JOURNAL OF YAZDEHAN STUDIES

Put out by CACA | The Center for the Analysis and Clitalysis of Altarity | An organ of ISOCPHYS | Founded in 1992 by a “sestina of polylexical exiles.”
JYazS

Journal of Yazdehan Studies

Number 1 : 1996

D. I. Swopes

Yazdehan manifesto (I) : Description of the hendecalexahedron

abstract

In eleven dimensions, each face of a hendecalexahedron can be viewed, not simply by rotating it, or by walking around it, but by holding each dimension singly, or even in combination, and rotating all the others in turn, walking, as it were, the dimension, or subset of dimensions, with its associated face or faces, around the dimension, or subset of dimensions, that we ourselves, from our fluid position as readerly pivot, have become. All faces can then be seen at once, felt at once, tasted, heard and smelt at once — or in any combination you may desire, in any order, simultaneously or sequentially. The totality of all possible rotations of all possible sets of dimensions and faces, and the experience of the observer performing the rotations, the experience of the observer walking in the eleven dimensions, with or without herself forming the twelfth and perfect face of the object, and of walking all faces, bound to her by eleven eleven-dimensional leashes, around the fulcrum of herself, is called, for short, time. Time is the act of reading, and reading gives birth to space.

introduction

In three dimensions, each face of a hendecalexahedron, an object [1] composed of eleven plane lexical faces, can be viewed in turn, either by rotating it, or by walking around it. The object may be solid, made of an opaque substance such as wood, metal, or stone, in which case the faces not directly confronting the viewer’s gaze may be obscured to greater or lesser degrees depending upon the angles obtaining between them. A simple twist of the wrist, however, or step to the left or right, is all that’s needed to bring an obscured face into focus. Or the hendecalexahedron may be transparent, of glass or crystal, yielding obstructions of quite a different order, depending upon the light-conducting properties of the material, its degree of purity. Faces may reflect faces, causing the object to appear vaster, more complex, than it actually is; conversely, faces may refract faces, reducing the object to an illusory sketch of shadows and lines in two dimensions, in which case R. Roussel’s advice to the readers of his La Doublure would be appropriate: “Ce livre étant un roman, il doit se commencer à la première page et se finir à la dernière” [2].

methods and materials

But we needn’t make the task of reading either so simple, or so difficult. First off, we may close our eyes, or switch the lights off, or do neither of these if we happen to be blind — for all eleven faces of the hendecalexahedron can be plainly felt and counted. Furthermore, one will note that the object is quite light; hollow, in fact. And that gives us an idea. Since a hendecalexahedron is rather an irregular object, why don’t we even things out by inserting ourselves into it, making of our face a twelfth, thus yielding an ideal lexical pleonastic platonism, the dodecalexagrammaton. We may extend our arms and legs deep into it, grazing its moist epithelium with pointed, curious fingers and toes. Or we may walk about with it fixed to our eyes [3], using it as a sort of looking glass or kaleidoscope — provided, of course, our eyes are capable of sight. If they are not, we may attach it to our ears, using the remaining eleven faces of our ideal dodecahedron as a sort of listening device, a system of baffles and warps serving to filter sounds, to amplify, to attenuate, to transform. And what about our nose, you ask? I, for one, am all for them — each face smells differently from the others, and each combination of faces different yet again — and taste, of course — for I have no bias against tongues — which quickly brings us back round again to touch. I forbid no reader from holding each of the eleven faces in her hands, and kissing each in turn, and then kissing the twelfth, which is her own.

clitalysis

This hendecalexahedron being a schizomythic narrative of exile (SNE), and not a mere roman traditionnel (RT), the reader will be asked to undertake certain exertions with which she may or may not be familiar, among which is the necessity, for those thoroughly engaged in the praxis of promiscuous textuality, to submit and subsume and insert oneself (like Galatia, a tenon in the mortise of the Anatolian tectum) into the textwork at large, in order to avoid the nettlesome surprise of a mysterious misspelling or illicit transliteration.

In addition, lexical ecological processes have combined with orogeny to make the Tetrastics a safe haven (abri bien) for many a heteroclitic persuasion, yielding a ripe diversity which, though seeming excessively heady or rich to plainer natures, has proved itself eminently palatable to natives as much by its savory longevity as by its fertile exuberance; the common restrictive slighting, thus, of one or another “marked” idiom into a sort of hunch-backed Ityalian or Intrussyan, accompanied by the plauditive superciliousness of a more Ronish Schadenfreude, will not be indulged in here. Any emphasis will be made, not for insular reasons of langue or parole, but for expressive Gest (geste, Gestus, gesture, etc).

