“Silent Word-City”
(poetry)

“He is not only an interpreter of the play of

dissimulation who can be likened to one who

exposes letters; he or it is also in the place of

what is called here being or the letter [l’etre ou

lettre]...” (Jacques Derrida, from The Gift of Death)

We are constantly asked to think about the way in which technology can build a future, but we have forgotten that once writing was considered to be technological, and more importantly that systems of writing are forms of visual art. But today I take for granted the graphic expansion of the word; or that the word, the letter, is in and of itself a symbol of power. And I substitute the essence behind word, letter, phrase—a meaning imposed on me through language itself (a hegemonic language), that relies on that same system that once was considered artistic and revolutionary.

You know what I am trying to reify through these (blank) verbal constructs? Here I wander through to the language of the city. The spoken and (un-)spoken. The technological and graphic. The grid of the building blocks that simultaneously form and (de-)form. For is not naming un-naming? Does it not depend on whose name we (you) are using? Does it not rely on the language you are naming me with? I am forced to speak through you: Your language; do you even hear me? Since when I speak (on) my own you, pretend you don’t understand me? Sometimes (because of you), I can’t even understand myself anymore.

Intertextual Crossroads in Tamar Boyadjian’s “Silent Word-City”

What does the enormous Armenian lowercase letter "տ" at the very beginning of the poem stand for? By first warning readers that we have forgotten that "systems of writing are forms of visual art, the poem hacks our default perception of graphemes. This reminder takes us back to the very beginning of the poem and shines a light on the visual attributes of the enormous Armenian small letter “տ.” As a visual element, it looks like two halves of an oval symbol placed next to each other. And when placed one upon the other, the two halves resemble the Latin "D," which is, in fact, the phonetic equivalent of the Western Armenian letter "տ." The epigraph seems to hold a key as to what it may stand for, at least, as a grapheme. Moreover, the manner in which it is presented in the epigraph is itself another key:

Who is "he"? The latter is identified in the sentence preceding the quoted one, but which is left out by Boyadjian:

In this quote from Gift of Death, Derrida refers to Patočka’s reluctance to straightforwardly quote Heidegger in his essay “Is Technological Civilization Decadent, and Why?” According to Derrida, the Czech philosopher alludes to Heidegger in "a strangely encrypted form."[3] He likens Patočka’s strategy of reference to that employed by Minister D– in Poe’s Purloined Letter, that is, leaving something in plain sight as an effective method of concealment. So, does "տ" stand for Minister D– or does it imply Mr. Dupin, the detective who was able to find and recover the purloined letter?

The "purloined letter" was originally evoked by Patočka, in the same essay, to describe how "force manifests itself as the highest concealment of Being."[4] Like Mr. Dupin, Derrida picks up the reference left in plain sight and turns it toward Patočka himself, who thereby is transformed into that very force that conceals the Being, which, here, is Heidegger.

Boyadjian, in carefully chiseling her epigraph, as if reconstructing Patočka’s play of dissimulation, reinstates the Mystery by re-hiding Heidegger, albeit in plain sight. Such an act echoes Patočka’s statement: “The most sophisticated inventions are boring if they do not lead to an exacerbation of the Mystery (Tajemstvi) concealed by what we discover, what is revealed to us).”[5] Or does Boyadjian, by re-enacting exposed concealment, thus associate herself with Minister D– (Minister D ou Minister տ), a poet about whose clever trick philosophers have been since raving. Is Boyadjian’s self-identification with Minister D– inspired by his ingenious demonstration that underestimation of poets inevitably leads to failure? This was insinuated by Dupin who ascribed the policemen’s inability to find the letter to such underestimation: “As poet and mathematician, he would reason well; as mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all, and thus would have been at the mercy of the Prefect.”[6] Doesn"t Boyadjian therefore become the "force" that conceals the Being, Minister D–? The enormous "տ" seems to stand also for the Being (although the first letter is different).

At any rate, "տ" is but a letter Boyadjian has purloined from the Armenian alphabet. But what else might this enormous purloined letter encompass besides Derrida, Minister D–, Mr. Dupin, the Being? If Heidegger is, for Derrida, not only an interpreter, the detective who exposed the purloined letters—perhaps also himself the purloined letter—then one of Boyadjian’s most visually conspicuous elements, the enormous "տ," is the "trumpery filigree card-rack of pasteboard, that hung dangling by a dirty blue ribbon, from a little brass knob just beneath the middle of the mantelpiece"—Minister D–’s hiding place of choice for the purloined letter.

