Bottom: on Shakespeare (1963)

Commentary

Bernstein, Charles. “Words and Pictures.” Sagetrieb 2.1 (Spring 1983): 9-34. Rpt. Content’s Dream: Essays 1975-1984. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon, 1986. 114-161.

Comens, Bruce. Apocalypse and After: Modern Strategy and Postmodern Tactics in Pound, Williams, and Zukofsky, U of Alabama P, 1995. 158-174.

Cordes, Jocelyn. “Love’s Labor: Reading Zukofsky’s Bottom: on Shakespeare.” Sagetrieb 14.3 (Winter 1995): 77-88.

Hatlen, Burton. “Zukofsky, Wittgenstein, and the Poetics of Absence.” Sagetrieb 1.1 (Spring 1982): 74-82.

Hunt, Erica. “Beginning at ‘Bottom.’” Poetics Journal 3 (May 1983): 63-66.

Malanga, Gerald. “Some Thoughts on Bottom and After I’s.” Poetry 107.1 (Oct. 1965): 60-64.

Melnick, David. “The ‘Ought’ Of Seeing: Zukofsky’s Bottom.” MAPS 5 (1973): 55-65.

Perelman, Bob. “Foreword” to Bottom: on Shakespeare. Wesleyan UP, 2002. vii-xiii.

Scroggins, Mark. Louis Zukofsky and the Poetry of Knowledge. Tuscaloosa: U of Alabama P, 1998. 68-94.

___. “Zukofsky’s Bottom: on Shakespeare: Objectivist Poetics and Critical Prosody.” West Coast Line 27.3 (Fall 1993): 17-36.

According to Mark Scroggins, the origins of Bottom go back to courses LZ taught during the summer of 1947 at Colgate University on Renaissance Literature and Shakespeare. At that time he began what he originally conceived of as an essay on Shakespeare, but in the end he worked more or less continually on the project until 1960. Dates on manuscripts as follows (from Booth 190-191):

Preface – Summer 1947 (Colgate Univ.) / Sept. 8/47

Part I – 15 Feb. 48       

Part Two, Section 1 – 1 Jan. 54

Complete work finished 8 May 1960 (LZ notes that “Pericles” section was written last)

However, at the page proofs stage, dated 1 April 1963 by LZ, he added to the selection of quotations from his own poetry that concludes “Continents” some excerpts from the Catullus translations he worked on with CZ during the period 1961-1963; the inserted Catullus quotations are those that follow “My nose feels better in the air” on page 265-266 of Bottom (Booth 191-192).

The Preface and Part One were published in New Directions 14 in 1953, Part Two in four installments in Black Mountain Review and Origin (1956-1961) and two sections of Part Three in Poetry (1960). Various brief selections or snippets appeared in other small publications, sometimes selected by editors (see below for further details). The complete text was published by Ark Press at the University of Texas in 1963, as a deluxe boxed edition in two volumes, the latter being CZ’s musical setting to Shakespeare’s Pericles. CZ’s Pericles began as a separate project (LZ mentions it in “A”-12.197.34 & 12.257.23), but eventually LZ conceived of them as companion works.

The two reprints of Bottom exactly reproduce Volume 1 of the original Ark Press edition from the table of contents through the index, except that the 1987 University of California Press edition notes that it “incorporates corrections that Louis Zukofsky noted in his own handwriting on the flyleaf and first pages of his personal copy of this book [the Ark Press edition]” (6). However, for some reason the 2002 Wesleyan University Press edition of both volumes reproduces the Ark Press edition without these corrections. The front apparatus of all three editions are somewhat different from each other, and in the case of the Wesleyan UP edition involves some repagination. Strangely a significant note of thanks on the copyright page of the Ark Press edition disappeared from both reprints:

The author takes this occasion to thank

Longview Foundation for its award to “Ember Eyes”

which appeared in Poetry, December 1960,

and

Mark Van Doren for his gift of

a facsimile volume of the original First Quartos of Shakespeare’s Poems and Pericles,

inscribed 10/7/47.

