"It is truth, but truth is not always appearance."
~ Ichabod Crane ~ Sleepy Hollow ~
~ Ichabod Crane ~ Sleepy Hollow ~
The concept of the palimpsest is one I've always found fascinating. A palimpsest, for those who are unfamiliar with the term, a manuscript that has had the text erased so the writing surface may be reused. It originally referred to parchment in particular, since animal hides are more durable than writing surfaces made from vegetable matter like papyrus, but also to clay tablets and the Roman wax-coated tablets and the like. With parchment, they would scrape the text from it and use it again. Often a ghost of the original text remains behind and a number of lost text has actually been recovered through the ghosts of the original texts appearing on a palimpsest.
One of the most famous examples of a palimpsest is the Archimedes Palimpsest. This is a number of texts (the original texts dated around the 10th century AD), including seven dissertations by Archimedes of Syracuse, three of which had been lost until the discovery of this palimpsest. These texts were erased and turned into a prayer book in the 12th century, several pages of which were in turn erased to reuse the texts for artworks. (For those curious, there is a close examination of a number of pages from the palimpsest here.)
But the idea is used in other senses, like the idea of the architectural palimpsest: the remains of other buildings or parts thereof that are still apparent on existing buildings. It used by forensic scientists to refer to the way objects at a site are layered upon each other to show the order of events. Historians are beginning to use the term as a description of the way people experience time, a sort of layering of present experiences over the past. It becomes an artform.
As I said, it's an idea I've always found fascinating. The writing underneath, the layering of meaning, even if it's invisible to the eyes. In Winterson's 'Written on the Body', she talks about the body as palimpsest, written upon over and again by experience, a text for the exploring, the reading, with the fingers like braille. On Cabinet of Wonders, Heather McDougal talks of Jean Baudrillard (whom I have not read) and his theories about society and experience. She says that he
One of the most famous examples of a palimpsest is the Archimedes Palimpsest. This is a number of texts (the original texts dated around the 10th century AD), including seven dissertations by Archimedes of Syracuse, three of which had been lost until the discovery of this palimpsest. These texts were erased and turned into a prayer book in the 12th century, several pages of which were in turn erased to reuse the texts for artworks. (For those curious, there is a close examination of a number of pages from the palimpsest here.)
But the idea is used in other senses, like the idea of the architectural palimpsest: the remains of other buildings or parts thereof that are still apparent on existing buildings. It used by forensic scientists to refer to the way objects at a site are layered upon each other to show the order of events. Historians are beginning to use the term as a description of the way people experience time, a sort of layering of present experiences over the past. It becomes an artform.
As I said, it's an idea I've always found fascinating. The writing underneath, the layering of meaning, even if it's invisible to the eyes. In Winterson's 'Written on the Body', she talks about the body as palimpsest, written upon over and again by experience, a text for the exploring, the reading, with the fingers like braille. On Cabinet of Wonders, Heather McDougal talks of Jean Baudrillard (whom I have not read) and his theories about society and experience. She says that he
discusses the way modern culture is simply a layered miasma of images of images of images - a totally mediated experience - until we no longer know where or what the original once was. Myths and rituals get worked over by time and human creativity until the originals show through only in glimmers; fairy tales gain and lose characters, nastiness, and motif depending on the era in which we live. Our whole existence could be seen as a long progression of palimpsestic reality, where the old cultures, the old ways, are stripped away but continue to shine through in the ways we do things: our superstitions, our celebrations.Existence - life - as palimpsest, written not only on the body but also on the mind. Everything we experience, as individuals, as a society, as a world, written over and again upon our conscious and unconscious minds as on our forms.
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