Shijing chapter 'Yong', 'The Dreamer' and 'The Endmorgan Quartet'
John Bjarne Grover
The article discusses one chapter of Shijing (the chapter 'Yong' = Shijing #45-54) relative to my novel "The Dreamer" (1994-95) and it is concluded that the two works share structure with sufficient relevance to allow for the assumption that each of the 18 lines of Shijing poem #53 can be read against each of the first 18 poems from book 6 ('Orphan and the angels') in my 16-volume 'The Endmorgan Quartet' (1997-2008). It is concluded that this probably will allow for the postulation of refined details (graphic, phonetic, semantic) in the early stages of the chinese script.
Shijing is the ancient book of chinese poetry - it was composed around 1100-700 BC.
The thesis in this article is that Shijing - here the chapter 'Yong' with its ten poems Shijing #45-54 - can be seen to constitute a correlate to a thematic understructure in my novel "The Dreamer" (1994-95). The unity of the Yong chapter hence tells of a similar unity in my novel. Each poem in this chapter tells of an essential aspect of my novel. It is essential that this is a novel without fiction - it is a diary novel which also was the form of an early model of novels in the european literary genre. Some would perhaps say that the diary novel is the original and most authentic form of the modern novel - although most novels are fiction only. This novel is a non-fiction novel - it is a piece of art with a certain literary form and it should not be considered biographical - in the sense that it is not fair and not interesting to look up surveillance data from me on that year 1994-95 - say, what did that driver of the car with a certain car number do there and then - for checking the relevance of certain aspects of the novel. The art is a subjective world which is communicated in a certain code - it is the code that can be analyzed, not the interface of the subjective world - because it is a piece of art which is contained in a certain code. When this artwork applies to this chapter of Shijing, it is likely that this can form the basis for studies in the historic background and context of the earliest times of the code of the chinese script.
The subjective code includes also the keystroke level - the novel retains the keystrokes of the author even when there are typing errors. For example, the last pages analyzed relative to Shijing #54 includes typing errors "ahve" for"have" and "thobbing" for "throbbing". Would this aspect apply also to Shijing #47?
I have made my own tentative translations of the 10 poems of the chapter Yong in such a way that they highlight the reference to my novel. The translations should by and large be in accordance with the main elements of the chinese, though.
The car numbers are a central theme in 'The Dreamer' - they used forelocks in those days of ancient China:
The grain that at the girdle floats
is in the middle of a stream,
a forelock hair so excellent, both
a reality and a dream
avoids another mortal oath.
A mother is she - only God
will not excuse her married blood.
The grain that at the girdle floats
is in a stream inclined,
a forelock hair so excellent, both
the truth and the upright
avoids another mortal loath.
A mother is she - only God
will not excuse her married blood.
One of the themes in the novel is the author's difficult relation to his mother (symbolizing also the society) and his attempts to liberate from her dominating role. The author has started to detect a mystic pattern in car numbers he meets in the street and is about to solve the deepest secrets of being. On pages 57-58 (under 10.9.94) I tell the story of what I believed was the dominating mother's telephone terror - it lasted for two years 1986-88 apparently in order to prevent me from taking up normal social relations - which also was a part of the reason why I (when the novel was written in 1994-95) could not have a normal phone but had to use telephone boxes (erroneously called 'booths') which is another frequent theme. The novel makes many mentions of the problems with the 'intruding mother' whom I tried to liberate from - and the moment of decisive break is told on page 561 - she suddenly occurs in the street and I am forced to choose of either turning around or to run past her - I chose the latter and the comment 'go to hell' escaped my mouth - said into the roadside, though - as I ran past her. Towards the end of the novel (page 601, under 5.5.95) there is also an attack from a psychiatrist on behalf of the mother - could be in order to prevent my escape. The novel has its turning point (peripeteia) on page 594: "27.4.95: Today I got the message that I have received a scholarship for my cognitive grammar project in Bergen". That is when I managed to escape from Oslo and the novel ends optimistically in this sense of it - the successful escape to a new and better world, is the literary function in the novel.
The poet's struggle with liberating from the dominating mother is also his struggle with liberating from Norway - a society which to the author seemed to have been constantly concerned with suppressing the poet in order to turn his work into their own power. It was on basis of the mother's signature that I was subjected to forced psychiatric treatment in Bergen after my PhD dissertation had been rejected - probably also on basis of a wish for turning it into political power.
The roadside comment into the bushes is mentioned again on page 603 - like the two last lines in the two stanzas of the poem Shijing #45.
