Last Page: Yggdrasil?

[blueyelie]

O, I forgot O!
O I feel is a couple things in regard to Navy, possibly the house, and as a (stretching far here) a footnote.

Navy in terms of the O -> Similar as stated before, Navy has "one eye" and that is a lens. This O could be similar to Navy situation that for once in his journeys through the world, he is going to be "open eyed". He doesn't have his camera. His doesn't have the ability to record anything. It is his "true" eye(s) that are going to leading the way up the stairs. He has to Open his eye... or on a funnier note; what if that O, linking to his situation was a type of text talk. Comapre this to Yggdrasil poem as if Navy was saying this:

The
s
t
a
i
r
c
a
s
e
How did this happen? The great staircase.
It grew even bigger than before
But I can't see the first step. Yet it is there
I must start to reach the top
Oh...

Like what if my footnote reference to Yggdrasil was Navy acutally talking! Thats what he said when he realized his prediciment. I don't know, just a thought

Now, I thought of the bottome O beinging where I began. Like another footnote. So where do I find footnote O or zero. I went to see footnote one, see if anything could be like a footnote 0 and there wasn't. (Wow when I acutally just typed 0 there, that looks more like the O in Yggdrasil than and O does). Then the pages number hit me. Page 0. Since TNR starts on page three technically, I went to page two; blank page, page one; the title, and then page 0, and blank page. Stay with me now, where else is there a blank white screen *coughpagecough*?
Exactly! Page 310, the blank white page that links us right back to the instance in which we started. Emptiness and nothing is what happend on tape (Navy's art eye), the O at the end of the poem is void of anything, emptyness, and if Navy's current state really leaves him nothing to work with but what is left in him, whcih is that big fucking dot!

Ok, my rambling got a little messed in there. Sorry, I will try to explain it later. Gotta leave for work! Thanks!

[noevilstar]

Yah Blue

I like the Odin=>Navy

I like it a lot

ps- O D I & N are all in Navidson... all but A V S

[Ellimist]

ODIN SAVs!

[noevilstar]

And let us not Forget Navy's 1st dream! (quickly refrence 398)
The dream describes Navy in a room where "the air reeks of rot (pg. 398)" -the roots of Ygg are said to be rotting.

"the trunk of the Tree is infected with some sort of rot"1

More Importanatly, Navy stands before a well that people jump into to determine there fate, and if they've been "good" a blue light takes them away. Obviously foreshadowing Navidsons final fall through the house.
In Norse Mythology, there are said to be three wells beneath yggdrasil.

" A gigantic root of the World Tree extends into each of the three levels, and a great well or spring lies beneath each root -- Hvergelmir in Niflheim, Mimir's Well in Jotunheim, and Urd's Well in Asgard. As we shall see later, Hvergelmir contains the water of creation, Mimir's Well the waterof wisdom, and Urd's Well the water of healing for the World Tree. "1

"Hvergelmir or "the roaring cauldron," the well from which all waters of the Nine Worlds flow and to which they ultimately return" 2

"At Mimir's well, which lay deep under the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, the god had earlier chosen to undergo an important forfeit. Odin paid with one eye for a single drink of the enchanted water. His mouthful granted him wisdom and fore-sight. It is due to this sacrifice that Odin's face is depicted with a straight line indicating an empty eye, or alternately, in a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low over the missing orb"3

"Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon and Nordic culture roughly corresponding to Fate...
The Well of Urd is the holy well, the Well Spring, the source of water for the world tree Yggdrasil...
The Well of Wyrd feeds the taproot of Yggdrasil the World Tree. It is guarded and tended by the three Norn, who dwell in a hall by the well. It is said that they scry the Bindrunes of Fate in the Well and carve them onto the living trunk of Yggdrasil" 2

I beleive this suggests that the house is in fact the well of Urd

pg. 398 pparaphrased "Navidson understands the logic of this place
1) he can remain in the room forever, or he can jump into the well
2) If he has led a good life, a blue light will visit him and take him to some gentle ethereal place. If he has live an inappropriate life, no light will visit him and he will fall forever."

well of urd= house?


