CoL49 (6) Either ... or ...

[Dave Monroe]

On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 3:02 PM, Robin
Landseadel<robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> Forget historical pattern—think high magic/low puns. The rules of the game
> here are not that of history, but of poetry. Make a chart, place the word
> "Tristero"/"Trystero" in the center and then run words out of that center
> like spokes in a wheel, words that relate because of similarity of sound or
> spelling, other words evoked by the words "Tristero"/"Trystero". There's
> "Tryst," "Triste", "Trieste." Nick Drake's couplet from Fruit Tree comes to
> mind, as does the town of Trieste, that place that gnostically inspired
> Rilke ...

Ovid, Tristia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tristia
http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ovid.html
http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Ovidexilehome.htm

>From Bernhard Siegert, Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal
System (Trans. Kevin Repp.  Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1999), Ch. 1,
"An Epoch of the Postal System," pp. 4-19:

... the use of the cursus publicus was reserved exclusively for the
emperor and the provincial governors.  And even these officials had to
present a certificate issued by the emperor or the praetorian prefect
(later also by the magister officium) in order to gain access to the
medium of the empire.  'People' did not communicate through the postal
system; on the contrary, the postal system communicated through people
....  In order to curb extensive corruption in the imperial postal
system, which always was tantamount to conspiracy against the empire,
Diocletian created an imperial secret service, the scola agentum in
rebus, and placed the postal administration under its authority.
Eventually, under Theodosius and Honorius, the use of the postal
system by private persons was even punished by death.  Since the
network of the cursus publicus was coextensive with the orbis
terrarum, banishment to Pontus meant being transported beyond the
limes of the world for Ovid.  While the Tristia are laments over the
loss of postal connections, the Epistulae ex Ponto use the medium of
literature to decry the catastrophe in the postal system.
  Postal systems are instrumenta regni.....  (pp. 6-7)

http://www.sup.org/book.cgi?isbn=0804732388
http://books.google.com/books?id=bz_1hEm_y84C