Opus

Encyclopædia of the sublime

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Eline Vere

Eline Vere is a novel by Louis Couperus, widely considered one of the greatest Dutch novelists. He gained prominence in 1889 with this psychological novel inspired Émile Zola, Gustave Flaubert, and Leo Tolstoy. Eline, withdrawn and subject to depression, accepts the marriage proposal of a family friend, only to break off the engagement, convinced that her sickly but charismatic cousin Vincent is in love with her. Vincent drifts in other directions. She travels, dreams, and deteriorates. Moving back to the Hague, she lives alone in a hotel, where, during a nervous crisis, she takes what may or may not be an accidental overdose.

L’invenzione della bellezza

Antonio Canova: L'invenzione della bellezza is a book published by Franco Maria Ricci. The cover features a marble bas-relief showing a detail from the work Le Grazie e Venere danzano davanti a Marte by Canova, created in statuary marble from the Fantiscritti quarry in Carrara, the same that supplied Antonio Canova. The bas-relief is set in velvet brocade with a gold thread weave. Inside, special velata pure cotton handmade paper, enhanced with an Antonio Canova watermark, carries press-printed texts by authors from the same period as Canova. The counterpoint to these texts are 26 plates showing tempere by Canova, all applied by hand and screen and litho printed, together with 5 etchings and 77 photographs of works by Canova.

Charles Ribart

In 1758, Charles Ribart planned an addition to the Champs-Élysées in Paris, to be constructed where the Arc de Triomphe now stands. It consisted of three levels, to be built in the shape of an elephant, with entry via a spiral staircase in the underbelly. The building was to have a form of air conditioning, and furniture that folded into the walls. A drainage system was to be incorporated into the elephant's trunk. The French Government, however, was not amused and turned him down.

Cicada

After mating, the female cicada cuts slits into the bark of a twig, and into these she deposits her eggs. She may do so repeatedly, until she has laid several hundred eggs. When the eggs hatch, the newborn nymphs drop to the ground, where they burrow. Most cicadas go through a life cycle that lasts from two to five years. Some species have much longer life cycles, such as the North American genus, Magicicada, which has a number of distinct "broods" that go through either a 17-year or, in the South of the USA, a 13-year life cycle. These long life cycles both happen to be prime numbers, perhaps developed as a response to predators such as the cicada killer wasp and praying mantis.

Codex Gigas

The Codex Gigas is the largest extant medieval manuscript in the world. It is thought to have been created in the early 13th century in the Benedictine monastery of Podlažice in Bohemia (modern Czech Republic). During the Thirty Years' War in 1648, the entire collection was stolen by the Swedish army as plunder and now it is preserved at the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm. It is also known as the Devil's Bible because of a large illustration of the devil on the inside and the legend surrounding its creation.