The Vicissitudes of Publication

Afore embarking on a sweeping exploration of The Jungian Jungle: The Archetypal Punctle, our Speaker’s troubled fancy falls prey to the whip of a biting whim:

“Most Beloved and Esteemed Reader,

The nobility of Academe implores that I hold my authorship accountable for inconsistencies in publication shedules; and yet I conjecture: does not the fickleness of a gentle muse, mutable and wispy in her tendency to withdraw at the slightest provocation, pardon the creative mind’s inconstancy? Genius does not acquiesce to Chronian demands! (If naught else thy cerebrum appropriates from my life’s devotion, this adage do consider).

Fervently,

Yours truly”

Following this proto-prologue (affront the luminance of a steady screen) she heralds forth the first droppings of a creative flush—fidgets on her stool as she pushes on letters that spring:

“In the beginning there was pause.
And the book was without form, and most promising; and space was on the face of the page. And the muse of the creator wrote upon the page of the space.
And the creator said, Let there be words: and there were words.
And the creator saw the word, and it was good; and the creator divided the word from the space…”

The punctles in the fray

Following a sad sojourn in slander’s bungalow, our errant scholar returns (at the behest of her intellect) to those ubiquitous punctles—the subjects of her ingenuity, the tormentors of her craft. Indeed, the artistry of academic pursuits; the chiseling of thought for the fashioning of publications, wearies her tender muse—and yet exhaustion does not emerge at the cost of coherence. Indeed, her moments of most profound lucidity are marked by a creeping sense that she is nothing more than an essential element in a faltering assemblage of academics. To falter: to cough dry dust at the doorstep of esoteric knowledge; to suddenly lose one’s bearings amidst a concrete labyrinth of motorcars, only to realize at the last moment of that sweet consciousness preceding full blown heat exhaustion that the punctle is the life.

And yet, all this musing—this flirting with philosophical philandering—condenses into a penetrating thought: the puissance of the punctle can be found in the Jungian jungle: in the archetypal punctle.

Bellum: Placitum Stilus: Partie Trois

To miss a point, yes: to gender it; to presuppose an assumed sexuality: Miss Space; Miss Parenthesis; Miss Exclamation! Indeed, I have missed the point, and why ever should I not? These punctles have not been castrated, no—they’ve been given the opportunity to unveil themselves fertility goddesses amidst a male dominated content—an alphabet fettered by the phallic; thralled by the masculine! Should I feign surprise when a quack of an academic, assuming expertise in the dethronement of the book, attempts to loosen this blog’s supremacy of influence via the pillaging of character? Surprise, I feign not! Misogyny, I admonish! Indeed, content is the sacrificial element of a text. Let us turn to Jesse Weston:

“To sum up the result of the analysis, I hold that we have solid grounds for the belief that the story postulates a close connection between the vitality of a certain king, and the prosperity of his kingdom; the forces of the ruler being weakened or destroyed, by wound, sickness, old age, or death, the land becomes waste, and the task of the hero is that of restoration.”

This certain king: phallic content; the prosperity of his kingdom: the synesthetic quality of the text! I borrow from this fool’s vocabulary to prove a point: castration points to the loss of textual virility, but most pressing, it unveils the need for restoration; the necessity of a “sacrificial lamb” to bring about the resurrection of a “synesthetic-event” within the text. The content, then, shall be sacrificed to the punctles; the male to the female! Hence, a new age of textual scholarship will surface: one marked by the fecundity of the fertile female.

And so this Speaker yelps in a fit of creative ecstasy: "To miss the point entirely is to de-male the text; to bring about a new age of artistic proliferation to replace the wasteland left in the wake of phallic Fascism!"

Bellum: Placitum Stilus: Partie Deux

“Missed the point entirely!” wails the heaving Speaker, at once overcome by arrhythmia amid a hallucinatory swirl of publications past, all a rising mirage; a phantasmagoria encircling like a haunting halo around the sad relics of a frenzied mind (so our non compos mentis Speaker fantasizes). And before her eyes, this conjured corona, rimmed with paper peppered in thought (symbol of a cloistered incline) cascades brusquely into a thudding puddle of dust—yes, a feverish fall; she faints: a not so final collapse.

. . . . .

Her eyelids flutter open in the dead of night, and following the blissfully fleeting moments of befuddled wonderment, the echoes of slander begin to meander forth—first as hollow shocks akin to the opaque dream-images of a life past, and then in shocking waves that pulse to amalgamate auditory hallucination; granting depth to the settling of an unsettled, encroaching sense:

“Missed the point entirely! Missed the point entirely!”

Thus following this histrionic swoon, our unnerved Speaker installs herself on a perch afore the shocking white of a luminescent screen to face her foe—assassin of character; bringer of woe . . . .

Bellum: Placitum Stilus: Partie Une

Fearing a public outcry in the wake of a (truly) infinitesimal veering from Punctal Theorem, the quaking Speaker bleats forth a blubbering apologia in the form of a plea:

“I mean not to prevaricate, dear friends, upon an occasion that makes desperate call for utter seriosity—indeed, I am well aware that my beloved audience finds itself in perfervid expectation of a theological expoundation on “The Punctles that Pervade” (said article penned by this very modest Speaker, published in the November Edition of yesteryear’s Punctative Metatheatricality and the Metaphysics of Liferature (Vol. 30, No.1), and weep at the thought that the impeccable whiteness of my vocation and the eager, inquisitive eyes of my unsuspecting readers will be tinged (blood red) by the salivating snare of infamy—oh my!—slander!—oh my!—scandal!: my expertise? Questioned! My character? Defamed! My sanity? Denied!