1 http://www.stevenforrest.com/dag.html

2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wyrd

3 http://www.octavia.net/vikings/odin.htm

[noevilstar]

The norns (Old Norse: norn, plural: nornir) are a kind of dísir,[1] numerous female beings who rule the fates of the various races of Norse mythology (The Fates). An English tradition talks of the Weird Sisters, (sometimes Wyrd Sisters or Three Weird Sisters), where Wyrd is the English form of Urðr, one of the named norns, whose name means itself "fate".
According to Snorri Sturluson's interpretation of the Völuspá, the three most important norns, Urðr (Wyrd), Verðandi and Skuld come out from a hall standing at the Well of Urðr (well of fate) and they draw water from the well and take sand that lies around it, which they pour over the ash Yggdrasill so that its branches will not rot. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norn)

could these norns be charcters we know...could some of the charecters be modern day norns, keeping yggdrasil (the house of leaves) in balance??

I shall sleep on all this info...its a lot to take in

[noevilstar]

or leave it right side up, the solid dot is the black expanse of space, and ygg (meaning terrible) and drasil (meaning steed) being the roots of the word Yggdrasil are holding it up.

"as I dig for wild orchids
in the Autumn fields,
it is the deeply-bedded root
that I desire
not the flower."
Izumi Shikibu
(HoL pg. 650)

Just to the left of the black dot on the Ygg page - is the credit of this poem , taken from "The Ink Dark Moon"

...just thought that was interesting...

Ink dark moon seems to refrence that dot above yggdrasil, and the poem itself suggests ygg too

. . . ...sorry to fill this thread with my ramblings... . . .

[blueyelie]

ODIN SAVs!

I LOVE IT

[noevilstar]

If the house was a part/land of yggdrasil, which one would it be?

[blueyelie]

.. Good question.
I don't see it being Asgard. I could seeing it being Jotunheim due to it's mystery and wonder. But also it could simply by Midgard being land of the mortals because that is where the house is.

Or, that made my think. In Vodun there is a god, Legba that opens the crossroads for the gods to enter the mortal world. So that mortals can speak to the gods on an easier basis, or become a "horse" for the gods. Now there is another god, Kalfou that does just the opposide of Legba; he doesn't open the gates for the gods to the mortals, he opens the gates for the mortals to enter the gods. Basically a much more spiritual an unsafe journey.
You can also take this into account with the veve's which Legbas is simply a "cross road" with four cardinal points. Now Kalfou has the crossroads, but also has four snakes dividing each quadrant, signifying to be going off the beaten path, or the safe path.
Anywho, I was think of the house and the connection of which world would the house be a part of, and it made me think of Kalfou in the sense that what if the was a conjunction of two worlds. Like, for lack of a better term, a "gatway" to the other worlds.

I'm trying to find such a thing in Nordic culture (only thing could be the rainbow bridge linking Asgard to Midgard) but to no avail.

[heartbreak]

I've actually thought on this a lot myself. Never had anything more then ideas and theories.

I think of Leaves is the roots of Yggdrasil. There are references to all three wells in the book. Creation, wisdom and healing.

I think represents Midgard. The Jörmungandr resides there. A serpent biting its own tail. Which often represents infinity much like the way loops around on itself.

I expect Mark's next major book might have correlation to the branches.

[blueyelie]

I'm guessing the next book would resemble the branches... but what exactly are the branches? My Nordic culture is a bit rusty, but I never remember the branches truly resembling something, other than where the deer at the leaves and the squirell scurried around. And also were the two people that survived Ragnarok lived. Hmm... maybe a book like Omega Man, but two people who survive feeding on others?

I felt the tree is more of the books. Such as that HoL is Midgard, or the place of mortals. I feel OR is a link to Asgard, due to the godly aspect of infinity dealing with Sam and Hailey. As for Hel, or Nifelhiem not sure. Maybe a third book, or maybe it links with T50YS or other stuff he has done. Yet to read those...

Some reason Yggdrasil haunts me in HoL. I'm not sure if it's a link, it is Yggdrasil, or what. And why Nordic culture does MZD pick of all? The pagan history? The fighting? The over...well... coolness?

