VICTORIA UNIVERSITY OF WELLINGTON Te Whare Wananga o te Upoko o te Ika a Maui

School of Architecture Te Kura Waihanga

ITDN 412

INTERIOR ARCHITECTURE

PART A: STAGE 01 PRELIMINARY DESIGN DESIGN RESEARCH / ESTABLISHING A POSITION

HANDOUT 1
The Dictionary of Imaginary Places

Samples of Passages from Literary Texts Which Invite Translation into Narrative Design
The following passages represent a range of literary depictions from the 1st century BC to the 20th century AD. These texts were selected as examples of provocateurs for narrative design. Literal translation is not intended. Rather ask yourself what such passages imply that is not literally described. Then ask yourself how you might translate such an implication into a contemporary language of design that is realizable. For instance, what might a lobby, reading room or desk (or book or pen) look like in the Graveyard of Unwritten Books? Once you have an evocative image in mind, consider how you might evolve that image into something that responds to contemporary contexts, yielding a narrative that is meaningful today. These passages are presented as potential starting points for in-depth exploration of narrative design expression. Your translations will ultimately move well beyond these imaginary passages, evolving into concepts and responses that are contemporary and your own. Consider each imaginary description as a seed which has the capacity to grow into a new entity with a unique identity. Quoted passages in this Handout are taken from the books listed below. For original bibliographies of these passages, refer to the Index at the conclusion of The Dictionary of Imaginary Places.
Author Borges, Jorge Luis Calvino, Italo Hejduk, John Title Labyrinths, selected stories. London: Penguin Books, 1970 Invisible Cities. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1974 Education of an Architect. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. 1988 The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 1999 Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. New York: Vintage International 1993 Platos Republic. New York: Oxford University Press 1993. Sexing the Cherry. London: The Random House Group Limited 1996. Call No. PQ7797 B635 A6 L PQ4809 A45 C5 E *NA2300 I79 E24

Manguel, Alberto & Guadalupi, Gianni Murakami, Haruki

GR650 M277 D

(DKB Book)

Waterfield, Robin (trans) Winterson, Jeanette

JC71 P3 W325 PR6073 I558 S

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Samples of Passages from Literary Texts Which Invite Translation into Narrative Design
The Sea of Lost Time The Sea of Lost Time is a vast stretch of water somewhere in South America, bordering a small abandoned village, whose hard soil is cracked with saltpeter. At the bottom of the Sea there are terraces of flowers. . . Many years ago, during the first few nights of March, the Sea which normally swept along refuse started to give off a heady odour of roses. People began to return to the village, which had been almost abandoned even then.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, El Mar del tiempo perdido, in La Increible y triste hisroria de la candida Erendira y de su abuela desalmada, Buenes Aires 1972

The Graveyard of Unwritten Books The Graveyard of Unwritten Books is a vast complex of galleries beneath the Hotel de Sense in Paris. Visitors enter a courtyard at the back of the building, where a small passage opens in a mossy wall. This leads to a narrow, gloomy gallery which in turn leads into an inner, subterranean courtyard. In this courtyard stands a well; a rope ladder allows the visitor to descend into its depths. Upon reaching the bottom of the well, the visitor will find a vaulted gallery dripping with damp; this gallery must be followed to an iron door. Visitors must knock to be admitted inside what appears to be a vast storeroom for books. Uniformed attendants move about in all directions, securing books under lock and key. Here, in what is known as the Graveyard of Unwritten Books, or the Well of Locks, all books banned by authorities throughout the world are shut away. Some of these books were published and then forbidden; others were stillborn; many never reached the written page. Visitors are advised to bring a flashlight and not to be seen with a book in their hands.
Nedim Gursel, Son Tramway, Istanbul 1990

The Island of the Day Before The Island of the Day Before is so named because visitors are unable to fix a point in space from which time can be measured, which makes it impossible to inscribe the island in the present. Visitors intent on travelling to the Island of the Day Before should know that they will not be allowed to land on the island itself, but must content themselves with observing it from a fully provisioned ship, the Daphne, anchored in its bay. . . At the centre of the island, tempting in its delicate hues, stands the Tree of Oblivion. Its fruit, if eaten, grants the traveller peace at last. . . It appears that on this island every form of life has been conceived not by an architect or a sculptor but by a jeweller: birds are coloured crystal, woodland animals are delicate, fish are flat and almost transparent. Visitors should be aware that the island they see may not be the same one others see, since the landscape seems to mirror each visitors own experience of the world.
Umberto Eco, La Isola del Giorno Primo, Milan 1994

