“A”-19
12 Feb.-29 May 1966
The form of this movement is
described by Kenneth Cox as a prelude of eight quatrains followed by 72
strophes of 13 lines each, except for the last which has 12 lines. Throughout
LZ uses a two-count (word) line except that the final line of each strophe is
three-count, although there are occasional irregularities. Based on the numbers
2 and 3, there are 23 (= 8) quatrains of 23 words each,
and 23 x 32 (= 72) strophes of 33 (= 27) words
each. The final strophe 22 x 3 (= 12) lines and 23 x 3 (=
24) words (Cox, “Tribute to Mallarmé” 256, 260). Cox also points out (260) that
13, the number of lines of each strophe, is the unlucky number which will be
made good in the final strophe of 12 lines. More speculatively, Cox argues
(258-259) that the predominate two-count line is meant to suggest the strokes
on a violin and that the progression of the main part of the movement,
following the prelude, is structured on Bach’s chaconne from the Partita No. 2
in D Minor for solo violin (see 413.1).
408.4 I / hear back- / stage…: much of “A”-19 concerns a violin
competition in which PZ participated in Genoa, Italy in Sept.-Oct. 1963 (see 412.14), LZ’s
working notebooks (HRC 4.2) indicate that the performance setting of this
prelude section (408.1-409.6), which is returned to at the end of the movement
(433.27-434.2), is from the Zukofskys’ residence at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs,
NY from Dec. 1965-March 1966, where this movement was begun.
409.5 an / other valentine:
LZ wrote many Valentine poems, usually addressed to CZ, and as usual this was
written at the appropriate time of year since he began “A”-19 in mid-Feb. See
434.2.
409.7 No ill-luck / if bonding…: through 411.24 taken largely or entirely
from various poems of Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), from which LZ freely
chooses and traduces words and phrases of the French text (Cox 261-263). This
is among LZ’s most wildly improvisational efforts, freely skipping about the
French text deploying a combination of translation and homophonic suggestion.
Although no doubt incomplete, the following seem the most obvious stanzas or
passages from which LZ is improvising, many identified by Cox:
409.7-18: No ill-luck / if bonding /
tohu bohu / horsehair mends /
azure mane / flogs cold / races rut /
shards the / perverse desolate / with pride / who cure / misfortune, from “Le Guignon,” which means jinx, bad luck
(such as a run of bad luck in gambling) or, as LZ has it, ill-luck:
Au-dessus du bétail ahuri des humains
Bondissaient en clarté les sauvages crinières
Des mendieurs d’azur le pied dans nos chemins.
Un noir vent sur leur marche éployé pour bannières
La flagellait de froid tel jusque dans la chair,
Qu’il y creusait aussi d’irritables ornières.
[…]
Vexés ne vont-ils pas provoquer le pervers,
Leur rapière grinçant suit le rayon de lune
Qui neige en sa carcasse et qui passe au travers.
Désolés sans l’orgueil qui sacre l’infortune,
Et tristes de venger leurs os de coups de bec,
Ils convoitent la haine, au lieu de la rancune.
409.18-23: Place / it futile range /
less discreet / than her / lips dawned / on china, from “Placet
Futile” (Futile Petition):
Princesse! à jalouser le destin d’une
Hébé
Qui poind sur cette tasse au baiser de vos lèvres,
J’use mes feux mais n’ai rang discret que d’abbé
Et ne figurerai même nu sur le Sèvres.
409.24: benign day’s / first kiss,
from “Apparition” (Apparition):
—C’était le jour béni de ton premier
baiser.
409.26-30: the lips / not drinking /
yet where / to tarry / is breath, from “Tombeau”
(Tomb):
À ne surprendre que naïvement d’accord
La lèvre sans y boire ou tarir son haleine
Un peu profond ruisseau calomnié la mort.
409.32: the martyr’s assay, from (?)
“L’Azur” (The Azure):
—Le Ciel est mort. —Vers toi, j’accours!
donne, ô matière,
L’oubli de l’Idéal cruel et du Péché
A ce martyr qui vient partager la litière
Où le bétail heureux des hommes est couché,
409.34-410.3: may be / soul owned / by
time / illumine itself / primordial elect / penchant salute, from “Cantique de Saint Jean” (Canticle of
Saint John):
Mais selon un baptême
Illuminée au meme
Principe qui m’élut
Penche un salut.
410.4-7: silk / play to / the balm /
of time, from “Quelle soie aux baumes
de temps” (What silk steeped in the balms of time):
Quelle soie aux baumes de temps
Où la Chimère s’exténue
Vaut la torse et native nue
Que, hors de ton miroir, tu tends!
410.10-13: bird one / hears once / of
all / alive, from “Petit Air II”
(Little Air II):
Voix étrangère au bosquet
Ou par nul écho suivie
L’oiseau qu’on n’ouït jamais
Une autre fois en la vie.
410.13-14: comber / naked jubilation, from “Petit Air” (Little Air):
Tel fugace oiseau si plonge
Exultatrice à côté
Dans l’onde toi devenue
Ta jubilation nue.
