Steam Submarine Zelf
Page 12
~~~
Every passing day
I think of thee
Submariner and Wolf Lady
The one true hearted wolf Ive ever known
Every passing day
I think of thee
Lest you think I could forget
But let this book tell you
I still do remember you
My sage
My mage
Singer of my God songs
The only realm I found where I belong
This Welfing song
is yours alone
To you I dedicate this tome
Sixteen the chapters
This the first in Steam Submarine
Read well and secrets will of other worlds appear
That tell of Zelf in realms not here
a cleveR Delfyc cryptogryphonical
signD
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Preface - The Troubling Fountain of All Mythology
That Robert Denethon in this book has perhaps written an unintentional allegory of his own life, his love, in artistic form; this, at least, is the thesis advanced by the editor and annotator of this first edition, P________, and it is an hypothesis that bears further examination.
There exists an essay that Robert Denethon wrote upon the subject of the anima and the animus, those ancient alchemical symbols of the self, often expressed in mediaeval texts as an hermaphroditic angel, half male, half female. In it, Denethon seems to be hinting at some sort of basic disillusionment, but it seems, not a fatal disillusionment - a sort of confrontation with the reality of this mythical other half in person. As the Indian philosophy of Ardhanadrœfvara says -
‘Wife is, in fact, one half of the man. as long a man is not married, he can not regenerate himself and remains incomplete. He becomes complete, when he gets a wife and produces progeny...’
Throughout a life, a person seeks their other half. But at some point one finds this person - and here is what Denethon says about the result:
What if a man’s anima was not just a myth, but a living person, flesh and blood, who sweats, weeps, laughs, and speaks in riddles or in truth, one who is capable of wisdom and folly, reverence and mockery, angelic and demonic in the same measure as any of us, but most of all, a person fully human and fully alive? What a strange, terrible thing, to be confronted with the shadow of one’s own follies and shortfallings, in the mirror image, as it were.
But this strange alchemy hints at something more than this: at the bottom of all our dreams, all our mythology, all the stories we tell each other by the light of the campfire, perhaps, is the deepest fountain of all, the most hidden place, as they called it at the Areopagus, the altar of the unknown god.
And the Indian idea of the other half is perhaps a faint echo of this reality.
In other words, what troubles us even more than encountering our anima, is when this first of all alphas, this unknown God, becomes real, and speaks to us. When this unknown God walks amongs us and does miracles, and calls us to follow him, or speaks his own mysteries in terms plainer and simpler than we would like to believe they are, more absolute than we want to hear or accept.
And when someone calls upon him for a miracle, and says, ‘I believe, Ellulianæn, help my unbelief,’ and he answers.
So when this God brings forth out of the realm of dreams and visions, one who is a person’s other half, yet is no dream but a flesh and blood, imperfect, excruciating, discomfiting human being: then perhaps marriage is a matter of being shocked by one’s own image reflected back - the sound of one’s own imperfect voice speaks in answer to the call, in a troubling echo - I, as broken as I am, see myself in you, as broken as you are, and yet I love you.
When one can no longer worship one’s anima (or animus, in the opposite case) one can no longer worship oneself.
Then, perhaps, the soul becomes a place wherein God can dwell.
Denethon: the Anima and the Animus in Art, 1968
Such a speech hints at a difficult ordeal in Denethon’s life. Clearly the path of true love was not smooth. Did he really marry this woman? Even the answer to this fundamental question is not known - Denethon was a recluse - so little is known of the facts of his life, his biography is a surd, an unknown quantity, a strange attractor.
It might, therefore, be stretching the point to see every single fact in this book as an allegory, since so little is known of the fellow.
Even Denethon’s birthplace is obscure - some conspiracists say that this is because he was born in Ultima Thule, others say that it is because he never existed at all. The name ‘Denethon’ may indeed be as fictitious as his works, although the anecdote rings true that when Robert’s father first read Lord of the Rings and found a villain named Denethor in there he was so upset about the slur to the family name that he threatened to sue Tolkien for libel, and it was only lack of funds (in terms of English pounds - he had some wealth in Ultima Thulean currency, apparently) that prevented him from taking this lawsuit to a successful conclusion.
But to find out whether the son Robert married this female person whom he believed to be his anima (or animus), or whether he simply loved her from afar - and the answer to this is perhaps hidden in the many papers and archive boxes that Denethon left behind - speaking simply, more research is needed. Perhaps someone will need to look into such things as marriage registers, voting records, the census and the like, before an answer is definitively known.
That P________, occupied with sorting out Denethon’s literary papers, has not discovered the facts yet is indubitably ascribable to the general disorder in which these papers were found, and the necessity of putting first things first. Without the literature, the life is worthless - it is Robert Denethon’s literary output that makes the facts of his life worth knowing, and not the other way around - thus P________ has begun with the literature, only hinting at points where life seems to impact art. He is making connexions, pointing the way forwards, making a scratch map of the places, as it were, that a later biographer of Denethon may wish to explore.