The Watchers Corner The Watchers Corner is a place on the border between an unnamed settlement and the desert, somewhere in Asia Minor. It is guarded by a [being] who walks about absorbed in the contemplation of the horizon. When travellers ask what its purpose is, keeping watch in this dreary place, it answers in a mournful voice that it is waiting for someone who has come from the desert. Should the traveller ask for whom it is waiting it will, if the question is put it during the day, refuse to answer. But if the question is asked in the early hours of the evening, when the [being] is weary of watching and walking and exhausted from strenuous expectation, it will sit on a rock and turn its worried and mournful face towards the desert, stare at its enquirers face, then cast its eyes back to the horizon, turn away once more and speak from within itself: I am waiting for a camel with two lit candles on its humps. And the [being] will tell the traveller about this marvellous camel, who. . . had a candle placed on each of its humps, and both wicks lit with one fire, after which it turned its face towards the desert and walked away to bring light and good tidings to all mortals, but has not yet returned.
Der Nister, Gedakht, Berlin 1922

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The City of Shadows The City of Shadows is somewhere under the Mediterranean. . . The city itself, built in a wide circle, is centred on a large stone cube used for assemblies and meetings. From here radiate six symmetrical roads lined with small brick houses. . . Visitors can read the history of the City of Shadows and its people, written in cuneiform letters, on the clay walls of a street passage between two of the houses. Not far from the city lies a motionless black lake of warm water, surrounded by a muddy shore. . . The inhabitants of the City of Shadows believe the lake to be the end of the world and have pictured the other side of the lake as a kind of hell. In fact, the other side contains a series of caves and tunnels that lead to a volcano and from there to the open air. . . The City of Shadows is inhabited by people descended from the Chaldeans. In the course of their subterranean existence they have lost both their sight and all knowledge of fire an element they believe to be subtle, comforting and dangerous. Their sight has been replaced by a perfected sense of touch which allows them to sense things at a distance.
Leon Groc, La Cite des Tenebres, Paris 1926

Despina Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveller arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea. When the camel-driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red windsocks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship: he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert, a windjammer about to cast off, with the breeze already swelling the sails. . . In the coastlines haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camels withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wine-skins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves; and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, towards oases of fresh water in the palm trees jagged shade, towards palaces of thick, white-washed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, and half-revealed.
Italo Calvino, Le Citta Invisibili, Turin 1972

The City of Dreams Dream Island. . . is difficult to approach because it always seems to draw away in the distance. Travellers are advised to arrive at dusk. The capital, or City of Dreams, is surrounded by a jungle thick with gigantic mandrakes and poppies from which hang great numbers of bats known as the birds of the island. A large river, the Night-Traveller, flows from two sources at the gates of the city. The sources bear the names of Sleep Eternal and Darkest Night. The walls of the city are high and rainbow-coloured. The gates are four: two look towards the Meadow of Indolence these are made of iron and bricks and through them escape dreams that are fearful, murderous, and sinful; the other two open towards the sea, one made of horn and the other of ivory. According to a distinguished Roman gentleman, who saw two such gates in another country, the one made of horn allows the passage of true dreams, and the one made of ivory, of false ones. . . Coming from the port, the traveller will find to the right the temple dedicated to the Goddess of Night. . . To the left is the Royal Palace and a square with a fountain, called the Drowsy Waters, and next to it two smaller temples, those of Truth and Deceit. The inhabitants, known as Dreams, are of diverse aspect; some are long, delicate, beautiful and graceful; others are hard-looking, small and ugly. Some are winged or have an astounding feature on their faces; some are dressed in full regalia, in the robes of a king or a priest.
Virgil, The Aeneid, 1 cen. BC
st

