"with just one hand held up high..."

[jw@math.mit.edu]

Glen Clark writes:
> Might someone know the meaning of the 3 to 5 "word" utterance at
> the end of _The_Dreaming_?  Is it really Aboriginal? 

Good question! For about five minutes once I was convinced it was Greek!
I learned the greek word for desert was "eremikos" and decided that sounded
just like the "utterance" until I ran to my room, put on TD and found it
wasn't even close...

Douglas MacGowan writes:
>	"So high our dragons soared into the air
>  	 that looking down the earth appeared to me
>	 no bigger than my hand in quantity" - Christopher Marlowe
>
>	"With just one hand
>	 held up high -
>	 I can blot you out" - The Excellent Kate  "Hello Earth"

Full marks to Christopher Marlowe for his early grasp of celestial mechanics,
but the figure is actually classical.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dante said it best, in _Paradiso_xxii_ (Mandelbaum translation):

Col viso ritornai per tutte quante    My eyes returned through all the 7 spheres
le sette spere, e vidi questo globo   and saw this globe in such a way that I
tal, ch'io sorrisi del suo vil        smiled at its meager image: I approve
    sembiante                         that judment as the best, which holds 
e quel consiglio per migliore approbo     this earth
che l'ha per meno; e chi ad altro     to be the least; and he whose thoughts 
    pensa                                 are set
chiamar si puote veramente probo.     elsewhere, can truly be called virtuous.
...                                   ...        The little threshing floor
L'aiuola che ci fa tanto feroci,      that so incites our savagery was all--
volgendom' io con li etterni Gemelli, from hills to river mouths--revealed to me
tutta m'apparve da' colli a le foci;  while I wheeled with eternal Gemini.

Grandgent, a Dante commentator, writes: "The long swift ascent [here]
symbolizes the uplifting of the soul by contemplation. ... our little
earth, so tiny that its pettiness makes him smile. Once St. Benedict
standing at a window, had a similar vision, suddenly beholding the
whole world collected, as it were, under one sunbeam (Gregory the
Great, _Dialogi_ II, xxxv)" (Also see Dante _Paradiso_xxvii_)

Dante may also be thinking of Cicero's _De_Re_Publica_, VI, where
Scipio is lifted to the skies in a dream:

stellarum autem globi terrae             The starry spheres were much larger 
magnitudinem facile vincebant.           than the earth; indeed the earth
iam ipsa terra ita mihi parva visa est,  itself seemed to me so small that I 
ut me imperii nostri, quo quasi          was scornful of our empire, which  
punctum eius attingimus, paeniteret      covers only a single point...

Note that it is usual in Dante to find a double reference to classical
and biblical forerunners. It would have been perfectly in form if Dante
had cited both St. Benedict and Cicero himself!

Dante's "little threshing floor" is apparently a reference to a legend
of Alexander the Great, who was supposedly carried to the sky by eagles,
but I can't trace the reference.

Boethius, in _The_Consolation_of_Philosophy_ II,vii, has:

Quicumque solam mente praecipiti petit  He that to honour only seeks to mount
Summumque credit gloriam,               And that his chiefest end doth count 
Late patentes aetheris cernat plagas    Let him behold the largeness of the sky
Artumque terrarum situm                 And on the strait earth cast his eye

and so Lucan, in _Pharsidia_, IX:
Pompey basked for a while in the pure light, admiring the busy planets
and the steadfast stars, and as he glanced below him saw what a thick
veil of darkness obscures our day.

and also see Tasso, G.L. c. xiv. st. 9-11.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In other words visionaries throughout the ages have used the vastness of
the cosmos to put the problems of the earth in perspective. Dante and
Marlowe both realized what has become a commonplace in the post-Apollo era:
that from the perspective of a space traveller the distant earth would
seem dwarfed by nearer concerns. In fact, from the distance of the moon,
one thumb at arms length ought to do it.

While I think hunting up possible allusions in Kate's work is great fun
and eminently worthwhile, and I applaud Douglas MacGowan's initiative,
I think in this case we need to apply Occam's razor: anyone writing after
the moon landings, say ca. 1977, could certainly have derived this
observation for herself, and we cannot be sure that she had any particular
antecedent in mind. (Extratextual clues, however, are always legitimate;
Douglas does well to note that Kate may have mentioned a fondness for
Marlowe.)


 

Julian