schopenhauer: 'a man can do as he wills, but not determine what it is that he wills' : would be nicely considered in relation to the previously discussed statement: pei: 'unless we choose to accept the doctrine of predestination, it is chance that makes history' : schopenhauer's chosen method of grappling with the elusive being humorous irony: the self-referential, paradoxical, ironical and circular approach, no matter the tone, in satirical fashion resembling the shakespearian wise fool, or truth illuminated through some unexpected path : it seems that eco's thesis in the name of the rose is related to this fact: that while aristotle's wisdom concerning the tragic form has survived some such similar wisdom with regard to comedy has been lost, perhaps by some nefarious conspiracy : to relate eco's concern with the lost language of god to this perceived thesis in the rose, it is in name only that the comic tradition persists : comedy in a post babel context :: comedy in a pre babel context, what might be characterized as the 'absurd' : kierkegaard's abraham being then the [comic] hero 'resigned' to sacrifice his son but simultaneously with faith 'on the strength of the absurd' that isaac will be given back to him, he thus receives isaac back in rejoicing, the fact of which not at all compromises the fact that he previously fully intended to sacrifice isaac : this must be the anti-tragic [comic] hero, acting 'on the strength of the absurd' : because this simultaneous resignation and faith is best attempted to be fathomed without respect to time, again eliminating theta, the is one central image to the elastic proof : this comic hero, with concurrent resignation and faith, is more powerul in an obvious way than the tragic hero, who makes a bad decision and is thereby ruined : if the lost aristotle manuscript concerning comedy that eco fictionalized indeed explained this kierkegaardian 'strength of the absurd,' contemporary poetics might be a different place : but rather than consider agamemnon as did kierkegaard, in constructing the elastic proof we are not constrained by the desire to compare like circumstances and so we should consider oedipus, the canonical tragic hero :: so might it be noteworthy that oedipus, when confronted by the riddle of the sphinx, had fulfilled exactly half of his prophesied destiny : what if the actual [meta] answer to the dilemma was to know the answer to the riddle but not to speak it, hence leaving the riddling sphinx in place and seeking another path : killing one's father is fairly commonplace in the course of abdication narrative, a son will routinely usurp his father, but marrying his mother is peculiarly revolting : if the choice of oedipus is the [theta] fulcrum between past and future : so the antecedent half of his destiny which was unavoidable [before the sphinx] was no big deal unless it was accompanied by the repulsive consequent [after the sphinx] : furthermore, in vanquishing the sphinx what essence is he clearing from the metaphorical path : the sphinx is apparently frightening, beautiful, and wise, a marriage of strength and wisdom, so perhaps oedipus was unwise in ridding his path of fear, beauty and wisdom : the city of thebes thought itself unfortunate for being held in protection by the sphinx, but indeed the post-sphinx plague that resulted from the choice of oedipus was much worse and so the sphinx as protector is vindicated : the wisdom is the riddle itself, not the answer to the riddle which was better left unsaid :: to add now to the images comprising the elastic proof that of salome, femme fatale : but setting aside the sexually pernicious salome of fin de siecle artwork, instead the salome complicit but perhaps reluctant to be used by herodias for the purpose of revenge : the reclamation of the biblical femme fatale (from contemporary unidimensional renderings) and the classical tragic hero (from interpretations from aristotle to nietsche) : consider the mothers, herodias and jocasta : jocasta is not the noir femme fatale using persuasive charm to manipulate the hero into committing atrocity, that is more her mother herodias, although herodias uses her daughter, needing the youth and beauty of salome to complete the heinous act, this relationship is most important and disserviced by the collapse of the two characters into one incomprehensible salome femme fatale : the lost femme fatale is thus both salome and herodias, the evil of the mother usurping the beauty and innocence of daughter in order to exact revenge against the truthful and innocent johannes : jocasta presumably conforms to the other noir archetype, the defenseless victim, the innocent mother : only noir punishes the femme fatale for being more potent than her station as woman allows, whereas herodias is rewarded : and jocasta, who only ever was a mother and wife, is shamed and kills herself : the tragic hero shames and condemns his innocent mother while the femme fatale is manipulated by her mother into committing evil :: place names and people names : the fabric of the elastic proof, this pattern with layers, the lacunae, unseen [meta] layer : consider meta108: the irony of this