“A”-13

23 Sept. 1960 

 

262.1    partita: a suite or series of instrumental dances in the same or related keys. In a 25 Aug. 1960 letter to Cid Corman, LZ indicates that he thinks of the five parts of “A”-13 in terms of a classical suite, a set of pieces usually based on dance music, in the traditional order: allemande, courante, sarabande, gigue (jig) and chaconne (Gist of Origin 160). These dance movements are respectively in 4/4 time, triple time, slow 3/2 time, 6/8 or 12/8 time and slow 3-beat time. In an interview, CZ denied that LZ had a particular partita in mind, but suggested that Bach’s Partitias for Solo Violin (see 297.28) would have been the primary influence on LZ’s conception of the partita (Ahearn, “Two Conversations” 114-115) and Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor (see 297.28) would be the most obvious model for the above five-part structure.

262.5    trice me the gist us: < Trismegistus; Hermes Trismegistus or the thrice-greatest is the Greek version of Thoth (267.9). Numerous hermetic philosophical, magical and alchemical texts were ascribed to him during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Quartermain points out (98) that “in a trice” means “in an instant” and that “trice” suggests, although does not strictly speaking mean, three, which throughout the rest of “A” will always suggest the Zukofsky family. On the other hand, “tris-” in Trismegistus does mean three.

262.11            mysteries: religion of secret rites and knowledge revealed only to initiates.

263.29  Red pipecleaner velvet wired to / Valentine head…: see 18.404.8.

264.10            Egyptian / Hippopotamus:

264.28  The grace of a madhouse—courtesy, Thanks / for Passover delicacies / specially the black bambino…: a thank you note from EP who at the time was incarcerated at the prison asylum St. Elizabeths in Washington, D.C. (Ahearn 218).

265.4            Apartheider…: apartheid, the systematic policy of racial segregation established in South Africa. A major resource in South Africa was gold mined by black workers under slave-like conditions. The phrase “free root’s old pest,” presumably refers to the historical role of slavery in the development of Western capitalism, or more generally the appropriation of surplus-value on which capitalism is based in Marx’s analysis (see “A”-9). At the time “A”-13 was written, the Prime Minister of South Africa was Hendrik Verwoerd (1901-1966), generally considered the primary architect of apartheid and who intensified the system during his period in office (1958-1966). The Sharpeville Massacre took place in March 1960, immediately followed by the declaration of a state of emergency and the banning of both main resistance groups, the African National Congress and the Pan Africanist Congress.

265.7    Not Nick in Ike nor Ike in Niké: Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) (see index 815), Soviet Premier from 1958-1964. Dwight David “Ike” Eisenhower (1890-1969), US President from 1953-1961. Niké the Greek god of victory, but also the name of a defense missile widely deployed around many U.S. cities during the Cold War (Ahearn 225-226). Also Nick is colloquial for the Devil.

265.7    dove: symbol of peace. The Big Four summit in Paris on 16 May 1960 ended in failure when Khrushchev demanded an apology from Eisenhower over the U-2 spy plane incident of 1 May 1960.

265.9    Stall in crew’s chief: < Stalin, Khrushchev. Nikita Khrushchev succeeded Joseph Stalin (1879-1953) as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR (see 265.7).

265.25  Four thousand eight hundred solar cells / Of four paddle wheels orbiting…: the three Vanguard satellites, launched in 1958 and 1959, were the first to be powered by solar cells. LZ’s numbers appear to be (deliberately?) exaggerated.

266.3            Wandering jew: any of various trailing or creeping plants of the spiderwort family.

266.6    Bach’s partita: see 262.1.

266.12  fissile: capable of being split, cleft, or divided into layers, as wood in the direction of the grain, or certain minerals and rocks in the planes of cleavage or foliation (CD).

266.16  Offer as instrument / Avoid their rules like a disease…: through 266.26 adapted from Aristotle, Politics I.4 (1253b): “For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus [see 266.19], which, says the poet [Homer], ‘of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods’ [Iliad XVIII.376]; if, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves” (trans. Benjamin Jowett).

266.19  Lame God’s tripods / Themselves run to the Gods…: Hephaestus or Vulcan, god of fire and crafts, usually depicted as lame. In Book XVIII of Homer’s Iliad, Achilles’ mother Thetis goes to Hephaestus to request that he make armor and shield for her son, and she finds the god making tripods, which are fitted with wheels so that they can be easily brought before the gods.

266.23  pinks: to pierce, puncture, stab with a rapier or some similar weapon, make a hole or holes in; to decorate with punctures or holes, tattoo (CD).

267.9    THOTH: (pronounced “tot”) Egyptian god of wisdom, writing and magic—depicted as a man with the head of an ibis.

267.24            Mangling done here: a mangle is a machine for smoothing fabrics or household articles of linen or cotton, as sheets, tablecloths, napkins, and towels (CD).

268.26            Heraclitus over the kitchen fire— / “Come in, there are Gods here too…: anecdote from Aristotle, On the Parts of Animal I.5 (645a): “Every realm of nature is marvelous: and as Heraclitus, when the strangers who came to visit him found him warming himself at the furnace in the kitchen and hesitated to go in, is reported to have bidden them not to be afraid to enter, as even in that kitchen divinities were present, so we should venture on the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something beautiful” (trans. William Ogle).