410.16-17: cinder sparing / the fire,
from “Toute l’âme résumée” (The
entire soul evoked):
Atteste quelque cigare
Brûlant savamment pour peu
Que la cendre se sépare
De son clair baiser de feu
410.19-20: idleness offense: / purchase,
from “Las de l’amer repos où ma pareses
offence” (Weary of bitter sleep in which my indolence offends).
410.20-24: woman / child broth /
quarryman cut out / for his / marriage, from “La femme de l’ouvrier” (The Workman’s Wife):
La femme, l’enfant, la soupe
En chemin pour le carrier
Le complimentent qu’il coupe
Dans l’us de se marier.
410.25-29: cobbler / who’d recreate /
shoes (feet / if you / will revive, from “Le savetier” (The Shoemaker):
Il recréerait des souliers,
O pieds! si vous le vouliez!
410.31-36: his live / eye separate / him from / his togs / so he / walk naked god, from “La marchande d’habits” (The Old-Clothes
Woman):
Le vif oeil don’t tu regardes
Jusques àleur contenu
Me sépare de mes hardes
Et comme un dieu je vais nu.
410.36-411.3: song of / his wood /
the truth / of a / face, from “Feuillet
d’album” (Album Leaf):
Tout à coup et comme par jeu
Mademoiselle qui voulûtes
Ouïr se révéler un peu
Le bois de mes diverses flûtes
Il me semble que cet essai
Tenté devant un paysage
A du bon quand je le cessai
Pour vous regarder au visage (this
stanza qtd. Bottom 231)
411.3: of / it hymn / work patience /
atlas herb / science ritual…, through 411.24 from “Prose (Pour Des Esseintes)” (Prose (for Des Esseintes)):
Car j’installe, par la science,
L’hymne des cœurs spirituels
En l’œuvre de ma patience,
Atlas, herbiers et rituels. […]
while insensible / authority trouble /
to humiliate / ore and motility / their impalpable / conscionable double / when
no / eye’ll hallucinate / air with / divisions:
L’ère d’autorité se trouble
Lorsque, sans nul motif, on dit
De ce midi que notre double
Inconscience approfondit
Que, sol des cent iris, son site
Ils savent s’il a bien été,
Ne porte pas de nom que cite
L’or de la trompette d’Été.
Oui, dans une île que l’air charge
De vue et non de visions
Toute fleur s’étalait plus large
Sans que nous en devisions. […]
(this stanza qtd. Bottom 231)
sage / sprig the / litigious who / tease
but / till the / blossom grow / too large / for their reasons:
Oh! sache l’Esprit de litige,
À cette heure où nous nous taisons,
Que de lis multiples la tige
Grandissait trop pour nos raisons
409.9 tohu bohu: <Heb. without form and void, chaos; see Genesis 1:2
and Jeremiah 4:23. In Fr. means hubbub or disorder (Cox 260).
409.10 horsehair […] mane:
horsehair is used for making violin bows (see 13.85.31), while manes alludes
back to “A”-7. In Bottom 426 LZ
mentions horsehair used in bows in connection with Paganini imitating the sound
of neighing (see below 413.2). See also 23.537.8 where a type of plant, “field
horsetail,” is mentioned, and also in the original version of “American Poetry
1920-1930” (1931), LZ mentions caudae
equinae (L. horsetail), which designates the bundle of nerves at the
lower end of the spinal cord (70).
410.8 anti-matter: a hypothetical form of matter that is identical to
physical matter except that its atoms are composed of antielectrons,
antiprotons and antineutrons (AHD).
411.27 Don / Quixote: protagonist of Don
Quixote by Miguel Cervantes (1547-1616).
412.4 Asked him / 4-year old / ‘why the violin?’…: this anecdote about PZ
was recounted in a 14 April 1948 letter to Lorine Niedecker (Penberthy 104).
412.14 PAGANINI PRIZE: the following through 416.15
replicates the announcement and rules, including typos and awkward translation,
for the annual Premio Paganini violin competition in which PZ, aged 19,
participated in Sept.-Oct. 1963, placing fourth (Ahearn 141). The competition
was founded in 1954 and takes place in Nicolò Paganini’s hometown of Genoa, the
winner giving a performance on 12 Oct., the day of the Columbus celebrations,
with Paganini’s favorite violin, the "Guarneri del Gesù," also known as
the “Cannone.”
412.37 Porpora (Carisch): Nicola Porpora (1686-1768), Italian composer;
Carisch is a major producer of sheet music.
413.1 Bach Ciaconna: the final
movement of the Partita No. 2 in D Minor for solo violin; ciaconna or chaconne
is a form with origins in rustic dance that evolved into a slow, stately
composition.
413.2 Paganini Capriccio n. 23:
the 24 “Caprices” (1820) by Paganini (1782-1840) are considered among the most
technically difficult compositions for solo violin. PZ would make a recording
of the Caprices in 1970; see
23.56312-15.
413.4 Paganini / two “Capricci” / (excluded the / one n. / 23): see
413.2.
