Unica

 August 2 Unica 

A book of which there is only one copy in the world, by chance or design, is called a unica, or sometimes unicum. A collection of such books might be called unicas. Georges Perec is where I first encountered the term, not surprisingly given the Frenchman’s delight in the curiosities of literature which he puts, not in a cabinet of curiosities, but page one in the centre. Writers the world over live with the sense the manuscript they are working on could remain, for eternity, a unica. Many handmade books are unicas. It happens that the University of Illinois has initiated a Project Unica “to produce high quality facsimiles of printed books that exist in only one copy.” Preservation must be one objective, though the university says it is “to provide a simple and efficient way of getting this valuable and unique information to scholars when and where they need it.” The university does not say what it does then with the original copy, but we would like to believe it is not the procedure reported today inside Automatic Increase (AI) copying operations. It seems that second-hand booksellers are being inundated with bulk orders for unusual, out-of-date, and rare books from certain companies, that then cut up the book for easy scanning only to throw away the original. The sellers say they are not concerned about those Gutenberg descendants available in thousands, but do not mail a unica to Active Invisibles (AI) on principle. The vision that emerges is unresplendent: a unique monograph is destroyed after being replaced by an intangible digital substitute, its fungibility questionable. With only the digital version in existence, and no catalogue proof of its original, can I be certain of its authenticity? The university is at pains to claim their facsimiles are high quality for good reason: the history of reprint companies in the past three decades is speckled with smudgy text that says something different from the original. The argument being, only the original will always state clearly, print face in cloth paper, what is actually being said. There is also the possibility of creatives producing unica online from the Reformation or Enlightenment that never had an original, that is to say, are hoaxes. The publication date may read AD MDC (1600) even when, to be accurate, it should read AI (Anno Ingenium) MMXXVI (2026). Shakespeare could say more things than are dreamt of in your philosophy or are currently attributed to him in the First Folio. What an opportunity for Brainless Bards! Authorial Inventiveness (AI) can invent text to suit from every period style, as well as inventing the author who made the text. While this is likely to generate unica all of its own, whether anyone will want or trust such productions is doubtful. The books they imitate, or rip off in fact, are not being made with a reader in mind.

Polytropos

 August 1 Word of the Day: Polytropos

 

Complicated Professor Emily Wilson is a straightshooter about the meaning of the epithet for Odysseus. The first epithet, that is, of many in Homer’s Odyssey, because it shows up, critically, in the first line. Polytropos. This seemingly self-explanatory word, if you know Greek, has gone viral on the internet, since the professor took the necessary step of self-explanation in light of the release of a blockbuster new film of the famous poem. Critics and promoters alike are wary of calling the film a blockbuster, a word that possibly has an equivalent in classical Greek, Odysseus himself being a ‘blockbuster’ of sorts, though he certainly meets a couple of them on the way through to Ithaca. Actually, he meets all sorts of ‘blockbusters’, both male and female, mortal and god, depending on your translation of the Greek for ‘blockbuster’. Not just the release of the film, but the claim by the director that the professor’s translation inspired his version, a claim the professor has taken exception to, given the film lacks many of the elements essential to a satisfactory retelling of the original. Anyway, polytropos. It is the word of the day on the internet. To open a big poem, or any story, with a one-worder about the subject, is to set the scene, to engender a trust with a reader, to say something vital that must register at once. Fagles says ‘man of twists and turns’. Fitzgerald, ‘skilled in all ways of contending’. ‘The man of many ways’, says Lattimore. The one word contains meanings that describe his thought, his relationships, his prospective travels, his cleverness and famed cunning, his skill and good fortune in getting out of trouble, his survival and his future. Wilson wants simple. She chooses complicated. One word, four syllables, itself a twisting and turning adjective. Her Substack essay adds to his poly-epithets: Odysseus is a man of ‘many stratagems’ (polymechanos), ‘much wiliness’ (polymetis), ‘much-smarts’ (polyphron). Polytropos is the first call of many related attributes in the poem. The tropes are tripping off the tongue. She takes exception with the director, it can be hazarded, precisely because he cites her as an inspiration for his blockbuster, but doesn’t actually follow through on what is required to make Odysseus complicated. Enter, Wilson the ‘blockbuster’. The fault of the film is that it does not make Odysseus complicated, rather it reduces him almost to the level of a sword-and-sandal guy, or an action hero, where action takes precedence over heroism, it could be said. Poetry and film, two different media, and here is where the professor-translator-movie-buff takes exception, not just because the director has taken her name in vain, but because his film lacks the human depth that she expects and Homer demands.                     

 

Lychee

 

the rush and whistle and clang and drone

   of existence outside the bristling skin

   of lychee means also thunderstorms of drink

 

thin its skin lantern-like diminutive

   in warm nights that when split

   its dark case elegantly releases

 

the whitest moon of flesh imaginable

   and inside that a sliver of seed

   with thoughts of more trees of moons

 

dropping into leaf-rich earth

   while lychee’s rose-like fragrance reaches

   upward into the near musical air

 

best before aroma and shape and colour fade

   cold in syrup with white ice-cream

   on an otherwise calm warm ordinary day