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—Background
on the Edited Texts—
Using
modernized punctuation and (mostly American) spelling, here as
first editor of the 154 Runes I try to make sense of the texts—by
definition an interpretive enterprise—while staying as faithful to
the original lines as possible.
Because
most texts are already knotty, I seldom select “open” punctuation
that would allow the broadest ranges of meanings. Editors of the Sonnets
have traditionally had to deal with the same dilemma, though the Runes
are even more obfuscatory than the Sonnets are—more teasing, gamelike,
slippery, and difficult to reduce to linearity. Sonnets editor Stephen
Booth’s decision to use minimal punctuation as he edits the Sonnets
seems admirable because it reduces editorial intrusion, but here as elsewhere
his paradigm cannot be mine. For my role, as I see it, is to point the
texts with clear road-markers so a first-time meanderer will not get hopelessly
lost. “Open” or minimal punctuation would tend to trigger too
many forking-paths effects and thus defeat the goal of moving directly
toward some kind of understanding of what a string of lines may “mean.”
Given the
ambiguity of the runic linestrings, I offer my edited versions undogmatically,
routinely sensing and regretting the loss of options I don’t or cannot
choose because other choices rule them out. Every line or so exemplifies
some syntactic or lexical “road not taken.”
My
line glosses add options, clarifications, and puns that amplify
or even in many cases run counter to the sense I’m trying to follow
and point up—thus helping keep alive the gamy spirit of the texts.
Since vague pronoun reference is a routine riddlic aspect in the Runes,
I often try to clarify pronouns in the glosses. While I try to stay close
to details of the Q lines, sometimes punning forms of terms in Q seem
to allow more meaning and wit to flow than stricter readings. As editor
I am not a purist, and I can’t claim any kind of consistency, except
that I do try to keep each text as “seriously” meaningful as
I can—not reducing it to its lowest level of joking or to its most
specific potential for conveying personal commentary about the poet. In
this sense, I think, I follow the precedent of previous editors of the
Sonnets. Occasionally I do resort to a personal reading—as Will himself
does in the overt sonnets about “Will having his will” and so
on.
Like editors of
the visible Sonnets, I might be accused of “pushing the
‘low’ wit into the footnotes” as I construe Will’s
licentious lines. In any case, reader/players who dislike my editorial
choices can start from scratch with the paste-up strings and devise their
own versions. Improving on what I offer is not unlikely and can legitimately
be a part of what other gamesters in future years and ages aim for.
Altogether,
I probably make fewer changes in Q’s wordforms than editors of the
visible Sonnets usually do. I make no real emendations (in the sense of
“correcting” Q’s “errors”) but—as I say—I
do sometimes regard puns as primary forms, for purposes of construing
a given text.
As the background notes
on the eleven individual sets indicate, the sets often display
some degree of thematic unity; sometimes they show formal, numerologic,
or typographic indicators of beginnings or endings. Some of their puns
comment on the positions of individual visible texts on the set leaf—much
as the “erroneous” heading of Sonnet 119 (labelled 116
in Q) links with the comment about an “error ” that might or
might not be "upon me proved."
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