The Darkness Within: First-person Speakers and the Unrepresentable

The Darkness Within: First-person Speakers
and the Unrepresentable*
Päivi M. Mehtonen
lf there is union of all the facu lties, the soul cannot communicate the
fact, even if it so desires (when actually experiencing it, I mean): if it
can communicate it, then it is not a union.1
He lies not who speaks of unity with images, dreams and faces-he who
stutters of unity.2
Many genres that favor first-person narration are described, somewhat
routinely, as presenti ng a first-person speaker even if that same agent
may also be the (only) receiver of the utterance. To this group belong
solitary speeches or i ntrapersonal communication such as the private
diary, talking to oneself or sub-voca l i zing, (internal) praying or repeating
what one hears-as weil as I i terature that simulates or parodies these
Situations and speeches, that is, adopts aspects of „solitary“ d iscourse i n
texts addressed to a n audience. Since God and other spiritual beings have
been unfashionable addressees i n secular modern communication models,
the rough scheme the speaker „1“-the message-the receiver „/“ (or an
“ I – I “ model) has been suggested as a way of describing such private discourses
that do not add to the information we a l ready have but serve
other functions.3 This paradoxical scheme seems particularly interesting
with respect to medieval, early modern and modern texts where the
fi rst-person speakers often emphasize the obscurity of the material that
they-and they alone-have experienced, or their l i m ited ski l l s or understandi
ng in approaching it.
This article is part of my I arger study A Quest for Abstract Literature: Medievalism
and Mysticism, funded by the Academy of Finland (project 1 25257).
The Life of the Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus, i n The Complete Works, vol. 1, trans.
and ed. Allison Peers (London: Burns & Oates, 2002}, 105.
Martin Buber, Ekstatische Konfessionen, changed new edition (orig. 1909; Leipzig:
Insel -Verlag, 1921}. 21 .
E.g., Yuri M. Lotman, „Autocommunication: ‚I‘ and ‚Other‘ as Addressees,“ i n Universe
of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Cu/ture, trans. Ann Shukman (Bioomington,
I N : lnd iana Un iversity Press, 1 990), 20-35, esp. 22.
FIRST -PERSON SPEAKERS AND THE UNREPRESENTABLE 1 7 3
Such genres-to be d i scussed in more detai I in the second part of the
article-do not fit weil into the influential schema underlying Cicero’s
discussion on speaking weil and obscuritas in Oe inventione (c. 84 BCE), a
small treatise on rhetorical invention later embell ished by medieval
commentators. Cicero takes up an (already then) old topic as he explores
the d i fferent kinds of court cases. The obscure case, genus obscurum, is
one “ i n which either the aud itors are slow of wit, or the case involves
matters which are rather difficult to grasp.“4 The communication model
implied by this Observation is strikingly minimalist as it mentions only
the message itself (or the d i fficu lty of „things“) and the receiver-not the
speaker-as possible sources of obscurity. This ideal of a good speaker
served the aims of public speech and Roman education, but d i d not work
quite as weil in the later Christian culture of humilitas and its l iterary
forms. ln the medieval commentaries on Oe inventione, the short-comings
in the communication model were augmented and the classical myth
of the perfect speaker d iscredited. Commentators from Victorinus and
G r i l l ius in the fourth and fifth centuries to Thierry of Chartres in the
twelfth century added a third component of obscurity: imbecillitas Joquentis,
that is, speakers who do not understand what they are saying.s
Such speakers may curtai I a presentation excessively, fal l into inchoate
verbosity or offer extremely convol uted arguments.
Although obscurity is treated as a vice i n these discussions, many authoritative
writers participated in cultivating it as a v i rtue. This is not
just the legacy of the early Christi an confessional practices-Sa int Augustine
famously excavating the „dark areas“ of memory images in the mind
(e.g., Confessiones, Book 1 0);6 such themes and forms of Iiterature also
Cicero, Oe inventione. Oe optimo genere oratorum. Topica, trans. H. M. Hubbell
(194 7 ; London: Heinemann and Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1 993), 1 1 5 20
Thierry of Chartres, Comm. S. Oe inv. 1 . 1 5.20, in The Latin Rhetorical Commentaries,
ed. K. M. Fredborg (Toronto: Pontifical I nstitute of Mediaeval Studies,
1 988), 1 1 0. See Päivi M. Mehtonen, Obscure Language, Unclear Literature (Helsinki:
The Finnish Academy of Seiences and Letters, 2003), 77-79, for a discussion
of the other mentioned sources.
On the vaguer concepts of „self“ and „identity,“ see, for instance, Roy Porter, ed.,
Rewriting the Setr.- Histories from the Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1 997). l t
has been suggested that t h e early Middle Ages „i ntroduced the inwardness of
radical reflexivity“ (Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern
ldentity [Cambridge: Cambridge Un iversity Press, 1989]. 1 3 1 ) ; and that the medieval
confessional practices supported strong „techniques of the self“ as individual
sinners were required to employ various means of publicizing their inner
1 7 4 PA lVI M . MEHTONEN
leaned on classical topoi in presenting the speaking consciousness and
body.l Moreover, the notion of a „sender I – receiver I“ communication is
an i nteresting case within the obscuritas tradition. Consider: a vague
prayer, not understood by the one who prays? An obscure diary. not
grasped by the d i arist him or herself? l ndeed, this is in a nutshell a feature
not uncommon i n mystical I iterature and the modern novel was i n fluenced
by i t (from Robert Musi l to Samuel Beckett). W h i l e genuinely
solitary and personal voices remain private and unshared i n real life, I
w i l l suggest that much fi rst-person I iterature that balances between narrative
and non-narrative forms (e.g., meditative essays, „descriptions“ of
an inner state, and fiction that adopts such forms) i n fact emu lates such
“ I – I “ communication.
The I inks between first-person speech and difficult or obscure language
also exist i n modern theory {without references to medieval or
early modern material). Yuri Lotman’s discussion of „autocommunication“
or „1-1“ system is an extension and critique of an old-school commun
ication model that assumed, according to Lotman, that before the act
of communication there exists information or a message known to „me“
(the sender) and not to „you“ (the receiver) . However, in autocommunication
the subject is transmitting a message to itself. Such communication
is at work, for instance, in diary jottings {„which are made not i n
order t o remember certa i n things but t o elucidate the writer’s inner
state“), a prayer,s o r a second reading of a fam i l iar text. ln all these cases,
the message is reformulated and acquires new meani ngs i n the process.
Particularly i nteresting here is Lotman’s Observation that such autocommunication
often tends to be condensed and difficult, even cryptographic,
as it does not have to be explained i n detai l but may sti l l foster a
sense of individual existence and self-discovery .9 Li kewise, some l i n –
thoughts and desires (Foucault, di scussed i n Kim Atkins, ed., Se/fand Sut:ljectivity
[Oxford: B l ackwell, 2005]. 208). Such views are stimulating but also so general
that they do not lend themselves to the exploration of the ulti mate difficulty and
construction of the textual I, in its individual occasions and their diverse practices.
See, for example, Judith Perkins, The Suffering Self.· Pain and Narrative
Representation in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1 995).
Although a prayer „may be thought of as a message to a n external powerful force
rather than a message to oneself,“ it is discussed by Lotman as an „1-1“ communication.
lt does not require vocalization to be communicated and i t does not add to
the information we already have; its functions serve other ends (Lotman, „Autocommunication.“
30).
Lotman, „Autocommunication,“ 20-2 1 , 32.
FIRST -PERSON SPEAKERS AND THE UNREPRESENT ABLE 175
guists have suggested that related phenomena such a s i ntrapersonal
communication or inner speech are orten radically e l l iptic; inner speech
„does not possess any separate, id iosyncratic, logical and grammatical
structure.“10
These features lend themselves readily to styli zation in what could be
called pseudo-autocommunication, which emulates the unstructured and
unclear features of „private“ discourse even when it is addressed to an
audience. ln the Middle Ages to such difficult and obscure material, in
both Cicero’s and Lotman’s sense, belonged the attempts to speak of
spiritual inner states that were known to the speaker alone but were under
strong cultural and communal pressure to be made public for the
benefit of a religious or other cause (to meet, for instance, the demand
for hagiographic heroes or role models). Much early mystical I iterature
was close to obscure oral speech and “ I – I “ communication whereas in the
later Middle Ages and early modern period the forms of first-person narration
had gone through a process of letterarizzazione, becoming established
topoi and devices of a particular poetics.1 1 While focusing strictly
on first-person narration-and leaving aside such vaguer concepts as
„self“ or „subject“-this essay takes l i berty in detecting evolving forms
and manifestations of obscure presentation i n both medieval and modern
material, the latter d i rectly influenced by the former.
The first part of this chapter i l lustrates cases of the „framed 1,“ where
the first-person voice is typically presented speaking in d i rect d iscourse
embedded in a narrative frame. The secend part then discusses more
10 Roman Jakobson, „The Sound Shape of Language,“ i n Selected Writings V I I I (Berlin:
Mouton de Gruyter, 1987), 82. See H. Porter Abbott’s definition of (Samuel
Beckett’s) autography or autographical reading as responding to „wming not as a
mode of recovery or reconstruction or even fictionalizing of the past but as a
mode of action taken in the moment of writing“ (Becketc Writing Becketc: The Author
in the Autograph [lthaca: Cornell Un1vers1ty Press 1 996), x). Such prose invites
the readertothink of autobiography, yet repeatedly sabotages both the narrative
character and historical authority of autobiography (2, 1 1 ).
11 This is vast claim that cannot be documented in the limited space available here.
For related work with different materials, see Paivi M. Mehtonen, „The Apophatic
F i rst-Person Speaker in Eckhart’s Sermons,‘ i n Modes of Aucharship in the Middle
Ages, ed. Slavica Rankovic et al. (Toronto: The Pontifical I nstitute for Mediaeval
Studies Press, 2012), 79-96; and eadem. „Speak Fiction: Rhetorical Fabrication of
Narrative in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Hiscoria regum Bricannie.“ 1n Medieval Narratives
Between History and Fiction: From che Centre co che Periphery of Europe, c.
7 700-7400, ed. Panagiotis A. Agapitos and Lars Boje Mortensen (Copenhagen:
Museum Tusculanum Press, 201 2), 81-101.
1 76 PAIVI M. MEHTONEN
complex examples of the „unframed 1,“ where the fi rst-person narration-
stressing the d i fficulty of its construction-dominates the text. The
seemingly small ward ego-ich-/ thus evokes a bundle of issues regarding
the content, form and the speaker in a text, from the allegedly difficult
materia to the self-proclaimed imbecillitas loquentis. How does the (represented)
mind think of and express itself and its inner states? What is
„I“ and how did it become such?
The Framed “ I „: lnterior and Exterior Action
ln early and high medieval lang narrative literature-from romance to
mystica I texts-the first-person speech is often framed as d i rect discourse
embedded i n a third-person (or combined third and first-person)
context. There is a significant division of work in romance structure: in
the embedded direct d iscourse the first-person narration works as a medium
for handling vaguer materials of inner action, fantasy and vision
than are allowed in the frame narrative. However, even in the frame narrative
the “ I “ can be an elusive category. l n the historical romance, a shift
of narrator may serve as a stylistic effect when the writer is processing
and interpolating pre-existing material. For instance, in Geoffrey of
Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (Historia regum Britanniae, c.
1 1 35-1 1 38), the main teller is referred to with „1,“ „Geoffrey of Monmouth,“
and „he.“ The seemingly simple and pseudo-chronological plot
offers various cases of first-person narration, sometimes i nterrupted
with epic interventions in the third person .
. . . as I said … Geoffrey of Monmouth will not be silent even about this [the adulteraus
relation of Mordred, king Arthur’s nephew, with Queen Ganhumara).
most noble earl, but,just as he found it written in the Brittsh book and heard
from Walter of Oxford, a man very familiar with many histories, he will teil, i n
h i s poor style, but briefly, o f the battles the famous k i n g fought agai nst his
nephew, when he returned to Britain after his victory.lz
12 “ . • . dixi . . . Ne hoc quidem, consul auguste, Galfridus Monemutensis tacebit, sed
ut in praefato Britannico sermone inuenit et a Waltero Oxenefordensi, in multis
historiis peritissimo uiro, audiuit, uili licet stilo, breuiter tamen propalabit, quae
proelia inclitus i l l e rex post uictoriam istam i n Britanniam reuersus cum nepote
suo commiserit“ (Geoffrey of Monmoutn, The History of the Kings of Britain [Oe
gestis Britonum (Historia Regum Britanniae)) , ed. Michael D. Reeve, trans. Neil
Wright [Woodbridge: The Boydeli Press, 2007]. 246-49; emphasis added).
