Theory ? Text ?
“we were frenzied beasts rampaging on bassfields in the jungle: surgical artists remorselessly guiding our passage.” Fogarty, 000319.
Where is text? Where is theory? Two questions bring storms of response; so many conditions can preciptate a different kind of rain, or shall we say: text. The imprint of alphabetic and alphanumeric symbols on a page, a screen, or a mind, is this text? If we play with the textual layers, my text, your text, Hyde’s text, whence can we define text from the nth dimension? From a vantage-point: a photon orbiting a nucleus composed of variant neurons. Text slides, a platelet on an icy mountain freshlet, bumping, spinning about grassy stalks thrusting from the current, in my mind. But these words are timid, flashy and ultimately arise out of distraction, as one reads desperately, to cleanse the eye from theory, from fiction, from poetry, from the mundane horror of 1930s fiction, no more circumlocutions! I beg of you.
Demanding, childish voice: TEXT?
If we are so pendatic as to have to refer to a dictionary or some other such resource, we find that the common consensus hallucination is that text is “the main body of printed words in a book as opposed to the notes and illustrations.” How anal. But as we delve deeper into this book on the sixth floor, we find that “the actual words of an author or piece of written work as opposed to commentary on them” is a fair idea of what text should be in our context of Hyde.
BUT.
The piece of paper in your hand, with the squiggly symmetrical markings on it, in even columns and rows, is this not a text? No. How many times?! I’m not an author. I’m not a writer; not even a textualist, ok? This piece of paper, or electronic bits encoded within a document in server no.5 in Superb Net, Seattle, cannot be considered to be a text unless I, myself am under discussion, under investigation for insubordination and dereliction of duty. In such an environment, this would be and shall be considered a text, as would my handwritten notes, as would any fragmentary piece of paper yielding some nonsensical phrase, in my hand, shall we see: “ in silence there is no death, only replenishment. Iron child, leaden, heavy: a burden to be carried, dead weight, consuming always with no return iron child = war machine / stormy / fierce and petulant”. But here! A little further on, we find this apparent non-sense in a high, frantic hand, some words seemingly meaningless: “Elantite! Sharp SpIked [exaggerated, resembling meaning] needles mounting sea ripples [scribbles?] / waves weighing upon our furtherst shore of plenty a movement into spasmodicy” (unknown notebook found unburnt in the ashes of Fogarty’s desk. 370819). The surrounding context for this unusual fragment is the work Fogarty was studying at the time, The Book of Nadath. We believe this because of “iron child”, which is the title of the eighth section of this long poem’s publication in 99. Could Fogarty have been referring to Hyde’s handwriting or his own? We shall never know, we are at too distant a remove to attempt to organise Fogarty’s disheveled notebooks, filled as they are with poetic rambles.
However, this discursion across textfields illustrates the potential for any piece of writing to be considered a text. Your text is as good as my text. But my text isn’t a text: it’s commentary. It cannot be considered a text unless it’s taken by unknown hackers and mutated into a text; anthropologists, sociologists, poor students undertaking textologic evacuations of the jumbled characters in such foolhardy rushes of expression post eleven hundred on twenty eight of three in zero zero.
These preliminary conditions for Hyde mean that our answer must be; any known, unknown fragment, letters, manuscripts and published works: all compose her text.
“what . . . is this thing that makes your heart roar and the muscles sing on your bones . . . ?” They Flew At Ciron, 81.
Nadath & Prophet: I could see how they could be regarded as similar, structurally. Nadath: false indeed, imagery obscures enlightenment, speaks to my eye, to my mind. Prophet: sings, unbearable song of freedom, of realisation, of escape through the eightfold path, out of the five delusions into the trinity of our world. We do not live in duality. Where is Rubaiyat in this?
Pleading, sobbing voice: THEORY?
This entire A4 is all theory, if we consider theory to be a series of ideas and general principles which sought to explain some aspect of text, these ideas and explanations have not been proven and never will. That’s is the nature of theory baybe! These conjectures about Hyde’s texts, about her compositions, the ‘correct’ manuscript theories; they’re all just hypotheses. However some hypotheses are better than others what right does one have, sixty-one years later, to make decisions based on fragmentary manuscripts? It’s the desire to see something brought into the light of day, of criticism, to show literary artists the genius in their midst, with the apologetic understanding that this is an unfinished work, but here it is, in the way we believe the text was intended to be presented. No one is omniscient, it’s all theory, and we cannot have the practical application of our theories: how dare you accuse me of necrophilia?
I shy from theory, as I shy from a cowherd with razorblades embedded in sugarcubes, my forelegs threshing the air as the bit clamps my tongue and pulls my head down. Whence does text dissolve, becomes actuality? Crossing these borders is a monumental task of sorting, poring, associating: jumble of dates in my mind, made more confusing / difficult by different scales, agreements and jealous guarding of documents. Exhibitionist, isn’t Fogarty?
