#villes

[semioticapocalypse]

Homer Page. New York City. 1949

I Am Collective Memories   •    Follow me, — says Visual Ratatosk

[lollytoffee]

The villes better get revenge

[francepittoresque]

IL Y A 319 ANS | Mort du maréchal de Vauban ➽ http://bit.ly/Sebastien-Vauban Le 30 mars 1707, une pneumonie a raison du stratège des citadelles. Architecte des sièges et ingénieur des frontières, Vauban dresse sous Louis XIV une véritable enceinte de pierre autour du royaume qui force encore l'admiration. Maître des tranchées, des glacis et des bastions, il enlève les places ennemies avec méthode et épargne le sang des soldats

[transparentgentlemenmarker]

Trop simple voilà pourquoi on ne le ferait pas

[coolcatsonly]

They turn reverently toward museums, schools, and libraries, and renew their ideals through contact with others who are equally in the thrall of great things. Are they not also immigrants to the cities, and is it not thanks to them that the chariot of civilization continues to move forward through the ages?

When cities grow, humanity progresses, and when they shrink, the social body is threatened with regression into barbarism.

Without having studied the question, one might easily imagine that cities are distributed randomly. And in fact, a number of accounts depict the founders of cities leaving to fate the choice of a site on which to settle and build protective walls. The course of the flight of birds, the spot on which a stag was hunted down and taken, or the point at which a ship ran aground determined where a city was to be constructed. Thus the capital of Iceland, Reykjavik, is supposed to have been founded according to the will of the gods. (5)

In 874, the fugitive Ingolfur came in sight of Iceland and cast into the water the wooden images that served as his household idols. He sought vainly to follow their course, but they eluded him, and he had to establish a temporary camp on the shore. Three years later, he rediscovered the sacred pieces of wood, and moved his settlement to a nearby site, which turned out to be as favorably situated as possible in this formidable “Land of Ice.” (6)

(5): Labonne, Annuaire du Club alpin, 1886. [Reclus’ note] (6): Ingolfur Arnarsson was the first settler of Iceland. After being banished from Norway he set sail for Iceland. He brought along the posts from the high seat, or throne, of his home in Norway. On sighting land, he threw the pillars into the sea and asked the gods to wash them ashore at the appropriate spot for a settlement. He lost sight of the pillars and built a farm on the southeast coast. The posts were finally located along the coast to the west, and the settlement was moved to a spot that was given the Norse name “Reykjavik,” or “Bay of Smoke,” after the geothermal steam that rose there.

Elisee Reclus - "The History of Cities," available at http://theanarchistlibrary.org/.

[cheminer-poesie-cressant]

@cheminer-poesie-cressant

Il y a les villes palais, les villes miroirs, les villes verticales, les villes circulaires, les villes bourdonnantes, les villes silence, les villes jardins, les villes chagrins, les villes cheminées, les villes arcades, les villes mourantes, les villes d'une ligne, les villes d'une vie, les villes qui retiennent, les villes qui embaument, les villes qui évadent, les villes qui reposent. Toutes sont la mienne.

(Dans la portée des ombres, extrait)

© Pierre Cressant

(dimanche 11 septembre 2005)

[visualratatosk]

Someone is always up there, 07