The car numbers with their mysterious language is the poet's way to escape from the suppressive society in order to start writing poetry. That is the 'forelocks' in this poem. Towards the end of the recording of car numbers, I decided to continue the tedious study of car numbers untill I had met the number 66666 - which also had occurred in the beginning of the novel and which started the whole story - on page 12. The numbers I studied are given on pages 1214-1220 in volume 3 ('Poetic semiosis'). 66666 occurs only thrice: It was the first number in the novel, ZZ 66666 on 26.06.94, then it occurred again already on 22.07.94 (BN 66666) - and I think there could have been also some occurrences which I did not register - and finally it was the last number DF 66666 on 24.2.95 in the series of nearly 1280 numbers. After this last occurrence (page 501) I was completely exhausted - and could finally start writing poetry, which I did on 26 february 1995 when I studied the morph RAK in several languages and wrote the poem RAK which is given on page 1196 in volume 3. In the course of the last months of writing the novel, I wrote also a number of such poems. Some of those are found in volume 3 following that first poem. I had not planned the coincidence of poetry writing with the end of the car number series - but it is possible to see this connection as a part of the story told in the novel.
The amount of car numbers which I observed and wrote down is approximately the same as the number of ships for Troy in the catalogue of ships in the second song of the Iliad.
The word 'besides' is used in an odd manner in my novel - it sometimes looks like an error for the proper form 'beside' - but the reason is perfectly explained in this poem: It means both beside and on top (simultaneously) at the same time - like those forelocks and the life under the roofbeams of a house relative to the walls. 'Beside' is used 70 times, 'besides' 57 times. The first occurrence is on page 54: "I was hesiitant where to go now, but then I observed a car parked just besides a flight of stairs leading up into a little side-street". This is not an error, I say - it means that the car is parked both next to and 'above' the flight of stairs. See also page 1072, the beginning of "And hang under the Justcan keys" in the red metre "My mention e Anna": "An american with a cap on his head was descending in the stairs when his foot slipped and his body seemed to attain a weightless state which let it float on a pillow of air and he grasped for the handrails with his right hand. His body lay floating in the air along the descending stairs. It seemed that he would go downtown on this magnetic pillow, as in a dream or in a reinvigorated youth". The word for 'besides' in this poem #46 is 也 = yě = and, even, also, too, besides, still - (in classical chinese) final particle implying affirmation. It is seen from the graphic form of the sign that it can play on the senses of both beside and above/across - like the roofbeams dependent on the walls. Clearly the function of this sign in this chinese poem can be that of a grammatical particle lending a shade of a particular sense to the line - but since the poem seems to be precisely about that difference and similarity of 'beside' (which means 'next to') relative to 'besides' (which means 'in addition to', hence 'on top of'), it is probable that it is the very point with the poem. That makes sense for my odd or sometimes erroneous use (by traditional standards) of the word 'besides' in the sense of 'beside' in my novel - it means 'on top of' as well as 'next to' - like a roof that rests on the walls. That is just the theme of the chinese poem - it looks as if the poet has misunderstood the word - but on a closer inspection it seems that the odd use of it is right after all - here by its self-referentiality:
A wall is made for roofing
what can't sweep off besides,
within the room of talking,
what can't tell words besides
what knows the truth: 'Besides'
means 'own words talk besides'.
A wall is made for roofing
what can't assist besides,
within the room of talking,
what can't explain besides
what can explain: 'Besides'
means 'long words talk besides'.
A wall is made for roofing
what can't control besides,
within the room of talking,
what can't study besides
what can study: 'Besides'
means 'disgraced folks talk besides'.
Most translations would probably not translate this 'besides' at all but take it as a grammatical marker only. However, the presence of this poem in the series 45-54 and the correlation of the total series with my novel suggests that my interpretation makes sense - because the word has such a specific role to play in the novel. This is also the reason why I believe that this poem is about precisely its own word 也.
I take this poem to be a continued and extended interpretation of the theme in the previous poem - telling of how this 也 is to be understood as a part of our innate cognitive endowment. As I see it, the poem is about the story of the two black textiles which I found (probably around 2014 or thereabout) on a tramseat in tram #1 in Vienna with one week's interval - they were probably ex nihilo occurrences, a little humid they were both of them even if it was a fine sunny day, folded, on a tramseat. Clearly they seemed to tell of the human 'cortical' cognitive endowment - two occurrences, two cortical hemispheres. The second time there was a lonely woman sitting on the seat behind it and I asked if it were hers and she said no. In the poem there seems to be a younger woman and an old one (unless these two are euphemisms for two aspects of one single woman) - the old woman here seems to be the tram itself - the textiles were then inside the 'old woman' (the tram) but outside the young. Both times I gave the textiles to the driver since they could have been forgotten there by a traveller - although the second time it looked a little puzzling since it was an exact repeat of the same event one week earlier.
A lonely woman along with an old
whose accessories hang from her ears,
easy and elegant in movement and style
like a mountain she is, like a riverrun steers -
she resembles the thoughts in her ivory side.
Philosophers who come to a brothel or bride
speak to those coming to carry the biers.
A flaw in a gem turns the limpid flesh around
when calling its feather for trimming 'besides'.
The black bushy hair should speak for itself
not a piece of it false or withered 'besides'.
A precious stone hanging down from her ears
like ivory scratches the head of her hairs
to part all the hairs for showing white skin.
