(cont…)
Philosophy stands at the head of worm society. It is not the government, but the assembly known as The Grand Symposium that represents the highest authority. The Grand Symposium is composed primarily of twenty-seven supposedly independent philosophers, or philosopharchs, who have gained their positions by means of a kind of meritocracy. The status of their perpetual philosophical debates are posted regularly for display outside the main debating chamber, somewhat in the manner that the fluctuations of the stock exchange are made public on Earth. This official state philosophy is then put into circulation as the theory upon which all political and scientific practice must be founded. Science and politics seldom have trouble accommodating to these fluctuations in official philosophy since, for the most part, they are exceedingly minor. A single link in a philosophical chain may be debated back and forth for a number of years without any result at the end but the re-affirmation, perhaps in slightly altered terms, of an old and orthodox philosophy.
Needless to say, law too is philosophically based. In fact, law as we know it does not exist. What exists instead are a vast number of philosophical guidelines. Criminals are generally those who are found to be anti-social or even just unpopular. Hidden crime is rare in as much as nothing is a crime until society as a whole recoils from it – a true case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Thus criminals are generally convicted spontaneously when they are seen as a threat to the balance of social order. If there is some doubt as to the guilt of the accused, then this must be dealt with first. But once found guilty, the accused must defend sh-his crime on philosophical grounds in order to avoid the main penalty in worm law – dissolution in acid. If shi-he avoids this fate, shi-he might receive an official warning – something with possibly grave repercussions in worm society – or may even be entirely vindicated. Incidentally, it would be of little avail to try and evade the acid sentence by appealing to the philosophical notion of the sanctity of all worm life, as this is a concept with little or no currency in worm culture.
The majority of philosophical guidelines and taboos prevalent in modern worm society stem directly from The Megadrile Analects of Yqstlss. Indeed, Yqstlss has had an incalculable influence of modern worm life, but since this is an issue dealt with in detail in the text of the story, I will refrain from saying any more on the subject here.
Notes on Translation
A few notes on translation would appear to be in order, so let me deal with them here. There are no words as such in the Hwraastclllslsshclimnean language; what there are instead are fragments of meaning that the speaker, or writer, may string together according to whim, like beads on a string. Since English consists of words with fairly self-contained meanings, it is difficult to translate these fragments of meaning singly. Therefore, even examples may be misleading. Word order in worm language is exceedingly flexible, and this flexibility lends itself both to a kind of creative logic and to a picturesque lyricism. Basic word fragments signifying objects, actions, concepts and so on, are arranged together in the manner that best suits the speaker’s intentions, punctuated here and there by fragments which lend meanings of aspect, tense and so on, or which may designate a concept as a noun or verb or any one of a bewildering array of parts of speech. For instance, the stative verb of Hwraastclllslsshclimnean has no counterpart in English. This is a kind of hybrid of verb and adjective to describe an ongoing state, such as the state of ‘being brown’. Worms typically invent their own words at will from the fragments available to them, and so the idiolect of each worm is quite distinct. Some words, of course, attain a universal usage, but more often than not, words are created to suit the time and situation in which they are spoken. As an example, a worm sentence something like the following, ‘Being brown, being shriveled, you from eaten was the rock from grow food, nature of taste what your sensations in was?’ might be translated into natural English as, ‘How did the (brown, shriveled) fungus that you ate taste?” Even the former version represents a fairly significant modification of the original.
I give this example merely to illustrate something of the difficulties that present themselves to the translator of worm literature, even before taking on philosophical or mystical concepts quite unfamiliar to human beings. It is possible, I think, to reproduce the bare content, at least where it refers to events and objects rather than abstractions, with only a modicum of difficulty. It is frankly impossible to reproduce the style. Nonetheless, my duty as a translator weighing upon me like an absolute imperative, I have tried my hardest to suggest Qsshflrrch’s playful and brilliant assault on logic, sh-his keen sense of juxtaposition, sh-his fusing of logic with lyrical flights of fancy that twist back on themselves like a spiral of mutated DNA. If in the process I have offended against the English language, I hope the reader may sympathise with my reasons for doing so and not think too harshly of the decisions I have made in response to the quite considerable dilemmas that I faced. As always, the translator must choose between a finished product that reads naturally and one that is closer to the spirit of the original. I have not adopted any hard and fast policies on this matter. For instance, where I thought it would most enhance the story to retain some colourful worm idiom, I have done so, and where I judged this tactic would produce results too obscure or inelegant, I have converted worm idiom to English idiom.
