“A”-14
14
Sept. 1964
314.1 beginning
An: as 315.9-11
indicates, from “A”-14 on the rest of the movements of “A” all beginning with “an” (or “an‑“). In a lengthy 12 Dec. 1930
letter to EP, LZ indicates that he planned very early to move from “a” to “an”
in the second half of the poem (EP/LZ
80); see also Preface to “Thanks to the Dictionary” (CF 265).
315.15 paddle
satellite…: the satellite Ranger VII (315.30) was launched on 28 July 1964
and landed on the moon 31 July. Ranger VII had two large paddle-like solar
panels sticking out on either side, and its mission was to take closeup photos
of the moon particularly of Mare Nubium before impacting on the surface.
315.24 words
you / count…: aside from being the first “An” song (see 314.1), “A”-14 is
also the first movement that deploys a predominately word count line, as will
also be the case in “A” 18-19 and 21-23. However, LZ’s interest in this method
goes back at least to “Two Dedications” written in Feb. 1929, which he remarks
on in a note to the original version of “American Poetry 1920-1930” in The Symposium 2.1 (Jan. 1931): 64.
“A”-14 begins with a one-count line, gradually progresses to a two (pages
315-331) and then three count line through the remainder until concluding with
a rapid count down to two then one.
316.11 Hallel
ascents / degrees vintage: Hallel is Heb. meaning praise; designation for
the group of Psalms 113-118 that are recited during various Jewish holidays.
These are followed by the Songs of Degrees (also translated as Ascents), Psalms
120-134.
316.16 ear
race: < erase.
316.27 Aristippus: (c.435-356 B.C.) a follower of Socrates and founder of the
Cyrenaic school of thought teaching that the ultimate goal of human action is
pleasure. According to Diogenes Laertius in his Life of Aristippus: “He bore
with Dionysius when he spat on him, and to one who took him to task he replied,
‘If the fishermen let themselves be drenched with sea-water in order to catch a
gudgeon, ought I not to endure to be wetted with negus [wine punch] in order to
take a blenny [a fish]?’” From Lives of
Eminent Philosophers (II.67); trans R.D. Hicks.
317.10 Dark
heart…: refers to Joseph Conrad, Heart
of Darkness (1899); lines 317.13-24 are quoted from Marlowe’s account of
what Kurtz says when he is intercepted in his attempt to join the savage night
rituals: “I’ve been telling you what we said—repeating the phrases we
pronounced,—but what’s the good? They were common everyday words,—the familiar, vague sounds exchanged on every
waking day of life. But what of that? They had behind them, to my mind, the
terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in
nightmares. Soul! If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I am the man. And
I wasn’t arguing with a lunatic either.
Believe me or not, his intelligence was
perfectly clear—concentrated, it
is true, upon himself with horrible intensity, yet clear; and therein was my
only chance—barring, of course, the killing him there and then, which wasn’t so
good, on account of unavoidable noise. But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked
within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad.” See Gilonis,
“Dark Heart.”
317.29 ‘I /
saw it I…: through 318.18 splices together quotations from Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness and Henry James’
story, “The Tone of Time” (1903). When Marlowe visits Kurtz’s “Intended”: “I saw her and him in the same instant
of time—his death and her sorrow—I saw her sorrow in the very moment of
his death. Do you understand? I saw them together—I heard them together.” From James: “I
may not perhaps say that she was never
so sad as when she laughed, but it’s certain that she always laughed when she was sad.”
318.22 Throw
bottles / jeering at their funerals…: through 319.3 describes various
violent incidents in the African-American struggle for civil rights. In May
1963, dogs and water hoses were turned on civil rights protesters in
Birmingham, Alabama.
319.1 four
/ little girls / bombed: four African-American girls killed 15 Sept. 1963
when a church in Birmingham was dynamited by Ku Klux Klansmen.
319.3 ‘better
/ trust an / unbridled horse / than undigested / harangue’: from Diogenes
Laertius, Lives of the Eminent
Philosophers (V.39), a remark attributed to Theophrastus (d. 287 BC),
student and successor of Aristotle: “An unbridled horse ought to be trusted
sooner than a badly-arranged discourse” (trans. R.D. Hicks).
319.15 ‘Fly
which / way shall / I fly…: the long passage through 325.6 is taken
entirely from John Milton, Paradise Lost,
from which LZ splices together short phrases and words from throughout the
poem. Click here
for a catalog of the passages LZ uses. Further passages from Paradise Lost and other works of Milton
appear at 327.2-328.20.
320.19 Tsīyōn:
= Zion or Sion; Milton uses the latter form, for which LZ substitutes the Heb.
transliteration meaning originally a hill (CD).
324.8 Death
on / his pale / horse: from Revelation 6:8: “And I looked, and behold a
pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
And Power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with
sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”
325.7 As at
/ the scroll’s / first hanging…: through 326.31 refers
to a scroll sent to LZ by Cid Corman (1924-2004) that reproduced a poem by the
Japanese poet Ryokan (1758-1831) in the poet’s own famous free-style
calligraphy. See “(Ryokan’s scroll)” which includes LZ’s version of Ryokan’s
poem working from a literal translation sent to him by Corman: “the / first /
snow / out / off / where / blue / eyes / the / cherry / tree’s / petals” (CSP 203), whose images reappear in
“A”-14. See Corman, “Ryokan’s Scroll.” It is not difficult to discern the
suggestion of LZ’s initials in the running cursive style of the scroll.
325.22 ‘I only
/ see what / sounds—…: quoting a letter from Corman to LZ. Corman points
out that when Ryokan’s calligraphy was reproduced on the cover of I’s (pronounced eyes) by Trobar Press in
1963, it was printed upside down, even though LZ said he had specifically
marked which side was up when sent to the printer (Corman, “Ryokan’s Scroll”
286). A reproduction of the cover with the inverted calligraphy can be found in
Scroggins, “Louis Zukofsky” 295.
327.1 Good gout: gout in Fr. means taste; but also Milton (see below) suffered from
gout.
327.2 ‘Not
sedulous / to indite / not tilting / furniture: from John Milton, Paradise Lost IX.27-39 (Cf. 1.4.11: “Not
boiling to put pen to paper…”).