413.8 Prokofieff / Scherzo:
Sergei Prokofieff (1891-1953), Russian composer. Scherzo is a lively movement,
usually in minuet form.
413.20 PAGANINI Concerto / in D / Major
first tempo: Violin Concerto No. 1 (1817).
415.33 Palazzo Tursi: built in 1565 on Genoa’s Via Gibraldi, it is now the
town hall and has on display three letters by Christopher Columbus and
Paganini’s favorite violin (see 417.16), which he willed to the city. Both were
natives of Genoa.
415.34 October / 12 in / the evening / on occasion…: 12 October is the
date when Christopher Columbus first landed in the New World in 1492; annually
celebrated in Genoa.
416.11 Teatro Comunale / dell’ Opera: in Genoa.
416.16 love’s labour’s lost / we (?)
four / indeed confronted…: from Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost V.ii.383-389:
Rosaline: In courtesy gives
undeserving praise.
We four indeed confronted were with four
In Russian habit: here they stay’d an hour,
And talk’d apace; and in that hour, my lord,
They did not bless us with one happy word.
I dare not call them fools; but this I think,
When they are thirsty, fools would fain have drink.
416.27 spit in / the hole, / man, and / tune again:
from Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew
III.i.41 (qtd. Bottom 395).
416.35 honor of / 1.st Prize / warm by / 4’s Mozart / an honest / Russian wish…:
it appears likely that this passage alludes to the fact that the 1st Prize
winner of the Paganini competition was Russian, where as 4 refers to PZ.
417.10 concours: Fr. contest or
competition.
417.13 segretly: conflated
Italian-English: It. segreto =
secret.
417.14 let 4.th / play the / Paganini’s violin: that is, PZ was allowed to play on
Paganini’s favorite violin, the "Cannone" (see
note at 415.14).
418.1 Whitman on /
Jenny Lind / for “all / her blandishments…: Jenny Lind (1820-1887) an
enormously popular singer from Sweden, who toured the U.S. under the
sponsorship of P.T. Barnum (see 12.189.24). The source of Whitman’s remark is a
review in the New York Times Book Review for 8 Dec. 1962 preserved among
LZ’s papers (HRC 4.2) of Jenny Lind: The Swedish Nightingale by Gladys
Denny Shultz: “The Swedish Swan, with all
her blandishments, never touched my heart in the least. I wondered at so
much vocal dexterity; and indeed
they were all very pretty, those leaps and double somersaults. But even in the grandest religious airs,
genuine masterpieces as they are, of the German composers, executed by this
strangely overpraised woman in perfect scientific style, let the critics say
what they like, it was a failure; for there was a vacuum in the head of the
performance. Beauty pervaded it, no doubt, and that of a high order. It was the
beauty of Adam before God Breathed into his nostrils.”
418.18 tanglewoods: the Tanglewood estate in Lenox, Massachusetts became
the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and also established a music
center for young professional musicians.
418.23 fools good / for their money: see “Poetry/For My Son When He Can
Read”: “[…] people parted in those months with everything in the spirit of a
fool and his money” (Prep+ 3).
418.25 TV Day / Nippon:
418.29 “Rondeau”: or rondo is a musical form in which one section
intermittently recurs.
419.2 Pythagoreans’
Four / justice the / first perfect…: four is the number of justice for the
Pythagoreans, the highest virtue. The precise source for the following
Pythagorean passage through 420.2 is uncertain, but the following from Tobias
Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science
(1930) seems likely for many of the key points:
“But let us return to number
worship. It found its supreme expression in the philosophy of the Pythagoreans.
Even numbers they regarded as soluble, therefore ephemeral, feminine,
pertaining to the earthly; odd numbers as indissoluble, masculine, partaking of
celestial nature.
Each
number was identified with some human attribute. One stood for reason,
because it was unchangeable; two for opinion; four for justice,
because it was the first perfect square,
the product of equals; five for
marriage, because it was the union of the first feminine and the first
masculine number. (One was regarded not as an odd number, but rather as the source
of all numbers.) […]
‘Bless us, divine number, thou who generatest gods and men! O holy, holy tetraktys, though
that containest the root and the source of the eternally flowing
creation! For the divine number begins
with the profound, pure unity until
it comes to the holy four; then it begets the mother of all, the
all-compromising, the all-bounding, the first-born, the never-swerving, the
never tiring holy ten, the keyholder of all.’
This is the prayer of the
Pythagoreans addressed to the tetraktys, the holy fourfoldness, which
was supposed to represent the four elements: fire, water, air and earth. The
holy ten derives from the first four numbers by a union of 1, 2, 3, 4. There is
the quaint story that Pythagoras commanded a new disciple to count to four:
‘See what you thought to be four
was really ten and a complete
triangle and our password.’”
419.7 holy holy / tetraktys…: 1+2+3+4=10; see
15.368.30. The tetraktys was for the numerological Pythagoreans the source of
all. The tetraktys arranged as dots form a perfect triangle with four on each
side—the Triangle of Four at 419.26, thus “four really ten” (419.23-24):
•
• •
• •
•
• •
• •
In Pythagorean
cosmology, of which the tetraktys is a sacred representation, fire is at the
center (419.25). LZ is quoting from the Pythagorean prayer to the tetraktys,
see preceding note.
