Legomenon for miscellaneous OTHER WRITINGS of UNKNOWN PROVENANCE

The events in a number of narratives in the Archives take place in or around a large house beside a lake in the mountains. But without independent validation, it can only be conjectured that {House, Hills} describes the setting of one or more or even all of them, as a handful insist. Still, it is easy to imagine that one reason for this apparent coincidence is that this very house served as a repository for the Writings during at least some portion of its transmission.

The speculative sketch {Hypothesis} would have to be quite late, especially if its second paragraph describing the Scholar and Egderus is accepted as authentic: its apparent aim seems to be to problematize archiving itself. It is not entirely unique in this respect, nor is it the only text whose Author affects such a dark philosophical perspective, but nowhere else in the Archives is the whole project called into question.

It once was thought that the gnomic Writing {The Kinds of Wildernesses} and the elegiac {The Land Where No Man Is} might be the work of the Locust Grove Author, or, as others claim, of the Author known only as M (for Missionary?). Each underwent a period of wandering that could qualify, under a generous definition, as a wilderness experience. (These sojourns are recounted in the Writings {Peripatikos Soter} and {M the Wanderer}, respectively.)

However, apart from what feels like a similarity in tone to the reflective passages in one or the other of these Authors' multi-part memoirs, there is no corroborating evidence, strictly speaking, for this tender-hearted, 'Romantic' hypothesis, in either case — no matter how powerful the intuition that it is correct. It must be kept in mind, however, that this is not the same as saying it cannot be correct.

The hortatory {fellowship}, one of the most recently discovered Writings to date, is still being studied and evaluated, though there is little disagreement over its authenticity. It bears striking resemblance to a much older Writing, {First Sermon of Egderus}, and may even be a separate descendant of a common ancestor, in which the speaker — for the text is plainly intended for public address, and may be a transcription, if not a version of the actual text of that oration — reminds those attending of their special status as members of the congregation they have just joined, which sets them off from the rest of humanity, in time as well as sociality.

The remaining Writings of Unknown Provenance, despite clearly having different Authors, seem to share a sensibility, that of a person who has withdrawn from the world, either by choice or by force of circumstance. Here their arrangement does suggest, if only obscurely, a series — not so much of chronology (either of narrative setting or of compositional succession), but of a potentially edifying order in which to read them.

The first in this last parcel of anonymous Writings, the poem {the strength of the pull of the dark} enjoins its reader (or hearer) to leave off worrying so much about why things are the way they are, but rather to simply enjoy them while they last.

It has been argued that {thanksgiving} shares an Author with the Insomniac's Writing {pass it on}, apparently on the basis of tone of voice — though a successful demonstration the 'truth' of this impression has so far proved elusive...

The last three of this group do, however, strongly suggest a single narrator, though their sequence here is necessarily tentative. The first, {brusque and impatient}, seems to be set in an early stage of a relationship between lovers, perhaps just when difficulties have begun to appear in actually living out the consequences of their mutual attraction. The next, {What will I do?}, hints at a later moment in the liaison, perhaps on the verge of a tragic end to this love story, its urgent question bespeaking bewilderment and (perhaps) the onset of despair. The older, seasoned couple sketched in {keeping busy} have found a more tolerant modus operandi in the face of some ominous and perhaps inevitable development in the world...

Whatever the answer to such scholarly questions, the value of these unclassifiable texts to a complete view of the Archives is incontestable.