Barely and widely (1958)
Commentary
Corman,
Cid. “Love—In These Words.” MAPS 5
(1973): 26-54 [comments on the entire book in sequence].
Barely
and widely
30 March
1956
161.5 “barely / twelve”: PZ would have turned
12 on 22 Oct. 1955; according to Scroggins this phrase is quoted from a review
of a PZ performance (Bio 292).
161.8 “widely / published / throughout / a long /
career”: in the March 1956 issue of Poetry,
LZ published the poem “The Guests” (CSP
153-154), and the Contributors note remarks: “Louis Zukofsky is known best for
his work in the Objectivist movement, both as a poet and as a leader. He has
been widely published throughout a long career” (382).
#1 “This is after all vacation. All that”
19 June
1956
162.23 hautboys:
oboes.
#2 “You who were made for this music”
19-21
June 1956
#3 “The green leaf that will outlast the winter”
1 Jan.
1957
#4 A Valentine
2 Feb.
1957
#5 The Heights
25-27
Feb. 1957/ Colorado Review (Spring
1958)
Title The Heights: Brooklyn Heights, the area
near the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge where the Zukofskys lived almost
continuously from 1942-1964 at addresses on Columbia Heights and Willow Street,
where they often had views of the harbor across to Manhattan.
#6 “Send regards to Ida the bitch”
8 May
1957
#7 Stratford-on-Avon
1 July-4
Aug. 1957/ Poetry (June 1958)
Title Stratford-on-Avon: Shakespeare’s
birthplace, a pilgrimage site and tourist trap in the southern Midlands of
England, which the Zukofskys visited during their summer 1957 trip to Europe
(see “4 Other Countries” below). Worth reading in relation to this poem is
Henry James’ long story, “The Birthplace” (1903), which is a send-up of the
commercialization of Shakespeare and particularly of Stratford-on-Avon; LZ
gives a page of quotations from this story in Bottom (99-100).
166.8 Anne Hathaway’s cottage at Shottery:
the family home of Shakespeare’s wife is an Elizabethan farmhouse in the
village of Shottery, down the road from Stratford.
166.9 Mary Arden’s house: another Tudor
farmhouse, formerly the home of Shakespeare’s mother in Wilmcote.
166.27 No tall perch, Helena...: through
167.16 refers to and quotes from A
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
166.28 Bard’s or Swan’s: both conventional
designations for Shakespeare, the latter from Ben Jonson’s “To the Memory of My
Beloved the Author, Mr. William Shakespeare” included in the First Folio:
Sweet Swan of Avon! what a sight it were
To see thee in our waters yet appear,
And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,
That so did take Eliza and our James!
166.32 we,
Hermia / Have with our neelds…: through 167.3 from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream III.ii, where
Helena and Hermia accuse each other of treachery:
Helena: Injurious Hermia! most
ungrateful maid!
Have you conspir’d, have you with these contriv’d
To bait me with this foul derision?
Is all the counsel that we two have shar’d,
The sister-vows, the hours that we have spent,
When we have chid the hasty-footed time
For parting us, O! is it all forgot?
All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence?
We, Hermia, like two artificial
gods,
Have with our neelds [needles] created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion,
Both warbling of one song, both in one key,
As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds,
Had been incorporate. So we grew
together,
Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,
But yet an union in partition;
Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;
So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart;
Two of the first, like coats in heraldry,
Due but to one, and crowned with one crest.
And will you rent our ancient love asunder,
To join with men in scorning your poor friend?
[…]
Hermia: Now I perceive that she hath
made compare
Between our statures; she hath urged her height;
And with her personage, her tall personage,
Her height, forsooth, she hath prevail'd with him.
And are you grown so high in his esteem;
Because I am so dwarfish and so low?
167.6 The
course of true love never did run smooth…: this and the next few lines
from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream I.i:
Lysander: Ay me! for aught that ever
I could read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run
smooth;
But, either it was different in blood,—
Hermia: O cross! too high to be
enthrall’d to low.
Lysander: Or else misgraffed in
respect of years,—
Hermia: O spite! too old to be
engag’d to young.
