MS W

I chose Ms. W primarily because I found it nearly illegible. The key to deciphering the handwriting was the letter “s,” which very much resembles “f” or, in fact, the German ß such as in Straße; once I identified it in “beseech,” words such as “housemates” and “pleasant” became readily readable.  I chose the genetic method of transcription, as I found the additions (signified in my transcription as  [added]) changed the tenor of the manuscript, and found I did not want to abandon the meanings inherent to the “rough draft.”  I kept the original lineation and ampersands, noting additions and deletions, and only once suggesting the modern ending -e which looks to be missing from the word “headache.” The handwriting appears hurried, but what I at first took for haste I now think of as inspiration.

Initially I read the manuscript as an excerpt from a letter dispensing medical advice, or the manuscript of a work of medical or moral instruction. However, at the line “Come out of the azure.” it becomes apparent that the text has literary, poetic merit, and its instruction abandons the mundane and enters lyrical and spiritual realms. After that line, the author additionally inserts “Love the day. Do not leave the sky out of your landscape.”, giving his prose a near-lyrical metrics.

At this point, the manuscript began to ring familiar, and after a bit of research I uncovered it was an excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Behaviour.” I include the passage also as it appears in the published essay. It’s interesting to note that some of the deleted phrases have been reinstated in the final published version, so the decision to favor the genetic method of transcription appears to be the right one. Nota bene: I was interested in the phrase “Come out of the azure” because it seems to contradict the subsequent evocation of the sky; I thought Emerson might be referring to “the blues,” and in fact it turns out this is a reference to a “distemper” colloquially known then as “the blue devils.”

-Ana Bozicevic