268.29  Parts of Animals: through 271.10 taken from Aristotle, On the Parts of Animals, one of his zoological treatises. As usual, LZ uses the Oxford edition of The Works of Aristotle under the general editorship of W.D. Ross, with this particular treatise translated by William Ogle.
269.2: Theory starts with that which is / Nature and art with what is to be— / Things that stay, and a taking off: “As with these productions of art, so also is it with the productions of nature. The mode of necessity, however, and the mode of ratiocination are different in natural science from what they are in the theoretical sciences; of which we have spoken elsewhere. For in the latter the starting-point is that which is; in the former that which is to be. For it is that which is yet to be—health, let us say, or a man—that, owing to its being of such and such characters, necessitates the pre-existence or previous production of this and that antecedent; and not this or that antecedent which, because it exists or has been generated, makes it necessary that health or a man is in, or shall come into, existence. Nor is it possible to track back the series of necessary antecedents to a starting-point, of which you can say that, existing itself from eternity, it has determined their existence as its consequent” (I.1; 639b-640a).
269.5: Breath by its passage breaks open / The nostrils’ outlets: “Now that with which the ancient writers, who first philosophized about Nature, busied themselves, was the material principle and the material cause. They inquired what this is, and what its character; how the universe is generated out of it, and by what motor influence, whether, for instance, by antagonism or friendship, whether by intelligence or spontaneous action, the substratum of matter being assumed to have certain inseparable properties; fire, for instance, to have a hot nature, earth a cold one; the former to be light, the latter heavy. For even the genesis of the universe is thus explained by them. After a like fashion do they deal also with the development of plants and of animals. They say, for instance, that the water contained in the body causes by its currents the formation of the stomach and the other receptacles of food or of excretion; and that the breath by its passage breaks open the outlets of the nostrils; air and water being the materials of which bodies are made; for all represent nature as composed of such or similar substances” (I.1; 640b).
269.7: Germ of each nature: “For a given germ does not give rise to any chance living being, nor spring from any chance one; but each germ springs from a definite parent and gives rise to a definite progeny. And thus it is the germ that is the ruling influence and fabricator of the offspring. For these it is by nature, the offspring being at any rate that which in nature will spring from it. At the same time the offspring is anterior to the germ; for germ and perfected progeny are related as the developmental process and the result. Anterior, however, to both germ and product is the organism from which the germ was derived. For every germ implies two organisms, the parent and the progeny. For germ or seed is both the seed of the organism from which it came, of the horse, for instance, from which it was derived, and the seed of the organism that will eventually arise from it, of the mule, for example, which is developed from the seed of the horse. The same seed then is the seed both of the horse and of the mule, though in different ways as here set forth. Moreover, the seed is potentially that which will spring from it, and the relation of potentiality to actuality we know” (I.3; 641b).
269.8: But its soul’s end the animal’s / Like the animal in a fable / Turned to stone: “If now this something that constitutes the form of the living being be the soul, or part of the soul, or something that without the soul cannot exist; as would seem to be the case, seeing at any rate that when the soul departs, what is left is no longer a living animal, and that none of the parts remain what they were before, excepting in mere configuration, like the animals that in the fable are turned into stone; if, I say, this be so, then it will come within the province of the natural philosopher to inform himself concerning the soul, and to treat of it, either in its entirety, or, at any rate, of that part of it which constitutes the essential character of an animal; and it will be his duty to say what this soul or this part of a soul is; and to discuss the attributes that attach to this essential character, especially as nature is spoken of in two senses, and the nature of a thing is either its matter or its essence; nature as essence including both the motor cause and the final cause” (I.3; 641a).
269.10: so scales / Feet, feathers / Used alike: “Many groups, as already noticed, present common attributes, that is to say, in some cases absolutely identical affections, and absolutely identical organs,—feet, feathers, scales, and the like—while in other groups the affections and organs are only so far identical as that they are analogous” (I.5; 645b).
269.11: Sponges / Virtually plants and / Not much more…: “The Ascidians differ but slightly from plants, and yet have more of an animal nature than the sponges, which are virtually plants and nothing more. For nature passes from lifeless objects to animals in such unbroken sequence, interposing between them beings which live and yet are not animals, that scarcely any difference seems to exist between two neighbouring groups owing to their close proximity. A sponge, then, as already said, in these respects completely resembles a plant, that throughout its life it is attached to a rock, and that when separated from this it dies. Slightly different from the sponges are the so-called Holothurias [sea-cucumber or sea-slugs] and the sea-lungs, as also sundry other sea-animals that resemble them. For these are free and unattached. Yet they have no feeling, and their life is simply that of a plant separated from the ground. For even among land-plants there are some that are independent of the soil, and that spring up and grow, either upon other plants, or even entirely free” (IV.5; 681a).
269.22: A tailsting / Nature gives it / To insects of fierce / Disposition—: “As for the insects that have a sting behind, this weapon is given them because they are of a fierce disposition” (IV.6; 683a).
269.27: Hind legs of grasshoppers / tho never the front seem to remember / The two long stem oars / By which a ship steered: “It is only the hind legs of locusts, and not the front ones, that resemble the steering oars of a ship. For this requires that the joint shall be deflected inwards, and such is never the case with the anterior limbs” (IV.6; 683a-683b).
270.1: To close their eyes / Some great birds / Crocodiles and frogs / Raise only their lower lid / A roll of skin / And as it contains / No flesh, like the prepuce ‘ It does not unite / When cut: “[…] whereas the oviparous quadrupeds, and the heavy-bodied birds as well as some others, use only the lower lid to close the eye; […]  It is as a still further safeguard that all these animals blink, and man most of all; this action (which is not performed from deliberate intention but from a natural instinct) serving to keep objects from falling into the eyes; and being more frequent in man than in the rest of these animals, because of the greater delicacy of his skin. These lids are made of a roll of skin; and it is because they are made of skin and contain no flesh that neither they, nor the similarly constructed prepuce, unite again when once cut” (II.13; 657a-657b).
270.10: The elephant claps with / Nostril as a hand, / In water as with a diver’s bell: “For the elephant uses its nostril as a hand; this being the instrument with which it conveys food, fluid and solid alike, to its mouth. […] Just then as divers are sometimes provided with instruments for respiration, through which they can draw air from above the water, and thus may remain for a long time under the sea, so also have elephants been furnished by nature with their lengthened nostril; and, whenever they have to traverse the water, they lift this up above the surface and breathe through it” (II.16; 658b-659a).
270.13: A small bird has nothing fairly called / A nose, a beak for jaws, / Head and neck / Little, breastbone / Narrowed: “A bird at any rate has nothing which can properly be called a nose. For its so-called beak is a substitute for jaws. The reason for this is to be found in the natural conformation of birds. For they are winged bipeds; and this makes it necessary that their heads and neck shall be of light weight; just as it makes it necessary that their breast shall be narrow” (II.16; 659b).
270.17: An ox—horns of such length—he must / Walk backward to graze: [continuing above passage on elephants, quoted at 270.10]: “For the elephant’s proboscis, as already said, is a nostril. Now it would have been impossible for this nostril to have the form of a proboscis, had it been hard and incapable of bending. For its very length would then have prevented the animal from supplying itself with food, being as great an impediment as the horn of certain oxen, that are said to be obliged to walk backwards while they are grazing” (II.16; 659a).
270.20: Brain is the cause of sleep / Why drowsy persons / Hang the head: “It is the brain again—or, in animals that have no brain, the part analogous to it—which is the cause of sleep. For either by chilling the blood that streams upwards after food, or by some other similar influences, it produces heaviness in the region in which it lies (which is the reason why drowsy persons hang the head), and causes the heat to escape downwards in company with the blood” (II.7; 653a).
270.23: Flesh the organ of touch: “Sensation, then, is confined to the simple or homogeneous parts. But, as might reasonably be expected, the organ of touch, though still homogeneous, is yet the least simple of all the sense-organs. For touch more than any other sense appears to be correlated to several distinct kinds of objects, and to recognize more than one category of contrasts, heat and cold, for instance, solidity and fluidity, and other similar oppositions. Accordingly, the organ which deals with these varied objects is of all the sense-organs the most corporeal, being either the flesh, or the substance which in some animals takes the place of flesh” (II.1; 647a).
270.24: The animal becomes a plant / Its upper parts / Downward, its lower / Above: “An Ascidian has a body divided by a single septum and with two orifices, one where it takes in the fluid matter that ministers to its nutrition, the other where it discharges the surplus of unused juice, for it has no visible residual substance, such as have the other Testacea. This is itself a very strong justification for considering an Ascidian, and anything else there may be among animals that resembles it, to be of a vegetable character; for plants also never have any residuum. Across the middle of the body of these Ascidians there runs a thin transverse partition, and here it is that we may reasonably suppose the part on which life depends to be situated” (IV.5; 681a).
270.28: All blooded animals / Have hearts / Origin and fountain: “All animals that have blood possess an omentum, a mesentery, intestines with their appendages, and, moreover, a diaphragm and a heart; and all, excepting fishes, a lung and a windpipe” (IV.1; 676b).
“For here [the heart], and here alone in all the viscera and indeed in all the body, there is blood without blood-vessels, the blood elsewhere being always contained within vessels. Nor is this but consistent with reason. For the blood is conveyed into the vessels from the heart, but none passes into the heart from without. For in itself it constitutes the origin and fountain, or primary receptacle, of the blood” (III.4; 666a).
271.1: Cut from Parnassus sedum / Which hung from rafters / Lives a considerable time: [continuing immediately from quotation at 269.11]: “Such, for example, is the plant which is found on Parnassus, and which some call the Epipetrum. This you may hang up on a peg and it will yet live for a considerable time” (IV.5; 681a). Sedum is a genus of the polypetalous plants, of the order crassulaceae; numerous species of which many are common in dry, barren or rocky places where little else will grow. Many species are remarkable for persistence of life, cut stems growing and even flowering when fastened on a wall, deriving nourishment from reserves in their lower leaves and succulent stem, especially S. Telephium, also called live-for-ever and livelong, and known as Aaron’s-rod because sometimes growing when pressed and apparently dried (CD).
271.4: Architecture—Bricks, painting, timber etc— / But start and end: a house: “Similarly, the true object of architecture is not bricks, mortar, or timber, but the house; and so the principal object of natural philosophy is not the material elements, but their composition, and the totality of the form, independently of which they have no existence” (I.5; 645a).
271.7: Man moved by his expectations / A beating heart / Not quite explained by the lung: “For it is in the front and centre of the body that the heart is situated, in which we say is the principle of life and the source of all motion and sensation. (For sensation and motion are exercised in the direction which we term forwards, and it is on this very relation that the distinction of before and behind is founded.) But where the heart is, there and surrounding it is the lung. Now inspiration, which occurs for the sake of the lung and for the sake of the principle which has its seat in the heart, is effected through the windpipe” (III.3; 665a).
271.10: his blood is water: “The water-courses in gardens are so constructed as to distribute water from one single source or fount into numerous channels, which divide and subdivide so as to convey it to all parts; and, again, in house-building stones are thrown down along the whole ground-plan of the foundation walls; because the garden-plants in the one case grow at the expense of the water, and the foundation walls in the other are built out of the stones. Now just after the same fashion has nature laid down channels for the conveyance of the blood throughout the whole body, because this blood is the material out of which the whole fabric is made” (III.5; 668a).

271.13  Bones the matter of coral: Cf. Ariel’s Song from Shakespeare, The Tempest I.ii: “Full fathom five thy father lies; / Of his bones are coral made.”

271.19  Love’s leisure is / The prime end of all action…: through 272.9 from various passages of Aristotle, Politics (trans. Benjamin Jowett)
271.19: Love’s leisure is / The prime end of all action: “Since the end of individuals and of states is the same, the end of the best man and of the best constitution must also be the same; it is therefore evident that there ought to exist in both of them the virtues of leisure; for peace, as has been often repeated, is the end of war, and leisure of toil” (VII.15; 1334a). See also Nicomachean Ethics X.7 (1177b): “And this activity [the philosophical life] alone would seem to be loved for its own sake; for nothing arises from it apart from the contemplating, while from practical activities we gain more or less apart from the action. And happiness is thought to depend on leisure; for we are busy that we may have leisure, and make war that we may live in peace” (trans. W.D. Ross).
271.21: That Pharsalian mare called Honest: “And some women, like the females of other animals–for example, mares and cows–have a strong tendency to produce offspring resembling their parents, as was the case with the Pharsalian mare called Honest” (II.3; 1262a).
271.22: Man should not work / At the same time / With his mind and his body: “When boyhood is over, three years should be spent in other studies; the period of life which follows may then be devoted to hard exercise and strict diet. Men ought not to labor at the same time with their minds and with their bodies; for the two kinds of labor are opposed to one another; the labor of the body impedes the mind, and the labor of the mind the body” (VIII.4; 1339a).
271.25: Two rites burn for affection / It is your own / And you love it: / Touching community / Let this / Be the conclusion: “For friendship we believe to be the greatest good of states and the preservative of them against revolutions; neither is there anything which Socrates so greatly lauds as the unity of the state which he and all the world declare to be created by friendship. But the unity which he commends would be like that of the lovers in the Symposium, who, as Aristophanes says, desire to grow together in the excess of their affection, and from being two to become one, in which case one or both would certainly perish. Whereas in a state having women and children common, love will be watery; and the father will certainly not say 'my son,' or the son 'my father.' As a little sweet wine mingled with a great deal of water is imperceptible in the mixture, so, in this sort of community, the idea of relationship which is based upon these names will be lost; there is no reason why the so-called father should care about the son, or the son about the father, or brothers about one another. Of the two qualities which chiefly inspire regard and affection—that a thing is your own and that it is your only one—neither can exist in such a state as this.
             Again, the transfer of children as soon as they are born from the rank of husbandmen or of artisans to that of guardians, and from the rank of guardians into a lower rank, will be very difficult to arrange; the givers or transferrers cannot but know whom they are giving and transferring, and to whom. And the previously mentioned evils, such as assaults, unlawful loves, homicides, will happen more often amongst those who are transferred to the lower classes, or who have a place assigned to them among the guardians; for they will no longer call the members of the class they have left brothers, and children, and fathers, and mothers, and will not, therefore, be afraid of committing any crimes by reason of consanguinity. Touching the community of wives and children, let this be our conclusion” (II.4; 1262b).
272.1: Further if politics be an art, / Most know nothing of peace / Supposing goods they contend for / Mean more than love: “The charge which Plato brings, in the Laws, against the intention of the legislator, is likewise justified; the whole constitution [of Sparta] has regard to one part of virtue only—the virtue of the soldier, which gives victory in war. So long as they were at war, therefore, their power was preserved, but when they had attained empire they fell, for of the arts of peace they knew nothing, and had never engaged in any employment higher than war. There is another error, equally great, into which they have fallen. Although they truly think that the goods for which men contend are to be acquired by virtue rather than by vice, they err in supposing that these goods are to be preferred to the virtue which gains them” (II.9; 1271b).
272.5: They regarded in making / Works / To occupy people / And keep them / Poor: “Also [the tyrant] should impoverish his subjects; he thus provides against the maintenance of a guard by the citizen and the people, having to keep hard at work, are prevented from conspiring. The Pyramids of Egypt afford an example of this policy; also the offerings of the family of Cypselus, and the building of the temple of Olympian Zeus by the Peisistratidae, and the great Polycratean monuments at Samos; all these works were alike intended to occupy the people and keep them poor” (V.11; 1313b).

