“A”-14
13
Aug.-14 Sept. 1964
314.1 beginning
An: as 315.9-11
indicates, from “A”-14 on the rest of the movements of “A” all begin with “an” (or “an‑“). In a lengthy 12 Dec. 1930
letter to EP, LZ indicates that he planned very early to move from “a” to “an”
in the second half of the poem (EP/LZ
80); see also Preface to “Thanks to the Dictionary” (CF 265). Scroggins points out that this opening echoes the title,
“Poem beginning ‘The’” (Bio 387).
315.15 paddle
satellite…: the lunar probe Ranger 7 (315.30) was launched on 28 July 1964
and impacted on the moon 31 July and had two large paddle-like solar panels
sticking out on either side. After a series of failures and near missed, Ranger
7 was a major success and sent back far better closeup photos of the moon,
particularly of Mare Nubium, than previously.
315.24 words
you / count…: aside from being the first “An” song (see 314.1), “A”-14 is
also the first movement that deploys a predominately word count line, as will
also be the case in “A”-18, -19 and 21-23. However, LZ’s interest in this
method goes back at least to “Two Dedications” written in Feb. 1929, which he
remarks on in a note to the original version of “American Poetry 1920-1930” in The Symposium 2.1 (Jan. 1931): 64.
“A”-14 begins with a one-count line, gradually progresses to a two (pages
315-331) and then a three count line through the remainder until concluding
with a rapid count down to two then one.
315.30 Ranger VII…: see note at 315.15. The
closeup photos Ranger 7 sent back were intended to help determine the viability
of an eventual manned moon landing, and one of the key questions was how deep
was the dust that covered the moon’s surface (316.2-3).
316.11 Hallel
ascents / degrees vintage: Hallel is Heb. meaning praise; designation for
the group of Psalms 113-118 that are recited during various Jewish holidays.
The Hallel group is followed by the Songs of Degrees (also translated as
Ascents), Psalms 120-134. LZ used the title, “Songs of Degrees” for a group of
poems in Some Time (CSP 144-152); see “A”-12.171.13 and
“Thanks to the Dictionary” (CF 284).
316.15 may / ear race / and eye / them:
homophonic transcription from Psalms 19:9:
:םיניע תריאמ הרב הוהי תוצמ בל-יחמשמ םירשי הוהי ידוקפ
pi.ku.dei a.do.nai ye.sha.rim me.sam.khei-lev mits.vat a.do.nai ba.ra me.i.rat
ei.na.yim:
The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the
commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes.
316.27 Aristippus…: (c.435-356 B.C.) a follower of Socrates and founder of the
Cyrenaic school of thought teaching that the ultimate goal of human action is
pleasure. According to Diogenes Laertius in his Life of Aristippus: “He bore
with Dionysius when he spat on him, and to one who took him to task he replied,
‘If the fishermen let themselves be drenched with sea-water in order to catch a
gudgeon, ought I not to endure to be wetted with negus [wine punch] in order to
take a blenny [a fish]?’” From Lives of
Eminent Philosophers (II.67); trans R.D. Hicks.
316.30 bore—he / and now / she—my / bane foe…:
through 317.9 is homophonically rendered from Psalms 104:1 with a segment (from
“my bane” to “new call) interpolated from Psalms 104:12:
:תשבל רדהו דוה דאמ תלדג יהלא הוהי הוהי-תא ישפנ יכרב
ba.ra.khi naf.shi et-ye.hva a.do.nai e.lo.hai ga.dal.ta me.od hod
ve.ha.dar la.vash.ta:
Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, Thou art very
great; Thou art clothed with glory and majesty.
:לוק-ונתי םיאפע ןיבמ ןוכשי םימשה-ףוע םהילע
a.lei.hem of-ha.sha.ma.yim yish.kon mi.bein o.fa.yim yit.nu-kol:
Beside them dwell the fowl of the heaven, from among the branches they
sing.
317.10 Dark
heart…: refers to Joseph Conrad, Heart
of Darkness (1899); see 317.13, 317.29 and 328.25.
317.13 ‘familiar
/ vague sounds / exchanged…: through 317.24 from Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Marlowe’s account of
what Kurtz says when he is intercepted in his attempt to join the savage night
rituals: “I’ve been telling you what we said—repeating the phrases we
pronounced,—but what’s the good? They were common everyday words,—the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every
waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the
terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in
nightmares. Soul! If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. And
I wasn’t arguing with a lunatic either.
Believe me or not, his intelligence was
perfectly clear—concentrated, it
is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my
only chance—barring, of course, the killing him there and then, which wasn’t so
good, on account of unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked
within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad. I had—for my sins, I suppose—to go through
the ordeal of looking into it myself. No eloquence could have been so withering
to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity. He struggled with himself, too. I saw it—I heard it. I saw the
inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear,
yet struggling blindly with itself.”
317.29 ‘I /
saw it I / heard it / I saw / her…: through 318.18 splices together
quotations from Joseph Conrad, Heart of
Darkness and Henry James, “The Tone of Time” (1903). For “I saw it I heard
it,” see above quotation at 317.13, while the next lines come from Marlowe’s
visit to Kurtz’s “Intended”: “I saw her
and him in the same instant of time—his
death and her sorrow—I saw her
sorrow in the very moment of his death. Do
you understand? I saw them
together—I heard them together.”
From “The Tone of Time”: “I may not perhaps say that she was never so sad as when she laughed, but it’s certain that she
always laughed when she was sad.”
318.22 Throw
bottles / jeering at their funerals…: through 319.3 describes various
violent incidents in the African-American struggle for civil rights. In May
1963, dogs and water hoses were turned on civil rights protesters in Birmingham,
Alabama.
319.1 four
/ little girls / bombed: four African-American girls killed 15 Sept. 1963
when a church in Birmingham was dynamited by Ku Klux Klansmen.
319.3 ‘better
/ trust an / unbridled horse / than undigested / harangue’: a remark
attributed to Theophrastus (d. 287 BC), student and successor of Aristotle; the
translation indicates that LZ found this in the Preface by Arthur Hort to Enquiry into Plants, which is used for
an extensive passage in “A”-22.520,23-521.15.
319.7 Crazy / white man!: LZ’s
notebook indicates this was reported reaction of Hawaiians startled at night by
the flash of high altitude Test of nuclear bomb many hundreds of miles away
(dated 7/14/62; HRC 3.16). At the times, the New York Times reported
this remark as said by a Samoan. Probably this was Starfish Prime detonated on
9 July 1962, which created an artificial aurora clearly visible from Hawaii
1,300 kilometers away as well as power outages. However there were numerous
such nuclear tests conducted both in the Pacific and in Nevada during
1962-1963, which ceased with the Partial Test Ban Treaty signed in Aug. 1963 and
went into effect in Oct. 1963 (see 15.367.23, also notes at 15.360.36 and 367.23).
319.9 high
altitude / tests: nuclear explosions outside the Earth’s atmosphere first
took place in Aug. 1958 by the U.S. with the U.S.S.R. following in 1961 and
continuing through Nov. 1962; these tests ceased with the Partial Test Ban
Treaty signed in Aug. 1963 and went into effect in Oct. 1963 (see 15.367.23, also
notes at 15.360.36 and 367.23).
319.15 ‘Fly
which / way shall / I fly…: the long passage through 325.6 is taken
entirely from John Milton, Paradise Lost,
from which LZ splices together short phrases and words from throughout the
poem. Click here
for a catalog of the passages LZ uses. Further passages from Paradise Lost and other works of Milton
appear at 327.2-328.20. Scroggins identifies the edition LZ used as The Poems of John Milton, ed. James
Holly Hanford, 2nd ed. (NY: Ronald Press Co., 1953), includes a life that
supplies the biographical details that appear at 327.5-328.2 (Bio 541).
320.19 Tsīyōn:
= Zion or Sion; Milton uses the latter form, for which LZ substitutes the Heb.
transliteration meaning originally a hill (CD).
