The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities

Der singende Fisch, however, is not reproduced in Kurtz’s book, and has never appeared in print until now.

According to Ms. Abendroth’s will, only one copy was to be made of the image: the original was to be kept by Ms. Nadel, while the print was to be delivered, with compliments, to Mr. Klaus Mehler, beseeching his thoughts. Mehler received the letter and the print on Monday, May 10, 1869; by Monday, May 17, he had committed suicide. He was found slumped over a mess of illegible, blood-spattered notes, a pen embedded in his left eye, the copy of Der singende Fisch torn to shreds. An autopsy later found pieces of it lodged in his trachea. Gouged into the polished surface of his mahogany desk were the words Die Palette hat keine Farbe, which translates to “the palette has no colour.”

Publicly, Ms. Nadel declared that his guilt over destroying Ms. Abendroth’s mind and health had consumed him; privately, she insisted to friends and family members that Der singende Fisch was a curse eight years in the making, that Edith had confided in her the instrument of her revenge, and instructed her to produce copies for whichever critic should desire one. We must recall, however, that Ms. Nadel was a consummate actress, and her grief may have led to undue dramatization of the facts.

Still, it is surprising that there is no record of anyone publishing their thoughts on Der singende Fisch; Rothschild and Nussbaum remain far more interested in the facts of Abendroth’s private life and analysis of her journals, and in the wake of Mehler’s suicide, very few individuals applied to Ms. Nadel for copies, perhaps feeling that to succeed where he had so spectacularly failed would be unseemly. Nevertheless, it was rumoured that Stephen Kurtz had intended to produce a monograph focusing on Leitfaden der Kritik and Der singende Fisch alone, and had even applied to Ms. Nadel’s estate for permission to see the original—but that project, like many others since the publication of Frogs, Frocks, and Fol-de-Rol, has fallen by the wayside while he recovers from his unfortunate boating accident.

Further Examination of The Singing Fish

Why, then, is the fish singing?

Certainly, divorced from its incredible history, Der singende Fisch is not particularly noteworthy: its lines are simple, its subject odd, if charming. All its cleverness lies in the recursivity of the meta- narrative—the fact that we, as critics, are observing a critic observing a fairly absurd creature, trying desperately to puzzle out its meaning. Just as the critic in the image is stymied by observing the fish, so must we be momentarily stymied by observing him observing the fish, and the dissonance produced by observing the fish in our turn, with all the calculated detail surrounding it.

Notice, for example, the thorns. Observe how one’s gaze moves from left to right, to begin at the roses, tempting in the gentle wash of the watercolour, before thickening into thorns the closer one approaches the fish. Surely this symbolises the inaccessibility of the art object, the difficulty facing any critic who attempts to penetrate its mystery. Again, why is the fish singing? Why is it performing an act we cannot apprehend without the frame of the title? Is it triumphant? One could argue that its triumph is in its inscrutability, in the impossibility of seeing it as anything but what it is.

But the critic does not look cowed, only frowning in thought; he is sainted, even, he wears a halo! Could that indicate that the critic is dead? Is the Singing of the Fish synonymous with the Death of the Critic? Can the one exist without the other? Finale, spell the ribbons—or are they scarves? The looping of the letters is rather noose-like—hearkening back, perhaps, to Odin’s gallows-heritage? The more answers one finds, the more thorns, or questions, one encounters!

This is terribly exciting work, you must understand. There is a terrible burden to be shouldered here, in being the first to offer a detailed analysis of the fish in print. Mehler’s death-desk scribbles offer little in the way of illumination, except for his gouged-out exclamations about palettes and colour. These are useless. Of course the palette has colour on it—the whole piece is washed in a pale rose watercolour, and the palette is shaped for holding oils or acrylic. Ah, but is that irony at work? Oh, of course! It is a pen-and-ink drawing—and look, there, the inkwell and the feathers! She has appropriated the critic’s tools! That is why the palette has no colour on it—the palette is her vulnerability, the colours her Achilles’ heel! The palette has no colour on it. The fish has sprung fully formed from it—the fish is the palette’s colour! The only colour is in the end—Finale, in colour, in the colour that the palette lacks—the colour the fish brings! The devilish detail of it! Frogs begin as fish! They die and are resurrected as singing fish! Oh, I see it all, Ms. Abendroth, I do, I see! I can hear it clear as a bell!

Such, at any rate, would likely have been Mehler’s statements, had he been able to communicate them in something other than the blood and wood-dust beneath his fingernails. The piece seems very nice, and it is testament to Dr. Lambshead’s discerning taste that he sought to preserve so excellent a thing in his Cabinet.⁸

ENDNOTES

1. Stephen Kurtz, ed. The Early Journals of Edith Abendroth, vol. III, p. 67 (Routledge, 1959)

2. Ibid., vol. VI, p. 98

3. Die Spitzer Feder, April 1856, p. 24

4. Ibid., October 1856, p. 32

5. Nussbaum, Ursula. Loves That Did Not Know Their Names: Lesbian Desire in Edith Abendroth’s Early Journals, p. 134 (Ashgate, 1979)

6. Kurtz, Stephen. Frogs, Frocks, and Fol-de-Rol: The Mirth and Madness of Edith Abendroth, p. 91 (Routledge, 1961)

7. Ibid., p. 113

8. While the main body of this essay and all previous endnotes were the work of Amal El-Mohtar, the final paragraph was appended by a friend who has chosen to remain anonymous. This friend would like to make clear that Ms. El-Mohtar’s unorthodox approach to the essay’s conclusion is to be read as ironic, and certainly has nothing to do with the fact that she has since withdrawn into the seclusion afforded by a village in the southwest of Cornwall, where she spends her days in pursuit of garden fairies to dissect for her doctoral thesis, and her nights in tormented, guilt-wracked sobs for subjecting them to the cruelty of iron.

The Armor of Sir Locust As Dictated to Stepan Chapman by Dr. Thackery Lambshead, 1998

Until recently, I looked forward to cataloging my collection of souvenirs and curios. Now, in retirement, I finally have the time, and it turns out that the job is an endless drudgery. It further turns out that I know nothing worth recording about my possessions. I only know that I acquired some of these things during my years of constant travel. Others could explicate them with better success than I. My memory is not what it was.

This thing, for example. I had to wire it together from various pieces. Bought it in a canvas box from an antique store in Cairo. Got it for peanuts. Had it appraised at the London Natural History. The docent said it was priceless. Hard to know what that means, coming from a docent.

Ivica Stevanovic’s “Armor Montage” incorporating Dr. Lambshead, as first published along with the doctor’s account in the magazine Armor & Codpiece Quarterly (Winter 2000).

It’s unusual, these days, to own a suit of medieval armor, but this specimen is more than unusual, it’s downright peculiar. The metal’s been assayed. I’m assured that it’s an alloy of tin and bronze characteristic of the Second Crusade. Copper grommets—probably a later addition. Scraps of leather, hung with buckles.

The first time you see this thing, a series of questions enter your mind. Such as: Is it armor for a man or for a horse? And if it’s for a man, why has it got armor for four arms? And if it’s for a horse, why has it got armor for six legs? That’s three questions already, and they just keep coming. For as long as the legend of Sir Locust has been