Z-siteA Companion to the Works of Louis Zukofsky

31 March-12 May 1951 / Botteghe Oscure 8 (1951)
strophe1, 31? March 1951; strophe 2, 11 April 1951; strophe 3, 6 May 1951; strophe 4, 9-10 May 1951; strophe 5, 12 May 1951

In the Table of Contents to “A”, LZ dates this movement 1950, which appears to be when he initially laid out his plan for the poem, but surviving manuscripts are dated March-May 1951 and the volume of Paracelsus that he draws on extensively was published in 1951.

For “A”-11 LZ adopts the form of Guido Cavalcanti’s ballata, Perch’io non spero di tornar già mai, again as in “A”-9 reproducing almost precisely the rhyme scheme and line syllable count—there are a few deviations. LZ also adopted from Cavalcanti the convention of the poet addressing the poem directly. T.S. Eliot begins “Ash-Wednesday” (1930) with a rendition of the famous first line: “Because I do not hope to turn again.” Among LZ’s notes presumably for “A”-11, he copied out Cavalcanti’s Italian with EP’s translation of the ballata (see Translations 120-123) and also Guillaume de Machault’s “Ballade: Plourès, dames” with his own translation (see Anew 17, CSP 86-87), which contains imagery relevant to “A”-11 (PZA).

Guido Cavalcanti – Ballata: Perch’io non spero

(Text from Pound’s Guido Cavalcanti: Rime (Genoa: Marsano, 1932) as found in David Anderson, Pound’s Cavalcanti: An Edition of the Translations, Notes and Essays (Princeton UP, 1983))

Throughout “A”-11 LZ adapts phrases or ideas from Spinoza and Paracelsus, which are noted on both a draft version (HRC 3.2) and a fair copy (PZ Archive). The Spinoza quotations below are from the text LZ used extensively elsewhere, especially in “A”-12 and Bottom: the Everyman’s Library edition of the Ethics translated by Andrew Boyle, with page numbers referring to that edition. The volume of Paracelsus, which he also uses extensively in “A”-12, is Paracelsus: Selected Writings, ed. Jolande Jacobi (Bollingen Foundation, 1951). This book was given to him by Edward and R’lene Dahlberg, presumably on its publication in 1951; Edward had been a colleague of LZ’s at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn from 1948-1950. The more readily available second edition (1957) has an unaltered text but has changed some the reproductions of woodblock prints and the entire volume repaginated, so I give references to both editions below.

124.1    River that must turn full after I stop dying: echoes the refrain of Edmund Spenser’s Prothalamion: “Sweete Themmes runne softly, till I end my Song.” Ahearn points out that LZ’s manuscript notes also reference a poem, “Bronx,” by the American poet Joseph Rodman Drake (1795-1820), from which LZ quotes in Anew #15, “No it was no dream of coming death” (CSP 85). Drake’s pastoral elegy is set along the Bronx River, beside which the Zukofskys lived in the early years of their marriage, but there is no evident indebtedness in “A”-11. LZ’s notes indicate he found the Drake poem in The New York Book of Poetry, eds. Charles Fenno Hoffman and Clement Clark Moore (NY: George Dearborn, Publ., 1837).

124.4    wrangling: Corman points out that this word can be found with fair frequency in Shakespeare (“‘A’-11” 17-18).

124.6    honor: this term, which terminates each stanza, was initially suggested by Cavalcanti’s original in which the first stanza ends with onore, although unlike LZ he varies it thereafter. Cf. Baruch de Spinoza’s definition of honor in Ethics III, Definitions of the Emotions 3: “Honour or glory (gloria) is pleasure accompanied by the idea of some action of ours which we imagine others to praise” (135). See also next note and 13.297.7.

124.7    Freed by their praises who make honor dearer: LZ notes Spinoza, Ethics IV, Prop. 52, Note: “For (as we have shown in Prop. 25, Part IV.) no one endeavours to preserve his being for the sake of some end; and inasmuch as this self-complacency is more and more cherished and encouraged by praises (Coroll., Prop. 53, Part III.), and, on the contrary (Coroll. 1, Prop. 55, Part III.), disturbed more and more by blame, we are led in life principally by the desire of honour, and under the burden of blame we can scarcely endure it” (177).

124.8    Whose losses show them rich and you no poorer: LZ’s notes reference Henry James, “The Altar of the Dead”: “People weren’t poor, after all, whom so many losses could overtake; they were positively rich when they had so much to give up” (Ahearn 117).

