For the Tempus-Fugitives Page 11

  Was wholly warranted as they’d done wrong

  And it, though fort, was scarcely dure, so just

  And fitting. If our libertine thought just

  The opposite then we can best start off

  By figuring maybe common sense is wrong

  To hold that, for the sadist, it’s all one

  Whether we’re talking real or fictive pain,

  Whether those living torments taken straight

  From Robespierre’s book or those that issue straight

  From some odd neural kink that finds them just

  To its inventive taste. So human pain,

  Where real or witnessed, turns the Marquis off

  Through that empathic gift that makes him one

  With fictive beings whose imagined wrong

  Goes straight to that raw nerve. What sets it off

  Then looks like just his crying need for one

  More suffering soul whose wrong might cause him pain.

  WIFE TO MR. HAYDN

  The daughter of Johann Peter Keller that Haydn really married was Maria Anna Theresia Keller, who was born the seventh child of her parents on 25 September 1730.…Since Anna Keller signed her marriage contract and her first will “Maria Anna” (names that were also part of Aloisia’s name) and appears as “Anna” in other documents, the mistaken identity never became apparent in documents from Haydn’s later life.

  —Michael Lorenz, “Haydn’s Real Wife”

  Suppose someone said, pointing to Nixon, “That’s the guy who might have lost.” Someone else says “Oh no, if you describe him as the winner, then it’s not true that he might have lost.” Now which one is being the philosopher here, the unintuitive man? It seems to me obviously to be the second. The second man has a philosophical theory. The first man would say, and with great conviction, “Well, of course, the winner of the election might have been someone else…” So, such terms as “the winner” or “the loser” don’t designate the same objects in all possible worlds. On the other hand, the term “Nixon” is just the name of this man.

  —Saul Kripke, Naming and Necessity

  So, room for hope: maybe she wasn’t such

  A battle-axe, or apt to block her ears

  And stomp off when the others came around,

  Vanhal and Dittersdorf, and then (a touch

  Déclassé but top-rated by his peers)

