don't remember either, may you ... what, me? Mistress, do tell us about him, about the knight, eh? What was Agilulf like?”
“Oh, Agilulf!”
9
AS I write this book, following a tale told in an ancient almost illegible chronicle, I realise only now that I have filled page after page and am still at the very beginning. For now the real ramifications of the plot get under way: Agilulf and his squire’s intrepid journey for proof of Sophronia’s virginity, interwoven with Bradamante’s pursuit and flight, Raimbaut’s love, and Torrismund’s search for the Knights of the Grail. But this thread, instead of running swiftly through my fingers, is apt to sag or stick and when I think of all the journeys and obstacles and flights and deceits and duels and jousts that I still have to put on paper I feel rather dazed. How this discipline as convent scribe and my assiduous penance of seeking words and all my meditations on ultimate truths have changed me. What the vulgar—and I too till now—considered as the greatest of delights, the interweaving adventures which make up every knightly tale, now seem to me pointless decoration, mere fringe, the hardest part of my task.
I long to hurry on with my story, tell it quickly, embellish every page with enough duels and battles for a poem but when I pause and start rereading I realise that my pen has left no mark on the paper and the pages are blank.
To tell it as I would like, this blank page would have to bristle with reddish rocks, flake with pebbly sand, spout sparse juniper trees. In the midst of a twisting ill-marked track, I would set Agilulf, passing erect on his saddle, lance at rest. But this page would have to be not only a rocky slope but the dome of sky above, slung so low that there is room only for a flight of cawing rooks in between. With my pen I should also trace faint dents in the paper to represent the slither of an invisible snake through grass or a hare crossing a heath, suddenly coming into the clear, stopping, sniffing around through its short whiskers, then vanishing again.
Everything moves on this bare page with no sign, no change on its surface, as after all everything moves and nothing changes on the earth’s crinkly crust; for there is but one single expanse of the same material, as there is with the sheet on which I write, an expanse which in spite of contractions and congealings in different forms and consistencies and various subtle colorings can still seem smeared over a flat surface. And even when hairy or feathery or knobbly bits seem at various times to move, that is but the change between the relations of various qualities distributed over the expanse of uniform matter, without anything changing in fact. The only person who can be said definitely to be on the move is Agilulf, by which I do not mean his horse or armor, but that lonely self-preoccupied, impatient something jogging along on horseback inside the armor. Around him pine cones fall from branches, streams gurgle over pebbles, fish swim in streams, maggots gnaw at leaves, tortoises rub their hard bellies on the ground, but all this is mere illusion of movement, perpetual revolving to and fro like waves. And in this wave Gurduloo is revolving to and fro, prisoner of the world’s stuff, he too smeared like the pine cones, fish, maggots, stones and leaves, a mere excrescence on the earth’s crust.
How much more difficult it is for me to plot on my paper Bradamante’s course or Raimbaut’s or glum Torrismund’s! There would have to be some very faint pucker on the surface as can be got by pricking paper from below with a pin, and this pucker would always have to be impregnated with the general matter of the world and this itself constitute its sense and beauty and sorrow, its true attrition and movement.
But how can I get on with my tale, if I begin to torture the white page like this, scoop out valleys and clefts in it score it with creases and scratches, reading into it the
“Oh, Agilulf!”
9
AS I write this book, following a tale told in an ancient almost illegible chronicle, I realise only now that I have filled page after page and am still at the very beginning. For now the real ramifications of the plot get under way: Agilulf and his squire’s intrepid journey for proof of Sophronia’s virginity, interwoven with Bradamante’s pursuit and flight, Raimbaut’s love, and Torrismund’s search for the Knights of the Grail. But this thread, instead of running swiftly through my fingers, is apt to sag or stick and when I think of all the journeys and obstacles and flights and deceits and duels and jousts that I still have to put on paper I feel rather dazed. How this discipline as convent scribe and my assiduous penance of seeking words and all my meditations on ultimate truths have changed me. What the vulgar—and I too till now—considered as the greatest of delights, the interweaving adventures which make up every knightly tale, now seem to me pointless decoration, mere fringe, the hardest part of my task.
I long to hurry on with my story, tell it quickly, embellish every page with enough duels and battles for a poem but when I pause and start rereading I realise that my pen has left no mark on the paper and the pages are blank.
To tell it as I would like, this blank page would have to bristle with reddish rocks, flake with pebbly sand, spout sparse juniper trees. In the midst of a twisting ill-marked track, I would set Agilulf, passing erect on his saddle, lance at rest. But this page would have to be not only a rocky slope but the dome of sky above, slung so low that there is room only for a flight of cawing rooks in between. With my pen I should also trace faint dents in the paper to represent the slither of an invisible snake through grass or a hare crossing a heath, suddenly coming into the clear, stopping, sniffing around through its short whiskers, then vanishing again.
Everything moves on this bare page with no sign, no change on its surface, as after all everything moves and nothing changes on the earth’s crinkly crust; for there is but one single expanse of the same material, as there is with the sheet on which I write, an expanse which in spite of contractions and congealings in different forms and consistencies and various subtle colorings can still seem smeared over a flat surface. And even when hairy or feathery or knobbly bits seem at various times to move, that is but the change between the relations of various qualities distributed over the expanse of uniform matter, without anything changing in fact. The only person who can be said definitely to be on the move is Agilulf, by which I do not mean his horse or armor, but that lonely self-preoccupied, impatient something jogging along on horseback inside the armor. Around him pine cones fall from branches, streams gurgle over pebbles, fish swim in streams, maggots gnaw at leaves, tortoises rub their hard bellies on the ground, but all this is mere illusion of movement, perpetual revolving to and fro like waves. And in this wave Gurduloo is revolving to and fro, prisoner of the world’s stuff, he too smeared like the pine cones, fish, maggots, stones and leaves, a mere excrescence on the earth’s crust.
How much more difficult it is for me to plot on my paper Bradamante’s course or Raimbaut’s or glum Torrismund’s! There would have to be some very faint pucker on the surface as can be got by pricking paper from below with a pin, and this pucker would always have to be impregnated with the general matter of the world and this itself constitute its sense and beauty and sorrow, its true attrition and movement.
But how can I get on with my tale, if I begin to torture the white page like this, scoop out valleys and clefts in it score it with creases and scratches, reading into it the
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