Empi Archipelago The Empi Archipelago lies in the Atlantic Ocean, not far from the Fortunate Islands. It is surrounded by a disagreeable mist of unbearable smell, reminiscent of human flesh burnt on a fire of sulphur, pitch and bitumen. The atmosphere is dark and humid, made worse by a rain of
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pitch that sometimes covers the ground. Visitors will be surprised by the constant uproar that can be heard throughout the archipelago: from no specific location, there seems to rise a mingling of cries and lamentations, as of many people in pain. Only one of the islands has been explored: it is said to be rocky, infertile, without trees or water. The island is strewn with thorns and naked blades, and is crossed by three rivers: one of Dirt, one of Fire and one of Blood. The River of Fire, very long and difficult to cross, runs like water and has waves like the sea.
Lucian of Samosata, True History, 2 cen. AD
nd

Entelechy Entelechy is an island kingdom of unknown location. . . Travellers will see the queen [of Entelechy] as young, fair and delicately built, but in fact she is more than two thousand years old. The queen has the ability to cure all diseases simply by playing a tune chosen according to the nature of the complaint the patient is suffering from; she does not even have to touch the patient. The instrument on which she plays her miraculous music is a curious object: its pipes are made of cassia sticks; its sounding board of guaiacum; its stops of rhubarb; its pedals of tussock; and its keyboard of scammony. A tune played on this instrument will immediately cure the blind, the deaf, and the dumb, the leper and the apoplectic. The queen herself only cures incurable diseases; less serious complaints are dealt with by her officers. . . One of the members of the royal household has the ability to restore women to their youth by recasting them. Toothless, bleary hags are transformed into attractive, fairhaired maidens of sixteen. This rejuvenator is, however, unable to restore their heels to their previous state and the recast women are thus shorter than they were in their first youth, which explains why they tend to collapse so suddenly. . . Although an extremely generous hostess who provides an excellent table for her guests, the queen herself drinks nothing but divine nectar and eats nothing but celestial ambrosia. Her masticators chew everything for her, digesting it in their crimson-lined gullets. Then, when they have chewed it finely, they pour it into her stomach through a funnel of the finest gold. The queen is said to perform all natural functions by proxy.
Francois Rabelais, Le cinquiesme et dernier livre des faicts et dicts du bon Pantagruel. . ., Paris, 1564

Erewhon Erewhon is a kingdom probably in central or northern Australia, though its location has been deliberately concealed by travellers who have visited it. Those geographers who have placed it in New Zealand (Upper Rangitata district, Canterbury) have not taken into account the sheer immensity of its land surface. It can be reached from the sheep-rearing plains that surround it through the gorge of a river that descends from very cold mountains. Most passes on these mountain-tops are glaciered, but the persistent traveller can find one which, though covered in snow, is still practicable. . . The capital of Erewhon is magnificent, with great towers and fortifications and lofty buildings that look like palaces. . . The only musical instruments in the houses are a dozen large bronze gongs which are kept in the larger drawing room and which the ladies occasionally beat at random, producing a rather unpleasant sound. This music is also used in all mercantile transactions, most of which take place in what is called the Musical Bank. . . The Musical Bank is socially acceptable, but its currency is of no use in the outside world. . . Education is imparted in Colleges of Unreason. Here the principal study is Hypothetics. Erewhonians argue that to teach a boy merely the nature of the things existing in the world around him, and about which he will have to be conversant during his whole life, would be to give him a narrow and shallow conception of the universe, which they argue, might contain all manner of things not found in it now. To open his eyes to these possibilities, and so to prepare him for a set of utterly strange and impossible contingencies, is reckoned the fittest way of training him for the actual conduct of his affairs in life. Some radical professors are members of the Society for the Suppression of Useless Knowledge, but they are minor factions. . . When anyone dies, the friends of the family send little boxes filled with artificial tears (from two to sixteen, according to the degree of intimacy or relationship), and people find it a nice point of etiquette to know the exact number of tears they ought to send.

