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theoretical note

The narrator and his colleagues at the Museum of the Consequences of Writing are relieved to find that the text of what follows is in ficracopra, a dialect of the once universal mother tongue that they are now able to translate, if not always to comprehend, for its unbroken context cannot be reassembled after the two plutonain calamities, those of the reversal of reason and of the invention of the book.

The modern world would of course become extinct should ficracopra and its context be reconstructed, even as a virtual reality (which some think it was) and if 'the reversal should be reversed'. But there are signs that this is exactly what is happening, hence the publication of this, as a book as well as on the internet. Otherwise how will people know what is happening, let alone what to do about it?

It should of course be remembered that the name ficracopra, which came to the narrator in a dream, is no way to be taken as a secret name of God, for in the ficracopran universe there was no notion of a creator, masculine or feminine, only the idea of continuous and spontaneous creation in the speaking of the tongue. Ficracopra is thought by some scholars to be the name the unbroken mother tongue itself, while others take it to be the name the universal, never-ending and all-pervasive process of spontaneous creation that was, in the tragic reversal of reason and in the invention of the book, reduced to such limiting impositions as masculine supremacy, transcendent monotheism, the separation of good and evil, the invention of the wheel and the universal subjection of body rhythms to the clock.

Other scholars believe that the word ficracopra was never used in the time when it was spoken as no other tongue existed and so the need did not arise to give the language a name. Hence to use the word now may be to prevent, at its linguistic source, the re-creation of the tongue and the reunification of its context.

Such thinkers believe that in ficracopran time there was no concept of past or future but only the universal experience of a 'continuous present tense'. So that if the ficracopran existence, or illusion, is ever recreated no one will be able to detect the difference, for the distinction between then and now will be lost. Thus the appeal to an imaginary golden paradise or past will be sensibly reduced to getting on with practical life as it is, in this post-mechanical world. Which is perhaps what is happening and all that needs to said. In which case this book may be superfluous, or simply entertaining. Which could be for the best.

The narrator, who perceived even the spelling of ficracopra as well as its pronunciation in a dream, is not however afraid of writing the word. He believes that, even when it comes to a mother-tongue or tongues, there are intimations which reach before and beyond what any mortal language or theory can describe or explain. But the languages of poetry and colloquial speech, however divided are the cultures, remain potentially able to transcend the ancient and modern languages of rigorous thought, which he takes as delusions of intellectual grandeur and pride.

 
Thus 
      in philosophy, 
as in speculative science and in critical thought, 
      as well as to their antecedents 
                          in theology 
                          and magic, 
                          grammar, 
                          logic and rhetoric, 
                          and all such artificial divisions of thought, 
                          he sees nothing 
                          but the occult tendency of the educated mind 
                          to give up the reading of its feelings, 
                          and the reading of the world, 
                          for the belief in 
                          literal knowledge. 

And having written these words, which go so far beyond the prerogative of a narrator, he wonders what inspiration or ambition has befallen him as he prepares to translate or to concoct whatever is to follow.

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practical consequence