“My dear despairing audience, I mean not to alarm—though my diction coupled with the rhetorical employment of the pathetic punctles through the repeated alternation of the interrogative and exclamatory marks (subject elucidated by this author in the aforementioned “The Punctles that Pervade”) would suggest otherwise. Sincerity forces me to shed light on the verity of this factuality: I must contend with the deranged ramblings of a gnosiophobic maniac—a so-called “synesthete” who drafted a severe slander of this here academic’s expertise . . .”

Pathetic division within Modernity's Punctal Theory

Meistersinger Hans Sachs writes:

"My friend, just this is poet’s task:
His dreams to read and to unmask.
Trust me, illusion’s truths thrice sealed
In dream to man will be revealed.
All verse-craft and poetisation
Is but soothdream interpretation."

This sad translation from that most jubilantly biting of tongues reveals the oft noted link between the dream-world and the poetic inspiration: a link that Dickinson undoubtedly and (likely) relentlessly clutched to as she dipped her pen in the blue sinews of her ink-stained mind. No doubt, her use of the dash in light of this exhausted and slightly delusional Speaker’s discernments proves that the stringed series of her innumerable poems should be read as the relics of a haunting dream sequence. Indeed, pathos is the logos of dreams—in that world of moldy designs and distorted lines, only feeling can gift the accolade of sense; and is poetry not the billowing eccho of this innate incline? In poetry we find reverie, the day-light equivalent of our nocturnal speculations. And punctles, the bringers of sense; the heralds of logos amidst a fray of lexical strife, must vest themselves in the garb of emotional enterprise. Leading the pathetic division within the larger dimension of Modern Punctal Theory tiptoes the dash, slinking along like a snake through a darkening culvert, followed by the eager (!!!) exclamatory mark, finally skirted by the somber suspension of the ellipsian flecks.

The dashes; the sparks

Hinging the moment from slumber to stir is a tittering dash—a horizontal slash of the kind that clinches the sky and the land: an elusive, penumbral half-line; a twilight of mind; a movement unfurled and distinctly defined.

This is the dash: the most visceral of the perishing punctles, its aim: to attach. Sentimental, so sentient, the dash marks a pause of delight—one that tickles the mind in quickening rhyme. It is the punctle of dreams: devoid of the logos of colons, the machinations of the subliminal mind rely on the pathos of our most feverish sign. And isn’t it the most ambiguous of our punctative sprites, this frolicking line that billows in roving recline the contents of a diction sublime? Oh, Dickinson knew it!-- when in lonesome concealment she sequestered her mind within the boundaries of these limitless lines; she sings:

The Brain—is wider than the sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—

The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As sponges—Buckets—do—

The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound—

The pauses of the dash are tempered in movement; they itch to prolong a climactic caesura of restless delay; a tension lax; a furl of electric delight positioning combinations of lexeme amid springing, uncontainable, sparks.

Of dashes (the motions of mind)

A spider once whispered a secret of gossamer line in the ear of a child that read with his mind—it rustled like rhyme—like a crushing of leaves by the darkening wind in the mint of a night—and he closed his eyes—and he opened his mind to the motions abound in the quiet of sound—in the twilight of mind—where the hollows of time begin to mime—where the hand reclines—where the spirit blithe sings in notes so high the Cherubims sigh—and the light takes flight!—for a moment he lies in obscure delight—in a daze of fantastic respite—and a lapis lazuli consumes a cerulean height—in the mind of an eye—where a vision of telescopic delight reigns a supreme right—bending the ridges of time—ebbing the wisps of a wonder back to a slender root—of a mystical kind—where clarity shines like the winks of a light caught in the glaucous ooze of primordial slime—but alas—the sound of a spoon as it clinks on a dish—from a distant smoky ravine—shakes open his lids in violent whisks—and the child sighs—forgetting his might he ebbs into vigilance—arises in time—the spider reclines. 

A ghoul in relics

Following this ardent apology succeeds an argumentation vested in logic’s design:

Whitman’s use of the dash generates a quick movement of breath that mirrors in form the “speeding . . . unreeling” spider’s silken thread. The dash makes the poem, looming thrice at pivotal moments of movement—carrying the momentum of the creative mind in hasty pause. The Speaker imagines Whitman a diligent spider, endlessly weaving his Leaves of Grass in some cottage cranny, eight arms at full length, “ceaselessly musing”—birthing fine linen in ringlets of elegant line; forging and shaping an impulse of soul: a means of design meant to build “till the bridge you will need be formed, Till the ductile anchor hold”. Indeed, Whitman did mark where on a bluff a delicate spider perused its surroundings through lurches of silk, but arguably he did more than this:

“A noiseless patient spider,
I marked where on a little promontory it stood isolated,
Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding”

To mark; to etch on paper: to write—who is this spindling spider? Is it perhaps a vision of our pouncing poet, himself settled neatly in a seat off of a certain wooden (oak) desk—indeed a kind of little bluff? Our spidery poet—your silk has found crevice in the nooks of my moods: the threads of your “O my soul”, silver in substance, still fling in the winds of this gossamer ghoul.