aspect of the logos must apply to the meta search : so with the collapse of theta the logos must take on another meaning, distinct from the connotation of discourse : perhaps sound : but sound, at least in our estimation also even involves theta : but try [versuchen] to collapse theta and achieve this resounding collection of images that comprise the way of affirmation, that echo the music of the spheres : when yggdrasil was a fledgling sprout, the harmony that filled the garden in which it grew, the nutrients of its soil, the color of its blossoms, the creatures that flew and crawled about, and the tall grass behind whose blades the roots lurked and the primeval insects engaged in the process of logos :: place names and people names : the anatomy of the fearful sphere implies an infinitude of points of an infinite size in an infinitude of directions, but this kind of description is useless : perhaps if deconstructed and examined piece by piece, the vastness and minisculeness will be more evident : firstly, each point must be approximated by a mirror-like object : and each point must have a name : it is unavoidable the question: what is in the name : the name is like a placeholder, a reference to some location in memory : if the content stored in the memory location is no longer associated with the name, then the name is just an empty label with no meaning, but the content in the memory location is still there and the only link back to it is in the name : so perhaps through the name we can excavate the underlying lost content : place names and people names : stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus, eco's quote from the rose: yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names : words, sounds that are names are evidently empty, as also evidenced by goethe's der erlkönig : as with eco's title for the rose, this title evokes discord : to examine this image as one mirror-like point within the fearful sphere :: name, location in memory : der erlkönig, the false contention regarding this title : this false contention exactly corresponding to that discord surrounding eco's rose title : in both cases the authors have created a false door [stelae] through which there is some meaning evident only to those who can pass through the door : in the case of the rose the title itself references this very fact, a meta title in effect it is self referential, the title is itself the empty name causing discord among those of us unable to pass through the false door to discover the actual meaning of the rose : these titles involve layers, the discord is the misperception that one layer is correct and the remaining layers are incorrect : a true perception involves the a priori acceptance that any presented layers hold meaning and that the true meaning derives from the aggregation of layers and that a heirarchical arrangement of layers is inappropriate : one layer [meta layer] of the rose title provides the key to all such titles, the title itself presents a rebuke against the narrow interpretation of its own meaning, it is saying there is more hidden in this title than we perceive at this time, and indeed there is more to all such titles; the presentation of the title and the quote from which it comes is a temptation to contentiousness over the meaning of the surface layer and therefore a distraction from a perception of other layers integral to the overall meaning : the title is a coded trap luring the narrow and binary tendency among observers to pick one meaning or another, to keep one layer and discard all others when actually the richness of the many layers is vital to the excavation of its meaning :: In the case of der erlkönig the discord surrounds the contention that goethe mistranslated or borrowed a mistranslation : it seems unlikely, actually impossible, that goethe meant to say elf king and rather said alder king : but the casualty of discord is not a loss regarding whether elf or alder is correct, the casualty is rather the loss of richness of meaning when both elf and alder are considered equally meaningful : so the question becomes whether elf and alder, at their roots, are isomorphic, and the answer, given the axiom of sweet imagination [meta132], is that they are accepted a priori as isomorphic and all that is needed are the missing layers [isomorphisms] connecting these two conjectures : the layers are not known, but consider this conjecture: these layers relate to the indo european root albh meaning 'white' which also spawned the middle high german elbe and old english elf : elf king and alder king might be masculine and feminine emanations of the root alb which describe an isomorphic god or goddess of various forms, consider: alberich, dwarf god of the underworld; alphito, arcadian goddess of barley; eller kong, danish king of the alders : whether elf king or alder king, a version of the same transformed deity is likely involved : the name is a marker, a place holder for a location in memory : interestingly, guido von list attempts to relate a similar runic sound 'embla' to 'alder' through a description of yggdrasil: '... the designation "World-Ash" is also meaningful, for "ash" is "Ask"—the first man, the primal-father of humanity who bore the same name ("the primal mother was called Embla, i.e., "Alder")' : so evidently, both alder and elf share some relationship with 'alb' and so the both are correct and the name meaning of the title erlkönig is the resonance of all layers of meaning :: name, iohannis : there is something eternally chilling about salome's repeated call for the head of john the baptist in strauss' opera : 'ich will den kopf johannes' : (understanding that this salome of strauss, from oscar wilde, is the previously discarded sexually pernicious femme fatale of fin de siecle consciousness, whereas the present consideration of salome is the combined victimized daughter salome and manipulative usurping mother herodias, nevertheless) the echo of 'den kopf johannes' rings out in singularly destructive potency in an elastic proof of images : why is her shrill call so potent : why does one suddenly feel a chord of empathy with the unsympathetic herod when she makes her uncompromising claim : her demand is incomprehensible, even with the back story provided by herodias' circumstance : indeed, why does herodias care what john thinks about her marriage when john is imprisoned and presumably helpless against her : salome's call is baffling and gruesome and to me there is a finality and humiliation in the act which increases the dramatic import [nostalgia] of the act to an unrivaled level : somehow johannen is tied to the divine logos [meta106], as is confirmed by augustine who elucidates the importance of john's father, zacharias, who is struck dumb in disbelief of john's birth and then 'finally, he is born, he receives a name and his father's tongue is loosed' : john declares: 'i am the voice of one crying in the wilderness' : augustine concludes: 'john is the voice, but the Lord in the beginning was the Word' [logos] : also, can it be coincidence that it is st. john's gospel that characterizes the word [logos] which had been 'with God from the beginning' : important to note is augustine's phrase: 'he receives a name and his father's tongue is loosed' the emphasis on his receiving a name and the importance of his voice are evidence that iohannis, the person name, is woven into the word, plan, language [logos] that we propose to illuminate through an elastic proof comprised of images : the name iohannis must somehow be an interwoven prologue (john the baptist) and epilogue (st john) to the fundament of the logos, the sound before the sound and after the sound that we seek : whereas john's father zachary loses his voice until john is named, salome terminates john's voice : the reason salome's claim is so wretched and final is that, in cutting his throat, she attacks exactly the anatomy of his voice :: name, virgil : a strangely circular and metalinguistic virgilius grammaticus reaffirms the 'ontological status' of naming names : his teacher is aeneas, a character created by another virgil, and several other virgils apparently appear in his grammars : vivien law explains that medieval readers were naturally accustomed to looking for meaning and significance in proper names : law describes virgilius' chapter titled propria nomina as likely containing underlying layers of discoverable significance : she quotes virgilius: 'Proper nouns are not to be read as mere noises, but as having some subtler interpretation.' : and she also cites Isidore of Sevile, who 'points out in his Etymologiae ... many names are motivated by their own causes' : what is the nature of the causes that motivate names, which are not 'mere noises' : if names are motivated by their own causes, then what is the role of name giver, if it is the will of the name giver which bestows the name, but yet names are motivated by their own causes, then perhaps it is accurate to say that: 'a man can do as he wills, but not determine what it is that he wills', schopenhauer : the name giver gives the name that he wills, but does not determine the name that he gives : so the name giver just happens to will the right name, that is, the name that is motivating itself to be given : in the case of zachary, father of john the baptist, the story from luke is interesting in that zechariah's dumbness is very intertwined with the usurpation by the angel of his role as name giver : he is told by the angel that elizabeth will have a son and that his name will be john, he doubts and so the angel takes away his voice : he remains dumb until exactly the moment when he must declare the child's name : john was about to be named zechariah, but elizabeth claimed his name was to be john, the crowd did not believe her and asked zechariah, who asked for a writing table and wrote that the child's name was to be john, at this moment he was again able to speak : john's voice is continually in focus, as with isaiah's foretelling of john: 'the voice of one crying in the desert' and 'the mouth of the Lord hath spoken'; his father's voice at birth, and, as discussed, with john the baptist's death: the literal severing of his voice box ::as the fearful sphere indicates, there is an axiom upon which the elastic proof rests: in an appropriate