Lysander: Or else it stood upon the
choice of friends,—
Hermia: O hell! to choose love by another’s eye.
Lysander: Or, if there were a
sympathy in choice,
War, death, or sickness did lay siege to it,
Making it momentany as a sound,
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream,
Brief as the lightning in the collied night,
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth,
And ere a man hath power to say, ‘Behold!’
The jaws of darkness do devour it up:
So quick bright things come to confusion.
Hermia: If then true lovers have been
ever cross’d,
It stands as an edict in destiny:
Then let us teach our trial patience,
Because it is a customary cross,
As due to love as thoughts and dreams and sighs,
Wishes and tears, poor fancy’s followers.
167.11 Until / Theseus judged…: from
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
IV.i, when Theseus and entourage discover the lovers asleep in the woods:
Theseus: No doubt they rose up early to observe
The rite of May, and, hearing our intent,
Came here in grace of our solemnity.
But speak, Egeus, is not this the day
That Hermia should give answer of her choice?
Egeus: It is, my lord.
Theseus: Go, bid the huntsmen wake them with their horns. [Horns and shout within. Lysander, Demetrius, Hermia, and Helena, wake
and start up.]
Good morrow, friends. Saint Valentine is
past:
Begin these wood-birds but to couple now?
166.20 the Birthplace: the house where
Shakespeare was born is located on Henley Street (see 166.10) in Stratford. As
LZ mentions, the gardens in back have been planted with various flowers and
trees mentioned in Shakespeare’s works.
166.21 Good
Friend for Jesus sake forbeare: the epitaph on the slab over
Shakespeare’s grave inside the Holy Trinity Church in Stratford reads:
Good friend
for Jesus sake forbeare,
To dig the dust enclosed here.
Blessed be the man that spares these stones,
And cursed be he that moves my bones.
167.25 full-blown
polychrome / bust: on the wall near Shakespeare’s grave is a colored bust
in relief showing him in the act of writing was put up by his family.
167.29 Anne
Hathaway’s burden—: this line appears to refer to the common assumption
that the Shakespeares had a difficult marriage, in large part based on
Shakespeare’s will, in which his wife is given the “second-best bed,” although
current scholarship generally does not accept this negative interpretation. On
the other hand, it may simply refer to the fact that Anne Hathaway outlived her
husband by some years, dying in 1623, by which time the monument to Shakespeare
with the above mentioned bust had been erected.
167.30 the new
Queen’s…: Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation was in June 1953.
168.13 Can no longer / Live by thinking:
from As You Like It V.ii.50, spoken
by Orlando in his impatience to publicly declare his love for Rosalind.
168.16 “That
may not be bad / If it turns out well”: echoing Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well.
#8 “This year”
22 Feb.
1958/ Poetry (June 1958)
168.7 Washington’s Birthday: 22 February.
168.12 Governors Island: island in New York
harbor near Brooklyn, to the east of the Statue of Liberty; until very recently
it was a military installation with various fortifications and not accessible
to the public.
168.11 Staten / Island: large island that
forms the western entrance to New York harbor.
#9 Ashtray
3 April
1958
#10 Another Ashtray
8 April
1958
#11 Head Lines
13
July/Aug. 1958
171.7 Krushchev / won’t debate / satellites:
Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) leader of the Soviet Union from 1953-1964 (see
“A”-13.265.7-9 and 284.10f). The space race was initiated with the launch of
the first satellite, Sputnik 1, by the USSR on 4 Oct. 1957, which was followed
by Sputnik 2 on 3 Nov. 1957 and then countered by the US with Explorer 1 on 31
Jan. 1958.
#12 4 Other Countries
Summer
1957-1 Sept. 1958
Commentary
Corman,
Cid. “Meeting in Firenze.” Sagetrieb
1.1 (Spring 1982): 120-124.
Zukofsky, Paul. “Why 4 Other Countries
or Dear Charles, This Is All Your Fault.” PEPC Library (2008).
This poem
is an account of the Zukofskys’ trip to Europe from late June to mid-Sept.
1957; the four countries are England, France, Italy and Switzerland.
