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- Oct 28, 2017
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While thinking about our collective obsession with sharpness, I remembered a passage from 'The Third Policeman', a macabre, comical fantasy by Flann O'Brien. Perhaps it has been quoted here before, but it may be new to some:
'The point is seven inches long and it is so sharp and thin that you cannot see it with the old eye. The first half of the sharpness is thick and strong but you cannot see it either because the real sharpness runs into it and if you saw the one you could see the other or maybe you would notice the joint.' [...] 'About an inch from the end it is so sharp that sometimes - late at night or on a soft day especially - you cannot think of it or try to make it the subject of a little idea because you will hurt your box with the excrutiation of it.' [...] 'Because what gave you the prick and brought the blood was not the point at all; it was the place I am talking about that is a good inch from the reputed point of the article under our discussion.'
'And what is this inch that is left?' I asked. 'What in heaven's name would you call that?'
'That is the real point,' said MacCruiskeen, 'but it is so thin that it could go into your hand and out in the other extremity externally and you would not feel a bit of it and you would see nothing and hear nothing. It is so thin that maybe it does not exist at all and you could spend half an hour trying to think about it and you could put no thought around it in the end.'
All of this thinking around sharp was brought about by receiving the sharpest out of the box knife I've ever received. It was delivered this morning, a knife I've been meaning to get for ages. I won't say it matches up to the somewhat Platonic form captured above, but the Fallkniven U2 is extremely sharp from the factory.
'The point is seven inches long and it is so sharp and thin that you cannot see it with the old eye. The first half of the sharpness is thick and strong but you cannot see it either because the real sharpness runs into it and if you saw the one you could see the other or maybe you would notice the joint.' [...] 'About an inch from the end it is so sharp that sometimes - late at night or on a soft day especially - you cannot think of it or try to make it the subject of a little idea because you will hurt your box with the excrutiation of it.' [...] 'Because what gave you the prick and brought the blood was not the point at all; it was the place I am talking about that is a good inch from the reputed point of the article under our discussion.'
'And what is this inch that is left?' I asked. 'What in heaven's name would you call that?'
'That is the real point,' said MacCruiskeen, 'but it is so thin that it could go into your hand and out in the other extremity externally and you would not feel a bit of it and you would see nothing and hear nothing. It is so thin that maybe it does not exist at all and you could spend half an hour trying to think about it and you could put no thought around it in the end.'
All of this thinking around sharp was brought about by receiving the sharpest out of the box knife I've ever received. It was delivered this morning, a knife I've been meaning to get for ages. I won't say it matches up to the somewhat Platonic form captured above, but the Fallkniven U2 is extremely sharp from the factory.
