Rückenfigur
by Susan Howe Iseult stands at Tintagel on the mid stairs between light and dark symbolism Does she stand for phonic human overtone for outlaw love the dread pull lothly for weariness actual brute predestined fact for phobic falling no one talking too Tintagel ruin of philosophy here is known change here is come crude change wave wave determinist caparison Your soul your separation But the counterfeit Iseult Iseult aux Blanches Mains stands by the wall to listen Phobic thought of openness a soul also has two faces Iseult's mother and double Iseult the Queen later in T Even Tros echoes Tristan's infirmity through spurious etymology the Tintagel of Fo not the dead city of night Wall in the element of Logic here is a door and beyond here is the sail she spies Tristran Tristan Tristrant Tristram Trystan Trystram Tristrem Tristanz Drust Drystan these names concoct a little wreathe of victory dreaming over the landscape Tintagel font icon twilight Grove bough dark wind cove brine testimony Iseult salt Iseut Isolde Ysolt Essyllt bride of March Marc Mark in the old French commentaries your secret correspondence Soft Iseut two Iseults one The third of Tristan's overt identities is a double one his disguise as nightingale in Tros then wild man in Fo Level and beautiful La Blanche Lande of disguise episodes the nocturnal garden of Tros Fo recalls the scene in Ovid Orpheus grief stricken over the loss of Eurydice sits by the bank of a river seven days I see Mark's shadow in water Mark's moral right to Iseult David's relationship to Saul Lean on handrail river below Sense of depth focus motion of chaos in Schlegel only as visual progress into depth its harsh curb estrangement logic Realism still exists is part of the realist dual hypothesis Dual on verso as one who has obeyed acceleration velocity killing frost regenerative thaw you other rowing forward face backward Hesperides messenger into the pastness of landscape inarticulate scrawl awash air Insufferably pale the icy limit pulls and pulls no kindness free against you Deep quietness never to be gathered no blind threat Assuredly I see division can never be weighed once pale anguish breathes free to be unhallowed empty what in thought or other sign roof and lintel remember Searching shall I know is some sense deepest moment What is and what appears The way light is broken To splinter color blue the color of day yellow near night the color of passion red by morning His name of grief being red sound to sense sense in place of the slaying Tristram must be caught Saw the mind otherwise in thought or other sign because we are not free Saw the mind otherwise Two thoughts in strife Separation requires an other quest for union I use a white thread half of the same paper and in the sun's light I place a lens so that the sea reflects back violet and blue making rays easily more freely your nativity and you of light from that of memory when eyelids close so in dream sensation Mind's trajected light It is precision we have to deal with we can pre- scind space from color if Thomas was only using a metaphor and metaphysics professes to be metaphor There is a way back to the misinterpretation of her message TheseusTristan is on the ship AegeusIseut is a land watcher she is a mastermind her frailty turned to the light her single vision twin soul half Dilemma of dead loyalty Mark's speeches are sham Gottfried shows Tristan only hunting for pleasure Emerald jacinth sapphire chalcedony lovely Isolt Topaz sardonyx chrysolite ruby sir Tristan the Court sees only the beauty of their persons that they appear to be represented Isolt sings for your eyes Surveillance is a constant theme in lyric poetry Le Page disgracié his attempt to buy a linnet for his master from a birdcatcher he hoped to comfort him with bird song but gambled the money away and in desperation bought a wild linnet that didn't sing His first words occur in the linnet episode the young master's perplexity about the bird's silence so just the linnet's silence provokes Tristan's je hero his shared identity the remarkable bird list in L'Orphée L'Orphée——the lanner falcon takes pigeons the sparrow- hawk sparrows the goshawk partridge when Tristan was young he would have watched hawks being flown his own little hunting falcon his observation of the way in which other birds refrain from their characteristic habit of "mobbing the owl" Vignette of the birdcatcher in the street that day the linnet's mimic reputation Parasite and liar of genius even emptiness is something not nothingness of negation having been born Not born wrapped in protective long cloak power of the woodland No burrowing deep for warmth The eagle of Prometheus is a vulture the vulture passions go to a predator tricked up forever unexpressed in half- effaced ambiguous butterfly disguises authentic regional avifauna an arsenal of stories Ysolt that for naught might carry them as they coasting past strange land past haven ruin garland effigy figment sensible nature blue silver orange yellow different lake effect of the death-rebirth eternal rush-return fragment I cannot separate in thought You cannot be separate from perception everything draws toward autumn distant tumult See that long row of folios Surely Ysolt remembers Itylus Antigone bears her secret in her heart like an arrow she is sent twice over into our dark social as if real life as if real person proceeding into self- knowledge as if there were no proof just blind right reason to assuage our violent earth Ysolt's single vision of union Precursor shadow self by self in open place or on an acting platform two personae meeting Strophe antistrophe which is which dual unspeakable cohesion Day binds the wide Sound Bitter sound as truth is silent as silent tomorrow Motif of retreating figure arrayed beyond expression huddled unintelligible air Theomimesis divinity message I have loved come veiling Lyrist come veil come lure echo remnant sentence spar never never form wherefor Wait some recognition you Lyric over us love unclothe Never forever whoso move |