BIENVENIDO, CENITI !
or
THE GREEN GRASSHOPPER
Introduced by Pietro Kennedy
“Never overlook the obvious” – that would be a good maxim in detective work, whether we are searching for a
serial killer or a serial technique. My colleagues at the Ofterdingen Gesellschaft have been looking high and
low these many months for our former editor – in - chief, Peter Ceniti – in parallel universes, in the remote future,
in the distant past – while, all along, he has been a short train ride away, having escaped, with the elegance and
economy for which he is known, to the Long Island beach house of his youthful summers, and to the rich vault of
memories and melodies he found waiting there.
In truth it was the merest chance that led me to this discovery: I was on my way to a kind of hybrid activity
scheduled for last weekend in the Hamptons, an informal conference in the open air where musicological
opinions could be exchanged in the context of a softball game / brewfest. (I keenly regret that, thanks to my
“fortunate detour,” I wound up missing the fun!) Exiting the expressway, preparing to turn onto the last long
road along the south shore, I was reminded of an earlier party from happier times at Ceniti’s summer cottage on
the north shore, facing the Long Island Sound. Was I overcome with nostalgia for my lost comrade, or gripped
by a mysterious premonition? I turned left instead of right, and headed through the level fields of corn toward
that desolate shore.
Arriving at the bungalow I found that the door was ajar (which is not the same thing, interestingly, as finding that
the jar was a door - let us be clear!) : I entered and quickly surmised I was alone. Ceniti’s habitual tidiness made it
difficult to ascertain how recently the place had been occupied: his coffee mugs were neatly stacked, his
swimming trunks hung on a clothes – line in the sun, mesh – outward.
But at the scholar’s desk I was rewarded beyond what I had dared to hope for. There, in a neat stack, I
discovered what I believe to be the missing pages from the controversial Secret Notebook of Heinrich von
Ofterdingen, allegedly torn out and confiscated by our erstwhile leader.
I will leave to others the task of re-evaluating the Ceiti / Ofterdingen relationship in light of this finding; I
suspect the popular opinion will be that these papers were excised because they indicate too clearly the
authorship of Ceniti, while the “poetic conceit” of Ofterdingen seems virtually forgotten.
My efforts instead will be directed to the explication and eventual presentation of the musical sketches I found
alongside Ceniti’s notes on the same beach house desk. These consist of five large, unbound sheets of
manuscript paper with hastily written motives and chords as well as indecipherable scribblings. No particular
order seems indicated, while the provenance of the music would have been impossible to ascertain were it not for
the presence, on the shelf above the desk, of a number of large, bound musical scores. These proved to be the
oratorios Ceniti composed many years ago at the start of his career – ambitious, cumbersome works in which
the seeds of the artist’s later expression are first found. The pages, yellowed with age, contain frequent
markings made by a conductor, and on one of the inside covers there even appears what seems to be a list of deli
– sandwich orders, doubtless intended to refresh the performers during a rehearsal break. On that same shelf I
also discovered a number of books – mostly of the sci-fi / fantasy type, and scores by other composers,
including two neglected masterpieces of 19th century opera: The Barber of Bagdad by Peter Cornelius and
Berlioz’s Benveuto Cellini, and, most importantly, the 4th, 7th and 9th symphonies of Cenit's childhood idol,
Anton Bruckner, along with Schoenberg's Gurrelieder and Verklarte Nacht. A collection of DVDs of Star
Trek, the original television series, completes the catalogue of my findings.
It became possible to trace the thematic sketches on the manuscript paper to their origin in the early works: this
provided a chronology to the sketches, and that, coupled with Ceniti’s ruminations on “stream of
consciousness” technique, gave me the idea of elaborating the material into a string sextet upon which I am
currently working, which I hope to present by summer’s end, and which I call The Green Grasshopper, for
reasons the ensuing text will make clear, though I will mention here that the choice of six performers can be
understood as representing the six legs of an insect, while the score I am preparing will utilize four colors, with
blue indicating thematic material derived from Ceniti's works, green for Star Trek themes, red for Bruckner and
Schoenberg, and black for non - thematic material.
