Coming soon: literate me.
Nota bene: As farewell to my doodling (instead of a drawing, which I will attempt with concerted efforts come a week from now), I permit myself this post.
I am surrounded by books, pretty ones I might add, that I am eager to read, but haven’t yet been able to page through more than 6 or 7 long paragraphs or a substantial series of verses. Each time I have had time to read, which, hasn’t been but a handful of times, I fall asleep in a murky army-green sea of exhaustion. The sea has much litter, sharp crushed soda cans, wrappers of McDonald’s hamburgers, coffee cups slowly oozing their sealing wax, clippings of newspapers I’ve missed, red ink puddling, my grandmothers’ soft faces, their sharp stoic laughs, birthdays and cakes gone by, people, eyes, so many now gurgling voices neglected, the rough, pointed whiskers of my dog, stacks that would fill freight trains of mail I haven’t opened, flickers of memories I’ve had to forget because we could find no other solution, and strings, webs and running trails of soggy light-blue yarn that's come out of its ball, binding feet-to nail-to pinky toe pulling me and my three feet of hair blonde-brown hair to some unknown depths. Am I heading towards sand-castles or clamshells, or just bells, tolling bells? A semester—no, no—a year, for years, of too much mental movement, both good and bad, traveling, insomnia, breaking hearts, all those and their contraries which are most definitely contained within.
When I arrive in Madrid with new, or at least effectively recycled energy, I am setting to work and writing real on the following, in order of priority:
Gonzalo de Berceo, Milagros de Nuestra Señora. Also as much as I can of his Obras completas.
Ovid, The Art of Love and Other Poems (Loeb Classical Library).
Tirant lo Blanc. I have caught a few pages already. Very fun. Bilingual edition.
Bruce Holsinger, The Premodern Condition. This one I have read about half and I must say, that despite my sea, I don’t want to put it down. The Middle Ages for Bataille, Derrida, Lacan (!), Barthes, and Bourdieu. Paranoia, preoccupation, mining, visceral reading. Who would have thought that Bataille was a paleographer and did an edition of Ordene de chevalerie. Not me, obviously. All the good ones are medievalists. Sort of.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
This I know
This afternoon I calculated that come next Thursday morning, I will have produced over 70 pages of supposedly academic texts, writing, and linguistics exercises. In 2 weeks.
Talking to a professor last week, per usual, I communicated more than what came out of my mouth. I did not mention my 70 pages, but must have emitted a woeful tale about the current state of my classwork. At the end, he told me:
You’re over classes, it happened to me, it happens to everyone.
And that is the truth. 8 years, 4 universities worth of playing good-student, writing papers, acting, attempts to invent interesting questions for use in office hours, those piles and piles of notebooks of scribbles I cannot decipher, memories of lectures attended to show interest in the work of such and such important professor, hundreds of books and handouts on primates and Popol Vuh, Aristophanes, Brazilian Cinema, elementary education, million things Shakespeare, Mayans, W.E.B. Du Bois, versification, "indigenismo", Juan de Mena, the subjunctive in French, readers of Freud, theories of substrata, American 1960's literature, Darwin, Lazarillo de Tormes, Spanish Civil War, Chaos theory. Caribbean cuisine, Carrillo, Cuban dance, Chien andalou, uprising, underclass
class.
Don't get me wrong, 2 of this year's seminars had many thought-making moments. I enjoyed these two seminars very much, great discussion and dialogue, terrific texts. At the same time, as I look back, most moments I was morphing and manipulating all communications such that they meet and merge with some amorphous, utterly disorganized line of thought I am in the process of developing: my unraveling "field", its shriveling progress. The poor individuals around me have suffered the darlings of my hole of gray, that well of deep black, tierra de malas yerbas with Rortian tomato plants, my over and under and about and about again with final vocabulary, Dagenaisian reading event, death of medieval authors, textual and authorial becoming, postcards in unsealed envelopes, arriving, not arriving, male-confidant as simulacrum of beloved lady, ungrammatical deliveries: purloined Heather.
I am not such a good student anymore.
