11 maio 2008
22 fevereiro 2008
07 janeiro 2008
CP 3
"animar" as creaturas: periodo de gestação (?)
"The creature was to have stood no more than 12 inches (300 mm) tall, and did the work usually associated with a golem. However, after a short time, the homunculus turned on its creator and ran away. The recipe consisted of a bag of bones, semen, skin fragments and hair from any animal, of which the chimeric homunculus would be a hybrid. This was to be laid in the ground surrounded by horse manure for forty days, at which point the embryo would form." (wikipédia)
"The creature was to have stood no more than 12 inches (300 mm) tall, and did the work usually associated with a golem. However, after a short time, the homunculus turned on its creator and ran away. The recipe consisted of a bag of bones, semen, skin fragments and hair from any animal, of which the chimeric homunculus would be a hybrid. This was to be laid in the ground surrounded by horse manure for forty days, at which point the embryo would form." (wikipédia)
16 dezembro 2007
05 dezembro 2007
04 dezembro 2007
Pinocchio
(imagem: The Project Gutenberg EBook of Pinocchio, by C. Collodi
Illustrator: Alice Carsey)
[...] Parece ter sido Lémery, químico francês dos séculos XVII-XVIII(1645-1715), quem fez a primeira distinção entre as substâncias, quanto à sua proveniência, classificando-as em animais, vegetais e minerais. Julgava-se nesse tempo, e assim se pensou durante grande parte do século XIX, que havia uma separação profunda entre as substâncias de origem mineral e as de origem orgânica. As primeiras poder-se-iam obter em laboratório, por meio de reacções convenientes; as segundas, não, porque como tinham origem nos animais e nas plantas, seres com vida, exigiam para a sua formação, a presença de certa força misteriosa que anima os corpos vivos. Berzelius, o notabilissimo químico sueco, designou este agente por "força vital" e afirmou que poucas esperanças deveria haver de algum dia se prepararem artificialmente as substâncias orgânicas. O desenvolvimento da química mostrou que não seria assim.
(Compêndio de Química para o 3º ciclo - Rómulo de Carvalho. Lisboa, Editora Studium, 1950)
Homúnculus
Faust: The Tragedy
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Part II, Act II: LABORATORY
(After the style of the Middle Ages: extensive, unwieldy apparatus, for fantastical purposes.)
WAGNER (at the furnace).
The solemn bell shakes with its boom
The sooty walls in dread vibration.
Soon must uncertainty assume
Some form, to greet long expectation.
[...]
(He turns to his hearth.)
Look! There's a gleam!--Now hope may be fulfilled,
That hundreds of ingredients, mixed, distilled-
And mixing is the secret-give us power
The stuff of human nature to compound;
If in a limbeck we now seal it round
And cohobate with final care profound,
The finished work may crown this silent hour.
(Turning again to the hearth.)
It works! The substance stirs, is turning clearer!
The truth of my conviction presses nearer:
The thing in Nature as high mystery prized,
This has our science probed beyond a doubt;
What Nature by slow process organized,
That have we grasped, and crystallized it out.
[...]
A flash, a mantling, and the ferment rises,
Thus, in this moment, hope materializes.
A mighty project may at first seem mad,
But now we laugh, the ways of chance foreseeing:
A thinker then, in mind's deep wonder clad,
May give at last a thinking brain its being.
(He looks at the phial enraptured.)
Now chimes the glass, a note of sweetest strength,
It clouds, it clears, my utmost hope it proves,
For there my longing eyes behold at length
A dapper form, that lives and breathes and moves.
My mannikin! What can the world ask more?
The mystery is brought to light of day.
Now comes the whisper we are waiting for:
He forms his speech, has clear-cut words to say.
HOMUNCULUS (speaking to Wagner from the phial).
Well, Father, what's to do? No joke, I see.
Come, take me to your heart, and tenderly!
But not too tight, for fear the glass should break.
That is the way that things are apt to take:
The cosmos scarce will compass Nature's kind,
But man's creations need to be confined....
Subscrever:
Mensagens (Atom)