324.8 Death
on / his pale / horse: from Revelation 6:8: “And I looked, and behold a pale
horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And
Power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with
sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”
325.7 As at
/ the scroll’s / first hanging…: through 326.31 refers
to a scroll sent to LZ by Cid Corman (1924-2004) that reproduces a poem by the
Japanese poet Ryokan (1758-1831) in the poet’s own famous free-style
calligraphy. See “(Ryokan’s scroll)” which includes LZ’s version of Ryokan’s
poem working from a literal translation sent to him by Corman: “the / first /
snow / out / off / where / blue / eyes / the / cherry / tree’s / petals” (CSP 203), whose images reappear in
“A”-14. See Corman, “Ryokan’s Scroll.” It is not difficult to discern the
suggestion of LZ’s initials in the running cursive style of the scroll.
325.22 ‘I only
/ see what / sounds—…: quoting from a letter from Cid Corman dated
5 June 1963 from Kyoto responding to the receipt of I’s (pronounced eyes);
also quoted phrase at 326.22-24. LZ copied out most or all of Corman’s letter
into his notebook and then added further remarks of his own which have been
only slightly revised for this passage. Corman includes anecdote about Ryokan
being asked for a sample of his calligraphy, as well as pointing out that when Ryokan’s
calligraphy was reproduced on the cover of I’s
(pronounced eyes) by Trobar Press in 1963, it was printed upside down, even
though LZ said he had specifically marked which side was up when sent to the
printer (Corman, “Ryokan’s Scroll” 286). A reproduction of the cover with the
inverted calligraphy can be found in Scroggins, “Louis Zukofsky” (1996): 295.
327.1 Good gout: gout in Fr. means taste; but also Milton (see below) suffered from
gout.
327.2 ‘Not
sedulous / to indite / not tilting / furniture: from John Milton, Paradise Lost IX.27-39 (Cf. 1.4.11: “Not
boiling to put pen to paper…”):
Since first this subject for heroic song
Pleas’d me, long choosing and beginning late,
Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroic deem’d, chief maistry to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabl’d knights
In battles feign’d—the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unsung; or to describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, emblazon’d
shields,
Impreses quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament; then marshall’d feast
Serv’d up in hall with sewers and seneschals,
The skill of artifice or office mean:
327.5 not /
able to quaff huge / tankards lustily: from John Milton, “Prolusion VI,” a
comic university exercise written in Latin addressed to his fellow students; LZ
quotes from several of Milton’s Prolusions
in Bottom 186, but here and in the
following his source is the biographical introduction in his edition of
Milton’s poems by James Holly Hanford: “Here Milton asks in a half jesting,
half angry way why they persist in calling him ‘The Lady.’ ‘Is it,’ he says,
‘because I never was able to quaff huge
tankards lustily . . . or, in short, because I have never proved my manhood
in the same way as those debauched blackguards?’”
327.9 did
not / insult only / preferred Truth / to King: “In October, 1649, [Milton]
published Eikonoklastes, as an answer to the Eikon Basilike, ‘The
True Protraiture of his Sacred Majesty in His Solitudes and Sufferings,’ a work
purporting to be by the hand of the martyred king himself. ‘I did not insult over fallen majesty,’ he
said later of this pamphlet, ‘I only preferred Queen Truth to King Charles.’”
327.13 —mere / move from / one residence / to
another / a cause / of sickness—: quoted directly from James Holly
Hanford’s introduction who is paraphrasing Milton.
327.19 (had traveled) / after I…: from the
autobiographical section of Milton, Second
Defense of the English People describing his travels to Italy: “After I had spent a month in surveying
the curiosities of this city [Venice], and had
put on board a ship the books which I had collected in Italy, I proceeded
through Verona and Milan […].”
327.25 —Italian,
yes? / —No (dozing)…: apparent
reference to a trip the Zukofskys took to Europe in 1957.
327.30 ‘Retreated to / a pretty / box…:
“In the matter of residence Milton’s life after his third marriage was more
stable than it had been in earlier days. He moved, perhaps as early as 1663, to
en establishment in Artillery Walk, away from the heart of London, with Bunhill
fields beyond. Here, as Phillips puts it, was his last stage in this
world. For a few months in 1665/6, however, [Milton] retreated [because
of the plague] for a few months to a ‘pretty box’ in Chalfont
St.Giles and it was at this time that he showed the completed manuscript of Paradise
Lost to his young Quaker friend Thomas Ellwood.” Ellwood’s The History
of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself (1714) is an important source of
biographical information on Milton’s later life.
328.2 the / beyond: myrtles—: from Milton, Paradise
Lost IX.625-629, but see also quotation in preceding note:
To whom the wily Adder, blithe and glad.
Empress, the way is ready, and not long;
Beyond a row of myrtles, on a flat,
Fast by a fountain, one small thicket past
Of blowing myrrh and balm:
(See also passage at IX.424-431).
328.4 love
was / not in / their eyes: from Milton, Paradise
Lost X.111-114:
Love was not in their looks, either
to God
Or to each other, but apparent guilt,
And shame, and perturbation, and despair,
Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile.
328.7 past
who / can recall: from Milton, Paradise
Lost IX.926: “But past who can
recall, or done undoe?”
328.9 nothing
is / here—for / tears: from Milton, Samson
Agonistes, lines 1721-1724:
Nothing is here for tears, nothing
to wail
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame,—nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
328.12 sense
variously / drawn…: from Milton, Preface to Paradise Lost, in which he rejects rhyme, arguing that “true
musical delight; […] consists onely in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables,
and the sense variously drawn out from
one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings […].”
328.18 To open
/ eyes make / them taste’: from
Milton, Paradise Lost IX.866:
This tree is not, as we are told, a tree
Of danger tasted, nor to evil unknown
Opening the way, but of divine effect
To open eyes, and make them Gods who taste;
And hath been tasted such:
328.25 ‘nobody
not / a hut / standing…: through 329.21 somewhat altered from Joseph
Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Describing
the journey inland to the Central Station:
“No
use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a stamped-in network
of paths spreading over the empty land, through long grass, through burnt
grass, through thickets, down and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills
ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a long time ago.
Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers
armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took to traveling on the road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to
carry heavy loads for them, I fancy
every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon. Only here the dwellings were gone too.
Still, I passed through several abandoned villages.” […]
“No, I don’t like work. I had
rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance
to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other
man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it
really means.”
329.12 infra
dig: = beneath one’s dignity; from L. infra
dignitatem.
329.22 in- / nocere: L. root of innocent and innocence: in- privative + nocen(t-)s, present
participle of nocere, harm, hurt (CD).
330.3 newspaper
strike: there was a long newspaper strike in NYC from 8 Dec. 1962 to 1
April 1963.
330.23 abi / gesunt abi: or abi gezunt,
Yiddish salutation: as long as you’re healthy.
330.28 Irish /
Boston factory / worker forr / Ted’s campaign…: this anecdote is from
Edward (Teddy) Kennedy’s first campaign for the Senate in 1962, when his
opponent attacked him for never having worked.
331.22 ‘speech
/ framed to / be heard…: well-known remark from the Notebooks of Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-1889): “Poetry is speech
framed for contemplation of the mind by the way of hearing or speech framed to be heard for its own sake
and interest even over and above its interest of meaning. Some matter
and meaning is essential to it but only as an element necessary to support and
employ the shape which is contemplated for its own sake. (Poetry is in fact
speech only employed to carry the inscape of speech for the inscape’s sake—and
therefore the inscape must be dwelt on...).”
332.4 incunabula:
plural of incunabulum, a book printed before 1501; an artifact of an early
period [< L. incunabula, swadding clothes, cradle] (AHD). In “American Poetry
1920-1930,” LZ quotes Hart Crane’s line, “The incunabula of the divine
grotesque,” as an example of his “amorphous” quality (Prep+ 139).
332.8 horse-finch:
the chaffinch.
332.23 Port /
Authority: the New York Port Authority manages all transportation
facilities of NYC.
332.13 YAMASHITA
LINE:
333.7 Hokusai: (1760-1849), the best known of Japanese painters and print
makers.
