Laus Angelica are fragments from a broader work that does not exist—a bit like Kilgore Trout's novels—written in medieval liturgical latin, that recounts a missed encounter between a craftsman or artisan, called Faber but whom the story refers to as Ego, maybe because he is the one recounting it, and a strange apparition in his everyday boredom, called Illa.
I posted it on 𝕏 mid May (2026), following a real-life though also missed encounter with an Italian-speaking Japanese who once told me in Spanish «¿Para qué gritarle a una colección anónima de desconocidos sobre tus pensamientos?» She was an art critics. So I interpreted this as "What you say, what you do, what you think, what you write, what you feel, what you are, this is not art, this is not Spleen, this is not expression, those are not feelings. This is noise: you shout, you brawl, you whine and shriek and moan; stop it already!" I told her "but can we at least speak about it? I never cared in my entire life for what people have been saying about me, for what people were thinking of what I do... Since my first memories of reprimands at home or at school, until today, I have made it a point of honor to ignore, scorn or laugh at people's opinion of me. But for some reason, what you think seems to matter to me. It doesn't feel like it's coming from you, but from behind you, from above you, from inside us, it is very strange... Could we talk about it?"
She never replied.
Of course, who would have? Not anybody who would have understood anything, anyway. So I suddenly felt the weight of half-a-century of humility which I never had, instantly crushing me. It's a lot of accumulated nonchalance to regurgitate all at once. I realized that it was very impudic indeed, rude, obscene, grotesque to shout at anonymous people like that, to tell them, not even what I think, but about what I think. Very presumptuous, very inconsiderate of everything and everybody. Obviously, she was wrong, but as I said, for some reason, what she thought seemed to matter a lot to me. So this absurdity became an awakening, an humbling one.
As I was later reading through tropes and sequences of medieval masses—failing in this way to distract myself from thinking about my impudence—I got moved by the sheer exaltation of angels singing for men the beauty of the creation in a mixture of solemn commands, axiomatic truths and poetic revelations. I got the feeling that this most alienating yet endearing of formats was the one suitable to mix the sacred with the vulgar, the holy with the ridiculous, the salvation with the painful, this was the language—this one which angels use to say "I love you" with the Universe—with which I could have my Ego say goodbye to his art critics. I couldn't to mine. She had told me "Now be quiet!". She didn't say it quite like that, she said «No requiero contestación», which is a most cruel version of the same thing. But at least I could try to fix it for him, for Ego. I wanted him to say her things like this:
"I didn't want you but wanted to want you.
I didn't love you but I loved loving you.
I didn't touch you but was touched touching the sky
through you."— Laus Angelica, May 4.
But this doesn't quite work. The second line is off, its Möbius resolution gets tangled in the sheer degeneracy of all the feelings packed in the same too-small world for so many variations. I want him to say ¬α, β⟹γ but he ends up saying ¬A=A=A. Nonsense. The intended meaning was "we were not lovers—and I didn't want us to be—but I liked that I still could have something of a lover's veneration and feelings and aspirations for a projection of you". I hoped context would help to fill in the blanks, but I don't think it did. The original tropes, in their naked brutality, work better:
Maiestas,
potestas,
claritas
eterna,
Sol, lumen,
et numen,
cacumen
et vita,
Tu nitor,
et decor,
tu candor
tu splendor,
et odor...— Laus Angelica, May 5.
The reason, I realized, is that they are in Latin. Almost Italian, like Illa, almost the Vulgate, where Illa becomes «Elle». So the story unfolded. Here it is. I won't comment it further, except to say that I couldn't fix it for the poor craftsman either, even with the help of divine agents.
Angelus: Cape caelum manu.
Ego: Nimis altum.
Angelus: In palma tua caelum est, in sinu dorsi eius quae ante te est.— Laus Angelica, May 6.
