The Notre-Dame Pump (small plate)
Meryon occasionally composed verse to accompany his prints. In this case, he designed a separate plate for his poem about the Notre-Dame water pump. In translation, the tongue-in-cheek text reads:
It is done,
O perfidy!
Poor pump,
Without pomp,
you must die!
But to diminish
This iniquitous sentence,
Why not, as a touch of Bacchic mischief,
Begin to pump,
Impromptu,
Fine wine,
Instead of pure water,
Which nobody really savors?
Meryon playfully suggests a miracle that might save the pump from demolition even as the tangled, leaking pipes that form the poem's decorative border evoke the inefficiency of this seventeenth-century structure.
It is done,
O perfidy!
Poor pump,
Without pomp,
you must die!
But to diminish
This iniquitous sentence,
Why not, as a touch of Bacchic mischief,
Begin to pump,
Impromptu,
Fine wine,
Instead of pure water,
Which nobody really savors?
Meryon playfully suggests a miracle that might save the pump from demolition even as the tangled, leaking pipes that form the poem's decorative border evoke the inefficiency of this seventeenth-century structure.
Artwork Details
- Title: The Notre-Dame Pump (small plate)
- Series/Portfolio: Etchings of Paris
- Artist: Charles Meryon (French, 1821–1868)
- Date: 1854
- Medium: Etching; second state of three
- Dimensions: sheet: 10 1/16 x 9 1/16 in. (25.6 x 23 cm)
plate: 4 3/16 x 3 1/8 in. (10.7 x 8 cm) - Classification: Prints
- Credit Line: Bequest of Susan Dwight Bliss, 1966
- Object Number: 67.630.46
- Curatorial Department: Drawings and Prints
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