“A”-1
1928, rev. 19 July 1942
1.2 Bach: the contemporary setting of “A”-1 is a performance of Johann
Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion
(Matthäuspassion)
at Carnegie Hall in NYC on Thursday, 5 April 1928, the eve of Good Friday,
which Zukofsky attended (1.21-25). This contemporary
performance is paralleled throughout by the work’s initial performance
conducted by Bach himself on Good Friday, 15 April 1729 in Leipzig (current
scholarship puts the probable first performance in 1727). LZ’s primary source of
information on Bach was Charles Sanford Terry’s scholarly biography; however,
this does not appear to be the source for the information on the original
performance of St. Matthew Passion in
“A”-1. In the brief Foreword to the publication of “A” 1-12 (1959), LZ states: “‘A’ / a poem of a life / —and a time.
The poem will continue thru 24 movements, its last words still to be lived.
Bach is a theme all thru it, the music first heard in 1928 affecting the
recurrences of changes as may be of the story or history” (Prep+ 228; see also Contributor’s note to An
“Objectivists” Anthology). CZ claims (“Commemorative Evening” 25) that the
genesis of “A”-1 was in a letter describing the performance to WCW, who was
unable to attend with LZ; the letter apparently has not survived, but see WCW’s letters in WCW/LZ
4-5, which LZ recalls in his 1958 “A Citation” to WCW (Prep+ 46).
1.3 Come, ye daughters, share my anguish…: this and the following italicized
lines in “A”-1 through “A”-7 are from a translation of the libretto of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. This work required a double choir that alternately sing these opening lines in
culminating antiphonal mode (No.1 Chorus and Chorale).
1.10 Black
full dress of the audience: the conductor of the Carnegie Hall performance,
Osip Gabrilowitsch, “had
requested plain black dress and a silent reception of the masterpiece” as
reported in the New York Times on 6 April 1928 (Scroggins 196).
1.19 twenty–two / children:
a slight exaggeration. In his two marriages, Bach had 20 children in all, only
half surviving to adulthood; at the time of the first performance of St. Matthew Passion in Leipzig (assuming the 1729
date), Bach would have had seven surviving children and six who had already
died.
1.21 The
Passion According to Matthew, / Composed…: see 1.2.
2.2 (Heart turned to Thee): from Bach, St. Matthew Passion (No. 13 Aria
(Soprano)).
2.3 I,
too, was born in Arcadia: motto adopted by
Goethe for his Travels in Italy (Ger. Auch ich war in Arkadien
geboren). In the earlier version of “A”-1
published in An “Objectivists” Anthology
(1932), the motto is in German. According to Corman, Henry Adams quotes this
motto in German in an 18 Nov. 1903 letter to Henry James
(“Z Gambit” 87). The Latin original of this epigrammatic remark, Et in Arcadia ego (I too was in Arcadia) is usually attributed
to the Italian painter Bartholomew Schidoni
(1560-1616), from whom is was echoed in the works of many other artists,
although apparently this was often found as an epitaph on ancient tombstones,
since the implied subject is Death.
2.8 Ecdysis: shedding of skin by snakes or insects; here punning
with “exit” and perhaps “ecstasy.”
2.10 chamfer:
a flat surface formed by cutting off the edge or corner; or a furrow or groove
as in a column. LZ evidently is referring to marble steps with reddish grain.
2.15 Desire
longing for perfection: Cf. LZ’s initial definition in
“An Objective”: “Desire for what is objectively perfect, inextricably the
direction of historic and contemporary particulars” (Prep+ 12). This formulation is informed by Spinoza for whom
perfection is identical with an entity’s reality or realization as defined by its
nature.
2.21 “Camel”
smoke: Camel is a well-known brand of cigarettes; LZ was
a life-long smoker. Ahearn suggests (42) that the famous image on the cigarette
packet of a camel against a background of a pyramids, palm trees and desert
refers back to the previous stanza’s mention of “sand dunes.”
3.3 Thomas
Hardy: British novelist, died 11
Jan. 1928; he originally studied to be an architect.
3.5 Sherry-Netherland: luxury NYC hotel on 5th Avenue at 59th Street, opened in 1927.
3.13 Chirping
quatrain on quatrain; / And the sonneteers…: the poets LZ has in mind here
through the rest of this passage can be reasonably identified as the major
groups of conservative modernists, who were at the height of their influence on
contemporary American poetry at the time: the poets “Down East” (generally
speaking, refers to New England) would include Robert Frost, those of the
“Middle West” would include Carl Sandburg and other mid-west poets associated
with Poetry magazine, and those of
the “West coast” would include Robinson Jeffers and Yvor
Winters. All those poets are at least mentioned dismissively and sometimes
analyzed in the original version of LZ’s “American
Poetry 1920-1930,” published in The
Symposium in Jan. 1931; these more negative and polemical comments were
edited out of the essay for collection in Prepositions
(1967).