124.9   what stars’ imprint you mirror: LZ notes Paracelsus, the 16th century occult philosopher and alchemist (see 12.134.9). Various details of this stanza appear to be taken from the following passage:
            “And so philosophy is nothing other than the knowledge and discovery of that which has its reflection in the mirror. And just as the image in the mirror gives no one any idea about his nature, and cannot be the object of cognition, but is only a dead image, so is man, considered in himself: nothing can be learned from him alone. For knowledge comes only from that outside being whose mirrored image he is.
            Heaven is man, and man is heaven, and all men together are the one heaven, and heaven is nothing but one man. You must know this to understand why one place is this way and the other that way, why this is new and that is old, and why there are everywhere so many diverse things. […] The starry vault imprints itself on the inner heaven of man. A miracle without equal!
            Just as the firmament with all its constellations forms a whole in itself, likewise man in himself is a free and mighty firmament [these latter remarks are next to a woodcut of a man as zodiac].” (114/39-40). For Paracelsus on “the mirrored image he is,” see 12.177.32-178.4.

124.10  Grazes their tears: LZ notes Spinoza, Ethics IV, Prop. 50, Note: “He who rightly knows that all things follow from the necessity of divine nature, and come to pass according to the eternal natural and regular laws, will find nothing at all that is worthy of hatred, laughter, or contempt, nor will he deplore any one; but as far as human virtue can go, he will endeavour to act well, as people say, and to rejoice. To this must be added that he who is easily touched by the emotions of pity, and is moved to tears at the misery of another, often does something of which he afterwards repents: both inasmuch as we can do nothing according to emotion which we can certainly know to be good, and inasmuch as we are easily deceived by false tears. I am speaking here expressly of a man who lives under the guidance of reason. For he who is moved neither by reason nor pity to help others is rightly called inhuman, for he seems to be dissimilar to man” (176).

124.11  faced to your outer stars: cf. Paracelsus: “The inner stars of man are, in their properties, kind, and nature, by their course and position, like his outer stars, and different only in form and in material. For as regards their nature, it is the same in the ether and in the microcosm, man” (95/21).

124.11  purer / Gold than tongues make…: Ahearn (122-123) relates this to Paracelsus’ alchemical interests in the purification of gold as symbolic of a purification of the self, in which case the “tongues” here suggest the purifying flames. In the following lines LZ’s notes appear to refer to an alchemical illustration on “Preparation of the Elixir of Life” in Selected Writings (187/114).

124.13  Art new, hurt old: revealing / The slackened bow as the stinging / Animal dies…: LZ notes from Paracelsus: “Everything that comes from the flesh is animal and follows an animal course; heaven has little influence on it. […] Thus each human life takes its own course, thus dying, death, and disease are unequally distributed, in each case according to the action of the heavens. For if the same heaven were in all of us, all men would have to be equally sick and equally healthy. But this is not so; the unity of the Great Heaven is split into our diversities by the various moments at which we are born” (113-114/ 39-40). “The soul endures while the body decays, and you may recall that correspondingly a seed must rot away if it is bear fruit. But what does it mean, to rot? It means only this—that the body decays while its essence, the good, the soul, subsists. This should be known about decaying. […] Decay is the beginning of all birth. . . . It transforms shape and essence, the forces and virtues of nature” (217/143).

124.15  thread gold stringing / the fingerboard: cf. Paracelsus: “aurum musicum, the wire or thread gold, used for the stringing of musical instruments (37/xxxv).

124.17  Honor, song, sang the blest is delight knowing: Spinoza’s given name, Benedict or Baruch, means blest, which is how LZ frequently refers to him; see index. On honor LZ notes Spinoza quotation at 124.7 and Ethics IV, Prop. 58: “Honour is not opposed to reason, but can arise from it” (180)

124.18  We overcome ills by love. Hurt, song, nourish / Eyes, think most of whom you hurt: LZ notes three passages from Spinoza. Ethics III, Prop. 44: “Hatred which is entirely conquered by love passes into love, and love on that account is greater than if it had not been preceded by hatred” (114; see 12.233.26). Spinoza, Ethics V, Prop. 10, Note: “E.g., we placed among the rules of life (Prop. 46, Part IV, with its Note) that hatred must be overcome by love or nobleness, not requited by reciprocated hatred. But in order that this rule may be always ready for us when we need it, we must often think and meditate on the common injuries done to men, and in what manner and according to what method they may best be avoided by nobility of character. For if we unite the image of the injury to the image of this rule, it will always be ready for us (Prop. 18, Part II.) when an injury is done to us” (207). Ethics V, Prop. 23, Note: “But nevertheless we feel and know that we are eternal. For the mind no less feels those things which it conceives in understanding than those which it has in memory. For the eyes of the mind by which it sees things and observes them are proofs” (214). See 12.233.26-234.1 and Bottom 334.

124.20  poison: LZ notes from Paracelsus: “Is not a mystery of nature concealed even in poison? . . . What has God created that He did not bless with some great gift for the benefit of man? Why then should poison be rejected and despised, if we consider not the poison but its curative virtue? […] In all things there is a poison, and there is nothing without a poison. It depends only upon the dose whether a poison is poison or not” (169/95).