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The Erewhonian notion of time is quite peculiar. They say that we are drawn through life backwards; or again, that we go onwards into the future as into a dark corridor. Time walks beside us and flings back shutters as we advance, but the light often dazzles us, and deepens the darkness which is in front. We can see but little at a time, and heed that little with far less than our apprehension of what we shall see next. Forever peering curiously through the glare of the present into the gloom of the future, we presage the leading lines of that which is before us by faintly reflected lights from dull mirrors that are behind us, and stumble on as we may until the trapdoor opens beneath us and we are gone.
Samuel Butler, Erewhon, London 1872

Ersilia Ersilia is a city of changing location, where in order to establish the relationships that sustain the citys life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or grey or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, trade, authority, or agency. When the strings become so numerous that one can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave; the houses are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain. The inhabitants then rebuild Ersilia elsewhere, weaving a similar pattern of strings which they try to make more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away. Thus, when travelling in the territory of Ersilia, a visitor will come upon the ruins of the abandoned cities without the walls, which do not last; without the bones of the dead, which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form.
Italo Calvino, Le Citta Invisibili, Turin 1972

The City of the Dead The City of the Dead contains many important secrets. . . Some of the prison buildings, for instance, have floors which can be tilted, dropping unsuspecting prisoners into deep underground rooms. Subterranean passages and ancient covered waterways provide hidden means of access to the citadel. To the west of the fortress is the so-called Maha-Lama Lake. The crater which formed the lake is completely surrounded by steep walls of rock. All that can be seen from above is the upper part of the statue of an angel. The area is feared and avoided by the few who have visited the city, perhaps because it is connected with ancient legends of evil. . . The floor of the crater has been dry for centuries, and strange structures have been built into its walls. At intervals, around the walls, pillars and doors can be seen; these doors give access to a vast underground palace with more than three hundred rooms. The doors themselves are inscribed with letters in several oriental languages; they can be opened by turning a metallic image of the sun. Inside, travellers will find many workrooms, storehouses and dwelling quarters, as well as sick-bays and burial grounds. Perhaps the most impressive building in the crater is the temple hollowed out within the rock. Around its circular walls runs a spiral of seats, climbing from the floor to the highest point of the roof. A balustrade runs along the outer edge of this gently ascending gallery, pierced with hundreds of openings, in each of which is a candle. At the very bottom of the spiral, travellers will see a simple stone pulpit. The acoustics here are such that every word uttered can be heard at the very top of the spiral of seats. Like the other underground buildings, the temple is lit by window openings which slope horizontally to ground level. The windows are made of a kind of mica as transparent as glass. Built into the rock, travellers will also find two. . . council chambers. One is known as the [Chamber] of the Dead because it houses the mummified corpses of the dead rulers of Ardistan. It is a huge room, with a roof supported by gigantic pillars of rock which were left in place when the chamber was excavated. The dead kings and high priests sit here as judges in a courtroom. In their parched hands they all hold notebooks in which the crimes committed during their lifetimes are recorded.
Karl Friedrich May, Ardistan, Bamberg, 1909

Fairyland

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Fairyland is a country of changing locations which can be visited only by those with a reason for coming. . . Several interesting buildings should be visited here. [One house] is a long, low hut, built against a tall cypress in a small clearing. Should a traveller open the door of a particular closet in this house, he will find his own shadow which will follow him everywhere. . . Finally, visitors are urged to visit a cottage on a peninsula which can be reached through several tunnels. As long as the fire is kept burning in the hearth it is always daytime in the cottage. Inside, there are four doors: the Door of Childhood, the Door of Sighs, the Door of Dismay and the Door of the Timeless Time seems longer than in other places; a journey lasting twenty-one days will seem to the traveller to last twenty-one years.
George Macdonald, Phantastes, London 1858

The Library of Babel Not to be confused with the biblical Babel, Genesis 11:1-9, this library which some people call the Universe is composed of an indefinite and perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries, separated by vast air shafts and surrounded by very low railings. From any of the hexagons one can see, interminably, the upper and lower floors. The distribution of the galleries is invariable: twenty shelves, five long shelves per side, cover all the sides except two; their height, from floor to ceiling, scarcely exceeds that of a normal bookcase. One of the free sides leads to a narrow hallway which opens onto another gallery, identical to the first. To the left and right of the hallway are two very small closets: one is for sleeping standing up, the other is a toilet. A spiral staircase and a mirror complete the furnishings. Men infer from this mirror that the library is not infinite (if it really were, why this illusory duplication?). On each shelf are thirty-five books of identical format, four hundred and ten pages long. On each page are forty lines, on each line eighty black letters. Because the orthographical symbols are twenty-five and because the library is infinite, all that can be said in any language is here on a printed page. Everything: the minutely detailed history of the future, the autobiographies of the archangels, a faithful catalogue of the library, thousands and thousands of false catalogues, the true story of everymans death, the translation of every book in all languages. Generation after generation of librarians wander through the library in an attempt to find the Book.
Jorges Luis Borges, La Biblioteca de Babel, in El Jardin de Senderos Que Se Bifurcan, Buenos Aires, 1941

