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| David Klöcker Ehrenstrahl Albino Squirrel in a Landscape (pet of King Charles XI of Sweden) 1696 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Jean-Baptiste Oudry The Lion and the Fly 1732 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Rosa Bonheur Wild Cat 1850 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| follower of Théodore Géricault Study of Dead Horse ca. 1820 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
Learning a Dead Language
There is nothing for you to say. You must
Learn first to listen. Because it is dead
It will not come to you of itself, nor would you
Of yourself master it. You must therefore
Learn to be still when it is imparted,
And, though you may not yet understand, to remember.
What you remember is saved. To understand
The least thing fully you would have to perceive
The whole grammar in all its accidence
And all its system, in the perfect singleness
Of intention it has because it is dead.
You can learn only a part at a time.
What you are given to remember
Has been saved before you from death's dullness by
Remembering. The unique intention
Of a language whose speech has died is order,
Incomplete only where someone has forgotten.
You will find that that order helps you to remember.
What you come to remember becomes yourself.
Learning will be to cultivate the awareness
Of that governing order, now pure of the passions
It composed; till, seeking it in itself,
You may find at last the passion that composed it,
Hear it both in its speech and in yourself.
What you remember saves you. To remember
Is not to rehearse, but to hear what never
Has fallen silent. So your learning is,
From the dead, order, and what sense of yourself
Is memorable, what passion may be heard
When there is nothing for you to say.
– W.S. Merwin, from Green with Beasts (Knopf, 1956)
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| Johan Lundbye Study of dead Swallow 1837 oil on canvas, mounted on cardboard Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Theodor Lundh Small Birds for the Table 1894 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Bruno Liljefors Eider Ducks 1894 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Christian Striep Herbs, Butterflies and Serpent before 1673 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Otto Marseus van Schrieck Serpent and Butterflies in a Wood before 1678 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
To the Insects
Elders
we have been here so short a time
and we pretend that we have invented memory
we have forgotten what it is like to be you
who do not remember us
we remember imagining that what survived us
would be like us
and would remember the world as it appears to us
but it will be your eyes that will fill with light
we kill you again and again
and we turn into you
eating the forests
eating the earth and the water
and dying of them
departing from ourselves
leaving you the morning
in its antiquity
– W.S. Merwin, from The Rain in the Trees (Knopf, 1988)
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| Roelant Savery Memento Mori (skeletons and birds) before 1639 oil on panel Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Kilian Zoll Study of Vegetation before 1860 oil on paper, mounted on panel Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Nils Kreuger Spring Evening 1896 oil on panel Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Vincent van Gogh Acacia in Flower before 1890 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Anne Vallayer-Coster Miniature Still-life with Flowers ca. 1780 oil on canvas Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |