Tower of Babel Forum - The Watchtower

More Babel

More Babel

If you scroll down a bit on this page...
https://rodcorp.typepad.com/rodcorp/2003/12/
... you'll find a pretty exhaustive list of "Depictions of the Tower of Babel 1150-1928".
Nice!

Für Spielkinder:
https://www.thebricktestament.com/genesis/the_tower_of_babel/gn11_05.html


--
Das Lemsche Gesetz:
Niemand liest etwas; wenn er etwas liest, versteht er es nicht; wenn er es versteht, vergißt er es sofort.

Re: More Babel

"...denn nun war auch klar, daß der Turmbau zu Babel nichts anderes gewesen war als der Versuch, leider übereilt und zu Recht an der Hybris seiner Planer gescheitert, den größten Menhir aller Zeiten zu errichten, nur daß die babylonischen Architekten sich mit der Statik verrechnet hatten, denn hätte der Turm die geplante Höhe erreicht, so hätte sich wegen seines enormen Gewichts, wie Athanasius Kircher gezeigt hat, die Erdachse um neunzig Grad oder vielleicht noch mehr gedreht, und unser armer Planet wäre, statt aufrecht mit einer zum Himmel ragenden ithyphallischen Krone, gebeugt mit einem sterilen Appendix dagestanden, mit einer welken Mentula, einem pendelnden Affenschwanz, einer Schechinah, die sich in den schwindelnden Abgründen einer antarktischen Malchuth verlor, als schlaffe Hieroglyphe für Pinguine."

Oha...

Re: More Babel

I was hoping for a clearer translation than this. What was that about penguins??

"...denn now was also clearly that the tower building to Babel had been nothing other as the attempt, unfortunately rushes and failed reckoned had themselves to right due to the hubris of its plans to erect the largest Menhir of all times, only that the babylonian architects with the static, for the tower would have reached the planned height, would have itself because of its enormous weight how Athanasius Kircher showed, the earth axis over Or perhaps yet more turned, and our poor planet would be, stood there instead of uprightly with an ithyphallischen crown jutting to the sky, bended with a sterile Appendix, with a faded Mentula, a pendelnden ape tail, a Schechinah, that lost itself in the swindling abysses of an antarktischen Malchuth, when loose hieroglyphic for penguin."

Oha..



Re: More Babel

Please don't count on me. I didn't even understand the german sentence.
It's a quote from "Foucault's pendulum", which is a horrible book to read if you're not a jewish philologic historian by chance...

Re: More Babel

(instantly firing up the old boiler)

Aaaah... now, that's one of the best novels I ever read... and, for those of you who are not Fawlty - I read a LOT.

The above quote deals with the building of the tower of Babel; the whole book is, among a lot of other things, about the construction of the Biggest Conspiracy of All Times (Ever), a gigantic masterplan into which every known piece of history can be fitted with a bit of mental exertion. The tower, it says, was, like the pyramids, Stonehenge, the Eiffel tower and other buildings, a kind of planetary acupuncture needle, used to control the Earth's inner power currents...

No, really - this book is so brilliant! It's one of (now) two reasons I'd like to learn Italian.



Dr. Zarkov
--
"Quick, Flash! We must save the Earth!"

Re: More Babel

Yes, it's definitely a very very good book, but it's also undeniably very arduous to read, and I doubt that there is ANY person on earth (except for Mr. Eco himself, and maybe Z) who can fully understand it without heavy usage of at least one good dictionary of foreign words and a book on torah / kaballah related topics.
Besides, the core story starts somewhere on page 438...

Basically the quote says that, if the Tower of Babel had been built the way it was designed, it would have shifted the earth' axis. The part with the penguins is beyond my comprehension...

Z, any news about that Italian "project" yet???

Re: More Babel

I think you just have to read it twice, so you can warm up to it. The first time it's somewhat strange, but the second time you already got an idea of what's going on.
And there's not one story, there are so many, many intertwined levels, something for everybody.

The Italian question is still undecided...



Dr. Zarkov
--
"Quick, Flash! We must save the Earth!"

Re: More Babel

You know I'm not quite the fastest reader. Using parts of my holiday for reading, it will still take me about three to four months to finish the pendulum. And I still have SO many other books to read, so reading anything twice is not too realistic for me...