272.16  What knowledge forbids the tree— / That is not naked…: alluding to the parable of the Garden of Eden and the Tree of Knowledge in Genesis, Chap. 2 & 3.

273.19  Tibia the animal’s legbone / Or old flute fleet of foot…: tibia = the inner, larger lower leg bone or shin-bone; ancient variety of flageolet or direct flute; < L. tibia the shin-bone, the shine, hence pipe, flue (orig. of bone) (CD). Also a technical term in organ music.

273.23  ‘The blood of Christ, the blood of Christ…: through 273.27 from Walt Whitman, “Notes (Such as They Are) Founded on Elias Hicks” collected in November Boughs (1892): “The division vulgarly call’d between Orthodox and Hicksites in the Society of Friends took place in 1827, ’8 and ’9. Probably it had been preparing some time. One who was present has since described to me the climax, at a meeting of Friends in Philadelphia crowded by a great attendance of both sexes, with Elias as principal speaker. In the course of his utterance or argument he made use of these words: ‘The blood of Christ—the blood of Christ—why, my friends, the actual blood of Christ in itself was no more effectual than the blood of bulls and goats—not a bit more—not a bit.’ At these words, after a momentary hush, commenced a great tumult.”

274.8            Bacchus: Greek God of wine.

274.28  Why hop ye so, ye little, little hills?: Cf. Psalms 68.16: “Why hop ye so, ye high hills? This is God’s hill, in the which it pleaseth him to dwell; yea, the Lord will abide in it for ever.” This is the Anglican Prayer Book Version of the Psalms (Coverdale Psalter) rather than the King James version, which uses the verb “leap.” According to Quartermain (208), he was told by Hugh Kenner that this passage through 274.39 is a found poem from an anthology of Anglican Humor among the Clergy.

275.10  For 17 years and for 27…: the Zukofskys moved to Columbia Heights near the Brooklyn Bridge and the Promenade (see 275.13) in late 1942, roughly 17 years prior to the composition of “A”-13, and for the most part lived in the same neighborhood throughout that period. Ten years previous, LZ also moved from Manhattan to Columbia Heights, although he moved back in 1934.

275.13            promenade: the Brooklyn Promenade Park runs along the East River just south of the Brooklyn Bridge, offering excellent views of downtown Manhattan and New York harbor.

275.39            Brooklyn Bridge / Inclined towards Edward Hopper’s angular search of shadows: Hopper (1882-1967) American realist painter, in whose works sharply etched shadows are often prominent, although he never actually painted the Brooklyn Bridge.

276.10  Great pianist’s performance / Of the Hungarian Rhapsody…: perhaps Vladimir Horowitz (1903-1989) who performed Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody at Carnegie Hall many times in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

276.34  The First Quarto of Pericles / With a preface by Mr. P. Z. Round: a facsimile publication of the 1609 First Quarto edition (London: C. Praetorious, 1886). Aside from including PZ’s initials, the name is an acronym of Ezra Pound. LZ reproduces the title-page of the First Quarto edition in Bottom (321), followed by extensive discussion of textual questions of Pericles in particular and Shakespeare in general, although the edition he used was the facsimile edited by Sidney Lee (1905).

276.39            Another owned about 1750 / By Charles Jennes the / Virtuoso, Handel’s friend: Jennes composed from the Bible the libretto for the oratorio Messiah by Georg Händel (1685-1759).

277.2            Another of the 1619 edition / Presented to the U. of Virginia / By Col. Thomas Mann Randolf…: the Fourth Quarto edition of Pericles. Randolf, or Randolph (1768-1828) was a Congressman and governor of Virginia; since Jefferson founded the University of Virginia, it makes sense the Randolf would make such a donation.

277.15  Order rains—Lucretius did not quite say that: aside from the pun on rains/reigns, this refers to the section in Book II of De Rerum Natura on the motion of atoms, where atoms are described as constantly raining, but it is their swerving (clinamen) that begins the actual formation of the physical universe.

277.19            lightning before one can say it, lightning: from Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet II.ii (I have not identified any textual variant that precisely matches LZ’s version):
Juliet: Well, do not swear: although I joy in thee,
I have no joy of this contract to-night:
It is too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be
Ere one can say it lightens. Sweet, good night!
This bud of love, by summer's ripening breath,
May prove a beauteous flower when next we meet.
Good night, good night! as sweet repose and rest
Come to thy heart as that within my breast!

277.25            Tuppence, Brumous: tuppence = two pence, former UK silver coin; brumous = pertaining or relating to winter; hence, foggy, misty, dull and sunless (CD).

277.38            Godey’s: Godey’s Lady Book was a popular and pioneering woman’s magazine from 1850-1898, which included literature, fashion and articles on all manner of topics deemed of interest to women. 

278.3    –That kid, banderlog singing…: through 278.30 mostly various passages from Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946), Unforgotten Years (1939), an autobiographical account of his early development as a writer. In the passage through 278.6, William James is the speaker (Ahearn quotes the relevant passage 148); Bandar-logs are chattering monkey people in Rudyard Kipling’s two Jungle Books:
            “[William James] had gone, he told me, by tram that afternoon to Boston; and as he sat and meditated in the Cambridge horsecar two strains of thought had occupied his mind. One of these was the notion, which Mrs. James had recently derived from the perusal of Kipling’s writings, that our social order, that all the graces and amenities of our social life, had for their ultimate sanction nothing but force, however much we might disguise it—the naked fist, in fact, the blow of the sword, the crack of the pistol, or the smoke and roar of guns. Superimposed upon this meditation began to recur, with greater and greater persistence, the memory of certain remarks of his brother Henry, who, on a recent visit to America, had indignantly protested against the outrageous pertness of the American child and the meek pusillanimity with which the older generation suffered the behavior of their children without protests.
            It was not long, William James said, before he became aware of what had aroused this second line of thought; it was the droning sound which filled the horsecar—the voice, in fact, of an American child, who was squeaking over and over again an endless, shrill, monotonous sing-song. Growing more and more irritated by this squeaking, William James resolved that he at least would not suffer it without protest; so, addressing the mother of the vocal infant, he said politely, ‘I think, madam you can hardly be aware that your child’s song is a cause of annoyance to the rest of us in this car.’ The lady thus addressed paid no attention; but a gallant American, who heard it, turned on him and said with great indignation, ‘How dare you, sir, address a lady in this ungentlemanly fashion!’” (118-119).

278.8    ‘Let me impress upon you…: Henry James’ advise to the young Logan Pearsall Smith, as reported in the latter’s Unforgotten Years (see 278.3), on declaring his interest in becoming a writer: “About the profession of letters in general, the desire to do the best one could with one’s pen,—and this I confessed was my ambition, —he made one remark which I have never forgotten. ‘My young friend,’ he said, ‘and I call you young, —you are disgustingly and, if I may be allowed to say so, nauseatingly young, —there is one thing that, if you really intend to follow the course you indicate, I cannot too emphatically insist on. There is one word—let me impress upon you—which you must inscribe upon your banner, and that,’ he added after an impressive pause, ‘that word is Loneliness’” (219-220).

278.14  We venerate our young…: through 278.21 from Logan Pearsall Smith, Unforgotten Years (see 278.3): “[The Greeks’] adoration of the youthful human form, in contrast to the Eastern idealization of venerable age, has put a kind of blight on human life; our progress, as we grow older, in wisdom and humanity is thought of in terms of the physical decay which accompanies that luminous advance. We feel ashamed, instead of feeling proud like the Chinese, of our accumulated years; we are always trying in vain to seem younger than we really are; in our Western world it is by no means a compliment, as it is in the wise East, to attribute to others a greater age than their appearance might suggest. When I think of that brother and sister [Smith is speaking of himself] fifty years ago at Harvard, —endowed, it may be, with the grace of youth, but full otherwise of ignorance and folly, —I cannot but prize more highly our present state. Our bones are ripening, it is true, for their ultimate repose, but how small a price, after all, is that to pay for the knowledge we have acquired of the world and men, for the splendid panorama of literature and the arts which years of travel and study have unrolled before us, and above all for those adequate conceptions in whose possession, according to Spinoza’s wisdom, true felicity consists” (129-130).
            Adequate conceptions or ideas, according to Spinoza, are those which are motivated by reason rather than passions. These lines, a central tenet of Spinoza’s philosophy, do not necessarily have a specific source, but Ethics Part IV, Appendix, No. 4 is a possibility: “It is therefore extremely useful in life to perfect as much as we can the intellect or reason, and of this alone does the happiness or blessedness of man consist: for blessedness (beatitude) is nothing else than satisfaction of mind which arises from the intuitive knowledge of God. But to perfect the intellect is nothing else than to understand God and his attributes and actions which follow from the necessity of his nature. Wherefore the ultimate aim of a man who is guided by reason, that is, his greatest desire by which he endeavours to moderate all the others, is that whereby an adequate conception is brought to him of all things which can come within the scope of his intelligence” (trans. Andrew Boyle).