419.25 central fire:
Pythagorean cosmology proposed a central fire around which were the sacred
number of ten heavenly bodies: earth, sun, moon, 5 planets and an unseeable
counter-earth.
419.27 boundless breath: “The Pythagoreans held, [Aristotle] tells us,
that there was ‘boundless breath’ outside the heavens, and that it was inhaled
by the world. […] We are told that, after the first unit had been
formed—however that may have taken place—the nearest part of the Boundless was
first drawn in and limited; and that it is the Boundless thus inhaled that
keeps the units separate from each other. It represents the interval between
them. This is a primitive way of describing discrete quantity” (108). John
Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy
(1920).
419.30 The / Golden Words / and you /
shall know / nature is / one…: the Golden
Words or Verses of Pythagoras are
a poeticized set of moral aphorisms ascribed to Pythagoras; there are various
versions and sources, but it appears LZ is using the translation by Thomas
Davidson:
These precepts having mastered, thou
shalt know
The system of the never-dying gods
And dying men, and how from all the
rest
Each thing is sundered, and how held in one:
And thou shalt know, as it is right thou shouldst,
That nature everywhere is uniform,
And so shalt neither hope for things that lie
Beyond all hope, nor fail of any truth.
420.8 my / luck is / 13: Scorggins notes that this appears in the 31st
stanza of the movement, 13 reversed (Bio
393).
420.13 Demetrius ‘Egypt / . . singing harmonies / of seven vowels / hymning
gods’…: through 420.36 from Demetrius, On
Style (De Elocutione), important
treatise on rhetoric from the 1st or 2nd century BC, but otherwise nothing is
known of Demetrius; not to be confused with Demetrius Phalereus (c.345-283 BC),
although this is a common enough mistake:
“In Egypt the priests, when singing
hymns in praise of the gods, employ the seven vowels, which they utter in due succession; and the sound of
these letters is so euphonious that men
listen to it in preference to flute and lyre. To do away with this
concurrence, therefore, is simply to do away entirely with the music and
harmony of speech.—But perhaps this is not the right time to enlarge on these
matters.
It is the concurrence of long
vowels which is most appropriately employed in the elevated style, as in the
words: ‘that rock he heaved uphillward’ (anô
hôtheske, Homer Odyssey 11.595).
The line, it may be said, is longer through the hiatus, and has actually
reproduced the mighty heaving of the stone. The words of Thucydides ‘that it
may not be attached to the mainland’ (mê
hêpeiros) furnish a similar example (Thucydides Bk. 6.1.2). Diphthongs also may clash with diphthongs, e.g. ‘the place
was colonised from Corcyra; of Corinth, however, was its founder’ (Kerkuraioi oikistês, Thucydides
Bk.1.24.2).
Well then, the concurrence of
the same long vowels, and of the same diphthongs, contributes to elevation of
style. On the other hand, the concurrence of different vowels produces, through
the number of sounds employed, variety
as well as elevation, an instance
being the word hêôs. In the word oiên
not only are the letters different
but also the breathings, one being rough
and the other smooth, so that there
are here many points of unlikeness.
In songs, too, trills can be
made on one and the same long letter, songs
being piled (so to say) on songs, so
that the concurrence of like vowels
may be regarded as a small part of a
song and as a trill.—These remarks must suffice on the question of hiatus and of
the kind of composition appropriate to the elevated style” (Para. 71-74; trans.
W. Rhys Roberts).
421.1 ‘Die Elenden / sollen essen’ / Bach’s first / music (Leipzig Cantorate):
Cantata No. 75, first performed 30 May 1723 (the title means “the wretched
shall eat”); the first cycle of cantatas Bach composed in his position as
Cantor of Saint Thomas School, the most important musical position in Leipzig,
which included responsibility for the music at the four main churches of the
city. This cycle was performed at the Nikolaikirche (Terry 149).
421.30 mention distinguée: Fr.
with distinction.
421.14 I / had no / patience with / another who forecast / me hungry…:
probably EP, who not only warned LZ about the professional hazards of being a
poet, but claimed his Cantos were
intended as “the tale of the tribe” (Guide
to Kulchur 194), a phrase he ascribes to Rudyard Kipling, although better
known in Mallarmé’s formulation from “Le Tombeau d’Edgar Poe”: “donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu”
(to give a purer sense to the words of the tribe).
421.21 drudging / professing to / make pure / the speech / of a / scrawling
race: LZ, like Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), supported himself by teaching
English most of his life. Here LZ is evidently alluding to his composition
students while playing off of Mallarmé’s famous line in “Le tombeau d’Edgar Poet”: “donner
un sens plus pur sux mots de la tribe.” See also 422.2-3.
421.27 Sun no / hay State / exchanges’ rolling: this may be a condensed
parody of Pound’s “Sun up; work / sundown; to rest…” section of Canto 49 (Cantos 245), although it also has the
look of a homophonic translation.
