Interlace Poem

Regular readers (and those who know me in real life) probably know that I am still somewhat active as an academic. For the past few months, I've been putting the finishing touches (I hope) on my fifth academic book, which I've begun to call "my last academic book," for whatever that's worth.

When asked what the book is about, I usually describe it as being about textual dimensions, even while I recognize that such a description probably doesn't communicate much of anything to anyone.

Agnes D Garbey's Interlace Poem, dated June 9, 1855. 

But it was a delight to be able to purchase this piece of manuscript poetry recently. It brings together, quite remarkably, many of the topics that have been occupying my mind as I've been writing this book. (And I recognize that the image is probably not legible here: the original is written in very tiny script--the whole thing is about 7" tall from top to bottom--and I need a magnifying glass to read the actual page itself).

It is, I think it is fair to say, a puzzle-poem, with the first "lines" reading "Begin and see if thou canst shew/ the starting point and place of ending too." The design, I think, can usefully be described as an interlace design--the single ongoing linear text of the poem wrapping around, with numerous crossing points and tricky turning points.

Such interlace designs were common in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts (and elsewhere in Anglo-Saxon art), and a well known critical essay by John Leyerle even concerns itself with "The Interlace Structure of Beowulf." It is difficult to tell if Agnes D. Garbey (if I am reading her name correctly) had Anglo-Saxon models in mind, but the interlace effect of her poem could not be more obvious. And the poem's use of the phrase "The endless knot" will also recall Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, for readers who know that poem well. We will probably never know for certain if medieval models have influenced this poem, but it is possible that they did: the middle nineteenth century was, if possible, even more fascinated with all things medieval than we are today.

In terms of the book I've been working on, this poem is a two-dimensional text: any attempt (such as the one I will offer below), to linearize it, to re-present it in a single textual line, without crossovers or overlap, will diminish the poem and its effect upon readers. Too often, we suppose that a poem can be read aloud, and maybe even that a poem should be read aloud. This poem, on the other hand, must be seen to be appreciated. 

The argument of the book I am writing, of course, is that we have long ignored or misunderstood two-dimensional and three-dimensional aspects of some literary texts, though manuscripts in particular have often enough made use of more than a single linear dimension. Agnes Garbey's poem, here, is a reminder that even as recently as the nineteenth century, manuscripts might make use of complex visual structures in ways that deserve our attention and respect. 

I don't know if I'll be able to use this poem in the book itself. I am tempted, though, to offer it up as a possible image for the cover--if only it were a bit more legible!


Transcription:

Begin and see if thou canst shew
The starting point and place of ending too;
Oh! mortal behold and thou shalt see,
The endless knot Love's twined for thee.
But like this knot a point of winding
And like this knot Love has no ending.
Is love like a moat that lives but a day,
On the beams of the sun and vanishes away?
Or like the flower that blooms at the morn
At noon of its beauty and lasciviousness shorn?
No, true love may [be] likened to the beautiful rose,
That from its leaves sweetest fragrance throws.
It buds, it blooms and dies, its presence is done,
Yet sweetness remains though the body is gone.
Oh! What wants life be de[ . . . ]ed of true love
Of heaven's cheering beams from our Father above;
A dark howling wilderness. --thick gathering gloom,
Spreading o'er our sad journey to the place of the tomb.
June 9th 1855                       Agnes D Garbey.

Fromkin and Rodman Phonetics Wheel

F&R Phonetics Wheel [1988]

Things have been thrown off their normal (already irregular) schedule here at Chancery Hill Books by a death in the family: my mother-in-law, a wonderful person who was herself a retired English professor.

The reverse of the Phonetics Wheel.

Many was the time Joyce and I chatted about having taught the Introduction to the English Language course at our respective institutions, and we both often used the venerable Fromkin and Rodman textbook for the course (An Introduction to Language; more recent editions have included additional co-authors, but I am afraid the book remains 'Fromkin and Rodman' in my heart).

We recently found, tucked in among Joyce's books and papers, the Fromkin and Rodman Phonetics Wheel that I've pictured here. It is, obviously, a volvelle, of the common everyday sort I've written about here before. 

Such little volvelles were, of course, unbelievably common in the twentieth century: verb wheels will, no doubt, be familiar to many who studied a foreign language in the middle of the twentieth century, but many simple calculations or collections of tabulated material were formatted into volvelles for promotional or advertising purposes during that time. I'd guess that some are probably still being produced, somewhere out there.

This Fromkin and Rodman Phonetics Wheel, of course, was also a promotional item: a giveaway, surely, intended to help persuade teachers to adopt the Fourth Edition of Fromkin and Rodman as a textbook for their classes to buy. 

Such items are ephemeral, and it is surprising when they survive at all. In the case of this example, a Google search on the phrase "Phonetics Wheel" turns up hardly anything at all, though one link may refer to a wheel like this one. 

This one, of course, can stay, for now, in my own little collection.