278.26  These blossoms nourished by something…: identified by Rieke (“Quotation and Originality” 94) as also from Logan Pearsall Smith’s Unforgotten Years (see 278.3).

278.29  His Quaker mother…: from Logan Pearsall Smith, Unforgotten Years (see 278.3): Smith’s mother was a prominent figure in the Quaker community, and he describes a visit by a group of schoolgirls: “The spectacle of all these good young girls, being prepared, as my mother knew, for lives of self-sacrifice as daughters, or as wives of American business husbands—somehow this spectacle banished from the old lady’s mind the admonition she had intended for them, and when she opened her lips I was considerably surprised to hear her say, ‘Girls, don’t be too unselfish’” (157).

278.22  two tallest Manhattan skyscrapers: the Chrysler Building and the Empire State Building, completed in 1930 and 1931 respectively, were the two tallest skyscrapers in the world until the late 1960s.

278.24  They are cut of white cardboard / On the blue: Ahearn suggests (159) that LZ may have in mind Henri Matisse’s late paper cut-outs of white on blue.

278.32            Savoyards: those involved in or fans of Gilbert and Sullivan operas; from the Savoy Theatre in London.

278.34 ‘Dear Mr. Gilbert, what is Mr. Bach composing now?’…: this well-known joke is attributed to W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911) in response to a fulsome admirer; LZ apparently got this from a Niedecker letter received 12 July 1953 (Penberthy 215). 

278.36            Gainsborough boy…: English painter Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788); “The Blue Boy,” a portrait of a boy in a blue suit is perhaps his best-known work (in the Huntington Library, California).

278.38            “Sharp” Cathedral for Chartres: the famous gothic cathedral in France, the proper pronunciation of Chartres poses a challenge for Americans unfamiliar with French.

279.2    Milch: giving milk; milky, said of plants; yielding liquid, distilling drops (namely, tears) (CD); from Ger. meaning milk.

279.5    If with light head . . / From my poor love of anything…: from Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), “Inspiration”:
If with light head erect I sing
Though all the Muses lend their force,
From my poor love of anything,
The verse is weak and shallow as its source.

But if with bended neck I grope
Listening behind me for my wit,
With faith superior to hope,
More anxious to keep back than forward it,—

Making my soul accomplice there
Unto the flame my heart hath lit,
Then will the verse forever wear,—
Time cannot bend the line which God has writ.

I hearing get, who had but ears,
And sight, who had but eyes before;
I moments live, who lived but years,
And truth discern, who knew but learning’s lore.

279.10  Ooçah: ? Ahearn notes that this is the only cedilla in “A” and that cedilla (from Spanish) means “little z” (153); or more precisely indicates the pronunciation “cz.”

279.12  Fiftieth star for Hawaii: Hawai’i became the fiftieth state in Aug. 1959.

279.16  The Stronger…: a short play by August Strindberg (1849-1912) about the rivalry between two women over a man, which takes place in a café. The continuation of the sentence is taken from the play, and the following sentence is LZ’s rewriting.

279.27  Chief of State for latrines or the Nations run by / a Doctrine:

279.32  the Herald in Agamemnon: in the tragedy by Aeschylus (c.525-456 BC), the Herald precedes Agamemnon’s arrival back home from the Trojan War, and expresses a love of country, the glory of Agamemnon and recounts the sufferings of war.

279.40            Emerson’s noble chemistry / Poured out / Sunshine from cucumbers…: from Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), a journal entry on the Persian poet Hafiz that LZ found in the notes to the essay “Persian Poetry” (1976) in his edition of Letters and Social Aims (1895). The reference to “sunshine from cucumbers” alludes to the absurd experiments of the Academy of Lagado from Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, Book III, Chap. 5:
            “In the journal of 1846 is a translation of Hafiz, followed by this paragraph,
called " The Noblest Chemistry ": — Sunshine from cucumbers. Here was a man who has occupied himself in a noble chemistry of extracting honor from scamps, temperance from sots, energy from beggars, justice from thieves, benevolence from misers. He knew there was sunshine under those moping churlish brows, elegance of manners hidden in the peasant, heart-warming expansion, grand surprises of sentiment, in these unchallenged, uncultivated men, and he persevered against all repulses until he drew it forth: now his orphans are educated, his boors are polished, his palaces built, his pictures, statues, conservatories, chapels adorn them; he stands there prince among his peers, prince of prince, —the sunshine is out, all flowing abroad over the world.”

280.8    Charlie befriending the kid / ‘There can’t always be the orange…: Charlie Chaplin (1889-1977), the initial allusion is probably to The Kid (1921), his first great feature length film, in which Chaplin as the Tramp adopts an abandoned child. He made the following remarks in a 1952 interview: “The great stories today are the things that are happening inside people. The things with which we have to compete are the startling physical and scientific developments and discoveries that are crowding upon us day by day. But all this external materialistic world has its counterpart, which is the spiritual. That's my theme. Against these great external forces, internal spiritual forces must grow. Nature always compensates with balance. There can't always be the orange outweighing the pea. So I am not afraid of all this atom business because I know that out of it will come the greatest expression of spirituality that man has ever known” (reported to Bosley Crowther in a 4 Oct. 1964 article in the The New York Times, but LZ must have found this elsewhere).

280.12  For Saadi sat in the sun…: from the poem “Saadi” by Ralph Waldo Emerson about the great Persian poet (1184-1291?):
Yet Saadi loved the race of men,—
No churl immured in cave or den,—
In bower and hall
He wants them all,
Nor can dispense
With Persia for his audience; (lines 23-28)
And yet it seemeth not to me
That the high gods love tragedy;
For Saadi sat in the sun,
And thanks was his contrition […] (lines 70-73).

280.14  said / It was rumored I was penitent…: from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, “Shakespeare; or the Poet” in Representative Men (1850): “Homer lies in sunshine; Chaucer is glad and erect; and Saadi says, ‘It was rumored abroad that I was penitent; but what had I to do with repentance?’ Not less sovereign and cheerful,—much more sovereign and cheerful, is the tone of Shakespeare.”

280.37  12 Street home: in 1940, the Zukofskys lived on 11th Street in lower Manhattan (?).

280.40  Old Fire House Museum on Duane Street: Duane Street on the lower East Side was the former location of the NYC Fire Dept. exhibitions of historical equipment. This and the following mentioned streets are all within easy walking distance of where LZ grew up on Chrystie Street.

281.7    C Street: presumably Chrystie Street; although Avenue C is on the lower East Side.

281.10  Greene Street: in Greenwich Village, NYC. “Rat lofts” also mentioned at 5.18.10.

281.16  French conductor…:

281.20  I remember another language…: that is, Yiddish, LZ’s first language; “shwenk de wesh” would more usually be Romanized, “shvenk de vesh.”

281.23  ‘A broch zu dir Semmele hust shayn a colt’: Yiddish; LZ translates this at 281.25. “ A broch zu dir” (a brokh tsu dir) usually would be a bit stronger: Damn you!

281.24  a’s Latin tho, the tone’s sneeze Prospero’s: a Latin “a” is pronounced short (roughly ah). Prospero is the scholarly magician in Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

281.29  ‘The sword will be hidden in the man…: apparently humorously translated sentences from Latin.

281.31            Admiral Kickover…:

281.37            pseudepigrapha: spurious writings, specifically, those writings which profess to be Biblical in character and inspired in authorship, but are not adjudged genuine by the general consent of scholars; those professedly Biblical books which are regarded as neither canonical nor inspired, and from their character are not worthy of use in religious worship. Biblical literature is divided into three classes: (a) The canonical and inspired; (b) the non-canonical and uninspired, but on account of their character worthy of use in the services of the church; (c) those which, though Biblical in form, so vary from the Biblical writings in spirit that they are not deemed worthy of any place in religious use. The second constitute the apocrypha, the third the pseudepigrapha (CD).

281.40            Isorhythm: a musical form in which a given rhythm cyclically repeats, although the corresponding melody notes may change.

281.41: Dominations and angelic orders: probably allusion George Santayana, Dominations and Powers (1951), which LZ reviewed in “The Effacement of Philosophy” (Prep+ 54-56). Dominations and powers are orders of angels.

282.2    editor / Who started as a shipping clerk…:

282.11  Satori: sudden enlightenment in Zen Buddhism.

282.12  muzjik: or muzhik = Russian peasant.

282.32  The Triangle fire: infamous fire in the Triangle Waist Factory, located at 23-29 Washington Place, on 25 March 1911 that killed 146 poor immigrant workers.

282.37            arcades of Richardson’s spacious windows…: refers to the architect Henry Hobson Richardson (1838-1886), a good friend of Henry Adams, who although he began in NYC in fact designed very few buildings there. However, he was highly influential in developing a Romanesque style, in contrast to the then popular Gothic revival style, known as the Richardson Romanesque.

282.39  Lower Broadway: major north-south boulevard of Manhattan that ends at Battery Park at the southern tip of the island.

282.40            Melville (at the foot of Gansevoort) walked under them: Gansevoort Street on the Lower West Side down to the piers where Melville would have gone as deputy inspector of customs (1866-1886); named after Melville’s grandfather, the Revolutionary hero Peter Gansevoort.

282.40  Lanier / Lectured or played his flute at the Broadway Central: the American poet, Sidney Lanier (1842-1881), was a professional flutist and visited NYC city on a number of occasions. The Grand Central Hotel at Broadway and West 3rd Street, later renamed the Broadway Central Hotel, was built in 1869 on the site of a former famous theatre.

