Fragment Three: "Remember'd sins my all, be orisons thy"

Remember'd sins my all, be orisons thy
In nymph Ophelia fair the now. You soft action
Of name the lose, and awry turn currents.
Their regard this with moment and pith:
Great of enterprises, and thought of cast.
Pale the with o'er sicklied is, resolution of hue,
Native the thus and all us of cowards make.
Does conscience thus of not know we that others to fly,
Than have we ills those bear? Rather, us makes
And will the puzzles returns. Traveller no bourn,
Whose from country undiscover'd, the death after something,
Of dread the that but life. Weary a under sweat and grunt,
To bear fardels, would who bodkin bare a with make quietus?
His might himself he, when takes unworthy the, of merit patient,
That spurns the, and office of insolence the delay.
Law's the love despised of pangs: the contumely man's proud,
The wrong oppressor's the time of scorns, and whips the bear,
Would who for life long so of calamity makes that respect,
The there's pause us give. Must coil mortal this off shuffled?
Have we? When come May dreams, what death of sleep
That in for rub the? There's ay: Dream, to perchance sleep,
To sleep to die, to wish'd be to devoutly. Consummation a:
'Tis to heir is flesh, that shocks natural thousand.
The and heart-ache, the end we say, to sleep a by and more,
No sleep to die. To them end opposing by,
And troubles of sea a against arms take to,
Or fortune, outrageous of arrows, and slings the suffer to mind.
The in nobler 'tis whether question the is
That be to not or be to.

Thoughts on Fragment Two

I am presenting these Fragments in the order in which they come to hand. The dilatory colleague of mine who chanced upon them did not care to note the order in which they were originally bound. However, as with any volume of poetry, one suspects that the order of the poems as read is not necessarily a reflection of the order in which they were written or the age of the poet at the time of writing.

We do feel that a younger, brasher sensibility is at work in this self-ironising piece of patriotic rhetoric. Played as it is, for bitter laughs, it is hard to imagine the older poet writing such mockeries as “there’s peace in dead English.” Only a young turk, full of anger and spunk, could lash the page with such an extraordinary welts of sarcasm and bar-room vulgarity. But of course I am not here to criticise. The upwelling of talent in a young genius is a remarkable phenomenon and takes many forms.

It is hard to know, at this distance, who the addressed persons, George Saint and Harry, were. Clearly earnest and idealistic young men, S.W. wastes no time in accusing them of the basest crimes. “Upon straining slips the[e] in greyhounds” -- bestiality at the time was of course punishable by execution, and as such S.W. was playing with fire with this accusation. He moves on from this libel to blaming these unfortunates for the whole tenor of the times in England -- the war-mongering, the mindless brutishness of the noble and the mettlesome. Indeed, S.W. says at one point that “In [England] made were limbs / Whose yeomen good you and war to how them teach, and blood -- / Grosser of men to now copy be.” It seems to the poet that these men taught the very arms and legs of their countrymen to wage war. What is more, the “grosser”, the more vulgar elements of society, the nation of shopkeepers, of “grossers”, simply then goes with the flow. They are unteachable, they are not idealistic, they merely march to the drum of the ideologically programmed. Off to war.

Since S.W. is first and foremost a surrealist, I have taken the decision not to edit these fragments as would an ordinary compiler of verse, but rather, have transcribed the fragments exactly as I found them. The reader may therefore have noticed that the rather flexible Elizabethan orthography results in the interchangeability of the definite article the and the objective pronoun thee. The sequence of short sentences starting with “And breath the[e] hard”, and continuing a little later with “Summon sinews the[e]!” and the like can be read as a sequence of impossible commands. We do not know whether S.W. ever experienced battle himself, but it is clear that he was able to conjure the nonsensical barks of the martinet in the service of deep irony. Is there any real difference between the command Eyes right and the order outlined below to “Hold , wide nostril!”? In each case the authority figure seeks to control the very lizard brain of the soldier, the most ancient and animalistic part of humanity. Whether it is the forces of the Establishment seeking to bring the people into line under the banner of patriotism, or the mimsy guardians at the gates of Usage and Syntax, S.W. insists that this colonialism of the mind is an affront to the dignity of man. And he does this, as so often, with a descent into absurdity, until we arrive at the final command “Of action the[e] imitate then ears!”, which incongruity is not only a piece of Dada avant la mode, but also serious and ironical command. Our ears are almost entirely motionless and yet we are asked, nay, ordered to imitate their action. Be still, says S.W., be still, and listen to the madness.