FIRST -PERSON SPEAKERS ANO Tt-E UNREPRESENTABLE 1 7 7
O n the one hand, shifts from the First to the third person may serve
stylistic purposes as when the narrator concedes his own poor or
clear style. On the other, they may follow from the Fact that the
writer is reworking pre-existing material; he may simply Substitute
his own ego for that of his source, or he „inherits“ the First-person
narration with the older materia he is using.13
ln addition to such shifts at the main Ievei of narration, Geoffrey’s Historia
also contains embedded speeches and letters where the characters
speak in the First person. Thus the narrator’s task is to manage two
modes of materia, the (pseudo)historical chronology of the British kings
and the embedded direct speech acts of the characters. For my gradually
evolving argument it is i mportant to observe that it is this Ievei of embedded
speech acts that contains the most fabulous tales, Future tenses,
obscure prophecies and hypothetical events. ln other words, verbatim
speeches, letters or d i alogues introduce present-tense discourse into a
past-tense Frame narrative. Thus the narrator of Geoffrey’s Historia is
only partly reliable when he (repeatedly) mentions that he is using unsophisticated,
brief and clear narration, claiming to omit material that
some of his predecessors have treated „with sufficient prolixity.“14 ln the
Historia, this prolixity and ambiguity is the privi lege of the characters‘
direct discourse. The characters that speak and write di rectly are freer to
produce the kinds of verbal prolixity, lofty style, lies and irrealis narratio
that are unrepresentable in the main narrative of Geoffrey’s history.15
Nowhere is this as obvious as i n Merlin’s obscure prophecies and the
„ambiguity of his words“ (ambiguitas uerborum), which form the Iongest
reported verbatim speech in the work and depict destruction, bloodshed,
new worlds, speaking forests and stones and dragons carrying the naked
giant.
13 Cf. Leo Spitzer, „Note on the Poetic and the Empirical ‚I‘ m Medieval Authors:
Traditio 4 (1946): 4 1 4-22; and Mehtonen, · The Apophatic Fi rst-Person Speaker,“
79-96.
1′ „satis prolixe“ ( The History of the Kings of Britain, 1 5, 4 7, 1 29-30).
15 Irrealis narratio consists of verbalizations of experience that is unrealized „either
because it i s predicated as taking place i n the future or because it is i n some sense
hypothetical.“ Dreams and visions also beleng to the realm of irrealis (unreal)
narration (Suzanne Fleischman, Tense and Narrativity: From Medieval Performance
to Modern Fiction (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990]. 1 04-05, 1 1 2}. ln
Geoffrey’s History, hypothetical sequences of events also occur in speeches reported
indirectly by the narrator, but hardly ever otherwise in the first-level narration.
See Mehtonen „Speak Fiction.“
1 7 8 PA lVI M . MEHTONEN
l n the Middle Ages there were, of course, authoritative models for
such narration in the prophets of the Old Testament or the Book of
Revelation of the New Testament. These were often referred to in medieval
commentaries as prime examples of obscuritas. ln his commentaries
on Ezekiel and Hosea, for instance, Saint Jerome (c. 348-420) uses the
Ciceroni an division of genus obscurum to point out the forms of obscurity
i n the Book of Ezekiel-a text that deals with visions that excite and perturb
the prophet’s imagination: a ball of fire encircled by radiance,
strange creatures half man, half beast, the eating of a scroll. godlessness.
The commentator nonetheless emphasizes that it is the reader’s duty to
atta i n a true awareness of what the things described are in Fact intended
to convey.16 What Jerome does not mention is that the Old Testament
prophets-Ezekiel and Hosea included-are good examples of obscure
Fi rst-person narration and shifting points ofview between “ I “ and „he.“ ln
the Bible, too, fabulous and obscure narration is often the province of the
Fi rst-person singular.
Just as in Merlin’s speech i n Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia, the
First-person speaker is (usually) presented as the sole witness to the narrated
events in religious vision l iterature. Their reporting becomes a sort
of sty lized autocommunication as the “ I “ is not communicating a paraphrasable
narrative of action or a considered message but pieces of
something it attempts (or presents itself as attempting) to decode while
presenting it. For instance, the Frauenmystik of the high Middle Ages often
presents a Frame narrative where somebody-repeatedly-poses the
visionary a question; then the answer (the „content“ of the vision) is presented
in First-person narration, as in this dialogue between Anna von
Munzingen and Eise von Neustadt:
Then the Sister asked her whether she :ould recal l anyone. She answered: “ I
cannot even recal l myself weil. I don’t know where the mind and heart go, except
simply in him. My soul rests in God and knows all thtngs in him, and then I
see the purity of my soul and that it ts without blemish.“ . . . The Sister asked
again what he would Iook like if she saw him with her outer vision. She said:
„He appears as a beautiful and gentle young man, and the room is full of angels
and saints. He sits next to me and Iooks at me compassionately.“17
16 Comm. in Hiez. 13, Praef., CCSL 75:1, 606; Comm. in Osee l.ii. l 6, 1 7 , CCSL 76, 29.
17 „Da fragte sie die Schwester, ob sie dann jemands gedenken könnte. Da sprach
sie: ‚Ich kann dann meiner selbst nicht gut gedenken. Wohin Sinn oder Herz
komme, als allein in ihn, das weiß ich nicht. Meine Seele legt sich dann in Gott und
weiß alle Dinge i n ihm, und dann sehe ich die Lauterkeit meiner Seele und daß sie
ohneale Flecken ist‘ . . . Da fragte wieder die Schwester, wie der wäre, den sie mit
außerem Gesicht sähe. Da sprach sie: ‚Er erscheint wie ein schöner liebreicher
Fi RST -PERSON SPEAKERS ANO THE UNREPRESENTABLE 1 79
Here the a l leged uncertainty and hesitation of the speaker i s a n important
part of the message, together with the „plot“ of the vision.