paradoxical structure each point is a metaphor for each other point, all points having in common that they are some aspect of the center point (which is everywhere) : consider virgilius maro: given that virgilius grammaticus was fond of meaningful names, as i understand it the meaning or origin of 'maro' is not known : 'maro' anagrammatically is 'roma', which is one character removed from 'rosa' and also 'rota' : 'roma', 'rosa' and 'rota' being the isomorphic points at hand : but aside from etymological fancy, the name meanings of 'rosa' and 'roma' are encoded together in eco's quote, stat pristina rosa: variously translated as 'yesterday's rome' and 'yesterday's rose' : and the name meanings of 'rosa' and 'rota' are encoded together at the cathedral at amiens: emile mâle describes the upper half of the exterior of the rose window on the south porch as being surrounded by a depiction of the rota fortunae with seventeen figures, eight ascending, eight descending and fortune herself at the top in the middle : mâle makes reference to the prominent description of the rota fortunae by boethius : georges poulet, in a footnote in an essay regarding dante and the fearful sphere, mentions that in De Consolatione 'Boethius compares the peripheral mobility of Fate with the central fixity of Providence' ('a man can do as he wills, but not determine what it is that he wills', schopenhauer) and he elucidates that boethius describes eternity in similar terms to that of the famous sphere : boethius' description of the rota fortunae is also synchronous with dante's metaphors on currency [meta122] : these points should be traceable through a line to the origin of the sphere but also to each other because the center point of the sphere is everywhere, discerning the axiomatic isomorphic quality of each node :: in imagining the images (the sought after lacunae, the conjectures comprising the fabric of the elastic proof) [meta132-134], consider a threefold arboreal meta metaphor : (the meta level metaphor being the isomorphic image of the overall elastic proof itself rather than an image characterizing a single node in the fabric of the proof [lacuna] (an image of the center point of the fearful sphere rather than an image of one emanating point : however being that the center is everywhere then this meta level metaphor is at once an image of the whole proof and a reflection of each individual point [lacuna])) : the three alternate arboreal morphic (meta metaphor) substitutions of the elastic proof: i) overtone: the music of the spheres, a tree of sounds emanating from a fundamental; this pythagorean meta map depicts the ptolomaic system of the sphere, requiring the imaginative collapse of theta, a leap of acceptance of unscientific knowledge, i.e., a hidden aspect [lacuna] of physics, a meta phor meta da physika : ii) option: the tree of choice (decision tree), providing the unwitting real time experiment necessary to quantify a meta phor accidentally, or conceptually quantify a meta phor involving the expounded colloquial truth of time's equivalence to money, the nodes of the decision tree representing alternate future choices of the path of the underlying asset which are statistically (using T (theta), volatility, and r (the time value of money)) discounted to a single present value of the option (the elimination of theta) : iii) yggdrasil: the mysterious tree of life which links all of our lacunae by some elusive thread, beginning with the evidently primal utterance ('ask') and spreading isomorphically to all points (embla, alba, elves & alders (all manner of woodland (selva oscura, sacred grove) metaphor (also consider 'mori', the japanese for forest, another phonetic isomorphism of rosa, roma, rota), including the above decision tree and overtone tree) and as such providing the most satisfying substitute for all sought after lacunae; as expressed by jung: 'Trees in particular were mysterious, and seemed to me direct embodiments of the incomprehensible meaning of life.' ::flowers, flowers, flowers : charles williams describes the way of rejection (center) as best depicted by dionysius the areopagite, and the way of affirmation (circumference) as best depicted by dante through beatrice (the thesis of the book) : in dante virgil is approached by beatrice who is approached by lucia, who is in turn approached by 'a lady in heaven, with grace enough to prevent the judgment' of dante, this unnamed woman thrice removed from dante is evidently Mary : emile mâle discusses st. bernard, who 'wrote at length on the Song of Songs applied all its metaphors to Mary' : later, in discussing thirteenth century depictions of the annunciation, mâle mentions the appearance in this period of 'a symbolic detail ... a flower with a long stalk is placed in a vase between the Virgin and the angel' he further explains that '... the mediæval doctors taught that the Annunciation took place in the springtime, "at the time of flowers," and they thought to find support for this in the name Nazareth, which signifies a "flower." So that St. Bernard could say : "The flower willed to be born of a flower, in a flower, at the time of flowers" : ...