171.1 Merry, La Belle / antichi, tilling—: this
opening alludes to the four countries visited and the three main languages of
the Zukofskys’ European sojourn. Merry as in Merry Old England, La Belle, Fr. the beautiful, antichi, It. ancient or the ancients,
and tilling referring to the peaceful agricultural Switzerland—the word appears
twice on 196 (Scroggins Bio 283).
171.14 Tours:
city in central France on the Loire River.
172.1 La Gloire in the black…:
172.6 Windermere: in the Lake District of
northern England near where William Wordsworth lived.
172.12 Angers: capital of Anjou province in
France, near the Loire River.
172.30 Poitiers: city in central France, where
Eleanor of Aquitaine had her court in the 12th century and center of
troubadour culture.
173.5 Arc de triomphe: in Paris.
173.7 madeleine memories: referring to Marcel
Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, which is quoted at
“A”-18.407.23-25.
173.8 Ouest: Fr. the West.
173.25 Cake Tower of / Babel / that is / Nice:
174.2 Lascaux: site of the most famous caves
containing Upper Paleolithic paintings located in the Dordogne area of southern
France.
174.4 Eyzies: another area in the French
Dordogne with numerous caves containing Paleolithic remains, including
paintings, but best known for the discovery of Cro-Magnon skeletons; apparently
LZ visited several of the caves (Davenport 110).
174.6 Périgueux: capital of the Dordogne
department in southwest France at the heart of what was troubadour country.
174.10 merde at St. Front: merde = Fr. shit.
St. Front is the main cathedral of Périgueux, which is based on a Byzantine
design and some believe copied from a Constantinople church, which perhaps
explains the mention of Istanbul at 174.12.
174.14 Tower / of Vésone: a Gallo-Roman
structure in the center of Périgueux originally the central part of a
temple.
174.31 arena’s ruin: Roman amphitheatre in
Périgueux, which is comparatively small.
175.3 Bertran de Born / and Girault de Borneil:
troubadour poets of Provence, France. Bertran de Born (c.1140-1214), Provencal noble
and poet from the Périgueux area, famously appears in Dante’s Inferno (XXVIII.118-126) and EP’s
“Sestina: Altaforte” and “Near Perigord.” Girault de Borneil, also spelled
Bornehl, (c.1162-c.1199), troubadour poet, also from the general area of Périgueux, is mentioned in Dante, Purgatorio XXVI.120 and De Vulgari Eloquentia. LZ includes a
free homophonic rendition of a couple lines by Borneil in “A”-23.558.23-24.
175.9 The
vowels / abide / in consonants…: from the Book of Bahir (Sefer ha-Bahir) among the earliest works of
medieval Cabbala, first published in the 12th century. The text is concerned
with the mysticism of letters; written Hebrew lacks vowels. LZ’s source is
Ernest Müller, History of Jewish Mysticism (1949); also qtd. Bottom (421).
176.14 St. Michael....: Mont-Saint-Michel, the
spectacular fortified Benedictine abbey on a small isle off the coast of
Normandy and subject of Henry Adams’ Mont-Saint-Michel
and Chartres (1904, 1913). The legend of the monastery’s founding is that
St. Aubert, Bishop of Avranches, was commanded to do so in a dream by the
Archangel Michael, which he initially ignored until Michael returned and bore a
hole with his finger in the bishop’s skull. LZ may be referring at 175.32f to
the fact that the abbey was turned into a prison during the French Revolution,
which it remained for over half a century.
176.24 Merveille: La Merveille (Fr. the
marvel) is one of the major structures on Mont-Saint-Michel facing out toward
the Atlantic.
176.19 Up
to the mount / where the Druids / in white surplice / sacrificed:
supposedly the site of Mont-Saint-Michel was originally the site of Druid
altars dedicated to the worship of the sun.
177.5 Master
/ Aristotle’s eternal / whiteness of / a day: refers to a passage from
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics I.6
(1096a-b): “And one might ask the question, what in the world they mean by ‘a
thing itself,’ if (as is the case) in ‘man himself’ and in a particular man the
account of man is one and the same. For in so far as they are man, they will in
no respect differ; and if this is so, neither will ‘good itself’ and particular
goods, in so far as they are good. But again it will not be good any the more
for being eternal, since that which lasts long is no whiter than that which
perishes in a day” (trans. W.D. Ross); see 12.237.25; also qtd. Bottom 61, 335.