Whereas the frame narrative focuses on the vita exterior of the characters
or their communities, the vita interior as presented by the first-person
narrators bustles with the fuzzier activity of a llegedly ineffable visions,
obscure fantasies and (either physical or intellectual) difficulties i n
describing these. This is evident i n the following report by Alpais oF Cudot
( 1 1 50-1 2 1 1 ), embedded in the „editor’s“ narrative frame of her I i Fe;
the speaker proceeds repetitively i n the process of seeing inner things.
But it seems to me that I report to you the visions I see i n my repose as happening
i n the manner I report them. But what they refer to or what they mean
or what most of them want and whether they have occurred . . . or been established
in the manner or order in which they appear to me to have occurred or
been established, this I do not know wei l . But whatever the truth of this thing
may be, this one thing I know, that I am not deceived or deceiving; for what I
say to you, I see as I say it, and I say as I see it. 18
The processes of reporting, experiencing and interpreting in the Firstperson
narration mingle, as if these deeds simultaneously legitimate each
other.
The self-conscious use of such materials and rhetoric deviates from
both ancient and medieval ideals of truthFulness in discourse. l n the old
controversy about whether speeches should be accepted i n historical
writing or not, the negative answer is interesting For a student oF Firstperson
speech: if history explores the sequences oF cause and eFfect-as
for instance the Greek historian Polybius (c. 200- 1 1 8 B.C.E.) claimed it
should-then speeches should be excluded from historical accounts because
they are obviously invented, displays of the historian’s oratorical
Jungling, und die Kammer wird voll von Engeln und Heiligen. Er sitzt bei mir und
sieht mich gar gutig an‘,“ (Anna von Munzmgen, „Die Chronik der Anna von
Munzingen,“ ed. J. König, Freiburger Diözesan Archiv 1 3 [Freiburg im Breisgau:
Herder, 1 880]. cited in Buber, Ekstatische Konfessionen, 1 05; my translation).
1B „Visiones quidem, quas vobis refero, sicut michi videtur, sie in requie mea fieri
video, sicut eas refero. Set quid pretendant aut quid significent vel quid sibi velint
pl ures earum et utrum eo modo vel ordine fiant … aut administrentur, quomodo
vel ordine michi fieri vel administran videntur, non satis agnosco. Quomodocumque
autem se rei veritas habeat, hoc unum scio, quod nec fallor nec falle, quin ea,
que vobis dico, sie videam sicut et dico, et sie dicam sicut et video“ (Aipais von
Cudot IV.xvii, in El isabeth Stein, ed., Leben und Visionen der Alpais von Cudot
[1 150-1211 ] [Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1995]. 215; my translation).
1 80 PAIVI M. MEHTONEN
skills rather than the transcription of words actually spoken.19 This attitude
was already contested in medieval historical narrative (e.g. Geoffrey
of Monmouth), and in mystical treatises: the First-person narration becomes
an authoritative form for the description of thi ngs seen in visions
and relating to the i nterior person as a space where the narrative rule of
cause and effect does not hold.
First person narration also offered latitude and l i cense for modes of
imagination which were seen as excessive in the traditional education of
the trivium: visions, fantasies and utopias. ln medieval school rhetoric
and arts of poetry. the topic of obscuritas was often mentioned. The aspiring
writer was warned against the pitfalls of vices that ran counter to
the rule of clarity: lying (i.e., excessive fiction), d iscontinuity, inconsistency,
prolixity and obscurity in writing.zo Some of these Features became
virtues and markers of authenticity or spiritual clarity, however, in I i terature
depicting inner states of mind and events that might appear inexplicable
to the speakers themselves.
The examples cited above from the Chronicle of Anna von Munzingen
and the visions of Alpais of Cudot belong to the genre of Gnadenvita and
are fluent in depicting the godhead, yet repetitive to the point of hyperbole
i n expressing the “ I .“ ln other words, not God but the „I“ is the ultimate
unrepresentable. The First-person speaker remains something that
modern textual theory calls „supranarratable“: something that defies
narrative, as for instance in the specifics of highly charged emotional
scenes-or even „the antinarratable“: something that transgresses social
laws or taboos and for that reason remains unspoken. The medieval mystical
„I“ is a similar phenomenon; the proneun is ubiquitous on the surface
of the texts but as soon as one starts focusing on it, it begins to
appear as a repetitive act that teils less about the person or „self“ and
more about the metaphysical quest of a community that acknowledges
the Iimits of language and understanding. This was also pointed out by
later mystics such as Saint Teresa of Avila ( 1 5 1 5-1582): human beings
go about „like silly little shepherd-boys, thinking we are learning to know
something of Thee when the very most we can know amounts to nothing
19 See Eric MacPhai I, „The Plot of History from Antiquity to the Renaissance,“ Journa/
ofthe History of ldeas 62 (2001 ) : 7-8.
20 lohn of Garland, Parisiana poetria 5.301-302, ed. and trans. T. Lawler (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1974); cf. Mehtonen, Obscure Language. 1 03-22.
FIRST -PERSON SPEAKERSAND THE UNREPRESENTABLE 1 8 1
a t a l l , for even in ourselves there are deep secrets which we cannot
fathom.“21
Herein lies an i mportant difference between mysticisms. The written
„I“ in the negative theology of Pseudo-Dionysius, Meister Eckhart or John
of the Cross is „rationalist“ in its methods of disseminating the spiritual
message. Although mystical obscurities, states of unknowing and transcendent
si lences beyond the capacities of human language are constantly
evoked, the writers themselves proceed like scholars and masters of
their topic. When Eckhart preaches the l i mited possi bil ities of human
language to capture spiritual realms in his sermons, the first-person
speakers therein are nevertheless able to muster up coherent (logical
and rhetorical) paradoxes in elegant and uninterrupted narration. The
sublime themes and issues are not narrated as radically interrupting the
speaking „I.“ To put it succinctly, aberration is not among the devices favoured
by these prose writers.
ln the women mystics, states of unknowing that contaminate the very
act of speaking and the (rhetorical) presentation of the imbecillitas loquentis
as a virtue are more common. The language of the excerpt from
the Chronicle of Anna von Munzingen cited above, for example, is lucid
although the passage develops the theme of uncerta inty. The style of the
passage from the visions of Alpais of Cudot l i kewise resonates with the
theme, and is effective even when it is repetitive and tautological. The
later phases of mystical discourse emphasised these aspects even more.
