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

[Robin Landseadel]

Absolutely spot-on.

The potential links work outward from the words at the center. What is  
that poor sailor's sick transmission of a W.A.S.T.E. franked envelop  
to Oedipa if not a deeper resonance of the sadness inherent in the  
name "Tristero"/"Trystero"? I also think of the darkness associated  
with the name, it's linking to the fate of forever being on the losing  
end of the deal, stuck with all those poor lost sheep, the preterite.  
And the connection you make here shows just how "literary" Tristero is  
in it's internal reference to Ovid's Tristia.

I'd say you may have hit the center of the target.

On Jul 11, 2009, at 5:24 PM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> 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