421.37 Le Livre / de Mallarmé…: Le “Livre” de Mallarmé
gathers together the highly fragmentary notes by Stéphane Mallarmé for his
ultimate but never realized project to create “The Book,” intended to fulfill
the prophetic claim that “everything exists in order to end up as a book” (see
423.12). The surviving notes, about 200 pages, edited with a lengthy and
comprehensive discussion by Jacques Scherer, were published by Gallimard in
1957, and this volume, as indicates (421.31-34), was given to LZ by PZ (Rieke
188). Mallarmé’s project as indicated in these notes is a good deal less purely
abstract than the much better known idea of “Le Livre” outlined in “The Book: A Spiritual Instrument” (1895),
entailing performances and a grandiose publication scheme with a considerable
of attention audience and financing.
422.2 professor by / subsistence hazard…: see note at 421.21. The mention
of “hazard” most likely refers to Mallarmé’s last major work, the
typographically innovative “Un Coup de
Dés” (first published 1897), whose full title and key words are “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard”
(A throw of the dice never abolishes chance).
422.16 a stretto: It. draw together or draw close; a musical term for the
overlapping of fugal subjects or motifs, an intensifying of the contrapuntal
density that usually indicates the fugue’s conclusion.
422.21 Pegasus / from Medusa: when Perseus decapitated Medusa, the winged
horse Pegasus sprang forth from her bloody neck. Pegasus has associations with
inspiration because Athena tamed and presented him to the Muses. The winged
Pegasus was also a prominent logo for Mobile Oil Company.
422.23 his / century’s dice…: see note at 422.2
423.12 ‘What book? / what book? / entire enough / to take / the place / of all
/ the books…: through 423.21 from Jacques Scherer’s forward to Le “Livre” de Mallarmé (see 421.37): “Mallarmé cherchait visiblement la structure
d’un livre. Quel livre? Quel livre assez
total, assez parfait pour tenir lieu de tous les autres livres et du monde meme?
Ce ne pouvait être, de toute évidence, que le Livre, l’Œuvre, la somme à
laquelle il disait avoir travaillé une bonne partie de son existence et que la
mort l’empêcha d’achever” (3).
423.22 . . Piece or / that play / with concert…: through 423.34 from Le “Livre” de Mallarmé (see 421.37) Folio 171(A), although much of this
passage is also quoted in Scherer’s discussion (38):
Pièce
│ ou
cette représentation avec concert
dialogue poème et symphonie
pour
scène et orch
—occupe le fond de l’Œ [Oeuvre]—
vers
et come publiIée en livre
journal
et vers
s’adapte – à un journal régulier
une fois pour toutes, et,
toutes les questions traitées,
Par quelqu’un qui les réduit à son
chapeau façon de tout
rendre
vierge – ce
qui est exté-
rieur au poéme
___ et comme publication
c’est, par fragments de
423.36 Eureka: long speculative,
cosmological essay (1848) by Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849). Mallarmé was a great
admirer as well as translator of Poe.
423.37 ‘each fractioning / fragment the / ensemble’s rhythm’: from Le “Livre” de Mallarmé Folio 172 (A), continuing from 171 (A) quoted at
423.22:
la représentation — chacun en
donnant
le rythme d’ensemble — selon sa fraction
Laquelle est — soit 1/8e?
424.3 Wherever / we put / our hats / is
our / home: see 4.12.13; also 423.33.
424.14 Blaise Pascal’s / candle pleaded…: (1602-1674) from Pascal, Pensées (1669) Sec. I.9: “When we wish
to correct with advantage and to show another that he errs, we must notice from
what side he views the matter, for on that side it is usually true, and admit
that truth to him, but reveal to him the side on which it is false. He is
satisfied with that, for he sees that he was not mistaken and that he only
failed to see all sides. Now, no one is
offended at not seeing everything; but one does not like to be mistaken,
and that perhaps arises from the fact that man naturally cannot see everything,
and that naturally he cannot err in the side he looks at, since the perceptions
of our senses are always true” (trans. W.F. Trotter). This is not, however, put
in the mouth of a candle; a paschal candle is put on the altar the day before
Easter.
424.21 Leonov first / to
float / in space…: Alsksei Leonov (b. 1934) became the first person to walk
in space on 18 March 1965, flying in Voskhod 2 with P. Belyayev. Among LZ’s
papers (HRC 4.2) is a clipping from the New York Times dated 22 March
1965 reporting on their landing: “Two Soviet Astronauts Return From Remote
Area,” in which Leonov is reported as saying: “I didn’t experience any fear […]
only a sense of infinite expanse and depth of the universe… I knew I would not
meet anyone I know up there.”