333.13 Alone: the few / minutes I breathe /
terrace to watch / the harbor burn—: from a letter to Cid Corman dated 29
June 1963 reporting that having just seen PZ off at the airport, LZ returned
home on an extremely hot day and went out onto the terrace “to watch the harbor
burn” (HRC 3.16).
333.18 B’s
Chomei: Basil Bunting’s “Chomei at Toyama” (1932), a free adaptation of the
“Record of the Ten-Foot-Square-Hut” by Kamo no Chomei (1153-1216); see
Bunting’s Collected Poems 63-72.
Early in the work, Chomei describes two fires he witnessed that devasted Kyoto.
333.25 curry-spun-dense:
< correspondence; LZ used this spelling in a 12 March 1936 letter to EP,
which the latter echoed in a subsequence letter (EP/LZ 178, 195).
333.27 Swift
had no / scholaress…: Jonathan Swift first met Esther Johnson (Stella) as a
tutor and thus she was his “scholaress”; she died in 1728 when Swift was 61 and
he lived 17 more years.
334.1 I’m
son of / a guileless presser: LZ’s father worked as a pants presser when he
immigrated to NYC. In a 11 July 1936 letter to EP, LZ mentions that his father
still worked as a presser at over 70.
334.3 Suffenuses:
Suffenus is a type of superficial poet; see Catullus, Carmina 22.
334.3 footprints / on the sands / of time…:
as LZ indicates at 334.11-12, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), “A
Psalm of Life”:
Lives of great men all remind us
We can live our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
334.27 he
plays…: presumably PZ, who is also “the child” at 335.10.
334.28 L’Enlèvement d’Europe—: operatic
work by Darius Milhaud (1892-1974).
334.29 Defoe
of / Europe’s jakes…: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), published a verse satire, The True-Born Englishman (1701), in
which he defended King William III against the charge of being a foreigner and
includes the following lines (jakes is a latrine; see 355.30):
We have been Europe’s sink, the jakes where she
Voids all her offal outcast progeny.
335.4 kokoro—mind you:
writing to LZ, Cid Corman uses the Japanese word kokoro in
characterizing Catullus, and when LZ asks about the meaning of the term,
Corman explains: “KOKORO is the Japanese word which means heart-mind. When a
Japanese person uses the word ‘mind’ he touches his heart; NEVER his head”
(dated 3 July 1963; HRC 22.8).
335.5 recordari re + cor: the etymology of record
and recorder is from the L. recordari, call to mind, remember,
recollect, think over, meditate upon; from re-,
again, + cor(d-) heart = English heart: see cordial. Cf. accord, concord,
discord (CD).
335.13 he was
born: PZ born 22 Oct. 1943.
335.16 grandpa
died: Pinchos Zukofsky died 11 April 1950.
335.29 “the
theatre’s / an intellectual hogpen”: from
H.L Menken (1880-1956), remark from a letter to Burton Rascoe referring to
George Jean Nathan, his co-editor of The
Smart Set: “I dislike his interest in the
theatre, which seems to me to be an
intellectual hogpen.” LZ’s source may be a review of Menken’s Letters
in the New York Times for 17 Sept. 1961 by Carlos Baker, in which he
remarks: “When we note that [Menken] had no ear for poetry and despised the
theater as an ‘intellectual hogpen,’ it is difficult to claim for him any
special eminence as a literary critic, whatever his skills as philologist and
editor.”
336.4 Melville’s windy / quite understandable…:
this passage on American authors is evidently a reworking of mostly dismissive
comments by PZ dated Sept/25/61 (HRC 3.16).
336.7 James’
/ persisting for all / he prefaced revisions: Henry James revised and
prefaced the famous New York edition of his selected works in 24 volumes
(1907-1909).
336.10 Twain’s
Jim with / integration behind him:
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1885); as McMorris suggests (13), this apparently allude
to the relationship of Jim and Huck on the raft where the racism that prevails
in the society on shore has been left behind.
336.12 Adams’ History…: Henry Adams’ History of the United States of America
during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 9
volumes (1889-1891).
336.13 Hawthorne’s
/ a chair (grandfather’s)…: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), Grandfather’s Chair (1841) was one of
Hawthorne’s early works for children which treated colonial and Revolutionary
American history. LZ would use material from this work in “A”-23.561.24-27; see
Rieke 210-213. Presumably “the scarlet rest” (336.15) alludes to The Scarlet
Letter.
336.17 Irving
storaged the / storied sketch: Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book (1819-1820) includes his best-known stories.
336.18 Whittier—
/ wittier authority doily / its lo
well…: John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892). “lo well” < Lowell, presumably James Russell Lowell (1819-1891).
Both were considered major figures of the so-called Fireside Poets.
336.24 Song of Myself / 11 my Shih-king: Whitman’s early long poem sequence and the Shih-king is the Confucian Book of Songs (or Odes), which was
translated by EP as Shih-ching: The
Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius (1954). The reference to 11 is
somewhat puzzling (but perhaps not if we assume the voice here is that of PZ:
see note at 336.4): poem 11 in Whitman’s sequence describes 28 young men
bathing naked in the sea being watched by a woman who imagines herself joining
them; however, in his 1930 essay on EP’s Cantos,
LZ quotes the image of boys swimming from the Kung Canto (Canto 13) as
capturing the perception of Confucius’ thought (Prep+ 68).
336.26 I was Kagekiyo: Kagekiyo is the title
character in a Noh play by Motokiyo translated by Fenollosa-Pound in 1914.
336.27 ‘That
thunders in / the Index’: from Shakespeare, Hamlet III.iv; Gertrude’s response to Hamlet’s harangue: “Ah me,
what act, / That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?” (qtd. Bottom 445).
337.3 No /
index was whole…: Bottom: on
Shakespeare does of course include an extensive index, in which the last
two entries are for CZ and LZ.
337.8 Job’s
Lo and / his strength—‘stones’?: see Job 6.12: [Job speaking] “Is my
strength the strength of stones? or is my flesh of brass?” and 40.15-17: [the
Lord speaking] “Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as
an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in
the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones
are wrapped together.” See 350.28 where Job and index are again collocated;
also 15.360.12
for Job and stones.
337.10 no song summers / but loyal hush /
lull—motor off: transliterated from two verses of Job 35:10 and
38:28:
:הלילב תורמז ןתנ ישע הולא היא רמא-אלו
ve.lo-a.mar a.ye e.lo.ha o.sai no.ten ze.mi.rot ba.lai.la:
But none saith: But where is God my Maker, who giveth
songs in the night.
:לט-ילגא דילוה-ימ וא בא רטמל-שיה
ha.yesh-la.ma.tar av o mi-ho.lid eg.lei-tal:
Hath the rain a father? Or who hath begotten the drops of dew?
337.16 Low
Library’s / Doric columns…: Low Memorial Library is the main library of
Columbia University, which LZ attended 1920-1924. Its design is based on both
the Pantheon in Rome and the Parthenon in Athens and has imposing classical
columns across the front.
337.25 the
dead / friend always the / other side of— / River…: probably WCW who lived
in Rutherford and was buried in nearby Lyndhurst, NJ just across the Hudson
River as one looks, for example, from the Columbia campus at Morningside
Heights. However, the Columbia associations might also hark back to Ricky
Chambers of “A”-3.
338.3 en canimus: LZ
translates this L. epigram immediately following as quoted in Terry 18. This
and the following Latin epigrams are from the historian of Eisenach, Bach’s
native town, Christian Paul Paullini in Annales
Isenacenses (1698). See 8.103.23.
338.5 claruit semper urbs / nostra musica: Terry does not offer
a translation of this, so the immediately following rendition is by LZ,
although more literal might be: our city always shines through music.
