“A”-12
1950-19 Oct. 1951
126.1 Out
of deep need: Hatlen points out that the tune for J.S. Bach’s final
composition, the Choral-Prelude (see 130.10), was based on the same melody he adopted
for a much earlier chorale prelude for organ No. 42, Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein (When we are in deepest need), from
the Orgelbüchlein (Little Organ Book, 1713-1716) (“From
Modernism,” in Scroggins (1997): 225). The Choral-Prelude was originally published in 1751
with The Art of Fugue (see 127.23),
although a separate work. Another possible source is Bach’s Cantata (BWV 131) “Aus der Tiefe rufe ich, Herr, zu dir”
(Out of the deep have I called unto thee, O Lord).
126.2 Four trombones and the organ in the nave:
126.4 Timed the theme Bach’s name…: see 127.23.
126.5 Dark, larch and ridge, night: Hatlen
suggests that this line primarily represents sound values, possibly “notes”
playing on Bach’s name (see 127.23)
(“From Modernism,” in Scroggins (1997): 223).
126.10 first, shape…:
on the movement from shape to rhythm to style see “The Effacement of
Philosophy” (1951), where LZ states that this charts the etymological evolution
of the Greek word ruthmos and also
offers “proportion” as an analogous term for “style” (Prep+ 55). Many other key elements in the first couple of pages of
“A”-12 appear clustered together in three paragraphs of this essay: the Rig Veda, Bach’s The Art of Fugue and
quote at 128.2, Aristotle and Spinoza.
126.11 The creation— / And breathed…: through 126.13 plus 126.15 and 126.18 from Genesis 2:6-7,
specifically the beginning of the Yahwist or J narrative of creation: “But
there went up a mist from the earth,
and watered the whole face of the ground.
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life; and man became a
living soul.” Hatlen further suggests that 126.17 alludes to Adam on first
seeing and naming the animals (“From Modernism,” in Scroggins (1997): 221).
126.19 First, glyph; then syllabary, / Then
letters: glyph = a symbol, such as a stylized human figure, that imparts
information nonverbally; syllabary = a list or set of written characters for a
language, each character representing a syllable.
126.21 First, dance. Then / Voice…: Cf. “A
Statement for Poetry” (1950) where LZ gives another version of his three phase
progression from dance to the sung poetry of Homer to the philosophical verse
of Lucretius, remarking that “the stages of culture are concretely delineated
in these three examples” (Prep+ 19).
126.24 Before the void there was neither / Being
nor non-being…: through 127.1 from the Creation Hymn of
the Rig Veda (Book X, Hymn 129), the
most ancient of the Hindu Vedas or scriptures; see Bottom 104, where LZ gives the date ca. 1000-800 B.C. for the Rig Veda (127.3):
Then was not non-existent nor existent:
There was no realm of air, no sky beyond it.
What covered in, and
where? —and what gave shelter?—
Was water there, unfathomed depth of water?—
Death was not then,
nor was there aught immortal:
No sign was there, the day's and night's divider.
That one thing,
breathless, breathed by its own nature:
Apart from it was nothing whatsoever.
Darkness there was:
at first concealed in darkness,
This All was indiscriminated chaos.
All that existed then was void and formless:
By the great power of warmth was born that unit.
Thereafter rose desire in the beginning,
Desire, the primal seed and germ of spirit.
Sages who searched with their heart's thought discovered
The existent's kinship in the non-existent.
Transversely was
their severing line extended:
What was above it then, and what below it?—
There were begetters,
there were mighty forces,
Free action here and energy up yonder.
Who verily knows and
who can here declare it,
Whence it was born and whence comes this creation?—
The gods are later
than this world's production.
Who knows, then, whence it first came into being?—
He, the first origin
of this creation,
Whether he formed it all or did not form it,
Whose eye controls
this world in highest heaven,
He verily knows it, or perhaps he knows not.
