bLOGOS/HA HA: Be Headed

David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.

10 September 2015

Be Headed

This c.1935 tableau photo of two men in the street is by Dora Maar.

Dora Maar (November 22, 1907 – July 16, 1997), born Henriette Theodora Marković, was an Argentinian-raised photographer of French and Croatian descent, with further known artistic work in poetry, and painting; she is most widely known as Pablo Picasso's muse of nearly a decade (c.1935-44), including for his widely known pieces Guernica and The Weeping Woman.
- Wikipedia

The man on his knees appears to be multi-headed with one or more heads down the darkness manhole and one head resting on the lighted path above, that being either iron-masked (see: L'Homme au Masque de Fer) or actually having the form of a two-eyed matrix manhole cover.

The other man is a TAR passer-by : his suited body in the photographic dimension; his probable head, crop-guillotined, likely exists elsewhere.

Around the time of this photo effacement, Dora Maar was introduced by Paul Eluard to Pablo Picasso. Over their next nine years together, Picasso rendered Maar's visage many times.