Where is text? Where is theory? Two questions bring storms of response; so many conditions can preciptate a different kind of rain, or shall we say: text. The imprint of alphabetic and alphanumeric symbols on a page, a screen, or a mind, is this text? If we play with the textual layers, my text, your text, Hyde’s text, whence can we define text from the nth dimension? From a vantage-point: a photon orbiting a nucleus composed of variant neurons. Text slides, a platelet on an icy mountain freshlet, bumping, spinning about grassy stalks thrusting from the current, in my mind. But these words are timid, flashy and ultimately arise out of distraction, as one reads desperately, to cleanse the eye from theory, from fiction, from poetry, from the mundane horror of 1930s fiction, no more circumlocutions! I beg of you.
Demanding, childish voice: TEXT?
If we are so pendatic as to have to refer to a dictionary or some other such resource, we find that the common consensus hallucination is that text is “the main body of printed words in a book as opposed to the notes and illustrations.” How anal. But as we delve deeper into this book on the sixth floor, we find that “the actual words of an author or piece of written work as opposed to commentary on them” is a fair idea of what text should be in our context of Hyde.
BUT.
The piece of paper in your hand, with the squiggly symmetrical markings on it, in even columns and rows, is this not a text? No. How many times?! I’m not an author. I’m not a writer; not even a textualist, ok? This piece of paper, or electronic bits encoded within a document in server no.5 in Superb Net, Seattle, cannot be considered to be a text unless I, myself am under discussion, under investigation for insubordination and dereliction of duty. In such an environment, this would be and shall be considered a text, as would my handwritten notes, as would any fragmentary piece of paper yielding some nonsensical phrase, in my hand, shall we see: “ in silence there is no death, only replenishment. Iron child, leaden, heavy: a burden to be carried, dead weight, consuming always with no return iron child = war machine / stormy / fierce and petulant”. But here! A little further on, we find this apparent non-sense in a high, frantic hand, some words seemingly meaningless: “Elantite! Sharp SpIked [exaggerated, resembling meaning] needles mounting sea ripples [scribbles?] / waves weighing upon our furtherst shore of plenty a movement into spasmodicy” (unknown notebook found unburnt in the ashes of Fogarty’s desk. 370819). The surrounding context for this unusual fragment is the work Fogarty was studying at the time, The Book of Nadath. We believe this because of “iron child”, which is the title of the eighth section of this long poem’s publication in 99. Could Fogarty have been referring to Hyde’s handwriting or his own? We shall never know, we are at too distant a remove to attempt to organise Fogarty’s disheveled notebooks, filled as they are with poetic rambles.
However, this discursion across textfields illustrates the potential for any piece of writing to be considered a text. Your text is as good as my text. But my text isn’t a text: it’s commentary. It cannot be considered a text unless it’s taken by unknown hackers and mutated into a text; anthropologists, sociologists, poor students undertaking textologic evacuations of the jumbled characters in such foolhardy rushes of expression post eleven hundred on twenty eight of three in zero zero.
These preliminary conditions for Hyde mean that our answer must be; any known, unknown fragment, letters, manuscripts and published works: all compose her text.
“what . . . is this thing that makes your heart roar and the muscles sing on your bones . . . ?” They Flew At Ciron, 81.
Nadath & Prophet: I could see how they could be regarded as similar, structurally. Nadath: false indeed, imagery obscures enlightenment, speaks to my eye, to my mind. Prophet: sings, unbearable song of freedom, of realisation, of escape through the eightfold path, out of the five delusions into the trinity of our world. We do not live in duality. Where is Rubaiyat in this?
Pleading, sobbing voice: THEORY?
This entire A4 is all theory, if we consider theory to be a series of ideas and general principles which sought to explain some aspect of text, these ideas and explanations have not been proven and never will. That’s is the nature of theory baybe! These conjectures about Hyde’s texts, about her compositions, the ‘correct’ manuscript theories; they’re all just hypotheses. However some hypotheses are better than others what right does one have, sixty-one years later, to make decisions based on fragmentary manuscripts? It’s the desire to see something brought into the light of day, of criticism, to show literary artists the genius in their midst, with the apologetic understanding that this is an unfinished work, but here it is, in the way we believe the text was intended to be presented. No one is omniscient, it’s all theory, and we cannot have the practical application of our theories: how dare you accuse me of necrophilia?
I shy from theory, as I shy from a cowherd with razorblades embedded in sugarcubes, my forelegs threshing the air as the bit clamps my tongue and pulls my head down. Whence does text dissolve, becomes actuality? Crossing these borders is a monumental task of sorting, poring, associating: jumble of dates in my mind, made more confusing / difficult by different scales, agreements and jealous guarding of documents. Exhibitionist, isn’t Fogarty?
posted by oga at
10:57 AM
