Goodbye, Stranger Matt Bondurant
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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2003 Goodbye, Stranger Matt Bondurant Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES GOODBYE, STRANGER By MATT BONDURANT A Dissertation submitted to the English Department in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2003 Copyright © 2003 Matt Bondurant All Rights Reserved The Members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Matt Bondurant defended on March 29th, 2003. ___________________________ Mark Winegardner Professor Directing Dissertation ___________________________ Leon Golden Outside Committee Member ___________________________ Elizabeth Stuckey-French Committee Member ___________________________ Anne Rowe Committee Member Approved: ______________________________________________________ Hunt Hawkins, Chair, English Department ______________________________________________________ Donald Foss, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences The Office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii For Jane Springer, Seth Tucker, & Stacy Dianne Lowe iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thank you to my director and mentor Mark Winegardner and to the rest of my committee: Anne Rowe, Leon Golden, Elizabeth Stuckey-French. Thank you to the English Department at Florida State University and the Creative Writing Program, my readers including Mike Mannon and Seth Tucker, and all my peers and friends in Tallahassee. Lastly thanks to my family for years of support. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract................................................................................................................. vi Epigraphs.............................................................................................................. vii 1. A MOORING POST ......................................................................................... 1 2. THE FLOOD IS MIGHTY................................................................................ 21 3. ZENOBIA......................................................................................................... 44 4. THE CANADANAUT ...................................................................................... 52 5. PENELOPE ...................................................................................................... 55 6. CRYPTOGRAPHY........................................................................................... 59 7. SETH ................................................................................................................ 68 8. THE MINDS OF INSECTS .............................................................................. 72 9. MUSIC.............................................................................................................. 80 10. WASH THIS HEART ..................................................................................... 89 11. SWEDISH PORN ........................................................................................... 97 12. THE ENGINEER ............................................................................................ 104 13. DETERMINATIVES ...................................................................................... 113 14. THE BLUE MAN ........................................................................................... 126 15. SHABTI.......................................................................................................... 133 16. WHAT TO LISTEN FOR ............................................................................... 141 17. EVENT HORIZON ........................................................................................ 145 18. DUNG BEETLES ........................................................................................... 151 19. ETERNITY..................................................................................................... 156 20. WEDJAT ....................................................................................................... 161 21. ANGLING ...................................................................................................... 174 22. TAKE A GUESS............................................................................................. 183 23. EXECRATION ............................................................................................... 190 24. THE HEART SCARAB .................................................................................. 197 25. ABSTRACTIONS .......................................................................................... 203 26. THE MASK OF THOTH ................................................................................ 211 27. REGRET......................................................................................................... 221 28. GRAVITY ...................................................................................................... 227 29. THE LAST FLOOD........................................................................................ 230 30. EPILOGUE – A LETTER .............................................................................. 239 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ................................................................................ 244 v ABSTRACT The land of ancient Egypt, as with most ancient cultures, was described in terms of its fertility, flooding, and available fresh water. The fertile flood plains of the Nile and the Delta that begins at Giza and Cairo was called Kemet, meaning the black land. The harsh landscape of the Sahara that surrounds the Nile valley was call Deshret, or the red land. The ancient Egyptians referred to themselves as remt-en-Kemet. The story of the ancient kingdoms of Egypt is the story of the various kings’ untiring and mostly fruitless efforts to unite these two kingdoms, these two worlds, the find the third land. It is also well known that the ancient Egyptians had some very definite ideas about the afterlife, and the separation of those two worlds. However, the multiple and ever-changing pantheon of gods, and the kings and great pharaohs (along with a few Queens) were able to exist simultaneously in the two lands at once; to live in the third land. In this novel, Dr Walter Rothschild is one of the premier Egyptologists and cryptographers in the world, working at the British Museum in London. His assignment is to crack the Stela of Paser, a real work that has stymied translators for centuries, a cryptographic puzzle that dangles the possibility of a third way of reading it. This turns out to be a possible key to not only discovering a new way of understanding the ancient Egyptians, but also offers strange glimpses at history, time, and space, and regret; ultimately how we all seek the third way, and how this search can defeat or liberate us. vi EPIGRAPHS Who does not regard with reverence an aged tree, which a thousand year ago, beheld generations long since passed from the earth, sitting its shade? Who would willingly part with the clumsy, tarnished ring, which his aged mother or grandmother had worn upon her finger? …Who can pass without emotion through the silent streets of Pompeii, which once resounded with the bustle of the forum and the song of sailors? Who does not take delight in treasuring up in his casket, among other gems, some old coins of the age in which Pericles sent forth his fleets against envious Sparta? … It cannot be denied, that every man regards whatever is ancient, with a certain interest and reverence. And why does he do so? These ancient things, be they beautiful or ugly, complete or fragmentary, lustrous or encrusted with filth, speak to every one that beholds them. Ay, antiquities speak. We hear their language distinctly, not with the outward ear, but with an inner sense, with which the Creator has endowed us… And what is it, that these monuments of antiquity have to say to us? Their language is: Consider, how young you are compared with those by-gone generations, whose contemporaries we have been! Bethink you, how soon you will disappear from the series of living things, without leaving behind you any such monuments of your existence! A different world has been on earth before you! G. Seyffarth – Summary of Recent Discoveries in Biblical Chronology, Universal History, and Egyptian Archeology vii The wisest sages of Egypt […] in order to designate things with wisdom do not use designs of letters, which develop into courses and propositions, and which represent sounds and word; instead they use designs of images, each of which stands for a distinct thing; and it is these that they sculpt onto their temples […] Every incised sign is thus, at once, knowledge, wisdom, a real entity captured in one stroke. Plutin us – in the Enneads (V. 8 5-6) viii The discovery that, by combining different hieroglyphs, evocative visual emblems might be created inspired these last scribes to experiment with increasingly complicated and abstruse combinations. In short, these scribes began to formulate a sort of kabbalistic play, based, however, on images rather than on letters. Around the term represented by a sign(which was given an initial phonetic reading) there formed a halo of visual connotations and secondary sense, a sort of chord of associated meanings which served to amplify the original semantic range of the term. The more the sacred text was