Z-siteA Companion to the Works of Louis Zukofsky

First Half: 9 Aug. 1938 – 1 April 1940 / privately printed with “aids” as  First Half of “A”-9 (1940); Poetry 58.3. (June 1941).
Second Half: 2 Aug. 1948 – Aug. 1950; strophe 1, 2-27 Aug. 1948 (Brooklyn); strophe 2, 13-14 July 1950 (Old Lyme); strophe 3, 15 Aug. 1950 (Old Lyme); strophe 4, 18 Aug. 1950 (Old Lyme); strophe 5, 22 Aug. 1950 (Old Lyme) / Montevallo Review 1/4 (Summer 1953).

Notes to “A”-9, first half
Notes to “A”-9, second half
Notes to First Half of “A”-9 (1940)

“A”-9 adopts the canzone form of “Donne mi priegha” by Guido Cavalcanti (c.1255-1300), reproducing the intricate internal as well as terminal rhyme scheme. This canzone is reproduced twice a decade apart; the first time drawing content primarily from Karl Marx (1818-1883) and the second time primarily from Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). LZ first encountered Cavalcanti’s canzone in 1928 when EP published in two issues of The Dial the original texts, his first translation, plus the introductory essay and notes that would be included in Guido Cavalcanti Rime (1932) and reproduced as “Cavalcanti” in Make It New (1934; see Literary Essays of Ezra Pound 149-200). LZ had incorporated Cavalcanti’s canzone (excluding the first stanza) in The Writing of Guillaume Apollinaire (1934), both the original Italian and EP’s 1928 translation, suggesting it was a useful gloss on Apollinaire (76-83). The idea for the first half of “A”-9 seems to have been in LZ’s mind quite early, as he mentions in a 9 Nov. 1933 letter to Carl Rakosi that he intends to write “a canzone out of economics, which I’ll do someday, wait + see” (HRC 20.13). However, it is worth keeping in mind that from its first publication he always referred to the first half of “A”-9, indicating that he already intended a second half, although it would take him a decade to get around to composing the latter. 

Donna mi priegha by Guido Cavalcanti

Donna mi priegha, perch’i voglio dire
D’un accidente che sovente é fero
Ed é si altero ch’é chiamato amore
Sicche chi l negha possa il ver sentire
Ond a’l presente chonoscente chero
Perch’i no spero ch om di basso chore
Atal ragione portj chonoscenza
Chè senza natural dimonstramento
Non o talento di voler provare
Laove nascie e chì lo fá criare
E qual è sua virtu e sua potenza
L’essenza e poi ciaschun suo movimento
E ‘l piacimento che’l fá dire amare
E se hom per veder lo puó mostrare:—

In quella parte dove sta memoria
Prende suo stato si formato chome
Diafan dal lume d’una schuritade
La qual da Marte viene e fá dimora
Elgli é creato e a sensato nome
D’alma chostume di chor volontade
Vien da veduta forma ches s’intende
Che’l prende nel possibile intelletto
Chome in subgetto loco e dimoranza
E in quella parte mai non a possanza
Perchè da qualitade non disciende
Resplende in sé perpetuale effecto
Non a diletto mà consideranza
Perche non pote laire simiglglianza:—

Non é virtute ma da qusta vene
Perfezione ches si pone tale
Non razionale ma che sente dihco
Fuor di salute giudichar mantene
E l antenzione per ragione vale
Discerne male in chui é vizio amicho
Di sua virtu seghue ispesso morte
Se forte la vertú fosse impedita
La quale aita la contrara via
Nonche opposito natural sia
Mà quanto che da ben perfett e torte
Per sorte non po dir om ch abbia vita
Che stabilita non a singnioria
A simil puó valer quant uom l obblia:

Lesser é quando lo volere a tanto
Ch oltra misura di natura torna
Poi non si addorna di riposo maj          
Move changiando cholr riso in pianto
E lla fighura con paura storna
Pocho soggiorna anchor di lui vedraj
Che n gente di valore il piu si trova
La nova qualità move a sospirj  
E vol ch om mirj in un formato locho
Destandos’ira la qual manda focho
Inmaginar nol puo hom che nol prova
E non si mova perch’a llui si tirj
E non si aggirj per trovarvi giocho
E certamente gran saver nè pocho:

