Chekhov's Mistress
A Quixotic Homage?
I’ve been impressed with Jason’s Palm-pilot reading of DQ, so I thought everyone might find this news item interesting…
Physicists in Madrid, Spain are celebrating the 400th anniversary of publication of “Don Quixote” in a very small way: they wrote the first paragraph on a silicon chip in letters so tiny the whole 1,000-page book would fit on the tips of six human hairs…Using water vapor in the atmosphere and an electric charge, that tip basically etches out tiny letters on the surface.
From the San Jose Mercury News (registration required: bugmenot pw )
p.s. I know the Grossman translation is bulky, but I’m enjoying having a larger typeface than in my old Jarvis translation that is just a stubby little paperback. Of course, I am now on the verge of using reading glasses, so that may explain my preference.
comments
I love this, mostly because it demonstrates just how important DQ has been to Spanish culture and how deeply its tongue-in-cheek self-referentiality resonates with us today.
Of course, the scientists involved in this homage are doing just what Don Quixote himself did: throwing themselves headlong into their own obsession (in this case, physics) to do something utterly improbable for its own sake (winking all the while).
Can you even imagine what literary work would inspire American scientists to such an enterprise? Perhaps once The Great American Novel finally gets written…
– Mike (04/08 at 09:03 PM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: April 06, 2005
- Filed Under:
Wise Men Fish Here: Literature
- Comments:1
- Links to this Post: Technorati
