Jurgis Baltrusaitis mentions Jean Cocteau's attempt to approach art and science through anamorphosis**.and presents Cocteau's XVIIth Century forerunner, namely,  J.B.Bossuet whose sermon "Providence," preached at the Louvre in March 1662, he quotes: "When I stop to consider within myself the disposition of human things, which seem so confusing, irregular, unequal, I often compare them to certain paintings(...) At first sight one cannot see but formless features and a confusing mixture of colors, as if they were produced either by a student, or resulted from the play of a small child, instead of the work accomplished by an experienced hand. However, as soon as someone who knows its secret tells you how to look at it from a special angle, all the unequal lines suddenly begin to get together before our eyes, all the confusion disappears, and you' can now discern a face with its contours and proportions where, before, there was no semblance of a human form."# 
The works about anamorphosis and literature he mentions comprise authors like John Donne, E.A.Poe and Henry James.*** 

 

Dmitri Nabokov's poetic parallel between the avatars of a world with no fixed forms and no names, and anamorphosis, is instigating. In art, there is a deliberate effort at producing a distorted representation which may be next translated into something that is familiar to the viewer .If I understand Dmitri Nabokov's paragraph (N-L Oct 16, 2006), the two primordial events (chaos and order) pertain exclusively to the natural world and, in contrast to many doctrines, the faulty perception, and its organization into a "human landscape," is not produced by language and reason. It's nature herself who finds a way for "stabilizing something." (DN personifies nature).

 

I don't know if DN was quoting his father when he wrote down his N-L message. I have the impression that VN held a different point of view from the one DN has put forward. In my opinion, there is a transcendental eye for VN, one that delights in the whimsies of the world, as it happens when nature produces beauty, independently of the mimetic adaptations that would garantee the survival of the "artist." However, when I recollect Shade's discovery about a "plexed symmetry," the unwordly Author is not merely a neutral observer, but the creator of patterns, too. But now, where do we, humans, fit? 

 

Any contributions and criticism?  

 

 

 

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* From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: Jurgis Baltrušaitis (May 7, 1903 – January 25, 1988) was a Lithuanian art historian, art critic and a founder of comparative art research. He was the son of the poet and diplomat Jurgis Baltrušaitis. Most of his works were written in French, although he always stressed his Lithuanian origin. After Lithuania was occupied by the USSR in 1945, he served as a diplomat in exile.
Biography: During his childhood he was immersed in the intense cultural life of his parents. One of his first teachers was the Russian poet and writer Boris Pasternak.
In 1924 he moved to Paris and began theater studies at the Sorbonne under the guidance of Professor Henri Focillon. Under his influence Baltrušaitis chose to study the history of art....Between 1933 and 1939 Baltrušaitis taught art history at the University of Kaunas, as well as lecturing at the Sorbonne and at the Warburg Institute in London.After World War II he delivered lectures at New York University, Yale University, Harvard University, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Publications
Le Moyen-Âge fantastique. Antiquités et exotismes dans l'art gothique, 1955; Reveils et Prodiges Le Gothique Fantastique, 1960; La quête d'Isis; Formations, déformations: La stylistique ornementale dans la sculpture romane (Idées et recherches); Réveils et prodiges. Les métamorphoses du gothique; Lithuanian folk art [microform] (Lithuania, country and nation, 3), 1948; Le miroir: Essai sur une légende scientifique : révélations, science-fiction et fallacies; Anamorphic art; berrations: Quatre Essais sur La Legende des Formes; Les perspectives depravees - anamorphoses ou thaumaturgus, 1955.
Trivia: Algirdas Julius Greimas once noted that in the West the elder Jurgis Baltrušaitis is known as the father of a famous art historian, but in Eastern Europe - the younger Jurgis Baltrušaitis is known as the son of a famous poet.

** - J.Cocteau "Note autour d'une anamorphose, un phenomène de réflexion?" dans Le Monde et La vie, n.95,avril 1961. ;
*** - Jean-Marie Benoit, "L'écriture de l'abyme. Nocturne pour le jour de sainte Lucie:le plus bref des jours, in John Donne," L'Age d'Homme. Les Dossiers H.1983 p.247 et Prologue de l'ouvrage par J.M.Benoit p. 11-13; J.Perrot. Henry James, une écriture énigmatique, Paris, 1982. p.25.; C.Picard, Nouvelle critique or nouvelle imposture, Paris, 1965; Roland Barthes par lui-même, Paris 1975,p.48; JF Lyotard Discours, figures. Paris, 1971, p. 378

# - "sermon de Bossuet sur la Providence qui compare l’effet des passions humaines à celui qui produit les anamorphoses : « Quand je considère en moi-même la  disposition des choses humaines, confuse, inégale, irrégulière, je la compare souvent  à certains tableaux (…). La première vue ne nous montre que des traits informes et un mélange confus de couleurs, qui semble être, ou l’essai de quelque apprenti, ou le jeu de quelque enfant, plutôt que l’ouvrage d’une main savante. Mais aussitôt que celui qui sait le secret vous le fait regarder par un certain endroit, aussitôt, toutes les lignes inégales venant à se ramasser d’une certaine façon dans votre vue, toute la confusion se démêle, et vous voyez paraître un visage avec ses linéaments et ses proportions où il n’y avait auparavant aucune apparence de forme humaine ».   
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