Citations:phlogiston


 * 1977 &mdash; If you look carefully, the destination for both the alchemist and the knight-errant should be the Ace of Cups which, for the one, contains phlogiston or the philosopher’s stone or the elixir of long life, and for the other the talisman guarded by the Fisher King, the mysterious vessel whose first poet lacked time—or else was unwilling—to explain it to us; and thus, since then, rivers of ink have flown in conjectures about the Grail, still contended between the Roman religion and the Celtic. &mdash; Italo Calvino, The Castle of Crossed Destinies, Part 2, Chapter 6, 1969. Translated from Italian by William Weaver.