Puppet Passage of the Day...

[Bleak&Icy]

Nathanael was stupefied—he had seen only too distinctly that in Olimpia’s pallid waxed face there were no eyes, merely black holes in their stead; she was an inanimate puppet. Spalanzani was rolling on the floor; the pieces of glass had cut his head and breast and arm; the blood was escaping from him in streams. But he gathered his strength together by an effort.

“After him—after him! What do you stand staring there for? Coppelius—Coppelius—he’s stolen my best automaton—at which I’ve worked for twenty years—my life work—the clockwork—speech—movement—mine—your eyes—stolen your eyes—damn him—curse him—after him—fetch me back Olimpia—there are the eyes.” And now Nathanael saw a pair of bloody eyes lying on the floor staring at him; Spalanzani seized them with his uninjured hand and threw them at him, so that they hit his breast.

Then madness dug her burning talons into Nathanael and swept down into his heart, rending his mind and thoughts to shreds. “Aha! aha! aha! Fire-wheel—fire-wheel! Spin round, fire- wheel! merrily, merrily! Aha! wooden doll! spin round, pretty wooden doll!” and he threw himself upon the Professor, clutching him fast by the throat.

He would certainly have strangled him had not several people, attracted by the noise, rushed in and torn away the madman; and so they saved the Professor, whose wounds were immediately dressed. Siegmund, with all his strength, was not able to subdue the frantic lunatic, who continued to scream in a dreadful way, “Spin round, wooden doll!” and to strike out right and left with his doubled fists. At length the united strength of several succeeded in overpowering him by throwing him on the floor and binding him. His cries passed into a brutish bellow that was awful to hear; and thus raging with the harrowing violence of madness, he was taken away
to the madhouse.

-- "The Sand-Man" by E. T. A. Hoffman

[Bleak&Icy]

The pulse of joy that beats in us at twenty becomes sluggish. Our limbs fail, our senses rot. We degenerate into hideous puppets, haunted by the memory of the passions of which we were too much afraid, and the exquisite temptations that we had not the courage to yield to.

-- The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

[Bleak&Icy]

The Marionettes by Walter de la Mare


Let the foul Scene proceed:
There’s laughter in the wings;
’Tis sawdust that they bleed,
Only a box Death brings.

How rare a skill is theirs —
These extreme pangs to show,
How real a frenzy wears
Each feigner of woe!

Gigantic dins uprise!
Even the gods must feel
A smarting of the eyes
As these fumes upsweel.

Strange, such a Piece is free,
While we Spectators sit,
Aghast at its agony,
Yet absorbed in it!

Dark is the outer air,
Coldly the night draughts blow,
Mutely we stare, and stare
At the frenzied Show.

Yet heaven hath its quiet shroud
Of deep, immutable blue —
We cry ‘An end!’ We are bowed
By the dread, ‘It’s true!’

While the Shape who hoofs applause
Behind our deafened ear,
Hoots — angel-wise — ‘the Cause!’
And affrights even fear.

[Bleak&Icy]

Palingenesy

A term employed by the philosophers of the seventeenth century to denote the ‘‘resurrection of plants,’’ and the method of achieving their astral appearance after destruction.

The Roman poet/philosopher Lucretius (ca. 98–55 B.C.E.) attacked the popular notion of ghosts by claiming they were not spirits returned from the mansions of the dead, but nothing more than thin films, pellicles, or membranes, cast off from the surface of all bodies like the exuviae (sloughs of reptiles).

Palingenesy was similar to the early claims of Lucretius involving a chemical explanation of the discovery of filmy substances, which he had observed to arise from all bodies. Yet, in order to prove that apparitions might really be explained on his principle, a crucial experiment was necessary.

Three alchemists obtained a quantity of earth-mould from St. Innocent’s Church in Paris, believing that this matter might contain the true philosophers’ stone. They subjected it to a distillatory process. They saw (it was claimed) the forms of men produced in their vials, which immediately caused them to end the project. This was brought to the attention of the Institute of Paris (under the protection of Louis XIV), which, in turn, took up the business with much seriousness. The result of its own investigations appeared in the Miscellania Curiosa. James F. Ferrier, in a volume of the Manchester Philosophical Transactions, made an abstract of one of these French documents:

‘‘A malefactor was executed, of whose body a grave physician got possession for the purpose of dissection. After disposing of the other parts of the body, he ordered his assistant to pulverize part of the cranium, which was a remedy at that time admitted in dispensatories. The powder was left in a paper on the table of the museum, where the assistant slept. About midnight he was awakened by a noise in the room, which obliged him to rise immediately. The noise continued about the table, without any visible agent; and at length he traced it to the powder, in the midst of which he now beheld, to his unspeakable dismay, a small head with open eyes staring at him; presently two branches appeared, which formed into arms and hands; then the ribs became visible, which were soon clothed with muscles and integuments; next the lower extremities sprouted out, and when they appeared perfect, the puppet (for his size was small) reared himself on his feet; instantly his clothes came upon him, and he appeared in the very cloak he wore at his execution. The affrighted spectator, who stood hitherto mumbling his prayers with great application, now thought of nothing but making his escape from the revived ruffian; but this was impossible, for the apparition planted himself in the way, and, after divers fierce looks and threatening gestures, opened the door and went out. No doubt the powder was missing next day.’’

-- Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology: A Compendium of Information on the Occult Sciences, Magic, Demonology, Superstitions, Spiritism, Mysticism, Metaphysics, Psychical Science, and Parapsychology, with Biographical and Bibliographical Notes and Comprehensive Indexes

FIFTH EDITION
In Two Volumes
VOLUME TWO
M-Z
Edited by J. Gordon Melton

[yellowish haze]

"She was holding a stumpy puppet to her chest which she tickled with a darning-needle. Each time she prodded into a crevice such as an armpit, the man who was spotlit by the moon jerked helplessly. The sheer delight of the marionette-mistress knew no bounds as the darning-needle gave off its own sparkling light in the vicarious conjuration of torture and stilted life."

-- Righteo by DF Lewis and PF Jeffery

[yellowish haze]

The human intellect feels at home among inanimate objects.

— Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution

[yellowish haze]

"There are many advantages in puppets. They never argue. They have no crude views about art. They have no public lives."

--Oscar Wilde

[yellowish haze]

"A puppet is not an actor and a puppet theatre is not human theatre in miniature, because when an actor 'represents', a puppet 'is'."

-- An Introduction to Puppets and Puppetmaking by David Currell,

[Bleak&Icy]

"The puppets made me do it!"
-- anonymous

[Bleak&Icy]

She very much reminds us of those puppet-heroines, for whom the showman contrives to dialogue without any skill in ventriloquism.
-- S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817)