As a follow up to my last post, I wanted to look closely at part of a sentence in The Ondt and the Gracehoper. Years ago, I felt compelled to make notes on this sentence — which describes the Ondt “swarming of himself in his sunnyroom” — when I was living in a house with a sunroom.

This sentence occurs after the Gracehoper has thrown himself into the Vico and encounters the Ondt on his throne:

Behailed His Gross the Ondt,

Behold his grace (or his greatness), and be him hailed (Gros is German for “Great”). But also, since he is Shaun, who represents Space, he is the gross (the total amount). Plus, his body is gross.

prostrandvorous upon his drone

Prostrate upon his throne. This phrase interestingly combines positions of both dominance and submission. The ending “-vorous” suggests eating. “Prostranstvo” is Russian for space — eating space? “Dvor” is Russian for “court.” “Drone” suggests a drone insect. “Throne” could also be a reference to sitting on the toilet.

in his Papylonian babooshkees, smolking a spatial brunt of Hosana cigals

Babylonian Babushka? Smoking a Cuban cigar. 

“Papillon” and “babochka” are, respectively, French and Russian for “butterfly.”

The Cuban cigar recalls the story of HCE giving the Cad a cigar: “he was to just pluggy well suck that brown boyo, my son, and spend a whole half hour in Havana.” See also my discusson of HCE’s “cigare divane” in this post.

Could “cigals” be sigils or sickles or symbols?

with unshrinkables farfalling from his unthinkables

The annotations website Fweet.org tells me that this is a reference to Oscar Wilde saying that an English gentleman hunting a fox is the “unspeakable in search of the uneatable.” HCE is compared to a fox in I.4.

“Farfalling” works in English, but it also recalls the German verfallen — disintegrating.

The phrase is beautiful. It feels like…the puffing of his cigar, the unshrinkable Space-ness of Shaun reverberating out from his unthinkable being. That’s the feeling it gives me, anyway.

swarming of himself in his sunnyroom

I get the image of a sultan being fanned. But also a swarm of insects. And “warming” himself, like a lizard on a rock.

I wrote these notes while in my sunroom, after having eaten Turkish takeout food. And I thought to myself, sometimes life imitates art.