Gloss

To discover in the analysis of the small individual moment the crystal of the total event. … To grasp the construction of history as such. In the structure of commentary.

Walter Benjamin¹

All our so-called consciousness is a more or less fantastic commentary on an unknown, perhaps unknowable, but felt text.

Friedrich Nietzsche²

The fruit of faith [is] understanding, so that we may arrive at eternal life, where the Gospel would not be read to us, but he who has given us the Gospel now would appear with all the pages of the reading and the voice of the reader and commentator removed.

St. Augustine³

The sphere of commentary is boundless, as close as the nearest subject, as far as the remotest object. To think otherwise is to believe that, first and last, reality is a foreign word, unglossable—or merely glossable—to the one who reads it.

"Arrayed in light as in a garment, he stretched out the sky like a skin" (Psalms 104:2) … "The sky vanished like a scroll that is rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place" (Revelation 6:14).⁴

Looking up into the dark I see—and/or think and feel I see—a constellation. Pointing toward it with my hand, I recognize or do not recognize a form, a name, an idea—the image. What is that? Where is that?

"A veritable horror vacui. … It might promote, once again, a reappreciation of the principle and substance of copia. And it might bring about a situation in which we will no longer be embarrassed to admit that filling up margins is what commentaries mostly do—and what they do best."⁵

Light specific to each star, generated at vastly different times and distances, continues to coincide within and without the body wherein I now stand, wondering, considering (cum + sidera).

"That which we call tradition is nothing but the pocket of time which the delay of its revelation continues to fill. That which takes place in a comment is a peculiar suspension of this delay. … In this sense, every commentary represents a most refined technique of articulating and contracting the times in which all language lives."⁶

Starlight twinkling, everything taking place everywhere, where it is not. Is there room for anything in this sphere? "A single glass of water lights up the world."⁷

"Our daily bread is not a sum of principles that nourish us but an infinite spectrum of tastes, a reality that exists solely in a precise palette of colors and temperatures. Only through the mediating gleam of our sensible imagination we do have access to our past and our future."⁸

The principle of the gloss manifests and/or gives witness to a primal withness, a unity of being and knowing, subject and object, wherein everything finds itself, however much alone, all the more with the alone—never alone.

"When you read, You shall love your neighbor as yourself, three kinds of vision take place: one with the eyes, when you see the actual letters; another with the human spirit, by which you think of your neighbor even though he is not there; a third with the attention of the mind, by which you understand and look at love itself."⁹

Touchpoint of that which language loves to touch and that which it touches with.

"By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surrounding cosmic milieu."¹⁰

Sacredness of signification | signification of the sacred.

Statius to Virgil: "E se non fosse ch'io drizzai mia cura, / quand' io intesi là dove tu chiame, / crucciato quasi a l'umana natura: / 'Per che non reggi tu, o sacra fame / de l'oro, l'appetito de' mortali?' / voltando sentirei le giostre grame" (Purgatorio 22.37-42).¹¹

Earthquake upon the providential threshold of truth and error, spontaneous life-saving hunger of the one who misreads rightly, understanding what one does not and thus getting it all the more perfectly.

"Whoever finds a lesson there useful to the building of charity, even though he...