Чудо искусства

THE MIRACLE OF ART 

In the era of the Great of the Leveling of Mountains, the Emperor was E Li-fan, which means elephant. And so the sculptor Chu, after ten long years of work, erected a huge statue of an elephant on the central plaza of the capital in the pose of Napoleon, but without his tricorne hat, for at that time, no one knew who Napoleon was. For  this reason, the statue had sported a flat top, so that when the Emperor Don Ki, which means donkey, assended to the throne during the era of the Great Settlement of the Deserts, the sculptor Chu now erected on this head a life-sized donkey carrying a volume of poems under his arm, for as is well known, this Emperor was especially fond of poems about his person. Now, the deserts were not at all sand-strewn and barren places, but rather, wastelands that had been formed after the Great Leveling of the Mountains, and so the former mountain springs now flowed through them. 

Inasmuch as the glaciers that fed them were gradually melting, without being renewed, the ara of the great Confluence of Rivers began, when the Emperor already was Chim Pan-zee, which, as strange as it might seem, is translated as baboon. And so the sculptor Chu installed a baboon on top of the donkey's head, and inasmuch as, for of the stability of this construction, the baboon was holding onto the donkey's ear, he came out looking hunched over and with a face distorted by tension, which, most fortunately, wasn't visible to the common people from down below. And the Emperor himself, being of superior rank and awesome dignity, soared in spirit upon his visitation of his monument and, upon gazing into his own face was greatly horrified. It was then than the devious Chim Pan-zee commanded that a tower be built out of elephant ivory opposite the monument, having thus diminished the memory of his most immediate predecessor, and then he had the sculptor Chu immured within the tower's face, providing him but with a single tiny window immediately opposite the contorted mug of the baboon. One story below him, at the level of the donkey, he had those poets incarcerated, whose poems, as the legend proclaimed, the donkey had sported under his arm. Peering out of their windows, the disgraced poets, seeing naught but the donkey's mug, continued composing their odes to his perspicacity. And this became the origin of that renowned expression regrading the tower of ivory. 

History tells us that, in meditating upon the confluence of rivers, the Emperor Chim Pan-zee came down with hydrocephaly, and slipped into his grave, and was replaced by yet another E Li-fan, and thus began the era of the Great Extraction of Mountains. It was decreed that the ivory tower be magnanimouly disassembled to be utilized in the construction of mountains, and the poets scattered this way and that, and the sculptor Chu continued walking a long time after that doubled over crookedly, fearing to look into the face of any and all passersby. Afterwards, he departed into the not yet completed mountains, where he befell an accident and, stumbling into a chunk of elephant ivory, he thus collapsed and expired. 

Hearsay however insists that he died from old age, and not out of foreboding. In accordance with the highest decree, he was buried on the central plaza under the magnificent figures he had sculpted, whose greatness it was determined ought not be recognized, for a new era had dawned. A young, but already distinguished sculptor who, in accordance with the spirit of the age, wished to remain anonymous, erected an effigy, portraying the sculptor Chu, leading an elephant by the bridle and laden with all his once upon a time renowned cargo. 

Thus, this composition was transformed into a monument to the artist himself, acknowledging the permanence of art, so that when the Roman legions passed this way, the astonished Latins carved out on the elephant's belly the following inscription: «АRS LONGA, VITA BREVIS (LIFE IS SHORT, ART IS ETERNAL)».

English by Alex Cigale