(trans. Ralph T.H. Griffith; qtd. in Bouquet, Sacred Books of the World)
127.3 Quire after over three millenia: quire = archaic form for choir, as either noun or verb; also a
collection of leaves of parchment or paper, folded one within the other, in a
manuscript or book; a set of 24 or sometimes 25 sheets of paper of the same
size and stock, one twentieth of a ream (AHD). The Shakespeare First Folio was
printed in quires of three sheets or 12 pages each. Hatlen suggests that the
reference to three millennia takes us back to the beginning of literate culture
in the West (“From Modernism,” in Scroggins (1997): 224).
127.4 A year, a month and 19 days before…:
Hatlen speculates that this alludes to the death of LZ’s father, Pinchos, on 11
April 1950 (see 154.13), assuming “A”-12 was written during the summer of 1951
(“From Modernism,” in Scroggins (1997): 227).
127.6 Sense sure, else not motion…: through
127.12 from Shakespeare, Hamlet
III.iv.71-81 (qtd. Bottom 47, 279):
Hamlet: Sense, sure, you
have,
Else
could you not have motion; but sure, that sense
Is apoplex'd; for madness would not err,
Nor sense to ecstasy was ne'er so thrall'd
But
it reserved some quantity of choice,
To serve in such a
difference. What devil was't
That thus hath
cozen'd you at hoodman-blind?
Eyes without feeling, feeling without sight,
Ears without hands or eyes, smelling sans all,
Or but a sickly part of one true sense
Could not so mope.
127.16 Blest / Ardent […] / Celia […] / Happy…:
these “musical” themes or notes, which spell out Bach’s name, will form the
major fugal structure of “A”-12 and are identified respectively with Spinoza,
Aristotle, Celia and Paracelsus. Paracelsus is identified with H on the basis
of his surname, von Hohenheim. See also 127.23.
127.21 things that bear harmony / certain in
concord with reason: from Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), Ethics IV, Appendix 15 & 20, in which Spinoza summarizes his
arguments on the best way to live and the advantages of living with others
rather than alone:
”The things which give birth to harmony
or peace are those which have reference to justice, equity, and honourable
dealing. For men are ill pleased not only when a thing is unjust or iniquitous,
but also when it is disgraceful or when any one despises the customs received
among them. But for attracting love those things are especially necessary which
relate to religion and piety. […] As for what concerns matrimony, it is certain that it is in concord with reason if the desire of uniting bodies is
engendered not from beauty alone, but also form the love of bearing children
and wisely educating them: and moreover, if the love of either of them, that
is, of husband or wife, has for its cause not only beauty, but also freedom of
mind.”
127.23 Art
of Fugue: Die
Kunst der Fuge is one of Bach’s late encyclopedic works left unfinished at
his death in 1750; Bach used the designation “contrapunctus” (see 8.104.23) for
the individual parts, consisting of 14 fugues and four canons. The work was
published the year after Bach’s death by his son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach,
but there has and continues to be considerable disagreement over the precise
arrangement and ordering of the works. The 1751 published edition includes an
alternative version of the 13th fugue, making 19 works in all, and
the final fugue, Contrapuntus XIV, breaks off at the point Bach introduced the
B-A-C-H motif, the sequence of notes B flat, A, C and B natural, with the
latter designated in German by H; see 130.6.
127.24 The parts of a fugue should behave…: LZ
attributes this remark to Bach (Prep+
19-20) and seems to imply, and readers have often assumed, that the following
metaphysical remarks on music at 128.2 and 130.1 are also attributable to him,
although such does not appear to be the case. Bach’s meta-musical remarks, on his
own work or in general, are surprisingly rare and conventionally pious, and he
was sometimes criticized in his day for lack of theoretical sophistication.
However, such philosophical views of music, both Enlightenment rationalist and
Pythagorean, were common enough in Bach’s day. Terry includes a paraphrased
remark that is similar to this quotation, but without indicating the source nor
mentioning anything similar to the quotations below, and LZ’s source is as yet
unidentified. In speaking of Bach’s practice in teaching counterpoint, Terry
remarks that he told students “that each part must be regarded as an individual
conversing with his fellows, who, when he speaks, must speak grammatically and
complete his sentences, and if he has nothing to say, had better remain silent”
(100).
