~~~
† In some versions of this sonnet the eye colour is grey rather than golden; surely a peculiarity for a wolf.
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Footnote 6) Even in the Fallen Realms, no wolf would ever put an animal in a cage, prolong its suffering, give it strange diseases and then put an ointment on it to see if the ointment would give it boils or pimples. And no wolf would ever think to hunt animals for sport.
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Footnote 7) One tries to imagine the reason for the wolf metaphor in Denethon’s work; it is simply impossible to fathom. It is said that he owned a dog; did he thereby attain some sympathy for the domestic canine’s wilder cousin? It is said that a wolf, once he or she imprints, will be bonded to that partner for life; is that why he uses this metaphor, as a symbol for faithfulness? Or did the unnamed object of his affections perhaps possess the surname, “Wolf” or one of the many variants in other languages? (Ze’ev in Hebrew, interestingly, Wolff, Loupe, Lupus, Phelan, Lykalos, López, Blaeth, Reszo, Farkas, Farquhar, etcetera...) Or is the wolf even a cryptic reference to music? The immortal Mozart is said to have been one of Denethon’s favourite composers, his name ‘Wolfgang’ means wolf-raven; also Zaeldh’nun, the elvish composer, well loved by Denethon as well - interestingly, Zaeldh’nun means ‘wolf’ in Hwellwellyn elvish! This brings us to Sonnet XXII, which mentions Mozart and the wolf metaphor§:
SONNET XXII
I am watching Hitchcock's Vertigo
You remind me of her, wolf of mine
Your darker self a hidden dream, I glimpse, (though
Truly I think you more sane than her, my sign
Of every hope I've ever held in this world.)
Let me watch that film with you, my star;
The way you look at me, love unfurled,
Flying like a flag, reminds me of her,
I would kiss you, let passion unfold like a flower
Let there be no falling, no despair,
Let Mozart be our sign in hope's sweet hour,
And I will ask you to marry me there.
God grant that all these dreams be true
All I ever want in future life is you.
§There are many other poems that mentions wolves also, see footnote 7.
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Footnote 8) The Fallen Realms are the realms where death entered the Cosmos, through Adam and Eve.
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Footnote 9) Zelf’s people, the Welfings, hunted only for food, and that, only when they lived in one of the dark realms. In Zelf’s own realm, First Den, no one ate meat at all.
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Footnote 10) Ælz io æülinaz is literally, “Alpha of Alphas” in Old Hwellwellyn. The final z disappears before ‘io’ in contractions or is replaced by ‘n’, giving the etymology, Ælioülianan for Ellulianæn. The dipthong Æ is the first letter in the Old Hwellwellyn Alphabet: indicating the belief that Ellulianæn existed before everything.
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Footnote 11) Endnote for this chapter. The wolf metaphors are so ubiquitous in Denethon’s poetry - as well as the one’s mentioned earlier, see also the sonnets, XIII, XXII, XXXI, also the aforementioned, and the ones from the 199 poems that I mention later in this chapter’s footnotes, also the songs, ‘Lone Wolf Howling’, ‘Lady Wolf’, ‘Wolf Moon Rising’, the poem ‘Lamb’ (a rendering of the biblical parable of the lost sheep), the individual poems ‘Sadness’ and ‘Aslan’s Dance - Wisdom’. Indeed, wolf metaphors and references abound in Denethon’s 373 poems, (note that in some later editions, his 372 poems, actually); for instance, here are just a few I found in a cursory search of the 199. Interestingly, Zev himself is mentioned in one of them:
EXTRACT FROM POEM NUMBER 2. FROM ‘A POEM A DAY FOR 199¥ DAYS’
Am I a sheep? Perhaps; I hope to God.
(Or did a wolfish snap, in a moment, ruin it all?)
It is stress and loneliness that turns odd
The things I say or do. And then I fall.
EXTRACT FROM POEM NUMBER 34. FROM ‘A POEM A DAY FOR 199 DAYS’
You are the wolf’s ears, the butterfly’s wing,
You are the sun by day, the stars at night,
You carry every hope that life could ever bring,
In your breast, and every possible delight.
POEM NUMBER 68.
Poem that Zev, the human werewolf, wrote for Zelf, the Welfing, the wolf-lady:
Of every living thing
You are the beautifullest
And your fur coat
Is the wolf-woolest
EXTRACT FROM POEM NUMBER 99.
