“A”-2
10 Oct.
1928, rev. 23 July 1942
6.2 Kay: although possibly a composite figure, this almost certainly
refers to Irving Kaplan, who used the pseudonym of Roger Kaigh,
by which name LZ referred to him privately as well. Kaplan was a classmate of LZ’s at Columbia
University and maintained
his friendship for many years. LZ refers to “Roger Kaigh”
and quotes from his essay “Paper” in “American Poetry 1920-1930,” originally
published in The Symposium (Jan.
1931); see Prep+ 147. For a detailed
discussion of “Roger Kaigh,” his essay and
connections with both LZ and Bunting, see Andrew Crozier, “Paper Bunting.”
6.4 itch according to its wonts:
< “each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!” From Karl
Marx, Critique of the Gotha
Program (1875): “In a higher phase of communist society, after the
enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and
therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished;
after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after
the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of
the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more
abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in
its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs!” Phrases from this passage appear at
8.45.30-46.2.
6.5 Johann
Sebastian: Bach (see 1.1.2).
6.6 traduction: Fr. translation; with
sense of traduce.
6.13 Epos:
an epic or a number of poems that treat an epic theme (AHD).
6.14 One
Greek carrying off at least two wives…: referring to Agamemnon and the sack
of Troy by the
Greeks (see note at 6.18); in the original version of this movement published
in An “Objectivists” Anthology, LZ
specifically names Agamemnon here. Cf. quotation from
Herodotus in Bottom 364.
6.16 Epopt caryatids: epopt = person initiated into religious mysteries; caryatid
= supporting column sculptured in the form of a draped female figure, with the
origin of the word meaning women of Caryae, a village
in southern Greece (AHD).
6.18 (Agamemnon):
leader of the Greeks in the Trojan war, who had a number of unfortunate
experiences involving women: for offending Artemis, he sacrificed his daughter
Iphigenia in order for the Greek army to set sail for Troy; he quarreled with
Achilles over the captive girl Briseis; he took
Cassandra as part of his war booty during the sack of Troy; and met his demise
at the hands of his wife Clytemnestra on his return home. Of course, this whole
string of events was set off by Paris’
“kidnapping” of Helen, wife of Menelaus who was brother of Agamemnon.
6.19 Ritornelle:
It. a refrain in music.
6.22 torus: bulging rounded projection
or swelling.
6.24 Ricky:
LZ’s friend Richard Chambers; see 3.9.3.
7.8 liveforever: see 1.4.29. Leggott
suggests that given the red and green Wrigleys motif
on the following page, it may be relevant that “many species [of liveforever] become red-tinged in fall,
and some produce entirely red rosettes amid their red-and-green whorls” (149).
7.9 Hyaline:
resembling glass, as in translucence or transparency, glassy (AHD). Corman suggests (“A”-2 112) this may evoke a use of the
word by EP in a famous watery passage of Canto 2: “Lithe turning of water /
sinews of Poseidon, / Black azure and hyaline, / glass wave over Tyro…” (9-10).
However, LZ often claimed he had not yet read any of the Cantos at the time he wrote the first movements of “A” in 1928; see Leggott
who presents compelling evidence backing LZ claim (146-147).
7.19 Liveforever,
everlasting…: on liveforever, see note at 1.4.29; everlasting
is a literal translation of the Latin genus of liveforever:
Sempervivum, see also 5.18.24; and the word
recurs several times in the Gilgamesh passage of “A”-23.541.10, 542.36, 543.25.
7.29 It
is not the sea, but what floats over it: Cf. Walt Whitman’s
“Song of the Banner at Daybreak” in Drum-Taps
(1872); lines spoken by “The Poet”:
Fresh and rosy red the
sun is mounting high,
On floats the sea in distant blue careering through
its channels,
On floats the wind over the breast of the sea setting in toward land,
The great steady wind from west or west-by-south,
Floating so buoyant with milk-white foam on the waters.
But I am not the sea nor
the red sun,
I am not the wind with girlish laughter,
Not the immense wind which strengthens, not the wind which lashes,
Not the spirit that ever lashes its own body to terror and death,
But I am that which unseen comes and sings, sings, sings,
Which babbles in brooks and scoots in showers on the land,
Which the birds know in the woods mornings and evenings,
And the shore-sands know and the hissing wave, and that banner and pennant,
Aloft there flapping and flapping.
8.7 (cantata):
a vocal and instrumental piece composed of choruses, solos and recitatives
(AHD).
8.10 Wrigleys: popular chewing gum, whose
spearmint flavor has a red and green package design. Corman notes that advertisements at
the time showed a boy and girl in an idyllic setting (“A-2” 114).
8.16 Around Thy tomb here sit we weeping:
from the final chorus of J.S. Bach, St.
Matthew Passion, sung around the dead Christ’s tomb by the Apostles (No. 67
Recitative (Soli) with Chorus and No. 68 Chorus); see
quotation at 1.2.2.