424.27 ‘The loan / from above / in favor / of all…: through 424.33 from Le “Livre” de Mallarmé Folio 62 (B); also quoted by Scherer in a section on “Le financement du Livre” (119):
c’est comme un emprunt
dessus — si ceci fait
en faveur du monde
— à restituer au
peuple – en exemplaires
à bon marché
avec
mon humble gain —
425.3 ‘Man / does not / write with / light on / black crystal / night…:
through 425.11 from Scherer in Le “Livre”
de Mallarmé. in a section on “Symbolisme du noir et du blanc.” Reike
(174) identifies this passage as from Mallarmé’s Quant au livre, which includes “The Book: A Spiritual Instrument”
and other writings on “The Book” that anticipate the notes in Le “Livre” de Mallarmé, although LZ actually finds these quotations in
Scherer’s discussion and very freely selects from both Mallarmé and Scherer:
“«Tu remarquas, insiste-t-il, on n’écrit
pas, lumineusement, sur champ obscur, l’alphabet des astres, seul, ainsi
s’indique, ébauché ou interrompu; l’homme poursuit noir sur blanc.» L’encre
dont se servent les homes est ténèbre, obscurité; c’est avec ce noir qu’il faut
créer. L’homme trouve ce noir—autre contraste—dans la clareté de sa conscience,
symbolisée par un encrier de verre blanc ou de crystal : «L’encrier, cristal
comme une conscience, avec sa goutte, au fond, de ténèbres relative à ce que
quelque chose soit.» A la constellation céleste correspond la noire écriture
humaine, «pli de sombre dentelle qui retient l’infini». L’écriture est une
création inversée.
En choisissant «la goutte
d’encre apparentée à la nuit sublime» pour satisfaire à son «devoir de tout
recréer», Mallarmé se situe dans la grande tradition mystique de la Nuit qui
s’était épanouie au XIXe siècle dans un certain romantisme et dans les
tendances qui en découlent. A la parole divine : «Que la lumière soit», l’homme
moderne a répondu, revendiquant sa propre existence, par une création d’ombre :
«Que la nuit soit», qui retentit sur «le papier blême de tant d’audace». On
voit que Mallarmé suit ses métaphores. Ce papier blêmissant devant l’audace de
l’homme apporte une nouvelle justification, trop parfaite pour ne pas être
ironique, de la blancheur du support de l’écriture” (50-51).
425.15 ‘white / paper support’: see quotation at 425.3.
425.25 If the / ‘crowd buy’ / of
the / inkwell what / ‘proof’ one / ear’s ‘reciprocal’?: from Le “Livre” de Mallarmé (see 421.37) Folio 114 (A), although also quoted by
Scherer in a section on “La notion de
prevue” (96):
établir que cela vaut 1000 francs (le
foiet : que
la
foule achètera)
preuve
réciproque
425.31 paschal: of or pertaining to Passover or Easter; see 424.14.
425.32 ‘The last / thing settled / writing a / book…: from Pascal, Pensées Sec. I.19: “The last thing one
settles in writing a book is what one should put in first” (trans. W.F.
Trotter).
426.3 20th / anniversary of / Hiroshima’s “A”: first atomic bomb was
dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945.
426.17 ‘the book / however seeming / never begins / or ends…: from Le “Livre” de Mallarmé Folio 181 (A), also qtd. in Scherer’s discussion (24):
“un livre ne commence ni ne finit : tout
au / plus fait-il semblant.”
426.21 . . the crowd / other than / by silence…: through 426.26 from
Scherer in Le “Livre” de Mallarmé, from a section on “Le côté de la foule”: “Si la messe est aux yeux de Mallarmé un
spectacle exemplaire, c’est, entre autres raisons, parce qu’elle permet à la
foule qui y assiste d’y participer activement par les répons, donc autrement
que par le silence : «Quiconque y peut de la source la plus humble d’un
gosier jeter aux voûtes le répons en latin incompris, mais exultant,
participe entre tous et lui-même de la sublimité se reployant vers le
choeur.» Et c’est dans le même esprit que Mallarmé salue la construction
d’un grand théâter populaire […]” (113).
426.27 proposing ‘the / State raise / a trifling / tax on / works in / the
public / domain…: through 427.2 from Scherer in Le “Livre” de Mallarmé
(Cox 267-268), in the section on “Le
financement du Livre”: “Et Mallarmé
propose que l’État institue, sur les œuvres tombées dans le
domaine public, une taxe minime, qui alimenterait une Caisse
des Lettres; cette Caisse pourrait organiser comme il convient «diverses
célébrations littéraires» et venir en aide aux jeunes écrivains, qui
sont, pour les classiques, des «légataires idéals, substitutés à
la filiation directe ou par le sang»” (117).
427.29 whose Book / prophecy…:
see 421.37.
427.35 Sextus Empiricus…: (c.160-210) Greek physician
and philosopher, an advocate and major source of Pyrrhonian skepticism.
428.3 ‘the art / of letters by / comprehension cures / a most / inactive
disease…: as LZ indicates at 428.14, the source for the quoted passages
through 430.2 is Against the Professors
(Adversus Mathematicos), one of the
three major surviving works by Greek skeptic philosopher, Sextus Empiricus (see
427.35) as translated by R.G. Bury for the Loeb Classical Library. This work
consists of six books: Against the Grammarians, the Rhetoricians, the
Geometers, the Arithmeticians, the Astrologers and the Musicians respectively.