Da ssimil tragge complessione e sghuardj
Che fà parere lo piacere piu certo
Non puó choverto star quand è sì giunto
Non giá selvagge la biltá son dardj
Ch a tal volere per temere sperto
Hom seghue merto spirito che punto
E Non si puó chonosciere per lo viso
Chompriso bianco in tale obbietto chade
E chi ben aude forma non si vede
Perchè lo mena chi dallui procede
Fuor di colore essere diviso
Asciso mezzo schuro luce rade
Fuor d’ongni fraude dice dengno in fede
Chè solo da chostui nasce merzede:—

Tu puoj sichuramente gir chanzone
Dove ti piace ch i t o sí ornate
Ch assa lodata sará tua ragione
Dalle persone ch anno intendimento
Di star con l’altre tu non aj talento:

(Text from EP Translations (1963): 132-141; reformatted to match LZ’s layout)

First Half of “A”-9

The edition of Marx, Capital that LZ draws on in the first half of “A”-9 is the Everyman’s Library edition translated by Eden and Cedar Paul (1930). The following quotations from this volume are as quoted in First Half of “A”-9 (1940) with LZ’s ellipses. Only the sources for a few key phrases and images have been given below, and there is no attempt to reproduce the 21 pages of typed notes from Capital that LZ included in First Half of “A”-9.

106.1    An impulse to action sings of a semblance / Of things related as equated values…: many of the key ideas as well as specific vocabulary of the first stanza come from Marx, Capital, Chap. 1, section 4: “The Mystery of the Fetishistic Character of Commodities”:
            “. . the mystery of the commodity form . . that it mirrors for men the social character of their own labour, mirrors it as an objective character attaching to the labour products themselves, mirrors it as a social natural property of these things. . . the social relation of the producers to the sum . . of their own labour, presents itself . . not between themselves, but between the products of . . labour. . . commodities . . social things . . at the same time perceptible by our senses. . . in vision, light actually passes from one thing, the external object, to another thing, the eye. . . On the other hand . . the value relation between the labour products which finds expression in the commodity form, have nothing whatever to do with the physical properties of the commodities or with the material relations that arise out of these physical properties. We are concerned only with a definite social relation between human beings, which, in their eyes, has here assumed the semblance of a relation between things. . . enter the nebulous world of religion. In that world, the products of the human mind become independent shapes, endowed with lives of their own . . The products of the human hand do the same thing in the world of commodities. I speak of this as the fetishistic character which attaches to the products of labour . . in virtue of the relations which the process of exchange establishes between the labour products . . material relations between persons and social relations between things. . . useful thing, on the one hand, and thing of value, on the other . . useful things . . produced expressly for exchange . . […] . . different kinds of labour . . ignoring their actual unlikeness . . reducing them to terms of that which they all share as expenditures of human labour power—abstract human labour. . . they do not know that they are doing this, but they do it. Value does not wear an explanatory label. For from it, value changes all labour products into social hieroglyphs. . . for the specification of a useful object as a value is just as much a social product as language is. . . When . . Galiani wrote, ‘wealth (value) is a relation between two persons,’ he should have added, ‘but the relation is hidden away within material wrappings.’” (45-47).

106.3    The measure all use is time congealed labor / In which abstraction things keep no resemblance / To goods created…: from Marx, Capital Chap. 1; see Arise 43:
“As values, commodities are nothing but particular masses of congealed labour time” (8).

106.3    labor: LZ’s key term here substitutes for Cavalcanti’s amor.

106.7    So that were the things words they could say…: this conceit is suggested by Marx in the concluding paragraph on “The Mystery of the Fetishistic Character of Commodities” in section 4 of Chap. 1 of Capital:
            “ . . one more example relating to the commodity form itself. If commodities could speak, they would say: ‘Our use-value may interest human beings; but it is not an attribute of ours, as things. What is our attribute, as things, is our value. Our own interrelations as commodities proves it. We are related to one another only as exchange-values.’ Now let us hear how the economist interprets the mind of the commodity. He says: ‘Value (exchange-value) is a property of things; riches (use-value), of man. Value, in this sense, necessarily implies exchanges; riches do not.’ […] What substantiates this view is the remarkable fact that the use-value of things is realized without exchange, by means of a direct relation between things and men, whereas their value is realized only in exchange, only in a social process. Surely, in this connexion, every one will recall the excellent Dogberry’s instruction to neighbour Seacoal: ‘To be a well-favoured man is the gift of fortune, but to write and read comes by nature’ [Much Ado about Nothing III.iii]” (58).
            Sherwood identifies another possible source behind this conceit in Edward FitzGerald’s version of Omar Khayyam’s Rubáiyat. In his radio script on “Remmey and Crolius Stoneware,” prepared in Feb. 1940, LZ concludes by remarking: “If the stoneware shown on our Index plates could speak, like Omar Khayyám’s pots, they would say ‘“Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?” It doesn’t matter really which Crolius or Remmey made us. The tradition is the same. […] O yes,’ this stoneware would say, ‘we were made at different times, by different hands. […] But, for all that, we are not so different one from another […]’” (A Useful Art 198). The quotation is from FitzGerald’s Rubáiyat #60 (1st edition) or #87 (4th edition), which includes quite a few speaking pots, especially #34-36 (1st edition) or #35-37 (4th edition) and #59-66 (1st edition) or #82-90 (4th edition)—in the 1st edition this latter group was set-off as a distinct sub-sequence with the title, “Kuza-Nama (‘Book of Pots’).”

