GRGR1 - In Praise of Rust

[Henry Musikar]

It appears that rust never sleeps...

Happy Birthday...

On  1 Oct 96 at 16:14, S T Johnson wrote:

> Then I stumbled upon the following, which is an excerpt of a lecture
> given by John Ruskin in 1858 entitled 'In Praise of Rust' (it is to
> be found in The Faber Book of Science page 110):
> 
> '...in a certain sense, and almost a literal one, we may say that
> iron rusted is Living; but when pure or polished, Dead. You all
> probably know that in the mixed air we breathe, the part of it
> essentially needful to us is called oxygen; and that this substance
> is to all animals, in the most accurate sense of the word, 'breath
> of life' [Genesis 2:7]. Now it is this very same air which the iron
> breathes when it gets rusty. The iron keeps all that it gets; we,
> and other animals, part with it again; but the metal absolutely
> keeps what it has once received of this aerial gift; and the
> ochreous dust which we so much despise is, in fact, just so much
> nobler than pure iron, in so far as it is iron and the air. Nobler,
> and more useful - for the main service of this metal, and all other
> metals, to us, is not in making knives, and scissors, and pokers,
> and pans, but in making the ground we feed from, and nearly all the
> substances first needful to our existence.... There is only one
> metal which does not readily rust ;  and that in its influence on
> Man hitherto, has caused Death rather than Life; it will not be put
> to its right use till it is made a pavement of, and so trodden under
> foot.
> 
> Here you have your hard bright, cold, lifeless metal - good enough
> for swords and scissors - but not for food. You think, perhaps that
> your iron is wonderfully useful in a pure form, but how would you
> like the world, if all your meadows, instead of grass, grew nothing
> but iron wire - if all your arable ground, instead of being made of
> sand and clay, were suddenly turned into flat surfaces of steel - if
> the whole earth instead of its green and glowing sphere, rich with
> forest and flower, showed nothing but the image of a vast furnace of
> a ghastly engine - a globe of black, lifeless excoriated metal? It
> would be that - probably it was once that; but assuredly it would
> be, were it not that all the substance of which it is made sucks and
> breathes the brilliancy of the atmosphere; and, as it breathes,
> softening from its merciless hardness, it falls into fruitful and
> beneficient dust; gathering itself again into the earths from which
> we feed, and the stones with which we build;'
> 
> He continues for several paragraphs eulogising iron's colouring of
> the Earth, before closing with:
> 
> 'A nobler colour than all these - the noblest colour ever seen on
> this earth - one which belongs to a strength greater than that of
> the Egyptian granite, and to a beauty greater than that of the
> sunset or the rose - is still mysteriously connected with the
> presence of this dark iron. I believe it is not ascertained on what
> the crimson of blood actually depends; but the colour is connected,
> of course, with its vitality, and that vitality with existence of
> iron as one of its substantial elements. Is it not strange to find
> this stern and strong metal mingled so delicately in our human life
> that we cannot even blush without its help?'
> 
> Ruskin's use of the word vital in relation to rust, and the 
> contrasting cold deathlyness of steel, would seem to fit that 
> used by Pynchon, as David Evers wrote in his post: 
> 
>  p. 3 - iron railway tracks giving way to a coral-like and 
>  mysteriously vital growth of rust
> 
>  p. 5 - Pirate's blanket an orange, rust and scarlet tartan
> 
>  p. 7 - the rooftop glasshouse is another crystal palace with 
>  iron trusswork: how could any winter be gray enough to age 
>  this iron that can sing in the wind?
> 
> Going further, Ruskin's 'fruitful and beneficient dust' feeding the
> earth is scarily close to the description (p.5 when Corydon Throsp
> is introduced) of the unbelievable black top soil in the glasshouse
> which feeds the bananas.
> 
> Going back to my original poser, and increasing the entanglement, I
> examined John Ruskin's biography and found apart from his being
> known primarily as a social reformer and art critic he was also the
> great champion of the work of the then obscure pre-Raphaelites (his
> ex-wife even married one of the brotherhood). He also wrote a great
> rage against the railways in one of his last works.
> 
> Does this all fit? Is there something else to the Rossetti
> reference?
> 
> stuart
> -- 
> 
> Dr. S. T. Johnson	stj at holyrood.ed.ac.uk
>    http://www.ed.ac.uk/~stj/homepage.html
> 

Keep Cool, but care. -- TRP
http://www.nicom.com/~gravity/mypage.htm