128.1 How comes this gentle concord in the world:
from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s
Dream IV.ii:
Theseus: I know you two are rival enemies:
How comes this gentle concord in the world,
That hatred is so far
from jealousy,
To sleep by hate, and
fear no enmity?
128.2 The order that rules music, the same /
controls…: in Prep+ 55, LZ attributes this remark to Bach, although its source is
unidentified and it is unlikely Bach ever explicitly made such a remark; see
note at 127.24.
128.11 “Speak to me in a different anguish:
Cf. remark by Little Baron Snorkie in Little:
“If you want me to understand, you’d better speak in a different anguish” (CF
14).
130.1 Unfinished is against the laws of the spirit…: see note at 127.24.
130.4 Well-tempered forces count: Cf. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier, an
encyclopedic fugal work in two “books” (1722 & 1740); well-tempered =
appropriately tuned.
130.5 preludio of the Third Partita: Bach’s prelude to Partita No. 3 for solo violin in E major
(1720).
130.6 countersubject of the fourfold 19th
fugue / Signed on death…: LZ refers here to
“Contrapunctus XIV,” the culminating but unfinished final piece of The Art of Fugue (see 127.23), which is a
four-voice, triple or quadruple fugue. Bach’s son, C.P.E. Bach, who edited the
original publication of The Art of Fugue
(1751), claimed that Bach died at the point when he introduced the B-A-C-H
motif, although modern scholarship rejects this claim.
130.10 last Choral-Prelude: supposedly Bach’s last composition was the chorale
prelude “Vor deinen Thron tret ’ich”
(Before thy throne I stand), dictated on his deathbed to his son-in-law
Alknikol (Terry 263-264).
130.11 Altnikol: Johann Christoph Altnikol
(1719-1759), married Bach’s daughter Elizabeth in 1749 and assisted Bach with
the composition of his final works including the chorale fantasias (Terry 257).
130.18 Voice without scurf or gray matter:
130.19 For the eyes of the mind are proofs: from Spinoza, Ethics
V, Prop. 23, Note (qtd. Bottom 26,
94, 297, 325): “This idea, as we have said, which expresses under a certain
species of eternity the essence of the body, is a certain mode of thought which
appertains to the essence of the mind, and which is necessarily eternal. It
cannot happen, however, that we can remember that we existed before our bodies,
since there are no traces of it in the body, neither can eternity be defined by
time nor have any relation to time. But nevertheless we feel and know that we
are eternal. For the mind no less feels those things which it conceives in
understanding than those which it has in memory. For the eyes of the mind by which it sees things and observes them are proofs” (214).
131.8 Walsinghame: an anonymous 16th
century ballad, although also attributed to Sir Walter Raleigh, included in TP 68-69; the tune associated with the
ballad was used by many Renaissance composers, including John Dowland and
William Byrd. During the Middle Ages, the shrine to Our Lady of Walsingham,
located in Norfolk, England, became a famous pilgrimage site commemorating a
noblewoman’s visions of Mary in the 11th century.
131.15 The sixth layer is Troy: various
excavations of the presumed site of ancient Troy beginning with Heinrich
Schliemann in the 1870s revealed nine more or less distinct layers of
habitation, with levels six and seven the primary candidates for Homer’s Troy.
131.32 A what-part invention: Cf. Bach’s Two and Three Part Inventions.
Bach’s “inventions” were intended as teaching exercises in contrapuntal
music.
132.1 Mildew’d ear, have you eyes? / You cannot
call it love…: from Shakespeare, Hamlet
III.iv.63-71; from Hamlet’s tirade against his mother, Queen Gertrude (qtd. Bottom 301):
Hamlet: This was your husband. Look you now, what follows:
Here is your husband;
like a mildew’d ear,
Blasting his
wholesome brother. Have you eyes?
Could you on this
fair mountain leave to feed,
And batten on this
moor? Ha! have you eyes?