Since first this subject for heroic song
Pleas’d me, long choosing and beginning late,
Not sedulous by nature to indite
Wars, hitherto the only argument
Heroic deem’d, chief maistry to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabl’d knights
In battles feign’d—the better fortitude
Of patience and heroic martyrdom
Unsung; or to describe races and games,
Or tilting furniture, emblazon’d
shields,
Impreses quaint, caparisons and steeds,
Bases and tinsel trappings, gorgeous knights
At joust and tournament; then marshall’d feast
Serv’d up in hall with sewers and seneschals,
The skill of artifice or office mean:
327.9 did
not / insult only / preferred Truth / to King: from John Milton, Second Defense of the English People
(1654), written in Latin: “A book appeared soon after, which was ascribed to
the king [Eikon Basilike], and
contained the most invidious charges against the parliament. I was ordered to
answer it; and opposed the Iconoclast to his Icon. I did not insult over fallen majesty, as is pretended; I only preferred queen Truth to king Charles” (trans. Robert
Fellowes).
327.19 (had traveled) / after I…: from the
autobiographical section of Milton, Second
Defense of the English People describing his travels to Italy: “After I had spent a month in surveying
the curiosities of this city [Venice], and had
put on board a ship the books which I had collected in Italy, I proceeded
through Verona and Milan […].”
327.25 —Italian,
yes? / —No (dozing)…: apparent
reference to a trip the Zukofskys took to Europe in 1957.
327.30 ‘Retreated to / a pretty / box…: the
phrase “pretty box” is from The History
of Thomas Ellwood Written by Himself (1714), an important source of
biographical information on Milton’s later life. LZ’s likely source is the
“Life of John Milton” that prefaces R.C. Browne’s edition of the English Poems of John Milton (1870,
1929): “On the appearance of the Plague (1665), Ellwood found a temporary
retreat for him in a ‘pretty box’ ‘in Chalfont St. Giles.’ It was there that he
gave Ellwood the manuscript of Paradise Lost for his perusal and judgment. When
Ellwood returned the poem, and had ‘modestly but freely’ told it author how he
liked it, after some further discourse, he added pleasantly, ‘”Thou hast said
much here of Paradise Lost, what hast thou to say of Paradise Found?” Milton made
no answer, but sate some time in a muse, then brake off the discourse and fell
upon another subject’” (xxiv).
328.3 beyond:
myrtles—: from Milton, Paradise Lost
IX.625-629:
To whom the wily Adder, blithe and glad.
Empress, the way is ready, and not long;
Beyond a row of myrtles, on a flat,
Fast by a fountain, one small thicket past
Of blowing myrrh and balm:
328.4 love
was / not in / their eyes: from Milton, Paradise
Lost X.111-114:
Love was not in their looks, either
to God
Or to each other, but apparent guilt,
And shame, and perturbation, and despair,
Anger, and obstinacy, and hate, and guile.
328.7 past
who / can recall: from Milton, Paradise
Lost IX.926: “But past who can
recall, or done undoe?”
328.9 nothing
is / here—for / tears: from Milton, Samson
Agonistes, lines 1721-1724:
Nothing is here for tears, nothing
to wail
Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise, or blame,—nothing but well and fair,
And what may quiet us in a death so noble.
328.12 sense
variously / drawn…: from Milton, Preface to Paradise Lost, in which he rejects rhyme, arguing that “true
musical delight; […] consists onely in apt Numbers, fit quantity of Syllables,
and the sense variously drawn out from
one Verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings […].”
328.18 To open
/ eyes make / them taste’: from
Milton, Paradise Lost IX.866:
This tree is not, as we are told, a tree
Of danger tasted, nor to evil unknown
Opening the way, but of divine effect
To open eyes, and make them Gods who taste;
And hath been tasted such:
328.25 ‘nobody
not / a hut / standing…: through 329.21 somewhat altered from Joseph
Conrad, Heart of Darkness. Describing
the journey inland to the Central Station:
“No
use telling you much about that. Paths, paths, everywhere; a stamped-in network
of paths spreading over the empty land, through long grass, through burnt
grass, through thickets, down and up chilly ravines, up and down stony hills
ablaze with heat; and a solitude, a solitude, nobody, not a hut. The population had cleared out a long time ago.
Well, if a lot of mysterious niggers
armed with all kinds of fearful weapons suddenly took to traveling on the road between Deal and Gravesend, catching the yokels right and left to
carry heavy loads for them, I fancy
every farm and cottage thereabouts would get empty very soon. Only here the dwellings were gone too.
Still, I passed through several abandoned villages.” […]
“No, I don’t like work. I had
rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance
to find yourself. Your own reality—for yourself, not for others—what no other
man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it
really means.”
329.12 infra
dig: = beneath one’s dignity; from L. infra
dignitatem.
329.22 in- / nocere: L. root of innocent and innocence: in- privative + nocen(t-)s, present
participle of nocere, harm, hurt
(CD).
330.3 newspaper
strike: there was a long newspaper strike in NYC from 8 Dec. 1962 to 1
April 1963.
330.23 abi / gesunt abi: or abi gezunt,
Yiddish salutation: as long as you’re healthy.
330.28 Irish /
Boston factory / worker forr / Ted’s campaign…: this anecdote is from
Edward (Teddy) Kennedy’s first campaign for the Senate in 1962, when his
opponent attacked him for never having worked.
331.22 ‘speech
/ framed to / be heard…: well-known remark from the Notebooks of Gerald Manley Hopkins (1844-1889): “Poetry is speech
framed for contemplation of the mind by the way of hearing or speech framed to be heard for its own sake
and interest even over and above its interest of meaning. Some matter
and meaning is essential to it but only as an element necessary to support and
employ the shape which is contemplated for its own sake. (Poetry is in fact
speech only employed to carry the inscape of speech for the inscape’s sake—and
therefore the inscape must be dwelt on...).”
332.4 incunabula:
plural of incunabulum, a book printed before 1501; an artifact of an early
period [< L. incunabula, swadding clothes, cradle] (AHD). In “American Poetry
1920-1930,” LZ quotes Hart Crane’s line, “The incunabula of the divine
grotesque,” as an example of his “amorphous” quality (Prep+ 139).