How foolish indeed! And yet heaven it's in!
How foolish indeed! It is God therein!
The brilliant white lustre of flesh turning around
it comes to open 'besides' on the ground
to cover the second wrinkled fine fibres
- and for removing the covering textiles.
The young woman's pure with her forehead's surround
dignified, highbrow her countenance shines.
A man comes to open and humbly inquires -
such beautiful country - like the heart of 'besides'.
It seems that the 'ivory' is to be understood as the white skullbone under which the cortical brain is hiding - the reference to the 'ivory' is then about the mystery how the two black and humid textiles could take shape 'ex nihilo' - that is, outside the closed skull. As such it is also akin to this 'besides' - taken to be both above (or simultaneous with) and alongside, next to: The skull is both beside the brain and above it, and the white bone is the opposite of the black textiles.
Since I believed that the textiles could have belonged to a traveller who had forgotten it there (although that appeared rather aburd when it happened for a second time - exactly like the first time), I did not unfold it the first time. The second time I unfolded it somewhat - it was probably rectangular and would have been perhaps a metre or 1,5 m in the one dimension and maybe two metre or so in the other (difficult to determine, though, from the only partwise unfolding in a tram) and it was partly overfolded (double, that means) in one end with a seam in one third or so.
I found that I could understand the story of the two black textiles as being about the territory of Austria - and the possible nervousness there could have been relative to the constitution of 1955 which requires of the state to remain demilitarized. However, it seems that the state has built some military defence nevertheless and this could cause some nervousness. If the administration had seen on surveillance that the two black textiles were truly 'ex nihilo' formations by my arrival, they could have returned them to me - and hence they would have had their authority to their territory consolidated. Alas, if instead the textiles were annexed by somebody who scissored them up for use in clothes etc, the nerves could have taken on the form of guilt relative to the war in Ukraine that has likewise scissored up the territory there. 'Such beautiful country...'
Simon Stock got the scapular textile from the virgin Mary in 1251. It may be that the black textiles are not a trifling detail. It is a part of the innate human constitution. See also TEQ #200. Should 'also, too' be read 'also 2'?
I am not certain if I have understood this right - I took it to be about the word 'recede' in my novel - it exhibits a similarly odd behaviour. Could be it is simply yet another extension of the previous poem #47. The central word is 矣 = 'yi' which seems basically to mean a uniform simplicity, either as grammatical particle telling that something has been understood or in the form 'simply, only, merely' - often, as it seems, lending emphasis to certain words. It is seen that the poem handles this word as if it should have meant something like 'divides' - but since the word seemingly cannot mean that but its opposite, it comes to attain the shade of the meaning 'recede', 'recession'. This is another word in my novel that behaves similarly compared with 'besides' - it occurs 7 times.
For the essential sign 矣 = 'yi', it is seen from the historic origin of the glyph 矣 that it resembles a folded textile on or lowered onto the head of a person - and the glyph from the times of Shijing even looks as if there are two interlaced textiles on the head of a person - like the two cortical hemispheres (symbolized in the two black textiles) that meet but nevertheless are distinct. One of them goes down (the 'analytic' one?), the other goes up. Does it 're-cede'? For these reasons it does make some sense to conceive of the sign as 'recede' or 'recession' in the present context.
The conclusion on basis of the overall structure in the chapter Yong is that this poem likely is about phoneme order and 'submorphemic signification' - in the context of the other poems it is likely to be about 'phoneme border'. For the chinese script, that could mean the border and order of radicals and similar phenomena. Here is my tentative translation:
In the recession (= 'Within the mulberry tree')
Therefore, to make the hastiness recede
a river that zigzags through a country recedes
says anyone who comes to contemplate
the great source of the agricultures that recede
when we in the recession of the fancy
require of ourselves, ascending in the temple,
to escort contributions to recession.
Therefore, to make the grain resource recede
a river that zigzags northwards recedes
says anyone who comes to contemplate
the great and sharpened peg that soon recedes
when we in the recession of the fancy
require of ourselves, ascending in the temple,
to escort contributions to recession.
Therefore, to make the territory recede
a river that zigzags eastwards recedes
says anyone who comes to contemplate
the great and constant harmony that recedes
when we in the recession of the fancy
require of ourselves, ascending in the temple,
to escort contributions to recession.
The quail will come to hurry off.
The magpie finds the border.
Man is not always only good.
I believe it is my brother.
The magpie finds the boundary.
The quail will hurry off.
Man is not always only good.
I believe it is the monarch.
The poetic effect comes from the interchanging of the order of the two first lines in each stanza - that leads to different understandings in the last line of each stanza. Hence the poem is likely to be about syntax and word/phrase border and order.