The Unframed I
However clearly I may wish to describe these matters which concern prayer, they
will be very obscure to anyone who has no experience of it.22
Remarkably, the issues of first-person narration and the Iegitimation of
obscure literary forms l i e at the heart of modern medievalism and the
21 „Y andamos aca como unos pastoreillos bobos, que nos parece alcanzamos algo
de Vos, y debe ser tanto como nonada, p􀖰es en nosotros mesmos estan grandes
secretos que no entendem es“ (Teresa of Avila, lnterior Castle 4.2, trans. E. Allison
Peer [New York: Image Bocks, 1989]. 82; Santa Teresa, Las moradas, Colecciön
Austral {1 939; Madrid: Espasa·Calpe, 1985) 4.2, 54).
22 „Per claro que yo quiera decir estas cosas de oraciön, sera bien escuro para quien
no tuviere espiriencia“ (Teresa of Avila [Teresa de Jesus], i n The Life of the Holy
Mother Teresa of Jesus, i n The Campfete Works, vol. 1 , trans. and ed. Allison Peers
[London: Burns & Oates, 2002], 62; Libro de Ia Vida 10.9, ed. Darnase Chicharro,
7th ed. [Catedra: Letras Hispanicas, 1987]. 189).
1 8 2 PAIVI M. MEHTONEN
reception of medieval mysticism in the earl iest avant-garde circles of the
1 900s in central E urope. Mysticism fits weil with the agenda of anti-realism
and the search for an anti-Cartesian expression of inner states, as
part of the critical scrutiny of language (Sprachkritik) and linguistic experimentation.
The edition of Meister Eckhart’s texts ( 1 903) by the cultural
critic and anarchist Gustav Landauer, for instance, and the
anthology of mystical texts ( 1 909) published by the Jewish philosopher
Martin Buber, phi losopher or theologian of secularism, were related to
such projects near the circles of early German-speaking expressionism.
Buber presents his edition and translation of Ekstatische Konfessionen
(Ecstatic Confessions), which includes nany chapters on woman mystics
from H ildegard of Bi ngen to Teresa of Avila and Anna Katharina Emmerich,
as bringing tagether „entirely forgotten documents“ and the
Middle Ages are weil represented by the mostly fi rst-person texts of the
German, ltalian, English, Swedish, Dutch and Spanish mystics. These
writers, says Buber, undertake „a work on the impossible, a creation in
the dark.“23 Buber’s interest stemmed from Jewish mystical Iiterature
(Hassidism) as weil as contemporary Austrian-German Sprachkritik (as
exemplified in the work of Fritz Mauthner and Buber’s good friend Landauer);
in his doctoral dissertation of 1 904 Buber had addressed the
problern of ind ividuation in Nikolaus of Cusa and Jakob Böhme, late medieval
and early modern thi nkers and mystics who had, according to
Buber, founded the new metaphysics of the individual.
The anti-realist and anti-narrative ethos ernerging from this background
and pre-Freudian empirieist psychology at the turn of the century
kindled an interest in Europe in old narrative forms of presenting
the “ 1 .“24 The vast Iiterature of medieval and early modern inner visions
represented a combination of inwardness and the supernatural (or hy·
pernatural), without the burden of coherent plots or detailed description
23 „eine Arbeit am Unmöglichen, eine Schöpfung im Dunkel“ (Buber, Ekstatische
Konfessionen. 2 1 ) .
2′ Judith Ryan has explored the i nfluence of empirieist psychology a n d captures weil
its literary consequences (with reference to later writers such as Franz Kafka.
Gertrude Stein and Robert Musil): “ i n response to the empiricists‘ dissolution of
familiar categories of thought, they invent new l i nguistic techniques and experi·
ment with new literary structures. lf there is no subject in the conventional [i.e.
post-Cartesian] sense, there can be no conventional language; similarly, if there i s
n o self, there can be n o traditional plot, n o familiar character development“ ( The
Va nishing Sutiject: Early Psychology and Literary Modernism [Chicago: The Univer·
sity ofChicago Press, 1991). 3).
FIRST -PERSON SPEAKERSAND THE UNREPRESENTABLE 1 8 3
o f events and places. For i nstance, i n the introduction to the Ekstatische
Konfessionen, Buber claims that the mystic’s „creation in the dark“ is not
a divi nely ordered act of unity but consists of something more immanent
and valuable: the utterances of a singular human being transmitted in
language to another human being. No trans-human unity legitimates
these speeches: they are unique and unified in themselves. l n the text of a
mystic we simply receive „the word of the 1 . „25 Conscious that the mystical
texts were seldom actually written by the speaking „I,“ the early
Buber-anticipating his later dialogic phi lo-sophy-emphasizes the linguistic
and i ntersubjective nature of this transm ission.
This early twentieth-century reception of medieval and modern mysticism
and appreciation of the ways it cherishes the unrepresentable (or
its „attempt to say the u nsayable“26) i nfluenced European linguistic
I iterature in the decades to come; apart from German l iterature, the
works of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett are eminent examples.27 The
late medieval and early modern mystical discourses provided Beckett,
especially, with models of autocommunication for further styl ization. To
the forms of the „framed I,“ presented in the first part of this essay, must
be added influential examples of an „unframed I “ where the uncerta inty
and obscurity of the first-person speaker becomes the dominant mode.
Unspeakers
„I am strai n ing every nerve, sisters, to explain to you this operation of
Iove, yet I do not know any way of doing so.“28 Resembling a Beckettian
sentence in its bareness and negation, this sentence could have been
25 „das Wort des Ich“ (Buber, Ekstatische Konfessionen, 6).
26 „Versuch, das Unsagbare zu sagen“ (Buber, Ekstatische Konfessionen, 18).
27 For „godless mysticism“ i n German I iterature (Robert Musil, Heinrich Mann, Gerhart
Hauptmann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, etc.), see Uwe Spörl, Gottlose Mystik in
der deutschen Literatur um die Jahrhundertwende (Paderborn: Ferdinand
Schöningh, 199 7). On the d i rect Connections of Sprachkritik, Joyce and Beckett,
see, for example, Linda Ben-Zvi, „Biographical, Textual, and Historical Origins,“ in
Samuel Beckett Studies, ed. Lois Oppenheim (New Y o r k : Palgrave Macmillan,
2004), 137. The attraction especially of the young Beckett to medieval writers
was obvious: his early prose and poetry were inspi red by the complex forms of
the mystics, troubadour poetry. Dante, and Chaucer.
