Brief summary of 'The Endmorgan Quartet'

Brief summary of 'The Endmorgan Quartet'

John Bjarne Grover

Here is the very brief summary of the 4-volume work which could be called an 'ultimate Endmorgan quartet' or something like that. As it tells, the work can be published in 4 volumes, or, if the second volume gets too thick, in 7 or 6 volumes - each of which could have the following summary attached on two pages at the end.

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The Endmorgan Quartet

is a poetic-philosophical study of the poetic reality and its relation to the historic reality, written by John Grover in the years 1994-2012. It consists of the four main parts:

1. 'The Dreamer' (1994-1995), prose, appr. 600 p, on the form of place
2. 'The Endmorgan Quartet' (1997-2008), poetry, appr. 1900 p, on the form of time
3. 'POLAKK English Bloggi' (2008-2010), poetry, appr. 380 p. on the form of writing
4. 'My mention e Anna' (2010-2012), poetry/prose, appr. 260 p, on the form of being

The second of these consists of 16 books of poetry and is divided into four parts with four books in each:

2a. 'The Endmorgan Quartet', TEQ books 1-4
2b. 'Birds to Saladin', TEQ books 5-8
2c. 'A saga Hume', TEQ books 9-12
2d. 'Wine 2*', TEQ books 13-16

When, in addition, 'The Endmorgan Quartet' is the signature to a poem in the third of the 16 books, a poem which can be seen to have its ultimate reference in 'My mention e Anna', it constitutes a maze of levels and connections. The Beachy Head landslide of 1999 can be seen to mean just 'Being's Form'. The 16 books can be seen to be about 16 poetic functions of the poetic reality such as it is giving form to the historic reality.

The Dreamer is a poetic-philosophical study of the form of place - a novel in diary form about a person who discovers that he is haunted by car numbers and voices start speaking to him. It is a new and mystic reality opening up, while some could believe that the writer is about to move into a psychosis. The novel was written in 1994-95. It is a nominal counterpoint to the temporal Endmorgan Quartet, in relation to which it serves to establish a divine aspect of the category of place. The book has a parallel text in 693 hebrew fragments from the Talmud Erubin which it shares with the parallel texts of the poetic work, books 13-16, and this can be seen as the substrate in the novel telling the story of another reality. The book can also be read as a story of an envoy from heaven arriving with the suburban line for writing a report on the state of the art on earth. It is a second-order novel with its main story in an esoteric and mystic format.

The Endmorgan Quartet is a work of poetry on the form of time over 16 books in parallel with ancient greek and hebrew texts. The second-order character of the work emerges from a study of its relation to the parallel texts. The very phenomenon of parallel texts itself is established by the 693 poems of books 1-10 relative to the 693 hebrew fragments in parallel to the poems of books 13-16, the same as for the novel. This largescaled establishment of parallel texts, spanning the more than 1700 poems in this work, contributes to the role of the parallel texts in greek and hebrew in this work - from Genesis, Exodus, Luke, Acts, Matthew as well as Xenophon and the Talmud. Book 11 (and some of book 10) interprets the function of the ancient texts: Each line in this book interprets the relation between a fragment of holy text in its original language and the poem it parallels in english language, poem by poem untill it catches up with itself at the first line of book 11 which follows the end of poem #693. Book 13 interprets the redaction history of these holy texts: Finding e.g. a certain difference between Tischendorf and Aland redactions of the new testament, it can be computed by ratio position in the work and finds thereby its interpretation in the corresponding ratio position among the 213 poems in book 13 - and catches up with itself on poem #128 in that book. Book 14 provides in its 207 poems a semantic definition of a work-internal character for each or most words in the work on a distributional basis by way of the date of writing of each word and hence the time interval between them. The sum total of this (and the rest of the 16 poetic functions) is a second-order poetic object beyond ordinary word level semantics which can be experienced in relation to the fragments of holy text in their original language for a deeper understanding of the form of time. It is this second-order phenomenon, which can be compared with the aspirations of traditional esoteric and mystic schools, albeit here in a way which can be studied more rationally, which also lends to 'The Dreamer' a character of a second-order narrative on the form of place beyond the narrative surface on the everyday life in Oslo: The real artwork is on a higher level, which explains the particular narrative form as motivated by the second order story. The two works are a contribution to a higher-order poetic logic.

This could perhaps suggest that the real artworks are not accessible to readers who do not master greek and hebrew, but that is not true - even if of course such knowledge helps. POLAKK English Bloggi (the 'blue metre') is a work on the form of writing and can be used to date texts of almost any age. Its 366 poems cover a 1000 year recurring cycle in literary form which makes it possible to date almost any text by way of this cycle of sonnets. It can be used to conclude e.g. that the Odyssey received its written form between 833 and 780 BC. It contains 365 sonnets and one leapyear poem in parallel to the first 366 verses of Genesis and the book is divided into 24 sections of text, each section defining a letter in the hebrew alphabet in such a way that the graphic form becomes understandable as carrying the semiotic mystery that makes it meaningful. The book can thereby be understood as being about the form of writing not only in historic time of 1000 year cycles but even in the local sense of an immediate semiotic function of the written alphabetic character under the nib of the pen. This also means that the parallel hebrew texts will function to some extent even for a reader who is not acquainted with the language.

My mention e Anna (the 'red metre', which perhaps can be needed if the 'blue' takes too many illusions) is on the form of being. The idea is that ontological reality arises in the shared interface between solipsism and otherness, and it is the way that the recognition of this autonomous otherness develops that creates the cosmos. The book contains three parts and presents for each part a short scene (motivated by the form of the text) which can be seen to constitute an 'ontological function' which contributes to the form of being. These three scenes can also be recognized as related to Exodus 14-16 which serve as parallel texts to 'Birds to Saladin' - and the book enters, also in such ways, into a formal relation to the rest of the work. For example, while the nearly 600 lines of TEQ book 5 seem to interpret the relation between the greek and hebrew substrate of the two halves of the 16 books of TEQ, My mention e Anna seems to interpret the mirror symmetry in the 202 poems of books 5-8. This suggests also how centuries of redaction history of holy texts can be part of the own solipsistic universe, and the story is the human recognition of the otherness of the divine as constituting the ontological reality. This also means that POLAKK English Bloggi and My mention e Anna will constitute a human counterpart to the divine aspects of The Dreamer and The Endmorgan Quartet and hence the work in total interprets the relation between the human and the divine as a second-order mystic-esoteric poetic object which can be studied also via its many formal properties. The four works in total make for a matrix of divine and human forms of place and time. Or, more commonly, the relation between the poetic and the historic reality. The books should be valuable not only for poets and others interested in literature but also for philosophers, theologians, logicians, linguists and many others.

John Grover is a poet educated in literature and linguistics. He wrote the work through 18 years in Oslo, London, Bergen, Vilnius, Paris, Rome, Budapest, Berlin, Vienna, Athens and Venice. He considers himself a child of the jewish poets Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan but grew up in christian environments.