Return to Neveryon: The Complete Series by Samuel R. Delany

Author:Samuel R. Delany
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504048293
Publisher: Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy
Published: 2017-07-27T00:00:00+00:00

Appendix A: The Culhar’ Correspondence

[The Neveryón tales, of which Neveryóna (‘The Tale of Signs and Cities’) is the sixth, are based on an ancient text of approximately 900 words known as the Culhar’ Fragment or, sometimes, the Missolonghi Codex, which has been found translated into numerous ancient languages. Because of the Culhar’s incomplete nature as well as its geographical dissemination among so many cultures, it has been difficult to assign an even reasonably indisputable origin to it, either as to date, land, or language of composition. In 1974, however, a comparative retranslation of the text from the various languages in which various versions have been found was presented by a young, black, American scholar, K. Leslie Steiner, along with an extensive commentary. Steiner’s work is notable not only for its linguistic interest but also because of its mathematical side. The first collection of tales (Tales of Nevèrÿon, Samuel R. Delany, Bantam Books; New York, 1979) was clearly in dialogue with Steiner’s findings. That volume concluded with an Appendix, written by archeologist S. L Kermit, giving a general review of the Culhar’s history as well as the thrusts of both Steiner’s mathematical and interpretive work. Among the responses to both the tales and the appended monograph, one, addressed to Kermit, seems worth publishing (en appendice) along with the engendered correspondence, for the readers of the present (or indeed the absent) text.]

New Haven

February 1981

To S. L. Kermit:

I have just read your comments on the Culhar’, and Steiner’s translation of same, and I feel that some remarks are in order.

I have checked the literature, and the Appendix to Delany’s work seems to be your first foray into archeology or text redaction (unless you are the S. Kermit who wrote the annotations to the most recent edition of Dee’s Necronomicon, in which case my congratulations; it was a solid piece of work). I would suggest that before you make another attempt you learn something about the topics you discuss. Or rather, learn something more; you’re obviously not ignorant, but your knowledge fails you at a number of points. Some examples follow (page numbers from the current edition of Tales of Nevèrÿon, London and Hanover, 1993).

p. 247: ‘Proto-Latin.’ I haven’t any idea what you are referring to, unless it be archaic Latin. The prefix ‘proto’ is used to refer to reconstructions of early stages of languages, ‘early’ here being sometime before those languages were reduced to writing. Thus, you can’t have a text of a proto-language. If you do, it is an attested language, and no longer a construct. The proto-language which is the postulated ancestor of Latin is referred to either as proto-Italic or proto-Italo-Celtic, depending on your theoretical bias.

p. 247: ‘…4,500 B.C., or even 5,000 B.C., which put it [the Culhar’ Fragment] practically inside the muzzy boundaries of the neolithic revolution.’ The two scholars I asked agreed that the neolithic period was roughly 6500 B.C.,–3000 B.C. Thus your dates are about as solidly neolithic as is possible.

p. 248: You mention that Blegan found a Greek version [of the Culhar’] in the fourth level down at Hissarlik, i.

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