On Mon, 14 May 2007 18:13:05 -0400
Julia Griffin <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is going off-topic from Dee, but "Fix here ..." somehow suggests
>Donne's "Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" : the foot, the round shape, the
>word "fix" - and the whole context of farewell.
-- Not necessarily so off-topic as might at first appear. The Donne poem
does
not seem to be about the mapping of planetary motion (the moon, like the
sun,
was a planet), but neither, at least at first, does the following passage,
in which Spenser's Palmer is telling Guyon to watch his step in regard to
the dangers of
The wandring Islands. Therefore doe them shonne;
For they haue oft drawn many a wandring wirght
Into most deadly daunger and distressed plight. ...
...whosoeuer once hath fastened
His foot thereon, may neuer it recure,
But wandreth euer more vncertain and vnsure.
As th'Isle of _Delos_ whylome men report
Amid th' Aegaean sea long time did stray,
Ne made for shipping any certain port,
Till that Latona traueiling that way,
Flying from Iunoes wrath and hard assay,
Of her faire twins was there deliuered,
Which afterwards did rule the night and day;
Therefore it firmely was established,
And for Apolloes honor highly herried. (FQ II.xii.11-13)
The sun and the moon are the 'planetoi' (wanderers: vs. the Fixed Stars)
whose courses are most easily fixed, by means of geocentric astronomy,
whereby earth is the fixed foot for the spheres whose motions around it bear
the heavenly bodies. Thus the fixing of the birthplace of the sun and the
moon
stands in place of the calendrical mapping of the solar and lunar years.
Only a winding, helicoidal, spiral motion can reconcile all the motions and
fixities in Donne's poem (somewhat like Proclus on "the turning-around of
the
circles back towards themselves," contra the traditional, epicyclic ways of
accommodating Timaeus 40d.) In that case the fixed foot of the invisible
spiral
in Donne's poem may have longish history, if (following John Freccero) it
appears in Dante's first canto, where the pilgrim reports his trying to
climb a mountain--a mount that prefigures the one he eventually does climb
(with
re-union with Beatrice at the top) after leaving the valley of hell: "when
I had
reached the foot (pič) of a hill, there where the valley ended ... I looked
up, and
saw its shoulders clothed already with the rays of the planet which leads
men
straight on every path ... After I had rested a little my weary body, I took
my way
over the lonely slope so that the firm foot (pič fermo) always was the
lower."
The fixed and the free heavenly bodies, and their two contrary motions by
implication, appear in the last lines of Dante's poem, along with the reason
and will (or will and desire) for which they respectively stand.
It was believed, after Aristotle, that we always walked with a firm foot and
a free
one; I vaguely remember some kind of joke about hillbillies always having
one
leg longer than the other because of always walking or ploughing around the
mountain, but this makes no sense unless they walked exclusively either
counterclockwise or clockwise. It would make trigonometric sense for
Donne's compass, however, that is, if the erect member is imagined as
srictly perpendicular
to the plane on which the circle is drawn. But if the point-fixed leg of
the compass
only draws itself erect as the circle is drawn, then the other leg produces
-- draws
-- not a circle, but a spiral.
The Platonic fixing of the cosmos, for which the anchoring of Delos can be a
"type" or "figure," is treated ironically in Book X of Paradise Lost, where
the key
word "fixed" is used for the bridge built by Sin and Death ("fix't as firm /
As
_Delos_ floating once" [295]). (-- That ought to fix Adam's wagon.) This
fixing
and enchainment of the Miltonic cosmos pre-evokes the re-location of Eden to
the Persian Gulf, where the mount "take[s] root an Island salt and bare"
(PL XI,
834; Raphael as astronaut has formerly spotted the earth and scouted the
cosmos both as if astronomically or telescopically reconnoitered by Galileo,
and
"As when ... a Pilot from amidst the _Cyclades_ / _Delos_ or _Samos_ first
appeering kenns / A cloudy spot" [PL V, 261-66].
-- Jim N.
> Julia Griffin
>
>>>> John Leonard <[log in to unmask]> 5/14/2007 3:57 PM >>>
>
> The suggestion that "fix" means "stop" might draw some support from a
> possibly parallel usage by Milton in a cryptic little poem (just 2 lines
> long) he jotted on the back of a letter sent him by Henry Lawes, enclosing
> his passport, before he embarked on his Italian journey in 1638:
>
>Fix here ye overdated spheres
> That wing the restless foot of time.