177.9 Benedictine / initial:
177.13 Pontorson: town on the Normandy coast
of France near Mont-Saint-Michel.
177.30 Perilous / Castle: Scottish border
castle of James Douglas, although in this context perhaps LZ is referring to
somewhere at or near Mont-Saint-Michel.
178.21 Saint Cecelia: or Cecilia, patron saint
of music, whose legend is the subject of “The Second Nun’s Tale” in Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.
178.30 Quimper: city in Brittany, France.
179.1 Bede’s tomb: the Venerable Bede
(673-735), author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People
(731). Although originally buried at the monastery at Jarrow, Northumbria where
he spent most of his life, he was later reburied in the Durham cathedral.
179.2 Chartres’ / two towers: the gothic
cathedral of Notre-Dame at Chartres, southwest of Paris, has two massive
mismatched towers.
179.6 Leoninus / to / Josquin: Léonin (fl.
1160-1180), French composer active in Paris and possibly the earliest
polyphonic composers. Leoninus also a contemporary poet and supposed inventor
of Leonine verse, who may in fact be the same person. Josquin Després or
Desprez (c.1450-1521), Flemish composer, the finest master of polyphonic vocal
music of his time.
179.26 Middle / Sea: Mediterranean < L. medius, middle + terra, land, and can refer to any large body of water surrounded by
land.
179.32 via Marsala 12: EP’s original address
in Rapallo, on the Italian Riviera, where LZ visited him in 1933. At the time
the Zukofskys made their 1957 trip, EP was still incarcerated in St.
Elizabeths.
180.3 Gino Pasterino: presumably a Rapallo
neighbor.
181.11 Nicollà Pisano’s / pulpit:
(c.1220-1278) Italian sculptor, one of whose major works is the design for the
pulpit in Pisa’s Baptistery, which depicts scenes from the life of Jesus and
the Last Judgment.
182.14 Cimabue: (c.1230-1302?), Italian artist
whose major authenticated work is a mosaic in the apse of the Pisa Cathedral.
182.25 Duccio’s / chromatic story…: Duccio di Buoninsegna
(c.1255/60-1319), Sienese painter, whose most important work is the huge Maestà
for the high altar of the Cathedral but now in the Cathedral Museum in Siena,
which includes numerous panels depicting scenes from the life of Christ.
183.17 Museo / Opera del Duomo: the Duomo
Cathedral museum in Florence.
183.29 Chapel / in Santa Croce: a major church
in Florence, several of whose chapels have fresco’s by Giotto (1267-1337)
depicting the life of St. Francis.
184.1 Fra Angelico’s brother…: Fra Angelico
(c.1387-1455), Italian Renaissance painter and Dominican friar, who for many
years lived at the convent of San Marco, where he decorated the cells of the
friars and other walls with numerous frescos.
185.9 San Miniato: the church of San Miniato
al Monte, in the hills south of the Arno River offering a splendid view of
Florence.
185.14 Masaccio: (1401-1428?), Florentine
painter, whose most famous works are frescos in the Brancacci Chapel of the
Santa Maria del Carmine located on the south side of the Arno.
185.28 the Fall / Before / the Decline…:
alluding to Edward Gibbon, The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire (see quotation at 186.18 and note at 187.12).
186.8 Forum: the Roman Forum; there are
several churches built on the site of the ruins, which were excavated in the
19th century.
186.18 Henry / qualmishly / shy…: Henry Adams,
whose The Education of Henry Adams is
being evoked here; from Chap. VI: Rome (1859-1860):
“Rome could not be fitted into an orderly,
middle-class, Bostonian, systematic scheme of evolution. No law of progress
applied to it. Not even time-sequences—the last refuge of helpless
historians—had value for it. The Forum no more led to the Vatican than the
Vatican to the Forum. Rienzi, Garibaldi, Tiberius Gracchus, Aurelian might be
mixed up in any relation of time, along with a thousand more, and never lead to
a sequence. The great word Evolution had not yet, in 1860, made a new religion
of history, but the old religion had preached the same doctrine for a thousand
years without finding in the entire history of Rome anything but flat
contradiction.
