Less clear, however, is the meaning of three clippings (#12-14) from Hamburg newspapers, the first two of which are themselves tableaux containing various heterogeneous images. Fortunately, in a July 1929 speech (the so-called Doktorfeier lecture) given recent graduates in Hamburg, Warburg wittily explains how we should interpret the first clipping from the Hamburger Fremdenblatt (#12). First, he compares its display of physical prowess in the figure of a young swimmer ("selbstzufriedene Schaustellungen menschlichen Könnens") with how early modern broadsheets hyped monsters. This synchronic gesture, then, yields a neat conceit propelled by (for Warburg) some typical wordplay: "Die Atmosphäre zufriedener Diesseitigkeit steht nun in grellstem Kontrast zu den Papstprozession, deren Mittelpunkt nicht das Monstrum, sondern die Monstranz bildet" [This atmosphere of satisfied worldliness most glaringly contrasts with the papal procession which is not centered on the monster but on the monstrance]. But then he wonders whether this wordplay actually produces knowledge (historical or otherwise) as well. Doubting that the swimmer is self-concious of his symbolic roots in "paganism" [Heidentum], he asks his audience to ponder how a "juxtaposition" of images can upset hermeneutic expectations: "Rohe Zusammenstellung zeigt, dass ganz unvermittelt das vergnügliche hoc meum corpus est neben dem tragischen hoc est corpus meum vor die Augen geführt werden kann, ohne dass die Diskrepanz zu Protest gegen solche barbarische Stillosigkeit führt" [Crude juxtaposition shows that the pleasurable hoc meum corpus est can be very abruptly brought before the eyes next to the tragic hoc corpus meum est without the discrepancy evoking protest against such a barbaric lack tactlessness]. Of course, more than a question of style is at stake here—even if his metonymies and metaphors are constitutive and characteristic of his thinking. Ultimately, Warburg looks fixedly toward the past (above all, to the "Kultur des Mittelmeerbeckens") for insights on how present and future forms of representation may serve urgent objective and subjective needs: "Um den Auseinandersetzungsprozess, der letzten Endes eine religiöse Konkretion oder wissenschaftliche Abstraktion bedeutet, in seinem augenblicklichen Stadium zu begreifen, müssen wir eine Auffangstelle jener Austauschbewegung von Vergangenheit und Gegenwart im nördlichen Europa besitzen, die uns hilft, so oder so dem Chaos von Unvernunft ein Filtersystem der retrospektiven Besonnenheit entgegenzusetzen." [In order to conceive the process of thought, whose final meaning is a religious concretion or a scientific abstraction, in its momentary state, we must possess a receptacle for that movement of exchange between past and present in northern Europe, which helps us to counter one way or another the chaos of unreason with a filtersystem of retrospective prudence.] The Bilderatlas, we are meant to understand, is constructed expressely to function as this dynamic "receptacle," even if it ultimately proves unable, or unwilling, to master such "chaos."