“A”-4

11 July 1929, rev. 23 July 1942

In revising “A”-4, LZ extensively rearranged the movement; see Textual Variants.

12.18    Stars of Deuteronomy: see Deuteronomy 1:10: “The Lord your God hath multiplied you, and, behold, ye are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude.”

12.20    We had a Speech, our children have / evolved a jargon: this alludes to an often heated dispute over the use of Hebrew and Yiddish, with the latter disparagingly referred to as not a proper language but a mere “jargon.”

12.22    Gate of Psalmody:

13.11    Fierce Ark! / Gold lion stomach…: the Ark of the Covenant, in which the Jewish people kept the stone tablets with Moses’ Ten Commandments, the Tablets of the Law. The Ark was a chest built from shittim wood, often identified as cedar, covered with gold and having two cherubim or winged lions on its cover. Red hair was particularly associated with King David, and with Jews generally.

13.18    He calleth for Elias: from J.S. Bach, St. Matthew Passion, No. 61b Recitative; Christ’s cry from the cross (see Matthew 27:46).

13.19    Clavicembalo: harpsichord.

13.23    ‘Religious, snarling monsters…: this and following lines in quotation marks are LZ’s translations from the poetry of Yehoash (see note at 14.18).

13.25    “Rain blows, light, on quiet water…:

13.27    Shimaunu-San: from poem by Yehoash (see 14.18), presumably a Japanese name; see 7.42.12.

14.18    Yehoash: pseudonym of Yiddish poet and translator Solomon Bloomgarden (1872-1927), who immigrated to the U.S. in 1891 and lived primarily in NYC. Much of his poetry includes translations and imitations from many linguistic cultures, including Japanese, as evidenced in this movement. Other translations from Yehoash appear in “Poem beginning ‘The’” (CSP 13, 16, 20).

14.21    “Heavier from day to day / Grow my limbs with sap of forests” / “Deep roots hammer lower”: from the Yiddish of Yehoash (see preceding note) and from the same poem continued at 15.25-16.2; from a poem translated as “Among the Trees” by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav in Sing, Stranger: A Century of American Yiddish Poetry, A Historical Anthology (Stanford UP, 2006): 90-91.

15.7      Set masts in dinghies: echoes the opening of EP’s Cantos translated from Book XI of Homer’s Odyssey: “Set keel to breakers, forth on the godly sea, and / We set up mast and sail on that swart ship.”

15.12    Tree of the Bach family / Compiled by Sebastian himself…: J.S. Bach put together a family genealogy with comments, from which the following remark is quoted. Veit Bach was Bach’s great-great-grandfather who settled in Wechmar in Thuringia, Germany and began the family tradition of music (Terry 4-5).

15.22    A carousel: see 12.3 (in the original printing of “A”-4, there are two explicit mentions of carousel in the opening lyric) and 6.24.4.

15.25    “I will gather a chain…: see note at 14.21.