[noevilstar]

I think of Leaves is the roots of Yggdrasil. There are references to all three wells in the book. Creation, wisdom and healing

I'm on board with the roots theory. What refrences do you have for the wells. I think Navy's first dream, see above, suggests perhaps the halls are the roots leading to the well of urd, or perhaps are the well itself.

I also thought the three wells were Fate, Wisdom, and the "Seething Cauldron" that connects the eleven rivers, where Nidhoggr the root-nibbling dragon is. Perhaps Nidhoggr is infact the beast.

[aenema22]

I got my copy of the book used from a girl I used to see long ago, and I noticed upon reading it that she had scribbled a lot of things in the margins that confused me.

On page 709 running parallel to YGGDRASIL she wrote the words "How can I wake up?" I know from reading other pages that she is fluent in French (she translated entire blocks of French text in the margins) but as far as Yggdrasil I don't see the connection.

Maybe she shuffled the letters in order to make them spell something else? I'd ask her but I am no longer in contact with her. =/

[Magda]

This is to connect the Bachelard thread with this Yggdrasil thread.

Sometimes we find ourselves in the presence of a form that guides and encloses our earliest dreams. For a painter, a tree is composed in its roundness. But the poet continues the dream from higher up. He knows that when a thing becomes isolated, it becomes round, it assumes a figure of being that is concentrated upon itself. In Rilkes Poèmes français, this is how the walnut tree lives and commends attention. Here again, around a lone tree, which is the centre of the world, the dome of the sky becomes round, in accordance with the rule of cosmic poetry.

Tree alwas in the center
Of all that surrounds it
Tree feasting upon
Heaven's great dome

Needless to say, all the poet sees, is a tree in a meadow [in the Rhone valley]: He is not thinking of the legendary Ygdrasil that would concentrate the entire cosmos, uniting heaven and earth. But the imagination of round being follows its own law: since, as the poet says, the walnut tree is “proudly rounded,” it can feast upon “heaven’s [Plural in French] great dome.” The world is around the round being.
And from Verse to verse, the poem grows, increases its being. The tree is alive, reflective, straining toward god.

You, as nobody else
turn everywhere
behaving like an apostle
who does not know, from where

God will appear to him
So, to be sure,
it develops itself in roundness
stretching towards Him its ripe arms

Tree that perhaps
Thinks innerly
Tree that dominates self
Slowly giving itself
The form that eliminates
Hazards of Wind.

I shall never find a better document for a phenomenology of a being which is at once established in its roundness and developing in it. Rilke’s tree propagates in green spheres a roundness that is a victory over accidents of form and capricious events of mobility. Here becoming has countless forms, countless leaves [mille feuilles], but being is subject to no dispersion: If I could ever succeed in grouping together all the images of being, all the multiple, changing images that, in spite of everything, illustrate permanence of being, Rilke's tree would open an important chapter in my album of concrete metaphysics.

I did not find the complete English translation of the poem. If somebody could provide me with the missing parts I will exchange them and thank so much. Thanks to heartbreak for some missing lines. Light blue text: my translation. Bold: my accentuation.

Edit: Ah yes.

[noevilstar]

from Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul, T.K. Seung, pg. 120

The notion of ascent and descent is a platonic theme. Some commentators have said that Zarathustra's initial descent from his mountain cave is the reversal of Plato's allegory of the cave. Whereas the Platonic sage goes down to the cave, Zarathustra goes up to the cave. The location of the cave is reversed. Therefore the latter is the reversal of the former. But this only a misleading appearance. Both of them ascend for their enlightenment and descend to dispense their wisdom to the people. Zarathustra's cave is located on a high mountain; Plato's cave is located underground.The former is the locus of wisdom; the latter is the locus of ignorance. Zarathustra's cave serves the noetic function as the Platonic Heaven. He gains his wisdom in the cave high on the mountains just as the Platonic sage gains his wisdom in the Platonic Heaven of eternal Forms.