Following from this author’s urdostoist conviction that the Electronic Rhapsody (ER) (un red propitious for the propagation and capture of agsad [4]) is more conducive to reading over words, via epiliminal leaps, than reading into them, via introspecular study, is a corollary to the above: the practice of limning nubile words with the same staid kohl as their chaster sisters; of saddling text and texture alike with dutifully durable tackle. In the heat of the chase, then, when the beast’s tracks seem suddenly to vanish into a physophyllical confusion of trampled woodbine and soiled briar leaves, it may take some flirtatious histolexical frottage, or even more arousing theratrolexical manipulation, to glean the piste from the scat and get the hunter back on her horse. An appropriately intrusive session [5] of heterolexical intercourse of sufficient duration, however, should make the whole sensuous web glow warmly; and its more sensitive parts flush a deep erxewanî.

Other colors to be encountered include mauve, indicating a certain subset (n=4) of thematic facets of the hendecalexahedron, known as sne-dynagon pods, which are also marked by the use of Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3, etc.) to indicate their intrathematic progressions; aquamarine, another such subset (n=4) of sne-dynagon pods, marked by the use of Roman numerals (I, II, III, etc.); tangerine, a subset (n=3) of sne-dynagon pods whose sequences are spelled out (First, Second, Third, etc.); common cobalt, to indicate the top level of the SNE itself, the author’s partners in the textual putting out therein and thereof, or something else entirely; and oriental ammine, to indicate the possible organisational facets (n=11), called simply pods, of the yazdehanian SNE itself, or nothing at all. The colors and the methods of numerisation have no significance in and of themselves; and whether the structural aspects of the SNE have any significance, it is for the author to demonstrate, and the reader to discover.

Finally, if it were not for certain characters, and even words, of this hendecalexahedron having been conjured by the cryptoclastic arts of cruciverbal graphomancy, what follows would be the usual cowardly statement, hedging between light, law and literature, concerning the innocence of any lexical lattice from all libellous coincidence and the like — however, the act of breathing life into an original grid is neither guarantee of a Creator’s absolute fictitiousness, nor proof of his having sinned. For was it not Felix Hermann [6] who asked, making reference to his claim that philosophy is the invention of the rich, Is not truth the invention of the false? To which Hermann Felix replied: Vraiment si; ce n’est pas fausse que la vérité n’est pas faussement l’invention vraie du faux.

analysis and discussion

But let us remember that our object is hollow. Might there not, then, be a less intrusive way to view it, to take it in, to read it, than to wrench ourselves into it, fix it to our own face? Of course there is.

conclusion

In eleven dimensions, each face of a hendecalexahedron can be viewed, not simply by rotating it, or by walking around it, but by holding each dimension singly, or even in combination, and rotating all the others in turn, walking, as it were, the dimension, or subset of dimensions, with its associated face or faces, around the dimension, or subset of dimensions, that we ourselves, from our fluid position as readerly pivot, have become. All faces can then be seen at once, felt at once, tasted, heard and smelt at once — or in any combination you may desire, in any order, simultaneously or sequentially. The totality of all possible rotations of all possible sets of dimensions and faces, and the experience of the observer performing the rotations, the experience of the observer walking in the eleven dimensions, with or without herself forming the twelfth and perfect face of the object, and of walking all faces, bound to her by eleven eleven-dimensional leashes, around the fulcrum of herself, is called, for short, time. Time is the act of reading, and reading gives birth to space.

notes and references

  1. Object. — S. E. Spitmarkx, Luftig-pfeilschriftige Abbildungen. Ruhr-Lülnrar, Spitmarkx Buchfabrik, 1848. Author’s translexification (AT) in prog.
  2. Se finir à la dernière. — R. Roussel, La Doublure. Paris, Lemerre, 1897.
  3. Affixed to our eyes. — Recall that this ludict was composed a good double yazdehanity avant que les vulgar realitarians had appropriated our idea and made blatant, vapid, sterile what had lain cryptic, fecund, latent [Note de Redashter, le dix-neuf Pédale de l’An 142 de l’EP].
  4. agsad. — Author-generated spooky action at a distance.
  5. Appropriately intrusive session. — Comme s’insinue le dieu Réel dans la déesse Réalité.
  6. Felix Hermann. — Cf. V. Sirin, Otchayanie [Отчаяние]. Paris: Sovremennye zapiski, Jan.–Oct. 1934; Berlin, Petropolis, 1936. V. Nabokoff-Sirin, Despair. London, John Long, 1937. V. Nabokov, La Méprise. Paris, Gallimard, 1939 (dont la revue dans “La chronique de J.-P. Sartre,” Europe, 15 juin 1939). V. Nabokov, Despair. Minxburgh, Pan Mutt, 1966.