[Dragaera] Seventeen Comments on the First Word of _Vallista_

[Philip Hart]

There
Was
A
Crooked
Man
Who
Built
A
Crooked
House
He
Kept
A
Crooked
Dancer
He
Uhh


0. Before beginning this exegesis, one should note that a translated
text, even a Text, will not bear the weight of such minute inspection
as described above.  Nevertheless let us begin by considering the
first, crucial word of _Vallista_.

1. By the way, it seems unlikely (and most difficult to check without
a concordance, which many people have in bygone years requested from
any listening Powers that Be) that "exegesis" appears in the Texts.
The word has a religious connotation, and Vlad (or so I believe) uses
no such terms, though for example "eschatology" well describes
essential (if mostly foreshadowed) themes of the Vladiad, and
religious concerns are of singular importance in it.

2. Of course the Texts come to us in translation, a fact alluded to
earlier.  But perhaps one should consider the possibility that the
translations are not subject to the sort of human (here one need not
add "(Eastern)") failings and impossibility of sufficient
correspondence of two or more languages to allow truly identical
meanings to be conveyed to necessarily different readers - such an
object or entity as the Cycle, capable of ordering hundreds of
thousands of years of several complex societies into a harmonious
sequence, or some other object or entity, could easily be imagined to
be able to arrange for the languages at issue to allow, given infinite
skill, such a feat.

3. Note while on the topic that some English-speaking readers of the
Bible believe precisely the above.  We should bear in mind what
purpose the Texts might be intended to serve in our world when
attempting to explore the forking paths of _Vallista_.

4. Consider for example how much the Texts centered on Vlad’s life
resemble a sort of Stations of the Cycle.  He is born from an
oppressed people; he spends many years in the wilderness, he dies and
is resurrected; it seems likely that his destiny is to in some way
redeem or reorder the universe.

5. Or one might think about the Vladiad as the coinage implies, an
epic describing among other events a man's journey from the arms of a
woman to the underworld and beyond.

6. But more naturally one should consider the Divina Commedia, in
which of course Virgil plays a major role - just in the first lines
the hero is confronted with symbolic beasts and describes having lost
"the straight path" - truly Vlad is someone who has walked a crooked
mile from his ghetto to hell and back.

7. Getting back to the promised exegesis however, one should perhaps
first consider the last words of the previous Text, leading as it does
into the topic of this discussion.

8. Unfortunately, it is not immediately obvious what the Text in
question is.  Should one consider the order in which the Texts,
entirely mysteriously one must admit, have come to us?  Or should one
look to the Text preceding this one in time?  What if this Text
simultaneously precedes and follows all the others?  Beware the
headache lurking behind such considerations.

9. Note that the Quran, if opining on a subject about which one knows
nothing is permissible, begins, or nearly, with a chapter about a
symbolic animal.  The text is not organized thematically, like the
Vladiad, or chronologically, like the Bible.

10. It might be useful while on the subject to mention again the
importance of numbers in the Text at hand in the context of
Kabbalistic reading of the Bible.  Such an encoding as some believe
exists adds an important degree of complexity to the translational
task described earlier.

11. How many last words of Jesus are enumerated?  Seven, of course.
"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" comes to seven - but only
in English.  In fact "words" here actually means "phrases".  Let us
however call a word a word, swallowing its own tail like the
Ouroboros.

12. Apropos, in rather a Vladiadian way there is a little joke in the
Gospels concerning the translation and the fallibility of human
communication or understanding, or our ability to be empathetic and
awful - "46 And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice,
saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani - that is to say, My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me? 47 Some of them that stood there, when they
heard that, said, This man calleth for Elias. 48 And straightway one
of them ran, and took a spunge, and filled it with vinegar, and put it
on a reed, and gave him to drink. 49 The rest said, Let be, let us see
whether Elias will come to save him."  Will Vlad save himself?

13. In any case, the echoing of numbers in the Bible mirrors the
rhyming elements among the Texts, such as the ubiquitous appearance -
and disappearance - of Devera.  One can draw some hope for the project
of understanding a Text at a deep level through close reading by
noting the care with which such elements occur - even if the
appearance of a character as important as Devera or unimportant as a
passing squirrel is simply historical, the inclusion of such elements
is a clear invitation to the project this brief note is intended to
start.

14. "Start", in all modesty, because the richness, intricacy,
interwovenness the above comments allude to make this task most
daunting. Is a joke a simple poke at mishearing - "Not now, Loiosh" -
or bear deep meaning ("Elias" is "Elijah").

15. And thus let us drop for the moment considerations of last things
- destruction, perhaps? - to focus on first things - creation,
perhaps?

16.  Creation, life itself - written on the universe like the secret
word written on a golem in a ghetto so reminiscent of Vlad's background - 
but see 15.

17. Let us then begin by considering the first letter of the first
word of _Vallista_.