I.51-52: “For it is plain that
the end aimed at by every art is very useful for life. Some arts have been introduced
mainly with the object of averting things hurtful, others with that of
discovering things beneficial; medicine is an example of the first kind, being
a curative and pain-relieving art, and navigation of the second, for all men
are very much in need of assistance of the other nations. Since then
‘grammatistic’ [knowledge of letters] by
its comprehension of letters cures a most inactive disease, forgetfulness, and contains a most
necessary activity, memory, almost everything depends upon it, and without it
it is impossible to teach any necessary thing to others, and it will be
impossible to learn anything profitable from another. Thus the ‘grammatistic’
is one of the most useful arts.”
I.54: “[…] this does not refer
to the uselessness of the art which is found to deal with the elements and with
employing them in writing and reading, but that which is boastful and needlessly inquisitive.”
428.14 Against the / Professors…:
see 428.3.
428.16 ‘the subject / taught does not / exist…: from Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors I.9: “It is no
part of our present task to pronounce upon the long and varied dispute
regarding learning which has been carried on by the philosophers. It is
sufficient to lay down that if any subject of learning exists, and if it is
attainable by man, four things must first be agreed upon—the subject taught, the teacher, the
learner, the method of learning. But, as we shall show, neither does the subject exist nor the teacher nor the learner nor the
method of learning; therefore no subject of learning exists.”
428.23 . . the óbverse / perceptible by / all alike…: from Sextus
Empiricus, Against the Professors
I.36-38:
“Now teaching takes place
either by means of sense-evidence or by means of speech. But of these
sense-evidence is concerned with ostensible things, and the ostensible is
apparent, and the apparent, in so far as it appears, is perceptible by all alike, and what is perceptible by all alike is
incapable of being taught; therefore what is shown by sense-evidence is not capable
of being taught.—And speech either
signifies or does not signify something. Now if it signifies nothing, neither
does it teach anything. Now if it signifies nothing, neither does it teach
anything; while it signifies, it signifies a thing either by nature or by
convention. But it does not signify by nature since all men do not understand
the speech of all,—Greeks that of barbarians and barbarians that of Greeks, or
Greeks that of Greeks or barbarians that of barbarians. And if it signifies by
convention, it is plain that those who
have apprehended beforehand the objects to which the terms are conventionally
applied will also understand those terms, not that they are taught by them
what they did not know, but rather as reviving
what they did know; but those who lack learning about the things not known
will fail to do so.
If, then, the subject taught
does not exist, nor the teacher, nor the learner, nor the method of learning,
it is clear that neither does the subject learnt exist nor he who presides over
that subject.”
429.34 ‘wrong moment / foolish for / sobering frenzied / youths…: from
Sextus Empiricus, Against the Professors
VI.7-8: “First in order, let us state the views commonly expressed concerning
Music by the majority of people. If, they say, we welcome Philosophy as
regulating human life and repressing the passions of the soul, much more shall
we welcome Music because it produces the same results as Philosophy not by
commanding us in a violent manner but by means of a seductive persuasiveness. Thus
Pythagoras, having noticed on one occasion that the youths who were in a state of Bacchic frenzy from drunkenness differed not at all from madmen, advised
the flute-player who was with them the ‘spondean’
tune [editor’s note: the sort of slow, solemn melodies used at spondai ‘libations’]; and when he had
done as instructed, they suddenly changed and became sober just as if they had
been sober from the beginning.” Sextus later comments (VI.23): “And, as to
Pythagoras, in the first place he was foolish
in desiring to render drunkards sober at the wrong moment, instead of
quitting the place; and secondly, by trying to reform them in this way he
confesses that flute-players have more influence than philosophers for the
reforming of morals.”
430.5 Aseptic doctor: Sextus Empiricus; see 427.35.
430.15 Lunik’s / hunch moon / surface desolate…: the unmanned Soviet space
probe Luna or Lunik 9 achieved the first soft landing on the moon in Feb. 1966 sending
back the first closeup photos of the surface. Both
the Luna (Lunik) program and the U.S. Lunar Orbiter programs (as well as Ranger
and Surveyor programs) sent various flights during the 1960s to photograph and
land on the moon.
430.22 Alighieri threading / a needle…: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321); there
are several mentions of needles in the Divine Comedy, such as the following
from the Inferno XV.17-21:
and
each looked at us,
as in the evening men are wont
to look at one another under a new moon;
and towards us sharpened their vision,
as an aged tailor does at the eye of
his needle.
However, a passage from Inferno XX.121-123 describing
female fortunetellers appears more directly related to the following allusion
to Catullus:
See the wretched women, who left the needle,
the shuttle, and the spindle, and made
themselves divineresses;
they wrought witchcraft with herbs and
images. (trans. J.A. Carlyle)
430.25 Gai’s / spindle: Gai is Catullus (Gaius Valerius Catullus), who in Carmina 64.306-322 describes the Parcae
(Fates) spinning the threads of life: “the Parcae began to utter soothtelling
chants […] while their hands duly plied the eternal task. The left hand held
the distaff clothed with soft wool; then the right hand lightly drawing out the
threads with upturned fingers shaped them, then with downward thumb twirled the
spindle poised with rounded whorl; and so with their teeth they still plucked
the threads and made the work even” (trans. F.W. Cornish). The Zukosky’s were
working on Catullus 64 at the same time
as LZ composed “A”-19 and both “spindle” and “whorl” appear in their version of
this passage. The image of the spindle or whorl associated with the Fates or
necessity clearly attracted LZ, which he also found in Plato; see “Pamphylian”
(CSP 133), Bottom 83 and Prep+ 55.
