When the reviewer of my new book for the Washington Post began by invoking Jung’s theory of
“synchronicity” I had an uneasy feeling, since synchronicity hasn’t always
worked out all that well for me. In
this instance things were hardly grave.
It meant that somebody else had also had “my” bright idea of writing a
book about Enlightenment esotericism, and that the two books had appeared at
approximately the same time. I’ll
get around to reading the other one at some point.
For the time being I’m satisfied by the venal information that I am
outselling it two to one. Of
course it would be better if that were a ratio rather than the actual number of
books sold in a week.
Synchronicity
snuck up on me in another way.
Only two weeks ago I wrote a post about what I called “dead letter
scholarship”, essays written for collections that never get published. That very week I got a dunning letter
about an essay I thought I had finessed, and therefore not even thought about. It turned out that the editor, on the
other hand, had been thinking about it pleasurably for some time, and looked
forward to reading it soon, confident as she claimed to be that I would
certainly make the deadline—July 31st! The boot was apparently on the other foot. Dead letter scholarship is distressing,
but deadbeat scholarship is even worse.
The deadbeat scholar is a wretch, scorned and rejected of men.
Thus
I have been beavering away for the last few days on a short essay on “The Structure of the Pearl”--the Pearl being, as I shall briefly explain in a moment, a very
beautiful fourteenth-century English poem. Since the deadline is actually today, I am going to have to
grant myself a forty-eight hour reprieve, but by the end of the week I shall
hope to have unburdened my conscience.
Getting into this mess involved not synchronicity but another feature of
my professional career—in addition to recurrent mental aberration, that is. I
have been haunted by what might be called “reputation lag”. Publishing an essay on some obscure
subject should not have the force of a religious vow to forsake all other
obscure subjects in perpetuity, but I am freuqently asked to talk or write
about something I established my “expertise” on in middle school.
I believe that it was in 1982—before
more than half the readers of this blog were even born—that I wrote something
about the structure of the Pearl. I haven’t thought a whole lot about it
since. None of us can dictate the
way that others will think about us, but it is terribly cruel to have to
imagine that someone has been thinking, as I passed by on the street: “Oh,
there goes whatzisname? You know,
the expert on the structure of the Pearl.”
Reunion of the Poet and the Pearl: A River Runs Through It
The
Pearl is one of the most beautiful
poems in our literature, but today’s readers are precluded from its easy appreciation
by several daunting problems. Its
language is very difficult—considerably more difficult than that of Chaucer, of
whom the Pearl-poet was a contemporary.
It is written in a Midland dialect—not in the London dialect that became
the basis of modern literary English.
It is full of unrecognizable words, often chosen to satisfy the
technical requirements of internal rhyme, or alliteration, as we usually call
it—a poetic form with which we are not generally familiar. Its narrative element is slight
and its precise subject matter—concerning which even medievalists are by no
means of one mind—often elusive.
In a nut, or rather oyster shell, it is this. A man laments at great length that he lost a perfectly
exquisite pearl in a garden. It
fell “through the grass to ground”.
Further details make it seem that he is probably talking about the loss
of a young daughter. Later, a
beautiful young girl appears in the poem to engage the narrator in heavy
theological rap. She explains that
if only he could see the reality of things he would be joyous rather than
despondent. For his lost pearl is
now one of the 144,000 virgins cavorting around the Lamb in the New Jerusalem,
as described in the Apocalypse of John.
The
Pearl exists in a unique manuscript,
along with a few others by the name author, including the priceless Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The poet was knee-deep in number
mysticism. Sir Gawain is all about five, which is why it has 101 25-line
stanzas for a total of 2525 lines.
Pearl is all about twelve,
which is why it has 101 12-line stanzas for a total of 2525 lines. If you want to know about the 101, you
will have to wait until I finish my essay, should I in fact do so.
Sir Robert Cotton
one mean librarian