338.22 Bach’s
necrology from / half-wit aunt…: necrology here means an obituary and
refers to the Nekrolog (1754), an
obituary which is effectively the first life of Bach put together by his son,
Carl Philipp Emanuel, and his pupil, J.F. Agricola, and published a few years
after Bach’s death. One of Bach’s paternal aunts is described in Terry as
“half-witted” and the quoted remarks are from the sermon at her funeral in
1679: “‘Our sister now with the Lord,’ said the preacher of her funeral sermon,
‘was as simple as a child, knowing not her right hand from her left. Yet her
brothers are men of understanding and skill, respected, hearkened to in our
churches and schools, esteemed by all the community, men in whom the Master’s
work is glorified’” (13).
339.2 Yiddish
/ Prometheús Desmótes chanted: LZ
grew up in a Yiddish theater district and was taken to many classic dramas in
Yiddish by his older brother, as mentioned in his Autobiography 33 (see 8.38.25), where he also mentions first reading Prometheus Unbound in Yiddish (63).
Here, however, LZ simply gives the transliterated Greek for the title of
Aeschylus’ Prometheus Unbound.
339.4 Seb
Bach at 14 / mastered Phocylides’ “spurious” / Poíema Nouthetikón in / Greek…: Phocylides was a 6th century
B.C aphoristic Greek poet who survives only in a few fragments. In the Hellenic
period, a long didactic poem was passed off as the work of Phocylides, but its
author was Jewish or possibly Christian since it is clearly influenced by the
Pentateuch. LZ gives the Greek title and a translation, although the poem is
more frequently referred to as the “Poem of Admonition” or simply the
“Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides.”
Because of its ethical import it became a popular school text in the
Reformation period. Terry mentions that this text was part of Bach’s schooling
by age 14, although not that he “mastered” it (28, 44), and LZ evidently has
looked up information on Phocylides elsewhere.
339.11 kaì tóde Phokulídeo: the “genuine”
Phocylides’ verses commonly opened with this Gk. phrase meaning literally “thus
also Phocylides….” Lines 339.14-25 are derived from the surviving fragments of
Phocylides. The following translations are from the Loeb Classical edition of Elegy and Iambus, ed. and trans. J.M.
Edmonds (1931).
339.14: Clifftown stands civil / above
mad Nineveh: “Thus also spake Phocylides—A little state living orderly in a
high place is stronger than a blockheaded Nineveh” (175). Nineveh was the
capital of the Assyrian Empire in the 8th century B.C and destroyed
in 612 B.C.
339.16: bread first then / virtue:
“Seek a living, and when thou hast a living, virtue” (177). This epigram can
also be found in Plato’s Republic
(407a): “Then you never heard of the saying of Phocylides, that as soon as a
man has a livelihood he should practice virtue?” (trans. Benjamin Jowett).
339.17: justice whole
/ virtue: “Righteousness containeth the sum of all virtues (arête)”
(181). This remark, which Edmonds notes is apparently proverbial and attributed
to Theognis, is also found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics (1129b): “Justice
then in this sense is perfect Virtue, though with a qualification, namely that
it is displayed towards others. This is why Justice is often thought to be the
chief of the virtues, and more sublime ‘or than the evening or the morning
star’; and we have the proverb—In Justice is all Virtue found in sum” (trans.
H. Rackham).
339.18: Lerians evil / all, not Procles / he’s
Lerian: “Thus also spake Phocylides—The Lerians are bad men, not one bad
and another not, but all save Procles, and Procles is a Lerian” (173).
339.20: rich / and no delight / in word
or / action: “Thus also spake Phocylides—Of what advantage is high birth to
such as have no grace either in words or in counsel?” (175).
339.23: middleman lives: Phocylides
as quoted in Aristotle’s Politics
(1295b): “It is these which are securest in a state; neither are they
themselves covetous of other men’s goods like the poor, nor are others covetous
of theirs as poor men’s are of rich men’s; and they run no risks, because they
are neither the objects nor the authors of conspiracy. And this is why we may
approve the wish of Phocylides: ‘Much advantage is theirs who are midmost, and
midmost in a city would I be’” (179).
339.24: lady was dog, / bee, pig, horse—:
“Thus also spake Phocylides—The tribes of women come of these four, the bitch,
the bee, the savage-looking sow, and the long-maned mare; the mare’s daughter
sprightly, quick, gadabout, and very comely, the savage-looking sow’s neither
bad, belike, nor good, the bitch’s tetchy and ill-mannered; and the bee’s a
good huswife who knows her work—and ‘tis she, my friend, thou shouldst pray
thou mayst get thee in delectable wedlock” (173-175).
339.28 Maria
Barbara: Maria Barbara Bach was Bach’s second cousin and first wife,
married in 1707. Terry mentions that shortly before he married, Bach was asked
to explain the presence of a young woman singing with him while he practiced
the organ at his first musical post at Mühlhausen, who proved to be his future
wife.
340.8 Cythringen: as LZ indicates, a
lute-like instrument that purportedly Bach’s great great grandfather, Veit
Bach, liked to play (Terry 5).
340.10 a
Lämmerhirt…: Bach’s mother, Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt (1644-94); her
surname means lamb shepherd. Her father, Valentin Lämmerhirt (d.1673), was
municipal councilor of Erfurt (Terry 15).
340.18 (when a
kid / your old man / declaimed…: LZ mentions reading Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow’s “Hiawatha” as a young boy in Autobiography
(63), and according to Redman he would be asked by the neighborhood Italian
children to recite the poem and be rewarded with pennies (609).
340.27 Christoph’s
clavier / pieces by moonlight: Johann Christoph Bach (1671-1721) was Bach’s
eldest brother who was chief organist at Ohrdruf and believed to have given
Bach his first keyboard lessons. Terry mentions an anecdote (recorded in the Nekrolog) that the precocious young Bach
demanded ever more challenging works that his brother felt he was not yet ready
for, so Bach secretly copied out over six months a volume of compositions owned
by his brother by moonlight, but supposedly once completed his brother found
out and took the copy from him (25).
341.4 his
discant voice / breaking fled into…: Bach’s first musical employment at age
15 was as a boy singer at a school in Lüneburg, but when his voice broke his
instrumental skill was such that he was able to remain at the school. Terry
describes young Bach as a “descantist” (45) and that as an instrumentalist he
began playing the violin and viola, but preferred the latter (341.9-16),
quoting from the earliest biography of Bach by Johann Nikolaus: “At musical
gatherings, where quartet or other instrumental music was performed, Bach preferred
to play the viola, an instrument which put him, as it were, in the
midst of the harmony, in a position to hear and enjoy it on
both sides” (23).
341.7 cantatas:
a vocal and instrumental piece composed of choruses, solos and recitatives
(AHD); Bach composed numerous examples; see 2.8.7.
341.8 Passions:
musical setting of the biblical story of Christ’s death, usually to be sung in
churches during the Easter period.
341.30 Capriccio / sopra la lontananza / del suo
fratello / dilettissimo:
early Bach composition from 1704; the title means: Capriccio on the Departure
of His Most Beloved Brother and was written for Bach’s elder brother Johann
Jakob (1682-1722) (Terry 31).
342.6 zippelfagottist: in 1705 Bach was
involved in an argument that ended up in court because he referred to a
musician as a “zippel fagottist.” Terry does not venture a translation
(65-66) and Bach scholars are not entirely in agreement as to the meaning of zippel,
which is Ger. vernacular and, according to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Deutsches
Wörterbuch, volume 15, means "a large, awkward, sometimes dumb person
[...]." Therefore, zippelfagottist is a dumb or simply bad
bassoonist (M. Waas).
342.10 slipped
/ out of the / organ gallery…: early in his career when employed at
Arnstadt, Bach was criticized by his superior who complained among other things
that Bach “had slipped out of the organ gallery to visit the ‘Schwartzberger
Hof,’ or another beer-house, during the preceding Sunday’s sermon, and was
admonished to behave better in future under penalty of forfeiting his emolument
as Prefect” (Terry 71).
342.16 Societät
/ der Musicalischen Wissenschaften: founded by his student Lorenz Christoph
Mizler, Bach joined the Society for Musical Sciences in 1747, among whom he
circulated copies of the Goldberg
Variations. The various details LZ mentions, such as Mizler dedicating his
thesis to Bach, “among others,” and free postage for the Society to circulate
manuscripts are mentioned by Terry (254-255).