106.16  We affect ready gold a steady token…: “Finally we have to ask how it is that gold can be replaced by worthless symbols of itself. . . Its functional existence absorbs . . its material existence. Being a transient and objective reflex of the prices of commodities, it functions only as a symbol of itself, and can therefore itself be replaced by symbols. One thing, however, is essential. This token which functions as money, must have an objective social validity of its own; and the paper symbol acquires such a validity by its enforced currency. State compulsion of the kind can take effect only within that domestic sphere of circulation which is restricted by the frontiers of the community; but it is only within that sphere that money fully assumes its function as circulating medium, or coin” (109).

107.3    Desired perfection…: Cf. 1.2.15 and 6.24.22: “An objective—nature as creator—desire for what is objectively perfect….”; echoed in the definition of “An Objective” (Prep+ 12).

107.16  Light acts beyond the phase day wills us into…: see Marx, Capital Chap. 10 on “The Working Day,” in which Marx analyzes how capitalism’s insatiable thirst to appropriate surplus-value creates various methods for extending the working day beyond what he repeatedly refers to as the “natural day.” This includes the introduction of shifts so that factories can run round the clock. 

107.19  cangues: a heavy wooden yoke borne on the shoulders and fastened around the neck and arms, a punishment commonly associated with Imperial China. In his “Restatement,” LZ explicitly makes the association with China as well as with the image of “human cattle.” The origin for these images in Marx is a footnote in Capital, Chap. 13: “Moses says: ‘Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.’ But the Christian philanthropists of Germany, when using their serfs to drive mills, fastened a large circular piece of wood round the necks of these human cattle, to prevent them from putting meal into their mouths” (395).

108.15  like a quantum of action / Defined product of energy and time: quantum of action or Planck’s constant, after its discoverer Max Planck (1858-1947), became the basis for the development of quantum theory, in which energy is conceived of as discrete packets or bundles rather than as flowing in a steady stream, as assumed in classical physics. See H. Stanley Allen, Electrons and Waves as quoted in First Half of “A”-9 (1940): “In Applied Mathematics a quantity called ‘Action’ is employed, which is defined as the product of energy and time, and if we consider the action during one complete period of vibration we find it equal to h, so that we may regard h as an atom of action. […] Arising out of the work of Planck on the quantum theory an important suggestion was made by Einstein in 1905. This was the hypothesis of the existence of ‘light quanta,’ according to which the energy of radiation, instead of spreading out form the source in all directions, as the wave theory would indicate, is concentrated or localized in certain . . bundles of units. On this view propagation of light takes place in a way resembling in many respects that met with in corpuscular or emission theory of Newton. It is as though the energy of the radiation were concentrated in space, being always confined to a very small volume. Further, the energy of a ‘light quantum’ or ‘photon’ is definite in amount for light of a given colour, being equal to the product of Planck’s constant and the frequency of vibration. . . ” (45-46).
            Although LZ is clearly alluding to quantum physics here, this phrase can also and more easily be understood in Marx’s terms as referring to a given measure of labor-power, that is, the average time required in a given society to fulfill a certain task, on the basis of which labor-power can be measured and commodified. Marx (or his translators) often uses the word “quantum,” although simply to mean a given measure of something, and LZ quotes Marx in this sense at 8.50.20.