I complain, but I have learned much information and many books this past year. Some of me wishes I could say that my 70 pages of academia will be all mine. Luckily, for the readers who will read it—even if for nothing more than to read against it—that is not the case. A lot of it is mine, however, more than it ever has been. I also know, and hope, that it will never be all mine. I have no qualms about admitting, although I am somewhat ashamed, that I am very dependent on certain people around me, those ice-cold, pure-blue fountains that produce ideas, wonderful writing, intellectual turmoil, many many questions. These cold-splashes push me to think things anew and to do better. The truth is that we all need a certain amount of muse and some element of jealously to produce good work. If we could ask Nietzsche about how he was able to write a book that he would come to call his favorite, I wonder if he would tell us about a group of friends, or maybe some enemies, or about how he was particularly mentally unwell in that period. Would he tell of a back and forth of letters, of a querelle so to speak, of heated discussions and digressions, words dripping with emotion, or urgency? I wish I were a Fenice, a 5 foot tall phoenix, who could recreate herself with only her own ashes, the black dust of my beak and wings > flaming woman.
In the end, I know I have a good flint in me. We all do, really; it just sparks better when there are others around you already burning. Class is over, but may we never stop talking. Malas yerbas, purloined Heather, here we come.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
We make it up as we along. 1970’s magic books, and remember the giver
These last days I’ve been feeling a little lost. I am sitting with so many books, and writing so many arguments, I don’t know which arguments go with which books. It’s starting to look like they all go together. Soon enough, I will have Alfonso taking up Lancelot’s sword and dueling with Vitz and Dagenais in the passe-partout, saying see, see! There’s middle in my Middle Ages (as long as I wrote that in the Partidas). Mio Cid Ruy Díaz is there looking on, saying to bring on the real, valiant enemy, not some wimpy author or textual critic (all authors are dead, anyhow); we see horses running, Leriano, Foissart’s Flos, and anyone lonely in Central Berkeley sloshing in the horses’ bellies, writing letters that serve as surrogate love affairs. At first we think the riders are Moors, but no! it’s the 52 blank spaces from the Carte Postal, dragging me, we pragmatists, and several Southern Europeans in chains, straight down to the tips of my typing fingers.
Yesterday evening I read a fascinating little book, something very Harvard 1970’s (Giles Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections), that cleared up many things about letters in Antiquity, the Latin Middle Ages, and my Middle Ages:
letters read by more than one person, even at the time when they were written,
that truly secret messages were conveyed by word of mouth,
that we must remember that letters originated as oral messages and that when letters were dictated, sometimes only an outline was given, such that the scribe or professional letter writer had to fill it in.
There is something about certain 1970’s books that I pull from the library that’s magic. This one is a magic book because it took some of ideas I had about letters in 14th and 15th century Spain and France and signed them with a reputable name. I’m in, now I can cite and elaborate.
Yesterday was a great day at the Bancroft. I read the Sotheby’s catalogue and tried to decipher the notations in red on the verso of the last folio:
Memento dantis
Accipito datum placide dantis que memento
Sic quod non vento des quod tibi corde precatur.
(Remember the giver. Kindly accept the gift and remember the giver, so that you may not give to the wind what she prays for you in her heart).
Remember the giver. Due to the similarity between Harley 4431 & BN fr. 835, two manuscripts known to have originated with Christine de Pizan, and Bancroft 109, some suspect that Christine gave the Bancroft manuscript to the duc de Berry as a gift, closing this dossier, a longish letter, with an order to remember her. This is a fascinating artifact: a manuscript gifted by the author to the duc to Berry, written in the careful hand of her fictional and very real adversary, Gontier Col. Possibly at the request of his patron, the duke, Gontier Col (subaltern scribe?) added no documents that would help counteract some of the strategies Christine employs to bolster her argument (rearrangement of letters, leaving out of key counterarguments). Gontier Col was no subaltern, however, at least when he wasn’t performing his scribal function. He was the author of two of the documents contained in the dossier and a powerful clerk. A curious observation by the Sotheby’s catalogue which has been contested, but as far as I know, not shown to be incorrect, is that in Harley 4431 and BN fr. 835, two manuscripts known to have originated with Christine de Pizan, Gontier Col’s second letter is misdated 1407. While we can’t know who was doing the alleged misdating, or if it was purposely done, it is, at least, evidence of the permeability of linear chronology.
