No Millennium

If history repeats itself first as tragedy then as farce, the third time it's -- Art History.

Yesterday, while leafing through a book of photographs of the early days of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, I found this arresting image:



Does Infantrywoman Felicia Harris, posing in Uday Hussein's palace in 2001, know that she is imitating Manet's Olympia? Compare:

Recently I came across a copy of Melville's Moby Dick -- a book which, it is embarrassing to admit, I had not revisited in a long time and which in fact I had never read all the way through.  It opened, unbidden, to this passage:


And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago.  It came in a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances.  I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:

"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States

"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL

"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN."


. . . which would date Ishmael's voyage to some time around the year 2001.