a book of words
a lexicon
(modern Latin, from Greek lexikon (book) of words)
messenger:
“The giving and taking of a poem is, then, a triadic relation. It can never be reduced to a pair: we are always confronted by the poet, the poem, and the audience.” – Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry
A person who carries a message or is employed to carry messages.
(Angela, from Greek angelos, messenger).
The medium, the means by which something is communicated through.
(from Latin, neuter of medius, middle).
To mediate is to form a connecting link between
(from Latin, mediatus, placed in the middle).
Iris (Rainbow – what bows between (iris), Messenger (eiris))
From Ovid’s Metamorphosis:
The Maiden Goddess
Entered, using her hands to part the dreams,
To clear her way, and the shining of her garments
Brightened the holy home, and the god saw her,
Blinking his eyes half-open, letting them close,
Nodded, woke almost, over and over tried,
Failed over and over, and roused himself, and leaned
Supported by one elbow, recognized her
And asked why she had come there. And she answered:
“O mildest of the gods, most gentle Sleep,
Rest of all things, the spirit’s comforter,
Router of care, O soother and restorer,
Juno sends orders: counterfeit a dream
To go, in the image of King Ceyx, to Trachis,
To make Alcyone see her shipwrecked husband.”
And, her instruction given, Iris left him,
For all too soon the magic spell of slumber
Was stealing through her limbs, and she soared upward
Along the rainbow arch she had descended.
ellipsis:
The omission from speech or writing of a word or words that are superfluous or able to be understood from contextual clues. A set of dots indicating such an omission.
(Latin from Greek, elleipsis, from ellieipein, leave out).
Orion, the hunter, rises from the horizon in the western sky. He holds his bow in hand, his shield, wears a belt of three stars. His belt is a set of ellipsis on the surface of the sky. Every constellation, composed of brighter stars, before all of the stars that are obscured behind them. As Walter Benjamin suggests, the emergence of constellations as configurations on the surface of the sky was the beginning of reading. To write, to read, to speak, words are chosen, sentences are made, things are expressed. What lies beneath and in between what is given? What is the silence there? What is expressed in what is not directly expressed? What are the other contexts, ideas, meanings, emotions? What is left out?
ecliptic:
Of an eclipse or the ecliptic (Eclipse: obscure or block out (light))
(via Latin from Greek ekleiptikos, from ekleipein ‘fail to appear’);
Loss of significance, power, or prominence in relation to another person or thing.
“Each being we encounter and which encounters us keeps to this curious opposition of presence in that it always withholds itself at the same time in a concealedness. Something must be revealed for there to be an encounter, yet beyond what is, not away from it but before it, there is still something else that happens.” – Martin Heidegger, The Origin of the Work of Art
A newspaper provides daily news and information about events in the world. While this world is now larger, its horizon line expanded, there is still the decision of what to include and what to omit. There is a state of affairs suggested, a coherence presented, and the photograph and words are the means of communication. There are events, meanings, ideas obscured in what is printed. There is speaking and there is silence. There is the way a story is conveyed, the choice of the story, what the reader brings to the story, the life of the characters beyond the life of the newspaper. The landscape is ever shifting, the horizon line never fixed. Something is obscured before something revealed, something revealed before something obscured.
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