s'encruia79 - Ferran Sintes

It appears from contemporary
Balearic archaeological findings, if
indeed the particular leads onward
to the general, that much of the
earliest written poetry dealt with
the primary body functions, and
that, in turn, the poetry of these
functions may have given rise very
often to what have subsequently
become known as "universal
symbols." Passing gas, removing
encrusted mucus from the nasal
cavity, humpy-doodling, perspiring,
excretera, were major themes
in those times before the poet had
become, so to speak, toilet trained.
Recently, Dr. Wilhelm Walrus, a
palaeontologist working in the
Balearics, has inadvertently uncovered
a wealth of early poetry in
tablet form, herewith new facts
under the lamp. The earthenware
tablets (100 x 40 x 5 mm, inscribed
with a blunt instrument) dated
circa 2739 BC, were excavated on
the North Coast of Majorca. Dr.
Walrus, with a grain of salt, calls
the site "the first Tapas bar"
(Tapa-1), due to the large quantities
of mussel and snail shells,
bone splinters believed to be rudimentary
toothpicks, and fossilised
mboli (an ancient form of "sandwich"
of Sub-Saharan origin).
The interest in bodily functions is
easily seen in Tablet #43:
She sweat like seal.
This poem, simple as it appears on
the surface, besides giving eviden-
Prehistory
Prof. Rolf Nielson
Symbol and “dirt” in early
balearic poetry
ce to a close existence between
man and the shrivel-pawed waterbeast,
raises enormous and unanswerable
symbolic questions. What
does "a seal" mean?
Figure 1: archaeologists’ field drawing of Tablet #43
It was William Blake's contention
that the poet invents the religious
symbol as he sings the mystical
experience, and that the robberpriest
carriages away with these
symbols accompanied by footmen,
to sell them at the going price.
The seal, as a symbol, may have
been part of this looting.
The richest finding in the area of
symbolism is Tablet #477:
When Ochlibba farts,
The wheat falls down.
The stone is split,
The boards open on the boat,
The water separates.
Obviously there has been a posterior
Judaeo-Christian borrowing
of lines 2-5, but it is unclear whether
this poem is an epigram or an
ode to some ancient proto-hero of
enormous and forgotten powers.
This same religious borrowing is
apparent in Tablet #12222, part of
the so-called "nose-digging
series". Here we find that the
Christian story of the Resurrection
was actually born in the nose of an
early poet:
I rolled back the stone
In my nose
And was born again.
On the other hand (or finger, we
might say in this case) however,
with all due respect to scholarship,
there is an enchanting, light side to
this series, as we see in Tablet #42:
I picked a booger from my nose
And flung it at my friend.
My friend picked a boogerfrom
his nose
And flung it at me.
Thus passed the day.
Here in Paris, with the smells of
frying plantain and the lovely
melodies of the German pop star
Nina Hagen drifting in the windows,
we poets and desk archaeologists
dim our sight and curve our
s’Encruia. Pàg.11