Recently, Kristen and I went to visit the museum of printing history here in Houston. The museum itself is a calm sprawling oasis of all things printed. Their special exhibit on the works of the physician and naturalist Jean-Charles Chenu was particularly exciting. I suppose I owe to my family's quebecois backround a disposition toward francophilia and probably also an appreciation of the nineteenth century. The entire notion of a 'gentleman' and gentleman's pursuits fascinated me as a child.
In my childhood mythology a gentleman's pursuit was driven by passion and the principle of self-improvement--never commerce. I guess gentlemen 'kept it real' and weren't 'sell outs' -- to mix my subcultural slang a little. Chenu's goal was impossible. He wished to create a complete document of known shells. While this kind of document had been achieved in the past, the scientific knowledge of existing shells had greatly expanded by Chenu's historical moment and he was doomed to failure.
Though he may have failed in his goal, he suceeded in creating subtle, beautiful images that have reached far beyond what was likely had been his imagined audience. I'm sure I'm not alone in feeling fed up with the constant money-talk these days. If it's not laments for the economy, it's schemes and plans to increase the size of bank accounts. The whole thing wears me down and leaves me existentially barren. But then I see shells like these and I hope that there can be more to our lives and to our society than just an endless series of hustles.
Maybe that's nostalgia for a time that never really existed... but I hope not.
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