332.8 horse-finch:
the chaffinch.
332.23 Port /
Authority: the New York Port Authority manages all transportation
facilities of NYC.
332.13 YAMASHITA
LINE:
333.7 Hokusai: (1760-1849), the best known of Japanese painters and print
makers.
333.18 B’s
Chomei: Basil Bunting’s “Chomei at Toyama” (1932), a free adaptation of the
“Record of the Ten-Foot-Square-Hut” by Kamo no Chomei (1153-1216); see
Bunting’s Collected Poems 63-72.
Early in the work, Chomei describes two fires he witnessed that devasted Kyoto.
333.25 curry-spun-dense:
< correspondence; this comes from EP in one of his rants to LZ in a 12 March
1936 letter (see EP/LZ 178).
333.27 Swift
had no / scholaress…: Jonathan Swift first met Esther Johnson (Stella) as a
tutor and thus she was his “scholaress”; she died in 1728 when Swift was 61 and
he lived 17 more years.
334.1 I’m
son of / a guileless presser: LZ’s father worked as a pants presser when he
immigrated to NYC.
334.3 Suffenuses:
Suffenus is a type of superficial poet; see Catullus, Carmina 22.
334.3 footprints / on the sands / of time…:
as LZ indicates at 334.11-12, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), “A
Psalm of Life”:
Lives of great men all remind us
We can live our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
334.27 he
plays…: presumably PZ, who is also “the child” at 335.10.
334.28 L’Enlèvement d’Europe—: operatic
work by Darius Milhaud (1892-1974).
334.29 Defoe
of / Europe’s jakes…: Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), published a verse satire, The True-Born Englishman (1701), in
which he defended King William III against the charge of being a foreigner and
includes the following lines (jakes is a latrine; see 355.30):
We have been Europe’s sink, the jakes where she
Voids all her offal outcast progeny.
335.4 kokoro: Japanese for heart or heart
of the matter. Also title of a novel by the major Japanese writer, Natsume
Soseki (1867-1916), English translation published in 1957.
335.5 recordari re + cor: the etymology of record
and recorder is from the L. recordari, call to mind, remember,
recollect, think over, meditate upon; from re-,
again, + cor(d-) heart = English heart: see cordial. Cf. accord, concord,
discord (CD).
335.13 he was
born: PZ born 22 Oct. 1943.
335.16 grandpa
died: Pinchos Zukofsky died 11 April 1950.
336.4 Melville’s
windy:
336.7 James’
/ persisting for all / he prefaced revisions: Henry James revised and
prefaced the famous New York edition of his selected works in 24 volumes
(1907-1909).
336.10 Twain’s
Jim with / integration behind him:
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn (1885); as McMorris suggests (13), this apparently allude
to the relationship of Jim and Huck on the raft where the racism that prevails
in the society on shore has been left behind.
336.12 Adams’ History…: Henry Adams’ History of the United States of America
during the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 9
volumes (1889-1891).
336.13 Hawthorne’s
/ a chair (grandfather’s)…: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), Grandfather’s Chair (1841) was one of
Hawthorne’s early works for children which treated colonial and Revolutionary
American history. LZ would use material from this volume in “A”-23.561.24-27;
see Rieke 210-213.
336.17 Irving
storaged the / storied sketch: Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book (1819-1820) includes his best-known stories.
336.18 Whittier—
/ wittier authority doily / its lo
well…: John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892). “lo well” < Lowell, presumably James Russell Lowell (1819-1891).
Both were considered major figures of the so-called Fireside Poets.
336.24 Song of Myself / 11 my Shih-king: this section of Whitman’s poem describes 28
young men bathing naked in the sea being watched by a woman who imagines
herself joining them. The Shih-king
is the Confucian Book of Songs (or
Odes), which was translated by EP as Shih-ching:
The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius (1954).
336.26 I was Kagekiyo: Kagekiyo is the title
character in a Noh play by Motokiyo translated by Fenollosa-Pound in 1914.
336.27 ‘That
thunders in / the Index’: from Shakespeare, Hamlet III.iv; Gertrude’s response to Hamlet’s harangue: “Ah me,
what act, / That roars so loud, and thunders in the index?” (qtd. Bottom 445).
337.3 No /
index was whole…: Bottom: on
Shakespeare does of course include an extensive index, in which the last
two entries are for CZ and LZ.
337.8 Job’s
Lo and / his strength—‘stones’?: see Job 6.12: [Job speaking] “Is my
strength the strength of stones? or is my flesh of brass?” and 40.15-17: [the
Lord speaking] “Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as
an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of
his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are
wrapped together.” See 350.28 where Job and index are again collocated; also 15.360.12 for Job
and stones.
337.16 Low
Library’s / Doric columns…: Low Memorial Library is the main library of
Columbia University, which LZ attended 1920-1924. Its design is based on both
the Pantheon in Rome and the Parthenon in Athens and has imposing classical columns
across the front.
337.25 the
dead / friend always the / other side of— / River…: probably WCW who lived
in Rutherford and was buried in nearby Lyndhurst, NJ just across the Hudson
River as one looks, for example, from the Columbia campus at Morningside
Heights. However, the Columbia associations might also hark back to Ricky
Chambers of “A”-3.
338.3 en canimus: LZ
translates this L. epigram immediately following as quoted in Terry 18. This
and the following Latin epigrams are from the historian of Eisenach, Bach’s
native town, Christian Paul Paullini in Annales
Isenacenses (1698). See 8.103.23.
338.5 claruit semper urbs / nostra musica: Terry does not offer
a translation of this, so the immediately following rendition is by LZ,
although more literal might be: our city always shines through music.
338.22 Bach’s
necrology from / half-wit aunt…: necrology here means an obituary and
refers to the Nekrolog (1754), an
obituary which is effectively the first life of Bach put together by his son,
Carl Philipp Emanuel, and his pupil, J.F. Agricola, and published a few years
after Bach’s death. One of Bach’s paternal aunts is described in Terry as
“half-witted” and the quoted remarks are from the sermon at her funeral in 1679:
“‘Our sister now with the Lord,’ said the preacher of her funeral sermon, ‘was
as simple as a child, knowing not her right hand from her left. Yet her
brothers are men of understanding and skill, respected, hearkened to in our
churches and schools, esteemed by all the community, men in whom the Master’s
work is glorified’” (13).