28 „Deshaciendome estoy. herrnanas, por daros a entender esta operaciön de amor,
y no se como“ (Teresa of Avila, lnrerior Castle 6.2, 135; Santa Teresa, Las moradas
6.2, 96).
1 84 PA lVI M. MEHTONEN
spoken by Molloy, in the first part of the Beckett trilogy ( 1 95 1 -1 953),
whose language gradually becomes a peculiar autocommunicative exercise
while the reader follows his monologue; it could also have been spoken
by the even more fragmented narrator of the third part of the trilogy,
The Unnamable (1 953), who is constantly bothered by the bodily pain of
speaking and understanding: “ I don’t know. I could know. But I shall not
know. Not this time. l t is I who write, who cannot rise my hand from my
knee.“29
However, the author of the above-cited sentence is a woman and a
mystic, Saint Teresa of Avi Ia, who presents herself struggling with narration
in her well-known spiritual works lnterior Castle (Moradas, 1 577)
and Life ( Vida, 1 562-1566), where the spiritual quest is presented by a
First-person autobiographer who frequently descri bes herself in states of
anamnesis and epistemological doubt. Although the comparison of
Teresa and Beckett may at first seem mutually unfruitful, neither of them
here representsjust herself or himself; they stand rather for two distinct
yet interrelated traditions of pseudo-autocommunication: the critique of
conventional language in mysticism and in avant-garde l iterature.30
The stylization of the „1-1“ discourse is evident in the ways in which
communication itself is thematized, beginning with doubting the reasons
for speaking and the existence of an external audience. Thus Teresa orients
herself towards her community as a n audience: „I do not know why
I have said this, sisters, nor to what purpose. for I have not understood it
29 Samuel Beckett, „The Unnamable,“ i n S. Beckett, The Beckett Trilogy. Molloy,
Malone Dies, The Unnamable (Picador: Pan Books. 1979), 276.
30 The vast Beckett schalarship somewhat surprisingly links his writing speciftcally
to Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Meister Eckart, John of the Cross or Angelus Silesius.
See for instance the contributions in Harold Coward and Toby Foshay. eds. .
Derrida and Negative Theology (Aibany: SUNY Press. 1992); Shira Wolosky, Language
Mysticism: The Negative Way of Language in Eliot, Beckett, and Ce/an
{Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1 995), 90-134; and John D. Caputo, „Apostles
of the Impossible: On God and the Gift in Derrida and Marion,“ i n God, the Gift,
and Postmodernism, ed. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (Bioomington:
lndiana University Press, 1 999), 1 96-97. ln discussions of negative theology as
weil as postmodern philosophy and fiction. the only (cursory) reference to medieval
woman mystics known to me is by Joy Morny „Conclusion. Divine Reservations,“
in Coward and Foshay, Derrida and Negative Theology, 255-57. ln Beckett
studies St. Teresa’s name is briefly mentioned by Mary Bryden. „Beckett and Religion.“
i n Samuel Beckett Studies, 1 66.
FIRST-PERSON SPEAKERS AND THE UNREPRESENTABLE 1 85
a l l myself.“31 Teresa often refers explicitly to things described i n mfstica
teulogia but concedes her inabil ity to use or understand „the proper
terms“ therein; instead, she sometimes finds it a help to „utter foolishness.“
32 Beckett’s Molloy l i kewise feels „like a fool who knows neither
where he is going nor why he is going there“ and takes the authorial suspicion
a step further: „Sometimes you would think I was writing for the
public. [ . . .] And I said, with rapture, here is something I can study al l my
l i fe, and never understand.“33 Not only is the existence of a clear message
and audience questioned; at times the speaking I appears radically plural:
Teresa’s speaker suffers from noises in the head whereas i n the
Beckett trilogy the speaker conducts internal arguments with hirnself as
for instance happens at the end of The Unnamable. As Lyons and others
have observed, such a division of voices or a „super-voice“ characterises
Beckett’s heroes: one part of the speaking consciousness wants to halt
and „to lose hirnself in darkness and si lence“; the other voice within h i m
urges him t o continue.34
The doubting, seemingly reluctant and uncannily plural Fi rst-person
speakers frequently refer to the indefinite parties commissioning or even
pressing them to move from meditation to text production. „Only those
who have commanded me to write this,“ reveals Teresa in her Life about
the reverend spiritual fathers who asked her to write it, „know that I am
doing so, and at the moment they are not here.“35 The motives for and
processes of writing are constantly reflected, and in terms of inspiration
and invention the motives could not be further from the romantieist inner
spark which guides the poet-geni us’s hand. Both Teresa’s and
Beckett’s l’s write because they are told to do so. Teresa complains that it
is hard for a woman who is writing simply what she has been commanded
to use spiritual language: „Your Reverence w i l l be amused to see
31 „No s􀌱 a qu􀖱 propOsito he dicho esto, hermanas. ni para qu􀌱. que no me he entendido“
(Teresa of Avila, lnterior Castle 6.6.5. 1 71 ; Santa Teresa. Las moradas 6.6,
1 20).
32 „Con decir disbarates me remed io algunas veces“ (L ife 18.2. 106; Libro de Ia Vida
18.2. 24 7-48).
33 Samuel 8eckett. „Molloy.“ in The Beckett Trilogy. 1 56.
3• Charles R. Lyons, Samuel Beckett (London: Macmillan. 1983). 104; Andrew K.
Kennedy, Samuel Beckett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1989). 1 45.
35 „solos los que me Jo mandan escribir saben que lo escribo, y a l presente no est<!
aquf“ (Life 10. 6 7; Libro de Ia Vida 1 0. 7. 188).
1 86 PIIlVI M. MEHTONEN
how stupid I am.“36 The demand for „published“ reports of inner visions
is expressed with acerbic irony:
I have done what Your Reverence commanded me, and written at length, on
the condition that Your Reverence will do as you promised me and tear up
anything that seems to you wrong. I had not finished reading through what I
had written when Your Reverence sent for 1t.J1
The commissioner is given permission to erase or add freely3B and readers
are left to wonder what may have been a ltered or censored and, ultimately,
whose text they are reading. The atmosphere of the beginning of
Beckett’s Mofloy is s i m ilar, albeit s l ightly more depressing. The protagenist
is in a room where somebody comes to take away the pages written
by the first-person speaker.39 The writer’s anxieties with respect to his
autocommunication-he does not know whether he is writing for the
publ ic or not-resemble those of the mystic.
