Showing posts with label Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

The Fourteen Categories

All animals fall into one of 14 categories:

*Those who belong to the emperor
*Embalmed ones
*Those who are trained
*Suckling pigs
*Mermaids (or Sirens)
*Fabulous ones
*Stray dogs
*Those who are included in this classification
*Those who tremble as if they were mad
*Innumerable ones
*Those drawn with a very fine camel hair brush
*Others
*Those who have just broken the flower vase
*Those who, at a distance, resemble flies

--from "Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge," a fictitious taxonomy of animals described in the book THE ANALYTICAL LANGUAGE OF JOHN WILKINS by the magic realist writer Jorge Luis Borges