You cannot call it love; for at your age
The hey-day in the blood is tame, it’s humble,
And waits upon the
judgment: and what judgment
Would step from this
to this?
132.4 Goodness dies—it happens— / In his own too
much: from Shakespeare, Hamlet IV.vii.114-123 (see 138.21) (qtd. Bottom 172, 299):
Claudius: Not that I think you did not love your father;
But that I know love
is begun by time,
And that I see, in
passages of proof,
Time qualifies the spark and fire of it.
There lives within
the very flame of love
A kind of wick or
snuff that will abate it;
And nothing is at a
like goodness still;
For goodness, growing to a plurisy,
Dies in his own too much: that we would do
We should do when we
would; for this “would” changes
And hath abatements
and delays as many
As there are tongues,
are hands, are accidents;
And then this
“should” is like a spendthrift sigh,
That hurts by easing.
132.6 Holding no quantity / Love looks not with
the eyes…: from Shakespeare, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream I.i (qtd. Bottom
9, 16, 19, 20):
Helena: Things base and vile, holding
no quantity,
Love can transpose to
form and dignity:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind;
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind:
Nor hath Love’s mind
of any judgement taste […]
132.11 You must name his name, / Half his face
must be seen…: through 134.20 LZ gives an abbreviated
version of Act III, scene i from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Through 132.17, III.i.36-64 (partially
qtd. Bottom 34):
Bottom: Nay, you must name his
name, and half his face must be seen
through the lion’s neck: and he himself must speak through, saying thus, or
to the same defect,—‘Ladies,’—or
‘Fair-ladies—I would wish You,’—or ‘I would request you,’—or ‘I would entreat you,—not to fear, not
to tremble: my life for yours. If
you think I come hither as a lion, it were pity of my life: no I am no such
thing; I am a man as other men are’; and there indeed let him name his name,
and tell them plainly he is Snug the joiner.
[…]
Quince:
Ay; or else one must come in with a bush
of thorns and a lanthorn, and say he comes to disfigure, or to present, the
person of Moonshine. Then, there is another thing: we must have a wall in the
great chamber; for Pyramus and Thisby says the story, did talk through the
chink of a wall.
Snout:
You can never bring in a wall. What say you, Bottom?
Bottom: Some man or other must present Wall:
and let him have some plaster, or some loam, or some rough-cast about him, to
signify wall; and let him hold his fingers thus, and through that cranny shall
Pyramus and Thisby whisper.
132.16 Some twelve years later with Birnam Wood:
the climatic action of Shakespeare’s Macbeth
takes place near Birnam Wood, and Malcolm’s ruse of hiding his men with cut
branches from the woods helps him defeat Macbeth. In the “Definition” section
of Bottom, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is dated 1595 and Macbeth 1606.
132.22 He of the Gurre-Lieder: Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), whose Gurre-Lieder is a major early
composition (completed 1911). LZ refers here to a remark Schoenberg made in a
1931 radio discussion on his early work: “[…] a Chinese poet is not only someone who
sounds Chinese, but he also says something. But what do I say? and apart from
this sound, how do I say it?”
132.24 As true as truest horse: from
Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
III.i.93-97 (qtd. Bottom 388):
Flute [playing Thisby]: Most radiant Pyramus, most lily-white of hue,
Of colour like the
red rose on triumphant brier,
Most brisky juvenal
and eke most lovely Jew,
As true as truest horse that yet would never tire,
I’ll meet thee,
Pyramus, at Ninny’s tomb.
132.25 You see an ass-head / Of your own do you?...:
through 134.8 from Shakespeare, A
Midsummer Night’s Dream III.i.114-161 (partial qtd. Bottom 9, 23, 371, 404):
Snout: O Bottom, thou art changed!
What do I see on thee?
Bottom:
What do you see? You see an asshead of
your own, do you?
[…]
Bottom:
I see their knavery: this is to make an
ass of me; to fright me, if they could. But I will not stir from this
place, do what they can: I will walk up
and down here, and I will sing, that they shall hear I am not afraid.