342.29 hid
calculus of / Leibniz: Mizler quotes a remark by Gottfried Leibniz, who he
knew personally, in Musikalische
Bibliothek, the publication of the Society for Musical Sciences (see
342.16): “Musica est exercitium
arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi” (Music is the hidden
arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating). LZ renders
this remark in Bottom: “Leibnitz […]
continued with the thought of music as ‘number, a felt relation of counting’”
(426). Cf. remark in “For Wallace Stevens”: “I hope everybody would read me
that same way—that is, […] just read the words. This activity is a kind of
mathematics but more sensuous, and it has little to do with learning, it has
something to do with structure” (Prep+
24).
343.2 Voltaire’s
Jacques: in Voltaire's Candide (1759), Jacques the Anabaptist is a
humane benefactor of Candide and Pangloss who drowns in the Bay of Lisbon
trying to save someone else. The context here would seem to suggest that the
more appropriate reference would be to Pangloss, who parrots Leibniz's claim
that "this is the best of all possible worlds," and who suffers from
syphilis.
343.4 Thirty
Years’ War…: religious conflicts involving much of Europe from 1618-1648.
Bach was born 1685. LZ is apparently referring to the development and
wide-spread use of the basso continuo in the Baroque period.
343.10 That
Was The / Week That Was: topical satirical TV program that originated in
Britain, but an American edition ran from 1963-1965.
343.18 Eyquem
(“de” Montaigne): Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592), the French
Renaissance essayist.
344.4 sieur:
Fr. = seigneur; sir, title of respect.
344.5 ‘Never
Middling Poets / over your publisher’s / door…: from Montaigne, “Of
Presumption”: “A man
may play the fool in everything else, but not in poetry; Mediocribus esse poetis / Non dii, non
hominess, non concessere columnae (But neither gods,
nor men, nor booksellers / Have stood for poets being mediocre—from Horace’s Ars Poetica). I would to God this sentence was written over
the doors of all our printers, to forbid the entrance of so many rhymesters! Verum / Nihil securius est malo poet
(None is more certain of himself / Than a bad poet—Martial)” (trans. Charles
Cotton).
344.13 ‘Reading’s
profitable / pleasure…: through 344.29 adapts phrases from Montaigne:
344.13-14: ‘Reading’s profitable pleasure: from
“Of Books”: “As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more
profit with the pleasure, and whence I learn how to marshal my opinions and
conditions, the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch, since he has
been translated into French, and Seneca.”
344.15-19: attracts judgment to / task…: from “Of
Three Kinds of Society”: “Meditation is a powerful and full study to such as
can effectually taste and employ themselves; I had rather fashion my soul than
furnish it. There is no employment, either more weak or more strong, than that
of entertaining a man's own thoughts, according as the soul is; the greatest
men make it their whole business, ‘Quibus
vivere est cogitare’ (To whom to live is to think—Cicero) […] The principal
use of reading to me is, that by various objects it rouses my reason, and
employs my judgment, not my memory.”
344.19-23:
song / does not work / my judgment…:
from “Of Presumption” (immediately preceding quotation at 344.5): “For in truth, as to the effects of the mind,
there is no part of me, be it what it will, with which I am satisfied; and the
approbation of others makes me not think the better of myself. My judgment is
tender and nice, especially in things that concern myself; I ever repudiate
myself, and feel myself float and waver by reason of my weakness. I have
nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment. My sight is clear and regular
enough, but, at working, it is apt to dazzle; as I most manifestly find in
poetry: I love it infinitely, and am able to give a tolerable judgment of other
men's works; but, in good earnest, when I apply myself to it, I play the child,
and am not able to endure myself.”
344.23-29: if not / the weight of / what I write…: from “Of Vanity”: “I would
have my matter distinguish itself; it sufficiently shows where it changes,
where it concludes, where it begins, and where it rejoins, without interlacing
it with words of connection introduced for the relief of weak or negligent
ears, and without explaining myself. Who is he that had not rather not be read
at all, than after a drowsy or cursory manner? ‘Nihil est tam utile, quod in transitu prosit’ (Nothing is so useful
that it can be profitable when taken in passing—Seneca). If to take a book in
hand were to take it in head; to look upon it were to consider it; and to run
it slightly over were to make it a man's own, I were then to blame to make
myself out so ignorant as I say I am. Seeing I cannot fix the attention of my
reader by the weight of what I write, manco male, I am much mistaken if I
should chance to do it by my intricacies. ‘Nay, but he will afterward repent
that he ever perplexed himself about it.’ 'Tis very true, but he will yet be
there perplexed. And, besides, there are some humors in which intelligence
produces disdain; who will think better of me for not understanding what I say,
and will conclude the depth of my sense by its obscurity; which, to speak in
good sooth, I mortally hate; and would avoid it if I could” (trans. Charles Cotton).
345.2 Bill:
WCW.
345.7 Prorsus
/ Latin goddess of / births head first / whence prose – news?: the
etymology of “prose” is from L. prosa,
short for prosa oratio,
straightforward or direct speech (i.e. without transpositions or ornamental
variations as in verse): prosa, fem.
of prosus, contraction of prorsus, straightforward, direct,
contraction of proversus, from pro, forth, + versus, turned, past participle of vertere, to turn, a turning, a line, verse (CD). It is perhaps
relevant here that WCW (see 345.2) was a pediatrician.
345.12 art of
sinking: Peri Bathous: or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry (1727), a mock Ars Poetica based on
Longinus’ treatise on the sublime that was part of the Martinus Scriblerus
project, believed to be primarily by Alexander Pope; qtd. Bottom 195.
345.13 ‘The
Republic Plato / sought the course / of human events’ / Vico…: Giambattista
Vico (1699-1744) more or less says this in his Conclusion to The New Science, although the wording
here seems likely taken from Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) in History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century
(1932; trans. 1933): “[…] But [the advance of] the end of the eighteenth
century and the beginning of the nineteenth had disentangled the problem [of
liberty] more clearly and almost conclusively, because it had criticized the
opposition—acute in eighteenth-century rationalism and the French
Revolution—between reason and history, in which history had been degraded and
condemned by the light of reason. [...] It had made one the rationality and the
reality of the new idea of history, rediscovering the saying of the philosopher
Giovanni Battista Vico that the republic sought for by Plato was
nothing but the course of human events.
[...] No longer did history appear [to have been] directed by alien forces. Now
it was seen to be the work and activity of the [human] spirit, and […] since
spirit is liberty, [as] the work of liberty.”
345.16 Bickerstaff
/ ‘Socrates the wisest / of uninspired mortals’: from Jonathan Swift,
“Predictions for the Year 1708,” using the voice of Swift’s personae Isaac
Bickerstaff: “[astrology] hath been in all ages defended by many learned men,
and among the rest by Socrates
himself, whom I look upon as undoubtedly the
wisest of uninspired mortals […].”
345.19 Struldbruggs:
in Book III of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels,
Gulliver hears about the Struldbruggs from Luggnagg, who are immortal but
nonetheless grow old, feeble and forgetful.
345.19 Hamilton’s
Manufactures: Alexander
Hamilton’s “Report on the Subject of Manufactures” (1791) argued for the
advantages of developing manufacturing and free trade.
345.22 Each
disenchanted Nazi / acted Polonius or / Wiggle & Failum: Beyers offers
the following gloss: “The Nazi war crimes trials were front-page headlines in
this period […]. The allusion to the notorious blowhard from Hamlet would seem to suggest banal,
self-interested subterfuge, while the fictitious firm of Wiggle & Failum
expresses both the method and general success of these attempts.” The Frankfurt
Auschwitz trials from Dec. 1963-Aug. 1965 prosecuted 22 mostly lower level
functionaries at the death camp; the trials were public and widely reported in
detail.
