Fearing Their Symbols

Razed the garden, profaned the chalices and the altars…

Trellick Tower, Golborne Road, Kensington & Chelsea, W10

…by horse the Huns broke into the Monastic library and they tore the incomprehensible books and they vituperated them and they burnt them…

Windmill Lane, Dublin, Dublin 2

…fearing their symbols and characters might be concealing secret blasphemies against their God…

Leake Street, Waterloo, Lambeth, SE1

…who was an iron scimitar.

Robin Hood Gardens, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, E14

From Jorge Luis Borges’ The Theologians (1947)

The Animal Within Me

I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory…

Corleck Head, National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street, Ranelagh, Dublin 2

…the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.

From Robert Louis Stephenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886)

Lowest of the Low

What am I in the eyes of most people — a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person — somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low.

Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, Tower Hamlets, E1

All right, then — even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart.

Highgate Hill, Archway, Islington, N19

That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion.

Seville Place, Dublin, Dublin 1

Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me.

Caroline Street, Limehouse, Tower Hamlets, E1

I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners.

Long Street, Shoreditch, Hackney, E2

And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

Dock Road, Brentford, TW8

Vincent van Gogh’s Letter to Theo (1882)