The christmas present

The christmas present

John Bjarne Grover

1. The background story - the recording of Hélène Grimaud

I told this story in vol.4 p.1223-1224: In 2016 I was sitting in a hotel room in Venice looking out over the red rooftile landscape when I suddenly heard a fragment of music (from over this landscape) which I came to call a 'spröde Chopin' (as I wrote a few days later in my diary of 6 july), and when in 2019 I listened to Hélène Grimaud's record 'Memory' (published in 2018), I immediately recognized the fragment of 2016 in the seven seconds 02:06-02:13 in Chopin's 'Waltz in A minor', track 11 out of 15. Computing the same ratio (as part of the entire record) on my TEQ, I came to book 11 with TEQ #916 with New Testament 'holy text' parallel Luke 9:4 και πεσων επι την γην ηκουσε φωνην λεγουσαν αυτω: σαουλ, σαουλ, τι με διωκεις; Here 'Fragmente' = σαουλ, σαουλ, the fragments I had heard, 'Stille' = και πεσων επι την γην ηκουσε φωνην λεγουσαν αυτω: while 'an Diotima' = τι με διωκεις (a 'Diotima case'). The acoustic fragment was in early july 2016 while I was still writing 'Stillhetens åndedrag', but before I found the parallelism in Nono's quartet and before I had found the second 'lapis philosophorum' on the ground outside my house in Szolnok on 10 august 2016 - as if it had πεσων επι την γην ('fallen upon the ground'). The second lapis is then the corporeal reality (a referential level) having converted from the acoustics of harmony into counterpoint [...] in the sense of the 'spröde Chopin' as φωνην λεγουσαν αυτω ('voice talking to him') being turned into the stone. I had in 2016 heard the two fragments σαουλ, σαουλ ('Saul, Saul!') of Chopin - the first could be harmony, the second its counterpoint - and indeed the story of Saul is his conversion to Paul. It may even be that I wrote it down in my diary [...] on the point 0,7 through the time it took to write 'Stillhetens åndedrag' (253 days from 11 january 2016 to 20 september 2016) and that this was the same ratio 0,7 as the seconds 02:06-02:13 in track 11 out of 15 on the record 'Memory' - recorded in Himmelfahrtskirche Sendling in Munich in december 2017 (subtract the silence at the end of each track, serving as 'pause' between each piece of music). The relation between my hearing of the fragment of Chopin (the 'revelation') and Grimaud's later recording can be called 'transcendent' - and indeed I recognized the few seconds of the 'spröde Chopin' fragment immediately upon hearing it in 2019 and did not doubt that it was the same as I had heard in 2016.

2. The christmas present

On christmas eve 2019, quite late in the afternoon or early evening, I pulled out from my bookshelf vol.3 of Sándor Weöres' Collected Works (3 vols), leafed and read a little and found a poem 'A másik élet' (from his 'Àthallás' = 'interferences', 'through-hearings') which appeared to have similarities with the beginning of my own TEQ - 'Me and the Leotad girl / on the slippery slope' - for which reason I translated it on christmas eve. I dont know if it is translated into other languages - here is anyhow the poem, my translation and the relevant parallel in the first line of TEQ:

Weöres Sándor: A másik élet

Ez a másik, ez a világosabb
suhanás nem adatik
csak a nádszál-rengetegben
s az ingatag erdön,
amikor az ember már madár
és lemondott a külön pohárról
túl az eszmélkedésen,
a levegö tudása nélkül
ürbe meríti szárnyait. Sándor Weöres: The other life

This other, this brighter
slippery/slipping is not given,
only in the rush-sedge-vastness/infinity
and in the unstable forest,
when/where human is already bird
and has renounced the special glass
beyond the consciousness,
without the knowledge of the air
dipping its wing into cosmic void/space. on

the
slippery
slope
COMMA
me
and
the
leotad
girl

Sándor Weöres: The other life

This other, this brighter
slipping is not given,
only in the sedge's countlessness
and in the unstable forest,
when human is already bird
and has renounced the particular glass
beyond the consciousness,
without the knowledge of the air
dipping its wing into cosmic space.

