In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

25 Bugatti’s Zoo Not only did World War I force Rembrandt Bugatti to abandon his work as an animal sculptor, but because of the war, all “his friends” vanished. The animals of the Jardin Zoologique in Brussels were slaughtered because they could no longer be fed. Shortly thereafter, Rembrandt Bugatti, 31, poisoned himself with gas. —Bugatti catalog, The Cleveland Museum of Art (Entries from Bugatti’s notebooks) I live to release continuance and the velocity of cunning in my sacred menagerie in loving bronze in Antwerp. Vultures and deer, yak, tapir, ostrich, cassowary and baboon, along with hippopotami, lions— gudu and emus. Very pure, very fine, happiness in Florentine details. The secretary birds now seize my attention. A wild rooster also beckons. Who could ever imagine, more than I, the endless elegance of the dziggetais? ❅ ❅ ❅ If you drop focus only a touch, someone else takes advantage. Behind the mask of the particulars of omnipotence and ignorance, there is nothing really irreverent, nothing at all ever again without consolation and misunderstood translation, shaped by well-earned darks of destiny. 26 What pleases, what devours, easily comes undone as a peace treaty. ❅ ❅ ❅ I stand hidebound by the world’s sideshows. Out of chances, bleak as Belgium in March. I count upon failures to be special blessings. Life happens when you dream other things, still guessing, guessing. My testimony is about tails and horns and hooves and the beatitudes of beasts, exact and warm as the inward wind I so miss in my veins. ❅ ❅ ❅ When winter never leaves (or lives), one misting evening I went lost between Groenplatts und Zickstraat— insatiably unable to grow old, when even my elephants forgot where to go to die. ...

Share