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Last updated 14/1/2025

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'Klecksographien' by Justinus Kerner is undated, but said to have been published in 1890, some years after his death. The author's introduction is dated 1857, and the work seems therefore to have been complete, although unpublished, at this date.

Each symmetrical inkblot picture in the book is accompanied by a poem inspired by the image.

In his introduction the author says, roughly translated: ''When reading and looking at these pages, many people will remember how, even in their earliest youth, they saw drawings emerge from the crushing of small berries, or even fly-heads etc, on folded paper, without art, without the help of pencil or brush. ... The fact that I was half-blind was the reason I was able to progress in this youthful game; because of this, drops of ink often fell onto the paper while I was writing. Sometimes I didn't notice them and just folded the paper together without drying them. When I pulled it apart again, I saw, especially when those drops had come close to a fold of the paper, how sometimes symmetric drawings had formed, namely arabesques, animal and human images and so on. This gave me the idea of developing the phenomenon.

Later he says that some of the inkblots have been enhanced with additional lines to credate faces etc.

The complete work can be accessed on-line here.

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The Introduction

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Sample pages

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