Birthday of artist M.C. (Maurits Corneille) Escher, b. 1898.

Waterfall

Art Print

Escher, M. C.


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Amazingly enough, I decided today to declare this week to be G.K. Chesterton Week at Semicolon, not because it’s Chesterton’s birthday. That was back in May. But I am reading Chesterton’s novel, The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare for a summer book club that Eldest Daughter started in order to amuse herself and some friends. And the June selection for my book club, Biblically Literate, (which, due to all the crises in my life, is not going so well) is another Chesterton book, Manalive. For a long time I’ve wanted to re-read Chesterton’s classic apologetic work, Orthodoxy, and Chesterton Week is my excuse to do so. And, finally, for Poetry Friday, which will be hosted here at Semicolon on Friday, I plan to post something poetic by Mr. Chesterton.

Now, you’re supposed to ask: why did you use the word “amazingly” in the last paragraph? Well, serendipitously, it seems to me that M.C. Escher and Gilbert Keith Chesterton are kindred spirits. They both deal in enigma and paradox and near-nightmare. They both lived at about the same time.
Chesterton might have hated Escher’s art of illusion and reality, but I prefer to think they would have found much common ground.

Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling? —M.C. Escher

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling. —G.K. Chesterton

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it’s in my basement… let me go upstairs and check. —M.C. Escher

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame. —G.K. Chesterton

We adore chaos because we love to produce order. —M.C. Escher

Don’t they sound as if they were separated at birth? I wonder if they ever met?