{"id":106208,"date":"2016-12-27T10:30:54","date_gmt":"2016-12-27T15:30:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=106208"},"modified":"2016-12-27T11:14:25","modified_gmt":"2016-12-27T16:14:25","slug":"distant-hammers-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/27\/distant-hammers-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Distant Hammers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>We\u2019re away until January 3, but we\u2019re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2016. Enjoy your holiday!<\/em><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_94132\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/11.png\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-94132\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-94132\" class=\"wp-image-94132\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/11.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"882\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/11.png 740w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/11-204x300.png 204w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/11-696x1024.png 696w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-94132\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">From Patrick Reed\u2019s \u201cDistant Hammers.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>Notes on art and apocalypse.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>How will the end come? Did it already come? Did we miss it? That we can ask this last question shows just how far our current mood of millenarianism has traveled from its antecedents in the distant and not-so-distant past. As late as Eliot, poets and prognosticators assured us that we would recognize \u201chow the world ends.\u201d Most visions of apocalypse were spectacular, sublime. The possibility that we have instead whimpered our way into some kind of boiling-frog scenario\u2014marked by slow but irreversible global warming, mass human displacement, and a gradually perceptible slide toward famine, disease, war, and extinction\u2014is a radical departure from the convulsive display we\u2019d long been promised.<\/p>\n<p>The first properly apocalyptic writings in the monotheistic tradition are the books of Joel and Zechariah, two of the twelve minor prophets in the Tanakh, or Jewish canon. Joel, whose <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chabad.org\/library\/bible_cdo\/aid\/16169\">account<\/a> may date to the reign of King Josiah, around 800 <small>B.C.<\/small>, and who may therefore be the oldest prophet, begins by describing a coming locust infestation, which he claims will be coincident with famine and widespread misery. The lament transforms into a hallucinogenic description of locusts as God\u2019s army (\u201cthe increasing locust, the nibbling locust, the finishing locust, and the shearing locust\u201d), of a fire that consumes the world, and of a day of thick darkness \u201clike the dawn spread over the mountains.\u201d The more famous book of Daniel follows approximately in this mold, albeit with new messianic trappings.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/02\/04\/distant-hammers\/\">Read More &gt;&gt;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Notes on art and apocalypse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":782,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26379],"tags":[21044,9517,35,12549,21040,21038,2777,21042,18962,171,16066,21035,247,21034,21030,21032,16851,20707,1022,21039,21041,2054,8076,21043,1786,21033,21037,21036,4035,21031],"class_list":["post-106208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-of-2016","tag-anthropocene","tag-apocalypse","tag-art","tag-astrology","tag-broadsheets","tag-cataclysm","tag-cy-twombly","tag-distant-hammers","tag-ecology","tag-environment","tag-environmentalism","tag-eschatology","tag-germany","tag-gnosticism","tag-joel","tag-john","tag-kazimir-malevich","tag-little-ice-age","tag-nature","tag-nuremberg","tag-patrick-j-reed","tag-paul-klee","tag-printing","tag-rachel-carson","tag-religion","tag-revelations","tag-timothy-morton","tag-vision-of-the-last-judgment","tag-william-blake","tag-zachariah"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Distant Hammers: Notes on Art and Apocalypse<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How will the end come? Did it already come? Ben Mauk surveys apocalyptic art from sixteenth-century German broadsides to contemporary works on paper.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/27\/distant-hammers-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Distant Hammers by Ben Mauk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"December 27, 2016 \u2013 Notes on art and apocalypse.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/27\/distant-hammers-2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-12-27T15:30:54+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-12-27T16:14:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/11.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"740\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1088\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Ben Mauk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Ben Mauk\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/27\/distant-hammers-2\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/27\/distant-hammers-2\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Ben Mauk\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/17b256e4d2c10a74d910ed0884b1c41e\"},\"headline\":\"Distant Hammers\",\"datePublished\":\"2016-12-27T15:30:54+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-12-27T16:14:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/27\/distant-hammers-2\/\"},\"wordCount\":287,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/27\/distant-hammers-2\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/11.png\",\"keywords\":[\"Anthropocene\",\"apocalypse\",\"art\",\"astrology\",\"broadsheets\",\"cataclysm\",\"Cy Twombly\",\"Distant Hammers\",\"ecology\",\"environment\",\"environmentalism\",\"eschatology\",\"Germany\",\"Gnosticism\",\"Joel\",\"John\",\"Kazimir Malevich\",\"Little Ice age\",\"nature\",\"Nuremberg\",\"Patrick J. 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