  That Mozart boy, the only one she found

  Half-way agreeable or up to much

  Once they’d stopped playing, sunk a dozen beers

  Between them, and agreed to let the sound

  Of Josef’s music (or the double-dutch

  They talked about it) silence any fears

  That maybe this new Wunderkind was bound

  To steal his show. Now it turned out that they’d

  Defamed her monstrously, the scholars who

  Just went on trotting out that same old tale

  About the constant misery she made

  Of Papa’s life, but so contrived to screw

  Things up it took two centuries to nail

  The libel. Seems that all the old brigade

  Of musicologists believed it true,

  The henpeck stuff, which led them without fail

  To hand it down and so promote the trade

  In any rumour-mongering that might do

  To place Frau Haydn on the Beaufort Scale

  Of stormy wives. Truth is, the thing went back

  To his biographer, one C.F. Pohl,

  Who (we now learn) took insufficient care

  With note-keeping or else displayed a lack

  Of proper training in his chosen role

  And who must therefore take the largest share

  Of blame for a false trail which gave the pack

  Their scent of female prey. What blew the whole

  Shebang sky-high was study (all too rare,

  It seems) of certain records that kept track

  Of dates and details and so proved the sole

  Remaining proof of how it failed to square,

  That legend, with the chronicle of those

  Plain life-events set down with not the least

  Small hint of myth or narrative intent

  As births, deaths, marriages—whatever goes

  Toward the stock of knowledge that’s increased

  By every instance of the scholar’s bent

  For patient archive-grubbing where he knows

  Home-truths reside. So at this point they ceased,

  The Haydn-seekers, to misrepresent

  One candidate for wife and rather chose—

  Since new research had diligently pieced

  The evidence together—to prevent

  Worse damage from befalling the fair name

  Of Haydnstudien by making known

  That, of the Keller girls, the one he’d wed

  Was not Aloysia who’d achieved ill fame

  As his domestic scourge because she’d grown

  To a mere eighteen months, the record said,

  When some obscure mishap or illness came

  To cut life short. So Pohl & Co. were thrown

  Off the right track by taking it as read,

  That marriage-record, or supposing some

  Plain fact-transcriber must back then have seen

  The entry, made a note of it, and checked,

  If only by calendric rule of thumb,

  That the event might plausibly have been

  As commonly set down. So the correct

  Account—as scholars (most of them) have come

  Around to thinking—says that we demean

  The cause of scholarship and disrespect

  The name of that dead child if we’re so dumb

  As not to grasp the truth: that our routine

  Ideas about which hen it was that pecked

  The kindest and most genial of all

  Our great composers have been way off-beam

  Since almost the year dot. In truth his bride

  Was that child’s sibling whom they chose to call

  “Maria Anna” likewise, on a scheme

  Straightforwardly if confusingly applied,

  But then—as if half-minded to forestall

  Such errors once the error-spawning meme

  Was up to its old tricks—put that aside

  And settled on “Theresia” as a small

  Concession to the need that something seem

  To make them different women or to guide

  The suitors or the scholars in their quest

  For the right girl. So, you may say, what’s here

  Achieved is just a small but in its way

  Impressive instance of how thought can test

  For such false reasonings as no doubt we’re

  Innately prone to and ensure that they,

  If not eliminated or suppressed,

  Are then at least not given the all-clear

  To work their mischief wholesale. Yet this may

  Be deemed one sign of how they all invest,

  Those types, in the self-comforting idea

  That some such well-judged putting-into-play

  Of new-found evidence and clearer thought

  Might somehow wipe the record clean or shift

  The burden of those long-accustomed jibes

  About Aloisia’s nearly having brought

  An end to his good-humour or so miffed

  His well-tuned temperament that certain vibes

  Might strike responsive ears as somehow fraught

  With echoes of the ever-widening rift

  Twixt man and wife. For so it was the scribes

  Of mainstream musicology once taught

  Their reader-listeners first to give short shrift

  To Aloisia, then—to mark the tribe’s

  Belated turn to more enlightened ways

  Of thought—advised us readers we should take

  An altogether different view and d
itch,

  Along with faulty scholarship, the craze

  For serving up the usual range of fake

  Bit-parts and sexist stereotypes by which

  That old-school musicology betrays

  Its male agenda. That’s why, for the sake

  Of some cheap joke, it casts her as a bitch

  Whose legendary ill-humour then displays

  By contrast every gift that went to make

  Her Josef, in his music, such a rich

  Resource for anyone who’d ride them out,

  Those patches of domestic Sturm und Drang

  Or suchlike contretemps. These might,

  To lesser mortals, spell the final rout

  Of all that once united yin and yang

  But, in his case, contrived to lift the blight

  Of ages—or relieve the short-lived bout

  Of gloom brought on (let’s say) by some harangue—

  Through such a sense of darkness turned to light

  As comes to solace grief and silence doubt,

  At least for now. Yet if the chorus sang

  About these things in bars they always cite,

  The commentators, from the opening strains

  Of his Creation, then the same applies

  Elsewhere in ways less plain to hear yet still,

  For many, what so perfectly sustains

  The truth of those domestic lows and highs

  That he transformed, Prospero-like, until

  Their formal interplay alone remains

  And keen-eared listeners can at best surmise,

  By dint of fine-tuned analytic skill,

  What subtly interwoven joys and pains

  May here find voice. So if they now revise

  The old back-story so as to fulfil

  Their scholarly vocation, it’s no more

  Of a corrective to the way they’d spun

  The tale of Haydn’s genius than to read

  The names “Anna Maria” where before

  They’d read “Anna Aloisia,” while the one

  Picked out as Josef’s bride is now decreed,

