MERVEILLES1 STACK008

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A marketplace is the Republic of things (I mean the ideal Republic, of course): the
whole is greater than the sum of its parts, itis beautiful even if the details are gauche
or banal. Thus the Mercato Nucto in Florence, where every object taken separately
is an offense to the spirit's good manners, while the whole is as flamboyant and funny
as a high altac. The Mercato Coreano is not so simple. "Korea," writes Father du Halde,
"furnishes white paper, brushes of hair and wolf tail, Ginseng, gold, silver, iron,
vellow varnish so beautiful that anything coated in it appears gilded the tree whence
This gum is distilled resembles a palm chickens whose tail is tbree feet long ponies,
three feet high, sable and beaver pelts, and fossil salt" To which I would add, on the
basis of my modest knowledge of Korean marketplaces: playing cards which are
pleasant-looking flat dominoes, as in lapan, women's clothing -the short tapestry
bolero, transparent and stiff as a chrysalis, and the long. dark-colored skirt knotted at
the first swell of the breasts ribbons covered in gilt letters to encourage longevity,
cothurne sandals with incurving prow, blue elephants, pink cats, pens and lamps, old
opium pouches modestly called the smoker's necessary, watch faces strung together
like sapeks, flowers. and a somewhat Promethean, I mean aquiline, taste for the
entrails of things: the innards of radios, the plexus of an electric razor or the thoras