In Part II, however, Zarathustra did not gain his wisdom by ascending to a mountain cave. He gained it by descending to the underworld. He said that the penitent poets would gain their knowledge of reality by descending to the underworld. THis is truly a reversal of the Platonic scheme. In the regard, Part II is differently constructed from Part I. As we have seen, Part II consists of a series of descending moves, which finally reaches the darkest and lowest point in "The Stillest Hour" . In Part III, Zarathustra reverses his descent and begins his ascent. But his ascent is said to be inseparable from his descent because the depth sustains the height. In "On the Tree on the Mountaintop" of PArt I, Zarathustra counseled a young man that like a tree a human being can reach the height by sending the roots downward into the deep dark evil, that is, one's dee passions and instinctual forces. His talk of height and depth is psychological rather than geological. The inseparable connection between the height and the depth and between ascent and descent will be the central theme.

truth and Truth. two cargoes for any poet's sea voyage.

Should I have been the truant of transcription that Hollander was, I might have been wise here and taken a cue from Hollander, and replaced caves, with care. Of course, this is more of the kind of thing a novelist or a playwright would deal with, and as I am pointedly not a novelist or a playwright I will leave that tale to someone else

[holistic]

Hey, I'm new here, sorry for the necro, I read the threads, I just registered to share my thoughts. I don't have the book with me, so sorry if I can't cite anything...but...

I think the staircase is Yggdrasil, literally.

At one point near the end, I think it's Zampano who says not to search in the sky, as there will be no answers there. When to dropped the coin it dropped too far to be contained inside Earth. What if it has a dual nature- it's almost like it is both below and leads to the sky, as said in the poem ("its roots [not branches] must hold the sky.") Beyond the bottom there is nothing, it leads to nowhere, unlike above the staircase. As for Nidhogg or the rest of the Ygdrasil metaphor I can't tell, but I thought it was an interesting thought.

[Nekopup]

With my first post on the forums (huzzah!), I'd like to point out a shred of evidence which seems to have gone overlooked. It was mentioned in the first post of this thread, but the idea was never revisited. Here's how I came upon this theory:

Some of my friends find it amusing to send impossible questions to that KGB texting service. If you haven't heard of it, you text them a question and they answer it for you (for $0.99). I thought of a question that would really stump them, and on a whim texted to them, "Is there truly a creature in the laybrinth inside Navidson's in Mark Z. Danielewski's of Leaves?" It took them a while to get back to me, and I thought I had stumped them, however I get a text saying simply, "The laybrinth and the book are the same. If the book is Yggdrasil, the creature must be the Nidhogg."

My hands resemble some ancient tree: the roots that bind up the earth, the rock, and the ceasely nibbling wordms.

The Nidhogg ate the roots of Yggdrasil, and P. eludes to this with the "ceaselessly nibbling wor[]ms": worm being a common synomym for a snake or a dragon around the time that these myths were created.

Consider also, changing that last word slightly: "ceaselessly nibbling word[]s" I believe that the Nidhogg, or the words, are destroying the roots of Yggdrasil, or the narrative. I will explain further:

Yggdrasil's roots reach into three wells. The first is the well of Wisdom, which I take to represent old man Z. I believe this not only because he is the oldest and supposedly the most wise of the narrators, but also because of the link between Odin losing his eye at this well and Zampano's blindness.

The second well is the well of Fate, which is fed by the past, present, and future. I take this well to represent Johnny, because of all of the characters, it is his past and present (even glimpses of his future) that are most revealed to us, it is to him that the story seems to be most strongly tied, and in Johnny's fate lies the fate of the narrative.

The last well, known as the "roarring kettle" supplies the rivers of the nine worlds. Similarly Pelafina weaves herself into both Johnny's world (most obviously) and Zampano's ("My dear Zampano, who did you lose?" as well as similarities between TWL, The P. poems (which Z has read), and many other subtle hints within Z's writings). Also, Pelafina erodes Johnny's world (maybe Zampano's?) like a river slowly eroding the earth on which it flows.*

These three wells, or narrators, feed Yggdrasil, or the story/book/narrative itself.