Fakreddin Valley Fakreddin Valley is a valley [whose] trees shade a gracious building crowned with airy domes. Each of the buildings nine bronze doors bears the inscription This is the asylum of pilgrims, the refuge of travellers and the depository of secrets from all parts of the world. Inside, guests are received beneath a vast concave ceiling illuminated by lamps of rock crystal. Sherbert is served in vases of the same material, accompanied by a wide range of delicacies, from rice boiled in almond milk to saffron soup. A thin veil of carnation-coloured silk, masks the doorway leading to the oval baths of porphyry and to the harem.
William Beckford, Vathek, Lucerne 1787

Island of the Wanderers Its precise location remains unknown. . . The island takes its name not from the first settlers but from a company of travellers who reached it during the Middle Ages. . . It was after their arrival that the custom of twice-monthly feasts began. At these feasts, the Greeks and the wanderers take it in turn to tell stories and sagas: Greek legends, myths of the North and tales of the East.
William Morris, The Earthly Paradise, A Poem, London 1868

The City of Words In the City of Words that I have told you about the smell of wild strawberries was the smell characteristic of the house that I have not yet told you about. . . The family who lived in the house were dedicated to a strange custom. Not one of them would allow their feet to touch the floor. Open the doors off the hall and you will see, not floors, but bottomless pits. The furniture of the house is suspended on racks from the ceiling; the dining table supported by great chains, each link six inches thick. To dine here is a great curiosity, for the visitor must sit in a gilded chair and allow himself to be winched up to join his place setting. . . Everyone who
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dines has a multiplicity of glasses and cutlery lest some should be dropped accidentally. Whatever food is left over at the end of the meal is scraped into the pit, from whence a fearful crunching can be heard. . . It is well known that the ceiling of one room is the floor of another, but the household ignores this ever-downward necessity and continues ever upward, celebrating ceilings but denying floors, and so their house never ends and they must travel by winch or rope from room to room, calling to one another as they go. The house is empty now, but it was there, dangling over dinner, illuminated by conversation and rich in the juices of a wild duck, that I noticed a woman whose face was a sea voyage I had not the courage to attempt. I did not speak to her, though I spoke to all the rest, and at midnight she put on flat pumps and balanced the yards of rope without faltering. She was a dancer. I spent the night in my suspended bed and slept badly. At dawn I was leaning out of the window, a rope around my waist. The moon was still visible: it seemed to me that I was closer to the moon than to the ground. A cold wind numbed my ears. Then I saw her. She was climbing down from her window on a thin rope which she cut and re-knotted a number of times during the descent. I strained my eyes to follow her, but she was gone.
Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry, London 1990

