Could it be Jorge Luis Borges (see below)?
Megan
I ran across this quote:
"On Exactitude in Science” an excerpt from “Travels of Praiseworthy Men”, (1658) by J.A. Suarez Miranda, relays the amazing similarities to our society today with satellite technology, and the ability to map the world inch by inch with amazing detail: […] In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a single Province covered the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire the entirety of a Province. In time, these Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it.
The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Discipline of Geography. (Borges 325)
Suarez, Miranda, J.A. "Of Exactitude in Science." Trans. Andrew Hurley. Collected Fictions. Ed.
Jorge Luis Borges. New York: Penguin Classics, 1998. 325 Rpt. of "Travels of
Praiseworthy Men." 1658.
media.schoolofvisualarts.edu/sva/media/1403/large/Proceedings2005.pdf
>>> Rusty Brown <brown@library.ucsb.edu> 4/12/2007 9:02:25 AM >>>
It's Greek to me.
RB
Mary Larsgaard wrote:
> Does this sound familiar to anyone?
>
> "In the 70s I read a book a poetry by one of the South American poets.
> In this book (which I’ve not been able to locate since) he quoted a
> paragraph taken from I know not what that might have been called
> the Art of Cartography. It was written in prose form but had the
> feeling of poetry. It was about a small (presumably European, perhaps
> Medieval) town that had been dedicated to perfecting the art of
> cartography.
> They had gone so far in an effort to reach the ultimate levels of
> accuracy and
> scale that they had produced a map of their own locale that it literally
> covered the entire town inch by inch."
>
> I do remember Lewis Carroll's comment about
> the only really useful maps having a scale
> of 1:1, but the above doesn't ring a bell.
>
> Mary
>
>
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