In which the author responds to readers who have asked why he chose the Breughel painting ‘Tower of Babel’ for the cover of his carpentry memoir, Journeyman’s Dues.
The straightforward answer is that Breughel depicts the tower described in Genesis 11 that was built when the people of earth spoke one language. As it grew closer to heaven, the Lord decided they were overreaching, invading his space, showing off, and probably would do all sorts of things even more competitive with his own powers. So he shattered that one language and the people could no longer coordinate the work and scattered to the seven corners of the world. I’ve read many parts of the Bible but always felt this was the nastiest and pettiest action of that god…and that’s saying a lot.
That’s still not straightforward enough, so here:
I identify with the builders who spoke the one language. I believe there still is one language. I absolutely love Breughel and that painting.
My book is about a young man obsessed with language and poetry who worked on giant buildings learning the one language of tools and leverage. And learning how to be a journeyman in the archaic fusic of union and skill. The book itself is a building, with many storeys, that took 60 years to complete.
Now for the long roundabout meander.
In 2014, my wife and I went to the Low Countries, specifically Amsterdam, Bruges, and Antwerp. I had two goals: to visit the Plantin Printing Museum in Antwerp, and to see as many Breughel, de Hooch and Bosch paintings as possible. The effect was more than I could have anticipated, life-altering. I loved discovering some mesmerizing works, like Breughel’s fantastical Dulle Griet in Antwerp. But that same day I also spent hours in the Plantin Museum which is the oldest intact printing establishment in the world, begun in the 16th Century. All the equipment is preserved as it had been centuries before, so you could walk right up to the old hand presses and the rows of type cases.
It was weaving into one tapestry for me…the warp of the metal type presses…and the weft of the paintings. There were rooms where you could see the books printed in the 16-17th Centuries, and their rich typographic artistry. In 1570, Plantin produced one of the masterpieces of early printing, a Bible with text simultaneously in Aramaic, Greek, Latin and Hebrew. The name for this kind of version is polyglot bible. Let that sink in.
When I got home and busy in my printshop again, I was obsessed with that tapestry of words and imagination, and bought an art book of Breughel’s work. There I discovered his Tower of Babel for the first time, the awesome yet ordinary depiction of that giant construction, with intricate engineering devices, half-finished galleries and stairs leading nowhere. It was teeming with people in very natural poses of the actual work. I got lost in the detail to the degree that I wanted to just sign up for the crew. How can I help? Well young fellow, said the 500-year old superintendent, how about the finish work? We need to get all these words to the top before that tyrant smites us again.
I spent the next couple of months ‘pitching in’, as best I could, building a two-dimensional tower of metal type and imagining the omniliterate tongue that would get us to the pinnacle that the overseer called heaven. We just wanted to SEE EVERYTHING. Is that so bad you big bully? Here’s the foundation:
By the time I finished & printed an edition, the tower had grown to 16” high, & I had used 45 different fonts, ending with a medley of 6-points.
I guess one could say that I’ve been obsessed with the metaphor of the towers of words and always aligned myself with the heresy of panhumanism. Maybe there never was one protohuman language but there most certainly is one humanity, still painfully burdened with patriarchs, bullies & demagogues. The tower of Babel was the One Big Union.
