What I love about this article from Jan Svankmajer, “Cabinets of Wonder: On Creating and Collecting,” is that what he’s attempting to describe cannot be described. He’s attempting to describe the indescribable. At the end, he discusses his own cabinet of wonder, containing naturalia, exotica, esoterica, artecicialia, scientica, Gaudia, Funeralia, horribilia, and vetustissima. His collection somehow collects representations of all these abstract ideas.
I love Svankmajer’s films. They have this oddity about them. The thing I can’t help but think about is the way these directors who see the world differently than the rest of us, all tend to be collectors, creating their own cabinets of wonder and curiosity — Guillermo del Toro is another. He calls it “Bleak House” and it’s fantastically strange.
[Pic: Guillermo del Toro in the cabinet of curiosity that he calls home]
The beginning of the article also speaks to me, as a collector. I’m without a doubt a collector of horror, superhero, and nerd culture oddities. A particular idea that resinates with me greatly is when Svankmajer says, “I’m basically passive. The objects of my desire seek me out, not I them.” I feel similarly.
As a last thought, I’m left with this idea what “cabinets of wonder initiates us. After leaving we are transformed.” What a tall order that is, indeed.
[Edit: Additional content from the initial post found below.]
I just saw a second reading was posted, so let me briefly talk about it as well.
Something that stands out about Melody Amsel-Arieli’s “Cabinets of Curiosity,” occurs on page 41. She says, “since they considered all forms, factual or mythical, part of Man’s sum of knowledge, each object held equal importance.” This is incredibly striking and relevant to me because it adds to multiple conversations I’ve had in classes this week about the value of research. I love that in these cabinets mermaid’s heads were equally regarded as plants, animals, or minerals. In one of my seminar classes this week, well actually in two of them now that I’m thinking about it, we talked about the divide between social science and humanities researchers and how each group thinks they are the one true research path and the other is hokum. While in these cabinets, everything is on equal terms, as should research be, in my opinion.
Another thing that spoke to me about this article was, also on page 41, where she talks about these rooms of wonder and how people would buy tickets to look at the oddities. Perhaps, P. T. Barnum wasn’t the first to profit on spectacle, perhaps it was these curators of wonder and curiosity.