A sketch, adapted tonight from Girl Scouts of Palo Alto —
From the April 14 noon post High Concept —
From the April 14 3 AM post Hudson and Finite Geometry —
From the April 24 evening post The Trials of Device —
Note that Hudson’s 1905 “unfolding” of even and odd puts even on top of
the square array, but my own 2013 unfolding above puts even at its left.
The broken pencil in a Dial illustration of June 20 —
"I could a tale unfold . . ." — Hamlet's father's ghost
"Thus the entire little drama, from crystallized carbon
and felled pine to this humble implement, to this
transparent thing, unfolds in a twinkle."
— Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things
"… a cardboard tube, more or less the same length as
the inner core of a toilet roll, but thicker. He frowned,
took the roll out, laid it on the desk and poked up it
with the butt end of a pencil. Something slid out.
It looked like a rolled-up black plastic dustbin liner;
but when he unfolded it, he recognised it as the funny
sheet thing he’d found in the strongroom and briefly
described as an Acme Portable Door, before losing
his nerve and changing it to something less facetious."
— Holt, Tom. The Portable Door . Orbit. Kindle Edition.
According to goodreads.com, the Holt book was
"first published March 6, 2003."
See also this journal on March 6, 2003, in a search for
Michelangelo Geometry.
Punchline of the above little drama —
"Try the other end of the pencil, Liz."
"I could a tale unfold . . ." — Hamlet's father's ghost
"Thus the entire little drama, from crystallized carbon
and felled pine to this humble implement, to this
transparent thing, unfolds in a twinkle."
— Vladimir Nabokov, Transparent Things
"… a cardboard tube, more or less the same length as
the inner core of a toilet roll, but thicker. He frowned,
took the roll out, laid it on the desk and poked up it
with the butt end of a pencil. Something slid out.
It looked like a rolled-up black plastic dustbin liner;
but when he unfolded it, he recognised it as the funny
sheet thing he’d found in the strongroom and briefly
described as an Acme Portable Door, before losing
his nerve and changing it to something less facetious."
— Holt, Tom. The Portable Door . Orbit. Kindle Edition.
According to goodreads.com, the Holt book was
"first published March 6, 2003."
"I could a tale unfold…" — Hamlet's father's ghost
Or not.
The following Log24 excerpts are from a noted mathematician's
recent date of death, and the preceding date.
This journal Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2014, at 5 PM ET:
"What is a tai chi master, and what is it that he unfolds?"
From an earlier post, Hamlet's father's ghost
on "the fretful porpentine":
Hamlet , Act 1, Scene 5 —
Ghost:
“I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combinèd locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood."
Galway Kinnell:
"I roll
this way and that in the great bed, under
the quilt
that mimics this country of broken farms and woods"
— "The Porcupine"
For quilt-block designs that do not mimic farms or woods,
see the cover of Diamond Theory . See also the quotations
from Wallace Stevens linked to in the last line of yesterday's
post in memory of Kinnell.
"… a bee for the remembering of happiness" — Wallace Stevens
“I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul….“
— Hamlet’s Father’s Ghost
The results of a search in this journal for “a tale unfold” suggest
a review of the following passage from Donna Tartt’s Secret History…
A math weblog discussed this passage on January 24, 2013.
For related alliances, see this weblog on that same date.
The Folding
Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5 —
Ghost:
"I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make thy two eyes, like stars, start from their spheres,
Thy knotted and combined locks to part
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine:
But this eternal blazon must not be
To ears of flesh and blood. List, list, O, list!"
This recalls the title of a piece in this week's New Yorker:"The Book of Lists:
Susan Sontag’s early journals." (See Log24 on Thursday, Dec. 18.)
In the rather grim holiday spirit of that piece, here are some journal notes for Sontag, whom we may imagine as the ghost of Hanukkah past.
There are at least two ways of folding a list (or tale) to fit a rectangular frame.The normal way, used in typesetting English prose and poetry, starts at the top, runs from left to right, jumps down a line, then again runs left to right, and so on until the passage is done or the bottom right corner of the frame is reached.
The boustrophedonic way again goes from top to bottom, with the first line running from left to right, the next from right to left, the next from left to right, and so on, with the lines' directions alternating.
The word "boustrophedon" is from the Greek words describing the turning, at the end of each row, of an ox plowing (or "harrowing") a field.
The Tale of
the Eternal Blazon
by Washington Irving
"Blazon meant originally a shield, and then the heraldic bearings on a shield.
Later it was applied to the art of describing or depicting heraldic bearings
in the proper manner; and finally the term came to signify ostentatious display
and also description or record by words or other means. In Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 5,
the Ghost, while talking with Prince Hamlet, says:
'But this eternal blazon
must not be
To ears of flesh and blood.'
Eternal blazon signifies revelation or description of things pertaining to eternity."
— Irving's Sketch Book, p. 461
By Washington Irving and Mary Elizabeth Litchfield, Ginn & Company, 1901
Related material:
Folding (and harrowing up)
some eternal blazons —
These are the foldings
described above.
They are two of the 322,560
natural ways to fit
the list (or tale)
"1, 2, 3, … 15, 16"
into a 4×4 frame.
For further details, see
The Diamond 16 Puzzle.
Moral of the tale:
Cynthia Zarin in The New Yorker, issue dated April 12, 2004–
"Time, for L'Engle, is accordion-pleated. She elaborated, 'When you bring a sheet off the line, you can't handle it until it's folded, and in a sense, I think, the universe can't exist until it's folded– or it's a story without a book.'"
In honor of the September 8 birthdays of
From a website on Donna Tartt‘s novel The Secret History…
“It is like a storyteller looking up suddenly into the eyes of his audience across the embers of a once blazing fire…
 |
…the reader feels privy to the secrets of human experience by their passage down through the ages; the telling and re-telling. A phrase from the ghost in Hamlet comes to mind: ‘I could a tale unfold whose lightest word / |
This work of literature seems especially relevant at the start of a new school year, and in light of my remarks below about ancient Greek religion. One should, when praising Apollo, never forget that Dionysus is also a powerful god.
For those who prefer film to the written word, I recommend “Barton Fink” as especially appropriate viewing for the High Holy Days. Judy Davis (my favorite actress) plays a Faulkner-figure’s “secretary” who actually writes most of his scripts.
Tartt is herself from Faulkner country. For her next book, see this page from Square Books, 160 Courthouse Square, Oxford, Misssissippi.
Let us pray that Tartt fares better in real life than Davis did in the movie.
As music for the High Holy Days, I recommend Don Henley’s “The Garden of Allah.” For some background on the actual Garden of Allah Hotel at 8080 Sunset Boulevard (where “Barton Fink” might have taken place), see
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