Second Half of “A”-9

The edition of Benedict de Spinoza LZ draws on is the Everyman’s Library edition of Ethics (including On the Correction of the Understanding), trans. Andrew Boyle (1910), with an introduction by George Santayana.

Compared with the first half, the latter half of “A”-9 has received relatively little detailed commentary, but here are a few general observations. In part because the rhyme words are largely carried over from the first half, the second half retains a fair amount of the Marxist terminology, although ventilated through Spinoza, with the result that Spinozian terms are significantly less prominent in the second half than Marxist vocabulary is in the first. Both for this reason as well as that Spinoza is more abstract, it is more difficult to point to the passages in Spinoza as the direct source of this or that phrase or line in the second half. However, LZ gives extensive references to Spinoza’s Ethics in both is drafts (HRC 3.1 & 2) and his fair copy (PZ Archive): the full list can be seen here. A fair number of these references are to Spinoza’s often lengthy notes and below no attempt has been made to exhaustively reproduce the passages LZ drew on.

108.25  Benedict’s neighbor / Crying his hall’s flown into the bird: Benedict is Spinoza himself and this example appears in Ethics II, Prop. 47, Note: “Now many errors consist of this alone, that we do not apply names rightly to things. For when any one says that lines which are drawn from the center of a circle to the circumference are unequal, he assuredly understands something far different by circle than mathematicians. Thus when men make mistakes in calculation they have different numbers in their heads than those on the paper. Wherefore it you could see their minds they do not err; they seem to err, however, because we think they have the same numbers in their minds as on the paper. If this were not so we should not believe that they made mistakes any more than I thought a man in error whom I heard the other day shouting that his hall had flown into his neighbour’s chicken, for his mind seemed sufficiently clear to me on the subject” (74; qtd. Bottom 287, Prep+ 56 and same passage without the chicken at “A”-12.235.7-8).

108.29  sweet alyssum, that not-madness: alyssum is a genus of plants, natural order Cruciferae, containing several white- or yellow-flowered species, much employed for decorating rockwork. <Gk. άλυσσον, a plant used to check hiccup; referred to λύζειν, to hiccup, or otherwise to neut. of ἅλυσσς, curing (canine) madness, < ἀ– priv. + λύσσα, madness.

109.2    Elysium: = Elysian Fields, in Greek mythology the abode of the blessed after death (AHD). Although etymologists seem unsure, Ahearn quotes an undated letter to Lorine Niedecker in which LZ says it is from the Gk. meaning “I shall go” (107). CD says: “<L. Elysium < Gr. Ἠλύσιον, the Elysian Field, or Fields, i.e., the field of the departed, lit. of going or coming.”

109.5    A body ready as love’s steady token / Fed thought unbroken…: LZ’s notes indicate Spinoza, Ethics V, Prop. 1: “Just as thoughts and the ideas of the mind are arranged and connected in the mind, so in the body its modifications or the modifications of things are arranged and connected according to their order” (202).

109.7    its ideal / that loves love: LZ’s notes indicate Spinoza, Ethics V, Prop. 36: “The mental intellectual love towards God is the very love of God with which God loves himself, not in so far as he is infinite, but in so far as he can be expressed through the essence of the human mind considered under the species of eternity, that is, mental intellectual love towards God is part of the infinite love with which God loves himself” (219).

109.8    Broken / Plea, best unspoken…: LZ’s notes reference Spinoza, Ethics II, Prop. 49, Note (see 12.233.5-7 and Bottom 421): “For these three, namely, images, words, and ideas, are by most people either entirely confused or not distinguished with sufficient accuracy or care, and hence they are entirely ignorant of the fact that to know this doctrine of the will is highly necessary both for philosophic speculation and for the wise ordering of life. Those who think that ideas consist of images which are formed in us by the concourse of bodies, persuade themselves that those ideas of things like which we can form no image in the mind are not ideas, but fabrications which we invent by our own free will; they therefore regard ideas as lifeless pictures on a board, and preoccupied thus with this misconception they do not see that an idea, in so far as it is an idea, involves affirmation or negation. Then those who confuse words with ideas, or with the affirmation which the idea involves, think that they can wish something contrary to what they feel, when they affirm or deny anything by were words against what they feel. […] For the essence of words and images is constituted solely by bodily motions which least involve the conception of thought” (77).

109.13  imprecision / Of indignation: cf. Spinoza, Ethics III, Appendix 24: “[…] although indignation seems to be a species of equity, yet life would be lawless in many a place where each one could pass judgment concerning the actions of another and vindicate his own or the right of another” (195).

