104. Notes - almost lost in translation

104. 25 April 2019

           Late afternoon. You are facing east at Heritage Park viewing the north picnic shelter through a grove of trees. Carol is on page 319 of Harlan Corbin's Don't Look Now. This morning Kim and Paul arrived early and finished putting down thirty-one bags of black mulch on the raised flower, bush and tree beds. You insisted that you pay for the bags and gave them compensation for their kindness and labor. Total, it took them two and a half hours for the labor, beginning with buying the mulch, delivering and bedding. - Amorella

           1725 hours. We really appreciate what they do for us. We do reciprocate mostly with trade-off late night 'Uber'-driving and two-boy sitting when needed. Amorella, I really don't know what kinds of questions to ask of Miss Havisham. Oddly enough, I tend to think of her as a kind of benevolent inner alien, just like I think of you. 

           You once asked me to describe myself as I see myself and I did, more than once, in Encounters-in-Mind. I realize she chose a human image that exemplifies how she sees herself in human terms, but how does she 'sense' her 'being' in her terms. - Amorella

           1737 hours. That seems pretty private to me, a bit too bold.

           She's your soul, boy. You can't have hidden anything from you that she doesn't already know. The best example so far is "Pinocchio" and how you thought you were like a wooden figure who was brought to life through human help, i.e. science and compassion. - Amorella

           1742 hours. What is it like, being my soul, Miss Havisham; with the focus on you, not me?

           I am round, flat, and very thin and in the spiritual texture of liquid water that can solidify on one side and be gas on the other. In this 'form' as it were, I sense empathy and compassion, much as the humans who kept you alive to the point you were 'human recognizable' in human unconsciousness. Otherwise, I would not have 'awaken', so to speak. When 'awaken' my form, rounded; otherwise, I was as a gaseous vapor without the spiritual boundary of endless, that is, as a very thin circle - a thin circular plate of sharp glass that can slice to the chase. Nothing human gets by me. I hold heartanmind flat and view it sideways. Another human soul cannot penetrate me without my protective empathic and compassionate consent. Within me resides a heaven or hell of heartanmind together.

           HeartanSoulanMind are a closed system of a sharp, thin water-like clear crystal solid on one side and a gaseous, steam-like form on the other. Size-wise, I am as nothing and everything; beyond the comprehension of heart or mind separate or together. Poetry beyond the sight and sound of a single letter in any human created alphabet. mh

       2022 hours. I sense my heartanmind are interfering with Miss Havisham's English translation. 

       You are correct. - Amorella

       2024 hours. My heart has thought concepts from Milton and Dante, particularly these lines by John Ciardi, whose translation I read in Dr. John Coulter's World Literature class at Otterbein. In the mid 60's I had conversation with John Ciardi on his Inferno translation when he visited the Howard House on Otterbein's campus. I was invited to the private reception as a member of the Quiz and Quill, English Honorary. Later, in 1982, I re-met, listened to his address, and spoke with him at a National Council of Teachers of English Conference in Washington, D.C. He was a very funny, down to earth sort of man, a delightful personality.

** **

In the translation by John Ciardi, used in the Modern Library Edition of Inferno the first nine lines of Canto III read as follows:

I AM THE WAY INTO THE CITY OF WOE.
I AM THE WAY TO A FORSAKEN PEOPLE.
I AM THE WAY INTO ETERNAL SORROW.

SACRED JUSTICE MOVED MY ARCHITECT.
I WAS RAISED HERE BY DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE,
PRIMORDIAL LOVE AND ULTIMATE INTELLECT.

ONLY THOSE ELEMENTS TIME CANNOT WEAR
WERE MADE BEFORE ME, AND BEYOND TIME I STAND.
ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE.

** **

       As Miss Havisham was writing with my fingers (so to speak) the lines above flashed into consciousness. 

       This 'event' of yours was not expected. Interesting. Post. - Amorella

       2041 hours. Both my heart and mind and perhaps even my soul are involved here because these are some of the most powerful words I have ever read. I am struck still both emotionally and intellectually at the word entrance to Dante's Inferno in Canto III. Such dramatic poetry has rarely been transcribed.