BERNEVAL

Either incipit and colophon, it came to me from my friend the translator and editor Diana Kuprel. A piece of ephemera in a package produced by the St. Michael’s College Press. Without attribution. Nicely set.

A border of two destinies touching upon each other almost interwoven.

Sor	 	sup	 	no	 	scrip	 	li	 	poti	 
 	te	 	er	 	rum	 	tor	 	bri	 	atur
Mor	 	inf	 	no	 	rap	 	li	 	mori	 

Which reconstructed with the overlapping bits, reads

Sorte supernorum scriptor libri potiatur
Morte infernorum raptor libri moriatur

Englished

 	   wrote	  procure     joys	 life supernal
May he who	 this book	  the	    of	 
 	  steals	  endure      pangs	 death infernal

This version is care of David Harvey, University of Exeter, via personal communication to Mark Drogin (pages 90-91, Anathema!) which came to me via “Bibliomania and the Medieval Book Curse” by Sandra Anderson which paper was written for the LIS 586 – History of the Book course at the University of Alberta. It was posted to the web in March 2003 as part of a capping exercise for the completion of a Master of Library and Information Studies degree.

Still no idea what manuscript this curse/blessing comes from. I have in my searches found some variations:

Morte superborum …
Morte reproborum …
Morte malignorum …

For those interested in tracing down the manuscript sources for some these intertwined inscriptions from anonymous scribes, please consult the multivolume Colophons de manuscrits occidentaux des origines au XVIe siècle. Bénédictins du Bouveret. (Fribourg, Suisse : Editions Universitaires, 1965-1982). And many happy searches beyond (such is my curse and blessing).

And so for day 1276
11.06.2010

Almost as if taken from a Parsi description of exposure in the Tower of Silence, Robert Bringhurst brings us to a new appreciation of feasting when he mediates upon the carcass of a dead fawn.

In terms of meat, there is not very much to a young fawn, but the eagles had opened her up, and the ravens had joined them. I reminded myself that being buried bit by bit in the guts of birds is at least as good as going into a hole in the ground, and that fueling an eagle’s flight or the voice of a raven is as fine a resurrection as anyone, human or deer, could hope for.

“The Silence That Is Not Poetry — And The Silence That Is” E.J. Pratt Lecture, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s 14 October 2005

In this collection of thirteen talks (The Tree of Meaning), I turn to an earlier lecture that also rifts on an ecological perspective. This time in the mode of culture and its artefacts.

So the cultural floor is a killing floor, and it’s littered with smithereens. Reach down and you might pick up some fragments of a Presocratic philosopher, a Zen master’s wink preserved in amber, a story or two told by an aboriginal elder, or a sheaf of poems by one of the great poets who go by the name Anonymous. You’ll have to sift through a lot of rubbish to find these treasures, but plenty of treasure is there: much more lying in the dust than you are likely to find in the superstructure. That’s why every true intellectual alive in the present day is a garbage picker.

“Poetry and Thinking” Luther College, University of Regina, 25 January 2001

For the visually-minded garbage picker there is the example of the catadores of the Jardim Gramacho chronicled in the movies Waste Land. For the booklover, there is detritus.com, the online home of Jeff Maser, Bookseller, through whose catalogues one can idle many an hour.

And so for day 1275
10.06.2010