The Hypertext Triomnibus

The Chemist’s Shelf

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tagstriad, difficulty/4, kind/conflict, kind/shared-figure-or-motif, kind/genealogy-influence

3 min read

Triad 27 of 32 · 2026-10-20 · Difficulty 4 · Conflict, Shared figure or motif, Genealogy/influence

The thread

What should be done with the ashes of the dead? Browne believes ‘our estranged and divided ashes shall unite againe’ at ‘the voyce of God’, calls human preservations a ‘fallacy in duration’, and notes that ‘Pharaoh is sold for balsoms’. Fedorov (via Groys’s Russian Cosmism) turns Browne’s palingenesis (‘What the Art of man can doe…’) into the sons’ common task, with the museum as the instrument of resurrection. Malevich (via Zhilyaev’s Avant-Garde Museology) answers: burn it, ‘thousands of graveyards could be accommodated on one chemist’s shelf’, ‘set up one pharmacy’. Browne’s apothecary jar of Pharaoh and Malevich’s pharmacy of Rubens are the same object valued oppositely. Browne holds both Russian positions at once (patience with ‘the urne and ashes of the Vatican’ / faith in reassembled dust); Bogdanov’s ‘Immortality Day’ ends the immortality anthology on a pyre; Zhilyaev’s book ends with a 1931 crematorium exhibition rebuked for a caption about bacteria.

The three books

  • Religio Medici and Urne-Buriall, Sir Thomas Browne; 1658. Hinge: holds both Russian positions at once — faith that scattered ashes reassemble (God’s work) and scepticism toward every human preservation; mummy ends on the apothecary’s shelf.
  • Russian Cosmism, Boris Groys (editor); 2018. The resurrection programme: Fedorov removes Browne’s deferral to God and gives the work to art/biology; Groys makes the museum the machine of immortality; Bogdanov’s ‘Immortality Day’ ends on a pyre.
  • Avant-Garde Museology, Arseny Zhilyaev (editor); 2015. The counter-position and its institutional sequel: Malevich’s ‘On the Museum’ (1919) — the dead as powder on one chemist’s shelf — and Levitsky’s 1931 review of a crematorium exhibition.

Notebook

  1. The reversed clause: Browne RM I.48 (‘What the Art of man can doe in these inferiour pieces…’) vs Fedorov ‘Astronomy and Architecture’ (‘Art… must consist precisely in the resurrection of everything destroyed by blind force’): what happens to an a fortiori argument when the greater term is removed? 2. The pharmacy as genre: Browne’s mummia and Malevich’s ‘one pharmacy’ turn the dead into a dose; test three present-day chemist’s shelves (digitised archive, training corpus, anthology) against ‘(and take up less room)’. 3. Oblivion as preservative: Browne UB V ‘to be unknown was the means of their continuation’ vs Groys’s ‘machine for making things last’; test case Levitsky’s crematorium exhibition (Zhilyaev pp. 554–56).

Rabbit holes

Links as checked on the day of the reading.

To carry

“Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it” — Sir Thomas Browne, Urne-Buriall, Chapter V

Themes

antiquarianism · antireligious museum · apothecary · ashes · Biocosmism · Bogdanov · Browne · common task · corpse medicine · cremation · crematorium · dust · Fedorov · Groys · immortality · Levitsky · Malevich · monuments · mummia · mummy · museum · museum as cemetery · oblivion · ossuary · palingenesis · pharmacy · preservation · resurrection · Russian Cosmism · Soviet museology · urn burial · Zhilyaev

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