Saturday, May 4, 2019

Deflation


Be forewarned, I am a total deflater of fun, about to strike again.
This time on that marvellous literary character created by Conan
Doyle, Sherlock Holmes. Yep, I know where the name 'Holmes' was
undoubtedly picked off. Worse still, I can do in the Swanns from the

Proustian universe as well.

The use of electricity for the purpose of lighting truly began with a British 
engineer named Frederick Hale Holmes, who in 1846 patented an electric 
arc lamp..

A brilliant British physicist and chemist named Joseph Swann is the man 
who was credited with the invention of the carbon fibre filament incandescent lamp...

https://www.thevictorianemporium.com/publications/history/article/history_of_lighting


Doyle(1859-1930) lived in Edingburgh, although the name itself is of Breton
origin. He was a physician, albeit not terribly successful, with an empty waiting
room. Hence, a lot of time on his hands... for imaginative writing.

Marcel Proust(1871-1922) wrote a prodigious amount; he was asthmatic and sickly
his entire life and his family's wealth made a literary career possible for him.
He wrote detaiiled accounts of his heroe's timid forays into Parisian social life.

Why do I link the works of these two very different men to the emergence of
the lit city streets in Europe? Because it must have made a huge difference. The
city acquired night life, it was no longer dangerous to be on the streets at night, nor
was the night dweller necessarily suspect. The artist - willy-nilly - documents his
epoch, and the contorsions of human consciousness to make sense of it all.

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