McLeod 1994
McLeod, Randall M., ed. Crisis in Editing: Texts of the English Renaissance. Papers given at the twenty-fourth annual Conference on Editorial Problems, University of Toronto, 4-5 November 1988. New York: AMS Press, 1994.
FIAT fLUX
(Random Cloud, pp. 61-172) N.B.: These notes copied from Whitney Trettien's Whiki
1633, Herbert dies; two "look-alike editions" of The Temple appear, with two different "Easter-wings"
"modern editing and criticism have joined to bring us only one 'EASTER-WINGS' poem, 20 lines long" (66) traces the reading of different versions -- what constitutes the "poem" (or "poems") order, how one interacts with the page to read it -- does the left wing or right come first? does the text read, down, left, or right?
"As the printed shape-poem is inherently an object of both reading and gazing, it cannot exist wholly in a single spatiality and temporality. In our performative processing of this poem-that-is-a-picture, we cannot be in all modalities at once." (72) "Untied, the wings of the book unfold as an agel in the grasp of the woman to whom the book was given. The diptych is not a merely visual field; it is also tactile and metamorphic." (72) manuscript -- is an adaptation "and not a mindless transcription: for this fact argues that what we modern readers are conditioned to think is the wrong sequence of stanzas seems to have been right for an engaged 17th-century sensibility" (74)
different leading of editions; "for those who like to think of poetry either as eternal, ghostly forms or as scattered generations of leaves, it will be a challenge to countenance the mediation of "Easter wings" in metal over these seven years" (78)
reading of punctuation within printed book indicates how the first edition was pushing the reader to read the poem -- as two different poems (79-82)
traces how the deathbed ms. could have traveled, and what authorities it could be said to have (84-5)
"The different orientations and styles of indenting in the manuscripts and first printed edition give no evidence which of them is correct, or indeed that any of them must be wrong. The differences could have expressed the will of the poet on different occasions in different media. Moreover it is not clear that authority is to be restricted merely to him. Insofar as one sees the labour of production as collaborative, the author may be deemed only one determinant among many. In some, it now seems impossible to find the single authoritative layout for the 'Easter wings' poems, if ever it existed." (85) "Everything points clearly to the rotation and the diptych format as esthetic choices. Nothing points clearly to who is responsible for them." (85) Gallery of different editions of Easter Wings -- shows trans/deformations of the poem over the years
when the poem is flipped so you don't have to turn the page, the gutter disappears, and "the poems cannot be grasped each on a separate wing of the book: without the diptych-format, the poems no longer allegorize the book, the book no longer allegorizes our hands. The body goes under. The iconic fades." (87)
editors believe themselves to be revealing the author's intent, experiencing thoughts not as their own but as Herbert's (118)
"Together these examples, like the repeated presentation of 'Easter wings' as a single poem, tell a predictable tale of editorial ineptitude and plagiarism. But to suggest that each of these editors is merely a stupid scoundrel is really to miss the broader point: their culpability is institutional. It lies in the tradition of editing and editorial commentary itself, which exists in the creation of culturally palatable displacements of the evidence. Thus, the editors' derivations one from another essentially manifest their cultural loyalty -- loyalty to the substitute, which their actions over the generations render incrementally more and more familiar and credible, as the evidence becomes excrementally more and more quaint and disregarded. The consequence is that the evidence, and the culture that produced it, appear alien in the culture of editing, even as it claims to bridge it to us." (127-8) "I want a criticism grounded in the paradoxical interaction of what we say and what we mean -- grounded in surprise and open to contradiction. I want to know why criticism makes Herbert's poem as safe as its Meaning, rather than as dangerous as our experience of it -- why, in explaining it, criticism explains it away." (131) "Endless deferral. Endless deference. We live by communal pieties, which are deemed to be legitimized by their derivation from texts, be they scripture, dictionaries, or editorial notes. But these texts see mto be necessary largely for the general assurance that they somehow back us up; they don't seem specifically to be textually necessary, and, in fact, are very often textually dangerous -- for they threaten to unmean their own meanings. When they do so, to try and make them mean what they are supposed to is to twist one's mind the way editors twist wings." (133) examines other printed shape poems that may be precursors for Herbert
transformation of information (147)
"The history of Indo-European reveals the immense staying power of linguistic codes. but they have held on only by letting go, for over time language has mutated, multipleid and diversely adapted to the cultures in co-evolution with them. Understandably, when we read Yeats or Shakespeare with etymological awareness, it may be difficult to bring ourselves to regret this awesome inefficient efficiency of communication over the ages -- because of the cultural diversity and intelligence and ignorance that muddles out of it, and which, since our very identities are rooted in language, sets us diverse, intelligence, and ignorant before it, absurdly pondering whether to regret it or not. Similarly, it is difficult to be objective when we contemplate the mutation of DNA codes, which fills the evolving earth with cognate species, simultaneously identifying and differentiating us. Well, if mutation of messages is the way of this world, how are we to react to Herbert's editors? Does their inexhaustible fertility issue in sublime adaptation or merely befuddled degeneration?" (148) different editions show "appropriation drifting inappropriately according to fashion; this drift forestalls literary criticism's approach to a science. This is not to say that editing is not a highly intellectual practice, for it is. But its intellect is self-absorbed; it is virtually cut off fro mthe objects it needs to contemplate." (148)
"plainly, authority itself is multiple. Not only do the documents lie in layers, then, but a given document may itself be layered. At the core of the evidence there beats more than one heart, and textual science cannot reduce this pulsing multiplicity to a solid unity -- if that is what the scholar in us hopes for." (149) "If his [Herbert's] inspiration and expression appear complicit with the very evolutionary drift that textual criticism stands opposed to, might not textual criticism seem to point the way of detachment, of sterility and of extinction?" (149) "Taken as a whole, the body of editorial modification and commodification can constitute a map of misreadings, not only those of our naive selves, but also those of our culture at large. I think it takes exacting textual criticism of authoritative documents to force editing to disclose such a map, for without an external discipline those who wander in editing will simply become what they behold." (150) "Editing can scarcely be expected to divulge its own structures, until it is juxtaposed critically to the evidence it claims to report. In the contradictions that become vivid in such a juxtaposition, we can measure precisely the difficulties of Herbert's poetry and our resistance to it." (150)