Now, to expand on the link between the worm (Nidhogg) and the words. The main thing weakening the story/book/narrative is the words themselves. This is because it is within the text that we find so many errors, undermining the legitimacy of the story/book/narrative, and weakening it considerably. Not only does the Nidhogg feed on the roots of Yggdrasil, but at the end of the world, the Nidhogg brings about the end of the ancient tree. Thus, the words/text eat away at the legitimacy of the story as it is presented, and once a story/book/narrative can not be trusted, it dies.

Yggdrasil -(eaten by/contains)- Nidhogg
=
Labrynth -(haunted by/contains)- Creature/Minotuar
=
of Leaves [Z,P, and J's stories together] -(weakened by/contains)- it's own words

What do you all think?

*More ties between the Yggdrasil story and Pelafina that are unfinished ideas of mine. I don't know how to better support them as evidence, but they are just things to think about: The roots leading into the "Roaring Kettle" (which I linked to Pelafina) is where the Nidhogg spends most of his time (Pelafina is the main source for the lack of legitimacy? Pelafina = Nidhogg [in the respect that I envision P to be Johnny's monster/creature]?) Lastly, the Yggdrasil reference on the last page is typed in 'Dante'. Connection?

[heartbreak]

Welcome to the forums nekopup. Good post. I think its got some potential. Will have to ponder it more.

One thing I will note for you is that in Dante's Inferno there is an inverted tree. I've got the line references noted downstairs, but as I climbed 2000 staires today my legs are hurting pretty good, so when I finally make it down there tomorrow I will post up the references. (Thought I had posted it on the forums already, but can't find it now.)

Again, welcome.

Edit: Ended up going downstairs anyways. The reference is in Purgatorio rather. Canto XXII.

But soon the sweet converse was broken by a tree which we found in the midst of the way, with fruit wholesome and pleasant to smell. And even as a pine tree grows gradually less from bough to bough upwards, so did that downwards; I think so that none may go up.

[Short_Fuse]

If the roots hold the sky, then what are the branches grabbing? The Leaves of this book? The very pages of text within the binding that is Yggdrasil. Does the black house on the mirrored page have something to do with it?

[mafleeted]

but not even discussing the book, just in the story itself...

"F. R. Schröder has proposed a fourth etymology where yggdrasill means "yew pillar", deriving yggia from *igwja (meaning "yew-tree"), and drasill from *dher- (meaning "support")."

were that the case, and if yggdrasil was the labyrinth, then could that mean that the labyrinth supports the world?

of course if yggdrasil is not the labyrinth this whole thing holds no water but don't both go on forever?

[sukatrid2plymi]

Does anyone know if MZD has a religion? And what it is? Idk about this but has anyone considered that maybe the meaning behind Yggdrasil is that WE ARE Yggdrasil. The house responded to people's emotions or what they were feeling; what was on their mind. And the book also compares the house to the human mind. In Navidson's drunken letter to his wife, he may have come across the notion that the house was himself. He talks about how the god he believes in is no common god. The book talks about how the only thing in that place is what you carry with you = (maybe)You. Maybe the house, being "God", is us. Making us God, or the masters of our own destiny yada yada yada. Idk if MZD has a religion (as I've stated before) but if anything, this WOULD be a very Atheistic idea. Just fruit for thought.

[fond illusions]

Bear with me if this has been covered in other threads, I've only been a member for a few days and haven't had time to catch up quite yet. And I'll admit I haven't finished my current reread of the book yet, so this is just a seedling of an idea--but I wanted to get it down before I forgot it.

On page 383, The Glossary includes several terms from the field of linguistics. I see similarities between several major themes/elements of the book (Yggdrasil of course being one of them) and X-bar theory in syntax. Simply put, x-bar theory states that sentences are made up of constituents that branch off of one another according to how certain principles and parameters in a language are set. What you get, if you map out even the simplest sentence, is a descending tree. Theoretically, this tree could go on branching off forever, but your sentence just wouldn't make any sense (I could get into the technical aspects of why this is but I think that would be waayyy too much of a tangent and way more syntactical theory than anyone wants to read about).
Also consider a quote from one of Pelafina's letters, which was part of a post in the beginning of this thread:

"My hands resembles some ancient tree: the roots that bind up the earth, the rock and the ceaselessly nibbling wordms."