339.2 Yiddish
/ Prometheús Desmótes chanted: LZ
grew up in a Yiddish theater district and was taken to many classic dramas in
Yiddish by his older brother, as mentioned in his Autobiography 33 (see 8.38.25). Here, however, LZ simply gives the
transliterated Greek for the title of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Unbound.
339.4 Seb
Bach at 14 / mastered Phocylides’ “spurious” / Poíema Nouthetikón in / Greek…: Phocylides was a 6th century
B.C aphoristic Greek poet who survives only in a few fragments. In the Hellenic
period, a long didactic poem was passed off as the work of Phocylides, but its
author was Jewish or possibly Christian since it is clearly influenced by the
Pentateuch. LZ gives the Greek title and a translation, although the poem is
more frequently referred to as the “Poem of Admonition” or simply the
“Sentences of Pseudo-Phocylides.”
Because of its ethical import it became a popular school text in the
Reformation period. Terry mentions that this text was part of Bach’s schooling
by age 14, although not that he “mastered” it (28, 44), and LZ evidently has
looked up information on Phocylides elsewhere.
339.11 kaì tóde Phokulídeo: the “genuine”
Phocylides’ verses commonly opened with this Gk. phrase meaning literally “thus
also Phocylides….” Lines 339.14-25 are derived from the surviving fragments of
Phocylides. The following translations are from the Loeb Classical edition of Elegy and Iambus, ed. and trans. J.M.
Edmonds (1931).
339.14: Clifftown stands civil / above
mad Nineveh: “Thus also spake Phocylides—A little state living orderly in a
high place is stronger than a blockheaded Nineveh” (175). Nineveh was the
capital of the Assyrian Empire in the 8th century B.C and destroyed
in 612 B.C.
339.16: bread first then / virtue:
“Seek a living, and when thou hast a living, virtue” (177). This epigram can
also be found in Plato’s Republic
(407a): “Then you never heard of the saying of Phocylides, that as soon as a
man has a livelihood he should practice virtue?” (trans. Benjamin Jowett).
339.17: justice whole
/ virtue: “Righteousness containeth the sum of all virtues (arête)”
(181). This remark, which Edmonds notes is apparently proverbial and attributed
to Theognis, is also found in Aristotle’s Nicomachean
Ethics (1129b): “Justice
then in this sense is perfect Virtue, though with a qualification, namely that
it is displayed towards others. This is why Justice is often thought to be the
chief of the virtues, and more sublime ‘or than the evening or the morning
star’; and we have the proverb—In Justice is all Virtue found in sum” (trans.
H. Rackham).
339.18: Lerians evil / all, not Procles / he’s
Lerian: “Thus also spake Phocylides—The Lerians are bad men, not one bad
and another not, but all save Procles, and Procles is a Lerian” (173).
339.20: rich / and no delight / in word
or / action: “Thus also spake Phocylides—Of what advantage is high birth to
such as have no grace either in words or in counsel?” (175).
339.23: middleman lives: Phocylides
as quoted in Aristotle’s Politics
(1295b): “It is these which are securest in a state; neither are they
themselves covetous of other men’s goods like the poor, nor are others covetous
of theirs as poor men’s are of rich men’s; and they run no risks, because they
are neither the objects nor the authors of conspiracy. And this is why we may
approve the wish of Phocylides: ‘Much advantage is theirs who are midmost, and
midmost in a city would I be’” (179).
339.24: lady was dog, / bee, pig, horse—:
“Thus also spake Phocylides—The tribes of women come of these four, the bitch,
the bee, the savage-looking sow, and the long-maned mare; the mare’s daughter
sprightly, quick, gadabout, and very comely, the savage-looking sow’s neither
bad, belike, nor good, the bitch’s tetchy and ill-mannered; and the bee’s a
good huswife who knows her work—and ‘tis she, my friend, thou shouldst pray
thou mayst get thee in delectable wedlock” (173-175).
339.28 Maria
Barbara: Maria Barbara Bach was Bach’s second cousin and first wife,
married in 1707. Terry mentions that shortly before he married, Bach was asked
to explain the presence of a young woman singing with him while he practiced
the organ at his first musical post at Mühlhausen, who proved to be his future
wife.
340.8 Cythringen: as LZ indicates, a
lute-like instrument that purportedly Bach’s great great grandfather, Veit
Bach, liked to play (Terry 5).
340.10 a
Lämmerhirt…: Bach’s mother, Maria Elisabeth Lämmerhirt (1644-94); her surname
means lamb shepherd. Her father, Valentin Lämmerhirt (d.1673), was municipal
councilor of Erfurt (Terry 15).
340.18 (when a
kid / your old man / declaimed…: according to Redman, as a young boy LZ
would be asked by the neighborhood Italian children to recite a Yiddish version
of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Hiawatha” and be rewarded with pennies (609).
340.27 Christoph’s
clavier / pieces by moonlight: Johann Christoph Bach (1671-1721) was Bach’s
eldest brother who was chief organist at Ohrdruf and believed to have given
Bach his first keyboard lessons. Terry mentions an anecdote (recorded in the Nekrolog) that the precocious young Bach
demanded ever more challenging works that his brother felt he was not yet ready
for, so Bach secretly copied out over six months a volume of compositions owned
by his brother by moonlight, but supposedly once completed his brother found
out and took the copy from him (25).
341.4 his
discant voice / breaking fled into…: Bach’s first musical employment at age
15 was as a boy singer at a school in Lüneburg, but when his voice broke his
instrumental skill was such that he was able to remain at the school. Terry
describes young Bach as a “descantist” (45) and that as an instrumentalist he
began playing the violin and viola (341.10-11).
341.7 cantatas:
a vocal and instrumental piece composed of choruses, solos and recitatives
(AHD); Bach composed numerous examples; see 2.8.7.
341.8 Passions:
musical setting of the biblical story of Christ’s death, usually to be sung in
churches during the Easter period.
341.30 Capriccio / sopra la lontananza / del suo
fratello / dilettissimo:
early Bach composition from 1704; the title means: Capriccio on the Departure
of His Most Beloved Brother and was written for Bach’s elder brother Johann
Jakob (1682-1722) (Terry 31).