283.3    Irving’s low town house…: probably refers to Irving House on the corner of Irving Place and East 17th Street, across from the Washington Irving High School; although there is a plaque claiming Washington Irving (1783-1859) lived at this address, apparently this is not the case, but the developer of Irving Place was a friend who named the street after him in 1831. 

283.3    Twain / Smoking nearby…: One of Mark Twain’s NYC homes was at 14 West 10th Street.

283.4    Henry James returned…: Henry James visited NYC in 1904, the year of LZ’s birth, and describes visiting both the Lower East Side and Washington Square in The American Scene (1907); see note at 12.148.21 and 18.397.18-19. A few phrases at 283.6 are taken from the Preface to The American Scene: “My visit to America had been the first possible to me for nearly a quarter of a century, and I had before my last previous one, brief and distant to memory, spent other years in continuous absence; so that I was to return with much of the freshness of eye, outward and inward, which, with the further contribution of a state of desire, is commonly held a precious agent of perception. I felt no doubt, I confess, of my great advantage on that score; since if I had had time to become almost as ‘fresh’ as an inquiring stranger, I had not on the other hand had enough to cease to be, or at least to feel, as acute as an initiated native. I made no scruple of my conviction that I should understand and should care better and more than the most earnest of visitors, and yet that I should vibrate with more curiosity—on the extent of ground, that is, on which I might aspire to intimate intelligence at all—than the pilgrim with the longest list of questions, the sharpest appetite for explanations and the largest exposure to mistakes.”

283.7    the Mews: Washington Mews just north of Washington Square, still used to house horse stables during LZ’s youth.

283.8            American Classical of Washington Square: square in the heart of Greenwich Village in NYC; along the north side in particular are 19^th century row houses built in Greek revival style. Henry James lived on Washington Square as a boy and of course used it as the title on one of his novels.

283.9    the University: New York University campus is located around Washington Square.

283.16  Worth Street: runs east-west across lower Manhattan.

283.19  O Pompeian florals:

283.20  W. C. Fields…: (1880-1946), American comic and actor.

283.25  our Cyrus:

283.30            Sputnik: probably Sputnik 4 launched on 15 May 1960 and stayed up for over two years, or perhaps Sputnik 5 launched 19 August 1960 carrying two dogs plus mice, rats and plants.

283.33  Polaris: ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and launched from submarines; first test launched in 1960.

283.34  Dear Whilom friend champing with the bad teeth of Rudaki: Basil Bunting, who translated the poem by the Persian poet Rudaki (859-c.941) about his bad teeth (see Collected Poems 133-134); an abbreviated version is quoted in Bottom 120-121. Bunting seems to have sent LZ his translation in Dec. 1948, and he had in fact lost several teeth to scurvy in 1942 (Keith Alldritt, The Poet as Spy: The Life and Wild Times of Basil Bunting. London: Aurum P, 1998. 99, 114-115). Whilom is archaic meaning having once been, former (AHD).

283.36  The Hoe, Plymouth, England: the Plymouth Hoe is a large grassy park area on Plymouth Sound.

283.37            seadog: veteran sailor.

284.3    love trouthe and . . wed thy folk: from Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400), the balade “Lak of Stedfastnesse,” the envoy addressed to King Richard (as quoted in TP 16):
O prince, desyre to be honourable
Cherish thy folk and hate extorcioun!
Suffre no thyng, that may be reprevable
To thyn estat, don in thy regioun.
Shew forth thy swerd of castigacioun,
Dred God, do law, love trouthe and worthynesse
And wed thy folk ageyn to stedfastnesse.

284.6    ‘A time for government to step aside…: Dwight David Eisenhower (see 265.7) famously remarked: "I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of their way and let them have it" (from TV Talk with British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, 31 August 1959).

284.10  ‘By pooling intelligence nets (laughing) / So we don’t have to pay twice…: in the following, LZ quotes some of the colorful and often gauche remarks for which Nikita Khrushchev was famous. In Oct. 1960 Khrushchev visited NYC for a U.N. session at which he frequently interrupted speeches and banged on the table. It is often recorded that he also at this time made his infamous remark addressed to the West—“Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will live to bury you in your grave!”—although in fact this was made years earlier at a different occasion. Later he clarified himself somewhat: “I once said, ‘We will bury you,’ and I got into trouble with it. Of course we will not bury you with a shovel. Your own working class will bury you”—which echoes The Communist Manifesto’s “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers” (see Arise 42).

284.32  Nikita / second name?: Sergei (or Sergeyevich) is usually given as Khrushchev’s middle name but sometimes treated as his first.

284.34  G.:

284.36  Pullets, pewlitzers, dull bright fellows: < Pulitzer Prizes, Fulbright Fellows.

285.14  Cuba’s cane: probably alluding to the Cuban Revolution; Fidel Castro’s forces triumphed in Jan. 1959, and in Aug. 1960 his government nationalized all foreign property in response to the U.S. embargo. Sugarcane is a major Cuban crop.

285.14  snake dance / twining down on Kishi: Nobusuke Kishi (1896-1987) was forced to resign as Prime Minister of Japan in July 1960, primarily due to large, often violent demonstrations in opposition to his extention of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty.

285.16  Mau Mau: native resistance movement in Kenya during the mid-1950s; began as a bloody campaign against Europeans in 1952 and largely put down by 1956, although the state of emergency in Kenya was officially lifted only in Jan. 1960.

285.20  Hebe: as the barmaid says, Hebe is the goddess of youth, daughter of Zeus and Hera, who poured the nectar or ambrosia to the gods.

285.26  —Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them…: from Shakespeare, Othello I.ii:
Othello: Keep up your bright swords, for the dew will rust them.—
Good signior, you shall more command with years
Than with your weapons.

285.27  God’s my life—snoring—no man can tell what: from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream IV.i: [Bottom on waking up:] “God’s my life, stolen hence, and left me asleep! I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, —and methought I had, —but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream: it shall be called Bottom’s Dream, because it hath no bottom; and I will sing it in the latter end of a play, before the duke: peradventure, to make it the more gracious, I shall sing it at her death” (qtd. Bottom 9).

285.28  —Look, if my gentle love be not rais’d up!: from Shakespeare, Othello II.iii; Othello speaking on Desdemona’s entrance.

285.29  Times: New York Times newspaper.

285.31  —Protesting a tax on horsetails for bows…:

286.6    As the little old lady said…: see 286.17.

286.14  hurdy-gurdies: a barrel organ or similar instrument played by turning a crank.

286.17            Landowska’s nose, that’s Bach’s Goldberg / Sounding off…: Wanda Landowska (1879-1959) Polish-French harpsichordist, who moved to the U.S. in 1940. An influential teacher, she was largely responsible for the revival of the harpsichord and was the first to play Bach’s Goldberg Variations on that instrument in the 20th century. She had a prominent nose.

286.28  Nero . . to Greece / For the music prize…: Nero (37-68), Roman Emperor. In 66 he made a grandiose tour of Greece to compete in major festivals at Olympia and Delphi.

286.36  A monster concert . . at Dresden . . / 1615…:

287.2            (Breughel’s spaces): see 8.66.15, 17.377.19.

287.18  Golden Mean’s / Calculus: for Aristotle’s ethical “golden mean,” see 12.236.13. Also “golden section,” a ratio, represented by the Greek letter phi, that is seen to have mysterious, even mystical significance and has been applied in mathematics and art, including music.

287.22  Stands for First Things / The Great Mother…: through 287.35 quoted and paraphrased from Lucretius, De Rerum Natura Bk. II:
“Wherefore earth alone has been called the Great Mother of the gods [Cybele], and the mother of the wild beast, and the parent of our body. Of her in days of old the learned poets of the Greeks sang that <borne on from her sacred> shrine in her car she drove a yoke of lions, teaching thereby that the great earth hangs in the space of air nor can earth rest on earth. […] On her the diverse nations in the ancient rite of worship call as the Mother of Ida, and they give her Phrygian bands to bear her company, because from those lands first they say corn began to be produced throughout the whole world. […] Taut timbrels [like a tambourine; same etymological root as timpani] thunder in their hands, and hollow cymbals all around, and horns menace with harsh-sounding bray, and the hollow pipe goads their minds in the Phrygian mode, and they carry weapons before them, the symbols of their dangerous frenzy, that they may be able to fill with fear of the goddess’s power the thankless minds and unhallowed hearts of the multitude. […] Then comes an armed band, whom the Greeks call by name the Curetes of Phrygia, and because now and again they join in mock conflict of arms and leap in rhythmic movement, gladdened at the sight of blood and shaking as they nod the awesome crests upon their heads, they recall the Curetes of Dicte, who are said once in Crete to have drowned the wailing of the infant Jove, while, a band of boys around the baby boy, in hurrying dance all armed, they beat in measured rhythm brass upon brass, that Saturn might not seize and commit him to his jaws, and plant an everlasting wound deep in the Mother’s heart. […] Yet all this, albeit well and nobly set forth and told, is nevertheless far removed from true reasoning. For it must needs be that all the nature of the gods enjoys life everlasting in perfect peace, sundered and separated far away from our world” (86-87; trans. Cyril Bailey).

287.30            Curetes: attendants of Rhea, mother of the gods, often depicted performing a sacred dance to accompanying music; see above quotation from Lucretius.

287.34  Tibiae stimulate: tibiae < L. pl. of tibia = shinebone, type of ancient flute; see 273.19. Presumably this is LZ’s interpretation of the “hollow pipe” in the above quotation from Lucretius.

287.36  Let’s go upstairs!: CZ notes that at the time of writing the Zukofskys lived in a tenth floor apartment at 135 Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights (Ahearn, “Two Conversations” 116).