Ceaselessly nibbling, endless words.
It's certainly something I'll keep in mind as I finish the book...what do you guys think?

[fond illusions]

Well, I found the D-Structure thread, so I'll spend some quality time over there to see how many times and in how many ways my ideas have already been brought up by some very smart and well-read people...but in the meantime, any comments/replies would be much appreciated!

[nbora]

"as I dig for wild orchids
in the Autumn fields,
it is the deeply-bedded root
that I desire
not the flower."
Izumi Shikibu
(HoL pg. 650)

Just to the left of the black dot on the Ygg page - is the credit of this poem , taken from "The Ink Dark Moon"

...just thought that was interesting...

Ink dark moon seems to refrence that dot above yggdrasil, and the poem itself suggests ygg too

. . . ...sorry to fill this thread with my ramblings... . . .

Thanks for sharing this wonderful quote from Izumi Shikibu. Orchids are so wonderful flowers and I also have some at home. I think these are the most beautiful flowers in the world. I also often receive flowers by post Birmingham and maybe the next time I will again order orchids in order to plant them in my green house. Nevertheless I think the quote you shared here is so true. Thanks.

[mollerz104]

there is a reference on page 357 that links the house to women as the darkness is (it claims) an incarnation of the womb.

Also, Navidson emerges from the at the end naked. Like a newborn child.

[Norkhat]

Sometimes, you just run into runes.

rune.jpg

Some streetart in Paris and much journeys among books led me back to take a peek at the Eda and old norse mythologies,
at which point my of Leaves copy began to whisper "start me over, from the end toward the beginning", and then I heard the call of the forums...

Looking up for the Yggdrasil in that ol' search-box has been a pleasure, jumping from the seminal Hey Zeus to more lonesome threads divulging an insight, sharing visions : one-eyed Odin's ordeal, the tree holding the realms, the roots that no-one knows...

I'd like to share some thoughts on several verse from those old poems. For our poetical excipit (surely, the poem at the end of HoL is that ? Our last sip, something to ponder on the way out. Strange how "this is not for you" seems to close the book as it barely opens, and how the last words expands our views to the sheer magnitude of a mythical tree, where so many symbols come to nest and rest).

Let me quote it one more time :

Ygg
d
r
a
s
i
l

What miracle is this ? This giant tree
It stands ten thousand feet high
But doesn't reach the ground. Still it stands.
Its roots must hold the sky.

O




You see, the Hamaval is told at the 1st person by Odin himself, under one of his many guises.
What does Odin think for 9 days and nights hanging upside down, until a final climax of self-initiation and revelation ?

Can a god be suprised, or amazed ? There may be little point in trying to guess who is speaking in the last poem of HoL, but
where does the narrator stand, to see such sights : if it holds the worlds Yggdrasil is that kind of topological object you cannot really walk away from, to peer at it from a distance...

The roots of the Yggdrasil belong to a mystery that baffles the norse Gods themselves, when Odin hangs and peers, there is no ground to look at.

I found a link toward a transcription and a commented translation of the Runatal, the portion of the Hamaval mentioning our very Ash Tree. As the author compares existing translation, one can almost hear a polyphony... I've allowed myself to merge some of these together :


138.


Veit ec at ec hecc
vindga meiði a
nætr allar nío,
geiri undaþr
oc gefinn Oðni
sialfr sialfom mer,
a þeim meiþi,
er mangi veit
hvers hann af rótom renn.


" I know that I hung, on a windy tree, a wind-tossed tree, a wind-rocked tree for all of nine nights,
wounded with a spear, and given to Óðinn, myself to myself,
on that tree, which no man knows, from what roots it runs.

That tree of which no one knows, from what root it springs."

There has been a lot of talk about Hermes in mythological posts over the forum, and you may remember that in the Homeric Ode that describe his birth, one of his first trickster action is to steal Apollo's cattle and make a very vocal sacrifice to all the greek pantheon including himself as a newcomer. Talk about performative language.