109.18  Virtue flames value, merriment love: cf. Bottom 26: “Where ‘Love hath reason,’ the sight flames […]” and Spinoza quotation at 11.124.22. For Spinoza on merriment, see Ethics IV, Prop. 42f (quoted at 12.184.15 and Bottom 78, 192) and IV, Prop. 44, Note: “Merriment, which we said to be good, can be more easily conceived than observed. For the emotions by which we are daily assailed have reference rather to some part of the body which is affected beyond the others, and so the emotions as a rule are in excess, and so detain the mind in the contemplation of one object that it cannot think of others; and although men are liable to many emotions, and therefore few are found who are always assailed by one and the same emotion, yet there are not wanting those to whom one and the same emotion adheres with great pertinacity. We see that men are sometimes so affected by one object that although it is not present, yet they believe it to be present with them; when this happens to a man who is not asleep, we say that he is delirious or insane; nor are they thought less mad who are fired with love, and who spend night and day in dreaming of their ladylove or mistress, for they cause laughter” (172-173).

109.21  More apt, more salutary body moves many / Minds whose direction…: LZ’s notes indicate Spinoza, Ethics II, Prop. 13, Note: “This, however, I will say in general, that according as a body is more apt than others for performing many actions at the same time, or receiving many actions performed at the same time, so is the mind more apt than others for perceiving many things at the same time: and according as the actions of a body depend more solely on itself, and according as fewer other bodies concur with its action, so the mind is more apt for distinct understanding. And thus we may recognize how one mind is superior to all others, and likewise see the cause why we have only a very confused knowledge of our body, and many other things which I shall deduce from these” (48; see also quotation at 12.188.1). See also Ethics II, Prop. 14 and IV, Appendix 27.

109.23  sole lee: pun on solely; lee = the insoluble matter that settles from a liquid, especially from wine; sediment; dregs (WD). See quotation at 109.21.

109.23  from it offences / To self or others die: on the power of love to turn hate into love, see Spinoza quotation at 12.233.26.

109.25  thwarted dream with eyes open: from Spinoza, Ethics III, Prop. 2, Note: this is the concluding remark of a long note in which Spinoza argues that “The body cannot determine the mind to think, nor the mind the body to remain in motion, or at rest, or in any other state (if there be any other). […] And therefore these decrees of the mind arise in the mind from the same necessity as the idea of things actually existing. Those, therefore, who believe that they speak, are silent, or do anything from the free decision of the mind, dream with their eyes open” (89-90); qtd. Bottom 81.

109.27  Remindful of its deaths as loves decreases: cf. Spinoza, Ethics II, 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).

110.2    Love acts beyond the phase day wills it into: cf. Spinoza, Ethics V, Prop. 34, Corollary: “Hence it follows that no love save intellectual love is eternal” (218).

110.3    Hate is obscure, errs, is pain, furor, torn: cf. Spinoza, Ethics III, Prop. 45: “If one imagines that anyone similar to himself is affected with hatred towards another whom he himself loves, then he will hate the first of these two” (115). Also Ethics III, Def. of Emotions 7: “Hatred (odium) is pain accompanied by the idea of an external cause” (130).

110.4    Lust to adorn aversion, hope: cf. Spinoza, Ethics III, Def. of Emotions 9: “Aversion (aversio) is pain accompanied by the idea of anything which is accidentally the cause of that pain” (130-131). And Ethics III, Def. of Emotions 12: “Hope (spes) is an uncertain pleasure arisen from the idea of a things past or future, the event of which we still doubt to some extent” (131).

110.4    love eying / Its object joined to its cause: from Spinoza, Ethics III, Def. of Emotions 6: “Love (amor) is pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause. Explanation.—this definition sufficiently explains the essence of love. That one given by authors who define that love is the wish of the lover to unite himself to the object loved, does not explain the essence of love, but a property thereof […]. But let it be remarked that when I say that it is a property of the essence of love that the lover wishes to be united to the object of his love, I do not understand by will or wish, consent, determination, or free decision (for this we have shown to be fictitious in Prop. 48, Part II.), nor even the wish of the lover to be united with the object of his love when it is absent, nor or continuing in its presence when it is present (for love can be conceived without either of these desires): but by wish I understand the satisfaction which is in the love by reason of the presence of the object loved, by which the pleasure of the lover is maintained, or at least cherished” (130).