(Called, 99 reasons why you are beautiful; this is the 6th reason:)
More lovely than a wolf’s mate, in your ways
¥Incidentally, Professor Ze’ev B. Wolfenbarter of the university of Austrich once commented that he believed there was some numerological significance to the number of poems in this section of the 373 (or 372 as I said), i.e. 199, but I simply cannot see it. I could find no name that added up to 199 using Gematria - ροβερτ ζ δενεθον , Denethon’s name in Hwellwellyn characters, adds up to 777, 777 also in Greek, ροβερτ ζ δενεθον, (Greek gematria is functionally equivalent to Hwellwellyn), but in English ordinal gematria, Robert Z Denethon adds up to 189, not 199. Zelf adds up to 49, Ζελφ, Ζελφ - 542, Ζεω Ζεu, 412, Zev - 53. I personally account Wolfenbarter’s theory to be complete bosh; although finding out the name of the woman Denethon loved might cast some light therein §. I think it unlikely, however, that Denethon’s fondness for gematria was quite as obsessive as Wolfenbarter suggests. Possibly Wolfenbarter got the figure 199 from Denethon’s scrawl on the working out page for the 372, ‘173 days to go,’ to which ultimate date, we don’t know. But 372-173 is, of course, 199.
§It was not until late in the course of writing this book, virtually on the eve of publication, that I found some information that went some way towards solving this mystery; there is indeed significance to the number 373, but when I discovered it, it was too late to reset the text on most of these pages.
The notes to Book IV elucidate my conclusions.
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Footnote 12) Denethon was apparently no stranger to despair. Some of the sonnets hint at times of darkness and defeat, such as the first one below, and ‘Dark Moon’ hints that such dark days were not unknown even after he had met his mysterious muse:
Sonnet to a Mysterious Arrival (Poem number 24, of the 199 poems.)
Everything about you is right.
You are the one I was waiting for
All my life. You are purest starlight ¤
In this dark world. God had you in store
For me, when I thought I had been beaten,
During all the lonely, wasted years.
(So many years). The years the locusts had eaten
When my life was haunted by crippling fears,
Through loneliness, defeat, despair, and loss,
God planned you’d come to me, eventually,
And make pure gold out of my life’s dross
He showed me you before you came to me,
And you arrived, long after this was stated,
Now, every tear I ever shed is compensated.
Dark Moon
On certain days the dark moon rises on me
If then you seem to turn away, a part
Of me believes the lies hell devises on me
And blackest, bleak despair fills my heart.
I half believe you truly do not love me
I start to think I’ll never marry you.
Dark world. I forget heaven above me
I know you won’t want me to worry you.
I moan - my heart in wilderness dwells, all my
Sorrows start to haunt me from the past.
A screech owl hardly screeches less, and I
br /> Watch lonely years stretch ahead, aghast.
But when I dwell on you, my spirit lifts:
For our God is a God of grace, and undeservèd gifts.
Yet, compare this fragment, from another poem:
Behind the melody of your speaking, I hear heaven’s voice.
You blow into my life like a fresh breeze
Scattering despair’s foul fume and the cobwebs of fear
Whisking away old habits and futile anxieties
Like a ray of light casting darker corners clear.
¤In the Bible stars are arguably metaphors for angels; c.f. Judges 5:20, Job 38:7. Could that explain the frequency of the star metaphor in Denethon’s work? (Later footnotes explore this in more detail.)
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Footnote 13) The asylum imagery brings to mind a story that Denethon himself was incarcerated in a mental sanatorium for a short length of time after a nervous breakdown in his early twenties. Like so many stories about Denethon, it is extremely hard to either prove or disprove, and only increases the mystery of his origins and life history.
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Footnote 14)
This metaphor brings to mind a Denethon poem:
Hawk
You are a hawk, perfect and beautiful and deadly entaloned
From far above, you espied me wandering below
Swooping down, grasping me entire, your jaws, sharply honed
Pull me, frigid in open-mouthed fear, into the sky I go.
~~~
In a moment of strange grace, I, mere mouse, face my demise
Watching with wonder the world revolving beneath
I cannot begrudge your hold on me, in this perfect, death-dealing vise.
To be captured by such beauty is the most wondrous death.
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Footnote 15)
Denethon is said to have written some music for this story, a suite for bass salpinxofone and piano.
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Footnote 16)
A cryptic reference to C.S.Lewis, perhaps, who said, “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”~~~~
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