqxy8VMDcT-Hi6PoWtuTmxzDebbOcCQzVLas0g8gPArAs0BJKVp29ZIh4_oUYi8WFLxOTsfrMHZLKGXIqarX_pSDfIiHKkwwOJg5SKnpUk/s1600/_63117305_63117295.jpg)
Their sole desire was to become solid -- as solid and perdurable as the rocks about them. They therefore practiced the rites of petrifaction. When the hated breath at last left the human body, that body was carried to special caves, and there laid in troughs filled with the petrous water that dripped from roof and walls. There it remained until the body turned white and hard, until the eyes were glazed under their vitreous lids, and the hair of the head became like crisp snail-shells, the beard like a few jagged icicles. But this process was merely a long purgatory, for when the body was finally petrified it was removed from its watery trough and carried like a recumbent statue to the halls of the dead -- caves in which the alabaster bodies were stacked, one above the other in dense rows, to wait for their final beatitude, crystallisation. When the body, no longer recognisably human, but rather a pillar of salt, took on the mathematical precision and perfect structure of crystal, then it was judged to have attained its final immortality.
herbert read / the green child /
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMx8iFDIqeENLT5m0L3hSzGP76jBVW27t1inB3G_0fEd_oRS170mAdfE8foq4t7cJgbSFG2lwDHYde3mTxU4wraLmHlq2MzcE3R9p-xh4bTQ8oZeTZI2UBDUOjvtwbnCfhQXfqRKQTktc/s400/pietra+1.jpeg)
No comments:
Post a Comment