Einsteins Dreams In this world, time is like a flow of water, occasionally displaced by a bit of debris, a passing breeze. Now and then, some cosmic disturbance will cause a rivulet of time to turn away from the mainstream, to make connection backstream. When this happens, birds, soil, people caught in the branching tributary find themselves suddenly carried to the past. Persons who have been transported back in time are easy to identify. They wear dark, indistinct clothing and walk on their toes, trying not to make a single sound, trying not to bend a single blade of grass. For they fear that any change they make in the past could have drastic consequences for the future. Just now, for example, such a person is crouching in the shadows of the arcade, at no. 19 Kramgasse. An odd place for a traveler from the future, but there she is. Pedestrians pass, stare, and walk on. She huddles in a corner, then quickly creeps across the street and cowers in another darkened spot, at no. 22. She is terrified that she will kick up dust, just as Peter Klausen is making his way to the apothecary on Spitalgasse this afternoon of 16 April 1905. Klausen is something of a dandy and hates to have his clothes sullied. If dust messes his clothes, he will stop and painstakingly brush them off, regardless of waiting appointments. If Klausen is sufficiently delayed, he may not buy the ointment for his wife, who has been complaining of leg aches for weeks. In that case, Klausens wife, in a bad humor, may decide not to make the trip to Lake Geneva. And if she does not go to Lake Geneva on 23 June 1905, she will not meet a Catherine dEpinay walking on the jetty of the east shore and will not introduce Mlle. dEpinay to her son Richard. In turn, Richard and Catherine will not marry on 17 December 1908, will not give birth to Friedrich on 8 July 1912. Friedrich Klausen will not be father to Hans Klausen on 22 August 1938, and without Hans Klausen the European Union of 1979 will never occur. The woman from the future, thrust without warning into this time and this place and now attempting to be invisible in her darkened spot at no. 22 Kramgasse, knows the Klausen story and a thousand other stories waiting to unfold, dependent on the births of children, the movement of people in the streets, the songs of birds at certain moments, the precise position of chairs, the wind. She crouches in the shadows and does not return the stares of people. She crouches and waits for the stream of time to carry her back to her own time. When a traveler from the future must talk, he does not talk but whimpers. He whispers tortured sounds. He is agonized. For if he makes the slightest alteration in anything, he may destroy the future. At the same time, he is forced to witness events without being party to them, without changing them. He envies the people who live in their own time, who can act at will, oblivious of the future, ignorant of the effects of their actions. But he cannot act. He is an inert gas, a ghost, a sheet without soul. He has lost his personhood. He is an exile of time. Such wretched people from the future can be found in every village and every town, hiding under the eaves of buildings, in basements, under bridges, in deserted fields. They are
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not questioned about coming events, about future marriages, births, finances, inventions, profits to be made. Instead, they are left alone and pitied.
Alan Lightman, Einsteins Dreams, London 1993

Circular Ruins No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sinking into the sacred mud, but within a few days no one was unaware that the silent man came from the South and that his home was one of the infinite villages upstream, on the violent mountainside, where the Zend tongue is not contaminated with Greek and where leprosy is infrequent. The truth is that the obscure man kissed the mud, came up the bank without pushing aside (probably without feeling) the brambles which dilacerated his flesh, and dragged himself, nauseous and bloodstained to the circular enclosure crowned by a stone tiger or horse, which once was the colour of fire and now was that of ashes. This circle was a temple, long ago devoured by fire, which the malarial jungle had profaned and whose god no longer received the homage of men. The stranger stretched out beneath the pedestal. He was awakened by the sun high above. . . Prints of bare feet, some figs and a jug told him that men of the region had respectfully spied upon his sleep and were solicitous of his favour or feared his magic. He felt the chill of fear and sought out a burial niche in the dilapidated wall and covered himself with some unknown leaves. The purpose which guided him was not impossible, though it was supernatural. He wanted to dream a man: he wanted to dream him with minute integrity and insert him into reality. This magical project had exhausted the entire content of his soul; if someone had asked him his own name or any trait of his previous life, he would not have been able to answer. The uninhabited and broken temple suited him, for it was a minimum of visible world. . . At first his dreams were chaotic; somewhat later, they were of a dialectical nature. The stranger dreamt that he was in the center of a circular amphitheatre which in some way was the burned temple; clouds of silent students filled the gradins; the faces of the last ones hung many centuries away and at a cosmic height, but were entirely clear and precise. The man was lecturing to them on anatomy, cosmography, magic; the countenances listened with eagerness and strove to respond with understanding, as if they divined the importance of the examination which would redeem one of them from his state of vain appearance and interpolate him into the world of reality. The man, both in dreams and awake, considered his phantoms replies, was not deceived by impostors, divined a growing intelligence in certain perplexities. He sought a soul which would merit participation in the universe. After nine or ten nights, he comprehended with some bitterness that he could expect nothing of those students who passively accepted his doctrines, but that he could of those who, at times, would venture a reasonable contradiction. . . The end of his meditation was sudden, though it was foretold in certain signs. . . For what was happening had happened many centuries ago. The ruins of the fire gods sanctuary were destroyed by fire. In a birdless dawn the magician saw the concentric blaze close round the walls. For a moment, he thought of taking refuge in the river, but then he knew that death was coming to crown his old age and absolve him of his labours. He walked into the shreds of flame. But they did not bite into his flesh, they caressed him and engulfed him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another.
Jorge Luis Borges, Las Ruins Circulaires, in El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan, Buenes Aires 1941