I got up early next morning (on christmas night) and found a piece of apparent ex nihilo matter on the floor:

There is text on and inside - the matter is quite densely packed and glued and I could not get the wrapped paper up. The visible text says "FI: M..." and "PT: Bloo..." or "PT: Bloc..." The edge of a frame is on the other side - and I recognized these two elements as the same as the 'Finnegan' (or 'resurrected Christ') on the Chu silk:

The 'window frame' or wooden table to the left of the outstepper, the two textual fragments above his head. This corresponds to the hand and the 'stradivarius neck' on top of the head of the 'indian'. Clearly this apparently ex nihilo piece seems to tell of the birth of Jesus in Christmas night. Here are some more photos of the text on it:

Then later in the following day, on Christmas day 25 december, I opened the door and found a glass with a candle inside, wrapped in a transparent plastic - standing on my doorstep in the corner:

Now what is remarkable is that this glass looks like a reflex of the poem of Weöres which I translated in the evening before - and indeed the red colour on top resembles the meaning of the family name Weöres which is 'blood red' ('vörös') - cp. also the text on the ex nihilo piece. Who had left it there? Ah, it must have been Santa who had passed by with it - that is for the Sándor name: He left with his reindeer 'birds' after having 'renounced' the 'particular glass' on the doorstep, on the 'unstable forest' where the door is opening. The wrapped glass looks like a rose.

Of course it could have been a friendly neighbour who had left it there, but the relevance of the poem I had translated in the evening before is remarkable - and I dont think there would have been any shops open after that.

Anyhow, the allusions to a birth in the christmas night is remarkable.

3. Capuçon/Wang's record

Then on the 14th of january 2020 I went for a trip to St.Pölten (where they have a priestly seminary for educating the 'Geist-liche' of the austrian church) and back again, and in the afternoon there started some knockings in the wall and above which I first believed was restoration works, but the peculiar rhythms and constant repeats, with only very brief pauses, made it difficult to believe so. There was generally not enough pause to lift up a new nail for hammering it in - and I started suspecting that it could have been 'poltergeists'. The knockings were silent during the night but continued the day after. I notice the three poems I had published in translation in the article 'Shijing and the naked woman ' - and recalled two reports I had seen on the internet from papal visits to 1) Fatima in Portugal and 2) Knock in Ireland. Now I thought that maybe the knockings I heard were 'crow counting' a la Shijing poem #17.

Then I bought the new record by Yuja Wang (piano) and Gautier Capuçon (cello) - César Franck 'Cello Sonata in A - FWV 8' (transcr. Jules Delsart), Frédéric Chopin: 'Introduction and Polonaise brillante in C op.3', 'Cello Sonata in G minor op.65', Astor Piazzolla: 'Le Grand Tango'. I think it was on 15 january that I bought it - but I had to skip their concert with the same program on 17 january, for various reasons.

The knocking continued untill I understood what it was: It was 'Stillhetens åndedrag' poem #40 line 8-9 (title line included) - contained in the 'anchory point' of track 4, the end of Franck:

Hør, det banker i milde
netter under det fjerne løv. Listen, it knocks [there's knocking] in the mild
nights under the distant leaf/leaves.

which I took to mean 'Hjertet banker i marionetter...' = 'the heart beats in marionettes...' = the front page of TEQ.

For counting seconds on the record, the sum total is 4349 seconds - that leaves 11 seconds extra which can be used for framing the 10 tracks with an extra second - for reaching 4800 seconds for the 48 poems. The data on the record give only whole seconds which means that there will be an average of 0,5 seconds extra per track which are not included - that gives an extra 5 seconds for the 10 tracks and that is why the total length is given as 4749 seconds. By inserting an extra 'virtual' second framing the tracks take it to 4800 seconds.

It is likely that the record applies to 'Rosens triangel' - cp. the glass on the threshold. With 4800 seconds of music, there are 100 seconds per poem if there are 48 poems in the book. That is in the triangle of Dominican (poems 1-16), Franciscan (poems 17-32) and Carmelite (poems 33-48) - plus the rose of the Benedictine (poems 49-64) that extends over the three first when the 3*16 = 48 benedictine stanzas are distributed over the 48 first poems, appended as fourth stanzas). These 48 poems apply also to the 48 verses of Acts 10 = 'keys to heaven'.

The guess is that this means an essential aspect of the match between logical and phonetic form of language on the border to either white noise ('Rosens triangel') or silence ('Stillhetens åndedrag').