342.6 zippelfagottist: in 1705 Bach was
involved in an argument that ended up in court because he referred to a
musician as a “zippel fagottist.” Terry does not venture a translation
(65-66) and Bach scholars are not entirely in agreement as to the meaning of zippel,
which is Ger. vernacular and, according to Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's Deutsches
Wörterbuch, volume 15, means "a large, awkward, sometimes dumb person
[...]." Therefore, zippelfagottist is a dumb or simply bad bassoonist
(M. Waas).
342.10 slipped
/ out of the / organ gallery…: early in his career when employed at
Arnstadt, Bach was criticized by his superior who complained among other things
that Bach “had slipped out of the organ gallery to visit the ‘Schwartzberger
Hof,’ or another beer-house, during the preceding Sunday’s sermon, and was
admonished to behave better in future under penalty of forfeiting his emolument
as Prefect” (Terry 71).
342.16 Societät
/ der Musicalischen Wissenschaften: founded by his student Lorenz Christoph
Mizler, Bach joined the Society for Musical Sciences in 1747, among whom he
circulated copies of the Goldberg
Variations. The various details LZ mentions, such as Mizler dedicating his
thesis to Bach, “among others,” and free postage for the Society to circulate
manuscripts are mentioned by Terry (254-255).
342.29 hid
calculus of / Leibniz: Mizler quotes a remark by Gottfried Leibniz, who he
knew personally, in Musikalische
Bibliothek, the publication of the Society for Musical Sciences (see
342.16): “Musica est exercitium
arithmeticae occultum nescientis se numerare animi” (Music is the hidden
arithmetical exercise of a mind unconscious that it is calculating). LZ renders
this remark in Bottom: “Leibnitz […]
continued with the thought of music as ‘number, a felt relation of counting’”
(426). Cf. remark in “For Wallace Stevens”: “I hope everybody would read me
that same way—that is, […] just read the words. This activity is a kind of
mathematics but more sensuous, and it has little to do with learning, it has
something to do with structure” (Prep+
24).
343.2 Voltaire’s
Jacques: in Voltaire's Candide (1759), Jacques the Anabaptist is a
humane benefactor of Candide and Pangloss who drowns in the Bay of Lisbon
trying to save someone else. The context here would seem to suggest that the
more appropriate reference would be to Pangloss, who parrots Leibniz's claim
that "this is the best of all possible worlds," and who suffers from
syphilis.
343.4 Thirty
Years’ War…: religious conflicts involving much of Europe from 1618-1648.
Bach was born 1685. LZ is apparently referring to the development and
wide-spread use of the basso continuo in the Baroque period.
343.10 That
Was The / Week That Was: topical satirical TV program that originated in
Britain, but an American edition ran from 1963-1965.
343.18 Eyquem
(“de” Montaigne): Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592), the French
Renaissance essayist.
344.4 sieur:
Fr. = seigneur; sir, title of respect.
344.5 ‘Never
Middling Poets / over your publisher’s / door…: from Montaigne, “Of
Presumption”: “A man
may play the fool in everything else, but not in poetry; Mediocribus esse poetis / Non dii, non
hominess, non concessere columnae (But neither gods,
nor men, nor booksellers / Have stood for poets being mediocre—from Horace’s Ars Poetica). I would to God this sentence was written over
the doors of all our printers, to forbid the entrance of so many rhymesters! Verum / Nihil securius est malo poet
(None is more certain of himself / Than a bad poet—Martial)” (trans. Charles
Cotton).
344.13 ‘Reading’s
profitable / pleasure…: through 344.29 adapts phrases from Montaigne:
344.13-14: ‘Reading’s profitable pleasure: from
“Of Books”: “As to what concerns my other reading, that mixes a little more
profit with the pleasure, and whence I learn how to marshal my opinions and
conditions, the books that serve me to this purpose are Plutarch, since he has
been translated into French, and Seneca.”
344.15-19: attracts judgment to / task…: from “Of
Three Kinds of Society”: “Meditation is a powerful and full study to such as
can effectually taste and employ themselves; I had rather fashion my soul than
furnish it. There is no employment, either more weak or more strong, than that
of entertaining a man's own thoughts, according as the soul is; the greatest
men make it their whole business, ‘Quibus
vivere est cogitare’ (To whom to live is to think—Cicero) […] The principal
use of reading to me is, that by various objects it rouses my reason, and
employs my judgment, not my memory.”
344.19-23:
song / does not work / my judgment…:
from “Of Presumption” (immediately preceding quotation at 344.5): “For in truth, as to the effects of the mind,
there is no part of me, be it what it will, with which I am satisfied; and the
approbation of others makes me not think the better of myself. My judgment is
tender and nice, especially in things that concern myself; I ever repudiate
myself, and feel myself float and waver by reason of my weakness. I have
nothing of my own that satisfies my judgment. My sight is clear and regular
enough, but, at working, it is apt to dazzle; as I most manifestly find in
poetry: I love it infinitely, and am able to give a tolerable judgment of other
men's works; but, in good earnest, when I apply myself to it, I play the child,
and am not able to endure myself.”
344.23-29: if not / the weight of / what I write…: from “Of Vanity”: “I would
have my matter distinguish itself; it sufficiently shows where it changes,
where it concludes, where it begins, and where it rejoins, without interlacing
it with words of connection introduced for the relief of weak or negligent
ears, and without explaining myself. Who is he that had not rather not be read
at all, than after a drowsy or cursory manner? ‘Nihil est tam utile, quod in transitu prosit’ (Nothing is so useful
that it can be profitable when taken in passing—Seneca). If to take a book in
hand were to take it in head; to look upon it were to consider it; and to run
it slightly over were to make it a man's own, I were then to blame to make
myself out so ignorant as I say I am. Seeing I cannot fix the attention of my
reader by the weight of what I write, manco male, I am much mistaken if I
should chance to do it by my intricacies. ‘Nay, but he will afterward repent
that he ever perplexed himself about it.’ 'Tis very true, but he will yet be
there perplexed. And, besides, there are some humors in which intelligence
produces disdain; who will think better of me for not understanding what I say,
and will conclude the depth of my sense by its obscurity; which, to speak in
good sooth, I mortally hate; and would avoid it if I could” (trans. Charles
Cotton).