  By general assent, to leave the score

  Unchanged since still the source of old-style fun

  With all the attributes that guaranteed

  Her, like her sibling, as an endless store

  Of anecdotal chat. So what they’d done,

  Philosophers might say, was just proceed

  To switch the proper names but not enquire

  Too closely into how or by what kind

  Of evidential warrant they’d accrued

  Such power. Though new disclosures might conspire

  To shift the referent they still inclined,

  The genial Haydn’s less than genial brood

  Of partisans, to stick with all their prior

  Convictions when, as usual, they’d a mind

  Not to let awkward truths-of-fact preclude

  Whatever fictive tale they might desire

  To put around no matter who’s consigned,

  Like her, to bit-parts of the sort eschewed

  By self-respecting extras. Listen well

  To how his wit and humour always stage

  Their peace-restoring comeback even though

  He’s maybe (who knows?) just been given hell

  Or else—a handy reference-point to gauge

  Their differences—encountered moods as low

  As any that, in Mozart, mean a spell

  Of dark G minor. These a later age

  Would take as ample reason to bestow

  On him, not Haydn, prior claim to tell

  Such inner-worldly truths as might assuage

  Our music-wakened need to undergo

  Those same upheavals of the human soul

  That (we suppose) must certainly have played

  Their part in drawing out a music prone

  To overwhelm our fragile flood-control

  Or bid Dionysus’ retinue invade

  Apollo’s realm had he not also known

  How most effectively to button-hole

  The form-attentive listener. What’s conveyed

  By Haydn’s gently civilizing tone

  Is more: steer clear of the magnetic pole

  Marked “tragedy” or “inner torment’, trade

  Your fraught dispatches from the danger-zone

  For feelings nearer home, and wonder if

  Perhaps humanity, like music, stands

  To gain far more by nurturing a sense

  Of irony than letting some small tiff

  Gain resonance. The discord then expands

  As dark-side harmonies grow more intense,

  Or rows turn into struggles on a cliff-

  Edge looking out across the ruined lands

  Where dazed combatants witness the expense

  Of spirit as each rumour brings a whiff

  Of grapeshot. Like a laying-on of hands,

  That trick of Haydn’s somehow to condense

  Fresh hope in every minor-major riff

  Or bring forth, from those ear-bewildering strands

  Of sound, creation’s aural hieroglyph.

  WAVELENGTHS

  Slowness and constancy; receptive openness to the environment; a passive, somewhat withdrawn character; a gesture of pulling in or retracting rather than projecting outward; being formed from the outside – each of these phrases emphasizes a slightly different side of a unitary way of being. We can, with inner effort, bring all the sloth’s traits into a coherent picture that ‘holds together’. And when we do this, we find that ‘every detail can begin to speak “sloth”’. That is, we can recognize a ‘slothness’ that shines through all the details and makes them into a single whole.

  —Stephen L. Talbott

  While film buffs know Hedy Lamarr . . . for her roles in many classic films, she was also an accomplished inventor. Lamarr is best known . . . for a ‘Secret Communication System’. The subject of the patent is a frequency-hopping spread-spectrum technology intended for a difficult-to-jam radio-frequency guidance system for torpedoes . . . . By transmitting on multiple radio frequencies, and switching frequencies rapidly (multiple times per second), the radio signals would sound like random noise to anyone monitoring any of the frequencies. But, with the sender and the receiver of the signal hopping frequencies simultaneously, the signal would be clear.

  —Matthew M. Yospin

  From his far vantage-point the pendent sloth

  Looks down. The watcher’s metabolic rate

  Begins to quicken as she sees it. Both

  Now undergo a certain change of state

  Although the one is naturally loth

  To let the woman’s distant gaze dictate

  Some correspondent quickening, while her growth

  Of interest bids her freeze-frame and await

  The sloth’s next move. Truth is, I didn’t know

  What moral it should point, that little tale

  Like some Aesopian fable meant to show

  (At a first shot) how artefacts of scale,

  Time-scale in this case, offer such tableaux

  Of mortal finitude. It’s what we fail

  To grasp if we suppose that things must go

  Along in concert or one beat prevail

  For all despite those detours that accrue,

  Those time-lapse intervals that came between

  Their two attempts to have eye-contact do

  World-bridging work. Then looks exchanged could mean

  Things understood, instead of sent askew

  Across the species-gulf installed to screen

  Out any chance some message might get through,

  Some signal flash up clear and so convene

  The kind of freak assemblage that defied

  Genetic codes or laws of natural kind,

  As well as chronometric scales supplied

  To keep genetic profiles well defined

  And crosstalk filtere
d strictly on the side

  Of background noise.

  Still, if she had a mind

  To get on terms with him (the sloth, but I’d

  An interest here) then likely she inclined

  Toward the sort of wavelength-hopping ruse

  Thought up six decades back by ‘well-known star

  Of stage and screen’ - yet, it appears, one whose

  Gifts far surpassed all that - Hedy Lamarr,

  None other. She worked out how you could use

  Such one-off channel-binding to debar

  The enemy from tracking subs that cruise

  The depths and scan the airwaves. Safer far,

  These nonce liaisons, on account of their

  Occurrence not requiring any code

  That might be cracked but simply that they share,

  Each time, theTreffpunkt of this episode

  Where two devices conjugate and where,

  Next thing, the system’s ready to reload

  And pick some other frequency to pair

  Them off again. What this device bestowed

  In time of war, as now, was just the trick

  For keeping channels open, making sure

  Stuff went from A to B, allowing quick-

  Change backup codes, and plenty of secure

  Alternatives lest something fail to click

  Straight off.

  Suppose she manages to lure

  The creature’s eye while his slow seconds tick