Errant Shakespeare
Ambisinister Droeshout Figure - Figuring Oxfordian Errancy
Definition of ERRANT -
1a behaving wrongly
b straying outside the proper path or bounds
c moving about aimlessly or irregularly
d fallible
2 traveling or given to traveling
Above from Merriam-Webster
(con't)
Errant has a split history. It comes from Anglo-French, a language in which two confusingly similar verbs with identical spellings ("errer") coeisted One errer meant "to err" and comes from errare, meaning "to wander" or "to err." The second errer meant "to travel," and traces to the Latin iter, meaning "road" or "journey." Both "errer" homographs contributed to the development of "errant" which not surprisingly has to do with both moving about and being mistaken. A "knight-errant" travels around in search of adventures. Cowboys round up "errant calves." An "errant child" is one who misbehaves. (You might also see "arrant" occasionally - it's a word that originated as an alteration of 'errant" and that usually means "extreme" or "shameless."
*************************
Review: Heidegger's Comedy of Errancy
REview by: Richard Findler
In the last section, entitled "The Dark Comic World of Martin Heidegger," Bruns concludes that the step back into language involves a "renunciation of techne" and a "letting-go of language". For Bruns, the renunciation means letting go of "language as logos, that is, as the power of framing representations" and instead allowing oneself to be open to estrangement. For Bruns, the openness to estrangement means that poetry releases thinking from philosophy, since poetry "exposes thinking to the otherness of language," or what is uncontrollable. Bruns surmises that perhaps poetry takes thinking "into that elsewhere where madfolk are". As such, poetry and thinking are not modes of homecoming, i.e., they are not orphic. Instead, they are hermetic modes of "wandering". What Heidegger ends up offering us is a comedy of discordance.
(Reviewed Work Heideggers Estrangements, Gerald L. Bruns
**************************
Jonson, Cynthia's Revels
Amorphus:
Eccho. Away.
Mercury. Stay, let me observe this Portent yet.
Amo. I am neither your Minotaure, nor your Centaure,
nor your Satyre, nor your Hyæna, nor your Babion, but
your meer Traveler, believe me.
Ecc. Leave me.
Mer. I guess'd it should be some travelling motion
pursu'd Eccho so.
Amo. Know you from whom you flye? or whence?
Ecc. Hence.
Amo. This is somewhat above strange! a Nymph of her
Feature and Lineament, to be so preposterously rude! well,
I will but cool my self at yon' Spring, and follow her.
Mer. Nay, then I am familiar with the issue: I'll leave
you too.
Amo. I am a Rhinoceros, if I had thought a Creature
of her symmetry, could have dar'd so improportionable,
suffer my prophane hand to take of thy Bounties. By
the Purity of my taste, here is most ambrosiack Water;
I will sup of it again. By thy favour, sweet fount.
See, the Water (a more running, subtile, and humo-
rous Nymph than she) permits me to touch, and handle
her. What should I infer? If my Behaviours had been
of a cheap or customary garb; my Accent or Phrase
vulgar; my Garments trite; my Countenance illite-
rate, or unpractis'd in the incounter of a beautiful and
brave attir'd Piece; then I might (with some change
of colour) have suspected my Faculties: but know-
ing my self an essence so sublimated, and refin'd by
travel; of so studied, and well exercis'd a Gesture; so
alone in Fashion; able to render the face of any States-
man living; and so speak the meer extraction of Lan-
guage; one that hath now made the sixth return upon
ventuer; and was your first that ever inricht his Coun-
trey with the true Laws of the duello; whose optiques
have drunk the spirit of Beauty, in some Eight score
and eighteen Princes Courts, where I have resided, and
been there fortunate in the amours of Three hundred
forty and five Ladies (all Nobly, if not Princely de-
scended) whose names I have in Catalogue; to con-
clude, in all so happy, as even Admiration her self doth
seem to fasten her kisses upon me: Certes, I do neither
see, nor feel, nor taste, nor favour the least steam, or
fume of a reason, that should invite this foolish fastidi-
ous Nymph, so peevishly to abandon me. Well, let the
Memory of her fleet into Air; my thoughts and I am
for this other Element, Water.
*********************************************
humour, flux, flow
*********************************************
Tom O'Bedlam
With an host of furious fancies,
Whereof I am commander,
With a burning spear and a horse of air
To the wilderness I wander.
By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summoned am to tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world's end:
Methinks it is no journey.
Yet I will sing, Any food, any feeding,
Feeding, drink or clothing;
Come dame or maid, be not afraid,
Poor Tom will injure nothing.
Comments
Post a Comment