“A”-5

9 Sept. 1929, rev. 28 July 1942

17.11    Faust: the title character of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s (1749-1832) major work, a figure of insatiable desire for knowledge.

17.12    alias MacFadden: Bernarr Macfadden (1868-1955), best-known as a flamboyant health crusader—bodybuilding, nutrition, free sexuality—Macfadden became enormously wealthy as a magazine publisher, initially of those promoting physical culture and then moving into various low-brow genres: e.g. true confessions, detective and romance stories. At about the time “A”-5 was written, Macfadden also started the sensationalist tabloid, New York Graphic, as well as owning several major buildings in NYC.

17.13    He-er vent Hel-ee-na: Helena of Troy appears significantly in the Second Part of Goethe’s Faust.

17.19    The courses we tide from: see 4.15.11. Cf. Shakespeare, Julius Caesar IV.3.218-221:

Brutus: There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

18.4      words Matthew weeps: the Gospel according to St. Matthew, the basis of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion (see 1.1.2)

18.5      claivicembalo: harpsichord; see 4.13.19.

18.6      Chorale: Ger. short for choral song (Choralgesang), a type of traditional German metrical hymn-tune for congregational use, frequently made use of by Bach; also can simply mean a chorus or choir.

18.7      O love untold…: probably from a hymn.

18.12    trefoil: plants having compound trifoliate leaves; something having the appearance of a trifoliate leaf.

18.13    Purple clover: also red or sweet clover (Trifolium pretense), also called trefoil.

18.14    She: LZ’s mother, Chana Pruss Zukofsky, died 29 Jan. 1927; see 6.38.25 (Ahearn 66). According to Leggott this was also the date LZ believed to be his birthday, until he more closely read his birth certificate some years later (116, 391); in the play, Arise, arise, the Mother dies on the same day as the Son’s birthday.

18.17    Speech bewailing a Wall: cf. Wailing Wall, the only surviving structure of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem.

19.2      Wrigleys: see 2.8.10.

19.7      laundered conception / of the B.V.D.: B.V.D. = male underwear; a brand name standing for the company founders—Bradley, Voorhees and Day—but has come to have a more generic meaning. LZ, however, is playing here with BVM (Blessed Virgin Mary; see 6.21.4) and the immaculate conception (Odlin 551). E.E. Cummings mentions both Wrigleys and B.V.D. in “Poem, or Beauty Hurts Mr. Vinal,” from is 5 (1926), the Cummings volume that LZ most admired.

19.11    the Jews eating unleavened bread: the Feast of Unleavened Bread is part of Passover commemorating the Jews’ exodus from Egypt.

19.20    forehead / tormented red: at this point in the original publication of “A”-5 in An “Objectivists” Anthology (1932), LZ explicitly refers to Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) and quotes the phrase, “plein de rouges tourmentes,” from “Les Chercheuses de Poux” (The Lice Seekers), whose first two lines are: “Quand le front de l’enfant, plien de rouges tourmentes, / Implore l’essaim blanc des rêves indistincts” (When, forehead full of torments hot and red, / The child invokes white clouds of hazy dreams….; trans. T. Sturge Moore).