The Matter of the Drawings
In the 19th century a most curious thing happened in both England and France—though unremarked upon at the time by the peoples of either—itself a curious thing given their intense rivalry in all matters in those days. For a number of years—precisely how many is a difficult answer to divine—this strange phenomenon drew on without comment, though in those lingering days one could hardly have escaped witnessing it. An artist retained to illustrate this or that; an apprentice at the draftsman’s desk at practice; a child and their first drawing; it mattered not, the experience was always the same.
The rough, undulating surface of the primordial sea in the dark of night, lit by moon and stars, lapping against a barren rocky shore. Black waves crashing about under a black sky. And there, upon the face of the deep, two great beasts of an antediluvian age, monstrous reptiles of the more ancient than ancient world, locked in battle, death a certainty for one or both, the spoils to the victor the rulership of that grim watery kingdom. A plesiosaur and an ichthyosaur, their jagged teeth bared as they lunged, savage and brutal, each desiring only to tear into the other’s flesh; those teeth, like daggers, sinking into whatever delicate spot the beasts spied.
The details might be different from one work to the next. No, it wasn’t that they were all exactly and assuredly the same, but, nevertheless, the fact remained—inescapably now—that the subject was as clear as its depiction was dim. Every single drawing of the same matter; every single work for year after year and the years to follow; drawn by any hand, dreamt by any mind, by any artist, to any audience or none; all of them this same image of primeval battle between prehistoric beasts.
And somehow, for all this time, and after for a century or more—though it continued throughout the whole of England and France—none gave even the merest hint of being cognizant of it. A master with a dozen pupils, each handing in their own rendition of that great struggle in the seas beneath the moonlight; and the master notices nothing. A publisher of books commissions an artist to do an etching, and the work is returned, again and the same again regardless of the book, regardless of the matter, these reptiles in the dance of death; and the publisher says nothing. Curious indeed!
In time, the mania passed and normalcy returned; yet, even after, when artists had long since resumed their tireless chasing after various and sundry in their usual longing for novelty, it went oddly without comment; for such a period as had been, all their creative powers were directed toward that same singular creation, and all seemed oblivious and unconcerned. For all that time; for all the generations that have followed; for all the delving of art historians into the mind of the past; there remains not a single solitary record—not the least of footnotes—chronicling this most uncanny occurrence.
Strange, don’t you think?