Ligotti are knots

Didacticism as a ‘complicated knot’: View of ‘PURITY’: http://www.ligotti.net/showpost.php?p=15506&postcount=21

My KNOTS short short in 2009: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=2471

Recent ‘Primary Task’ thread: http://www.ligotti.net/showpost.php?p=105109&postcount=10

Gulliver was tied up in knots by the Lilliputians which relates to my recent mini-review of ‘The Spectral Link’: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/07/21/the-spectral-link-by-thomas-ligotti/

Ligotti’s own reference to knots in ‘My Work Is Not Yet Done’:
“People do not know, and cannot face, the things that go on in this world, the secret nightmares that are suffered by millions every day … and the excruciating paradox, the nightmarish obscenity of being something that does not know what it is and yet believes that it does know, something that in fact is nothing but a tiny particle that forms the body of The Great Black Swine Which Wallows in a Great River of Blackness that to us looks like sunrises and skyscrapers, like all the knotted events of the past the unraveling of those knots in the future, like birthdays and funerals, like satellites and cell phones and rockets launched into space, like nations and peoples, like the laws of nature and the laws of humanity, like families and friends, like everything, including these words that I write.”

The many references to knots in ‘Tristram Shandy’ by Laurence Sterne that I propound is a Ligottian work of Anti-Natalism in my review of it here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/tristram-shandy/

Rhys Hughes’ RAPE OF KNOTS that I review here: https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/journeys-beyond-advice-rhys-hughes/#comment-2645

“…but Nietzsche is philosophy’s toughest knot to untie…” From CATHR

Any more ligotti or ligatures? Please add to comments below….

7 thoughts on “Ligotti are knots”

Discussion thread here: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=8882

Re: Nihilistic Passage of the Day
Passage from ‘Tristram Shandy’ by Laurence Sterne where these knots are used to prevent – or at least indefinitely postpone – the birth of the baby who is the actual narrator of this passage by which means he would not exist at all and neither then would this actual passage exist at all…

“In the case of knots,—by which, in the first place, I would not be understood to mean slip-knots—because in the course of my life and opinions—my opinions concerning them will come in more properly when I mention the catastrophe of my great uncle Mr. Hammond Shandy,—a little man,—but of high fancy:—he rushed into the duke of Monmouth’s affair:—nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that particular species of knots called bow-knots;—there is so little address, or skill, or patience required in the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion at all about them.—But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard knots, made bona fide, as Obadiah made his;—in which there is no quibbling provision made by the duplication and return of the two ends of the strings thro’ the annulus or noose made by the second implication of them—to get them slipp’d and undone by.—I hope you apprehend me.
In the case of these knots then, and of the several obstructions, which, may it please your reverences, such knots cast in our way in getting through life—every hasty man can whip out his pen-knife and cut through them.—’Tis wrong. Believe me, Sirs, the most virtuous way, and which both reason and conscience dictate—is to take our teeth or our fingers to them.—Dr. Slop had lost his teeth—his favourite instrument, by extracting in a wrong direction, or by some misapplication of it, unfortunately slipping, he had formerly, in a hard labour, knock’d out three of the best of them with the handle of it:—he tried his fingers—alas; the nails of his fingers and thumbs were cut close.—The duce take it! I can make nothing of it either way, cried Dr. Slop.—The trampling over head near my mother’s bed-side increased.—Pox take the fellow! I shall never get the knots untied as long as I live.—My mother gave a groan.—Lend me your penknife—I must e’en cut the knots at last—pugh!—psha!—Lord! I have cut my thumb quite across to the very bone—curse the fellow—if there was not another man-midwife within fifty miles—I am undone for this bout—I wish the scoundrel hang’d—I wish he was shot—I wish all the devils in hell had him for a blockhead—!”

Apparently, Swift’s Gulliver is a known influence on Lovecraft, where he, Gulliver, finally realises that humanity is a debased breed.

Cross reference with ligotti as knots: http://www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=8882

Re: Ligotti are knots

Quote Originally Posted by ramonoski

Something I learned today (and sorry if this is common knowledge) is that the words “religion” and “ligature/ligament” share the same Latin root. They all come from the word ligare which means “to bind together”—which, of course, is another form of knot.

That’s amazing. Thanks. A clincher.
The French for ‘to tie up’: LIGOTER (or to tie a straitjacket)
That ‘ligotti’ means ‘knots’ now seems too obvious to have mentioned at all.
This thread is now finally tied up, the last link within a link? …

O Doctor Gulliver, hermaphrodite policeman, pissing-on-fire, clumsy Lilliputian puppeteers, loan (Olan) as mutual knot, those Ligottian knots and nodules of existence &c. &c. (more above on this thread) … Our Work Is Done?