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Kip Manley

Posted on April 25, 2005 7:40 PM

Westmarkism.

So I’m brushing up on Lemmish sects. Westmarkers: they won’t cast any magic not found in the Books of Lem, right? So any texts they write are essentially exegeses of the rainbow? Or ought to be? —Or at least drawn from them. Theory, I imagine, could venture outside the realm of close critical reading of those books alone, but any explicit spells or rituals must be drawn from that well alone. Right? (No, not so much. Okay. Cool. Makes life easier for me.)

Anyway, I’m also thinking there are collections of essentially hadith: extra-textual anecdotes and proverbs and koans regarding the life of Lem (and, sometimes, Tresmillia) mostly drawn from the post-Diaspora window when Lemmites were splitting hither and yon and Lem was keeping mum as to who was more right than whom. His every word and gesture was scrutinized, we’re told; here in the hadith were where that scrutiny was recorded and decoded. Except they aren’t called hadith. “Trivia,” maybe? “Paleæ” (chaff)? —Ooh! I like “secanes” (cuttings, parings). Except maybe it should be “secta.” I can’t remember if I want a plural participle or a plural gerund. I think the gerund, which would be secta. Bad me. Maybe we should go with trivia?

#1
SK

Posted on April 25, 2005 11:37 PM

It all depends on what the meaning of "in the text" is...
I've always imagined that the Westmarchite belief that permissable magic is all contained within the books of Lem has led to the movement's development of perfectly unspeakably tortured "close readings" of those texts.

I'm totally getting into the idea of the secta now. Pages and pages and pages of excruciatingly detailed Founder Worship. Sweet.

#2
Kip Manley

Posted on April 26, 2005 9:32 AM

Close readings without effort.

What I’d been thinking for my initial run at Rationis mentis was less close reading than theory-inspired-by: the explication of a single coherent theory (“systems,” see, would have been something of a funny) of pneuma: the Classical idea of a subtle fluid that acts as intermediary and translator between gross material sensation and ineffably numinous soul, or, to be less Cartesian (and Christian), the divine spark of Love and Reason. —But that seemed a little, shall we say, “free-form” for my initial idea of Westmarchites as dour people of the Books. I’d been worried that the clear and useful mentem text I’d seen in my head from Charles’s description would have to be extracted from something a bit more purple, overwrought, closely read:


Was it the combination of “sorrel” and finding out that the Greek oxys had more senses of sharpness than acidity, sourness, pungency (the leaves and stems of most oxalises are sour-juiced), that decided Zukofsky to bring in the horse again? Plus the resemblance of oxalis leaves (three leaflets, notched) to those of clover, the lucky leaf (“One’s a lucky horse,” “A” – 12, p. 176)—more lucky to Zukofsky when its heart shapes number three rather than four? Each leaflet-heart comes to a sharp point at the mutual conjunction, or is “brought to a point” (kyrbasia es oxy apegmenas); Zukofsky was looking at Liddell and Scott’s entry for oxys. “Tow ox / a”? The vertex of a triangle is expressed in the phrase to oxy. The Greek point was also extended to the senses, and could signify sharp keen feeling, whether the blazing heat of the sun or stabs of pain or grief. Virgil’s “rapidus sol” is cited by Liddell and Scott as an analog; Zukofsky checked Lewis and Short and found the reference under the literal sense (very rare, used only poetically) of rapidus as “tearing away, seizing.”


—From Leggott’s Reading Zukofsky, as brought to my attention by the invaluable etc. Ray Davis. So I was at first pleased to discover via the wiki that Westmarchites are mostly concerned about spontaneous magic and not so much necessarily extemporeaneous theorizin.’ Though your clarification, Sarah, did make me feel like I was cheating; still, I had my idea and wanted to push on.

Except, you know, I went back and actually read Charles’s description and realized what I wanted had no bearing in canon whatsofrickinever; what Flens Fletus wrote had as little to do with my idea as it did with what I feared it might be: not my clear explication, or Leggott’s bravura wrestling, but Zukofsky his own dam’ self:


#63 OXALIS



Wood sorrel lady’s-sorrel 3-hearts tow ox

a leese rapids whose soul

air-spring disperses thru water elator

ox lips mistaken for clover

more ruse mulberry locust-flower shield

welcome wanderer óxalis time primrose-yellow

a breeze sweet rampant pulse

scald scold honor the bard


—Except, you know, about emotions and thought and reflection in the Books. So I let Fletus be Fletus, came up with the idea of the exegeses, and gave the theory of pneuma to Sine Pluvere Palmæ, which gave me the new phantom cite I needed, and everybody was happy. I hope.

Sine Pluvere Palmæ, by the way (“Glory without effort”): I couldn’t decide if he was a widely read Manerean, or a Lemmite who was widely read, and finally shrugged and left it to whomever. Along with the title of his work. Which I realize might be seen as cheating, but it was three in the morning. —Though I do have an idea for the Lesson of the Attar of Roses, which I shall perhaps type up once I get back to my notes.

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