345.25 with noble prize / address I would / be
Iago too / all things shall / be well…: Beyers points out that in 1964,
when “A”-14 was written, “Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel Prize for
literature; however, LZ’s notebook indicates he is referring to a 1962 Nobel
Prize address as yet unidentified. Iago in Shakespeare, Othello IV.ii
assures Desdemona that “All things shall be well,” as he sets up her demise,
and much earlier in I.ii he repeatedly advises Roderigo to “put money in thy
purse.”
346.3 long
hot summer: phrase used to refer to race riots throughout the mid-1960s,
particularly the summer of 1967 when there were major riots in Detroit and
Newark.
346.4 “a
coasted / torn-muffin”: < a toasted corn muffin.
346.9 mine
tipples, dynamite’s / in Hazard, Kentucky / which speaks Chaucer: according to Guy Davenport, LZ gave a reading at a community
college in Hazard in 1963 (see Odlin, “Brief Notes” 100-101). Beyers points out
that Hazard was in the depressed coal mining country of Eastern Kentucky, thus
the reference to tipple, a tip-car for carrying coal out of the mines, and the
dynamite used in the mining, which relates to the name Hazard; also puns on
tipple meaning strong drink and dynamite as slang for bootleg liquor.
346.12 ‘Gave sheep’s brains / to Academician
Lavrentyev’…: through 346.17 the speaker is Premier Khrushchev joking with
American reporters; from the New York Times for 5 July 1961: “Jovial
Khrushchev Goes to U.S. Party And Stays Till End.” Mikhail A. Lavrentyev (1900-1980), Russian
physicist and mathematician, was a vice president of the Soviet
Academy of Sciences.
346.21 Floats eats and / sings Gagarin
(Wild Duck)…: Yuri Gagarin (1936-1968), Soviet cosmonaut who became first
man in space on 12 April 1961. The New York Times had numerous articles
on the flight the next day and following, from which LZ selected for the lines
through 347.2. 14 April 1961: “’I Could Have Gone On Forever'; Gagarin, in
Ecstasy, Says He Floated, Ate and Sang.” 13 April 1961: “First in Space;
Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin”: “The name Gagarin derives from the
Russian word for ‘wild duck.’”13 April 1961: “Astronaut’s Day
Started at Dawn; By the Late Morning Gagarin Had Orbited the Earth and Made a
Safe Return”: “’I see the earth. Visibility good. One
can see everything. Some covered by cumulus cloud’ * *
* ‘I am continuing with the flight. Everything normal. Everything working
perfectly.’ […] ‘What is it like up there?’ Major Gagarin told them: ‘The sky is
very, very dark and the earth is bluish. Everything is
clearly visible.’"
347.3 Elsewhere landing the / two
astronauts inhaled…: Pavel Popovich and Andrian Nikolayev were launched
into orbit on Vostok 3 and 4 a day apart on 11 and 12 Aug. 1962 to become the
first humans to be simultaneously in space. The New York Times for 17
Aug. 1962: “Malinovsky Says Space Trips Show Military Power; Warning of Defense
Chief Given as Moscow Prepares Welcome for Astronauts Red Square Decorated
Parade Expected Tomorrow Families of Two Pilots Arrive in the Capital”:
“Moscow, Aug. 16—The Soviet Defense Minister, Marshal Rodion Y. Malinovsky,
declared today that the space flights of Maj. Andrian G. Nikolayev and Lieut.
Col. Pavel R. Popovich should serve as a warning to the enemies of the Soviet
Union. […] Upon landing, Pravda reported, the two astronauts inhaled
the fragrance of wild flowers, took showers
and sang ‘Because it is not without reason a poet
has said that all that is best in life ends with a song.’” Nikolayev married
fellow cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova the following year; see 15.373.37.
347.29 rhomb:
shaped like an equilateral parallelogram.
347.30 sensitif / enharmonics flyspeck / random
crescendo their / aleatory: sensitive = Fr. sensory, sentient, over-sensitive. Enharmonic = in
music, tones that are identical in pitch but are written differently according
to the key in which they occur; what LZ appears to have in mind here is the
idea of an enharmonic scale which essentially means there are more notes or
tones distinguished between the usual notes of the scale (see LZ’s remarks on
enharmonic notes and microtonic music in Bottom
35). These lines obliquely refer to an anecdote recounted in Little, in which the adolescent Little
(PZ) shows his music teacher Betur (Ivan Galamian) an experimental music score,
identified by PZ in the notes to the novel as by John Cage, to which Betur
responds: “’[…] would be difficult to play when’s hot becus summer flies change
composer’s score’” (CF 160-161).
348.7 matzoh:
or matzo, a brittle, flat piece of unleavened bread, eaten especially during
Passover (AHD).
348.11 Paul H:
possibly Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) Jewish German composer and theorist, who
emigrated to the U.S. and taught for many years at Yale. His The Craft of
Musical Composition (1935-1942) was an important work of theory and
pedagogy, published in English in two volumes with a third published unfinished
and posthumously in 1970, and is apparently alluded by LZ in a 21 June 1951
letter to WCW where he encourages the latter to write a work on poetics that
might do what Hindemith and Schoenberg did for music (WCW/LZ 441).
348.16 Fly
epistemologists:
348.18 Dios…:
349.2 Jefferson
dined alone: in 1962 JFK invited a large group of Nobel Prize winners to
the White House and remarked: “I think this is the most
extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been
gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson
dined alone.”
349.4 lower
limit body / upper limit dance…: Cf. 12.138.7-8.
349.11 mathémata / swank for things / learned: the derivation of
“mathematical” is from Gk. mathema, a
lesson, a thing learned, learning, science; in the plural mathemata, the sciences, esp. mathematics (CD). In Bottom, LZ mentions that in Greek
mathematics “meant a disposition to learn” (75).
349.13 (“like”
caged / “silence” which pulses): reference to John Cage’s 1952 work 4’33”, in which a performer sits at a
piano for the designated time and allows the ambient sounds to make up the
composition or performance; see 347.30.
349.17 Gracie Allen’s dead: American comedian,
best known for teaming with George Burns, died 27 August 1964; see 12.206.12.
349.18 Button up your / overcoat: a classic late 1920s popular tune first sung by Helen
Kane: “Button up your overcoat, / When the wind is free, / Take good care of
yourself, / You belong to me!” On Kane also see note
to “Madison, Wis., remembering the bloom of Monticello.”
349.28 A Test: LZ’s A Test of Poetry (1948).
349.30 Bach’s
/ one unposthumous: LZ consoles
himself on his own lack of recognition with the fact that few of Bach’s works
were published during his lifetime and he was largely forgotten for a century
after his death.
350.5 Old
man looking / for some one / to endear (Moon
/ Compasses)…: Robert Frost (1874-1963), whose short
poem “Moon Compasses” (350.7-8) ends with the line, “So love will take beneath
the hands a face,” which evidently strikes LZ as a “premonition” of the death
of JFK, “bonny prince / beheaded” (350.9-10; see 15.360.40), and the image of Jackie taking his
face between her hands; the prince reference perhaps alludes to the popular
association of the Kennedy White House with the musical Camelot.
350.10 ‘poetry’s
of / the grief, politics / of the grievances’: a well-known remark by
Robert Frost. He originally made this distinction in his introduction to Edwin
Arlington Robinson, King Jasper (1935), and repeated it as late as Nov. 1962 in
an address at Dartmouth College, “On Extravagance: A Talk.”
350.28 Job’s,
for which / the pious have / been blamed, restoration…: at the end of the
Book of Job, all that Job has lost is restored two-fold and the Lord reprimands
“the pious,” that is, the three friends who berate Job for his lack of
submissiveness before the Lord. However, LZ seems to be suggesting some dispute
about the authorship of the “happy” conclusion to Job.
351.10 —that I so / carefully have dress’d…:
through 352.15 consists entirely of quotations all related to horses; those in
italics are from Shakespeare. Evidently LZ composed this passage by going back
to Bottom and picking out phrases or
words from quotations on horses, most probably using the index. While he did
not use every horse quotation in Bottom,
those he did appear in the same order as in that text. The following quotations
appear as in Bottom:
351.10: from Richard II V.v (qtd. Bottom 71):
Groom: Bolingbroke rode on roan
Barbary,
That horse that thou so often hast bestrid,
That horse that I so carefully have
dress’d!