287.37            Ludwig…: Wittgenstein (1889-1951), from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921):
“2.013 Everything is, as it were, in a space of possible atomic facts. I can think of this space as empty, but not of the thing without the space. 2.0131 A spatial object must lie in infinite space. (A point in space is a place for an argument.)” (qtd. Bottom 46, 47). LZ used the first English translation by C.K. Ogden and F.P. Ramsey (1922), which included the original German.

288.13            Picasso’s jeering horse’s head in / His “Guernica”: a horse’s head with the mouth shown “tilted” figures prominently at the center of Picasso’s painting. Although it is unlikely most would describe the horse as “jeering,” LZ evidently emphasizes the defiant aspect of the work. On Picasso’s “Guernica”, see 12.205.34; and the Guernica bombing, see 10.118.20.

288.21  old composer: Serly(?)

288.31            “Duodecuple”: technical term for twelve-tone music.

288.32  Et bonum quo antiquius, eo melius…: LZ immediately translates the Latin in the following line, but makes it self-questioning; from Shakespeare, Pericles I.Prologue (qtd. Bottom 145, 330):
Gower: To sing a song that old was sung,
From ashes ancient Gower is come;
Assuming man’s infirmities,
To glad your ear, and please your eyes.
It hath been sung at festivals,
On ember-eves and holy-ales;
And lords and ladies in their lives
Have read it for restoratives:
The purchase is to make men glorious;
Et bonum quo antiquius, eo melius.

288.35  —Thanks fer / Passover provender…: a thank you note from EP while imprisoned at St. Elizabeths from 1945-1958 (EP/LZ xviii).

289.5    Lunik Three: Sputnik 3 launched 15 May 1958 and decayed 6 April 1960.

289.10            Choctaw oke or hoke equals yes: a common folk etymology for “okay” is that it derives from the Native American Choctaw word oke or hoke, an affirmative response meaning roughly “it is so.”

289.18  helden soprano: helden = Ger. heroes or epics, here means a heroic soprano such as Wagner’s Brunhilde, see 289.21.

289.21            Brunhilde: a Valkyrie (female Norse divinities who accompany the dead to Valhalla) who is the central female character in Richard Wagner’s opera cycle, Der Ring der Nibelungen (1869-1876).

289.23  Man in the moon stand and stride…: to the end of this section quotes a modernized spelling version of “The Man in the Moon,” an anonymous medieval lyric from the 14th century manuscript called the Harley Lyrics, which is the largest single collection of early Middle English lyrics.

290.24  The human son fathered by man and the sun: from Aristotle, Physics II.2 (194b): “Again, matter is a relative term: to each form there corresponds a special matter. How far then must the physicist know the form or essence? Up to a point, perhaps, as the doctor must know sinew or the smith bronze (i.e. until he understands the purpose of each): and the physicist is concerned only with things whose forms are separable indeed, but do not exist apart from matter. Man is begotten by man and by the sun as well. The mode of existence and essence of the separable it is the business of the primary type of philosophy to define” (trans R.P. Hardie & R.K. Gaye) (qtd. Bottom 76, 86; see 12.236.11-13).

290.29  Korean King who / In the first half century…: see Bottom 423 where it is a Korean poet rather than king; these same two passages are quoted and related in Prep + 171-172. It is probable that this tale refers to the Korean kayagum, a 12-string zither that is believed to be related to the Chinese k’in (see 300.23).

290.32            paulownia wood: particularly prized in East Asia because it is easy to carve and often used for musical instruments.

290.38  my Shakespeare theme—‘Love see?’—…: as elaborated in Bottom:
                        “love: reason   ::   eyes: mind
Love needs no tongue of reason if love and the eyes are 1—an identity. The good reasons of the mind’s right judgment are but superfluities for saying: Love sees—if it needs saying at all in a text which is always hovering towards The rest is silence” (39).

291.3    spinet: small upright piano. Along with the “blessed” of the preceding line, also suggests Spinoza, a major source for the articulation of LZ’s “Shakespeare theme.”

291.5    four seasons: Antonio Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons”; see 12.136.26.

291.12  Only in Shakespeare is there / Such reconcilement…: see 290.38.

291.18  outpost Harry: scene of a fierce eight-day battle in June 1953 during the Korean War between a small contingent of U.S. troops fending off vastly superior Chinese communist troops. During lulls in the fighting the dead were recovered.

292.6    ‘An older sister an English beauty / Called Violet…:

292.22  Two hundred years ago / His alma mater…: Columbia University, which LZ attended from 1920-1922, was chartered by King George II as King’s College in 1754, and its first location was at the Trinity Church schoolhouse on what is now lower Broadway. In 1857 the college moved to a site at 49^th Street and Madison Avenue bought from the Deaf and Dumb Asylum. Moved to its current Morningside Heights location in 1897, previously the site of the Bloomingdale Insane Asylum.

293.3    ‘Barrel E, Barrel A, Barrel D, Barrel G’: Ahearn’s suggestion that this is PZ hearing musical notes in the banging of the garbage men (156) is supported by CZ (“Commemorative Evening” 25).

293.9    . . the commodity wages not with the danger: from Shakespeare, Pericles IV.ii:
Pander: Three or four thousand chequins were as pretty proportion to live quietly, and so give over.
Bawd: Why to give over, I pray you? Is it a shame to get when we are old?
Pander: O, our credit comes not in like the commodity, nor the commodity wages not with the danger; therefore, if in our youths we could pick up some pretty estate, ’twere not amiss to keep our door hatch’d. Besides, the sore terms we stand upon with the gods will be strong with us for giving o’er.

293.11  . . sung, and made the night bed mute: from Shakespeare, Pericles IV.Prologue (this line is from the 1609 First Quarto: all modern texts accept the emendation of “night bed” to “night-bird” = nightingale, first suggested by the 18^th century scholar Lewis Theobald; qtd. Bottom 38):
Gower: Or when she would with sharpe needle wound,
The Cambricke which she made more sound
By hurting it or when too’th Lute
She sung, and made the night bed mute,
That still records with mone […]

293.11  and / the lonely listener, / prose clothes the poem:

293.14  . . world-without-end bargain in: from Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost V.ii: “Princess: A time, methinks, too short / To make a world-without-end bargain in.”

293.15  And take upon’s . . / Who loses and who wins…: from Shakespeare, King Lear V.iii (qtd. Bottom 312):
Lear: No, no, no, no! Come, let’s away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds I’ the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;
And take upon’s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out,
In a wall’d prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon.

293.31  M. said…: Max Beerbohm (1872-1956) in The Works of Max Beerbohm (1898): “To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.”

293.36  No one in history or legend / Died of laughter…: from Max Beerbohm in “Laughter” (1920): “Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter.”

294.2    You can’t win affection / By wishing your opponent to drop dead…: Cf. concluding scene of Little (CF 175; also 131); also Spinoza’s remarks on the transformation of hate through love (see 11.124.19, 12.233.26).

294.6    Pill-and-Envy / Mud’s Son:

294.9            Michelangelo’s Moses: the main figure in Michelangelo’s elaborate tomb for Pope Julian II in St. Peter’s Cathedral, the Vatican; the statue depicts Moses with a strikingly long flowing beard.

294.23  against nature…:

294.29  crèche: Fr. crib. A public nursery where the children of women who go out to work are cared for during the day; an asylum for foundlings and infants which have been abandoned (CD).

295.16  Vico’s intellegere from legere to collect greens: LZ apparently is putting together two passages from The New Science of Giambattista Vico (1688-1744):
            “This was the order of human institutions: first the forests, after that the huts, then the villages, next the cities, and finally the academies. This axiom is a great principle of etymology, for this sequence of human institutions sets the pattern for the histories of words in the various native languages. Thus we observe the Latin language that almost the whole corpus of its words had sylvan or rustic origins. For example, lex. First it must have meant a collection of acorns. Thence we believe is derived ilex, as it were lex, the oak (as certainly aquilex means collector of waters); for the oak produces acorns by which the swine are drawn together. Lex was next a collection of vegetables, from which the latter were called legumina. Later on, at a time when vulgar letters had not yet been invented for writing down the laws, lex by a necessity of civil nature must have meant a collection of citizens, or the public parliament; so that the presence of the people was the lex, or ‘law,’ that solemnized the wills that were made calatis comitiis, in the presence of the assembled comitia. Finally, collecting letters, and making, as it were, a sheaf of them for each word, was called legere, reading” (Paras. 239-240).
            [From the Prolegomena to Book Two on “Poetic Wisdom”:] “Throughout this book it will be shown that as much as the poets had first sensed in the way of vulgar wisdom, the philosophers later understood in the way of esoteric wisdom; so that the former may be said to have been the sense and the latter the intellect of the human race. What Aristotle said of the individual man is therefore true of the race in general: Nihil est in intellectu quin prius fuerit in sensu [On the Soul 432a 7-8]. That is, the human mind does not understand anything of which it has had no previous impression (which our modern metaphysicians call ‘occasion’) from the senses. Now the mind uses the intellect when, from something it senses, it gathers something which does not fall under the senses; and this is the proper meaning of the Latin verb intelligere” (Para. 363; trans. Thomas Goddard Bergin and Max Harold Fisch).

295.19            Disserere to discuss to scatter seed: discuss < L. discussus, pp. of discutere, strike or shake apart, break up, scatter (CD). In the Art of Rhetoric, Vico mentions as an example of concrete words that have come to designate activities of the human mind: dissero (> disserere, present indicative), to scatter seed, discuss.

295.38  Dian’s argentine: from Shakespeare, Pericles V.i; Pericles on awakening from his dream vision of Diana: “Celestial Dian, goddess argentine, / I will obey thee.” This first line is quoted in CD for the definition of “argentine,” meaning silvery.

295.39  night’s mute: see 293.11.

296.11  H.J.: Henry James.

296.26  It is not night when I do see your face: from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream II.i:
Helena: Your virtue is my privilege: for that
It is not night when I do see your face,
Therefore I think I am not in the night;
Nor doth this wood lack worlds of company,
For you in my respect are all the world:
Then how can it be said I am alone,
When all the world is here to look on me?

