Aletheia Lorelei Verthandi is my name. I’ve said as much. It’s my name. I found it. It belongs to me.
I’d like to share with you something of what it means.
ALETHEIA
“Aletheia, disclosure regarded as the opening of presence, is not yet truth. Is aletheia then less than truth? Or is it more because it first grants truth as adequatio and certitudo, because there can be no presence and presenting outside of the realm of the opening?”
Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being, 1972 [1]
I needed an A. A stands for many things.
A stands for Aletheia, an element of ancient Greek philosophy.
In ancient Greek mythology, Lethe was a daughter of Eris (as given in Hesiod’s Theogony) and one of the five rivers to flow through the Underworld (about which more in this article by Benito Cereno). Lethe meant concealment, forgetfulness, and oblivion; it was from her waters that the shades of the dead were to drink in order to forget their mortal lives. Those in the know might instead seek the pool of Mnemosyne (whose name you might recognize as referenced in The Matrix Resurrections) in order to preserve their memories.
In Greek, applying the alpha privative (α-) to lethe (λήθη) generates its antonym, aletheia (άλήθεια), literally un-concealment, un-forgetfulness, un-oblivion. Aletheia is commonly translated as “truth,” although 20th century philosopher Martin Heidegger argued throughout his career for a more nuanced definition closer to “disclosure” based on its etymology.
It occurs to me, looking at its roots, that aletheia has something of a synonym, also in Greek. You may recognize it from the title of the last book of the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Deriving from the roots ἀπο-, meaning “off” or “not,” and καλύπτω, meaning “to cover,” it literally means uncovering, disclosure, or—famously—Revelation. The word is ἀποκάλυψις, rendered in Latin as apocalypsis and in English as “apocalypse.”
A stands for many things, and many more besides.
LORELEI
lureln … leise für sich singen, ohne dabei zu sprechen; summen, lallen; de lurelt de ganzen Dag summt in einem fort Lieder vor sich hin, spricht fortwährend mit sich selbst.
[Translated: to sing quietly to yourself, without speaking; to hum, to mumble; “he [murmurs] the whole day,” hums songs to himself on and on, talks continually to himself.]
Rhenish Dictionary definition for “lureln” [2]
On the right bank of a narrow and treacherous bend in the river Rhine in Germany (50°08’22″N, 07°43’44″E) stands a 132-meter high steep slate rock named the Loreley. Its name likely comes from the old Rhenish word “lureln,” defined above, and the word “ley”—probably derived from Celtic—meaning “rock.” Possibly this was in reference to the heavy currents of the river, amplified by the peculiar echoes of the cliff. The site maintains its historic spelling with a “y,” but since the German spelling reform the given name is properly spelled “Lorelei.”
The rock and its echoes are associated with local folklore going long back, involving dwarfs, mountain spirits, even the famous Nibelung gold. But starting in the early 19th century, the Loreley gained a feminine association that simultaneously elevated it in the German national consciousness. The poet Clemens Brentano (Zu Bacharach am Rheine, 1801), inspired by the myth of Echo, invented a woman named “Lore Lay,” accused of witchery, who ultimately died falling from atop the rock. Other authors and travel guides built upon the idea, sometimes falsely attributing it to an “ancient legend.” Eventually it came to the writer and poet Heinrich Heine (Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten, 1824), whose rendition imagined the Lorelei as a golden-haired siren luring boatmen upon the treacherous rocks below.
Heine’s poem proved extremely popular and was set to music by several composers, most memorably by Friedrich Silcher in 1837. From there, the Lorelei has remained in the German imagination… although Heine himself was a far more controversial figure, as a Jew and an anti-nationalist, about which I intend to write more in a future post.
VERTHANDI
Þaðan koma meyjar / margs vitandi
þrjár, ór þeim sal / er und þolli stendr;
[Urð hétu eina, / aðra Verðandi,
skáru á skíði, / Skuld ina þriðju;]
þær lög lögðu, / þær líf kuru
alda börnum, / örlög seggja.Thence come the maidens / mighty in wisdom,
Three from the dwelling / down ‘neath the tree;
[Urth is one named, / Verthandi the next,—
On the wood they scored,— / and Skuld the third.]
Laws they made there, / and life allotted
To the sons of men, / and set their fates.Völuspá, “The Prophecy of the Seeress,” stanza 20 [3]
What we know of Norse mythology is largely thanks to texts created in Iceland, mostly in the 13th century, by those using parchment writing, newly introduced to Scandinavia by Christian missionaries, to preserve pre-Christian oral tradition and folk belief. The two most important such sources are the Prose “Edda,” a sort of textbook to skaldic poetry compiled by the scholar and political leader Snorri Sturluson, and what has come to be called the Poetic Edda, an anonymous collection of narrative poems telling of Norse mythology and Germanic heroic legends.
The best known poem of the Poetic Edda is “Vǫluspá (The Prophecy of the Seeress),” in which a vǫlva has been tasked by Odin to tell of the creation and fate of the world. The poem makes mention of the Norns, three beings of great power who dwell at the base of the world tree Yggdrasil and govern the destinies of men. (The account of the Norns may have been inspired, or at least influenced, by the Μοῖραι or Parcae, the Fates of Greek or Roman mythology.) Their names are given (in lines which are probably an interpolation from some other account of the Norns) as Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld. They are commonly taken to represent Past, Present, and Future, respectively, but there’s more nuance to the translation than that, and the temporal connotations are disputed.
Skuld means “debt” and is related to the English word “should.” In addition to being the youngest Norn, Skuld is one of Odin’s valkyries.
Urðr means “fate.” It derives from the Old Norse verb verða, and is an etymological cognate of the Old English wyrd.
Verðandi is even more closely related to verða, being the present participle of the verb, which is a cognate of the German werden. Verðandi literally means “(that which is) becoming.”
And so here I am, becoming.
And as for how I came by these names? Mostly they intersect about my adolescence. I read a book. I played a game. I learned a language. I heard stories. These were important to me. I kept them close, developed them over time, and had the pieces when I needed them.
But I’ll save those stories for another time.
[1]: Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 69, translation amended. Cited in Nikolas Kompridis, Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future, (Boston: MIT Press, 2006), p. 189. via Wikipedia
[2]: „lureln“, Rheinisches Wörterbuch, digitalisierte Fassung im Wörterbuchnetz des Trier Center for Digital Humanities, Version 01/21, https://www.woerterbuchnetz.de/RhWB?lemid=L06225, abgerufen am 21.12.2022.
[3]: Völuspá, “The Prophecy of the Seeress,” stanza 20. Poetic Edda (translation by Henry Adams Bellows, published 1936), https://www.voluspa.org/voluspa16-20.htm