This seems to tell of a fragment from the novel - on how the writing creates the story. The novel is really about the writing of itself: It is when the author starts writing the diary that strange things start happening - and they clearly are a reflex of the writing. The author turns schizophrenic and is divided into a writing subject and the world that answers his writing and send mysterious car numbers and other phenomena mirroring the text that has been written. Seen in the continuation from the previous poem, this #49 tells how the subjective faculty of faith creates the history - here from pages 13-14:
As I sit down to write this, in the moment when I type down 'the neighbour's car', a policecar is driving fast down the road with flashing blue lights.
In the moment when I type down 'the dentist's son', a cat is miaowing terribly outside, mocked by a magpie, just beside the burglared car. This is not the least strange, in this dream world: Magpies have always been signs for the dentist, ever since I moved into their house, which has been surrounded by a host of magpies. And one evening when I came home, his son stood in the garage, miaowing terribly just like the cat outside.
There can be no doubt at all.
I am well aware of the absurdity in the style of the above. And yet it is all true, it is nothing I have fancied here.
I fear that all this has happened today because I wrote down yesterday's events before I went to sleep. It may have provoked the burglary. I had better stop writing about these strange things.
#50 - 定之方中 - Ding Zhi Fang Zhong
The poem tells of the theory contained in the article I wrote about in my novel: I had written an article about Cantor's diagonal proof wherein I believed that I had found a logical flaw and I sent it around to many journals while writing the novel throughout 1994-95 - the novel tells of the negative response to this hopeful student of formalisms. It is likely that the story was about the student (me) who had been subjected to raw school dentistry (1970-71) - the dentist destroyed most of my teeth - while reading about this Cantor's proof in a book about modern mathematics: I had already completed the school math two years ahead and was allowed to leave the class to read this modern math book for myself, seated in the aula next to the dentist Aulie. I recall well this Cantor proof which looked dubious to me. Briefly, Cantor seems to claim that if you have an ocean which is green and you let into it one drop of red, then the ocean is strictly speaking not really green any longer - hence it is in fact red, tells Cantor, since he can prove that there exists a single diagonal set which cannot be counted and therefore uncountable sets exist (even if that single diagonal set is easily counted with one finger) - and although that may seem intuitively right for fans of strict logic it probably occurs odd for most people.
The story is really about the epistemological status of adjectives relative to nouns since it does not follow from the negation of the adjective 'countable' that 'uncountability' exists or, say, makes sense. My fundamental theorem of linguistics tells that humans can understand 2 and only 2 as the same. If they are to understand 3 items as 'the same', it will be a matter of categorization. 2 and only 2 as 'the same' means that the transcendent arbitrarity (value 1) is ignored (and in some form or other moved down to the immanent arbitrarity value 2) - it means that we cannot see or understand the difference but we intuitively know that it must be there. For 3 and only 3 to be 'the same', this principle must apply in a new way which is difficult to understand for humans: That is the christian trinity which is hard to understand. Christ came from another reality - he was both human and divine - hence he lived in both 2 and only 2 as well as 3 and only 3 - that is the reason why he could not escape the crucifixion when he lived in 2 and only 2. The stigmata of Christ are a part of the organic predisposition of humans in 2 and only 2 relative to 3 and only 3. Humans have material organs and it is not certain that this is the case for other forms of being - such as the divines with 3 and only 3. The universe can be full of forms of life which humans cannot perceive or understand - but it may be that a computer based on mystic procedure can lend us a glimpse into a larger reality. Christ gave us the chance to glimpse into the eternity of 3 - and mystics contemplate his stigmata in order to try and understand the mystic reality of eternity. Some mystics, such as Padre Pio in Italy some years ago, develop own stigmata.
This is likely to be the factual sense of Cantor's transfinite numbers - hence that humans live in the human reality (say, call it aleph-2) and can glimpse into what then is aleph-3 - but it is hard to see further on. There is a radical difference between 2 and 3. There is a qualitative difference, this means - and humans then leap to the conclusion that it means that the radical difference is the same as the difference between an adjective (referring to a quality) and a noun (referring to e.g. a substance potentially in a certain 'quantity'). This is where the flaw in Cantor's proof is found - he shows how one can negate the adjective 'countable' and from this he concludes that 'uncountability' (a noun) - or 'uncountable sets' - exist[s]. The reason why this flaw seems meaningful is that the adjective suggests the qualitative difference between human and divine realities - in that sense that Christ could not escape the crucifixion when as a reality 3 he lived in reality 2.
In the novel I returned to this old story from my schooldays and wrote an article which I sent to several journals - who all rejected it. Mathematics prefer the permutation of symbols before theologic speculation. I suppose my article had more literary than mathematical value. The ancient chinese poem seems to tell of such paradoxes as the diagonal proof can be seen to be about.
The abstraction of square method in the middle of delay,
in a theory for a journal that is clear and logical
considered to be coming to its usage day by day
when composed in a space void and paradoxical:
The setup of this hazelnut is getting oh so chilling -
a seat of printing woodblocks that are printing in the fillings
and hence the matrimonial lute-strings are (not) willing.
The rise to the rank of its own emptiness - that is sound
that uses the full moon as a far and handy plectre,
a full moon so clear and so orderly - a lecture
declaring all the mountains and the cities on a mound,
subdueing the observance of a single mulberry tree
defining its own cloudiness so arbitrarily
as to finish all so well and to conclude it properly.
It quickly falls again, though, since already it's on null -
the fate of a keeper of domestic animal.
A small amount of starlight in the morning will desire
the theory out of all the mulberry trees that are inwired.
Unfair, indeed unreasonable also is the man
who holds your intention pressed deeply in the sand
like three thousand horses in the keyhole of a hand.
The poem is a collection of all sorts of such 'cantorial ucountability'. Since the keeper of domestic animals is himself a domestic animal, that lends shape to his fate etc. I notice that the "seat of printing woodblocks that are printing in the fillings" echoes the black textiles on the tramseat - representing the brain with its cortical fissures that can be seen (in popular conception) to contain the bodily basis for logical paradoxes.
In the latter half of the novel, I frequently go to 'the other side of the river' - the 'contralateral' area there. The beginning of the novel tells "I wouldn't go to the other side of the rails if I were you". There are 207 'other side' in the novel - 22 of these are 'other side of the rails' (plus one 'other side of the rail') - nearly all of them are in the beginning of the novel - and 6 are 'the other side of the river', all of them after the last 'other side of the rails', near the end of the work.
The rainbow on the other side
does not dare point a finger:
A woman at the crossroads is
away from parents, brothers.
The morning comes - ah! - in the west
observe the morning rain.
A woman at the crossroads is
away from brothers, parents.
Thus, as there comes a man as well
she faints by thoughts of marriage.
It's great to have no confidence
and not to know God's carriage.
This concerns the theme of going from the one to the other side of something - like those black 'ex nihilo' textiles.
There was a car burglary and also suspicions of illegitimate room lock-ins in the novel - that could be about the rodents of this poem. There is a car burglary in the beginning, and after the car number registrations (volume 3 pages 1214-1220) are ended and the author starts writing poetry (volume 3 pages 1196-1210) and carry out event studies (volume 4 pages 1023-1132), there came an intrusion into his private room on 3 march. This is mentioned under 7.3.95 (page 511) - see also 16.3.95 (page 516).
Rodents have their own fur.
Mankind have no deportment, though.
Mankind have no deportment - though
they know not how to die.
Rodents have their own teeth.
Mankind do not have brakes, though.
Mankind do not have brakes - though
they wait not for their death.
Rodents have their own body.
Mankind have no respect, though.
Mankind have no respect - though
they hurry not towards death.
This theme of rodents living in a different reality compared with humans - and thereby (?) they can pass through walls - pertains also to the theme of the black 'ex nihilo' textiles that are understood as having transcended through the wall of the human skull.
The mother theme in the novel is about the poet who gets his norwegian past off and finally can start writing poetry. Seen in the continuation of the themes of the preceding poems this #53 means that poetry is a form of 'other reality' occurring in the human reality. This is told in the form of each of the 18 lines of the poem #53 matching a corresponding poem from the beginning of book 6 'Orphan and the angels' in my 'The Endmorgan Quartet' (1997-2008). It is possible to see the car numbers as the link between the novel 'The Dreamer' and the poetic work 'The Endmorgan Quartet': I collected appr 1280 car numbers which is about the number of ships for Troy in the catalogue in the Iliad, while the number of warriors sailing in these ships is about the number of lines in TEQ - that is, the number of inner poetic articulations. These inner poetic articulations - the poet (me, that is) heard the poetic lines pronounced in the inner mind - can be seen as poetic in the sense of being a correlate to 'ex nihilo' matter coming from another reality - which means that they have a revelational character. In the Iliad that means that the warriors who came to Troy transcended their walls like rodents that gnaw themselves into the houses of humans in #52. The orphan is an old symbols for the poet and the 'deep arrival' will correspond to the orphan-poet's arrival at the 'other' reality - the border to the human reality.
Orphan, orphan, oppose the tail
on deep arrival at the waste land -
the simple fibre in the fringes' veil.
Good horses go for the measures and (Good horses are 4)
for the elegance of a gentleman:
What cord will they strike on the trail?
Orphan, orphan, oppose the flag
on deep arrival at the metropolis -
the simple fibre in the silken tag.
Good horses have their accessories (Good horses are 5)
for the elegance of a gentle stag:
What will it give them for this?
Orphan, orphan, at the manifest
on deep arrival at the city wall -
the simple fibre in the music's crest.
Good horses add one more to it all (Good horses are 6)
for the elegance of a gentle call:
What will it tell of this (zigzag) quest?
I here align these 18 lines of poetry (there are four signs in each line) with the 18 first poems of my 'Orphan and the angels' - for the reader to study the relevance of each line for each poem. I give two examples of what I mean can be the way of comparison.