3.16 holluschickies: young male fur seals, in other words, those
that may be legally killed for their fur.
3.18 “mélange
adultère de tout”: Fr.
of many things adulterate (trans. Joseph P. Shipley). The title of a French
poem by T.S. Eliot included in Poems
(1920), which is taken from the first line of a poem by Tristan Corbière (1845-1875), “Épitaphe pour Tristan-Joachim-Edouard Corbière, Philosophe: Épave, Mort-Né.”
3.23 Who
sang of women raped by horses: according to Cid
Corman, a reference to Robinson Jeffers (“Z Gambit” 77); in any case, a
reference to the Greek mythological subject matter of the Centaurs’ attempted
rape at the wedding of the Lapiths (see 6.35.21).
3.24 elevated:
train on raised rails.
3.27 Pennsylvania miners: the bitter Rossiter coal strike
in northern Pennsylvania lasted from April 1927
to August 1928. Strikers were treated with extreme brutality by mining company
police, and especially heavy-handed legal injunctions against them attracted
national attention and sympathy.
3.29 Carat:
Mike Gold (1893-1967) wrote the well-known proletariat novel, Jews Without Money
(1930) and in 1928 became editor of the The New Masses,
taking a strongly pro-Soviet line (Corman, “Z Gambit” 77-78). Gold, born Irwin Granich,
grew up on the same street as LZ in the Lower East Side of NYC, which he
vividly recalls in his novel.
3.32 It
was also Passover…: 5 April 1928, when LZ attended the
performance of St. Matthew Passion,
was the first day of Passover.
4.13 “There
are different techniques…: quoted from EP’s Antheil and the Treatise on Harmony (1924):
“[Henry] Lawes’ work is an example of how the words
of a poem may be set, and enhanced by music. There are different techniques in poetry; men write to be read, or spoken, or declaimed, or rhapsodized; and quite differently to be sung”; see EP and Music 271 (Ahearn 44).
4.17 “I
heard him agonizing…: quoted from WCW’s A Voyage to Pagany (1928) in a chapter on Bach in which he
describes a performance of St. Matthew’s
Passion he attended in Vienna in 1924: “Funny old figure he must have been
going across the street having generated another child in the night. Over to the old organ loft. Something
uncanny about it. —Dev [the novel’s autobiographical protagonist] was
concerned. A light—coming, I saw him, I heard him and
not like a man on the street. I heard
him agonizing. I saw him inside,
not cold but he lived and I was
possessed by his passion” (179-180) (Ahearn 45). See also 17.377.12-13. LZ
reviewed the novel in 1928; see Prep+
51-53.
4.19 “Everything
which / We really are…: quoted from E.E. Cummings’ play Him (1927): “I can’t describe it—a
shyness, more shy than you can ever imagine, a shyness cohabiting very easily
and very skillfully everything which we
really are and everything which we never
quite live” (120). LZ actually quotes the latter half of this sentence
without designating it as such in his review of Cummings’ play in The Exile
4 (Autumn 1928); see Prep+ 84-85
(original title of essay was “Mr. Cummings and the Delectable Mountains”).
4.24 Cold stone above Thy head…: from Bach’s St.
Matthew Passion; apparently a conflation of No. 26 Recitative and No. 68
Chorus, the former is the moment when Jesus finds his disciples asleep at
Gethsemane (Matthew 26:40f) and the latter the final chorus addressed to buried
Jesus.
4.29 liveforever: common name for various
plants probably of genus Sempervivum;
common houseleek (Leggott 148). Also according to Leggott,
“many species become red-tinged in fall, and some produce entirely red rosettes
amid their red-and-green whorls” (149). See Leggott 144-164 for
extensive discussion of liveforever in “A”.
5.6 Ready
to give up the ghost in a cellar: Cf. Shakespeare, Hamlet I.v.171-173:
Hamlet: Ah, ha,
boy! sayst thou so? Art thou
there, true-penny?
Come on,—you hear this fellow in the cellar-age,—
Consent to swear.
5.11 ‘Production
exceeds demand…:
5.12 Wobblies: members of the Industrial Workers of the World
(IWW), a revolutionary industrial union.
5.15 great
Magnus: although Corman
identifies Magnus as Henry Ford (the magnate) (“Z Gambit” 80), who figures
prominently in “A”-6, Ahearn has located a letter in which LZ identifies this
as Magnus W. Alexander (1870-1932), an American engineer, business leader and
first president (1916-1932) of the National Industrial Conference Board, a
pro-business research and lobbying group. LZ worked for the NICB from Oct.
1927-March 1928. Etymologically, magnus < L. =
great.
5.15 confrères: Fr. colleagues,
associates.
5.19 “We
ran ‘em in chain gangs…:
5.27 “Ye lightnings, ye
thunders / In clouds are ye vanished? / Open, O
fierce flaming pit!”: from St. Matthew Passion,
No. 27b Chorus; at the moment of Jesus’ arrest.