I try the version wherein 'Rosens triangel' means the principle of counterpoint to 'Stillhetens åndedrag' = the harmony - the two principles meeting in mirror symmetry - and then the poltergeists of 'Stillhetens åndedrag' #40 will knock at 'Rosens triangel' poem #25, the lines "skal ramme de ytterste kiler / i ryggens fantastiske segn" = "shall hit the outermost wedges / in the back's fantastic drop/collapse/falldown". This is the problem of the angel on the front page of TEQ.

Where is the onset of Franck - where does the record start the alignment to 'Rosens triangel' if this is the end of track 4? Franck is 29:03 minutes = 1743 seconds = 17,43 poems (if 100 seconds per poem). If a poem is 12 lines, that means 0,43 poem = 5,16 lines, if 16 lines (a benedictine stanza appended) it means 6,88 lines. I take the intermediate which means that the poltergeist is at 24,43 and subtract 17,43 to reach 7,00 = the onset of poem 8 exactly. But since the counterpoint goes mirror-symmetrically to the harmony, it means that perhaps one should compute the other way - read the poems from end to beginning - and then it means 40+17 = 57-48 = 9 = onset of #10.

On 20 january at 11:00 exactly there were 10 loud and distinct knocks which I happened to record.

In my study of Nono's "Fragmente - Stille - an Diotima" relative to my 'Stillhetens åndedrag' (in vol.4) I found that there was a distinct 'calibration point' in the wrapover when the 105 poems of 'Stillhetens åndedrag' were reduced to 64. This calibration point would be in the last stanza of poem #50 - each of these poems being 20 lines + title line = 21. The mirror point for this (here it be about the counterpoint) would then be in the first stanza of poem 15 - and the interval between these would be 35,57 poems = 3557 seconds - subtract the 1743 seconds of Franck and you get to 3557-1743 = 1814 seconds into Chopin: Track 5 = 544 seconds, track 6 = 927 seconds, track 7 = 288 seconds, that leaves 55 seconds into track 8 for the 1814 seconds.

This may be systematically 'the same' as the 'spröde Chopin' I heard from over the rooftops of Venice - that is Hélène Grimaud's record 'Memory' - the seven seconds 02:06-02:13 in Chopin's 'Waltz in A minor', which is track 11 out of 15.

In Capuçon/Wang's Chopin, track 8, the cello is walking up a stairway (scala) in the 7 seconds 0:54-1:01 (this recording from 0:56/57-1:04) - that could mean with New Testament 'holy text' parallel of Grimaud in Luke 9:4 - και πεσων επι την γην ηκουσε φωνην λεγουσαν αυτω: σαουλ, σαουλ, τι με διωκεις; = 'and falling upon the ground he heard a voice/phone/sound speaking to him: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?'

The metaphysical theory could apply to these two fragments of music, 7 seconds each, in such a way that the human spirit (me) recognizes these as 'the same' in a metaphysical sense of it (which acoustic music of course is not, but the story may be heuristic), and thereby a piece of matter is created 'ex nihilo' and 'falls to the ground' - while the difference between the two 'same' fragments then should amount to the 'meaning' (voice?) of the created matter.

One can guess that the difference between the two fragments of music, 7 seconds each, should come out as approximately the greek of Luke 9:4 - which could take about 7 seconds to pronounce. Mirrored or whatever. Harmony plus counterpoint. It could have been this which fell upon the ground in the christmas night.

'Polt av kingel i språket' could be the story. Polt of cobweb in the language.

And now for a little mystery: Do you think anybody will write an email to me: "Dear John, we read your article on the internet and have codecracked your interesting pieces of matter which you say could be ex nihilo, please find enclosed our analysis. We also bought the two records you refer to and tried to find out if there were any linguistically significant structure inbetween the two fragments you mention - could be we found something - see enclosed study. Thanks and best wishes - your friends at the institute of so-and-so".

Sources:

Capuçon, Gautier & Wang, Yuja: Franck, Chopin, Piazzolla. 2019 Erato 0190295392260

Grimaud, Hélène: Memory. Recording in Munich in December 2017 published in 2018 on Deutsche Grammophon 00289 483 5710.

Weöres, Sándor: Egybegyüjtött irások. 1-3. Magvetö, Budapest 1986.