Histoire du Manneken-Pis: Racontée par lui-même by Jacques Collin de Plancy

Histoire du Manneken-Pis: Racontée par lui-même Reviews

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  Osiris Oliphant

  History of the Manneken-Pis, told by itself (1824)
  
  A broad investigation into the famous pissing boy statue in Brussels by the compiler of the Infernal Dictionary.
  
  from the googles-
  {Manneken Pis, a Renaissance fountain in Brussels depicting a urinating boy, is a “floating signifier”, attracting multiple symbolic meanings from its earliest appearance. There is a surprising degree of overlap between meanings attached to the statue by hermetic alchemists and those used in health promotion campaigns. Approaches to alchemy could be scientific or spiritual but shared symbolic modes of expression. Both alchemists and public health promoters see the statue as capable of inspiring practical changes in behavior in an individual. From the starting point of an account of an eighteenth-century search for the philosopher’s stone which is said to have ended in a tragic death, this article examines how alchemists and proponents of public health have used the image of the urinating boy.}
  
  auto translated excerpt=
  ...We tell yet another tale. A fairy lived at the corner of rue de l'Étuve. A child came to pee at her door. She condemned him to the same function,for life, in the same place. A holy man evaded the wickedness of the fairy, by putting in the place of the child a statue which has not stopped pissing clear water until this day. All this contributes to demonstrate the celebrity of the oldest boy in Brussels. We also know that in the city of Grammont, the curious can admire a fountain copied from our Manneken Pis...