Modern language theory and linguistics associate certa in stylistic
characteristics-repetition, obscurity, ungrammaticality and so forthwith
autocommunication and inner speech, which raises the question of
whether or not these characteristics also exist in the self-consciously
styl ized autocommunication of Teresa and Beckett. ln comparing the
tasks of translating the complete works Saint lohn of the Cross and his
teacher Teresa, E. All ison Peers noted John’s „crystal-clear expression“
and his „logical and orderly mind,“ as weil as „great objectivity.“ Whatever
the last qualification may mean in the realm of mysticism, John’s
prose nevertheless has little in common with Teresa’s Spanish prose,
which, according to Peers, consists of i nflammatory phrases; „outbursts
of sanctified commonsense. humour and irony“; disjointed, el liptical,
parenthetical and „gaily ungrammatical“ sentences; repetition; semiphonetic
transl iterations of Latin texts; breathless sentences; d i sconnected
observations, transpositions, ellipses as weil as sudden suspension of
36 „servira de dar recreaciön a vuesa merced de ver tanta torpeza“ (Life 1 1 , 64; cf.
65, 204; Libro de Ia Vida 1 1 , 193).
31 Life, Letter, 299. This Ietter is not printed in the Spanish edition of Vida used here.
38 Life 7 , 47; 1 7, 100; Libro dela Vtda 7.22, 168.
39 The figure of „they“ featured already in Beckett’s early prose such as The Expelled
and Mercier and Camier. On phi losophical and existenti alist interpretations of this
figure as Heideggerian „lostness i n the ‚they'“ (Verlorenheit i n das Man), see Raili
Elovaara. The Problem of Idencity in Samuel Beckett’s Prose: An Approach from
Philosophies of Existence (Helsinki: Arnales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae,
1976), 79, 126-34, 199; also Anthony Uhlmann, Beckett and Poststructuralism
(Cambridge: Cambridge Untversity Press, 1 999), 1 62-65.
FIRST -PERSON SPEAKERS ANO THE UNREPRESENTABLE 1 8 7
thought.40
S i m i lar stylistic and compositional devices are at work in Beckett’s
prose, including the „grimly weighted precision“ of its language, a reliance
on the rhetorical figure of aposiopesis (an unexplained break into
si lence41), as weil as the narrator’s „difficulty organising his documentation.“
42 These features of mystical and literary first-person prose not only
hyperbolize some features of autocommunication; they also continue
traditional rhetorical strategies of imbecillitas loquentis such as pleading
one’s i ncapacity to handle the matter in order to capture the good will of
the audience. ln Oe inventione, moreover, Cicero recommended two options
for beginning the speech if the speaker anticipates an obscure case:
either particularly cieariy-perspicue-by elucidating matters down to the
last deta i l, or by employing the tactics of insinuation rather than a
straighttorward opening, thus winning the audience and thejudge over
not perspicue but obscure, by way of obfuscation and digression. in literature,
such license to downright obscurity (or Statements of obscurity)
was not left unused. 8oth Teresa and Beckett combine stylistic obscurity
and perspicuity in a masterful way; Stanley Cavell, for instance, has observed
Beckett’s hidden literality:
The words strew obscurities across our path and seem willfully to thwart comprehension;
and then time after time we discover that their meaning has been
missed only because it was so utterly bare-totally, therefore unnoticeably, i n
view.4l
What emerges is first-person prose that is both meditative and ironic in
some way. Under the watchful control of some absent and non-visible
„they,“ the first-person speakers in both Teresa and Beckett exaggerate
their humil ity and ignorance in a way that contradicts their skill and
egoism so blatantly that the result is irony and laughter: „I confess that
others have written about it much better elsewhere, and I have feit great
confusion and shame in writing of it, thoJgh less than I should.“44 A similar
effect is produced by a narration of inner experience that is (alleged-
40 Preface, i n Teresa, Life, xiv, xviii, xxxvii-xxxviii.
‚1 See H. Porter Abbott, „Narrative,“ in Samuel Beckett Studies, 8. 1 5.
42 Susan Brienza, Samuel Beckett’s New Worlds: Style in Metafiction (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press 1987), 50, on Murphy.
<l Stanley Cavell, Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 200 2), 1 1 9.
44 „y habranlos escrito en otras parte muy mUor, yo lo confieso, y que con harta confusiön
y verguenza l o he escrito, aunque no tanta como habra de tener“ ( Life 1 2.
73; Libro de Ia Vida 12.7, 204-05).
1 8 8 PA lVI M. MEHTONEN
ly) i nterrupted by lapses of poor memory and inoperative mnemotechnique4S
This representation and fictionalizing of obscurity and the prima!
d i fficulty of speaking is so frequent in Teresa’s work that it becomes
both a theme and a technique. in terms of poetics, it resembles the „figure
of evasion“ Wolosky has found in Beckett’s figure of the self as a
challenge of representation. What emerges is not unitary essence but „a
scene of intrarelation between the self and its images of itself.“46
Conclusion
The foregrounding of language in the representations of writing and
speaking discussed here produces a relative ineffabil ity and obscurity in
certain modes of expression. Although it is possible to define obscuritas
as a stylistic device,47 i t also appears as a vaguer effect of themes and
forms such as pseudo-autocommun ication. Further exploration of more
material might reveal i nterplay between cases where the result actually
is gibberish or „an unknown language“ to the reader (for instance, H i lde·
gard of Bingen’s lingua ignota) and those where the speaker merely
claims tobe uttering nonsense, as i n the cases d iscussed here.
Each new era up-dates its obscurity canons, and the avant-garde period
of the early 1 900s was no exception. Martin Buber, the admirer of
world mysticisms in Ekstatische Konfessionen, was praised by a contemporary
critic and fellow expressionist, Hermann Bahr, for h i s obscure
language. his dunkle Rede, and the way he expresses the non-conceptual
and si lence in language-something that nineteenth-century positiv ist
science and realistic I iterature had completely neglected and lost sight
of.4S Bahr wonders: why does a writer who has so much to say to his contemporaries
say it in such a way that the reader must first translate the
45 E.g., Life 1 1 . 64-65; Libro de Ia Vida 1 1 .6, 1 92-93. See also books 1 0 and 34 of the
Life!Libro de Ia Vida.