How does S.W. resolve this aggressively sarcastic piece? What recommendations does he have for the acquaintances who were the jumping-off point for such a cynical view of duty and patriotism? He notes that the “humility and stillness modest as man” is “so nothing”: dismissible; a paradox. In other words, even though humankind is the only being on the planet with the self-knowledge to exhibit the serenity which the poet requires, we are still not equal to the task. Humility itself is debased by its attempt to find a host in mankind.

And so there is only peace in death, unless S.W.’s friends, George Saint and Harry, can, just once, “breach the[e] unto more”. To destroy the programmatic cycle of violence in which they (and by extension we) find themselves, they must needs break themselves open. With the pieces of their very souls they must close up the wall, “and more” -- build it higher, and attain manhood not by marching for the dead land where they had their accidental birth, but by clambering up, up towards the angels.

Fragment Two: "George Saint and England! Harry, for God cry!"

George Saint and England! Harry, for God cry!
Charge this upon and spirit your follow!
Afoot games the start the -- upon straining slips the in greyhounds.
Like stand you, see I eyes your, in lustre noble,
Not hath that base and mean so you of none is there.
For not doubt I, which breeding your worth
Are you that swear us. Let pasture your of mettle
The here us show England! In made were limbs
Whose yeomen good you and war to how them teach, and blood -
Grosser of men to now copy be. You beget did fathers called
You whom those that attest, now mothers your not dishonor argument.
Of lack for swords their sheathed and fought,
Even till morn from parts. These in have Alexanders many!
So like that fathers! War-proof of fathers,
From fet is blood, whose english noble you!
On, on, height full! His to spirit every up bend,
And breath the hard! Hold, wide nostril!
The stretch and teeth! The set now ocean wasteful
And wild the with swilled base confounded his jutty,
And oerhang rock gallèd a doth, as fearfully as it oerwhelm.
Brow the! Let cannon brass the like head the!
Of portage the through pry it! Let aspect terrible a eye the lend,
Then rage hard-favored with nature fair!
Disguise blood the up! Summon sinews the! Stiffen tiger the!
Of action the imitate then ears! Our in blows war of blast the,
When but humility and stillness modest as man,
A becomes so nothing. There's peace in dead English.
Our with up wall the close, or more.
Once, friends dear, breach the unto more. Once!

Thoughts on Fragment One

Clearly still feeling his way towards the sort of style which characterises his later work, S.W. here uses his distinctive syntax to bring us the full force of that "sound of full idiot". In later work, of course, as his confidence increases, that style will harden into flickering shards of clarity, but here S.W. seems to be still exploring his voice, and using it to represent the sheer incoherence and instability of the world.

And yet, for all the idiocy, “by told tale a is it more”. With this arresting line, S.W. sets out his stall. The patterns of foolishness and fury we perceive in the world can only be increased, aggravated, by the act of storytelling. No tale can ease our pain, no effort to impose narrative order can be a salve. We will not hear such nonsense from S.W. - "No heard is then". A strikingly modern concept, that the conventions of narrative realism are shackles that tug us deeper into the mire.

But what of the player poor? And what does he play? Where does he "stage...his frets"? Some form of viol or lute is being alluded to here. S.W. casts himself in the role of jester or musician -- making tunes with sheer language. He mocks our attempts to make sense of a world of patterned language with yet more language. All that can be done is to make music -- that shadow walking beside structured, mortal, language, casting off Death, lighting fools along the dusty way.

In the second half of the fragment, the temporal focus shifts hectically from future to present to past, and all sense of time-flow as we understand it is thrown out the window. Days and hours, time past and recorded, time yet to come in that circular succession of tomorrows, the repeated use of temporal vocabulary -- of "pace" and "brief" and "time" itself --, the magnificent compression of mood and tense and sense in the lines "Word a such for time a been/have would there hereafter died have" -- where the illusory comforts offered by words themselves are instantly exploded into near-nonsense -- in all this the sense of hallucinatory introrse alienation is palpable. He asks us, plaintively, "Have yesterdays our all?" Is it all over? Are we cut adrift by our need to make sense of our world and our past, to entrap ourselves in a skein of language? Is the only truth we think we know entirely down to the ersatz stories we construct to explain our yesterdays?