But the speaker of “Silent Word-City” is in a quest for another purloined entity. It could be described as a purloined l’être. As prompted by the title, it is the silent word loosely defined by Stéphane Mallarmé as follows (in Boyadjian’s translation):

In other words, all the languages have purloined the immortal silent word by the sheer fact of their existence. And the diversity of idioms, the existence of world languages, is but a play of dissimulation to hide the silent word. In this context, Boyadjian’s engagement of multiple languages or diverse idioms in her texts, including “Silent Word-City,” is perhaps an unconscious subliminal message that the silent word, the ultimate truth, is always lurking in the open, in all of her texts. Much like Minister D–’s purloined letter, the immortal silent word will speak the truth if uttered, publicized. Boyadjian strives to utter it by exercising what Patočka calls "an exacerbation of the Mystery."

The Armenian language is one of the roughly 6,500 accomplices in the conspiracy to purloin the immortal silent word. Boyadjian summons the Armenian, her native tongue, in her quest of the purloined l’être (ou lettre). Into her otherwise English text she imports the Armenian capital "Է," the seventh lettre of the alphabet, which not only sounds like "ê" in l’être, but also means the latter: "Being," "Creature," "Essence." Furthermore, in Armenian religious vocabulary, "Է" means "God."

The placement of "Է" in the poem is noteworthy. It appears above the following sentence: “How do you read the silent light between the letters of the city?” Morphing into the word "էջ" —meaning both "page" and "downward motion"— the letter/word "Է" flows "between the letters" of the question and continues its fall through the poem between more and more letters. As the fall continues, it more and more resembles that of Alice through the rabbit hole, by virtue of its slow, explorative nature.

While Alice was falling past the bookshelves, "Է" is effectively falling through texts, between their letters. The first phase of the fall is through a circular "calligraphic infrastructure" filled with blinding light. This segment of the poem is likely an answer to a question set earlier: “What is the language of my city? Whose light shines through my calligraphic infrastructures.” Though the speaker reckons with the powers of the ubiquitous language, she struggles to identify it. Not only does she not know whose light shines, but also how to read that silent light between the letters of the city.

Boyadjian links Mallarmé’s concept of "silent word" to "light" as a symbol of "enlightenment," "knowledge." Thus, the round-shaped text starts with the Armenian words for "light" and "hush." Graphically, these words also contain letters that resemble the Armenian letter “տ” split in two— “լոյս” [luys] and “սուս” [soos]. The second phrase, "La lumière ; de Monde," is reminiscent of how Jesus referred to his disciples when addressing them – "La lumière du Monde" (Matthew 5:14).

The Armenian word for "pomegranate" (նուռ), in the following line, seems to go astray from the topic of light and silence, however, it bridges "سبک," the Farsi and Arabic word for "light," which sounds like the Armenian word for pomegranate (նուռ – noor). "سبک" is followed by "النور," which is Eleanora spelled in Farsi. This is where we encounter the second concrete reference to Poe, specifically, to his short story of the same name.

Poe uses many metaphors of light (e.g. a Seraphim who has "an inextinguishable light,"[8] according to Thomas Aquinas) to describe Eleonora, which means "light of God" in Arabic. Apparently, Boyadjian chose Farsi to spell Eleonora, because the latter borrowed the style of "the songs of Schiraz”[9] to dwell upon a "sorrowful theme.”[10] Interestingly, the Armenian "է" replaces the letter "e" in between the letters of "El" and "nor," as if to place Being or Essence between God and Light.

The next line in “Silent Word-City” starts with what, at first, seems to be an antonym of light—"hell," whereas it is, in fact, the German word for "luminous." But this little linguistic confusion packs the drama and, perhaps, the culmination of the whole narrative. It is the metaphor for the burning and tormenting thoughts of this protagonist before eventually marrying Ermengarde against the vows he had given Eleonora before her death. One night, however, Eleonora’s voice absolves him of his vows, evoking the reign and rule of the "Spirit of Love" a result of his action. Boyadjian has zipped this transformation, or the unexpected change of course, into a single word: "hell." Her choice to switch to German may be in honor of Ermengarde—a name of German origin, which means "universal protection."