430.27 astronauts’ violent / spinning docking / “God? We / were busy”:
Gemini 8 was the first manned docking of two spacecraft in orbit on 16 March
1966, but a malfunction caused the Gemini capsule to roll violently and forced
an emergency landing.
430.31 (West of / Vatican Belvedere / Apollo “By / God a Mohawk”): from
Francis Parkman (1823-1893), The Oregon
Trail (1849), Chap. 11, describing a Native American warrior: “There was
one in particular, a ferocious fellow, named The Mad Wolf, who, with the bow in
his hand and the quiver at his back, might have seemed, but for his face, the
Pythian Apollo himself. Such a figure rose before the imagination of [Benjamin]
West, when on first seeing the Belvedere in the Vatican, he exclaimed, ‘By God,
a Mohawk!;” Benjamin West (1738-1820) the American painter.
430.35 Chatillon ‘fevered / with ivy / poison…: from Francis Parkman, The Oregon Trail, Chap. 14: “For my
part, I was in hopes that Shaw and Henry Chatillon were coming to join us. I
would have welcomed them cordially, for I had no other companions than two
brutish white men and five hundred savages. I little suspected that at that
very moment my unlucky comrade was lying on a buffalo robe at Fort Laramie,
fevered with ivy poison, and solacing his woes with tobacco and Shakespeare.”
432.7 (the aged / Cardinal wishes…: a full performance of Mozart’s Requiem Mass for JFK was given on 19
Jan. 1964 at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, presided over by
Cardinal Cushing (1895-1970), who apparently did have a rough voice. The Boston
Symphony Orchestra performed, conducted by Erick Leinsdorf (1912-1993), who was
musical director of the BSO from 1962-1969; he interrupted a performance of the
orchestra to announce the assassination of JFK. LZ appears to have gotten the
information in this section from the New York Times for 6 Feb. 1964:
“Cardinal Cushing: Symbol of ‘New Boston,’” which includes various remarks by
Cushing, including that he had “a voice like a fish peddler,” and an exchange
with Pope John XXIII, in which “The Boston prelate said he confessed to having
‘bleeding ulcers.’ ‘Oh, that’s too bad,’ Pope John said, ‘Why don’t you take a
little bicarbonate soda before you go to bed at night? I do and it’s
marvelous.’ ‘Your Holiness, thank God you’re not infallible when prescribing
medicine; that’s the worst thing you can take for ulcers,’ the Cardinal
replied.”
432.26 Viennese director / of opera / still thinks / Sacco/Vanzetti: there was a story in the early 1960s that Rudolph
Bing (1902-1997), the Viennese born director of the Metropolitan Opera in NYC,
thought a proposed opera by Marc Blitzsten (1905-1964) entitled Sacco and Vanzetti, was about two
lovers. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were two Italian-American
anarchists, who became a cause célèbre
when they were tried and convicted in 1921 of murder during an armed robbery.
Both denied any knowledge of the crime, and it was widely believed they were
convicted due to their radical politics. Despite intense international interest,
protests and numerous delays, they were executed in Massachusetts on 23 August
1927.
432.36 schlemiel: bungler, dolt; Yiddish in
origin (AHD).
433.1 ‘nectar of / heather-honey gathering / of herbs…: evidently this is
the “blarney” description on a bottle of Irish Mist (433.12), a liqueur made
from whiskey, heather-honey and herbs and claiming to be an ancient recipe, as
recounted in a letter by PZ to his parents dated 12 March 1966 (HRC 4.6).
433.12 Irish Mist: see 433.1
434.10 From / thence sorrow / be ever /
raz’d: raz’d = erased; from Shakespeare, Pericles I.i; Pericles speaking on the entrance of the daughter of
Antiochus (qtd. Bottom 432):
See, where she comes apparell'd like the spring,
Graces her subjects, and her thoughts the king
Of every virtue gives renown to men!
Her face the book of praises, where is read
Nothing but curious pleasures, as from
thence
Sorrow were ever raz'd, and testy wrath
Could never be her mild companion.
You gods, that made me man, and sway in love,
That hath inflam'd desire in my breast
To taste the fruit of yon celestial tree
Or die in the adventure, be my helps,
As I am son and servant to your will,
To compass such a boundless happiness!
434.13 nine / so soon twenty: PZ would have been nine on 22 Oct. 1952 and
twenty in 1963, more or less at the time he would have returned from the
Paganini Prize competition (412.14). This concluding line points immediately
to “A”-20, written prior to “A”-19 for PZ’s 20th birthday and incorporating a
poem he wrote at age nine.