In thinking about these documents, I have in mind a rounded silk cord that alternates smooth spaces with sewn seams. Perhaps a question to ask is: if something was taken apart once, is it more apt to be cut apart again, re-ordered? I think that this dossier, rather than representing a series of letters, should be read more as a commentary on the debate documents. I am frustrated with my annoyance with readings of the Querelle as an act of self-fashioning at Christine because I think, in saying that we need to find more in her texts than a self-creation and defense of women, that I will somehow make her into even less of an author than those I critique. Here's me joining the ranks of all those critics who I probably misread as saying that there are no Medieval authors.
These last days I’ve been feeling a little lost. I am sitting with so many books, and writing so many arguments, I don’t know which arguments go with which books. It’s starting to look like they all go together. Soon enough, I will have Alfonso taking up Lancelot’s sword and dueling with Vitz and Dagenais in the passe-partout, saying see, see! There’s middle in my Middle Ages (as long as I wrote that in the Partidas). Mio Cid Ruy Díaz is there looking on, saying to bring on the real, valiant enemy, not some wimpy author or textual critic (all authors are dead, anyhow); we see horses running, Leriano, Foissart’s Flos, and anyone lonely in Central Berkeley sloshing in the horses’ bellies, writing letters that serve as surrogate love affairs. At first we think the riders are Moors, but no! it’s the 52 blank spaces from the Carte Postal, dragging me, we pragmatists, and several Southern Europeans in chains, straight down to the tips of my typing fingers.
Yesterday evening I read a fascinating little book, something very Harvard 1970’s (Giles Constable, Letters and Letter-Collections), that cleared up many things about letters in Antiquity, the Latin Middle Ages, and my Middle Ages:
letters read by more than one person, even at the time when they were written,
that truly secret messages were conveyed by word of mouth,
that we must remember that letters originated as oral messages and that when letters were dictated, sometimes only an outline was given, such that the scribe or professional letter writer had to fill it in.
There is something about certain 1970’s books that I pull from the library that’s magic. This one is a magic book because it took some of ideas I had about letters in 14th and 15th century Spain and France and signed them with a reputable name. I’m in, now I can cite and elaborate.
Yesterday was a great day at the Bancroft. I read the Sotheby’s catalogue and tried to decipher the notations in red on the verso of the last folio:
Memento dantis
Accipito datum placide dantis que memento
Sic quod non vento des quod tibi corde precatur.
(Remember the giver. Kindly accept the gift and remember the giver, so that you may not give to the wind what she prays for you in her heart).
Remember the giver. Due to the similarity between Harley 4431 & BN fr. 835, two manuscripts known to have originated with Christine de Pizan, and Bancroft 109, some suspect that Christine gave the Bancroft manuscript to the duc de Berry as a gift, closing this dossier, a longish letter, with an order to remember her. This is a fascinating artifact: a manuscript gifted by the author to the duc to Berry, written in the careful hand of her fictional and very real adversary, Gontier Col. Possibly at the request of his patron, the duke, Gontier Col (subaltern scribe?) added no documents that would help counteract some of the strategies Christine employs to bolster her argument (rearrangement of letters, leaving out of key counterarguments). Gontier Col was no subaltern, however, at least when he wasn’t performing his scribal function. He was the author of two of the documents contained in the dossier and a powerful clerk. A curious observation by the Sotheby’s catalogue which has been contested, but as far as I know, not shown to be incorrect, is that in Harley 4431 and BN fr. 835, two manuscripts known to have originated with Christine de Pizan, Gontier Col’s second letter is misdated 1407. While we can’t know who was doing the alleged misdating, or if it was purposely done, it is, at least, evidence of the permeability of linear chronology.
In thinking about these documents, I have in mind a rounded silk cord that alternates smooth spaces with sewn seams. Perhaps a question to ask is: if something was taken apart once, is it more apt to be cut apart again, re-ordered? I think that this dossier, rather than representing a series of letters, should be read more as a commentary on the debate documents. I am frustrated with my annoyance with readings of the Querelle as an act of self-fashioning at Christine because I think, in saying that we need to find more in her texts than a self-creation and defense of women, that I will somehow make her into even less of an author than those I critique. Here's me joining the ranks of all those critics who I probably misread as saying that there are no Medieval authors.