The form of this single movement work is sure to be unique. To the uninitiated it will seem a panorama of
changing ideas, a free, musical stream of consciousness, wherein a lucid progression of emotional states reigns in
place of intellectual development. So much is to be expected from a familiarity with all the quasi – improvisatory
Ofterdingen phenomena. But to the careful listener a hidden level of meaning will be discerned, directing the
flow of melody: the score will present the themes of Ceniti’s youthful works in the order of their appearance in
the world – thus the form will amount to a glimpse, as it were in “fast – forward,” of the artist’s evolving musical
imagination. Star Trek aficionados will also discover, melted into the musical discourse, certain melodies
conceived for that show by Alexander Courage, along with quotations and transformations of the Bruckner
and Schoenberg works. It goes without saying that, if the music has any worth, the private allusions are
unnecessary to its enjoyment, though there is a special "double pleasure" that arises from the perception of
both autonomous meaning and coded significance. And whereas, with a traditional work, original themes are
arranged in conventional forms, here the opposite is true: it is the musical material that is derivative, while the
originality arises from their novel arrangement.
Inevitably such a task involves the arranger in problems of stylistic incongruities. I am currently struggling with
this matter; my tentative solution is as follows: reaching a particularly intractable passage, I lay down my pen,
repair to my colleague’s well furnished kitchen and imbibe a cooling draught of smooth ale, or perhaps one of
those little “wine – coolers” nestled on the refrigerator door. Returning to my work I find the contrapuntal lines
have blurred, the harmonies have melted, the timbres have dissolved into one great, fuzzy ur-sound…I shrug, and I
turn the page.
The reader will understand, I trust, my reasons for remaining in the Ceniti bungalow these past few weeks: I do
not wish to disturb the manuscripts he has left, or in any way risk upsetting his probably fragile metal health;
above all, I hope to catch him by surprise one fine day as he strolls in (I imagine) sporting a broad sombrero, a
fishing pole over his shoulder. In the meantime the view is grand, all the beds are comfortable, and in an extra
refrigerator located in the basement there’s plenty more beer. It’s almost as if he was expecting me.
Here follows the text of the “Missing Pages”.
Baiting Hollow! The place seems smaller now that I’m grown, but otherwise unchanged except for the shifting
of sand about the jetties and the work of winter storms on the bluffs. Exquisite pale pebbles still glisten in the
shore– foam where the sky bends down to meet the sea, and the black cormorants still perch on boulders (but
this must be another generation!) , spreading their wings to dry in the air. That shell lying there reminds me of
something I read long ago, how crustaceans secrete calciferous matter continuously, in widening spirals, until the
moment of death; and I think: my fitful, darkly motivated secretions (I’m talking about my musical and scholarly
publications) project an invisible, spiral form, as the familiar themes are periodically enriched by accumulated
experience, or is it that experience grants us a deeper appreciation of what the familiar has always possessed?
Sitting here on this bleached log as I did for so many summers, I find my thoughts drifting like seaweed; the
innocent impressions of the child become confused with the observations of the youthful poet, and leitmotifs
from Star Trek mingle with melodies of works I’ve nearly forgotten writing. In this still space of heat and haze it
is time that dances: I confront my sundry selves in many mirrors, and what I had thought to be progress, a
shedding of skins, reveals itself as spiral loops in a single shell that is my life.
I’ve come to realize I am immeasurably more complex a being than I used to think I was: this pleases me most of the
time (except, for example, when I am filing my tax returns trying to figure out how many dependents to claim).
There’s my nature – all those atavistic instincts I can conveniently blame for my lapses in behavior, and then, of
course, there’s my nurture – my family, the books I’ve read (like A Voyage to Arcturas and Perelandra and even
The Dreamquest of Unknown Kadath, and of course Magic Mountain), the pedagogues and prelates, not to
mention my memory of being thrown out trying to steal third base in a Little League game with a teammate
already occupying that spot.
There’s also a fairly good chance (as I’ve come to see things) that I possess an immortal soul, and this
complicates everything since, in addition to being the product of my genes and my environment, there’s the
possibility that my actions in previous lifetimes have predisposed me in ways I’m unaware of so that even when I
think I’m choosing freely I’m the prisoner of my karma.
I short, I’ve evolved a typically Modernist, “fractured” view of the self: I am the sum of my competing voices: as I
said, an infinitely more complex situation than I used to imagine. Not that I’ve actually read much Joyce or
Kafka (God forbid!). But the form you might notice unfolding here which could be described as “stream of
consciousness” or “calculated collage” or “free association” or perhaps “dreamy discontinuity” arises, in any
event, from the method of simply jotting down thoughts s they pop into my head.
So like some crusty sea creature I find myself traversing another cycle, winding another loop in my spiral, by
which I mean that I’ve returned to the summer shores of my youth and that, returning, I’ve been flooded with
remembrances, and that, remembering, I’m driven to rework the old themes, reflecting upon them over time,
elaborating, stylizing, or perhaps instead crystallizing, distilling to essential form, or maybe just regurgitating,
and, to be honest, I lack the objectivity to determine whether this is wisdom or folly, whether I’ve become the
sage who in stillness gathers the universe to himself, or a persistent parrot stuck in a loop of mindless
repetitions. And so I waver between euphoria and stultifying malaise.