Of course both priests and evolutionists
bitterly denied this heresy, but what they affirmed or denied in 1860 had very
little importance indeed for 1960. Anarchy lost no ground meanwhile. The
problem became only the more fascinating. Probably it was more vital in May,
1860, than it had been in October, 1764, when the idea of writing the Decline
and Fall of the city first started to the mind of Gibbon, ‘in the close of the
evening, as I sat musing in the Church of the Zoccolanti or Franciscan Friars,
while they were singing Vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, on the ruins of the
Capitol.’ Murray’s Handbook had the grace to quote this passage from Gibbon’s Autobiography, which led Adams more than
once to sit at sunset on the steps of the Church of Santa Maria di Ara Coeli,
curiously wondering that not an inch had been gained by Gibbon, —or all the
historians since, —towards explaining the Fall. The mystery remained unsolved;
the charm remained intact. Two great experiments of western civilisation had
left there the chief monuments of their failure, and nothing proved that the
city might not still survive to express the failure of a third.
The young man had no idea what he was doing. The
thought of posing for a Gibbon never entered his mind. He was a tourist, even
to the depths of his sub-consciousness, and it was well for him that he should
be nothing else, for even the greatest of men cannot sit with dignity, ‘in the
close of evening, among the ruins of the Capitol,’ unless they have something
quite original to say about it. Tacitus could do it; so could Michael Angelo;
and so, at a pinch, could Gibbon, though in figure hardly heroic; but, in sum,
none of them could say very much more than the tourist, who went on repeating to himself the eternal
question: —Why! Why!! Why!!!—as his
neighbor, the blind beggar, might do, sitting next him, on the church steps. No one ever had answered the question to the satisfaction of
any one else; yet every one who had either head or heart, felt that sooner or
later he must make up his mind what answer to accept. Substitute the word
America for the word Rome, and the question became personal.”
186.21 Chaim / (life): as LZ indicates, a Heb.
name meaning life.
186.26 Adam / (earth): the Heb. etymology of
Adam is contentious and most often taken to mean man or human, but of earth or
earth-born is another strong candidate. Evidently LZ is alluding to Henry
Adams’ anti-Semitism in this passage.
187.8 repeating
/ Like his neighbor…: see quotation at 186.18.
187.12 Ara Coeli / Altar of Heaven: the church
of Santa Maria d’Aracoeli stands on Capitol Hill in Rome overlooking the Forum
and Palatine. See quotation above at 186.18 where Henry Adams gives an account
of sitting on the steps of the church, which evokes the epiphanic moment when
Edward Gibbon conceived his great history; the Santa Maria d’Aracoeli is on the
site of the Temple of Jupiter, which supposedly is also the site where the
Sibyl of the Tiber announced the coming of Christ to Emperor Augustus.
Throughout The Education, Adams
repeatedly mentions the Ara Coeli, or more precisely this early visit on the
steps, as an image of the protagonist contemplating the ruins and ultimate
incoherence of history.
187.17 column of / Trajan: located in the
Roman Forum.
187.22 Victoria / & Albert: major London
museum specializing in applied and decorative arts, which includes a full-scale
plaster copy of Trajan’s Column in two pieces.
188.5 Pantheon’s dome…: the great imitation
Greek temple in Rome. “Coffers” here refers to sunken square panels decorating
the interior of the temple’s dome.
188.18 Christians / in the catacombs…:
catacombs of the early Christians in Rome, which were often decorated with
depictions of Christ as the Good Shepherd (188.27); see “A”-12.185.23.
189.12 baths of Diocletian: largest of the
public bath complexes in Imperial Rome; part of the National Museum of Rome is
now housed in its remains. In Bottom
LZ also indicates his appreciation of the “Native Roman sculpture, tile, and
wall-painting” (184) he saw at the Baths of Diocetian and elsewhere in Rome.
189.17 Farnesina / stuccoes…: Roman wall
stuccoes depicting idyllic scenes, which were excavated from beneath the
Renaissance Villa Farnesina on the outskirts of Rome; the stuccoes are in the
National Museum of Rome.