Tu reples omnia,
illustras omnia,
penetras omnia,
accendis omnia
numinis claritate— Laus Angelica, May 7
Angelus: Ecce, eam tibi fero. Audi:
Illa: De musica sacra scribo, non quia pretiosa est, sed quia sacra.
Angelus: Et?
Ego: Estne et ipsa angelus?— Laus Angelica, May 8
Agmina angelica
psallant tibi in astra.
Haec est una
☾velut luna☽
quae decora creditur.— Laus Angelica, May 9
Nec hoc sum, nec illud.
Ego sum qui sum.
... ¡Et sane elegannnte!— Laus Angelica, May 9
Caeli rutilant per climata,
Alogiantur cuncta bona.
Pace namque hodie in vera
sunt copulata duo animalia:
Superna—Ima— Laus Angelica, May 9
Ego: Gladius in duo secat qui tui similibus impar est.
Illa: Arrogans. Nisi cum rebus gestis congruat. In hoc altero, scilicet. In te: arrogans.— Laus Angelica, May 10
Ego: Totam fabulam vixi uno tui aspectu.
Angelus: Me paenitet te non potuisse valedicere.
Illa: Volo adhuc prospectum per fenestram intueri.
Ego: Aliquid tibi dicere volui; nescio quid.
Angelus: Iucundum fuit eam convenisse.
Illa: Iucundum fuit te convenisse.
Ego: Meminero.
Angelus: Oblita erit.
Illa: In alia(m?) occasione(m?)— Laus Angelica, May 11
Laudate eam in sono tubae
Laudate eam in psalterio et cithara
Laudate eam in chordis et organo
Laudate eam in cymbalis bene sonantibus
Laudate eam in cymbalis iubilationis
Laudate eam in cyclis lunaribus et probabilibus
Laudate eam in infinitatibus et impossibilibus.
psi poetae sunt tuba, ipsi
psalterium, ipsi tympanum, ipsi
cordae, ipsi organum, ipsi
musica, ipsi ostinatum, ipsi
ardentes.— Laus Angelica, May 12
Non te volui, sed volui velle te.
Non te amavi, sed amavi amare te.
Non te tetigi — sed tangens caelum per te, tactus sum.— Laus Angelica, May 12
Illa: Breviter dicta:
Omnia nominativo, nihil genetivo, ne vocativo quidem.
Non es Egon. Non es ego. Ne tu ipse quidem es.— Laus Angelica, May 12
Ego non sum Egon.
— Laus Angelica, May 13
Angelus: Me paenitet, Faber.
De lilia illa, clementia titulo nulla.
Parvus anfractus in plano complexo, amplitudine nulla.
Hoc solum afferre possum: certum habeo,
Unam eandemque pedanteriam vobis esse communem.— Laus Angelica, May 14
Laus Fabri:
Tam multa poemata habeo ad recordanda ea omnia quae numquam evenerunt.— Laus Angelica, May 15
Night, like a giant brew of suspended spilled-over coffee, maelstrom of time cooling down, rotates in a vast invisible cup in which float all the galaxies, all the mountains and all the baristas.
"I would like a coffee with you."
This coffee is over your head and is drinking you.— Faber's poem is not strictly part of Laus Angelica, May 16
Deus: Consummatum est.
Universum: Ex spuma omnium possibilium bullam illam rupi—quae vos ambos tegebat, continebat. Collapsa omnia.
Echo tua: Et exigua deflexio grata animis oblata est. Cur non?
Luna: Undeviginti.
Angelus: Me paenitet, Faber. Nunc siste, nunc desine, nunc sileto.
Ego: Adhuc musicam animam meam tangere audio.
Angelus: Pluvia est. Nunc siste.
Ego: Adhuc video sidera, viam ad caelum sternentia.
Angelus: Lucerna humi scintillans est. Nunc desine.
Ego: Adhuc sentio praesentiam illius...
Nox: Numquam ea ibi fuit. Nunc sileto.— Laus Angelica, May 17