For the lookups in the 'Wiktionary', I have linked it to the historical forms of the signs. The pronounciation, etymologies and semantic definitions follow. Notice that one sometimes can get up a wide variety of historic forms by clicking on the line which tells "Historical forms of the character" on top of the graphic scheme.
干
旄
TEQ #336:
孑
孑
干
旄
、
TEQ #337:
在
浚
之
郊
。
TEQ #338:
素
絲
紕
之
、
TEQ #339:
良
馬
四
之
。
TEQ #340:
彼
姝
者
子
、
TEQ #341:
何
以
畀
之
。
TEQ #342:
孑
孑
干
旟
、
TEQ #343:
在
浚
之
都
。
TEQ #344:
素
絲
組
之
、
TEQ #345:
良
馬
五
之
。
TEQ #346:
彼
姝
者
子
、
TEQ #347:
何
以
予
之
。
TEQ #348:
孑
孑
干
旌
、
TEQ #349:
在
浚
之
城
。
TEQ #350:
素
絲
祝
之
、
TEQ #351:
良
馬
六
之
。
TEQ #352:
彼
姝
者
子
、
TEQ #353:
何
以
告
之
。
I exemplify with two lines for the corresponding poems:
Example 1:
TEQ #341 matches the line 何以畀之
Off you need of the active.
Does that mean the Robert Frost is gone a clan?
By the breasts and curtseys,
to have the listenty in order,
that is supposed to be
real to Sweden.
- To Sweden?
To what extent leaves we or take we
the former litigous review - are laty
TAO, with its office about?
When the city Hagen is made of clay,
this means that there were harp music
on each side of the staircase.
Smart! Okay?
何 = 'he/hö' means basicalled 'what? how? why? which?' with additional meaning 'to carry, to bear'. Could be the sign looks like a fridge - a 'frosty' cupboard.
以 = '[y]i' = 'by, through, with' - an instrumental preposition with secondary meanings 'because, on account of, so as to, in order to, according to, in regard as, to think, to consider, to have, to use, to do, until, when, where, although, and, or'. The sign looks to the right like a woman curtseying to the man standing in front of her to the left.
畀 = 'bì' = 'to confer on; to give to' - the TAO could be encircled in a way which chinese squares can signify - but here the circle is also taken to be a square for harp strings - on a staircase with two sides
之 = 'zhi' = arrive at, go to, him/her/it, zigzag, in regard to, (final particle)
Example 2:
TEQ #351 matches the line 良馬六之:
The plant and the spirancy:
It is in the chorus.
Quiz and love -
Trekspiel
良馬 = 'liáng mǎ' = 'good horse'
'The plant and the spirancy' = thep-'LIANG' thes 'MA'-rancy
六 = '6' - cp. 'quiz and love'
之 = 'zhi' = arrive at, go to, him/her/it, zigzag, in regard to, (final particle) - a rather perfect 'trekspiel' = 'trekkspill' = 'accordion'
If this theory is right, it means that there is a very rich logical basis in my poem for understanding the origins of the chinese signs in this Shijing #53. My poems are based on a poetic-esthetic logic which I suppose is common for all human beings - and hence also can be a universal basis for the chinese signs. Clearly if the overall conclusion is that there is a correlation between my 18 poems and the 18 lines of this Shijing poem, not the least on the background of the general correlation of the chapter Yong relative to my novel, then there could be rich resources for sinology in my poems for reconstructing early stages of the script - could be in graphic form, phonetics and semantics.
For the correlation with the novel, though, the correlation tells of how the poet finally could come to write poetry.
The novel ends here - this poem #54 tells of the last two pages of the novel. The novel can be read as the story of an envoy from heaven (here the orphan-poet arriving to the human reality) who has been sent for writing a report about the state of the Earth - he arrives by a suburban line on the first page and returns to heaven on the last. This return can be seen in how the ambiguities ("I went to the library, but copied a few references from a book before I left" - does that mean before he left home or before he left the library?) are gradually narrowed in like a Jesus ascending with his report in hand untill he looks like a small dot in the sky and there the novel ends. The last two pages tell of the 'ascension' of the envoy - he returns to heaven in the sky at the completion of the 'report' which the novel itself can be seen to be.
The 28 lines are divided into four stanzas. I bring the lookups for the 'Wiktionary' articles discussing the signs - and in the following separate file I bring also for a quicker overview some glosses from the 'Yabla' chinese dictionary - the selection is a little edited by me.
Here is the file with glosses from the Yabla dictionary.
|
1 - 載馳載驅、 2 - 歸唁衛侯。 3 - 驅馬悠悠、 4 - 言至于漕。 5 - 大夫跋涉、 6 - 我心則憂。 |
7 - 既不我嘉、 8 - 不能旋反。 9 - 視爾不臧、 10 - 我思不遠。 11 - 既 不我嘉、 12 - 不能旋濟。 13 - 視爾不臧、 14 - 我思不閟。 |
15 - 陟彼阿丘、 16 - 言采其蝱。 17 - 女子善懷、 18 - 亦各有行。 19 - 許人尤之、 20 - 眾穉且狂。 |
21 - 我行其野、 22 - 芃芃其麥。 23 - 控于大邦、 24 - 誰因誰極。 25 - 大夫君子、 26 - 無我有尤。 27 - 百爾所思、 28 - 不如我所之。 |
25.5.95: Ascension day.
