Genoblast,
the bisexual nucleus of the impregnated ovum.
and, the anatomy book, diagram of cell division:
“t. End of telophase. The daughter cells are connected by the ectoplasmic stalk. The endoplasm has been completely divided by the constriction of the equatorial band. It has mixed with the interchromosomal (exnuclear) material. The compact daughter nuclei have begun to show clear areas and to enlarge. u. The daughter cells have moved in opposite directions and stretched the connecting stalk. The nuclei have larger clear areas and less visible chromosome material. v. The connecting stalk has been pulled into a thin strand by the migration of the daughter cells in opposite directions.”
and
“w. . . . The connecting stalk is broken.”
Blastomere,
one of the segments into which the fertilized egg divides. And
Morula,
the mulberry mass, coral- or sponge-like, a mass of blastomeres . . . this hollows into a shell, surrounding a central cavity, and is called a
Blastosphere,
which “becomes adherent by its embryonic pole to the epithelial lining of the uterus. There it flattens out somewhat and erodes and digests the underlying surface of the uterus.”
(Isabel, in PIERRE: “I pray for peace—for motionlessness—for the feeling of myself, as of some plant, absorbing life without seeking it . . .”
and for the next two weeks the invader attacks the host, destroying epithelial tissue to make room for itself, and set up embryotrophic nutrition.
MOBY-DICK, The Shark Massacre: “But in the foamy confusion of their mixed and struggling hosts, the marksmen could not always hit their mark; and this brought about new revelations of the incredible ferocity of the foe. They viciously snapped, not only at each other’s disembowelments, but like flexible bows, bent round, and bit their own; till these entrails seemed swallowed over and over again by the same mouth, to be oppositely voided by the gaping wound.”
And on the fourth voyage of Columbus, the men, having eaten all their supply of meat, killed some sharks. In the stomach of one, they found the head of another, a head that they had thrown back earlier into the sea, as being unfit to eat.
“The trophoblast proliferates rapidly, forms a network of branching processes which cover the entire ovum, invade the maternal tissues and open into the maternal blood vessels . . .”
(there was the Royal Order, granting amnesty to all convicts who would colonize the Indes . . .
(the new islands overrun with the undifferentiated
(like the red, rushing growth that fills the space of a wound:
(proud flesh
I shift position in the chair, my eyes having trouble with the typeface before me . . . trying by changing the fundamental balance of my body, of my spine, to alter what I see . . .
“Parallel neural folds rise higher and higher, flanking the neural groove, and finally meet and fuse to form a closed tube which is the primordial brain . . .”
and there are the drawings in the medical book:
embryos, 4 to 10 weeks: the wide-set, bead-like eyes, the pig-snouts, the enormous double foreheads, grotesque, like the masks and carvings Carl acquired in Alaska . . .
“The conclusion is that each organ not only originates from a definite embryonic area or primordium and from no other but also that it arises at a very definite moment which must be utilized then if ever.”
and as I read this, the print, the black letters on white, come into sure focus. I reach to the ashtray—judging the distance with ease and pleasure—and put out the stump of my cigar.
I remain still, enjoying again a sense of refreshment, of well-being . . .
there is this about Columbus and Melville: both were blunt men, setting the written word on the page and letting it stand, not going back to correct their errors, not caring to be neat . . .
(Melville: “It is impossible to talk or to write without apparently throwing oneself helplessly open . . .”
The orthography, the spelling of both was hurried, splashed with errors,
and both men annotated, scattered postils, in whatever books they read: putting islands, fragments of themselves, at the extremes of the page . . .
There was the handwriting:
Columbus, the early Columbus, man of the ocean-sea and the Indes, confident, level, forward-flowing, the touch light, the form disciplined, not flamboyant (the tops of the consonants rising and curving like Mediterranean lateen sails), exuberant,
and later, as he grew old, writing to the Sovereigns to complain and beg, the words became cramped, the letters thick, the pen bore heavily on the page, the flowing lines conflicted, became eccentric . . .
And Melville: harder, more incised (the Yankee) and crabbed, but, like Christopher, leaning forward against restraints, and on a level line: level with the horizon . . .
Whereas Columbus, complaining and failing, jabbed the page, Melville (likewise failing) withdrew from it, the pen, the thought, the man scarcely forming the word . . .
And Columbus, a very old man, all hope and islands lost to him save only as gout, as crystals at the extremities of his body, permitted his two styles to flow together and become one . . .
(always, however, the line remaining level . . . the only variation being, upon occasion, a moderate roll, the pen riding the page like a caravel coasting a gentle ground swell, among the Indes . . .