>
> Such commentary as this mysterious little poem has provoked has tended to
> focus on the meaning of "overdated" (which seems to be Milton's coinage,
> whatever it means). I wonder if "tine" in "fix and tine the moon" might
> mean "tie" in the sense "bind." This might seem far from alchemy, but
> Milton refers to alchemical binding in PL 3.600-605, where alchemists
>"bind
> / Volatile Hermes" (the element mercury) and "call up unbound / In various
> shapes old Proteus from the sea". If memory serves me right, alchemical
> binding means the removing of air (a volatile element) from common mercury
> to make "philosophic mercury"--a necessary step toward the making of the
> elixir and philosopher's stone. I have no idea as to how or whether the
> moon might be relevant to all this. Milton in PL is talking about the
>sun.
>
> John Leonard
>
> ----- Original Message -----
>From: "James C. Nohrnberg" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 3:19 PM
> Subject: Re: John Dee and Alan Moore
>
>
>> All of the suggestions are good. The phrase, "fix and tine the moon"
>> sounds Jonsonian, as kind of pseudo-scientific cant. Especially if the
>> moon is the Virgin Queen Belphoebe/Cynthia, whose horoscope Dee could well
>> have cast. For Dr. Dee did in fact fix the day--i.e., an ideally
>> propitious one--for Elizabeth's coronation. Of course the attempt to
>> e-fix the moon on the tines of an alchemical-astrological toasting-fork
>> re-makes the point about Dee--a mathematician, astrologer, geographer,
>> astronomer (I guess), medicine man, alchemist-ry student (alchemists "fix"
>> metals in states that are nearer than normal to gold, and work with
>> "tincting" to do this--the moon is not a metal, but it stands for silver,
>> and thus for quick-silver or mercury, as the sun stands for gold and thus
>> for sulphur). Burghley urged Dee to come home from the Continent and turn
>> base metal into gold to pay for the expenses of England's taking on the
>> Armada. I.e, Dee could hardly help being reputed a magician. Magicians,
>> like Mutability, can molest and arrest the moon, or predict and produce
>> eclipses (compare the powers of Job's curse or spell on the day and the
>> night in 3:3-10).
>>
>> On Mon, 14 May 2007 10:10:56 -0600
>> Katherine Eggert <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>> Dear Charlie,
>>>
>>> There's a chance this might be astrological rather than alchemical. You
>>> "fix" the moon (and the planets etc.) as part of doing an astrological
>>> chart. If "tine" is not a misprint, it's pretty much a synonym for "fix"
>>> (tine=enclose). An EEBO-TCP search of "fix" near "moon" gives you this
>>> reference:
>>>
>>> Title: The five books of Mr. Manilius containing a system of the ancient
>>> astronomy and astrology : together with the philosophy of the Stoicks
>>> Author: Manilius, Marcus.
>>> Publication Info: London : [s.n.], 1700.
>>> For Instance,* grant it were thy great Concern
>>> To know the 28 Planet's Twelfths; securely learn;
>>> I'll shew the Method: As you count the Signs,
>>>First mark that Sign's Degree where Phoebe shine
>>> And views the new-born Child; that multiply
>>> By Twelve: (because Twelve Signs adorn the Sky)
>>> Observe the Product, and from thence assign
>>> To those gay Stars where Phaebe's found to shine
>>> Thrice ten Degrees: Then go in Order on,
>>> Assigning Thirty till the Number's done;
>>> And where the Number ends there fix the Moon: Page 78
>>> That is her Twelfth. (p. 77)
>>>
>>> Dee did some famous astrological charts -- I seem to remember he did one
>>> for Queen Elizabeth that she refused to see! -- so you could pay him to
>>> learn how to do that, too.
>>>
>>> Best,
>>> Katherine
>>>
>>>
>>> Katherine Eggert
>>> Associate Professor and Chair
>>> Department of English
>>> University of Colorado
>>> 226 UCB
>>> Boulder, CO 80309-0226
>>> (303) 492-7382
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: Charles Butler To: [log in to unmask] Sent: Monday, May
>>> 14, 2007 3:25 AM
>>> Subject: Re: John Dee and Alan Moore
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks to Penny and Laurie. I've had a look at the Glasgow web site, and
>>> at first glance it seems very possible that 'tine' may be a misprint (or
>>> misreading) for 'tinge' or 'ting' - which would make sense in an
>>> alchemical context, should one wish to create the Philosopher's Stone.
>>> Which is the kind of thing people would pay money to Doctor Dee to learn
>>> how to do, I guess! Charlie
>>>
>>> --
>>> Website: www.charlesbutler.co.uk
>>
>> [log in to unmask]
>> James Nohrnberg
>> Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
>> Univ. of Virginia
>> P.O Box 400121
>> Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
>>
[log in to unmask]
James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121
|