One technical matter that may need clarification – all worms are hermaphrodite, being capable of both siring and giving birth to young. For that reason gendered English personal pronouns are highly inappropriate when referring to worms. Worms refer to themselves as ‘this one’ and to a second person as ‘that one’, and, where we would use ‘he’ or ‘she’, use instead a phrase translatable as ‘that other one (which we both know about or which this or that one referred to earlier)’. I decided against using such literal translations, and for a while toyed with the idea of using ‘it’ in place of ‘he’ or ‘she’. I was not happy with this idea, however, as, if anything, it suggests impersonality or asexuality. The method I finally stuck with was the use of the pronoun ‘shi-he’, a phonetic rendering of ‘s/he’. This raised the question of how to deal with passive and possessive pronouns, IE him/her and his/hers. The use of these as is, or phonetically, would be a clumsy mouthful. Therefore, although not entirely in keeping with the logic on which I based ‘shi-he’, I settled on the further pronouns ‘sh-his’ and ‘sh-him’. I hope these devices do not jar too much. Once again, when faced with a dilemma, I was forced to make a difficult decision.
I am aware that there are not a few readers who, when reading translated literature, like to be apprehended of the correct pronunciations of foreign – or alien – words or names that inevitably crop up in the text. In fact, I number myself amongst those readers and sympathise with such a desire. However, since it is quite beyond the bounds of ingenuity and reason to convey worm pronunciation using the written alphabet alone, I shall have to refer readers to recordings of worm speech. For those without access to such recordings, the most I can do is provide some very broad hints as to the general impression worm language upon the human ear. Imagine, if you will, a mouth full of drool. If you can actually achieve this condition, so much the better. Next, lick your lips in imitation of your most grotesque mental image of a lecherous old man. If you can work up enough saliva, and lick and smack your lips with enough of tongue-twisting dementia that you actually feel in danger of choking on your own spit, then you will probably be very close to producing a sound reminiscent of Hwraarstclllslsshclimnean. I am not unaware how undiplomatic this description must sound, but feel that I would have to go to a great deal of effort to phrase it any other way. I hope that it will, at least, provide something for the reader’s imagination to work on.
Finally, I find that I cannot refrain from mentioning the fact that I have had the pleasure – no, perhaps that is the wrong word – the rather disturbing privilege, then, of meeting the author of this work. Perhaps it is not entirely good academic practice to include such personal anecdotes about the author in an introduction such as this, but I hope that, on this occasion, the reader will share my very simple, perhaps even primitive, curiosity about the enigmatic being known as Qsshflrrch.
It was actually Qsshflrrch sh-himself who instigated this meeting. Shi-he, always eager, it seems, to keep tabs on sh-his readership, had learnt that there was a human in Frfrspfshuul who was researching worm literature and, in particular, sh-his own vermicular oeuvre.
I remember with quite lurid, even febrile, distinctness, the day – I use the word ‘day’ out of convenience, since one is seldom conscious of such things as night and day in Frfrspfshuul – when I received the missive from Qsshflrrch. I have heard accounts of subjects in sensory deprivation tanks, severed from the constant input of familiar impressions, drifting into a new world of hallucination. As previously mentioned, I, too, felt myself cut off from all that was familiar. The apartments that were appointed for me as a human guest, in their sealed sterility, often came to seem like my own private sensory deprivation chamber, in which I would frequently have to try my hardest to resist hallucination of a nightmare variety. Hence, when the canister containing the scroll and the message from Qsshlfrrch’s own pipette arrived, it had for me an intrusive hallucinatory quality shared by the whole sequence of events it precipitated.
I am anxious to describe the emotions that the arrival of this communication stirred up in me, but feel from the outset that the task is beyond my powers of language. Firstly, I might say, it was very unusual for me to receive any mail of a personal kind. Back on Earth, the receipt of a letter, on paper or otherwise, was a fairly predictable event and expected to bring in its wake only predictable things, if anything at all. Here, what I felt above all else, was a sense of wonder and mystery. The reasons for my receiving this scroll and the events to which this might lead were utterly beyond my speculation.
