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Chapter 5: An Occult Vocabulary and the Problem of Knowledge
- University of Missouri Press
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128 Chapter 5 An Occult Vocabulary and the Problem of Knowledge Casper Yost was the first PW observer to point to the “problem of knowledge .” How could Pearl Curran deliver up historical language and dialects, ethnic names and place names and local markers of a foreign culture out of her modest education and limited reading and do so while dictating fiction at a speed and with a fluency that amazed visitors, unless some supernormal agency was involved? Examples of facile mimicry give themselves away throughout the PW texts and Record, but even a limited inventory of the vocabulary’s uncommon resources suggests that Curran was rightly awed when she pronounced beyond her ken. Awed at what, one still might ask. Rephrased in Chapter 9, the question will become: what does the medium’s verbal performance at the Ouija board suggest about the complexity and multiple capacities of human memory ? For now, Curran’s experience of language summoned unaccountably from its ancient home raises its own questions. Like historical romancers before and after, the literary PW created a textual claim to citizenship in the centuries she wrote about. That claim can initially be seen as the fictionist’s gaining plausibility for apparent historical knowledge through dictations that are no more than a matter of stylistic manner. The Ouija board’s customary idiom, in responding to visitors’ questions, gave an impression of olde England much like that of the signage on America’s fa- An OccultVocabulary and the Problem of Knowledge 129 miliar beef-and-ale restaurants. When philologically astute visitors questioned PW’s use of words from different periods and regions, the board celebrated its freedom to roam the history of the language, a boast that asserted stylistic willfulness more than it explained: “Ye shall find whits o’ this and that ta’en from here and there . . . ” (CPW, 343). Mouthing variously, as a matter of mood or audience or occasion, the writer created an illusion of speech made grandly whimsical by the centuries. No longer “atrack ’pon clay,” she was free to weave “o’ the spill o’ time and ’tis the cloth o’ me. Let any man then weave o’ such” (PWR 2:278). When she spoke as unsuspecting medium, Curran was perfectly willing to describe the language of the board as a “manufactured English,” but she gave no evidence of curiosity about its origins apart from an occasional trip to the dictionary when an unfamiliar word had been dictated. A deliberate and disingenuous Curran must remain a logical possibility. That medium would have sought out arcane usages and consulted historical grammars and medieval and early modern texts unobserved, though one could argue that ill-informed research by such an uneducated person would have consumed valuable time and created an unconvincing deception. More difficult and interesting questions are raised by considering the PW lexicon as a network of coded verbal memories , cognitively occult in Curran well before ingredients of the “wonder-put” were prompted to issue fluently into an appropriate context. As the medium moved the Ouija board’s pointer, the phenomenon repeatedly claimed for itself what Curran did not—the resources and prerogatives of the conscious artist.“I be afull o’ word” said PW (PWR 1:116). A reader of the PW Record is likely to take away an impression of affectation and verbal role-playing, but in the domain of what Curran did not know she knew, there remains a core of historical, colloquial English accessed with apparent facility and put to apt use, contributing often if not consistently to the lively concreteness of PW texts. Not even PW’s defenders could avoid characterizing the antiquity of PW’s language as performative costume. Walter Prince, noting the repetitive use of the prefix a- as rhythmic filler, was exasperated enough to call the dialect“halfartificial ” (CPW, 343). No one would write in a tongue “so clumsy and so objectionable ,” never spoken “anywhere at any time,” granted a contributor to Patience Worth’s Magazine—probably Casper Yost—if the purpose were simply to sell books (PWM, Mar. 1918, 4). From the beginning, the appearance of ’tis and dost announced a stale convention. Then idiosyncrasies of spelling began to appear with an insistence on older but entirely recognizable forms like merrie , tung, milch, linon, ribband, and regular use of expressions like a-lack a-day. Some word choices suggested only idiosyncratic variations on what was familiar , to dud, bedud, or pettiskirt (as a verb) serving as metaphors to suggest pretension , decoration, or...