What strikes me here, is how Odin, not yet a full-fledged king-of-the-pantheon, somehow squares himself to the next level. And makes a sacrifice of himself to himself.

The connection between Hermes and Odin is rather weird, but even if he becomes head of pantheon, Odin likes disguises and language. Just keep in mind that the 3rd day of the week, Dies Mercuris (day of Hermes, that forms the word Mecredi in french) is called Wednesday in english, Day of Wodanaz (aka Wotan, aka Odin).

Both are gods of languages in their own way. For something happens on the Yggdrasil Ordeal. This is the kind of poem that re-tells the shift between pre-history (oral legacy) and history (written recordings). Indeed some civilizations may have myths about how a god gave them the gift of writing (Thoth for the Egyptian, Marduk's son Nabu for the Sumerian) but here we are told, 1st hand, the tale of a god learning how to read.
Self-initiating himself through a rite of his own invention before becoming anyone's teacher.


139.
Við hleifi seldu
né við hornigi,
nýsta ek niðr,
nam ek upp rúnar,
oepandi nam,
fell ek aptr þaðan.


"They did not gladden me with a loaf or a horn.
I peered down.

I took up the runes,
screaming I took them.

Again I fell from there."


I was literally haunted by this
nam ek upp rúnar

The "original" text of course is illegible to me... and yet
old norse linguistical roots help us recognize some of those words from earlier encounter : some have flowed into proto-german and old-english, upp to our modern lexicon. The Yggdrasil, is a grand-father of a tree, it's no wonder we are so fond of the tree-imagery : with our genealogical tree (and even languages have genealogy), our semantic trees, our arborescences of all kind.

With this one line, a new timeline begins for Odin.
It strikes me as both a physical strain and a mental and feat. He acquires them, is imprinted by them, but also takes them as someone grabs meaning, swallows a word.

How do you reach for a letter that hasn't been ever carved before ?

And the nature of Odin's shriek was repeated in some kind of strange echolalia by the other translations proposed :

"I looked below me-
aloud I cried-
caught up the runes, caught them up wailing,
thence to the ground fell again.

to runes applied myself,
wailing learnt them,
then fell down thence.

I peered right down in the deep;
crying aloud I lifted the Runes
then back I fell from thence.

Crying aloud, I caught up runes;
finally I fell."

All these synonyms make quite a chant... the legendary scene is re-enacted at each iteration.
Odin sacrifices much of himself for knowledge (later — or was it before that ? — he exchanges an eye against Knowledge and Secrets at (or with) Mimir's Well) but this is quite his moment.
He takes back something with him,
some illustrators of the myth even have him carving the runes of the bark, but I picture something less dignified from the text : a rapture.

220px-The_Sacrifice_of_Odin_by_Fr%C3%B8lich.jpg

I peered down — with such scales, with such scarring, with such stakes
few work of literature of poetry engage this kind of energeia, from our readings combined I want to believe HoL is one of them.

Knowledge from the Deep, from the abyss. Here again I summon some topological quality for I suspect MZD to find much of his mead in a Klein's Bottle. What about a tree whose canopy holds the worlds and whose roots span into not so much an emptiness as the sky itself. Proof, if need be, that the Vikings of old were not protected from picturing pre-escherian mindfuck. The mind bends over such paradoxes, inwards becoming outwards on a Moebius Strip.

It roots must hold the sky — the last page of HoL sounds like a possible monolog of Odin's to himself. Both assessing, stating, revealing, accepting. A moment between the stanzas, between the lines, just before the tidal wave. Starved, thirsty, bleeding — what can feed him, but something that's neither blood, nor food, nor drink & yet able to fill him upp ?

An alphabet, a complete runic alphabet rushes (to) him. Something as trivial as geometrical shapes and sounds linked with each other. Twigs and branches the old norse called them. The furious simplicity and realm of possibility of the alphabet. It's only trivial when we get it. It should never be taken for granted. With these runes he will spell.

