File spoon-archives/deleuze-guattari.archive/deleuze-guattari_1998/deleuze-guattari.9806, message 52


Date: Wed, 10 Jun 1998 11:32:49 +1200 (NZST)
From: michael.goddard-AT-stonebow.otago.ac.nz (Michael Goddard)
Subject: prehistory of the crystal



Awhile back there was some discussion of the origins of Deleuze and
Guattari's concept of the crystal, which seemed to locake it as emerging as
early as Difference and Repetition.

In my research I have found that this concept has a fascinating
pre-history, which whether it was of significance to d&g or not is highly
resonant with their work.
1) Worringer's 'Abstraction and Empathy (1908)', in which the term
'expressionism was coined develops a conception of art that would contrast
an empathic organic pole with an abstract crystalline one: 'In consequence
of the most profound inner connection of all living things, this
geometrical form [of archaic art] is also the morphological law of
crystalline-inorganic matter...the morphological law of inorganic matter
still echoes like a dim memory in our human organism...we may conjecture
that the creation of geometric abstraction was a pure self-creation out of
the preconditions of the human organism'


2) Even more surprising and resonant is Stendhal's book 'de l'amour' a
delerious yet rigorous philosophical exploration of all aspects of love,
which is understood in terms of crystallisation:


5. The first crystallisation begins. If you are sure that a woman loves you
, it is apleasure to endow her with a thousand perfections and to count
your blessings with infinite satisfaction. In the end you overrate wildly
and regard her as something fallen from heaven...leave a lover with his
thoughts for twenty four hours, and this is what will happen:
At the salt mines of Strasbourg, they throw a leafless wintry bough into
one of the thousands of salt workings. Two or three months later they haul
it out covered with a shining deposit of crystals.
What I have called crystallisation is a mental process which draws fron
everything that happens new proofs of the perfection of the loved one...'.
It goes on developing the theory of crystallisation in numerous situations
and in true Deleuzian fashion acros varisou geographical styles.

If any-one is interested in these or other examples, I'd be interested to
hear about it.

michael


   

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