124.20  rod blossoms: LZ’s notes appear to suggest a pun with the middle name of Joseph Rodman Drake (see note at 124.2), as well as an allusion to Numbers 17:8 where Aaron’s rod blossoms to confirm the legitimacy of the House of Levi for the high priesthood: “And it came to pass, that on the morrow Moses went into the tabernacle of witness; and, behold, the rod of Aaron for the house of Levi was budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds.” The knight and minnesinger Tannhäuser requested absolution from the Pope for dawdling in Venusberg but was refused and told he could not expect forgiveness until the papal staff grew leaves; Tannhäuser leaves in despair and three days later the staff blossoms; the subject of one of Wagner’s operas. Also this phrase echoes the “red blossom” of 8.48.2, 8.105.4.

124.21  sweet lights: from Joseph Rodman Drake, “Bronx” (see note at 124.2): “Sweet sights, sweet sounds, all sights, all sounds excelling, / Oh! ’twas a ravishing spot formed for a poet’s swelling.”

124.21  in them I flourish: from Spinoza, Ethics V, Prop. 13: “The more an image is associated with many other things, the more often it flourishes. Proof.—The more an image is associated with many other things, the more causes there are by which it can be excited. Q.e.d.” (209; qtd. Bottom 29); see also quotation at 12.174.22.

124.22  not any one power / May recall or forget: LZ notes Spinoza, Ethics III, Prop. 2, Note: “Again, it is not within the free power of the mind to remember or forget anything” (89).

124.24   Love to see your love flows into / Us: LZ notes three passages from Paracelsus, as well as Dante without any specific reference. See Paracelsus: “Matter was at the beginning of all things, and only after it had been created was it endowed with the spirit of life, so that this spirit might unfold in and through the bodies as God had willed. […] Only then was man created in the likeness of God, and endowed with His spirit” (89-90/15-16). “You should look upon man as a part of nature whose end lies in heaven. In the heavens you can see man, each part for itself; for man is made of heaven” (113/39). “In him is God who is also in Heaven; and all the forces of Heaven operate likewise in man. Where else can Heaven be rediscovered if not in man? Since it acts from us, it must also be in us. […] Thoughts create a new heaven, a new firmament, a new source of energy, from which new arts flow. . . . When a man undertakes to create something, he establishes a new heaven, as it were, and from it the work that he desire to create flows into him” (119/45). 

125.1    Venus lights: LZ notes Paracelsus: “Who gives man all the arts, all the skills that he achieves? man does not give them to himself. […] And although we speak of heavenly songs and symphonies, they are produced neither by harps nor lutes, but are a noise in the clouds, an echo from the earth. Thus all things come from God, and God plants all things in us according to His will. […] If there had been no Venus, music would never have been invented, and if there had been no Mars, neither would the crafts ever have been invented” (202-203/128-129). The above passage is illustrated with a woodcut depicting Venus with Mars. 

125.1    to / Live our desires lead us to honor: LZ notes Spinoza, Ethics IV, Prop. 52, Note; see quotation at 124.7.

125.3    in nothing less than in death: LZ notes Spinoza, Ethics IV, Prop. 67: “A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life” (187).

125.4    the extended / World that nothing can leave: LZ’s notes Paracelsus: “Man was not born out of a nothingness, but was made from a substance. . . . The Scriptures state that God took the limus terrae, the primordial stuff of the earth, and formed man out of this mass. […] But limus terrae is also the Great World, and thus man was created from heaven and earth. Limus terrae is an extract of the firmament, of the universe of stars, and at the same time of all the elements. […] Therefore, the Great World, the macrocosm, is closed in itself in such a way that nothing can leave it, but that everything that is of it and within it remains complete and undivided” (90-91/16-17). Also according to sketchy notes made by George Butterick from a seminar LZ gave at the U. of Connecticut in 1971, this alludes to Spinoza for whom extension characterizes bodies whereas duration characterizes thought (Butterick 161).

125.8    His second paradise: LZ notes from Paracelsus: “The striving for wisdom is the second paradise of the world” (65/xiii); see 12.146.24. 

125.13  turn […] / four notes first too full for talk: in music a turn is an ornament consisting of four notes (Kenner, “Too Full for Talk” in Terrell 201). Ahearn suggests that this represents the four main voices of the poem: Cavalcanti, Joseph Rodman Drake, Paracelsus and Spinoza (118), but may also allude to the four notes of Bach’s name from which Bach composed an unfinished fugue, see 8.104.24 and particularly 12.127.23. See 22.526.18: “Too full for talk, 4 / tones….” The latter refers to the four tones of Mandarin Chinese, which are also mentioned at 22.526.7 and 22.532.8. Cf. Joyce, Ulysses: “Too full for words.”