Friday, May 04, 2007
Day at the Bancroft.
Before I spend more time joking about certain translations of “des secrés membre” in some of the Querelle documents, I post here some of my too big and too vague ideas that I am positing for a paper. I place them here such that I might be moved to revise them, to react to and amend this act of public humiliation.
It was after much debate that I decided to do a reading of Christine de Pizan’s second dossier, the group of documents presented to Isabel of Bavaria, Queen of France and Guillaume de Tignonville, Provost of Paris, dated February 1, 1401, as presented in the Bancroft MS. This decision was a difficult one. At first, I thought it would be impossible to do a reading of the Querelle de la Rose without touching on all the documents, reading them in chronological order. Then, when I began re-reading the documents chronologically, and after struggling with the fact that perhaps I was reading a never was, in the sense that it is unlikely that many people would have ever had the opportunity to read the documents in this way (and, of course, we have no evidence of such a reading), I discovered that the order of these documents, despite their status as letters their bearing of dates, may not be as important as it might first appear. Notions of sender, recipient, addressee, and addresser (as well as linear chronology) all not only problematized, but, and arguably so, entirely disrupted in Christine’s dossier.
Several critics who study the Querelle, including Kevin Brownlee, Marilynn Desmond, and David Hult, have observed that Christine entered the debate, at least in part, such that she might assert her position as female clerk and author. While I am mostly in agreement with this view, and while I think it is important to note that Christine’s presentation of a controlled, carefully chosen selection of documents is a literal acting act out of her position as clerk and author, there are other key questions raised in her creation, presentation, and dispatching of a book of letters in two separate redactions. Beginning with a brief description of the manuscript held at the Bancroft library, and drawing on theories of medieval notions about letters and debate (debate tradition, letters as public documents, postcards of sorts) and authorship, and modern theories and readings of letters, sending, and receiving, including Derrida’s deconstruction of categories of sender and recipient (Carte Postale), I will present a reading of the dossier documents, as presented in the Bancroft text. I hope to develop some provisional answers to the following questions that this particular manuscript seems to ask: 1) what happens to notions of authorship and categories of sender and recipient when we create a book of letters actually exchanged in “real life”? 2) what kind of speech act (John Austin, How to Do Things with Words) is a material book of letters? 3) how are notions of sender and recipient rewritten and complicated in Christine’s dossier? 4) what type of fiction is this?
A few (very preliminary) ideas on the Bancroft MS.
The Bancroft MS is in the hand of Gontier Col, secretary of the King, written in the court of Jean, duc de Berry, 1402-1410. This manuscript is dated after October 2, 1402 and presents the same order of documents shown in Bibliothèque Nacionale fr. 835 and British Library, Harley 4431. The documents contained therein include the following: 1-2) two dedicatory epistles to the addressees noted above, 3) a notice of an exchange of letters between Jean de Montreuil and Jean Gerson, 4) Gontier Col’s letter dated September 13, 1403 requesting a copy of Christine’s response to Jean de Montreuil’s Treatise on the Roman de la Rose, 5) Christine de Pizan's letter to Jean de Montreuil, 6) Gontier Col's second letter to Christine de Pizan, and 7) Christine de Pizan's letter to Pierre Col, the same order of documents presumably similarly to Harley 4431 and Bibliothèque Nationale fr. 835. These manuscripts (Bancroft MS 109, BN fr. 835 and Harley 4431) were redacted after Christine’s writing of her long response to Pierre Col. What is curious, however, is that despite being in the hand of Gontier Col (unique feature not found in the other manuscripts of this redaction), sympathizer of Pierre Col, supporter of Jean de Meun, the manuscript does not include Pierre Col’s lengthy and important response, dated variously between the start of June and the beginning of September 1402. While it is impossible to know Gontier Col’s motivation for not including this text adding in a significant way to his sign of the debate, it calls to our attention, perhaps in more ways than one, the artificial, if not fictional nature of Christine’s book. What type of fiction does this dossier tell?