These facsimiles figure prominately in some of LZ’s discussion of textual issues in Bottom, and undoubtedly refer to 1905 editions by Sidney Lee, who is also mentioned several times. Van Doren (1894-1972) was one of LZ’s professors at Columbia and closely involved with student literary publications; he also published Shakespeare (1939), a standard work on the subject.

The following is a chronological list of journal publications of segments from Bottom with precise indications of the excerpts:

1953     Preface and Part I. New Directions 14: 288-307.

1955            “Shakespeare’s Theme.” The Pound Newsletter 8 (Oct.): 18 [from “Shakespeare’s theme” to “Nine, XVII, XVIII, XXX” (84)].

1956     from Bottom: on Shakespeare Part Two. Black Mountain Review 6 (Spring): 119-155 [Section 1 (“Music’s master”) and Section 2 to “…dead love birds, ‘Love hath reason’” (33-49); plus CZ’s “Gower Chorus” from Act 1 of Pericles, volume 2 of Bottom (10-12)].

1957     Bottom: on Shakespeare Part Two. Black Mountain Review 7 (Autumn): 95-133 [from “The object is simple (Tractatus)” to “…wonder of looking” (49-67)].

1960     “All eyes!” (from Bottom: on Shakespeare). Folio 25.2 (Spring): 7-13 [?].
From Bottom: on Shakespeare. Poetry 97.3 (Dec.): 141-152 [Part Three: “Ember eves” and “Z”].

1961     from Bottom: on Shakespeare. Origin 1, second series (April): 48-62 [Part Two: from “Magnanimity is by nature difficult” to “a flower that might come to think and like it” (67-77)].

            from Bottom: on Shakespeare. Origin 2, second series (July): 34-62 [Part Two: from “As for the anticipatory Freudian flight of divided soul” to “…trusting to see an alphabet of subjects” (77-94)].
“Old Testment’s Odyssey” (from Bottom: on Shakespeare). Damascus Road 1: 23-24 [from Part Three].

1964            “Bottom: on Shakespeare and A Mosaic.” Agenda 3.6 (Dec.): 29-35 [for this special LZ issue of Agenda, the editor, Charles Tomlinson, collaged short quotations from Bottom with those from other writers such as Robert Duncan and Marshall McLuhan].

1965     “On Basil Bunting: from Bottom: On Shakespeare page 163.” King Ida’s Watch Chain: A Moving Anthology: Link One: Basil Bunting issue [from “’I shall end up by hating the Western World’” to “…the quantity of rhymeless ‘classic’ feet” (163-164)].

1968     from Bottom: on Shakespeare. Origin 8, third series (Jan.): 18 [brief snippets for an issue on Josef Albers, probably selected by Corman rather than LZ: “St. Thomas: ‘No power … color’” (133); “(speaking of Crashaw … in its place …” (175); “Art is to see” (185); “Seeing cannot be … moves less” (185); “Plato (Symposium): ‘The mind … eye fails’” (74)].
“Julia’s Wild.” Artes Hispanicas 1.3 & 4 (Winter-Spring): 219-220 [a large issue on concrete poetry from around the world edited by Augusto de Campos, includes LZ’s poem from “Julia’s Wild” in Part Three with de Campos’ facing translation into Portuguese].

1970     from Bottom: on Shakespeare. Workshop No. Nine (April): 9-10 [Part Three, “Iliad”: from “A concise Iliad of history” to “so poetry was a guide for prose” (391-392); “Qu’ai-je” and “Rites” (436); “U (V),” “Videsne” and “Wonder” (440-441)].
from Bottom: on Shakespeare. Tree 1 (Winter): 25 [Part Three, “Continents”: from “On vicissitude Shakespeare’s text offers” to “invests their minutes and shores” (155)].

1975     “A Translator’s Florilegium: from Bottom: on Shakespeare.” Modern Language Notes 90.6 (Dec.): 923-924 [introduced by Hugh Kenner, so quite possibly selected by him as well; from Part Three, “Iliad”: from “Pericles, an Odyssean song” to “…had been in The Iliad” (378) and from “XIX, 408: Achilles’ horse Xanthus” to “…and meant to kill” (388)].