I woke up at three o'clock last night.
1.
載
馳
載
驅
、
Somebody came home and slammed the door.
2.
歸
唁
衛
侯
。
After a while, I had the idea that the 21st of January had been repeated.
3.
驅
馬
悠
悠
、
I don't know what it was. Probably, it was the aftereffect of my walk to the other side of the river,
4.
言
至
于
漕
。
as if I had pulled these two sides together.
5.
大
夫
跋
涉
、
All a matter of imagination, of course.
6.
我
心
則
憂
。
Before I went to bed, I looked through a couple of dictionaries on the syllable PAL initially, and when these things happened, I thought with myself: This is an effect of the PAL semantics. A voice said to me:
7.
既
不
我
嘉
、
PAL means that you want it, but you cannot have it.
8.
不
能
旋
反
。
- Signifying that the wish to communion with people in the social space is maintained, but a temporary blockage is put up to prevent intrusion of unwanted influence.
9.
視
爾
不
臧
、
Alternatively: Everything is maintained, but you are enabled to see who the influential person is.
10.
我
思
不
遠
。
I have discovered that there are quite a lot of PALLer put outside houses nowadays. I don't know what their function is, but it is clearly related to this.
11.
既
不
我
嘉
、
As I wrote the above, I felt a natural obligation to leave out any talk of 'masturbation' or anything similar. This expectation was strong enough to prevent me from making any mention of these things.
12.
不
能
旋
濟
。
Maybe it is related to the effect of the same PAL syllable, or maybe there is something else underlying.
13.
視
爾
不
臧
、
Last night a voice said as I was half asleep: "It is called Pilestredet..." I went out to buy some bread, and in the moment when I came to Pilestredet, a Swedish car took off from this street and drove up Holberg's street, where I came walking. It had number PAL 778.
14.
我
思
不
閟
。
26.5.95: I met HK on Sofie's street. I was in the telephone booth, and he biked past.
15.
陟
彼
阿
丘
、
I thought: Now there is only one meeting left with him before I go for Bergen. That will ahve to be closer to my home.
16.
言
采
其
蝱
。
Later, I went out with a rucksack and a lot of waste papers to burn them on a bonfire in the wood.
17.
女
子
善
懷
、
I met him in the intersection between Ullevålsveien and Stensberggata. I said:
18.
亦
各
有
行
。
According to my conjectures, we should have met a little further up. He laughed a little, but did not really follow me.
19.
許
人
尤
之
、
He had a few frame (RAM-me) lists on his bike, to make frames for his wife's exhibition.
20.
眾
穉
且
狂
。
Before I left, I thought: Now I go and burn these papers.
21.
我
行
其
野
、
Somebody ran to the toilet and masturbated, as it seemed. I left a little later with a strange feeling in my righthand temple.
22.
芃
芃
其
麥
。
I discovered that I could move this feeling down (it ended up in my behind, in fact) or up according to my own will.
23.
控
于
大
邦
、
Seemingly, this righthand temple was the cognitive correlate to the 'tail' in the behind as an instantiation of this influence from the social space.
24.
誰
因
誰
極
。
27.5.95: I went to the library, but copied a few references from a book before I left. I understood the mechanics now:
25.
大
夫
君
子
、
Copying is to stretch the copy-right a little, since one pays to the wrong institution (the machine owner, not the author).
26.
無
我
有
尤
。
Similarly, in libraries, there is an abundance of what-you-know, because they let people read the books without paying for it - that is, without giving credit to the authors.
27.
百
爾
所
思
、
This is why this thobbing feeling may accompany copying, and why the same feeling may arise in libraries.
28.
不
如
我
所
I went to the woods again. I met somebody on the tram. I may write about it later.
29.
之
。
Conclusion
The series of poems in the Yong chapter of Shijing seems to tell of the nature of poetry conceived in the sense of the appearance of 'another reality' - revelational inner poetic articulations or 'ex nihilo' formation of matter. It starts in #45 with the poet having to liberate from the historic reality he is born into - the 'forelocks' correspond to the car numbers which constitute the link between the reality and the dream, and between the novel and the poetic work. #46 interprets this in the form of the grammatical particle 也 = yě which here can be translated 'besides' - and the poem describes how this can straddle the two realities, the inner and the outer - both the wall and the roofbeam that crosses over the wall. It tells, that is, of how the border between realities can be understood and transcended. (This is also the theme of my fundamental theorem of linguistics). My conception of #47 is that it tells of the two black textiles I found in Vienna - telling of how the cortical brain relates to the outside world. #48 is likely to be about order and border of phonemic elements, or signs qua words in chinese, while #49 is the corresponding syntax of words or phrases. #50 concerns the border to metaphysical reality, including the border to the divine, and in #51 this is taken on to the understanding of the humans' limited ability to understand God's will. #52 tells of how this comes into the human world, like rodents into the house, and in #53 the relation between #48 and #49 can be seen to find a correlate in the relation between the chinese lines and my poems - something which could come to constitute a source for sinological studies of the oldest stages of the script. In #54 the chinese lines find counterparts in the prose lines of my novel - which means that #53-54 correspond to the mysteries of the car numbers of my novel.