345.2 Bill:
WCW.
345.7 Prorsus
/ Latin goddess of / births head first / whence prose – news?: the
etymology of “prose” is from L. prosa,
short for prosa oratio,
straightforward or direct speech (i.e. without transpositions or ornamental
variations as in verse): prosa, fem.
of prosus, contraction of prorsus, straightforward, direct,
contraction of proversus, from pro, forth, + versus, turned, past participle of vertere, to turn, a turning, a line, verse (CD). It is perhaps
relevant here that WCW (see 345.2) was a pediatrician.
345.12 art of
sinking: Peri Bathous: or, The Art of Sinking in Poetry (1727), a mock Ars Poetica based on
Longinus’ treatise on the sublime that was part of the Martinus Scriblerus
project, believed to be primarily by Alexander Pope.
345.13 ‘The
Republic Plato / sought the course / of human events’ / Vico…: Giambattista
Vico (1699-1744) more or less says this in his Conclusion to The New Science, although the wording
here seems likely taken from Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) in History of Europe in the Nineteenth Century
(1963): “[…] But [the advance of] the end of the eighteenth century and the
beginning of the nineteenth had disentangled the problem [of liberty] more
clearly and almost conclusively, because it had criticized the opposition—acute
in eighteenth-century rationalism and the French Revolution—between reason and
history, in which history had been degraded and condemned by the light of
reason. [...] It had made one the rationality and the reality of the new idea
of history, rediscovering the saying of the philosopher Giovanni Battista Vico that the republic sought for by Plato was nothing but the course of human events. [...] No
longer did history appear [to have been] directed by alien forces. Now it was
seen to be the work and activity of the [human] spirit, and […] since spirit is
liberty, [as] the work of liberty.”
345.16 Bickerstaff
/ ‘Socrates the wisest / of uninspired mortals’: from Jonathan Swift,
“Predictions for the Year 1708,” using the voice of Swift’s personae Isaac
Bickerstaff: “[astrology] hath been in all ages defended by many learned men,
and among the rest by Socrates
himself, whom I look upon as undoubtedly the
wisest of uninspired mortals […].”
345.19 Struldbruggs:
in Book III of Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels,
Gulliver hears about the Struldbruggs from Luggnagg, who are immortal but
nonetheless grow old, feeble and forgetful.
345.19 Hamilton’s
Manufactures: Alexander
Hamilton’s “Report on the Subject of Manufactures” (1791) argued for the
advantages of developing manufacturing and free trade.
345.22 Each
disenchanted Nazi / acted Polonius or / Wiggle & Failum: Beyers offers
the following gloss: “The Nazi war crimes trials were front-page headlines in
this period […]. The allusion to the notorious blowhard from Hamlet would seem to suggest banal,
self-interested subterfuge, while the fictitious firm of Wiggle & Failum
expresses both the method and general success of these attempts.”
345.25 with
noble prize / address I would / be Iago too: Beyers points out that in
1964, when “A”-14 was written, “Jean-Paul Sartre refused the Nobel Prize for
literature, partly because, he said, though he did not find the award a
‘bourgeois prize,’ he believed that ‘certain rightist circles’ would give his
acceptance of the award a ‘bourgeois interpretation.’” Iago is the villainous
character in Shakespeare’s Othello.
346.3 long
hot summer: phrase used to refer to race riots throughout the mid-1960s,
particularly the summer of 1967 when there were major riots in Detroit and
Newark.
346.9 mine
tipples, dynamite’s / in Hazard, Kentucky / which speaks Chaucer: according the Guy Davenport, LZ gave a reading at a community
college in Hazard in 1963 (see Odlin, “Brief Notes” 100-101). Beyers points out
that Hazard was in the depressed coal mining country of Eastern Kentucky, thus
the reference to tipple, a tip-car for carrying coal out of the mines, and the
dynamite used in the mining, which relates to the name Hazard; also puns on
tipple meaning strong drink and dynamite as slang for bootleg liquor.
346.13 Academician
Lavrentyev: Mikhail Lavrentyev (1900-1980), Russian physicist and
mathematician, important member of the USSR Academy of Sciences.
346.22 Gagarin
(Wild Duck): Yuri Gagarin (1936-1968), Soviet cosmonaut who became first
man in space on 12 April 1961. The quoted lines 346.23-347.2 are Gagarin’s
reported remarks on his flight. Gagarin means wild duck in Russian.
347.4 two
astronauts:
347.7 ‘Because
/ and not without / reason our poet / said…:
347.29 rhomb:
shaped like an equilateral parallelogram.
347.30 sensitif / enharmonics flyspeck / random
crescendo their / aleatory: sensitive = Fr. sensory, sentient, over-sensitive. Enharmonic = in
music, tones that are identical in pitch but are written differently according
to the key in which they occur; what LZ appears to have in mind here is the
idea of an enharmonic scale which essentially means there are more notes or
tones distinguished between the usual notes of the scale (see LZ’s remarks on
enharmonic notes and microtonic music in Bottom
35). These lines obliquely refer to an anecdote recounted in Little, in which the adolescent Little
(PZ) shows his music teacher Betur (Ivan Galamian) an experimental music score,
which in the notes to the novel PZ identifies as by John Cage: “After nearly
six years of Betur it was the teacher noticeably grown old who always seemed to
run off while Little with apparent loyalty pursued him, unexpectedly from time
to time with a new ‘chance’ score of dots, dashes and carets that bypassed
note, line and intensity to the discretion of the performer. About which, Betur
would say, ‘This I moss leave to you,
we have still Beethoven concerto to do. As for former—whether in Tabriz where I
wass born, or Hamadan where I stud’ed, or Mrs Betur maybe tell you in Jawjaw—would be difficult to play when’s
hot becus summer flies change composer’s score’” (CSF 160-161).
348.7 matzoh:
or matzo, a brittle, flat piece of unleavened bread, eaten especially during
Passover (AHD).
348.11 Paul H:
possibly Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) Jewish German composer and theorist, who
emigrated to the U.S. and taught for many years at Yale. He wrote important
works of theory and pedagogy, which LZ apparently alludes to in a 21 June 1951
letter to WCW where he encourages the latter to write a work on poetics that
might do what Hindemith and Schoenberg did for music (WCW/LZ 441).