The Library of Old Dreams The first old dream she places on the table is nothing I know as an old dream. I stare at the object before me, then look up at her. She stands next to me looking down at it. How is this an old dream? The sound of the words old dream led me to expect something else old writings perhaps, something hazy, amorphous. Here we have an old dream, says the Librarian. Her voice is distant, aimless; her tone wants not so much to explain to me as to reconfirm for herself. Or it is possible to say, the old dream is inside of this. I nod, but do not understand. Take it in your hands, she prompts.
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I pick it up and run my eyes over the surface to see if I can find some trace of an old dream. But there is not a clue I am to read an old dream from this? That is the work of the Dreamreader, says the Librarian. And what do I do with the dreams I read? Nothing. You have only to read them. How can that be? I say. I know that I am to read an old dream from this. But then not to do anything with it, I do not understand. What can be the point of that? Work should have a purpose. She shakes her head. I cannot explain. Perhaps the dreamreading will tell you. I can only show you how it is done. I set the [object] down on the table and lean back to look at it. The [object] is enveloped in a profound silence that seems nothingness itself. The silence does not reside on the surface, but is held like smoke within. It is unfathomable, eternal, a disembodied vision cast upon a point in the void. There is a sadness about it, an inherent pathos. I have no words for it. Please show me, I say. I pick the [object] up from the table once again and feel its weight in my hands. Smiling faintly, she takes the [object] from me and painstakingly wipes off the dust This is how to read old dreams, the Librarian begins.
Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, New York 1993

Evening in Llano When an angel accidentally falls and drowns in the sea, its desperately flapping wings send out vibrations that cause a harmonic fluctuation that coincides with the sound of a suppressed cry, announcing an ocean storm. Think not the feathers washed up on the shore a natural event.
John Hejduk, Education of an Architect, New York 1988

Allegory of the Cave Imagine people living in a cavernous cell down under the ground; at the far end of the cave, a long way off, theres an entrance open to the outside world. Theyve been there since childhood, with their legs and necks tied up in a way which keeps them in one place and allows them to look only straight ahead, but not to turn their heads. Theres firelight burning a long way further up the cave behind them, and up the slope between the fire and the prisoners theres a road, beside which you should imagine a low wall has been built like the partition which [puppeteers] place between themselves and their audience and above which they show their [puppets]. . . Imagine also that there are people on the other side of this wall who are carrying all sorts of artefacts. These artefacts, human statuettes, and animal models carved in stone and wood and all kinds of materials stick out over the wall; and as youd expect, some of the people talk as they carry these objects along, while others are silent. . . [They see nothing] of themselves and one another except the shadows cast by the fire on to the cave wall directly opposite them. . . And. . . the objects which were being carried along,. . . they only see their shadows as well. . . And what if sound echoed off the prison wall opposite them? When any of the passers-by spoke, dont you think theyd be bound to assume that the sound came from a passing shadow? . . . All in all, then, the shadows of artefacts would constitute the only reality people in this situation would recognize. What do you think would happen, then, if they were set free from their bonds. . . What would it be like if they found that happening to them? Imagine that one of them has been set free and is suddenly made to stand up, to turn his head and walk, and to look towards the firelight. . . And what do you think hed say if he were shown any of the passing objects and had to respond to being asked what it was? Dont you think hed be bewildered and would think that there was more reality in what hed been seeing before than in what he was being shown now?
Plato, Republic, 4 Cent. BC
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The Shadow Grounds I open the door to the Gatehouse and find the Gatekeeper at the back door splitting firewood.
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Big snow on the way. I can feel it in the air, says the Gatekeeper, axe in hand. Four beasts dead in this morning alone. Many more will die by tomorrow. This winter the cold is something fierce. I take off my gloves and warm my fingers at the stove. The Gatekeeper ties the splits into a bundle and tosses it onto a stack in the woodshed, then shuts the door behind him and props his axe up against the wall. Finally, he comes over and warms his fingers, too. From now on, looks like I burn the beasts alone. Made my life easier having the help, but everything has to end sometime. Anyway, it was my job to begin with. Is my shadow so ill as that? The thing is not well, answers the Gatekeeper, rolling his head on his shoulders. Not well at all. Been looking after it as best I can, but only so much a person can do. Can I see him? Sure, I give you a half hour. I have to go burn dead beasts after that. The Gatekeeper takes his key ring off the hook and unlocks the iron gate to the Shadow Grounds. He walks quickly across the enclosure ahead of me, and shows me into the lean-to. It is as cold as an icehouse. Not my fault, the Gatekeeper says. Not my idea to throw your shadow in here. No thrill for me. We got regulations, and shadows have to be put in here. I just follow the rules. Your shadow even has it better than some. Bad times, there are two or three shadows crammed in here together. Objection is by now beside the point. I nod and say nothing. I should never have left my shadow in a place like this. Your shadow is down below, he says. Down below is a little warmer, if you can stand the smell. The Gatekeeper goes over to a corner and lifts a damp wooden trapdoor to reveal not a staircase but a ladder. The Gatekeeper descends the first few rungs, then motions for me to follow. I brush the snow from my coat and follow him. Down below, the stale smell of shit and piss assaults the senses. Without a window, the air cannot escape. It is a cellar the size of a small trunkroom. A bed occupies a third of the floor. Beneath the bed is a crockery chamber pot. A candle, the sole source of light and heat, flickers on a tottering old table. The floor is earthen, and the dampness in the room chilling. My shadow lies in bed, unmoving, with a blanket pulled up to his ears. He stares at me with lifeless eyes. As the old Colonel has said, my shadow does not seem to have much time left. I need fresh air, says the Gatekeeper, overcome by the stench. You two talk all you want. This shadow no longer has the strength to stick to you. The Gatekeeper leaves. My shadow hesitates a moment, cautiously looking about the room, then beckons me over to his bedside. Go up and check that the Gatekeeper isnt listening, whispers the shadow. I steal up the ladder, crack open the trapdoor, see that no one is about. Hes gone, I say. We have things to talk about, declares my shadow. Im not as weak as I appear
Haruki Murakami, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, New York 1993