The recent breaking news in Pittsburgh

A recent addition to my collection: something I have no wish to sell.
Jerome, Commentery on Hosea; Caroline minuscule.

The recent revelations of the depth and breadth of the thefts of rare books, plates, and leaves from the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh have been breathtaking. The dollar amount that has been quoted, at just over eight million dollars, is stunning, if only as a reminder that I am really only a small-time dealer.

I won’t take any position on the guilt or innocence of the specific parties who have been charged here: I will assume and hope that the wheels of justice will roll on to whatever verdicts ought to be reached. But the charges that have been brought are themselves a reminder that one of the great dangers (if not the single greatest danger) to public collections of rare books, manuscripts, and archival materials is theft from inside—one recent claim I’ve seen is that insider thefts account for about one-third of such thefts.

Often enough, as I have transitioned from academic scholar to rare book and manuscript dealer, I’ve been greeted by academics with skepticism or disdain: anyone who deals in (or even owns) fragments, the message has often seemed to be, is necessarily a participant in the breaking up of valuable books and artifacts of historic importance. It’s true enough that some dealers do break up books, but that should no more be used as a brush to tar the whole field of manuscript dealers than the existence of some academic or librarian book-thieves should be used to condemn all manuscript scholars and librarians.

Because of course, not all scholars and librarians are villains, even if some of them are (I am remembering now the case of Anthony Melnikas, whose story broke at Ohio State not long after I got my degree there in 1994). Nor are all dealers villains, even if some are. There is no reason at all for dealers or collectors and academics to see themselves as opposed on these issues: almost all dealers, collectors, and scholars, in my experience, truly value manuscripts and rare books as elements of our shared human cultural heritage. 

One of the tragedies of the Carnegie case, of course, is that many items were cut from their bindings and apparently marketed as individual pieces, potentially scattering them to the four winds. One cannot avoid the suspicion that cutting such items away from their contexts anonymizes them, potentially making them easier to sell, because they are more difficult to trace.

I’ve written before about individual leaves as refugees, ripped from their proper contexts, victims of violence through no fault of their own. One need not support book-breakers or thieves to believe that such refugees might be taken in and valued. But this case can remind us all that it is not only dealers who engage in such cutting. And even a small-time dealer like me has been known to return stolen or looted material that was purchased innocently or inadvertently. 

In my own business, I have sometimes purchased individual (i.e. cut) leaves, though I prefer to focus on materials re-used in bindings. And I’ve committed, as a dealer and a collector, to not break up books or lots that I personally own.

And I’ve sometimes gone farther, engaging in rescue-buying, purchasing complex lots or multiple related lots from a single seller, when I felt that the pieces ought to stay together. This has not always been a wise financial decision on my part, I suspect. How fortunate I am, though, to have been able to make some decisions that weren’t entirely driven by the logic of profit. In such cases, I try to be guided by what is best for the items. Even a collection of cut leaves, sometimes, can make up a whole that shouldn’t be broken.

But then, I am still a collector at heart, one who believes that collectors—and their collections, public and private—can still do good in the world, even if there are some people out there who sometimes take advantage of such utopian and altruistic thinking. A personal collection can still be a real refuge for rare items, a place of protection, perhaps especially for items that are not especially valuable.

I’ve looked over the list of items missing from the Carnegie Library; I purchased none of those books or items, a circumstance for which I am thankful. In part, I’ve been protected from that fate by being only a small time dealer and collector. But I’ve also been reminded how important it is for all of us to do what’s best for our books: both those we own, and those in our local libraries, where we also share some care taking responsibilities. 

Because I can’t help feeling that, if only I had gone up to the Carnegie to look at some of their rare books, the fact that some of them were missing or damaged might have been discovered a little sooner, before quite so much damage was done.

The other side of the above fragment, showing both how it once
lay along the spine of a binding and how (more recently, I'd guess)
it seems to have been affected by a rusty paper clip.
Note: the image is a bit blurry here.

Elephant and Castle

I've been to London a number of times, and I've heard the phrase "Elephant and Castle" on many of these trips: for me, it's always been a tube stop, although one I haven't often used, if ever. I should have realized, though, that the phrase has a particular medieval resonance, and that it derives from numerous medieval depictions of war-elephants with fighting platforms or pavilions on their backs, as usefully summarized on this blog post I ran across recently.

I ran across that blog, of course, because of the image I've used above, and some online searching I attempted in trying to trace it. As may (or may not) be clear from the heading, this woodcut is used at the top of a broadside Calendar for the year 1603, and the  image is a complex and fascinating one. In the center, we have, indeed, an elephant with a kind of fighting castle perched upon its back. Before it and behind it are some marching figures, apparently carrying an army of spears. In the upper right background, three cannon are pointing into the air; though it may not be especially clear, one of them has just fired, and (in a portion of the image that is not shown), the cannon ball is heading directly for a ship sitting just offshore. It seems doubtful that an actual historical battle is being depicted.