[Sings]
The ousel cock so
black of hue,
With orange-tawny
bill,
The throstle with his
note so true,
The wren with little
quill—
Titania:
[Awaking] What angel wakes me from my flowery bed?
[…]
Titania:
I pray thee, gentle mortal, sing again:
Mine ear is much
enamour’d of thy note;
So is mine eye enthralled to thy shape;
And thy fair virtue’s
force perforce doth move me
On the first view to
say, to swear, I love thee.
Bottom: Methinks, mistress, you should have little
reason for that: and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company
together now-a-days; the more the
pity that some honest neighbours
will not make them friends. Nay, I can gleek upon occasion.
Titania: Thou art as wise as thou art beautiful.
Bottom: Not so, neither: but if I had wit enough to
get out of this wood, I have enough to serve mine own turn.
Out of this wood do not desire to go:
Thou shalt remain here, whether thou wilt or no.
I am a spirit of no common rate;
The summer still doth tend upon my state;
And I do love thee: therefore, go with me;
I’ll give thee
fairies to attend on thee,
And they shall fetch
thee jewels from the deep,
And sing while thou
on pressed flowers dost sleep;
And I will purge thy
mortal grossness so
That thou shalt like
an airy spirit go.
134.9 Paracelsus’ Book of Bad and Good Fortune…: Auroleus
Phillipus Theostratus Bombastus von Hohenheim (1593-1541), known as Paracelsus,
was a Swiss doctor, alchemist and occult philosopher. Despite his itinerate and
poverty-stricken life, as well as his own advice not to be overeager to write,
he was an enormously prolific writer. This does not appear to be the title of a
particular work by Paracelsus, although “Good and Bad Fortune” is the title of
a section heading in the selection of Paracelsus writings LZ used, and this
heading fits his own life and work, as the following quotation indicates. LZ’s
source for all information about and quotations from Paracelsus is Paracelsus: Selected Writing, ed.
Jolande Jacobi, trans. Norbert Guterman (1951); Jacobi selects from across the
large and repetitive body of Paracelsus’ writings and organizes them under
various headings, so unless bracketed, the ellipses are Jacobi’s.
134.10 The sun shines upon all of us equally /
With its luck…: from Paracelsus: “The
sun shines upon all of us equally with its luck. The summer comes to all of us
equally with it luck, and so does the stormy winter. But while the sun
looks at all of us equally, we look at it unequally. God has redeemed all of
us, the one as much as the other; but one does not look at Him in the same way
as the other. He loves us all, without regard for person; but our love for Him is unequal” (205).
134.15 Good Master Mustardseed, I know your /
patience well…: through 134.20 from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream III.i.191-196; spoken by Bottom (qtd. Bottom 371).
134.29 Most (must)…: city in Lithuania; see 151.10.
135.1 “Bechardi!” “Morgen!” / “Was machst du?”…:
Ger. “Bechardi!“ “Morning” / “What are you doing?” / “I’m building an
outhouse!”
135.11 The best man learns of himself…:
through 136.4 adapted from various quotations in L. Cranmer-Byng, The Vision
of Asia: An Interpretation of Chinese Art and Culture (1932). Although LZ
once published this passage in a special Li Po issue of The Galley Sail Review (Winter 1960), edited by David Rafael Wang,
this poet is not actually source of the quotations. LZ also uses the phrase
“best-man” to refer to Mao Zedong’s poem at 204.32.
135.11-12: The best man learns of himself / To bring rest to others:
“But the true meaning and value of education in China may be traced to a
pregnant saying of Confucius who, when asked how the superior man attained his
position, replied, ‘He cultivates himself so as to bring rest unto the
people’” (24).
135.13-25: He has perched over—why—valley. In the pines…: from a poem
collected in The Odes of Confucius [Book of Odes] (On “—why—“ see
next note below):
He has perched in the valley with pines overgrown,
This fellow so stout and so merry and free;
He sleeps and he talks and he wanders alone,
And none are so true to their pleasures as he.
He has builded his hut in the bend of the mound,
This fellow so fine with his affluent air;
He wakes and he sings with no neighbour around.
And whatever betide him his home will be there.
He dwells on a height amid cloudland and rain,
This fellow so grand whom the world blunders by;
He slumbers alone, wakes, and slumbers again,
And his secrets are safe in that valley of Wei. (118)
135.26-136.4: Reject no one / and / Debase nothing…: “Unity with the One
may only be achieved by passing through the variety of the many. Through man to
God, through life in its infinite aspects to the Source of life is the Way of
Tao. It is at once a Way of approach and a Way of refection: ‘Among men,
reject none; among things, reject nothing. This is called comprehensive
intelligence’” (50). Quotation is from Lao Tsu as translated by Lionel
Giles.
135.13 —why—: this is LZ’s guess at the
pronunciation of the name of the valley, Wei, in the Confucian ode quoted
above, as indicated by the rhyme in the translation--although more standard
would be closer to “way.” It is also possible that LZ is evoking Wordsworth’s
“Tintern Abbey,” whose full title locates it in the valley of Wye and also
mentions a hermit in the woods. Cranmer-Byng often draws parallels between
Chinese poetry and the English Romantics, pointing out that he is not the first
to observe the similarities between Wordsworth and Chinese nature poets,
although arguing that the latter are more subtle (211, 220).
135.24 eyes, / A face of sky: see 132.19,
138.17, 138.26, 161.26.
136.26 From Battle of / Discord and Harmony: this is LZ’s version of the title of Antonio Vivaldi’s
major work, usually translated as The
Trial of Harmony and Invention (1725), a set of twelve concertos of which
the first four are the famous Four
Seasons. Ahearn also points out that behind Vivaldi’s title stands
Empedocles’ four elements of fire, water, earth and air (Ahearn 126-127).
137.1 “Glad they were there”: this is the
first line of LZ’s “Anew 29”
(composed in 1938), from which also the lines at 137.3-4 are quoted (CSP 93).
In the book publication, LZ appended to this seemingly slight lyric, which
“describes” dancing, quotations from Dante, Karl Marx, the physicist Henrik
Lorentz and Guido Cavalcanti.
137.3 Flying
not to / Lose sight of it: see 137.1.
137.7 red-head priest’s: i.e. Vivaldi; see
136.26, 158.10.
137.18 “Then he put / His horse into / His
pocketbook”: adapted from a sentence in a letter from Niedecker: “And then
I put a horse into her pocketbook” (Penberthy 14).
137.25 Lorine: =
Niedecker (1903-1970), American poet from Michigan and longtime friend of LZ.
138.6 an integral: LZ uses the mathematical
symbol for integral to link music and speech immediately preceding, although it
may not be irrelevant that the symbol also suggests the ƒ-hole of a violin. Apparently it was Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz (1646-1716) who first used and advocated this symbol.
138.19 Guano: a substance composed chiefly of
the dung of sea birds or bats, accumulated along certain coastal areas or in
caves and used as fertilizer (AHD).
138.21 Time
qualifies the fire and spark of it: from Shakespeare, Hamlet IV.vii (see 132.4).
138.28 My father died in the spring: Pinchos
Zukofsky (c.1860-1950); at 155.1-3 LZ mentions that his father did not know his
birthdate and was 91 or 95 when he died.
139.1 Half of a fence was built that summer…:
Cf. description of the Zukofskys’ summer cottage near Old Lyme, Conneticut in Little (CF 36-37).
139.10 della Robbia: family of Florentine
sculptures and ceramists of the 15th and 16th centuries;
particularly Luca della Robbia (d. 1482) who perfected glazed terracotta.
139.27 the Baalshem:
Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, the Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760), founder of modern
Hasidism, who asserted the joyfulness of worship. Baal Shem Tov means in Heb.
“master of the good name (i.e. God).”
139.28 Thaew: CZ’s maiden name; see note to “H.T.”
where LZ wrote to Niedecker that the name means good in Heb.
139.29 michtam of David:
michtam = Heb. writing, i.e. poem or psalm. Psalms 16, 56-60 are designated as
“michtam of David.”
140.23 Maishe Afroim:
LZ’s grandfather (Terrell 35).
140.23 Sephardim: descendents of the Jews who
lived on the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages and were expelled in
1492.
141.4 Shittim wood: in the
Bible the wood, believed to be acacia, from which the Ark of the Covenant and
the furniture of the Tabernacle were made; see particularly the instructions
for making the Ark and the Tabernacle in Exodus 25-27.
141.11 Aphrodite’s drapery / Her peers are the
Fates: Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, was believed to have been depicted
as a reclining draped figure (now headless) on the East pediment of the
Parthenon as part of a group of the three Fates (see next).
141.14 Enter the stone treasury / From the East,
Greek…: LZ is describing entering and moving through the Parthenon on the
Acropolis in Athens, which originally contained a huge statue of Athena. The
West pediment (141.20), the triangular gable above the columns, survives in a
broken condition.
141.17 Your Virgin is chryselephantine / Aegis of
Zeus: the lost chryselephantine statue of Athena in the Parthenon;
chryselephantine is a sculptural technique of using wood overlaid with ivory
and gold. Aegis is the shield or breastplate of Zeus, which became associated
with Athena.
141.23 Marbles of Earthshaker and Virgin /
Fighting for order in Athens: in a contest over who would become the patron
deity of Athens, to be determined by who produced the most useful gift, Athena
won over Poseidon by providing the olive tree. This episode was depicted on the
West pediment of the Parthenon.
141.25 Even Odysseus returned to the sea, / His
oar…: from Homer, Odyssey Book
XI, when Odysseus visits the land of the dead and Tiresius prophesizes his
future following his return home: “’Yet verily on their [the suitors] violent
deeds shalt thou take vengeance when thou comest. But when thou hast slain the
wooers in thy halls, whether by guile or openly with the sharp sword, then do
thou go forth, taking a shapely oar, until thou comest to men that know naught
of the sea and eat not of food mingled with salt, aye, and they know naught of
ships with purple cheeks, or of shapely oars that are as wings unto ships. And
I will tell thee a sign right manifest, which will not escape thee. When
another wayfarer, on meeting thee, shall say that thou hast a winnowing-fan on
thy stout shoulder, then do thou fix in the earth thy shapely oar and make
goodly offerings to lord Poseidon—a ram, and a bull, and a boar that mates with
sows—and depart for thy home and offer sacred hecatombs to the immortal gods
who hold broad heaven, to each one in due order. And death shall come to thee
thyself far from the sea, a death so gentle, that shall lay thee low when thou
art overcome with sleek old age, and thy people shall dwell in prosperity around
thee. In this have I told thee sooth’” (trans. A.T. Murray).
141.27 Still fighting in northwest Greece / The 8th
division…: from 1946 until late 1949, Communist rebels fought government
forces in the Grammos Mountains in north Greece along the border with
Macedonia; the Greek campaign to finally squelch the insurgency was largely led
by the U.S. military in quasi-clandestine operations.
142.6 D.P’s / O.M’s and M.A.’s: D.P =
displaced person.
142.8 Stephen Hero: / “Let him Aristotle…:
from James Joyce, Chap. 24 of Stephen
Hero (first publ. 1944), an early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man:
”[Stephen speaking to Cranly] —I would not say a word against Aristotle for the
world but I think his spirit would hardly do itself justice in treating of the
‘inexact’ sciences.
—I wonder what Aristotle would have thought of you as a poet?
—I'm damned if I would apologise to him at all. Let him examine me if he is
able. Can you imagine a handsome lady saying ‘O, excuse me, my dear Mr
Aristotle, for being so beautiful’"?
142.14 Philo: (20 BC-40 AD) Alexandrian Jewish
philosopher who synthesized Greek and Jewish thought through allegory;
mentioned in “Poem beginning ‘The’” (CSP
15).
142.14 Javan: in Genesis 10:2 the son of
Japheth; however, in Biblical Heb. came to designate Greece (e.g. Zechariah
9:13). See Bottom 104.