I took the scroll from the canister, and even before I had discovered the seal at the bottom, trembled – actually trembled – at the feeling that I knew the author of this message. I had become so intimate with the idiosyncrasies of Qsshflrrch’s acid-trail that my unconscious recognised it before I made the conscious connection. Because the letter was addressed to me, that distinctive trail that was the heart of Qsshflrrch’s literature seemed suddenly alive in a new way. I almost believed the words were aware I was reading them.
This was an invitation to meet from, for want of a better word, a ‘hero’ of long-standing, and, mixed in with all my other emotions was something of the naïve excitement of the fan, as perhaps you can imagine. But the problem lies with the word ‘hero’. Its connotations are far too human. If only there were a single noun to describe my feelings towards this… this fantastic alien figure. I can only hope that my feelings become apparent in the unfolding of this account. In fact, I wish to state my intentions now, for fear of being misunderstood, to relate my impressions and feelings during the whole of this episode with the utmost candour. Perhaps in so doing I shall only succeed in giving a glimpse of the personal psychology of one weak, obsessed and prejudiced man. Or perhaps I shall provide a more useful insight into the inter-cultural ambiguities and ambivalence in which a project such as this translation is spawned.
To return to the scroll and its contents, the letters corroded into its alloy were like a premonition of what was to come. I found the shapes, the texture, the colours, expressive of feelings and thoughts which, though they did not evaporate at second or third glance, were yet too deep and too elusive for me to formulate into words. It was as if the script gave off a kind of foetor. The colours were ripe ordure browns, tainted yellows, mouldy blues and greys, with here and there a sheen of sickly iridescence, all of which was suggestive of a rich decay, like something foul and slick, half-covered with dead leaves. I could only admire the supreme art of the pipette that had produced such profound and sophisticated hues. This was the exotic and grotesque art of Qsshflrrch in which I had lost myself for years. This script was a promise of adventure. But I use the word ‘adventure’ in the same, somewhat distorted way I used the word ‘hero’ before. Just as the letters of that message conveyed a kind of exquisite nausea, so the adventure they promised was tinged with repugnance and dread.
The actual import of the message was very simple. Qsshflrrch apprised me of the fact that shi-he was aware of my studies, expressed sh-his frank curiosity towards those studies, especially where they pertained to sh-his own work, informed me of a time when a meeting would be convenient for sh-him, and provided scrupulously detailed directions on how to reach sh-his abode.
Some of the most common means of transport in the city of Frfrspfshuul are not practicable for human beings, and since Qsshflrrch’s domicile was situated way out near The Crevices – the Frfrspfushuul equivalent of a shanty town – the way was rendered doubly difficult for me. I shall not dwell on the details of my trek. Suffice it to say that this excursion was an eye-opening tour of some of the obscurer parts of the city. Along the way I must have encountered nearly all of the architectural, that is to say, burrowing styles of worm history. I was more than once ambushed by the dawning horror that I was lost in some fairly ghastly places. I had to wait, sweating, like a trapped pot-holer, for passing worm citizens to shuffle my way and study the missive from Qsshflrrch that I kept handy. Towards the end of my expedition, when such passersby grew rare, such a chance encounter seemed to take on a whole different complexion. Of course, I was more or less accustomed to the vicinity of worms in the overcrowded centre of the city, but here in the hinterlands old instincts were reawakened, and I felt as I might had I suddenly come across such beings in an unexplored cave-system back on Earth. By the time I arrived in the locality of Qssflrrch’s apartments, my nerves were very much the worse for wear.
I was to learn later that Qsshflrrch had chosen to reside in an area which, because it was so difficult to defend from worms’ few remaining natural predators, who lurked in the total darkness of further, natural cave systems, had fallen largely into disuse. And, as I stood before the rocky portal that led to Qsshflrrsh’s apartments, I already felt without such knowledge that this was a colder, darker, more desolate part of the city than I was used to. The jagged rockface here presented such a wild aspect, abetted by the clammy air currents, that the suggestion of order beyond the portal made me think not of a dwelling-place, not even a worm’s dwelling place, but rather of a shrine erected in a wasteland. My image of Qsshflrrch was of the urbanite par excellence, and this anchoritic abode was quite out of keeping with my expectations.
I tentatively announced my presence and, after an interval of silence as gaunt and chill as the draught-swept rock floor, was
