The Trout's Symmetry.—"Few humanly designed lines are more graceful than those of the yacht. The trout is made up of such lines. It is a submarine designed by the Almighty. It makes the most of the simple elements of artistic beauty—symmetry of line, suggestive of agile power, and delicately blended harmonies of rich color."—New York Evening Telegram, editorial page, July 17, 1915.In view of the tensions between nature and industry in the discourse of landscape, there's something compelling about the comparison of fish to vessels such as yachts and submarines. The quotation is from 1915. Is this a modernist aesthetic - one in which industry is not subordinate to nature and a fish is beautiful to the extent that it approximates the lines of industrial design?
Schooner Eleonora (replica of Nathanael Greene
Herreshoff design, 1910), pictured in the Channel Islands, 2010. Image by
Impact from Wikimedia Commons.
I have been reading The Natural History of Selbourne by Gilbert White. there is not much about fishing but there is a nice description of a loach.: 'The loach, in its general aspect, has a pellucid appearance: its back is mottled with irregular collections of small black dots, not reaching much below the linea lateralis, as are the black and tail fins: a black line runs from each eye down to the nose; its belly is of a silvery white; the upper jaw projects beyond the lower, and is surrounded with six feelers, three on each side;its pectoral fins are large; its vental much smaller...it appears to be an active nimble fish.'
ReplyDeleteThe description is so long and exact I have not put all of it but it struck me it is a bit like a botanists drawing - very precise and that is the point of this kind of writing.