The Notre-Dame Pump (small plate) 1854 Charles Meryon French Meryon occasionally composed verse to accompany his prints. In this case, he designed a separate plate for his poem about the Notre-Dame water pump. In translation, the tongue-in-cheek text reads: It is done, O perfidy! Poor pump, Without pomp, you must die! But to diminish This iniquitous sentence, Why not, as a touch of Bacchic mischief, Begin to pump, Impromptu, Fine wine, Instead of pure water, Which nobody really savors?Meryon playfully suggests a miracle that might save the pump from demolition even as the tangled, leaking pipe
The Notre-Dame Pump (small plate) 1854 Charles Meryon French Meryon occasionally composed verse to accompany his prints. In this case, he designed a separate plate for his poem about the Notre-Dame water pump. In translation, the tongue-in-cheek text reads: It is done, O perfidy! Poor pump, Without pomp, you must die! But to diminish This iniquitous sentence, Why not, as a touch of Bacchic mischief, Begin to pump, Impromptu, Fine wine, Instead of pure water, Which nobody really savors?Meryon playfully suggests a miracle that might save the pump from demolition even as the tangled, leaking pipes that form the poem’s decorative border evoke the inefficiency of this seventeenth-century The Notre-Dame Pump (small plate) 368865
Size: 1777px × 2383px
Photo credit: © MET/BOT / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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