albe harlow

“The excess of metaphor (water, windowpane, book) is a game played by the discourse. The game, which is a regulated activity and always subject to return, consists then not in piling up words for mere verbal pleasure (logorrhea) but in multiplying one form of language (in this case, comparison), as though in an attempt to exhaust the nonetheless infinite variety and inventiveness of synonyms, while repeating and varying the signifier, so as to affirm the plural existence of the text, its return.” *

“…the grotesque must also be reconceptualized in terms of overcoming knowledge without losing the fear associated with the natural, and the fear of the uncertain, i.e. the fear of not overcoming nature,…” †

“He thought it delightful to imagine, for instance, that a cake of soap must be solid ambrosia to the ants swarming over it, and what a shock to be drowned in the midst of that orgy.” ‡

* Howard, Richard. “XXIV. Transformation as Game.” S/Z: by Roland Barthes, Hill and Wang, 2007, p. 58.

† Nesbitt, Kate, and Peter Eisenman. “Contemporary Definitions of the Sublime.” Theorizing a New Agenda for Architecture: an Anthology of Architectural Theory 1965-1995, Princeton Architectural Press, 1996, p. 568.

‡ “41.” Ada or Ardor: a Family Chronicle, by Vladimir Nabokov, Vintage Books, 1990, p. 294.