296.39  “cellar door” (1926), / (1956) “Neither/nor, nor and/or”: “Cellar Door” appeared in line 172 of “Poem Beginning ‘The’” (1926), apparently referring there to a student hangout at Columbia University (?), and rhyming with the preceding line’s “galore.” For “Neither/nor…” see the poem, “The Laws Can Say” (1955), published in Some Time (see CSP 155).

297.7    Honor a word gone out of English: see 11.124.7.

297.8    Bottom the weaver: the character from A Midsummer Night’s Dream; see 12.133.20.

297.9            Richard Flecknoe on Pericles: / “Ars longa, vita brevis…: Richard Flecknoe (c.1600-1678), English dramatist and poet. Ars longa, vita brevis: L. art is long, life is short; attributed to Hippocrates. LZ found this remark in a note to Sidney Lee’s facsimile edition of Shakespeares Pericles (1905), which he refers to quite often in Bottom, although he does not mention this particular comment: “In 1656 Richard Flecknoe, in his Diarium, p. 96, has the epigram:— ‘On the play of the life and death of Pyrocles’ / Ars longa, via brevis, as they say, / But who inverts that saying made this play.” 

297.14  The lines of the song Pericles that end so many times: life: throughout Shakespeare’s Pericles, 15 lines end with the word “life.”

297.15  Our thoughts . . our . . their ends not our own…: from Shakespeare, Hamlet III.ii; spoken by the Player King in the inner play:
But, orderly to end where I begun,
Our wills and fates do so contrary run
That our devices still are overthrown;
Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own:
So think thou wilt no second husband wed;
But die thy thoughts when thy first lord is dead.

297.18            Memphis—not Egypt—Tennessee: Memphis was a major city and capital of ancient Egypt. Memphis, Tennessee is best known for its associations with country music.

297.26            Michelangelo’s hordes of the Judgment / in the Sistine Chapel: refers to Michelangelo’s crowded fresco of contorted bodies rising to the Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, painted 1535-1541.

297.28            saraband of / Bach’s Second Partita for Violin: see 262.1.

297.31  Taine said…: Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893), French historian; quote unidentified.

297.36  The King is a thing, says Hamlet / shocking only the fox: from Shakespeare, Hamlet IV.ii:
Hamlet: The body is with the king, but the king is not with the body.
The king is a thing,—
Guildenstern: A thing, my lord!
Hamlet: Of nothing: bring me to him. Hide fox, and all after.

298.9    Attar of roses banked as collateral…:

298.21            stereoscope: an optical instrument with two eyepieces used to create a three-dimensional effect with two photographs of the same scene taken at slightly different angles (AHD). Mentioned also at 300.7, LZ was intrigued by the image of the stereoscope, which appears at least twice elsewhere in his writings: in a passage of “Thanks to the Dictionary” that apparently describes the double-focus experience of watching a film (CF 274) and in the story, “It Was”: “I wanted our time to be the story, but like the thought of a place passed by once and recalled altogether: seen again a through a stereoscope blending views a little way apart into a solid—defying touch” (CF 183).

298.27            Jefferson’s slave quarters in his natural air-conditioned / cellar at Monticello: Thomas Jefferson Monticello home includes an extensive cellar, from which food and wine were sent above into the main house. The “gadgeteer” of 298.30 is undoubtedly Jefferson, who was a well-known and voracious adapter of new practical inventions, many of which he incorporated into Monticello.

298.29  Mt. Vernon: George Washington’s Virginia estate.

298.32            Collections’ Amati they let him try out in the Library of / Congress: Amati was a 17th century family of violin makers from Cremona, Italy. The “Collection” here is no doubt the Cremonese Collection of musical instruments at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., which includes a violin by Niccolò Amati (1596-1684) called the “Brookings,” acquired in 1938, which apparently PZ was allowed to “try out.”

298.34            Arcangelo / Corelli: Arcangelo Corelli (1653-1713), Italian composer and preeminent violinist of his day.

298.35  The mad kept way out there in a circle as he played / Corelli, Jannequin’s song: the Zukofskys visited EP at St. Elizabeths (see 264.28, 288.35) on 11 July 1954, where PZ played Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin No. 3 in E Major and, at EP’s request, Le Chant des Oiseaux (Song of the Birds) by Clement Jannequin (c.1475-c.1560), a favorite piece whose score as arranged by Gerhart Münch EP used for Canto 75. LZ briefly describes this visit in Little (CF 121) and mentions Jannequin in relation to EP in “Nor did the prophet’” (CSP 146). See also CZ’s description in Terrell, “Two Conversations” 585-587 and Gordon, “Zuk and Ez at St. Liz.”

298.39            deodar: a tall cedar (Cedrus deodara) native to the Himalaya Mountains and having drooping branches and dark bluish-green leaves, often with white, light green, or yellow new growth in cultivars (AHD).

299.5    Gilbert Stuart’s / Portrait of Washington: (1775-1828) American artist who painted a number of portraits of President Washington, including the one used on the one dollar bill. Here perhaps referring to the huge carving of Washington’s face on Mount Rushmore, South Dakota.

299.7    Crater Lake: National Park in southern Oregon, the lake is famous for its intense blue color. This and following details are from a trip West the Zukofskys took in the summer of 1958, returning through parts of Canada.

299.12  Sages of sheaves of analects…: Cf. The Analects of Confucius. Ancient Chinese texts were written on pieces of split bamboo that were tied together and could be rolled up into bundles. EP’s translation of Confucius’ main works, including the Analects, was published in 1951.

299.14            misnamed temples / Of Grand Canyon’s absurd sunsets: buttes and tower-like formations left due to erosion of the canyon walls by the Colorado River are frequently called temples, and given exotic mythological and religious names, such as the Vishnu, Zoroaster, Thor, Isis or Buddha Temples.

299.18  Lake Louise: in southern Alberta, Canada.

299.21  kadota figs: a light-green, tear-drop shaped fig.

299.27  poor man’s flowers: purple lilacs (syringe vulgaris), supposedly so-called because they are so easy to cultivate.

299.32            Winnipeg: capital of Manitoba, Canada.

299.33            Canmore: in Alberta in the Canadian Rockies.

300.13  You intended a small boy to light a masquerade / As a Chinese sage…: a slightly more detailed description of this Confucius outfit that PZ wore to a costume party appears in one of Lorine Niedecker’s For Paul poems, “Now go to the party” (Collected Works 152), no doubt from LZ’s description in a letter. The “you” of this passage is obviously CZ.

300.18  when the Chinese / Adopt the Latin alphabet…: Mao Zedong officially adopted a policy of romanizing written Chinese in the 1950s; the pinyin system of romanization was developed toward this purpose, although the complete transfer to an alphabetic writing system was abandoned after the end of the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s.

300.23  K’in: or qin (pronounced “chin”), also known as guqin or ancient qin, a zither or dulcimer, was the preferred instrument of the classical Chinese literati. The modern k’in has seven strings but ancient versions had five or ten strings, which were made from twisted silk treated with glue. They also have 13 studs along the side to guide finger placement. Ancient texts describe the cosmological proportions of the k’in: the top is rounded representing the heavens, the bottom flat like the earth; the length a numerological equivalent to 366. The k’in was believed to have special powers of creating harmony within both the player and the listener. Specific notes or tones had elaborate symbolism associated with them, each with its own name and mood; although there were usually a good many more than five, what LZ evidently refers to is the five notes or tones of the ancient Chinese scale. LZ’s specific source is as yet unidentified.

300.31  Yü—North’s black winter water…: these “notes” represent or are analogous to the traditional five elements in ancient Chinese lore—water, wood, earth, metal and fire—and five is the most fundamental number in ancient Chinese numerology, which pervades innumerable cultural correspondences. LZ indicates the correspondences with specific colors, directions and seasons. Yellow is the color associated with the emperor, always perceived as the center, as is China in general (Middle Kingdom is the literal translation of the characters for China in Mandarin).

301.16  We talk after the fishermen in Pericles / Who banter their verse…: three fishermen appear in Shakespeare, Pericles II.i, who help out the shipwrecked prince. Pericles remarks admiringly on their good humored verbal wit and social critique: “How from the fenny subiect of the Sea, / These Fishers tell the infirmities of men, / And from their watry empire recollect. / All that may men approue, or men detect”; see the Fishermen’s remarks quoted at 21.456.34 and 21.457.2.

301.20            Shakespeare skeptical of most music…:

301.24  “He that doth ill hateth the night”: from Thomas Nashe (1567-1601), The Terrors of the Night, Or a Discourse of Apparitions (1594): “It is not to be gainsaid but the devil can transform himself into an angel of light, appear in the day as well as in the night, but not in this subtle world of Christianity so usual as before. If he do, it is when men’s minds are extraordinarily thrown down with discontent, or inly terrified with some horrible concealed murder, or other heinous crime close smothered in secret. In the day he may smoothly in some mild shape insinuate, but in the night he takes upon him like a tyrant. There is no thief that is half so hardy in the day as in the night; no more the devil. A general principle it is, he that doth ill hateth the light.”

301.26            Gagaku: ancient form of Japanese court music, including dance. LZ apparently went to a performance of Gagaku music and dance in early June 1959, and there exists a copy of Playbill (1 June 1959) among LZ’s papers offering information particularly on two of the performances, a Mimic Dance and a Monkey-God Dance (Rieke, “Quotation and Originality” 93). 

301.34            Monkey Dance…: LZ wrote Cid Corman 30 Sept. 1960 that, although he had been reading Monkey (see 302.4), he discounts its significance in “A”-13, adding: “Just as I’m my own Gagaku (as I say in iii)—I mean don’t take my dance to be a literal report of the dances I ‘saw’ performed—if I haven’t said this before. As a matter of fact I take off from two dances I saw & mix ‘em up […]” (“In the Event of Words” 326); see 301.26.

