"Dédicace" (poem) by R. Murray Schafer (excerpt), recited by R. Murray Schafer

An excerpt of "Dédicace," a poem by R. Murray Schafer, which appeared as the dedication pages to his Smoke: A Novel (1976). Recited by R. Murray Schafer.

R. Murray Schafer (1933-2021) was a Canadian composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist who was perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World (1977).

In this poem, Schafer alters the spellings of each word (often by means of transposing or scrambling their letters) in such a way that, at first, the listener hears the text as being in an unknown foreign language. With each repetition, however, the spellings of individual words are gradually "corrected," creating an unexpected transformation from unintelligibility to intelligibility.

Preceding Schafer's reading are brief comments on the relationship between music and poetry by the American developmental psychologist Howard Gardner (b. 1943) and the American composer John Cage (1912-1992).

This is an excerpt from the "Music & Words" episode (Episode 8) of the 12-part radio series The Nature of Music, which was hosted by the ethnomusicologist Karl Signell (b. 1933) and originally broadcast on National Public Radio in the United States in 1987.

"Dédicace" was reproduced, with the author's permission, in Text-Sound Texts, ed. Richard Kostelanetz (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1980), pp. 205-207.
https://monoskop.org/images/d/d7/Kost...

The excerpt read here (which starts at 01:22) reads as follows:

Tou fo meryon, tou fo teh lulsk, tou fo teh lehmet nad te chonc lehls, tou fo syad nad hisgnt, I heva noshiedaf sith tumcose fo sdwor rof oyu, nwustiting titell fo ti ta mite. Eseth era royu losymbs, royu urte a canfisigance, hohtug theiner fo su kwen ti neth. Theiner fo su kwen woh teh sulping larity fo ym elov dowul noe ayd mecobe a rentconai fo rembanremec, a save rof royu dafed mobol, a rackced raj fo urego a bomt, shuped up tou of meryon, tou of teh lulsk, tou of teh lehmet nad teh chonc lehls, tou of syad nad hisgnt,
[ ... ]
pushed up out of memory, out of the skull, out of the helmet and the conch shell, out of days and nights, I have noshiedaf this costume of words for you, nwustiting little of it at a time. These are your symbols, your true canfisigance, though neither of us knew it then. Neither of us knew how the pulsing reality of my love would one day become a rentconai of rembanremec, a vase for your faded bloom, a cracked jar of rouge, a tomb, pushed up out of memory, out of the skull, out of the helmet and the conch shell, out of days and nights, I have fashioned this costume of words for you, untwisting little of it at a time. These are your symbols, your true significance, though neither of us knew it then. Neither of us knew how the pulsing reality of my love would one day become a container of remembrance, a vase for your faded bloom, a cracked jar of rouge, a tomb.

More information:
https://drum.lib.umd.edu/items/3cf4a7...
https://www2.umbc.edu/eol/nom/nomguid...