46 Wolosky, LanguageMysticism, 7 1 , 74, 81
47 See Jan Ziolkowski, „Theories of Obscurity in the Latin Tradition,“ Mediaevalia 1 9
(1996): 1 01-70; John T. Hamilton, Soliciting Darkness: Pindar, Obscurity, and the
Classical Tradition, Harvard Studies i n Comparative Literature 4 7 (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003); and Mehtonen, Obscure Language.
•a The titles of the works of Buber’s Fellow expressionists included „The last 1.“ „The
self cannot be saved“ (Bahr). and so for:h. See Andreas Berlage, Empfindung, Ich
und Sprache um 1900. Ernst Mach, Hermann Bahr und Fritz Mauthner im Zusammenhang
(Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1994).
FIRST ·PERSON SPEAKERS ANO THE UNREPRESENTABLE 1 89
words into other words in order to understand them? l n reading Buber,
even a native speaker of German must translate Buber’s German prose
before he or she can understand it.49 Why bother? This question was
tackled in medieval texts: why in the first place should one believe that
obscure visions or incomprehensible texts are worth reporting and the
effort of reading? The pleasure, excitement and humor i nvolved i n
pseudo-autocommunication Iead to a n aesthetics of obscurity that deserves
an independent exploration.
􀄿9 Hermann Bahr, Expressionismus (1 916; München: Delphin-Verlag, 1 920), 40-43.
Obscurity in Medieval Texts
MEDIUM AEVUM QUOTIDIANUM
SONDERBAND XXX
Obscurity in Medieval Texts
edited by
Lucie Dolezalova, Jeff Rider,
and Alessandro Zironi
Krems 2013
Reviewed by
Tamas Visi
and Myriam White-Le Goff
Cover designed by Petr Dolezal with the use of a photo of the interior of
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (photo Lucie Dolezalova)
GEDRUCKT MIT UNTERSTÜTZUNG
DER
CHARLES UNIVERSITY RESEARCH DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMS
„UNIVERSITY CENTRE FOR THE STUDY OF ÄNCIENT AND MEDIEVAL
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80TH AT THE FACULTY O F HUMANITIES, CHARLES UNIVERSITY IN PRAGUE
UNDDER
CZECH SCIENCE FOUNDATION
WITHIN THE RESEARCH PROJECT
„INTERPRETING AND APPROPRIATING ÜBSCURITY
IN MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT CULTURE“
(GACR P405/1 0/Pl 1 2)
A l l e Rechte vorbehalten
-ISBN 978-3-901094-32-13‘.3
Herausgeber: Medium Aevum Quotidianum. Gesellschaft zur Erforschung der materiellen
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Acknowledgements
List of Figures
T able of Contents
Textual Obscurity in the Middle Ages (lntroduction)
Lucie Dole2alov􀭟. Jeff Rider. and Alessandro Zironi
„Ciarifications“ of Obscurity:
Conditions for Proclus’s Allegorical Reading of Plato’s Parmenides 1 5
Florin George Cäl ian
Lucifica nigris tune nuntio regna figuris. Po!!tique textuelle de I‘ obscuritas
dans I es recueils d‘!!nigmes latines du Haut moyen Age (V He-V I I I • s.) 3 2
Christiane Veyrard-Cosme
The Enigmatic Style in Twelfth-Century French Literature 49
Jeff Rider
Mise en abyme in Marie de France’s „Laüstic“ 63
Susan Small
Perturbations of the Soul: Alexander of Ashby and Aegidius of Paris an
Understanding Biblical Obscuritas 75
Greti Dinkova-Bruun
Versus obscuri nella poesia didascalica grammatocale del X I I I sec. 87
Carla Piccone
Disclosing Secrets: Vorgil on Middle High German Poems 1 1 0
Alessandro Zironi
Obscuritas tegum: Traditional Law. Learned Jurisprudence, and Territorial
Legislation (The Example of Sachsenspiegel and fus Municipale Maideburgense) 124
Hiram Kümper
Ta Be Born (Aga in) from God:
Scriptural Obscurity as a Theological Way Out for Cornelius Agrippa 1 45
Noel Putnik
Obscuritas in Medoeval and Humanist Translation Theories 157
R!!ka Forrai
The Darkness Within:
First-person Speakers and the Unrepresentable 1 72
Päivi M. Mehtonen
Contributors 1 90
Index nominum 1 94
Index rerum 197
Acknowledgements
This volume grew out of a conference held in Prague in October 6-8. 201 1 .
The conference and the book were supported by a post-doctoral research
grant from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, “ l nterpreting and
Appropriating Obscurity i n Medieval Manuscript Culture“ no. P405/1 0/
P1 1 2 undertaken at the Faculty of Arts at the Charles University in Prague,
by The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports through l nstitutional
Support for Longterm Development of Research Organizations to the
Faculty of Humanities of the same university (PRVOUK 1 8 and UNCE
204002), and by the European Research Council under the European
Community’s Seventh Framewerk Programme ( FPJ/2007-2013) I ERC
grant agreement No. 263672. We are much grateful to these i nstitutions.
Further thanks goes to the individual contributors to this volume who have
been very quick and patient during the process, as weil as to Petr Dolezal
for the cover design and Adela Novakova for the index.
List of Figures
Figure 1 : Scene from one of the Saxon Mirror’s codices picturati (Wolfenbuttel, HerzogAugust-
Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 3.1 . Aug. 2°, fol. 34r).
Figure 2: Index for a manuscript of the Richtsteig Landrecht (Göttweig, Sti ftsbibliothek,
Cod. 364rot, fol. 526r).
Figure 3: Printed text of a Saxon Mirror with Gloss (Christi an Zobel, Leipzig, 1 569).
Figure 4: A remissorium from a Saxon Mirror edited tn 1536 by Chistoph Zobel (Leipzig).
Figure 5: Editorial report for a Saxon Mirror pri nted in 1545 by Nikolaus Wolrab
(Leipzig).
Figure 6: Sebastian Stelbagius, Epitome sive summa universae doctrinae iusticiae legalis
(Bautzen, 1 564 ).
Figures 7 and 8: Melchior Kling, Das Gantze Sechsisch Landrecht mit Text und Gloß in eine
richtige Ordnung gebracht (Leipzig 1 572).