Regards,
H (with sincere hopes of revision).
Before I spend more time joking about certain translations of “des secrés membre” in some of the Querelle documents, I post here some of my too big and too vague ideas that I am positing for a paper. I place them here such that I might be moved to revise them, to react to and amend this act of public humiliation.
It was after much debate that I decided to do a reading of Christine de Pizan’s second dossier, the group of documents presented to Isabel of Bavaria, Queen of France and Guillaume de Tignonville, Provost of Paris, dated February 1, 1401, as presented in the Bancroft MS. This decision was a difficult one. At first, I thought it would be impossible to do a reading of the Querelle de la Rose without touching on all the documents, reading them in chronological order. Then, when I began re-reading the documents chronologically, and after struggling with the fact that perhaps I was reading a never was, in the sense that it is unlikely that many people would have ever had the opportunity to read the documents in this way (and, of course, we have no evidence of such a reading), I discovered that the order of these documents, despite their status as letters their bearing of dates, may not be as important as it might first appear. Notions of sender, recipient, addressee, and addresser (as well as linear chronology) all not only problematized, but, and arguably so, entirely disrupted in Christine’s dossier.
Several critics who study the Querelle, including Kevin Brownlee, Marilynn Desmond, and David Hult, have observed that Christine entered the debate, at least in part, such that she might assert her position as female clerk and author. While I am mostly in agreement with this view, and while I think it is important to note that Christine’s presentation of a controlled, carefully chosen selection of documents is a literal acting act out of her position as clerk and author, there are other key questions raised in her creation, presentation, and dispatching of a book of letters in two separate redactions. Beginning with a brief description of the manuscript held at the Bancroft library, and drawing on theories of medieval notions about letters and debate (debate tradition, letters as public documents, postcards of sorts) and authorship, and modern theories and readings of letters, sending, and receiving, including Derrida’s deconstruction of categories of sender and recipient (Carte Postale), I will present a reading of the dossier documents, as presented in the Bancroft text. I hope to develop some provisional answers to the following questions that this particular manuscript seems to ask: 1) what happens to notions of authorship and categories of sender and recipient when we create a book of letters actually exchanged in “real life”? 2) what kind of speech act (John Austin, How to Do Things with Words) is a material book of letters? 3) how are notions of sender and recipient rewritten and complicated in Christine’s dossier? 4) what type of fiction is this?
A few (very preliminary) ideas on the Bancroft MS.
The Bancroft MS is in the hand of Gontier Col, secretary of the King, written in the court of Jean, duc de Berry, 1402-1410. This manuscript is dated after October 2, 1402 and presents the same order of documents shown in Bibliothèque Nacionale fr. 835 and British Library, Harley 4431. The documents contained therein include the following: 1-2) two dedicatory epistles to the addressees noted above, 3) a notice of an exchange of letters between Jean de Montreuil and Jean Gerson, 4) Gontier Col’s letter dated September 13, 1403 requesting a copy of Christine’s response to Jean de Montreuil’s Treatise on the Roman de la Rose, 5) Christine de Pizan's letter to Jean de Montreuil, 6) Gontier Col's second letter to Christine de Pizan, and 7) Christine de Pizan's letter to Pierre Col, the same order of documents presumably similarly to Harley 4431 and Bibliothèque Nationale fr. 835. These manuscripts (Bancroft MS 109, BN fr. 835 and Harley 4431) were redacted after Christine’s writing of her long response to Pierre Col. What is curious, however, is that despite being in the hand of Gontier Col (unique feature not found in the other manuscripts of this redaction), sympathizer of Pierre Col, supporter of Jean de Meun, the manuscript does not include Pierre Col’s lengthy and important response, dated variously between the start of June and the beginning of September 1402. While it is impossible to know Gontier Col’s motivation for not including this text adding in a significant way to his sign of the debate, it calls to our attention, perhaps in more ways than one, the artificial, if not fictional nature of Christine’s book. What type of fiction does this dossier tell?
Regards,
H (with sincere hopes of revision).
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