110.11  Balm or jewelweed: jewelweed is a plant having yellowish, spurred flowers, also called touch-me-not and balsam, which is frequently synonymous with balm, any number of aromatic and resinous plants used to produce balming ointments. In a 6 Sept. 1968 letter, Lorine Niedecker mentions that she pointed out jewelweed to LZ when he visited her in Wisconsin in Sept. 1936, and adds that it is an antidote for poison ivy (Penberthy 354-355).

110.21  Loss seize the hurt head Apollo’s eyes’ point to: / Ai, Ai Hyacinthus, the petals of vision: Apollo’s beloved Hyacinth was accidentally killed by a discus blown awry by jealous Zephyr. Apollo’s cry of grief, “Ai Ai,” can be read on the leaves of the flower that sprang from Hyacinth’s blood. Homophonically, “Ai, Ai” can be read as either “eye, eye” or “I, I.”

110.30   Love speaks: “in wracked cities there is less action…: among notes with the draft manuscripts of the second half of “A”-9, there is an extensive list of references to Spinoza either used or for potential use in the coda (see link to list above). Among these is a quotation from Aristotle’s Metaphysics I.9, where he is critiquing Plato’s theory of Forms: “Nor have the Forms any connexion with what we see to be the cause of the arts, that for whose sake both all mind and the whole of nature are operative […] if [the Forms] are not to be movement, whence did movement come? The whole study of nature has been annihilated. […] the Forms destroy the things for whose existence we are most zealous than for the existence of the Ideas […]” (992b, 990b). See “A”-12.170.6-11.

110.30  wracked cities: as several commentators have pointed out, this alludes to the recently concluded war, and LZ’s early notes for the second half of “A”-9 indicate his intention that the coda link with the following “A”-10 written previously during the war (Booth 54). Cf. Gertrude Stein’s remarks quoted at 12.223.17f.

111.1    Sweet alyssum sometimes is not of time…: on sweet alyssum, see note at 108.29. LZ’s manuscript has a reference immediately following this concluding envoy to Spinoza, Ethics V, Prop. 36, see quotation at 109.7. See also following Note: “From this we clearly understand in what consists our salvation, blessedness, or liberty (salus nostra seu beatitude seu libertas), namely, in the constant and eternal love for God, or in the love of God for men. And this love or blessedness is called in the Scriptures ‘glory’ [ἡδόξα]—not without reason. For whether this love has reference to God or the mind, it can rightly be called mental satisfaction, which in truth cannot be distinguished from glory (Def. Emo. 25 and 30). For in so far as it has reference to God it is (Prop. 35, Part V.) pleasure, if I may use this term, accompanied by the idea of himself, just as it is in so far as it has referent to the mind (Prop. 27, Part V.). Again, in as much as the essence of our mind consists of knowledge alone, the beginning and basis of which is God (Prop. 15, Part I., and Note, Prop. 47, Part II.), it is hence quite clear to us in what manner and for what reason our mind follows with regard to essence and existence from divine nature and continually depends on God” (219-220).

111.4    How else is love’s distance approximated: see the brief Preface by Albert Einstein to Albert Einstein: A Biographical Portrait, NY: Albert & Charles Boni, 1930) written by his son-in-law Anton Reiser (Rudolf Kayser) and translated anonymously by LZ: “What has been overlooked is the irrational, the inconsistent, the droll, even the insane, which nature, inexhaustible operative, implants in an individual, seemingly for her own amusement. But these things are singled out only in the crucible of one’s own mind. This is as it should be. For, otherwise, how could the isolation of distance be approximated” (v).

First Half of “A”-9 (1940)

The First Half of “A”-9 appeared in 1940 in a mimeograph edition of 55 copies (produced by CZ; see WCW/LZ 276) that reproduced extensive sources for the poem. LZ’s poem alone was reprinted the following year in Poetry 58.3 (June 1941), and the Contributors note, presumably originating from LZ, states: “Mr. Zukofsky has spent five years on this first half of the ninth movement of his long poem, A [sic]. He uses the canzone form which, according to Dante, embraced ‘the whole art of poetry.’ The form, appears only once before in literature, in Guido Cavalcanti’s Donna mi Prega. 55 mimeographed copies of A-9: First Half, including notes, have been made for private distribution” (172; the phrase from Dante is quoted or paraphrased in The Writing of Guillaume Apollinaire 184/185, “A”-12.162.31, Bottom 392, Prep+ 9, 224). The idea of incorporating Marx into a canzone goes back even earlier, as LZ mentions the possibility in a 29 Oct. 1933 letter to EP (EP/LZ 154).

