#incipits

Letter from Michelangelo Buonarroti to his father, Ludovico (di Leonardo) Buonarroti Simoni, June 1508.

Translation of Robert W. Carden, 1913.

This Old Babylonian tablet is a listing of “incipits,” the first lines of texts, which served as titles in ancient Mesopotamia.  In other words, it’s like a “table of contents” to a collection of texts.  Most of the incipits on this tablet appear to be for romantic or erotic poetry, none of which is now extant.  Based on grammatical forms (which I've indicated in the translation), they were spoken to both male and female listeners.

I have selected a few of the most fun incipits to translate; a full translation is here.  The most beautiful and interesting incipit, to me, is the final one, which spans two lines.  It is spoken to a kalû-priest, whom I discussed here (also see pp.41ff here); like some other categories of Ishtar's priests, they had a gender identity outside a traditional binary, though it's debatable whether a modern categorization would label them as gay, nonbinary, trans, etc.  Regardless, this tablet shows that even in the ancient world, love was not binary.

...

2. šumma aṣṣalal dikênni atti “If I should sleep, rouse me, you(f.)!”

4. muttalliktī tattallak allallāni “My wanderer(f.) wandered like an allallu-bird.”

7. i nuštaqti nēpištu râmimma “Let's complete the ritual of love!”

8. abbunti luštūḫma “Let me lengthen for the girl!”

9. arak ša pīrim iṣṣeḫrakka “So long that an elephant's is smaller than you(m.)!”

10. i nigri kisalla ūraša mašḫat “Let's quarrel in the courtyard (?); she is ravished in her vulva.”

15. iššâ abūbam išakkan minam “He raised the 'flood'; what did it achieve?”

20. wāṣīat petēat šina errēšāšina “She comes out, she opens up: two are their(f.) plowmen.”

24. ana wardūtim ul abâška “I shall not debase myself to slavery for you(m.)!”

Dusk comes now, for me the last. The sun has sunk beneath the western cliffs, staining the land with blood, and now the twilight eats its way toward me inexorably. The stars come out, one by one, but the only star that matters burns night and day, day and night. It is always with me, the brightest thing in the sky but for the sun. It is the plague star. This day I buried Janeel. With my own hands I buried her, digging in the hard rocky ground from dawn through late afternoon, until my arms were afire with pain. When my ordeal was done, when the last spadeful of this wretched alien dirt had been thrown upon her head, when the last stone had been placed atop her cairn, then I stood over her and spat upon her grave. (Tuf Voyaging, George R. R. Martin)

So without further ado, here it goes.

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory.  He's got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest, Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books. When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway -- might want his car, or his cargo. The gun is tiny, acm-styled, lightweight, the kind of gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane, and when you get done using it, you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter, because it runs on electricity. [...] The Deliverator's car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator's car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car's tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator's car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady's thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta. (Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson)

I love it because how completely over the top the whole thing is. It sets out to do one thing, and it does it perfectly. It's bonkers, and paints a ridiculous picture of a world so unlike the one we live in today (but is it really?), and at the same time it manages to already feel dated in 2025. The rest of the book is well worth reading in my opinion.

They are so important to me, because they are my first contact with a book. Indeed, I avoid reading back cover summaries as they tend to spoil the story, and I hate getting spoiled.

Here are a few that I want to share with you. I'll reserve the longer ones for future posts.

---

"Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas." (L'Étranger, Albert Camus) Mother died today. Or maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure. (The Stranger, Albert Camus)

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" (A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens)

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." (Pride & Prejudice, Jane Austen)

"The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move." (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams)

"I’m pretty much fucked. That’s my considered opinion. Fucked." (The Martian, Andy Weir)

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." (Neuromancer, William Gibson)

"When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist." (Circe, Madeline Miller)

J’ai des bouts de toi, des bouts d’elles et de lui, éparpillés dans le cyberespace, j’ai des mots et des histoires, planqués un peu partout dans le nuage, des poussières d’étoiles.

Un petit quizz facile ...

(A priori, tous les incipits ont été cités dans ce blogue...)