Unutterable

(1)

This non-appliance sound
This dead durch sprung Technik - horrible (2)
This the breath of Nick (3)
On dripping post-seizure, [Venetian / finishing] floated brain of intolerable
This the rank post-urings and... posturings and insights of the unutterable (4)

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1. Zack, who is becoming a master of the summative note, remarks:

"Unutterable" was one of H.P. Lovecraft's favorite words... More of a Smith solo track than a Fall song, "Unutterable" would not have sounded out of place on MES's spoken word album The Post Nearly Man which begins with a "cover" of "The Horror in Clay," the first chapter of Lovecraft's short story "The Call of Cthulhu."

Dan submits:

Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan:
 

I stood here, and saw before me the unutterable, the unthinkable gulf that yawns profound between two worlds, the world of matter and the world of spirit...

Thop points out that priest and poet Geoffrey Studdert Kennedy's complete works were anthologised as The Unutterable Beauty in the late 1927. I assume the line comes from one of his poems or letters, but if there is any connection at all, it seems equally likely that MES just saw the title somewhere.

POE! reminds us that Poe also used the word a lot.

^

2. In German "durch" means by or through, "sprung" means leap, and "Technik" covers both technology and technique. "Vorsprung durch Technik" (advancement through technology) is the motto of the Audi automobile company.  

^

3. "Old Nick" is a cognomen for the devil (see also "2 x 4" and "Zandra"). "The breath of Nick" could mean the breath of the devil, or, more figuratively, it could just mean really bad breath.

Dan submits:

Hyoscine (Hyoscine hydrobromide, produced by the nightshade family of plants) is also known as "devil's breath."

According to Wikipedia, "It is used to treat motion sickness, postoperative nausea and vomiting, and also to reduce saliva production."

The saliva-reduction bit is interesting, given the reference to "dripping."

"Post-seizure" sounds like something to do with epilespsy, which is seems MES suffered from at least intermittently. It seems hypscine can cause convulsions in susceptible patients.

^

4. "Unutterable" is, in fact, an English word; although I thought "inutterable" was the more usual word, the OED pronounces it "now rare," whereas it doesn't comment on the frequency of "unutterable" (nor does it, however, produce an example of its use more recent than 1883).

^

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Unutterable: Fall Tracks A-Z

The Story of the Fall: 2000