[23/10-2024: I may add a comment of some potentially heuristic value on TEQ book 6 'Orphan and the angels': Shijing #53 starts with and can be seen to be about the poet-orphan which is the first word in the title to book 6, while the last word 'angels' can be seen to be the end of the novel when the writing subject 'met somebody on the tram'. On top of the tram there is a pantograph which not only resembles the form of the chinese sign 之 - it can also be seen to be about 'angels' in its electric character: The envoy from heaven met the angels in the course of his ascension. Is this present in the end of book 6? It can be seen to mention the story of the two black textiles found on a seat in tram #1 ('Salvage Author Line'?). The 'høy/high gearway and timetables' are likely to be just the pantograph and the timetables for the tram. This suggests that book 6 could concern the connection Shijing #53-54 in a somewhat essential way].
To repeat it: From a scientific of view point it is probably the data from the comparison of my TEQ #336-353 with the 18 lines of Shijing #53 which are most interesting - since the comparison could bring new suggestions for an understanding of the graphic and phonetic form as well as the semantic interpretation to the earliest chinese signs. It is self-evident that the correlations will have to be rudimentary, but more extensive material can narrow the variation down. For example, the sign 子 = 'zǐ' (often meaning something like 'child, offspring, egg') occurs as the fourth and last sign in the second last line of Shijing #53 correlating with my TEQ #352 - which could mean the two last lines "I didn't feel like - engagement... / Did the result look fancy?" The same sign occurs also in Shijing #54 line 17 = 女子善懷 = in stanza 3 which probably correlates (see above) with 'a lot of waste papers'. This should make sense to a normal intuition. This sign 子 = 'zǐ' - which in its historic origins could be compared with the today very similar 孑 = 'jié' which is the two first signs in Shijing #53 and which in its historic origins also resembles the historic origins of 子 = 'zǐ' quite a lot, except that the graphic character seems to lack an arm and maybe an ear, can thereby also be compared with the two first stanzas (i.e., the first half) of TEQ #336: "How can I help you? / Horribly to take any money... / Then she tears off her tears / with the lonesome. // Even if you fall... / Looked at the agent, / a fun below, / what a good thing..". She tears off her ear? Could be there are traces of faint relevance in this comparison as well.
I have fancied that my novel can be maybe the world's most plagiarized novel - that could have been maybe even long before I made it available for the public in my humble self-published kitchenbench edition in 2008. What would the reason for this apparently massive amount of plagiarisms be? The present study could suggest that the reason is its literary qualities as far as concerns the chance to establish a basis for a poetic language and logic - also of potentially high relevance for the development of a mystic basis for the new computer epistemology. I have elsewhere also suggested - justified or not - that there could have been a few reasons to speculate that (cognitive?) surveillance data from me could have been used for modelling strategies in wartorn Ukraine, for which reason plagiarisms could have been stimulated for enhancing the effect of a terror-and-monkey-business strategy, but I would still believe that the literary qualities of the book could contribute to the plagiaristic successes. I do not support such potential plagiarisms. It is time to understand that the book should be taken seriously and not be the prey of plagiarisms.
Sources:
Chinese Text Project - Shijing - the book of poetry.
'Das neue chinesisch-deutsche Wörterbuch'. Beijing (2004)
Grover, J.B.: The collected works. Volumes 1-4. Wien 2013, 2019.
Mathews, R.H.: Chinese-English Dictionary. (A Chinese-English Dictionary Compiled for the China Inland Mission by R.H.Mathews, Shanghai: China Inland Mission and Presbyterian Mission Press, 1931). Revised american edition 1943. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Pocket chinese dictionary - english/chinese chinese/english. (Based on earlier work by Martin H. Manser). Oxford University Press 1999
Sachs, N.: Fahrt ins Staublose. ('In den Wohnungen des Todes', 'Sternverdunkelung', 'Und niemand weiss weiter', 'Flucht und Verwandlung', 'Fahrt ins Staublose', 'Noch feiert Tod das Leben'). Suhrkamp 1988.
Simon, R.: Shijing. Das altchinesische Buch der Lieder. Chinesisch/Deutsch. Übersetzt und herausgegeben von Rainald Simon. Reclam Bibliothek 2015.
https://chinese.yabla.com - the 'Yabla' chinese english pinyin internet dictionary.
© John Bjarne Grover
On the web 22 october 2024
Last updated 23 october 2024