King Richard: Rode he on Barbary?
Tell me, gentle friend,
How went he under him?
.
. .
King Richard: So proud that
Bolingbroke was on his back!
That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand;
This hand hath made him proud with clapping him.
Would he not stumble?
.
. .
Forgiveness, horse! why do I rail on
thee,
Since thou, created to be aw’d by man,
Wast born to bear? I was not made a
horse;
And yet I bear a burden like an ass . . .
351.16: (the
Prince of / the First Heaven…: this parenthetical passage is quoted from
the pseudoepigraphal Hebrew Book of Enoch (3 Enoch), Chap. XVIII;
the larger passage from which this is extracted qtd. Bottom 107.
351.21: from Anthony and Cleopatra
IV.14 (qtd. Bottom 136, 318):
Mark Anthony: That which is now a
horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimes, and makes it indistinct,
As water is in water. . . .
351.24: (grazing
in a / field, rubbed down / by other hands): LZ is quoting two separate
phrases that appear in Bottom. The first from George Bernard Shaw, The
Apple Cart: “[Sempronius speaking:]
Nature to him meant nakedness; and nakedness only disgusted him. He wouldn’t
look at a horse grazing in a field; but put splendid trappings on it and
stick it into a procession and he just loved it” (Bottom 211). The
second LZ’s own comment on Shakespeaere’s The First Part of Henry the Sixth,
“which conjecture assumes to be a horse rubbed down by other hands than
Shakespeare’s […]” (Bottom 267).
351.27: from Henry
IV, Part 1 I.iv (qtd.
Bottom 268):
Talbot: Your hearts I’ll stamp
out with my horse’s heels,
And make a quagmire of your mingled brains.
351.27: from Henry IV, Part 1 II.iv
(qtd. Bottom 270):
Warwick: Between two horses, which doth bear him best;
351.28: from Venus and Adonis l. 287
[describing Adonis’ horse] (qtd. Bottom
278):
He sees his love, and nothing else
he sees,
For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.
351.29: from King Lear II.iv (qtd. Bottom 311):
Fool: . . . All that follow their
noses are led by their eyes but blind men . . . the cockney . . . ’Twas her
brother that, in pure kindness to
his horse, buttered his hay.
351.30: from Macbeth II.iv (qtd. Bottom 313):
Ross: . . . horses— . . .
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn’d wild in nature, broke their
stalls, . . .
Contending ’gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind.
352.1: from Two Noble Kinsmen V.iv
(qtd. Bottom 349; see 13.305.2-5
where the immediately following phrase is quoted):
Pirithous:
On this horse is Arcite
Trotting the stones of Athens, which
the Calkins
Did rather tell than trample; . . .
as
he thus went counting
The flinty pavement, dancing, as t’were,
to th’ Musicke
His own hoofes made; (for as they say, from iron
Came Musickes origen)
352.2: (tethered / by reins / not
frightened trampling / on the dead): from Homer, Iliad X; in this case the passage concerned is not actually quoted
in Bottom but is referenced at 352;
the same episode but different details concerning the capture of Rhesus’ horses
by Odysseus and Diomedes also appears at 15.374.30-375.3:
Iliad X.475f: “Rhesos slept in the
middle, his horses tethered by the reins to the handrail of the
car. Odysseus saw him first, and pointed him out to Diomedes. ‘There’s the man,
Diomedes, there are the horses, just as Dolon told us before we killed him. Now
then, pluck up your courage. You must not stand idle in your armour. Loose the
horses—or you kill the men, and I’ll look after the horses.’ Then Athena
breathed strength into Diomedes. He struck right and left; there were ugly
groans and cries as the sword went home, and the ground was reddened with
blood. As a lion leaps furious on sheep or goats without a shepherd, so
Tydeides went up and down among the Thracians until he had killed twelve;
Odysseus went behind him, and every time he struck one of them took hold of a
foot and pulled him out of the way, so as to leave a clear space for the horses
to pass without being scared by trampling on dead bodes, for they
were not used to them yet” (trans. W.H.D. Rouse).
352.6: from A
Midsummer Night’s Dream III.i (qtd. Bottom 388, 12.132.24 and 12.226.26):
Flute: As true as
truest horse, that would never tire
352.7: (capable): from Troilus and Cressida III.iii (qtd. Bottom 392):
Achilles: Come, thou shalt bear a
letter to him straight.
Thersites: Let me carry another to
his horse; for that’s the more capable
creature.
352.7: from Merchant of Venice V.i (qtd. Bottom
415):
Lorenzo: bring your music forth
into the air . . .
colts
. . .
If they but hear . . .
any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn’d to a modest gaze . . .
Orpheus drew trees, stones,
floods . . .
nought so stockish, hard . . . full
of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
352.11: destroyed if changed / into a
man—: from Spinoza, Ethics IV,
Preface (qtd. Bottom 421): “For most
specially must it be noted . . . when I say a man passes from a less to a
greater perfection, and the contrary . . . I do not understand that he has
changed from one essence or form into another, e.g., a horse would be equally destroyed if it were changed into a man as if it were
changed into an insect; but that his power of acting, in so far as it is
understood by his nature, we conceive to be increased or diminished.”
352.13: from Pericles II.i (qtd. Bottom 431):
Pericles: Vnto thy value I will mount myselfe
Vpon a Courser, whose delight steps
Shall make the gazer ioy to see him tread;
352.16 Our children’s children: from
Shakespeare, King Henry VIII V.v
(qtd. Bottom 341, 386; see
12.254.17):
Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour and the greatness of his name
Shall be, and make new nations: he shall flourish,
And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches
To all the plains about him: our
children's children
Shall see this, and bless heaven.
352.18 A
Vermeer blown / up into a / mural: in 1964 the Zukofskys moved into the
12th floor of a newly built apartment building called the Vermeer Apartments at
77 Seventh Avenue on the corner of West 15th Street, Manhattan.
There was an over-sized reproduction of a Vermeer painting in the lobby.
352.24 Pitman:
Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897), British inventor of phonographic shorthand; see
index.
352.24 Ez:
EP.
353.7 Holy
Thursday (coincidence) / April 11, 1963 / Pacem
in Terris…: anniversary of the death of LZ’s father, Pinchos Zukofsky,
in 1950. However this date and the Latin phrase, meaning Peace on Earth,
indicate a famous encyclical letter of Pope John XXIII on Establishing
Universal Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity and Liberty—the Latin phrase is used
as the short title. The long salutation ends: “and to all men of good will.”
The encyclical was a response to the Cold War, calling for conflict resolution
through negotiation rather than arms and a respect for human rights.
353.15 if Iván
jokes…:
354.4 Schönberg
seems / lately to plait / song near Mozart:
354.12 The
voice of / Episcopal goldwasser Polyuria: polyuria is an excessive passage
of urine (AHD); goldwasser Ger. gold
water < Barry Goldwater (1909-1998), conservative American politician who
ran as the Republican presidential candidate in 1964 against Lyndon B. Johnson;
see note at 15.365.6.
354.14 “to
strip the / amour off the enemy: alludes to Homer, Iliad where the practice of stripping off the armor of the dead as
trophies is ubiquitous.
354.16 Lucretius
re- / wombs…: through 354.29 paraphrases from Book V of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura.
355.10 an
escaped cat / ran down three / flights of stairs…: according to CZ, this is
an incident from LZ’s childhood; see Terrell, “Eccentric Profile” 36-37.
355.28 Poitiers:
medieval town in central France, which the Zukofskys visited during their 1958
European trip; see CSP 172.
355.30 jakes:
latrine; see 335.1.
