the simurgh
Every time I look at this painting by Arcimboldo I remember a fable cited by Jorge Luis Borges in The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim (I say cited, but of course inventing bogus sources is one of Borges' favourite literary games.) This is the story: A flock of birds set out on a journey to find their king, about whom they know only two things: his name is Simurgh, or "Thirty Birds," and he lives on a mountain in the far East. The journey is long and perilous; many birds desert the quest; others perish—in the end only thirty birds survive the journey to the mountain on which their king lives, and, "purified by their travails, look upon their king at last: they see that they are the Simurgh and that the Simurgh is each, and all, of them." The story, Borges tells us, is found in the Mantiq al-tair or "Parliament of the Birds," the author, one Farid al-din Abi Hamid Muhammad ben Ibrahim. I wonder if Borges ever saw the painting. I am sure it would have reminded him of his story, just as the story would have reminded Arcimboldo of his painting. In The Anatomy of Melancholy, Robert Burton writes: "I will conclude with Scaliger: we are not whole men, but parts of men; from all of us together something might be made; from each of us individually, nothing." Borges, Arcimboldo, Burton, you and I: Ours are the faces that compose that face of human faces.
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Air, Giuseppe Arcimboldo, 1566
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