| from
The Black Tulip – The Feast of the Florists, Norwich (1631)
We live amid the frenzy of increase (Cannetti). Our pathology is wounded nature; our economic mode mania; our manner modification. Tulipomania is symbolic; the black tulip (tulipa negra) is paradoxical; there is nothing that lives that is coloured black. Perfect black, black death. – Alec Finlay ‘We finish by Art which Nature only projected’ – La Chesnée Monstereul “Just then the Tulip Society of Haarlem offered a prize for the discovery (we dare not say the manufacture) of a large black tulip without a spot of colour, a thing which had not yet been accomplished, and was considered impossible, as at that time there did not exist a flower of that species approaching even to a dark nut brown. It was, therefore, generally said that the founders of the prize might just as well have offered two millions as a hundred thousand guilders, since no one would be able to gain it.” – Alexandre Dumas black tulip, curiosity flower, pretty showy little shower stem, hollow tunnel dark to light bind, knotted wound tied around scion, new branch or plant entire, perpetuating variety offset, bulblets of a mother bulb, always show the same characteristics as the parent modify, a change without transformation within graft, stock & scion joined in union breed, lottery tulip, jewel commodity, curiosity breeds acumen market, friendly, lively, very lively, bull, euphoric, maniac future, speculation, “the of the stock market was introduced into the of nature” – Zbigniew Herbert
|