301.35  (Able the sensible rhesus…: Able, along with his co-pilot Baker, were monkeys sent up in a Jupiter rocket on 28 May 1959, and were the first living beings to survive space travel.

302.4            Monkey God…: according to CZ (Ahearn, “Two Conversations” 118-119), this is indebted to Arthur Waley’s Monkey, a highly abridged translation of the great Chinese novel, Journey to the West by Wu Ch’eng-en. However, LZ’s description has little in common with the rambunctious antics of Monkey and appears to be based on his memory or imagining of a monkey dance (see remarks at 301.34 and note at 301.26). The more formal or original name for Noh is Sarugaku Noh with saru meaning monkey. Mary Oppen in Meaning a Life (Santa Barbara: Black Sparrow P, 1978) mentions that LZ “saw the Noh plays with a famous Chinese actor who toured the United States several times, and he delighted us with imitations of this actor” (94); although this account seems to mixup Japanese and Chinese, it probably refers to the great Chinese opera performer Mei Lan-Fang (1893-1961), who both LZ and WCW saw and enthused over in 1930 (WCW/LZ 60-62).

303.18  [partita iv]: this section of “A”-13 primarily catalogs the contents of the small pocket notes LZ was in the habit of carrying.

304.5    my resource / es / for / my son…: these lines appear to refer to the origins of “Poetry / For My Son When He Can Read,” which begins: “When you were 19 months old your ability to say ‘Go billy go billy go billy go ba,’ much faster than I could ever say it, made me take some almost illegible notes on poetry out of my wallet” (Prep+ 3).

304.14  your / own / eyes, by strength…: phrases from various passages of Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen (in Bottom, the chapter “Forgotten” (349-351) primarily consists of various quotations from this play, including almost all of the following):
III.vi (qtd. Bottom 350)
Emilia: By that you would have trembled to deny
A blushing maid—
Hippolyta: —By your own eyes, by strength—
In which you swore I went beyond all women,
Almost all men – and yet I yielded, Theseus—
III.i (qtd. Bottom 350)
Arcite: —Plainly spoken,
Yet—pardon me—hard language: when I spur [Wind horns within.]
My horse I chide him not. Content and anger
In me have but one face. Hark, sir, they call
The scattered to the banquet. You must guess...
I have an office there.
V.i (qtd. Bottom 350):
Palamon: O thou that from eleven to ninety reign’st
In mortal bosoms, whose chase is this world
And we in herds thy game, I give thee thanks
For this fair token, which, being laid unto
Mine innocent true heart, arms in assurance
My body to this business. Let us rise
And bow before the goddess.
V.iv:
Pirithous: […] on this horse is Arcite
Trotting the stones of Athens, which the calkins
Did rather tell than trample; for the horse
Would make his length a mile, if’t pleased his rider
To put pride in him. As he thus went counting
The flinty pavement, dancing, as ’twere, to th’ music
His own hooves made—for, as they say, from iron...
Came music’s origin—what envious flint,
Cold as old Saturn and like him possessed
With fire malevolent, darted a spark,
Or what fierce sulfur else, to this end made,
I comment not—the hot horse, hot as fire,
Took toy at this and fell to what disorder
His power could give his will, bounds; comes on end […]
III.i (qtd. Bottom 350):
Arcite: But if
Thou knew’st my mistress breathed on me, and that
I eared her language, lived in her eye—O, coz,...
hat passion would enclose thee!
II.vi (qtd. Bottom 349)
Jailor’s Daughter: My father
Durst better have endured cold iron than done it....
I love him beyond love and beyond reason
Or wit or safety. I have made him know it—
I care not, I am desperate.

305.28  the year / he was born: PZ born 22 Oct. 1943.

306.1            “Jakobus / Stain- /er / in Absam…: Jacobus Stainer (c.1617-1683) a great violin maker from Absam (near Innsbruck), Austria. The quotation is the hand-written label inside PZ’s violin; prope Oenipontam is L. meaning near Innsbruck; see 12.157.10 and 18.405.7.

307.8    life into / dust: from Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen V.ii (qtd. Bottom 350):
Palamon: I knew a man
Of eighty winters, this I told them, who...
A lass of fourteen brided—’twas thy power
To put life into dust.

307.9    (who can- / not / feel / nor see the…: from Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen I.i (qtd. Bottom 349):
Emilia: Pray you, say nothing, pray you.
Who cannot feel nor see the rain, being in’t,
Knows neither wet nor dry.

308.4    Go, fresh / horses: from Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale III.i (qtd. Bottom 431): “Dion: Go: fresh horses! / And gracious be the issue!”

308.9    Thoth: see 267.9.

308.24  Hop o’my / thumb lady- / bug…: “Hop o’ my Thumb” is a children’s fairytale by Charles Perreult (1628-1703).

308.30  by / my / short life / body to / this / thanks / tender her—: from Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen V.iv (qtd. Bottom 351):
Palamon: By my short life,
I am most glad on’t; Tis the latest thing
I shall be glad of; pre’thee tell her so:
Commend me to her, and to peece her portion,
Tender her this. [Gives purse.]
First Knight: Nay lets be offerers all.

308.32  my / body to / this: from Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen V.i; see quote at 304.14 (qtd. Bottom 350)

309.5    lets / offerers—: see quote at 308.30.

309.7            tandaradei: a famous onomatopoetic voicing of the nightingale from “Under the Lindens” by Walter von der Vogelweide (13th century):
Under the lindens of the heather,
There was our double resting-place,
Side by side and close together
Garnered blossoms, crushed, and grass
Nigh a shaw in such a vale:
Tandaradei,
Sweetly sang the nightingale. (trans. Ford Madox Ford)

309.11            [musical staff and clef]: a notation fixing the location of a particular note on the staff, and therefore the location of the other notes; in this case a treble clef, the G or violin-clef.

309.23  five contiguous windows of a tenth floor: in an interview, CZ notes that this entire subsection of “A”-13 is set as if LZ is looking out the 10th floor window of their Brooklyn apartment at 135 Willow Street, which they moved into in 1957. She notes that at the time it was one of the few high buildings in the area of mostly low-rise apartments, so they looked down upon many surrounding roofs and their ornamentations, as well as across the East River toward Manhattan (Ahearn, “Two Conversations” 116-117).

309.26  from eleven to ninety: from Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen V.i; see quote at 304.14 (qtd. Bottom 350).

310.2            children in some kind: from Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen V.iv: the final passage of the play excluding the epilogue (qtd. Bottom 349):
Theseus: O you heavenly charmers,—
What things you make of us! For what we lack
We laugh, for what we have, are sorry; still
Are children in some kind. Let us be thankful
For that which is, and with you leave dispute
That are above our question. Let’s go off
And bear us like the time.

310.6    corbie gable: a gable having corbie-steps, a series of steps or step-like projections on the top of a gable wall; also called crow-steps.

310.21            Surcingle—Sir Single: a surcingle is a girth for a horse; esp. a girth separate from the saddle and passing around the body of the horse, retaining in place a blanket, a sheet, or the like, by passing over it (CD).

310.35  Quoins, stringcourses, / Rustications, / Ogee arch, spandrel…: various external architectural features. A quoin is an external solid angle of a building; a stringcourse is a narrow molding or a projecting course continued horizontally along the face of a building, frequently under windows; rustication in masonry is stonework of which the face is hacked or picked in holes, or of which the courses and the separate blocks are marked by rectangular grooves; an ogee arch is formed with doubly curved sides, the lower part of each side being concave and the part toward the apex convex; a spandrel is the triangular space comprehended between the outer curve of an arch, a horizontal line drawn through its apex, and a vertical line through its springing, or the wall-space between the outer moldings of two arches and the framework surrounding it; a lanthern is an upright skylight in the roof of a building (CD).

311.3    (For what we lack we laugh): from Shakespeare, Two Noble Kinsmen V.iv: see 310.2.

311.11  world’s largest hotel:

311.13            tourelles: Fr. turrets.

311.17  . . your sweet music . . last night..: from Shakespeare, Pericles II.v (qtd. Bottom 36):
Simondes: I am beholding to you
For your sweet music this last night: I do
Protest my ears were never better fed
With such delightful pleasing harmony.

311.26            fantastic island / To the north…: Manhattan viewed from Brooklyn Heights.

311.39  Empire State: the Empire State Building, at the time the tallest in the world; but also the nickname for New York state.

312.14            Pompons, ferns, petiole: a pompon is a form of small, globe-shaped flower head that characterizes a type of flowering plant, esp. chrysanthemums and dahlias. A petiole is a leafstalk.

312.17  The Egyptian queen: / —age cannot wither: from Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra II.ii:
Enobarbas [speaking of Cleopatra]:
Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies; for vilest things
Become themselves in her: that the holy priests
Bless her when she is riggish.

312.19  So brief is not brief…:

312.32  Eight definitions / Seven axioms…: Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics deploys a method of “geometrical demonstration” to elaborate its philosophical system out of eight initial definitions and seven axioms. The following list are all key terms from Spinoza’s philosophy.

313.13            (Launce) / To / Stand-under . . / Under-stand . . / all one: from Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona II.5 (qtd. Bottom 50-51 and frequently referred to thereafter):
Speed: What an ass art thou! I understand thee not.
Launce: What a block art thou, that thou canst not! My staff understands me.
Speed: What thou sayest?
Launce: Ay, and what I do too: look thee, I'll but lean, and my staff understands me.
Speed: It stands under thee, indeed.
Launce: Why, stand-under and under-stand is all one.

313.21  Love you: from Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale II.i:
Mamillius [to Hermione]: “You’ll kiss me hard, and speak to me, as if I were a baby still. I love you better” (Rieke, “Quotation and Originality” 97).