Needless to say, a little feedback would be appreciated, but nobody gives a damn about my work; I’ve learned
to live with that, consoling myself with the thought that outer success would only have tempted me to sell out
(though to whom, I’ve no idea) long ago, whereas the practice of art as “die Erhebung des Menschen uber sich
Selbst” – Novalis’ term, “the transformation of man over himself” – bears its own austere rewards. Still I’m
human, you know? and am chronically plagued by hopeful fantasies of certain colleagues nodding in
approbation at my subtleties, or of faceless scholars of international repute scribbling enthusiastic requests for
copies of this or that score, or of the barber down the street (who stares balefully through the glass at me each
morning since our “misunderstanding” some years ago) – the barber or the young woman at the Pharmacy
counter smiling at the recognition of my name (“I was listening to the radio the other day and I heard…”).
But you’re wondering whether I’ve become unhinged, and perhaps even if, in these frank utterances I am
unwittingly confessing to the manufacture of the entire Ofterdingen phenomenon. To such questionings I
respond with a simple, direct maybe, acknowledging at the same time that it was imprudent to steal third under the
circumstances, but that I desired to demonstrate to my coach a degree of independent thought, not to mention
a certain dramatic flair. You must admit, in any case, it was the last thing the opposition was expecting.
Meanwhile there are other instances of spiral formations as with the resonant wave – form of a ringing bell
(whose subtle a-periodicities produce a palpable halo of partials) or in the revolution of certain planets about
their suns. Rigid periodicity, like rigid symmetry, is lifeless, as epitomized by the demeanor of a certain colleague
of many years whose ridiculous bow-tie spreads its wings beneath the ridged, inverted pyramid of his chin as he
glides aloofly through the halls of academia, masking beneath the distracted air of the intellectual a dark
jealousy, a secret loathing for me…
To be fair, though, for every trauma I suffered as a child I probably inflicted two: I really shouldn’t have said
those things to the chubby girl in my biology class – for all I know she never recovered, and while I wasn’t directly
responsible for that car spinning out and banging off the divider on the bridge that rainy morning, I really should
have stopped to see if the driver was hurt, especially since, a moment before the accident, I may have swerved a
tiny bit into her lane.
The problem is my perceptions and actions are influenced by a disproportionate love for a single person on
whose account I am willing to mistreat all others. I am ashamed of this, knowing it’s wrong, but seem powerless to
improve my condition. So I wind up despising as well the object of my affections, until in the end I only wish to
be apart. But of course this is impossible since, as you must have guessed, it is my self whom I love so dearly.
But those pebbles seemed to offer some hope: cool and quiet, smooth like flattened eggs from centuries of
watery caresses, shot through with mesmerizing dark lines and spots, like miniature modern art, frozen images of
hot flowing pre-historic juices cooled, coalesced, crystallized. Escape! (I remember thinking) - escape from
symmetry (farewell, Professor Bow-tie!) and subjectivity (farewell, my selves, my loves!) to something clean and
free, random and right, a nugget of infinite spirit in compact, finite form.
…I walk the beach as I did in my childhood,
Then unknowning, now abandoning art,
Never thinking, never feeling, but being,
Dreaming like a plum – colored stone
Whose vast interior design is simple
Yearning forging form…
Was it exciting, liberating, standing on the shore with the sun on my back, seeing into those stones? Certainly.
Did it yield much poetry and music? Indisputably. Did I find in this pantheistic epiphany the justification for a
looser moral code? - Did I make the whole damn thing up to be able to act like a jerk with a free conscience?
Possibly.
Which would explain why I’m back here, where I began, wondering: what is the opposite of a spiral? The image
of concentric circles swirling inward to infinitesimality, the metaphysical flush of a toilet. But with Heinrich von
Ofterdingen I have some hope. With him I can hope to climb out from myself while remaining a man. The beauty
of his world gives me the spiritual space to breathe - the space I've been fighting all my life for - in the face of
pessimism, modernism, you-name-it-ism - as well, it calls our past to judgment and invites change, calls me back to
confront my deeds and my doings, here at Baiting Hollow, the point of intersection between Ofterdingen's
and the real world, the place where what is converges with all that might be.
Oh magical beach, oh radiant inner vision! A pale green grasshopper appears before me, a motionless enigma,
seeming to express, in his graceful equipose, all my experiences, all my contemplation, distilled to fluent, elegant
form, leading me to wonder: from the shambles of my life, scattered about me on this beach, may it be that love
one day shall mount?