Wednesday, January 16, 2008

angelic language has nothing in common with human language,

classic books (number 2):

imagining language: an anthology, edited by jed jasula and steve mccaffery, mit press 1998



includes:

-richard head and francis kirkman: canting vocabulary, 1665 (compact lexicon of rogue idiolect)

-robert desnos: rrose sélavy, etc., 1923

-john dee and edward kelley: enochian table, 1581-1589 & the enocian call, 1581-1589

-emanuel swedenborg: the angelic language, 1768 (blog entry title)

-thomas more: quatrain in utopian vernacular, 1516

-françois rabelais: from gargantua and pantagruel, 1564 (translated by thomas urquhart and peter le motteaux)

-lewis carroll: stanza of anglo-saxon poetry, 1855

-athanasius kircher: the origin of writing, 1679 & the 72 names of god, 1654 & epilogismus combinationis linearis 1669

-sir thomas urquhart: neaudethaumata, a universal language, 1653
man is called a microcosm, because he may by his conceptions and words contain within him the representatives of what in the whole world is comprehended.

-francis lodwick: the forms of distinctional marks, 1647
the actor (drinker), the action (drinking), the object (drink), the inclination (drunkard), the abstract of the demonstrative adjective (drunkenness), and the place of action (drinking house).

-richard grey: from memoria technica, 1730
(is the last in a long line of artificial memory systems)

-jonathan swift: anglo-latin letter to dr. sheridan, c. 1725 & a project for improving speculative knowledge, 1726 & a litteralial scheme of writing, c. 1725

-marcel duchamp: conditions of a language, 1934

-john cage: writing for the second time through finnegans wake, 1979

-jorge luis borges: funes the memorius, 1942

-juan de celaya: the geometry of the mind, 1525

-jacob boehme: from mysterium magnum, 1623

-victor hugo: a hieroglyphic alphabet, 1839

-sir francis bacon: biliteral cipher, 1613

-john wilkins: the somatic production of sounds, 1668

-christian bök: crystal systems, 1994

-novalis: monologue, c. 1798

(et cetera)


athanasius kircher: epilogismus combinationis linearis

(an example of fraenkel's "stylizations" of mallarmé's poem + michaux)

sir francis bacon: biliteral cipher

john wilkins : the somatic production of sound

3 comments:

the art of memory said...

posting this in the hopes of making these examples less mysterious to me.......

woolgathersome said...

Lovely, lovely, lovely....

Thanks for posting these!

Why less mysterious?

the art of memory said...

meaning many go over my head, if not all.