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follypersistof the words that are phonologically ready to slip from your lips, even if the meaning escapes you, let's borrow another phrase from Borges with:
If you want to break down the literal Tlönic translation, Teaching Tlön will get there soon. I'd like to give the advice I give anyone reading the unfamiliar, which is to read it aloud. Oh time thy pyramids, hlör u fang, axaxaxas mlö. The repetition readily giving way to an uncertain ending — "mlö" sits in the mouth as an unrecognizable syllable which I doubt you could find in abstract of fictional libraries and encyclopedias, no matter how many armloads you carry of infinite books filled with similar sentences, or how far your circumlocution takes you around the confines of the imperial tongue. But if familiarity breeds contempt, novelty breeds the joy that stays on the tongue across a long life. Or maybe that's just me? Or maybe I am drawn to
which Hurley and JEI alike describe pronouncing axaxaxas mlö as.
The way I learned to read literature — third-hand from just reading and trying to make the words work by brute force, and listening to a bunch of yale-educated yuppies banter readings methods amongst themselves — was simultaneously a classical education in english letters as a kind of performance art and paranoia. The old saw I learned from those who learned from Bloom and his anxiety of influence was to alienate and confound our mutual observer. If you follow it merely on the level of class, this looks like classical gatekeeping, but whether a weak or strong misreading, I never read it that way. Instead, if you assume that there is a mutual observer, someone or something watching, there is no need to make yourself clear and digestible to that power! This is our new modern movement, right? Art made from the heart, art made personal; the personal, made as art. Making our social media, and our artistic media, that cannot be processed in the service of power... yet.
And yet, and yet, and yet... we are not only always already authors; we are, as we read and eat the words on the page, also art. If the author exists, their laughter would be cruel and would be mocking. Any power that precedes us has made itself inscrutable. But maybe for a few short lines, we can share in that laughter, and our own authorship.
"hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö"
If you want to break down the literal Tlönic translation, Teaching Tlön will get there soon. I'd like to give the advice I give anyone reading the unfamiliar, which is to read it aloud. Oh time thy pyramids, hlör u fang, axaxaxas mlö. The repetition readily giving way to an uncertain ending — "mlö" sits in the mouth as an unrecognizable syllable which I doubt you could find in abstract of fictional libraries and encyclopedias, no matter how many armloads you carry of infinite books filled with similar sentences, or how far your circumlocution takes you around the confines of the imperial tongue. But if familiarity breeds contempt, novelty breeds the joy that stays on the tongue across a long life. Or maybe that's just me? Or maybe I am drawn to
the author's cruel, mocking laughter
which Hurley and JEI alike describe pronouncing axaxaxas mlö as.
The way I learned to read literature — third-hand from just reading and trying to make the words work by brute force, and listening to a bunch of yale-educated yuppies banter readings methods amongst themselves — was simultaneously a classical education in english letters as a kind of performance art and paranoia. The old saw I learned from those who learned from Bloom and his anxiety of influence was to alienate and confound our mutual observer. If you follow it merely on the level of class, this looks like classical gatekeeping, but whether a weak or strong misreading, I never read it that way. Instead, if you assume that there is a mutual observer, someone or something watching, there is no need to make yourself clear and digestible to that power! This is our new modern movement, right? Art made from the heart, art made personal; the personal, made as art. Making our social media, and our artistic media, that cannot be processed in the service of power... yet.
And yet, and yet, and yet... we are not only always already authors; we are, as we read and eat the words on the page, also art. If the author exists, their laughter would be cruel and would be mocking. Any power that precedes us has made itself inscrutable. But maybe for a few short lines, we can share in that laughter, and our own authorship.