On the one hand, the last German word in that line, "Erhellen"—"to light up," "to illuminate"—shares remote phonetic similarities with Ermengarde; on the other hand, Ermengarde may be interpreted as "Armenian protection" or "Protected Armenian" as "Ermeni" is Turkish for "Armenian." Does Ermengarde, in this sense, refer to the Armenian "Է,՛ which appears well-guarded inside "ElԷnor," between God and Light? This accentuated relatedness of these two beings via their names offers a hint at what Eleonora is going to tell the protagonist in Heaven—that Eleonora and Ermengarde are identical or, paraphrasing Patočka, Ermengarde manifests herself as the highest concealment of Eleonora.

Interestingly, the English reading of the German word "hell" (adj. light) corrupts the further reading experience. So, instead of interpreting the Armenian word "լուծէ" [loo-dzeh] as an order to solve, one is tempted to read it as an order to "carry out abnormal frequent intestinal evacuations with fluid stools." "Լուծէ" is preceded by "luce," the similarly sounding Italian word for light. Boyadjian also shines light to the homograph of "light" (not heavy) by inserting "leicht" (German) and "ελαφρύ" (Greek). Interestingly, the latter bears slight phonetic semblance of Eleonora. Near the end of this round-shaped section, Boyadjian introduces the Finnish word for light, "valo," which is followed by the similarly sounding (albeit slightly corrupted spelling) Armenian word "Վայլէ" [vahy-leh], which means "Enjoy!"

While Boyadjian tries hard to read "the silent light between the letters of the city" with the arsenal of "diverse idioms," "է" continues its fall through the words: "ElԷnor," "լուծէ," and "Վայլէ." Eventually, "Է" finds itself, at the very bottom, surrounded by a plethora of the letter "չ" [ch]—the 25th letter of the Armenian alphabet, which signifies negation, the Armenian equivalent of "not," "un-," or "non-.”

That small square of negations surrounding the symbol of Being, Essence or God, is itself situated between two larger rectangles at the top and at the bottom. Both rectangles contain the repetition of the Armenian word for "am not," where the 5^th Armenian letter "Ե՛" (which, here, is pronounced "է") is occasionally replaced by the familiar "ê" from "l’être." And this entire structure is in the shape of the English "I," which, thus, reads "I am not."

Here, at the end of “Silent Word-City,” it is as hard to forget that "systems of writing are forms of visual art," as it is to "take for granted the graphic expansion of the word." This monumental "calligraphic infrastructure" is the total negation of the Self – its total destruction in the hopes attaining the silent word. It is the destruction of "l’être" by "lettres.” This vaguely echoes the following statement at the beginning of “Silent Word-City”: "And I substitute the essence behind word, letter, phrase -a meaning imposed on me through language." The apparent reversal of this statement at the end—the graphic self-negation or "(in)controlled / absent," where "the essence behind word, letter, phrase" negate the "I" that was supposed to substitute them—throws the poem into an endless loop of a Möbius strip. The loop is also reinforced thanks to the fact that the giant Armenian letter "տ" at the very beginning of “Silent Word-City” is a negative prefix just like the Armenian letter "չ՛" at the very end.

Karén Karslyan

1. Derrida, Jacques. The Gift of Death. Trans. David Wills. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1995, p. 39.

2. Ibid.

3. Derrida, Jacques. The Gift of Death & Literature in secret. Trans. David Wills. 2nd ed. Chicago, IL: U of Chicago Press, 2008, p. 39.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid., p. 37.

6. Poe, Edgar Alan. "The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe." American Studies at the University of Virginia. Web. 15 Feb. 2017. <http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/purloine.html>.

7. Boyadjian, Tamar M. “Is Not Translation, but a quest for some…” Makukachu: Anthology of Contemporary Armenian Literature. Grigoryan, Violet, and Vahan Ishkhanyan, comps. Ed. Tamar M. Boyadjian. Yerevan, Ingnagir Literary Club, 2016, p. 8.

8. Aquinas, Thomas. “Summa Theologica.” Documenta Catholica Omnia. Web. 8 Feb. 2017. <http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1225-1274,_Thomas_Aquinas,_Summa_Theologiae_%5B1%5D,_EN.pdf>.

9. Poe, Edgar Alan. “Eleonora.” Lit2Go. Web. 8 Feb. 2017. <http://etc.usf.edu/lit2go/147/the-works-of-edgar-allan-poe/5236/eleonora/>

10. Ibid.