189.24 Livia’s / Villa Ad Gallinas: located in
northern Rome, this villa belonged to Emperor Augustus’ consort Livia Drusilla.
The villa’s famous garden frescos, however, were moved to the National Museum
of Rome.
190.15 San Vitale: the major Byzantine church
in Ravenna, contains remarkable mosaics.
190.23 Galla Placidia: (c. 390-450) daughter
of Roman Emperor Theodorius I, wife of the Emperor Constantius and mother of
Emperor Valentinian III, but here the primary reference is to her famous
Byzantine-style mausoleum near San Vitale in Ravenna. LZ’s “the gold that
shines / in the dark” echoes EP’s “Gold fades in the gloom, / Under the
blue-black roof, Placidia’s” (Canto 20/98; see also Canto 11/51: “In the gloom,
the gold gathers the light against it”).
191.5 Bell Tower / in Venice…: on the central
square, Piazza San Marco, near the basilica (191.14).
192.13 Banda Municipale: It. municipal (music)
band.
192.14 Boccherini’s / “Menuetto”: Luigi
Boccherini (1743-1805), Italian composer and virtuoso cellist, best known for a
minuet from one of his string quartets.
192.31 Jesu
Lavoratore…: It. Working Jesus. Apparently this is the church, Gesu lavoratore, in Marghera, on the
mainland immediately opposite Venice.
193.1 The faded / fresco / in San Zeno / of Verona: San Zeno is the
major Romanesque church of Verona. The fresco is also mentioned in Bottom: “where the fresco says, tho
paint fades, there are leaves unclouded by thought” (184). The statue of San
Zeno (193.18f) is in the tympanum over the main doorway, whose doors are
decorated with square panels of bronze reliefs depicting biblical scenes, which
LZ here compares with Chinese (Han) style. This church and particularly its
doors was a favorite of EP and is mentioned frequently in the Cantos (e.g. 91/614).
193.28 Ghiberti’s gates: the doors of the
Baptistry in Florence created by Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), which were
dubbed by Michelangelo the “Gates of Paradise.”
194.1 Montecchio…: Montecchio Maggiore is a
town not far from Verona where the rival families depicted in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the “star-cross’d”
lovers, each had castles.
194.15 Giulietta’s Tomb: located in a cloister
in Verona next to the church where Romeo and Juliet were married.
194.32 Adige: river flowing through Verona.
195.1 Roman theatre: the theatre, as opposed
to the Roman arena, is just across the Adige from the main center of the city.
195.6 Gens Valeria: L. family or clan of
Valeria.
195.8 Catullus: Gaius Valerius Catullus
(c.84-c.54 BC), Roman poet from Verona. LZ translated one of his poems in 1939
(see CSP 88-89) and would shortly
begin homophonically translating his entire works with CZ.
195.9 Sirmio: Catullus owned a villa at
Sirmio on Lake Gardia near Verona, about which he wrote a famous poem (Carmina 31), quoted at 195.11. Another
of EP’s sacred places; see Cantos
76/458, 78/478.
195.11 o
Lydiae lacus: L. o Lydian lake; from Catullus, Carmina 31 about Sirmio.
195.27 Milano’s Sforzesco: the Castello
Sforzesco, the large fortress and residence of the Sforza Dukes of Milan.
According to Corman, the “One work of art / to a room” in the Castello museum
is Micheangelo’s Rondanini Pietá (“Love—In These Words” 52).
195.31 Luini: Bernardino Luini (1480-1532),
Milanese painter, follower of Leonardo da Vinci. LZ mentions Luini in “Poem
beginning ‘The’,” echoing the artist’s appearance in EP’s “Hugh Selwyn
Mauberley,” where he appears as an exemplar of a refined but limited artist.
196.8 Pilatus: mountain overlooking Lucerne,
Switzerland.
196.20 Berne: capital of Switzerland built on
the Aare River, which retains an extensive medieval section.
198.12 Colorado’s Red Rocks: as LZ says, a natural amphitheatre outside Denver
created from two red sandstone monoliths called Ship Rock and Creation Rock.