348.16 Fly
epistemologists:
348.18 Dios…:
349.2 Jefferson
dined alone: in 1962 JFK invited a large group of Nobel Prize winners to
the White House and remarked: “I think this is the most
extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been
gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas
Jefferson dined alone.”
349.4 lower
limit body / upper limit dance…: Cf. 12.138.7-8.
349.11 mathémata / swank for things / learned: the derivation of
“mathematical” is from Gk. mathema, a
lesson, a thing learned, learning, science; in the plural mathemata, the sciences, esp. mathematics (CD). In Bottom, LZ mentions that in Greek
mathematics “meant a disposition to learn” (75).
349.13 (“like”
caged / “silence” which pulses): reference to John Cage’s 1952 work 4’33”, in which a performer sits at a
piano for the designated time and allows the ambient sounds to make up the
composition or performance; see 347.30.
349.17 Gracie Allen’s dead: American comedian,
best known for teaming with George Burns, died 27 August 1964; see 12.206.12.
349.18 Button up your / overcoat: a classic late 1920s popular tune first sung by Helen
Kane: “Button up your overcoat, / When the wind is free, / Take good care of
yourself, / You belong to me!” On Kane also see note
to “Madison, Wis., remembering the bloom of Monticello.”
349.28 A Test: LZ’s A Test of Poetry (1948).
349.30 Bach’s
/ one unposthumous: LZ consoles
himself on his own lack of recognition with the fact that few of Bach’s works
were published during his lifetime and he was largely forgotten for a century
after his death.
350.5 Old
man looking / for some one / to endear (Moon
/ Compasses)…: Robert Frost (1874-1963), whose short
poem “Moon Compasses” (350.7-8) ends with the line, “So love will take beneath
the hands a face,” which evidently strikes LZ as a “premonition” of the death
of JFK, “bonny prince / beheaded” (350.9-10; see 15.360.40), and the image of Jackie taking his
face between her hands.
350.10 ‘poetry’s
of / the grief, politics / of the grievances’: slightly altered proverbial
remark by Frost.
350.28 Job’s,
for which / the pious have / been blamed, restoration…: at the end of the
Book of Job, all that Job has lost is restored two-fold and the Lord reprimands
“the pious,” that is, the three friends who berate Job for his lack of
submissiveness before the Lord.
351.10 —that I so / carefully have dress’d…:
quotations in italics through 352.16 from Shakespeare, mostly on horses:
Richard
II V.v (qtd. Bottom 71):
Groom: […] When Bolingbroke rode
on roan Barbary—
That horse that thou so often hast bestrid,
That horse that I so carefully have
dress’d!
King Richard: Rode he on Barbary?
Tell me, gentle friend,
How went he under him?
Groom: So proudly as if he disdain’d
the ground.
King Richard: So proud that
Bolingbroke was on his back!
That jade hath eat bread from my royal hand;
This hand hath made him proud with clapping him.
Would he not stumble? Would he not
fall down,
Since pride must have a fall, and break the neck
Of that proud man that did usurp his back?
Forgiveness, horse! Why do I rail on
thee,
Since thou, created to be aw’d by man,
Wast born to bear? I was not made a
horse;
And yet I bear a burden like an ass,
Spurr’d, gall’d, and tir’d, by jauncing Bolingbroke.
Anthony
and Cleopatra IV.14 (qtd. Bottom
136, 318):
Mark Anthony: That which is now a
horse, even with a thought
The rack dislimes, and makes it indistinct,
As water is in water.
Henry
IV, Part 1 I.iv (qtd. Bottom
268):
Talbot: Your hearts I’ll stamp
out with my horse’s heels,
And make a quagmire of your mingled brains.
II.iv (qtd. Bottom 270):
Warwick: Between two horses, which doth bear him best;
Venus
and Adonis l. 287 (qtd. Bottom
278):
He sees his love, and nothing else
he sees,
For nothing else with his proud sight agrees.
King
Lear II.iv (qtd. Bottom 311):
Fool: Cry to it, nuncle, as the
cockney did to the eels when she put ‘em I’ the paste alive; she knapped ’em o’
the coxcombs with a stick, and cried “Down, wantons, down!” ‘T was her brother
that, in pure kindness to his horse,
buttered his hay.
Macbeth
II.iv (qtd. Bottom 313):
Ross: And Duncan’s horses—a thing
most strange and certain—
Beauteous and swift, the minions of their race,
Turn’d wild in nature, broke their
stalls, flung out,
Contending ’gainst obedience, as they would make
War with mankind.
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream III.i (qtd. Bottom
388):
Flute: 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 would
never tire,
I’ll meet thee, Pyramus, at Ninny’s tomb.
Merchant
of Venice V.i (qtd. Bottom
415):
Lorenzo: The reason is, your
spirits are attentive:
For do but note a wild and wanton herd,
Or race of youthful and unhandled colts,
Fetching mad bounds, bellowing and neighing loud,
Which is the hot condition of their blood;
If they but hear perchance a trumpet sound,
Or any air of music touch their ears,
You shall perceive them make a mutual stand,
Their savage eyes turn’d to a modest gaze
By the sweet power of music: therefore the poet
Did feign that Orpheus drew trees, stones and floods;
Since nought so stockish, hard and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
Pericles
II.i (qtd. Bottom 431):
Pericles: Believe
it, I will.
By your furtherance I am cloth’d in steel;
And spite of all the rapture of the sea,
This jewel holds his biding on my arm:
Unto thy value will I mount myself
Upon a courser, whose delightful steps
Shall make the gazer joy to see him tread.
Only, my friend, I yet am unprovided
Of a pair of bases.
King
Henry VIII V.v (see 12.254.17; qtd. Bottom
341, 386):
Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honour and the greatness of his name
Shall be, and make new nations: he shall flourish,
And, like a mountain cedar, reach his branches
To all the plains about him: our
children's children
Shall see this, and bless heaven.
352.18 A
Vermeer blown / up into a / mural: in 1964 the Zukofskys moved into the
12th floor of a newly built apartment building called the Vermeer Apartments at
77 Seventh Avenue on the corner of West 15th Street, Manhattan.
There was an over-sized reproduction of a Vermeer painting in the lobby.
