Hopkins b/w Duchamp

Gerard Manley Hopkins and Marcel Duchamp, back to back (Hopkins first). These two don't usually invite comparison, but the similarities (and differences) in these sets of notes and sketches are intriguing:

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Just caught sight of a little whirlwind which ran very fast careening across our pond. It was made by conspiring catspaws seeming to be caught in, in a whorl, to the centre. There were of course two motions, the traveling and the rotation…Each tail of the catspaw seemed to fling itself alive into its place in turn, so that something like the scale A B C D was very rapidly repeated all around the ring…there was something eery, Circe-like and quick about it”        
​—Gerard Manley Hopkins

Figure 1, above: Catspaws' tails.

   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .  

Figure 2, below: Parasol sieves

As in a Derby, the spangles pass through the parasols A, C D.EF…B. and as they gradually arrive at D, E, F,…etc. they are straightened out i.e. they loose their sense of up and down ([more precise term]).—The group of these parasols forms a sort of labyrinth of the 3 directions.--

The spangles dazed by this progressive turning, imperceptibly lose [provisionally they will find it again later] their designation of left, right, up, down, etc, lose their awareness of position.

​​…they can no longer retain their individuality”      
​ —Marcel Duchamp

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The overall schema could be a document from a fictional world—a world in which critical inquiry is the mysterious object, and art the helpmate and authority. Where Art tumbles Circe-stunned Letters in "conspiring catspaws..."

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Sources:
House, Humphrey, ed. The Journals and Papers of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oxford University Press, London, 1959.
Sanouillet, Michel and Peterson, Elmer, eds., The Essential Writings of Marcel Duchamp, Thames and Hudson, Ltd., London, 1975.