’pataphilology Before you start to read this book, take this moment to think about making a donation to punctum books, an independent non-profit press, @ https://punctumbooks.com/support/ If you’re reading the e-book, you can click on the image below to go directly to our donations site. Any amount, no matter the size, is appreciated and will help us to keep our ship of fools afloat. Contri- butions from dedicated readers will also help us to keep our commons open and to cultivate new work that can’t find a welcoming port elsewhere. Our ad- venture is not possible without your support. Vive la Open Access. Fig. 1. Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools (1490–1500) ’pataphilology: an irreader. Copyright © 2018 by editors and authors. This work carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license, which means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the authors or punctum books endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transformation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ First published in 2018 by punctum books, Earth, Milky Way. https://punctumbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-1-947447-81-3 (print) ISBN-13: 978-1-947447-82-0 (ePDF) lccn: 2018954815 Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library of Congress Book design: Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Cover image: After Albrecht Dürer, “Saint Jerome Extracting a Thorn from the Lion’s Foot, Lyons, 1508 (copy),” n.d., woodcut. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 31.54.43. philology An Irreader Edited by Sean Gurd & Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei Contents Preamble Steve McCaffery The Papyrus of Ani: Egyptian Book of the Dead: A Prototype of Ekphrastic Translation of Plate 1, Chapters 1–5 (Along with a Brief Note to Explain Its Rudiments) 11 Introduction Sean Gurd Elements of ’Pataphilology 21 • • • One Michael D. Gordin and Joshua T. Katz The Walker and the Wake: Analysis of Non-Intrinsic Philological Isolates 61 Two James I. Porter “On Epic Naïveté”: Adorno’s Allegory of Philology 93 Three Sean Braune ’Pataphilological Lacan 117 Four Paul Allen Miller Going Soft on Canidia: The Epodes, an Unappreciated Classic 139 Five Erik Gunderson The Paraphilologist as ’Pataphysician 167 • • • Bibliography 217 Contributors 235 Preamble The Papyrus of Ani: Egyptian Book of the Dead: A Prototype of Ekphrastic Translation of Plate 1, Chapters 1–5 (Along with a Brief Note to Explain Its Rudiments) Steve McCaffery he Pataphysical premise for ekphrastic translation is sim- ple. Meaning (core) is the epiphenomenon of Sign (sur- T face). Under the rubric of this premise, translation be- comes subject to the following clinamen: a swerve of translation to the level of description. Such an attempt to establish a system of verbal linear cor- respondence as a studied description of what is seen (i.e., by a treatment of hieroglyph as phenotype, hence a new code), will of necessity be partly a subjective response, cf. Tender Buttons. Ekphrastic translation liberates the latter from the domain of service, of utility, into the realm of creativity. “HA HA,” doubt- lessly Bosse-de-Nage would exclaim/explain. 11 ’pataphilology Fig. 1. E.A. Wallis Budge (ed.), The Papyrus of Ani: A Reproduction in Facsimile, 3 vols. (London: The Medici Society Ltd. & New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913), 2:339–41, Pl. 1. 12 the papyrus of ani The Papyrus of Ani An ekphrastic translation of Plate 1 Chapters 1–5 this I guess is the man who moves with the star in his armpit black with a band a page across from the column black disc and the oval end spotted who lines up and sits like a snail or a stone round the dark kick of a bird. fuck the snail circle a bit (more) larger and wave bend it. who blocks (not blocks) blocks circles. yes. who circles a bit. 13 ’pataphilology who puts the line across and above the feather puts the pen and the helmet he puts with the line and the helmet across and the pen up seated as he is where the eye was larger where the pillar was and still is a line to his arms and (perhaps) is held holding a pen up when this happened. well the flag blew way at least if the flag was near to the circle (it was and) it squared up the bit of the circle well half of it bended a loop band and wiggled it then as a wave was a wave came & it wiggled it wiggled. 14 the papyrus of ani at three flags three flags dripping in a bowl not three bowls in a bowl near an ibis and separate defined in the next text his wave dripped. what has this to do with two feathers. a pen. a hen. not a hen. a man crouched over his hand (or his arm) where the serpent is (not) the snail where look at a band just above it. one long horizon and the feathers underneath it (rattles): that serpent again when the head drips frontal 15 ’pataphilology the dish missed. how not to do this: taking a feather for a walk next taking a feather standing it up right moving the legs into rain with a pouch and a feather. feathers come to be pens from inward hawks its horns are a scarab’s mandibles oval a feather alone where the man sits seated beside it the beetle the dish again (is it) the man takes the feather or: the feather in front of the man in front of the hawk suddenly one thin wafer one triangle in one swift sickle the hawk looks the line bends. there are three flags which mean there is a helmet hovering above his arm 16 the papyrus of ani cup resting above the k- for kukoo (a little bird comes. no. k’s for kick i’ll kick it up the ass a wave of ripples from my knee below the circle in side the dot. what has this to do with two feathers a pen a hen not a hen a man and a crouch. over the hand where the serpent is (not) the snail where look at a band just above it 17 ’pataphilology Addendum The following is an earlier version of part of the same plate. put-the-line-on-across-it a bove and the featherpenhelmet-and put-the-line-across helmet. both helmet-and pen. seated where the eye (is) larger-on-the pillarline. an arm perhaps. holding a pen. a pen. happened. flag blows away it is away now flag-is-not the circle (bit) square and square beside-it (circle) bit overaband a loopa (band). wiggle-a-bit. bit. wave. three flags now and then and dripping bowl where ibis comes separate defines the next text 18 the papyrus of ani the wave drips. two feathersand a pen is a hen not a hen is a mancrouch. over the hand where serpent is (not) snail. where. bandisaboveit 19 Introduction Elements of ’Pataphilology Sean Gurd I began to think with the word ’pataphilology around 2001, as a way of grouping a dossier of very strange texts that ranged I in date of origin from the 1860s through the 1990s and in genre from avant-garde literature through the work of outsid- ers, hallucinators, schizophrenics, and principled refuseniks to normal (and normative) language practices. Sometimes these texts (many of which are gathered in the epoch-marking 1998 anthology Imagining Langugae, edited by Jed Rasula and Steve McCaffery) deploy perfectly respectable philological method- ologies, but in a manner which leads to bizarre and even oth- erworldly results; at other times new philologies are invented, then deployed to produce remarkable and moving documents. Reading these works, I felt as though I had entered an alternate world in which everything I knew had somehow been subtly changed, where everything was itself and yet unsettlingly differ- ent at the same time. My interest in this ’pataphilological file, as I came to think of it, was surely sustained by my fascination with, and even my love for, the philology practiced in the classics departments where 21 ’pataphilology I worked and studied. I didn’t know what ’pataphilology said about philology, or even if it said anything at all about it; I had not done much beyond recognizing that ’pataphilology seemed to share a set of gestures with its more well-known counterpart. But I am certain that that little file (to which, from time to time, I added a new work, a new name, a new idea) contributed to my engagement with classical philology. So I was delighted when the neologism, which I had never even said out loud, appeared in print in 2013, in an article by James Zetzel called “The Bride of Mercury: Confessions of a ’Pataphilologist.”1 Surveying Roman textual scholarship in later antiquity, Zetzel imagined that it was practically impossible to tell philology and ’pataphilology apart. I wouldn’t say that about my ’pataphilologists — what they do is very different from philology as I know it — but Zetzel’s argu- ment is entirely concerned with scholarly practices that belong to the “mainstream,” even to the Grand Tradition of European literary learning.