The language of the heading, of course, is German, and the calendar certainly comes from a German speaking area, perhaps Austria in particular (possibly Vienna), though no printer's name is now preserved with it.

As best I can tell, the red component of the image above is printed along with the red-printed heading; the other colors (green, magenta, and mustard yellow) seem to have been applied by hand.

As one might guess, such broadside calendars are scarce today: they were ephemeral at best, and they very quickly went out of date. This one is preserved as part of an old book-binding, which seems to have been put together around 1604--immediately after this calendar went out of date. But it's a fascinating example of an old genre of text (and image) that still is part of our world today, whenever we hang a calendar on our wall for ready consultation.

Table of symbols and the beginning of the calendar for January (Jenner)

In 1603, apparently, calendars like this also served some of the function of almanacs; between the Elephant and Castle and the January section, we see both a coat of arms (perhaps for Vienna?) and a list of symbols and their meanings, including some that relate to phases of the moon and some that are more about prognostication. The lack of numbers for the days seems strange, but apparently marking the Sundays with red triangles was enough. And so, although the calendar has some surface damage, we can still see by consulting the table that snow ("Schnee") was predicted for Tuesday, January 14. 

I haven't yet figured out a way to find out if that prediction was true, though there may be a record somewhere. But I do know that I'll remember this image when next I am in London, and I see the words "Elephant and Castle" on the Underground map.

Bicycle Season

Not everything I buy at auction is destined for resale--at least not right away. I am still a collector, in my way, and one of the things I often find myself attracted to is vintage folk art. And if there's some component to it that has to do with books or writing, I find it doubly hard to resist. 

Last week, at the one auction I regularly attend, I was able to get a small box of folky items, including a small, crudely carved wooden chain, and some other wooden items, but the real gems, as far as I was concerned, were a pair of folk-art bicycles.

They are made, as I expect the images show, from recycled old office supplies: the wheels are made from typewriter erasers (with the brushes removed); the bicycle frames (and the cyclist's head) are made from old brass binding rivets; and the limbs of the cyclist are bent paperclips. The corks that make the hats, I suppose, aren't really office supplies at all.

The bicycle with the black wheels, I think, is the older of the two; probably it was the model that the later example was based on. It seems to me to be a bit more handily made and attractive.

I can't really picture either of these being made any more recently than the 1950s or 1960s. I probably last used a typewriter eraser in the 1980s, and I don't think I ever really had a ready supply of brass binding rivets. I suppose both are obsolete technologies, now, but I think that's part of these bicyclists' charm.

Florentine Sonnets, 1906

I am heading off to Ohio later this morning, to (among other things) give a presentation at the Eastern Region Meeting and Seminar of the Early American Pattern Glass Society, in Lancaster, Ohio, on Friday.

Florentine Sonnets (1906); vellum-covered
boards with hand-painted illumination

My talk will be only partly on the American glass industry of the nineteenth century; the rest of what I have to say (and there will be a connection, believe it or not), will be about a minor nineteenth-century American poet. I find this poet particularly interesting because he had a special fascination, it seems, with the middle ages, writing book-length poems about the Norman Conquest and the conversion of King Edwin of Deira, among other things. 

At the end of his  life, he lived in Florence, and wrote and photographically illustrated a couple of books for the English-speaking tourist trade. The one pictured here was--as I hope the illustration shows--available bound in vellum, and (for an extra fee, one supposes), available with a hand-painted illumination on the cover.

This copy has, in addition, a small gift dedication painted on at the bottom, matching the illumination. "From Aunt Laura," it reads.

All in all, such a book reminds us that one of the things tourism did (and does) is to make the past (and in European tourism, it is often the medieval past) consumable. And that book and manuscripts could be, and were, sometimes used for the same purpose. Many a manuscript or leaf, I think, was purchased as a souvenir on the Grand Tour.

The same poet's Roman Sonnets (1908), in
printed paper-covered boards.

Grotesque faces

"Vir perfecte pietatis "

It's been a busy time here in the Chancery Hill neighborhood, as I've been cataloguing a few hundred books for someone else, rather than for me. This work has caused me, among other things, to think more seriously about cataloguing my own collections, as well as about the very nature of cataloguing as an activity, as a way of describing and interpreting. 

It is also an act of learning, and of the transmission of learning, in many ways. Certainly, I've learned much about many books in doing this work, with all the enjoyment and frustration that goes with that.

But today, as a kind of "Shelfie Wednesday" treat, I thought I'd share something else that give me a bit of joy today: a manuscript fragment I recently purchased. This one had been recycled as the wrapper for a legal document in 1731, though it seems to have long been separated from that document, now. 

But I couldn't help but laugh when I saw the two grotesque faces adorning this capital "U" from the word "Uir,'' ("man").  With their tongues out (colored in red, no less!), and their silly hats, and their unpleasant expressions, they rather made my day. "A man of perfect piety," hardly seems to describe either one.

Here's a bit more of the context: