Benjamin-Eugène Fichel, French
“Yoo-Hoo! Hey, Down There! Not To Rush You, Fellas, But How’s It Going With Finding a Taller Ladder?,” 1860
Oil on panel
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Info, or perhaps links that point to more info, about this artist can be found here (archived if necessary), here (if truncated, can be read in full for free on Fridays), here, here, here, and here, perhaps in addition to what’s in his Wikipedia page (Google translated French Wikipedia page has more).
/// In King’s Library, Encyclopædists
are researching the best orthopedists.
Cloaked in red, Diderot,
has a freakish torso.
(Was he stretched on the rack by extremists?)
/// The length of his spine isn’t right.
He appears over eight feet in height.
Those books on higher shelves,
colleagues can’t reach themselves.
He can hand them down from the next flight.
/// Men of learning convene in this room.
Some converse; most, great writings, consume.
All portrayed with respect,
(as such scholars expect),
save the bumbler who fumbled his plume.
/// As a jest, to display “high” IQ,
Jacques climbed up to stacks on level two.
Rarest tomes, (and the driest),
are the ones shelved the highest.
Now he’s trapped and can’t see what to do.
/// His fear of heights grows more intense
as the distance to fall looks immense.
He’d absorbed all his knowlege
from the best Paris college,
but Jacques never did learn common sense.
/// The stairs he’d climbed up on were wheeled.
When they vanished, in panic he squealed.
To prevent heart attack
his friends wheeled the stair back
from the corner where it was concealed.
/// With Jacques once more at ground level seated,
he felt anger for how he’d been treated.
Though for vengeance he burned,
a sage lesson was learned,
and his “high jinx” was never repeated.
/// Those who knew Diderot often wrote
how, on very tall women he’d dote.
So the answer, perforce,
(like a pantomime horse),
there are two men inside that red coat.
/// He was known for his wisdom and wit,
and for knowledge his quest never quit.
There’s a clue to his “height”
in this motto he’d write:
“On the shoulders of giants we sit.”