Friday, April 18, 2008

Translation of Mysterious "Panoptikon" Document


Thanks to Sebastian Keller for kindly translating the Mysterious Panoptikon Document." There is much great information to be found here, and a wonderful collection of quotations. Here is a sample:

“I entered a display of waxworks; the entourage of the ruler looked very slutty and neglected. It was a terrible loneliness and I hastened through to a closed room with the collection of anatomy on display. There almost any part of the human body was to be found on display, made of wax, most of them in sick, terrible states, a really strange assembly of human conditions. A big part of that assembly was constituted of a long row of glasses which contained all the stages of a foetuses growth. Those weren't wax, but real beings and they were sitting in the alcohol like philosophers. Their thoughtfulness was all the more clear as those guys should have been the youth of that assembly. But suddenly in the hut right next to that there was loud music and drums an the wall shuddered and all the quiet attention vanished. Those little beings started to shiver and dance in a wild polca and soon there was anarchy, so I don't believe that this assembly ended with an address.” (Gottfried Keller, dream diary, S.93f)...


Read the entire translation (and add your own comments) here; compare it against Stefan Nagel's orginal "Schaubuden - Geschichte und Erscheinungsformen" here. You can find additional images here.

Pictured above: Page 24 from chapter 1 "Panoptikum, Kuriosa" of l "Schaubuden - Geschichte und Erscheinungsformen."

1 comment:

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