Wave-Mares & Bone Coffers

Off The Shelf: (5/23/2022)

Welcome to Off The Shelf, a publication of The Square Inch. It’s about everything books. If you love the old smell of an ancient treasure you found in a library book sale or if you just love turning fine pages—maybe you even dog-ear them like a monster—this place is for you.

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Photo by Ann Marie Kennon (www.pexel.com)

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Dear Friends,

Recently I was reading a passage in Jaroslav Pelikan’s magisterial five-volume work on the history of Christian doctrine (which I’ll surely talk more about in a future edition of Off The Shelf) and I ran across a quote and a notation I didn’t recognize.

Let me explain that. Pelikan’s books are very unique. The layout is such that it has extremely wide margins; the actual text is a tight column. It’s almost like reading a scroll, the closest ink-and-paper equivalent of digital “scrolling” I’ve encountered. The purpose for the wide margin is for the “footnotes,” or, well, “side notes.” Here’s what I mean:

Cool, isn’t it? It generally gives me plenty of room to make marginal notations of my own (which I usually do in scholarly books), but also avoids filling up the page with footnotes or having to use—yuck!—endnotes. Now, I was intrigued by this reference to an Anglo-Saxon poem, The Dream of the Rood. And even more intrigued by the next obscure quote from another poet about being redeemed “from the wrath of God.” So I made a note to track them down.

But these marginal notes are abbreviated so as to be inscrutable. I had to flip to the “key” to figure out what he is referencing.

He’s citing someone named “Cynewulf” (kin-i-wolf) and a poem called “Christ.” I had never heard of Cynewulf, nor of his poem. So that set me off on a delightful little treasure hunt. Which resulted in finding this gem: