Missives through Marsella
excerpts from A Glimmer of the Grimmer, a collection of correspondence between philosopher Rachel Desselut (1715–82) and mathematician Raymond al Mustafa (1710–88) which was compiled, translated and published in 2008 by Ankerton [Nuneaton] Scholastic Primers. The following text is taken from letters written while Desselut was in the Provence capital of Marsella and al Mustafa was in the Aragonese city of Huesca. Desselut's original letters survive among the Bouvoin Papers at the Vithor New School; al Mustafa's are kept in the Barcelon Gravatory.
…my long silence; I cannot blame the wars. I had the pennackit [cholera] this last summer, and twice I quite convinced my doctors that I should not reach autumn, and yet I have in fact outlived the oleanders.
My abbess [1] is dead. The words lack sentiment, though I felt it; she had been frail since the old year and we spoke our farewells far before the pennackit overthrew her. She leaves me the least of the upper rooms and the best of the library. Neither is large but the Ovid is complete, and I have been reading him into the night for the first time since Mascon [2]. He is unkind to women, of course…
…been worrying at a gap in the Parable [3], try as I might. Ink spills, copyists drowse. In most cases I can well read a manuscript despite some deficiencies. By what means can the Divine Word [4] correct errors which compound in mere matter? Do the mathematicians know of methods which will tolerate a mistake…
…little progress on the Cartographer [5]. Every time I begin, I find I have written another parable. — R.
PS. A favour, if you are ever in the capital. My father's annotated Vallakis was reported in the Jeans [Genoa] peripatetic bookhouses, which I know to visit Barcelon. The flyleaf bears our arms in red ink, and his hand fills the lower margins. I no longer think of recovering the entire library, but I would have that one volume, if it lives.
[1] Desselut spent many years as a lodger in a minor complex of religious buildings outside Marsella, following periods of exile in Norman Kent and Portingale.
[2] The Burgund town of Mascon [Mâcon] was the seat of the Bouvoin viscountcy, where Desselut's father's manor house stood.
[3] The Parable of the Mute Bookbinder, Desselut's most famous work, in which she describes how a book might fully describe its own creation.
[4] Desselut's controversial name for the written instructions she believed to be scribed within living cases [cells].
[5] Apparently referring to a collection of unfinished essays on memory and identity, published posthumously as The Tellure and the Tellard in 1819 by the University of Hulm [Ulm].
…Duke [6] is angry with his couriers, and his couriers are angry with the roads, and I receive what is left of everyone's patience. Your letter found me in good health; having read it twice, it leaves me all the better.
To your question. I have a name for you, though it has not yet left my workshop. In the course of astronomical prediction, I encounter configurations which are resident, settling to an arrangement almost no matter how they begin (I am reminded of a method for finding the edge of a square), and those which are fugitive, when variation in the beginning is only amplified with time. I do not know how fragile the Word is. There are enough miscarriages to suggest that some mistakes, at least, cannot be corrected…
…you told me from St. Ives [Setúbal, Portugal] that you had considered "Inner Word". I have always found the name you chose to set a fence between your argument and your reader, but I cannot begrudge your conviction. It is only that my city is full of scholars and clergy with their own convictions…
…a disadvantage. My Madray [~Madurai] correspondent, of the medical school, has convinced me that the progress of life theory here in Barcelon is dead. I have considered Roun [Rouen], or (to my mother's delight) the new observatory in Mashick [~Mexico]; I no longer believe I will die in Huesca.
I will look for the Vallakis. If it is in Spain I will hear of it by summer. — R.
[6] al Mustafa had had the Duke of Aragon as his patron for the last two decades.