355.30 my
“Cats”…: through 356.7 and beyond refers to the renditions of Catullus, on
which LZ worked with CZ from 1958-1966. McMorris (17) references the mention of
“chaste” at 356.1 to LZ’s translation of Catullus, Carmina 16: “But the pious poet / is chaste…” (CSP 253). The lines at 356.1-5 were echoed by LZ a number of times,
including in a note on the cover of Catullus,
which reproduces a manuscript work page: “I might be said to / have tried
reading his lips / that is while pronouncing” (Corman, “Poetry as Translation”
19); see also the 1962 statement, “Translating Catullus” (Prep+ 225). The lines “to sharp them / and flat them” refer to the
task and problem of translating Catullus’ quantitative verse. On “not in
prurience” at 356.6, cf. remark in Aug. 1975 letter to David Gordon: “Point of Catullus was to focus on something
beside the obscene” (Gordon, “Zuk on His Toes” 135).
356.8 eyes
of Egyptian / deity…:
356.12 Lunaria annua honesty: honesty is the name of several plants, especially of a small
cruciferous plant, Lunaria annua (L. biennis): so called from the
transparency of its dissepiments (CD). Also called moonwort (see 23.563.21),
lunary and satin flower; see 15.375.26-27. Cruciferae
includes mustard; see 356.15 (Leggott 119). See Leggot (136-140) for detailed
consideration of “honesty” in “A”.
356.14 Good Master / Mustardseed I desire / you
more acquaintance: from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream III.i; see 12.134.15 and qtd. Bottom 371.
356.20 broken
homonyms: McMorris points out (17) that this alludes to LZ’s homophonic
translation method in his rendering of Catullus.
356.22 Sir
Horse: Little refers to his father as “Sir Horse,” which is appropriate
given LZ’s life-long horse obsession (CF
140).
356.28 rays:
this word appears repeatedly in both Catullus
poems whose last words are quoted at 357.1-4; the first line of Catullus 68a is, “No postmeridian ray,
dear Girls, choir my Allius and ray”
(CSP 302), and the word appears twice
further on, as well as twice in Catullus
76. In all I count 26 instances of ray/s throughout Catullus, which usually relates to Bottom’s concern with eyes/sight/light and goes back at least to
the definition of “An Objective”: “The lens bringing the rays from an object to
focus” (Prep+ 12).
357.1 dulce mihist / kiss me last—: last
two words of Catullus, Carmina 68a.
LZ gives his “Cats” translation; more literal would be “sweet to me.” LZ uses
the Loeb Classical Library text here, whereas most current editions give the
text as: dulce mihi est.
357.3 pietate mea— / my piety may: last
two words of Catullus, Carmina 76
with LZ’s translation.
357.5 Mr.
Dooley…: created by Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936), Mr. Dooley was a
working class Chicago saloon keeper who satirically comments on politics and
government policy of the day. The following quotation is a sample of his
vernacular commentary from “A Little Essay on Books” in Observations by Mr. Dooley (1902). LZ refers to Mr. Dooley in Anew 14 (CSP 85).
357.20 Fulton
/ street market of / fish: fish market on the East River of Manhattan.
357.26 The
Book / Of the Dead…: The [Egyptian]
Book of the Dead: The Hieroglyphic Transcription of the Papyrus of Ani in
the edition of E.A. Wallis Budge, which includes the hieroglyphic texts with
translations and extensive commentary. As Odlin (552) points out, there
are various editions and revisions of this text, but it appears LZ used a
reprint of Budge’s final edition of 1913. The lines, “not wished for /
facsimile of papyrus,” apparently refers to the fact that the one volume
edition LZ bought (University Books, 1960) excluded the last of the original
three volumes, which reproduced in color facsimile the original papyrus texts.
The quoted text at 357.30-358.2 is taken from Budge’s description of “The
Papyrus of Ani, Its Date and Contents”: “When brought to England the papyrus
was of a very light colour, similar to that of the Papyrus of Hunefer (no.
9901), but after it was unrolled it became darker, the whites, yellows,
blues, and greens lost their intense vividness, and certain parts of
the sections contracted. The papyrus contains a large selection of Chapter of
the Theban Recension of the Book of the Dead, nearly all of which are
accompanied by Vignettes; text and Vignettes have at top and bottom a border
of two colours, red and yellow, or yellow and orange” (217)
358.2 Pert- / em-hru (pronounced / it how?)…: this is the transliteration of
the Egyptian title of the Book of the
Dead, and LZ appears to be primarily working from the opening page of the
text. The numbers in the following quotation refer to the three lines of the
hieroglyphic text, with the numbers in the parentheses referring to the
following footnotes:
”Chapter I: [Plates V and VI] 1. Here begin the Chapters of Coming
Forth (1) by Day, and the songs of praising (2) and
glorifying which are to be recited 2. for ‘coming forth’ and for entering into
Khert-Neter, and the spells which are to be said in Beautiful Amentet. They
shall be recited on the 3. day of the funeral, entering in after coming forth.
(1) I.e., the Chapters which make the soul of a man to leave his body,
and make its appearance by day, or in the day; they are popularly known as the ‘Book
of the Dead.’ The title ‘Pert-em-hru’ has been translated and explained
in various ways, e.g., ‘Coming forth from [or as] the Day’
(Birch), ‘The departure from the Day’ (Birch), ‘Sortir du jour’ (Naville,
Devéria), ‘Sortie de la journée’ (Pierret), ‘Augang bei Tage’ (Brugsch), etc.
(2) The title of this Chapter mentions three kinds of compositions,
[hieroglyphic text], which indicate the commemorative praisings, and the forms
of words which were recited during the performance of ceremonies, and spells or
words of power, respectively. The object of all these was to secure the life
and safety of the departed soul, and to enable it to move about freely, and to return
to the earth at pleasure” (355).
In
his introduction, Budge mentions other possible translations of Pert-em-hru,
and then remarks: “This name, however, had probably a meaning for the Egyptians
which has not yet been rendered in a modern language, and one important idea in
connection with the whole work is expressed by another title which calls it
‘the chapter of making strong (or perfect)
the Khu’” (28), an idea often
repeated in the Egyptian text.
358.11 Kuh…:
as Odlin
notes (553) either LZ or the printer misspelled “Khu,” although possibly there
is an echo of LZ’s “Hi, Kuh” poem from I’s
(pronounced eyes) (1963). Khu are
the spirits or souls of the dead, as Budge explains: “Another
important and apparently eternal part of man was the Khu, [hieroglyph], which,
judging from the meaning of the word, may be defined as a ‘shining’ or
translucent Spirit-soul. For want of a better word Khu has often been
translated ‘shining one,’ ‘glorious,’ ‘intelligence,’ and the like, but its
true meaning must be Spirit-soul” (79).
358.19 adz /
(sail?)– / bird–…: this concluding list is LZ’s speculative translation of
a line of hieroglyphs quoted in Budge’s introduction (Odlin 553-554). The
relevant hieroglyphs are at the very top of the page which can be seen here:
“In the Papyrus of Ani (Chapter CLXXV) the deceased is
represented as having come to a place remote and far away, where there is
neither air to breathe nor water to drink, but where he holds converse with
Temu. In answer to his question, ‘How long have I to live?’ the god of Anu
answers:—
[hieroglyphic text, followed by translation:]
Thou shalt exist for millions of millions of years, a period of millions of
years” (67-68)
LZ interprets the hieroglyphs of the main clause visually with secondary
guesses in parentheses:
1) a reed quill which could be taken for an adz or a sail;
2) a chick;
3) what looks like a cruse-type lamp (a cruse is a small earthen pot or bottle
for holding liquids);
4) a mouth, but could be taken for a pupil-less eye;
5) a person sitting or kneeing down with arms upraised > exult;
6) a single stroke underneath which are three strokes > tally, or one over
three as at 358.31-32;
7) looks like a horizontal squiggle;
8) repeats the fifth;
9) repeats the sixth.
10-11) apparently LZ’s final Sun and eye are taken from a cluster in the final
phrase of the hieroglyphic sentence where there is a sun hieroglyph (a circle
with a dot in the middle), which might also be taken for an eye, although in
this case it is next to a single stroke that also could be read as “I.”
