A Dance to the Music of Time, by Nicolas Poussin, c. 1635. Wallace Collection, London.
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Miscellany
Along with an elephant whose name in Arabic meant “the father of intelligence,” Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid presented Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne with a mechanical clock powered by water in 807. At noon a weight dropped, bells sounded, and twelve brass horsemen emerged from twelve windows.
Time rushes toward us with its hospital tray of infinitely varied narcotics, even while it is preparing us for its inevitably fatal operation.
—Tennessee Williams, 1951
