Semantic Sonata completed

Semantic Sonata was originally Semantic Sonata No.2. Semantic Sonata No.1 was a poem in French incorporating logical or algebraic symbols written in the late 1940s but never published, although Anthony Froshaug considered publishing both and produced a prospectus for Semantic Sonata No.2.

However, the most commonly found versions of Semantic Sonata, in On Semantic Poetry  and reprinted in  the Collected Poems of Stefan Themerson  are not complete. The full version of the poem can only be found in the rare and expensive Gaberbocchus Black Series Factor T  of 1956. As a service to people who possess the Collected Poems, I print the omitted sections here. They come on 98 of the Collected Poems, at the end of the 1st movement, after:

                                                                                                                    persons

                                                                                                        under

                                                                                                        arrest

                                                                                                            and

                                                                                                                in

                                                                                                                custody......

                   and

                                                      where the business of the

                                                                    court is carried on,  

                                                           you have been formally proved

                                       found

                                                       guilty of a crime

              on very free from obscurity

                               or

                                       dubiety

                               easy to be apprehended

                                                                 grasped by the intellect,

    certain

             unmistakable

     positive

              sure testimony

                                                made on oath by a witness

                                                   concerning what he had seen

                                                                                            heard

                                                                         or otherwise knows.

                             A book containing an alphabetical list of plain

                                                                                                 unadorned speech-signs

                                 lies before me

                             Relation between them

                             becomes the relation of points

                                                                      lines

                                                                 surfaces

                                                                    solids in the world of my muscles

                                                                          And
                                                                     nevertheless
                             In this place where now I am I am
                             Pretending to be receiving impressions of sound upon my auditory nerves-
                                                                              and refusing to listen;
                             pretending to be using my voice to produce musical sounds
                                                                                to render an air
                                                                                                     or
                                                                                                     tune-
                                                                   and only taking in and expelling
                                                                                 air from my lungs
                             pretending to entertain the feeling
                                                                      or
                                                                      passion of benevolence
                                                                                        charity
                                                                                        brotherliness borne by human
                                                                                                              beings towards
                                                                                                              others of mankind
                                                                       and a
                                                                             dry
                                                                             powdery
                                                                             greyish substance
                                                                             which remains
                                                                             after burning
                                                                             anything.

Recapitulation

                                God gave me human shape and said: Pretend!

                                God always gives some shapes to his voids and says:  Pretend! And

                                the voids do pretend, and grow old, and  become
                                what they were not,
                                what they didn't want to be.

                                A void with a white rag to gag another void with
                                a white rag of logic I've got and am holding it in my hand
                                but he's so tall, o my god, and his mouth is so far from the ground
                                I climb up and climb and climb up and up
                                and have been climbing since the first day of Genesis

                               yet
                              nevertheless
                              Here I am, pretending to be what I'm not
                              Pretending to hear, and- deaf,
                              pretending to sing, and- voiceless,
                              pretending to love and- ashes.


Coda

                           Simple words build gothic cathedrals
                                                           But he's so tall, o my god,
                           Simple syntax builds dodecahedrons
                                                           But his mouth is so far from the ground
                           Simple words upon my writing desk
                           Simple syntax- the functioning of my muscles
                                                          Yet the nail of his ogreish toe

                                                          still keeps high above my stretched fingers.

Franciszka and Stefan Themerson and the Gaberbocchus Press

This site is dedicated to Franciszka and Stefan Themerson and the Gaberbocchus Press which they founded and ran for many years. I have been helping Franciszka's niece, Jasia Reichardt, in the archive for some years. There is a website dedicated to the archive at http://www.themersonarchive.com/
We'd be interested in any information you can give us about them, but we are particularly interested in knowing the whereabouts of correspondence with both of them and Franciszka's art.