The Map of the Empire In that Empire, the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the map of the Empire an entire Province. In the course of Time, these Extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and coincided with it point for point. Less attentive to the Study of Cartography, succeeding Generations came to judge a map of such Magnitude cumbersome, and, not without Irreverence, they abandoned it to the Rigors of Sun and Rain. In the western Deserts, tattered Fragments of the Map are still to be found, Sheltering an occasional Beast or beggar; in the whole Nation, no other relic is left of the Discipline of Geography.
J. A. Suarez Miranda, Travels of Praiseworthy Men, 1958

The Absent Suitor

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In a famous passage in the Natural History, Pliny the Elder tells of a Corinthian maiden who traced on the wall her lovers shadow, hoping to console herself with the young mans likeness while he travelled to another country. Not to be outdone, the womans father, a potter, filled the outline with clay and baked it in his kiln, producing a three-dimensional version of the absent suitor. Thus painting and the plastic arts, it was thought, were born: from the anxieties of love, and the ingenuity of a woman.
Ian Donaldson, Shaping Lives: Reflections on Biography, 1992

modelling portraits from clay was first invented by Butades, a potter of Sicyon, at Corinth. He did this owing to his daughter, who was in love with a young man; and she, when he was going abroad, drew in outline on the wall the shadow of his face thrown by a lamp. Her father pressed clay on this and made a relief, which he hardened by exposure to fire with the rest of his pottery; and it is said that this likeness was preserved
Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Book XXXV, section XLIII, 1 cent. AD (1952 translation by H. Rackham, Harvard University Press edition)
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Numbers in the Dark It was the hidden side of everything that intrigued me, the hidden side of houses, the hidden side of gardens, the hidden side of streets, the hidden side of towns, the hidden side of televisions, the hidden side of dishwashers, the hidden side of the sea, the hidden side of the moon. But when I managed to get to that hidden side, I realized that what I was looking for was the hidden side of the hidden side Sometimes, at the back of the mirror, behind my reflection, I thought I saw a presence I wasnt quick enough to identify and which immediately hid. I tried to study not myself in the mirror but the world behind me: nothing caught my attention. I was about to turn away when, there, I would see it peep out from the opposite side of the mirror I left the mirror and started to look for the spot where Id seen the presence disappear I aimed at where I planned to get to, I concentrated my strength, I tensed my will, but my point of arrival was departing Corinna said: Its when it relaxes that the bow releases the arrow, but to do that it must first be properly tensed.
Italo Calvino: The Mirror, the Target, Numbers in the Dark 1996

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