Studies in Words

Can I just say that when you're sitting in a cedar-plank floathouse beside a roaring woodstove fire, the waxing moon shedding light through the shutters like an animal discarding its hide to dance nude in human form --

when you've got a coffee mug of smoky single malt scotch in one hand, and Leonard Cohen playing (softly, because you know the words and all you really need is the suggestion of a tune) --

when your belly is full of good food, and your lips are still smoldering from the remnants of a cigar, and the warmth from the flames and cast iron wraps around you like a live thing clinging to you gently --

when all those stars align, C. S. Lewis' discussion of the word "nature" (phusis, kynde, physical) makes even more sense than is typical.

The Metrical Version of Mandeville's Travels

Today's task: The Metrical Version of Mandeville's Travels, (ed. M. C. Seymour, Early English Text Society).

Okay, so this was a pretty cute text. I feel weird saying that about a 2950-line poem in Middle English, but it's true. Something about it is just very...sing-songy and light. Much of the moralizing and the in-depth discussions of the other versions have been excised (of course) and the rhymes don't often seem too laboured, so the overall effect is very...cute.

There are a few key points in the text that I think would make interesting intersections with the longer prose versions:

(Botanical)
1. The episode with the Trees of Sun and Moon 68
2. Hagiography / the origin of roses 30
3. People who live on the scent of apples 67
4. The pepper narrative 51
5. The discussion of balm 41

(Fantastical/weird)
6. Monopeds 50
7. The country of Amazons 49
8. The mention of Uther Pendragon and Merlin 57
9. The seemly men / unseemly women 48

(Authority)
10. The purpose of the book 3
11. On shortening the book 4

I don't have any concrete thoughts about how these cross over between poetry and prose, but it's something I'll look at more closely later.


Here is an index of plant references from my edition of the book:

Abundance -- 41, 69
Apple -- (Sodom) 35; 67
Balm -- 41, 46?
Bamboo -- 56
Banana -- 41
Cedar -- 65
Cloves -- 54
Corn -- 75
Cotton -- 54
Cypress -- 64
Fig -- 41
Forest -- 64, 70
Garden -- 34, 41
Ginger -- 54
Grape / Wine -- 15, 58, 75
Lemon -- 51
Mace -- 54
Mastic -- 18
Nutmeg -- 54
Olive -- 38, 67
Pepper -- 51
Reed -- 16
Rice -- 75
Rose -- 30
Saffron -- 72
Spices -- 52, 54, 75
Sponge -- 16
Thorn -- 16
Tree -- (Bread) 55; (Cotton) 63; (Flour) 55; (Honey) 55; (Olive) 67; (Poison) 55; (Sun and Moon) 68; (Wine) 55; (Wool) 60
Wine / Grape -- 15, 58, 75
Wood -- 54

(Intermission)

Consider this a brief intermission to say:

This is what I feel like right now.




I feel like I am made of books. I feel like my skeleton is made of brittle book spines. I feel like a blur of faded gilt edges, smudged ink, a smattering of languages, illegible titles. My lungs are a catalogue of old-book smells inhaled during furtive night-time reading. I see words when I close my eyes.

More to follow. Promise.