352.24 Pitman:
Sir Isaac Pitman (1813-1897), British inventor of phonographic shorthand; see
index.
352.24 Ez:
EP.
353.7 Holy
Thursday (coincidence) / April 11, 1963 / Pacem
in Terris…: anniversary of the death of LZ’s father, Pinchos Zukofsky,
in 1950. However this date and the L. phrase, meaning Peace on Earth, actually
refer to an Encyclical Letter of Pope John XXIII on Establishing Universal
Peace in Truth, Justice, Charity and Liberty. The long salutation ends: “and to
All Men of Good Will.”
353.15 if Iván
jokes…:
354.4 Schönberg
seems / lately to plait / song near Mozart:
354.12 The
voice of / Episcopal goldwasser Polyuria: polyuria is an excessive passage
of urine (AHD); goldwasser Ger. gold
water < Barry Goldwater (1909-1998), conservative American politician who
ran as the Republican presidential candidate in 1964 against Lyndon B. Johnson;
see note at 15.365.6.
354.14 “to
strip the / amour off the enemy: probably alludes to Homer, Iliad Book VII, in which Ajax is
described as stripping the armor off the Trojans he kills.
354.16 Lucretius
re- / wombs…: through 354.29 paraphrases from Book V of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura.
355.10 an
escaped cat / ran down three / flights of stairs…: according to CZ, this is
an incident from LZ’s childhood; see Terrell, “Eccentric Profile” 36-37.
355.28 Poitiers:
medieval town in central France, which the Zukofskys visited during their 1958
European trip; see CSP 172.
355.30 jakes:
latrine; see 335.1.
355.30 my
“Cats”…: LZ’s homophonic renditions of Catullus, on which he worked with CZ
from 1958-1969. McMorris (17) references the mention of “chaste” at 356.1 to
LZ’s translation of Catullus, Carmina
16: “But the Pious poet / is chaste…” (CSP
253). Cf. 356.1-7 to LZ’s 1962 statement, “Translating Catullus”: “This version
of Catullus aims at the rendition of his sound. By reading his lips, that is
while pronouncing the Latin words, the translation—as his lips shape—tries to
breathe with him” (Prep+ 225). The
lines “to sharp them / and flat them” refer to the process and problem of
translating Catullus’ quantitative verse into accentual English.
356.8 eyes
of Egyptian / deity…:
356.12 Lunaria annua honesty: honesty is the name of several plants, especially of a small
cruciferous plant, Lunaria annua (L. biennis): so called from the
transparency of its dissepiments (CD). Cruciferae
includes mustard; see 356.15 (Leggott 119). See Leggot (136-140) for detailed
consideration of “honesty” in “A”.
356.14 Good Master / Mustardseed I desire / you
more acquaintance: from Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream III.i; see 12.134.15 and qtd. Bottom 371.
356.20 broken
homonyms: McMorris points out (17) that this alludes to LZ’s homophonic
translation method in his rendering of Catullus.
356.22 Sir Horse:
357.1 dulce mihist / kiss me last—: last
two words of Catullus, Carmina 68a.
LZ gives his “Cats” translation; more literal would be “sweet to me.” LZ uses
the Loeb Classical Library text here, whereas most current editions give the
text as: dulce mihi est.
357.3 pietate mea— / my piety may: last
two words of Catullus, Carmina 76
with LZ’s translation.
357.5 Mr.
Dooley…: created by Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936), Mr. Dooley was a
working class Chicago saloon keeper who satirically comments on politics and
government policy of the day. The following quotation is a sample of his
dialect commentary from “A Little Essay on Books” in Observations by Mr. Dooley (1902). LZ refers to Mr. Dooley in Anew 14 (CSP 85).
357.20 Fulton
/ street market of / fish: fish market on the East River of Manhattan.
357.26 The
Book / Of the Dead…: The [Egyptian]
Book of the Dead in the edition of E.A. Wallis Budge (1895), which includes
facsimile of hieroglyphic texts with translations and extensive commentary. As
Odlin (552) points out, the quoted text at 357.30-358.2 is, more or less, from
Budge’s introduction: “The
Theban version, which was much used in Upper Egypt from the XVIIIth to the XXth
dynasty, was commonly written on papyri in the hieroglyphic character. The text
is written in black ink in perpendicular rows of hieroglyphics, which are
separated from each other by black lines; the titles of the chapters or
sections, and certain parts of the chapters and the rubrics belonging thereto,
are written in red ink. A steady development in the illumination of the vignettes is
observable in the papyri of this period. At the beginning of the XVIIIth
dynasty the vignettes are in black outline, but we see from the papyrus of
Hunefer (Brit. Mus. No. 9901), who was an overseer of cattle of Seti I, king of
Egypt about B.C. 1370, that the vignettes are painted in reds, greens, yellows,
white, and other colours, and that the whole of the text and vignettes are
enclosed in a red and yellow border.”
358.2 Pert- / em-hru (pronounced / it how?)…: from Budge’s introduction (see
previous): “The common name for the Book
of the Dead in the Theban period, and probably also before this date, is pert
em hru, which words have been variously translated ‘manifested in the
light,’ ‘coming forth from the day,’ ‘coming forth by day,’ ‘la manifestation
au jour,’ ‘la manifestation à la lumière,’ ‘[Kapitel von] der Erscheinung im
Lichte,’ ‘Erscheinen am Tage,’ ‘[Caput] egrediendi in lucem,’ etc. This
name, however, had probably a meaning for the Egyptians which has not yet been
rendered in a modern language, and one important idea in connection with the
whole work is expressed by another title which calls it ‘the chapter of making
strong (or perfect) the Khu [spirit or soul of the dead].’” Odlin notes (553) that
either LZ or the printer misspelled “Khu,” although perhaps there is an echo of
LZ’s “Hi, Kuh” poem from I’s (pronounced eyes) (1963).
358.19 adz /
(sail?)– / bird–…: as Odlin shows (553-554), this concluding catalogue is
LZ’s speculative translation of hieroglyphs found in Budge. The parenthetical
entries are secondary guesses of the immediately preceding.
358.23 (cruse?):
an earthen pot or bottle for liquids.