I took up the runes — and by taking up, how we both inherit and begin to own. The alphabetical system of the Runes did not spring from nowhere : germanic tribe borrowing and tweaking rough roman italics from the 1st century, by a game of straightening and reversing and fashioning, adding and suppressing according to their tongue as the roman did with etruscan script, borrowed from the greeks who mirrored the phenician characters, who were themselves spreading whatever origins the proto-sinaitic writings may have... perhaps a handful of hieroglyphs picked up by slaves for their consonnantic value, to carve names of an alien tongue... most probably oblivious of the incredible leap between ideograms and their alphabetical graffiti...

The story of writing runs along centuries, and the Myth has this synthetic quality to tell a much more condensed tale. Origins we can quote. The runes intrude fully-formed upon our realm, with some alien-quality. The All-father Screams when he takes them upp.

I took them screaming — That cry echoes still in my ears : is it a birthing wail ? Is it a mystical climax ? is it pain ? Power ?
Odin will later be the god of both warrior frenzy and lyrical inspiration, is it a cry of Fury, then ? He stretched his endurance to the very last limits, and in some way collects the runes,
takes them for himself, and with these forms he will in-form, in both a trivial and magical meaning.

0 — ...

The introduction of any alphabet alters the world — there will be labels, tags, texts. Trace evolves into recording. One's name upon a bowl, a record of cattle-count but also the literatures that follow.

In Only Revolution's central page, at the fold, there's a love-scene that moves me like the notion of the eye of the storm does.
And upon that page are several O that I overlooked at first. But it's not an "oh". It's a full fledged orgasm, it's the bliss of an O. At the top our lungs. It can, it does last forever, before whatever fade-out lets time go back on its track, separating Sam and Hailey.

Perhaps then does Odin go for the O. Perhaps that he doesn't know the Verb, but the Verbs, in that last moment. The signs, and all the combination of signs.

So, what is that last symbol, above HoL's poem ? Is it too full to be read an O or maked a 0 ?
Is it an O filled with awe ? Anyway, how do we even write down a cry ?

The black dot is an overflow of matter, a drop. If it was a spot and not so aesthetical we'd call it noise and not information.

220565244_0c30ec94fa.jpg

O Yggdrasil. indeed.
But that black, circular dot of ink, is enough to dip a fountain-pen in, and draw whatever letter or rune we need, pelikan-style. We can draw from it. See how the separate characters of the name that is spelt claim their individuality ? Asking to be picked, to be taken up, to be tasted. Each of of them commands to spells of their own, for lone letters are all initials. We can draw from them as well.


There's a well, remember, under the Yggdrasil.

...

And there, on the same page, at the over end, in the down-below
is whatever we fill the void with : with letters that have names.
And sometimes houses.


Aye, the Alphabet. Is it for us ?

[heartbreak]

Norkhat, Thanks! for this windy exploration of O's Ordeal. It's been on the back burners of my leaves to turn for awhile now. On another path, maybe just a fork in the road, you might try some godly humor. P.22.133-134. Just some other imagery of inverted boughs. No worries.

[Nammu307]

Is any of you familiar with what Jessica Pressman said about Yggdrasil? About it being a reference to a Linux Operating system?

[Ellimist]

We is not. Go on...

The reference to an ancient myth explaining the division of the world into separate but connected entitites-a network-concludes the novel and my reading of it. The final allusion is not only metaphoric but material for Yggdrasil was the name of an early version of the Linux Operating System. This subtle reference thus links a cultural myth explaining the universe as network to a computer operating system structuring our internet culture.

Page 122: http://jessicapressman.commons.yale....-of-leaves.pdf

[Nammu307]

yes, that's the one. since the entire book has a very intimate relatioship with computers (footnotes are a kind of hypertext fiction and this kind of typography could not have been made 30 years ago, of Leaves wold not exist without computers) but also a very intimate relationship with "traditional" books (that is it is still meant to be read by turning pages and not clicking links), this could mean a sort of merging of the digital with traditional, paper and computer, god and cyberuniverse, Johnny with Zampano, Pelafina with Johnny and ultimately Pelafina and Zampano. I am not sure where I'm going with this either, but it was an interesting thing she noticed. Maybe the "digital" is just as important as mythological. And that ultimately the possibilities of an interpretation are endless...