142.16 Gethsemane: garden where Jesus’ agony
and betrayal took place; see Matthew 26:36f. This is where Jesus comes upon his
sleeping disciples and is a key scene in Bach’s St Matthew Passion, which LZ alludes to several times in the early
movements of “A”.
142.18 In Hebrew “In the beginning” / Means
literally from the head?...: The first word of the Hebrew Bible, מּיִתּלּאּ (pronounced be-re-shiyt), which also
designates the book itself, means in, on or at the beginning, start or head.
See Bottom 104, where LZ gives a
phonetic transcription of the first verse of Genesis in Heb. plus commentary.
142.20 A source creating / The heaven and the
earth...: from Genesis 2:4-5, the same passage that appears on the first
page of the movement (see 126.11):
“These are the generations of the
heavens and of the earth when they were created, in
the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every
herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain
upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a
mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.”
142.25 live forever: see 1.4.29; see
next.
142.26 immortelle: Fr., fem. of immortel, undying. Any one of the
flowers commonly called everlasting,
or a wreath made of such flowers (CD; Leggott 153).
143.2 Pinchos: see 151.10.
143.3 Maishe Afroim: see 140.23.
143.21 Bach remembers his own name: see 127.23.
143.22 Kadish: Jewish prayer for the dead.
143.27 Einstein:
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), an oft quoted aphorism; see Prep+ 51.
144.7 Michtam of David: see 139.29. Most of
this passage through 144.22 is adapted from Psalms 16, the first of the Psalms
designated as “Michtam of David”:
16:1
Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust.
16:2 O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee;
16:3 But to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom
is all my delight.
16:4 Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god: their
drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my
lips.
16:5 The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: thou
maintainest my lot.
16:6 The lines are fallen unto me in
pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.
16:7 I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel: my reins also instruct me in the night seasons.
16:8 I have set the Lord always before
me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
16:9 Therefore my heart is glad, and my
glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.
16:10 For thou wilt not leave my soul in
hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.
16:11 Thou wilt shew me the path of life:
in thy presence is fulness of joy; at
thy right hand there are pleasures for
evermore.
144.26 To have asked…: in 1936 EP asked LZ to
query his father about Leviticus 25, which states Mosaic laws on usury or the
charging of interest, specifically about the Heb. terms neschec and marbis, and
whether a distinction between Jew and non-Jew applies to the ban against usury.
In his detailed response, LZ confirmed that the former means to bite “like a
snake’s bite,” while the latter means “increase (with the connotation of
accretion, pathological?).” Also reported that his father did not think
it proper to make a distinction between Jews and non-Jews on the application of
usury laws (EP/LZ 181-186; EP remarks
on these terms in Guide to Kulchur
(1938): 42).
145.3 Shag Red:
145.4 Air-conditioned dialektiké: possibly echoing Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945); but
see next. Dialektiké = Gk. root of
dialectic, the art of debate.
145.5 A Sum (you say) / Post-mortemer: <
Mortimer J. Adler (1902-2001) a fellow student when LZ attended Columbia, who
became a philosopher and educator, best known as an editor and advocate of the
“Great Books” and “Great Ideas” curriculum (Scroggins, “An Ernster Mensch” 35). Adler’s first book was Dialectic (1927).
145.12 Good Friday—that’s a pun: see
18.402.21.
145.13 Don’t learn for revenge, / Question and
question…: from Paracelsus: “Therefore, man, learn and learn, question and question, and do not be ashamed of it; for only thus
can you earn a name that will resound in all countries and never be forgotten”
(105). Casting Avicenna into a bonfire, he told students, “so that all this misery may
go in the air with the smoke” (lv).
145.18 As
smoke is driven away, so drive them away: from Psalm 68:2: “As smoke is driven
away, so drive them away: as wax melteth before the fire, so let the wicked
perish at the presence of God.”
145.20 Singers go before, / Players on instruments:
from Psalm 68:25.
145.22 Chenaniah for song / (Grace) instructed in
son