In the “Foreword” to the 1940 publication LZ remarks: “These aids are presented in the foregoing order, the poem last, so that if the intention to have it fluoresce as it were in the light of seven centuries of interrelated thought has at all been realized the poem will explain itself. In any case, the aids may forestall exegesis.” And concludes: “‘A’-9 may mean more if it be taken also as a sign that capitalism will capitulate” (dated 24 Nov. 1939). See also brief remarks in 24 April 1939 letter to WCW (WCW/LZ 269).

The contents of this edition are as follows, with original page numbers:

The Italian text of Cavalcanti’s canzone is taken from EP’s edition of Guido Cavalcanti Rime (Genova: Edizioni Marsano, 1932 [LZ dates it 1931]).

The extensive quotations from Capital (Vol. 1) are an attempt to offer a radical abridgement of the entire work using the Everyman’s Library edition translated by Eden and Cedar Paul (1930).

The passages on modern physics are from H. Stanley Allen’s Electrons and Waves: An Introduction to Atomic Physics (1932).

The earlier EP translation of Cavalcanti’s canzone was first published in 1928, although LZ took it from Guido Cavalcanti Rime (1932); the second translation is the version that appears in Canto 36, taken from A Draft of Cantos XXXI-XLI (1934).

Jerry Reisman’s Brooklyn vernacular version of the first two stanzas was not published elsewhere (see below).

LZ’s vernacular version is reprinted in Kenner’s “Loove in Brooklyn” and in Selected Poems (2006). Although a number of critics have described LZ’s vernacular as Brooklynese, he indicated on various occasions in letters that it is “Oirish” (SL 180, 260).

The statement on form includes the following: “[…] the first 70 lines are the poetic analog of a conic section—i.e. the ratio of the accelerations of two sounds (r,n) has been made equal to the ratio of the accelerations of the coordinates (x,y) of a particle moving in a circular path with uniform angular velocity. I.e. values of
            d²y
            dt²                  =    tan Θ where Θ  =    arc tan y/x
            d²x
            dt²
are noted for five symmetrically located points. The time unit in the poetry is defined by 7 eleven-syllable lines. Each point is represented by a strophe. Mr. Jerry Reisman is responsible for this part of the ‘form.’” Kenneth Cox points out that the letter “A” forms the figure of a conic section with a line through the middle. Ahearn quotes related notes in manuscripts, as well as providing some explanations in his appendix on “Mathematical Configurations in ‘A’” (Introduction to “A” 232-236, 239-240); see also Booth 53-54.

LZ’s “Restatement” is a fairly straightforward stanza-by-stanza paraphrase of the Marxist content of his version.

Jerry Reisman, “A Dame Ast Me” (First and second strophes of Donna mi Prega)

It’s so hot an’ proud comin’ so often, dough
A natural freak, I’m itchin’ t’speak becuz
A dame ast what wuz love. Wut is it? I t’ink
A heel in a crowd is not too dumb to know –
It may be all greek, a lot of cheek or fuzz
To wise guys – it does no good to teach a gink
Who’ll never ever be high’s a Georgia pie
Yet git by fine widout no experiments.
I don’t wanna, gents, nor am I apt ’a prove
Where it wuz born, how it begun to move,
What its good points are an’ how it gits in high
An’ how by an’ large it is its own movements
An’ de pleasin’ sense of what it feels “to love”
An’ if guys see it clear’s a t’ing in a groove.

It sets up ’n dat part memory hails from
An’ pulls a quick change into a range of light
Very like at night when Mars’ shadow comes down
An’ remains. De heart gives it de flair to come
T’rough; d’ soul – oomph. Its name ’s a feeling’, same’s “a sight
T’sore eyes.” It’s made: ’n’right den an’ dere goes to town
After takin’ shape from a form which is seen
In de bean only if ya foist get de drift;
In dat case it’ll shift yet for a right guy’ll stay
In place, dough it can’t rest because it don’t weigh
Down but spreads out like electric light, so clean
Is its sheen everywhere, ’cause it’s got lift.
A swell gift; but ’tain’t all fun, y’ figger out de lay.
It can’t show true color any udder way