Cambridge Tales 3: ‘Invisible Worm’

                                                                                               For Damian Grant

The large auditorium was politely full – all those present were sitting about three feet apart. On the stage was a blackboard with a large flow chart hung on it, somewhat resembling the innards of an oil refinery.

The distinguished figure of Head of Faculty, in an immaculately ironed gown, was concluding his introduction of the guest speaker from the I.P. Onanovský Institute of Zoosemasiology, ‘famous throughout Central Europe’.

His guest, wearing a granular grey jacket and flamboyant open-necked white shirt, was rummaging in a battered brown attaché case on the floor. It evidently contained underclothes, several manuscripts, soap, a cucumber, and a hunk of black bread. But with a toss of his mane he produced the text he was looking for, slammed the case shut, and in two strides was at the podium.

‘…it is therefore my great pleasure to call upon Professor Lubomir Żuk to deliver the forty-fifth Hochstapler Memorial Lecture, entitled “Blake on White”.’

Żuk seized his script ravenously with both hands, jerked his head back, stared fiercely at the far wall, and was off. The little platinum blonde with enormous tortoiseshell glasses sitting in the middle of the front row immediately began writing.

‘It is known the animal symbolicum’s semeio-analysis of functional linguistic systems of poetic language – which we shall call PL for simplicity – contains the code of the logic linear. It postulates the isomorphism of paragrams. Further, we will expose in it all the combinatory figures that the algebra has formalised in a system of artificial signs and which are not externalised on the level of the manifestation of the usual language! In the functionment of the modes of conjunction of PL is comprised the dynamic process by which mechanism the signs are charged with, or themselves metamorphose, the signification. The phonologisation of these signs, articulated or not with a certain step of logoneurosis, is accompanied by distinct, we may say unique, situation-ness, and can only be comprehended hermeneutically (which we shall designate HER for simplicity).’

Not a muscle moved in the auditorium. You could have heard a pin drop. Żuk sharply inhaled and continued:

‘As Torop illuminated (1922, 1958, 1979), the semantics of the sub-system “literal description of strange world”, which we shall designate Φ (x₁…x_n) for simplicity, imply the polysemous transgradiency of diachronic antinomial tropes – ’

He bounded to the flow chart and stabbed a finger at various numbered black entrails. There was an audible shifting of posteriors and clearing of throats.

‘However, the constructional semantics of fictionality operating in the vectoralised empirical apparatus of fragments of PL suggest clustering and switching of codes and actional/axiological functions that correlate with the same “reality” but imply HER denotants through their inclusion as units (“words”) in an entirely different semiotic system, whose pragmatics are characterised by increased complexity of the semantic structure in consequence of interaction of extended series of distinct reticulatedness and transgraded valency within the given socium – ’

A solid block of tension had formed above the audience’s heads.

‘This we may observe in the fragmentary specimen of PL which I have chosen for dissection and shall now read.’

He bent over the text, cupped his hands round it as if it were a trembling butterfly, grinned toothily at it, and intoned:

O Rose, thou art sick…

Women screamed. Men roared. Several women flopped forwards onto their desks and the little blonde ejaculated ‘Crimson joy!’. Several men leapt up and stared about them as though lost. Some women burst into tears. Some men punched the air and one bellowed ‘Bless relaxes!’. Other women suddenly felt damp below. Three people were carried out unconscious. A student ululated hysterically, and an elderly professor fought his way into a gangway and throwing up his arms danced ecstatically out of the hall with cries of ‘Glad Day! Glad Day! Glad Day!’.

Żuk did not see. Wringing his hands slowly over the words, he continued:

The in-vis-ible worm –

© Patrick Miles, 2021

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SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS 

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’  Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.