Perhaps so.

One question remains - who is “she”? Why should “she” die? We can but wait for S.W. to reveal himself in further Fragments.

Fragment One: "Nothing, signifying fury and sound of full idiot"

Nothing, signifying fury and sound of full idiot,
An by told tale a is it more. No heard is then,
And stage the upon hour his frets, and struts that player poor.
A shadow walking, a but life's candle brief.
Out, out, Death! Dusty to way the fools lighted!
Have yesterdays our all, and time recorded of syllable last?
The to day to day from pace petty, this in creeps:
To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow!
Word a such for time a been,
Have would there hereafter died have.
Should she?

The Discovery

On the 1st of August 2010, I received an email from the Professor of English Literature at the University of Camberwell. He had been poking about in the University archives, he said, researching a minor Elizabethan playwright, and had made something of a find. While he was leafing idly through a book of superannuated criticism, a large and dirty sheaf of papers slipped out, falling to the library floor. The papers were old and dusty. The Professor picked them up and examined them. He found that they were covered with manuscript, virtually illegible, and seemingly written with a quill-pen. The writing was dense and untidy, replete with crossings-out and corrections. Strange runes and symbols crept up and down the margins. He had no idea what he had, but he sat at the library table and began to sort through the crumbling pages.

It quickly became apparent to him that proper transcription and analysis of the manuscripts were beyond his meagre skill. Knowing of my interest and expertise, he contacted me immediately and suggested I might like to take a look.

Upon receipt of the email, I can't say I was exactly intrigued. From the Professor's description I suspected that the work was of more modern provenance – a bad fake by a bored Camberwell scholar from God knows when. But the man continued to badger me, insisting that there was something of value which he needed me to see. Eventually I acquiesced. I have made something of a speciality, in my career, of puncturing the egos of the over-excited. I thought I might be able to perform a similar service on this occasion.

When I arrived at the dingy library, the Professor ushered me in and sat me down. He opened before me a bulging manilla folder, and I leant forward into the greatest discovery of my career.

The lost work of the great Elizabethan surrealist, “S.W.” is something of a standing joke among men of my profession. A letter from Jonson to the Earl of Oxford mentions S.W., praising "his heaps of words all crushed and smashed”. Webster footnotes some of his own less penetrable lyrics with the mysterious initials. Marlowe, we read, loathed him for the "divinity and filth" of his work. Bacon once beat a servant to death in fury after a long night reading the First Folio. At the subsequent trial the book was entered as evidence. The judge stated that “No gentleman can be expected to retain his faculties after drowning his mind in unreason”, and acquitted Bacon on grounds of temporary insanity. He ordered all extant copies of the poetry to be burnt, the ashes to be thrown into a hole, and covered with quicklime.

And that, we thought, for four hundred years, was that. After the judgement was handed down, the poet himself seems to have disappeared without a trace. Oh, there were many attempts to recover the writings, down the centuries. Libraries and private collections were trawled through by patient scholars, in the belief that something, somewhere, must remain. More recently there was an attempt to reconstruct the poems and plays by feeding all subsequent English literature through powerful computers. All came to naught. The work of S.W., it seemed, was lost to us permanently.

No longer. For in that hot little library I gazed on beauty the like of which no human now alive could possibly imagine. Glorious poetry, more pregnant with meaning and power than I could have foreseen. And there, in the bottom right corner of each page, in that blotched and clotted hand, were the magical initials: S.W. Could it be that my hitherto unremarkable colleague had discovered the long-lost Folio? Could it be that literature was about to be turned upside down by this complete reinvention of the art? Would all subsequent writing have to be re-evaluated in the light of this find? I believe it will. I believe it is the greatest discovery in the field of letters made in the last hundred years

I can waste no time with the popular press or the turbid meanderings of academia. The world must know of this remarkable find. That is why I turn to the internet. As I go through the papers I will present each new piece on this blog. I beg you, be careful how much you expose yourself to. After that long first night I spent going through the papers and transcribing them I felt the edges of my mind begin to fray.

The great S.W. has returned to delight the world. We have been waiting for him.