Anyhow, in this first English edition of the Griffonomiconus Steamus Submarinus, P________ has given us annotations gleaned from Denethon’s poetry about his love affair with this mysterious ‘lady of the stars,’ his ‘beautiful dark-haired girl, head among the stars, heart full of wisdom.’ It seems from everything gleaned so far that this was a completely platonic relationship, as much as any mediaeval love affair, as chaste as the love Spencer’s knight had for his Faerie Queen, and perhaps as mysterious and mortally incomplete as Dante’s love for his Beatrice, and yet, there is no doubt that she made a very strong impression on him; that fact is attested by the 373 poems and fragments that he wrote for her.
Yet when we look at this book, what a strange figure Denethon uses as an allegory for his love (if indeed she is allegorical) - the figure of the wolf-lady, an otherwordly character, a strangely self-contradictory, paradoxical figure - both innocent and predator, victim and victor, lamb and lamb-eater. What can be meant by this? We can only hope that later scholarship will tease out the symbolism and find the peculiar truths that may lay behind the particular image. At this moment, we have only Denethon’s work to rely on and little more. P________ has done his best to give us the few other facts that can be teased out to complete the partial image, and for this much, we must be very grateful, as it is the culmination of a lifetime’s work.
Indeed, P________ himself has expressed the thought privately to me that he feels this work is his ‘dim mirror’, quoting in I Corinthians 13:12, ‘for now we see in a mirror dimly, then we shall see face to face.’
As a friend, and a confidant, I have often put my confidence in his truthfulness and honesty, although his personal mental stability and sanity is not always unquestionable.
Be that as it may, this work is one that I believe will stand the test of time - P________’s annotated transposition of Denethon’s Steam Submarine - and I truly hope that you wi
ll enjoy it as much as I have.
Footnote 1) For instance, some have pointed out that a chapter title in the fourth book, ‘The Road to Emmaus,’ might be a reference to a group within the Roman Catholic church that provided marriage counseling for prospective partners in Denethon’s day. Yet this is going too far - P________ is sure, and I follow him in this, that this is a singular and unusual coincidence rather than some sort of intentional symbolism.
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Footnote 2) Was it lucky accident or design that there are exactly 373 poems? It seems an incontravertible fact that it was design. Knowing Denethon’s penchant for Biblical numerology, 373 is surely a significant number. This thesis is worthy of examination - the number in Greek Gematria of the word, Logos, λογοσ, meaning Word in the theologickal sense applied to Jesus in John 1:1-10, is 373, but this is also the simply common Greek word meaning ‘word’ - thus we have 373 poems - each a ‘word’ of its own, in a sense, the collection making a ‘word’ also... 373 is also the 74th prime number, and this is surely significant to Denethon, who wishes his works to conform to the Divine Will, 7 being the divine, overriding number, and 4 being the number of cardinal points in the creation. And one must not forget the Gematria value 373 is found in the book of Isaiah in the phrase מ שלג ‘than snow’ in Hebrew, the significance of which may be seen in the fact that 373 is a number that can be arranged as a star, or perhaps, as a snowflake, composed of 7 stars each with 37 units, and 6 hexagons each with 19 units. Enoch, who was taken up to God, lived for 373 years. Interestingly, 370 is a number indicating completeness, and 73 in Hebrew Gematria is the number of divine wisdom חָכמָה. the mysterious and hidden female expression of divinity.
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Footnote 3) Of course, every mirror in the 1st century Roman empire was dim, in other words, gave a poor quality reflection, for they originally used polished brass to make their mirrors, and while Pliny mentions glass mirrors backed by gold leaf by 77ad, the modern process that gives an exact likeness wasn’t invented until 1835 by Justus von Liebig.
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Footnote 4) For instance P________ has told me that in L____, where he lives, he sometimes glimpses the author of this book standing in the corner of the room beside the hatstand; a shockingly physical presence glimpsed out of the corner of his eye. At other times he spots gnomes standing by the side of the street, then realises there is a gnarly treestump standing there, and once, other creatures, indescribable, threatening, pale, insectine things with many limbs and pincers and the like - such visions that would cause grown men to instantaneously develop knocking knees. In moments of slight drunkenness he is wont to claim that these visions are echoes from the other world, from Ultima Thule, perhaps, or other, nearer and more disturbing ambits, that exist in parallel to our own existence. Denethon, of course, is said to hail from one of the other worlds on the World Tree, or others say that he has gone there; wherever ‘there’ may be, but these rumours can neither be verified nor disproven, and according to the more suspicious commentators were most likely started by Denethon himself as a way to increase his own notoriety.
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Footnote 5) viz. Denethon’s Sonnet V
I am a wolf. I stare at you, unblinkingly
from the shadows, across the other side.
You are a wolf. You stare back at me.
Strange golden † eyes. You abide,
In the very place I sought to see you.
You wait for me there, but I cannot come,
Not yet. The other she-wolves wish to be you.
I wait. I watch. You watch. The moon, the sun,
The seasons pass like slowly whirling moons.
Yet still your golden eyes, deep as death,
Watch me. I howl mournful tunes.
I watch you watch me, still as breath,
Gentle as the grey fur on your underside.
Passionate as the hunt. My wolf-bride.