Jewel Bearing

 

Does anything strike you as odd about the following line? Anything unusual?

For finding jewel casque

Why is it “jewel casque” rather than the casque? Casque is an unusual word, so clarity can’t be it. Inserting the word jewel actually makes the meter of the poem worse. It flows much better without it. The Cleveland poem uses the word casque without the word jewel in front of it. This awkward insertion of the word jewel is almost certainly a clue. Now, if you’re thinking—What’s the big deal, man? So what if it’s a little awkward—do me a favor and just slap yourself in the face right now! This is exactly the kind of subtle clue we’re looking for, a word that an editor like Byron would most certainly remove, a word that would grate on a literary genius, like Byron.

As a child, I used to take apart old wristwatches, the windup kind, just to marvel at the beautiful complexity, a hundred tiny parts all working together perfectly for a common purpose. I was surprised to find a number of small circular rubies embedded in some of the flat metal components. I now know why they were there. 

One definition of the word jewel is a hard precious gem used as a bearing at the pivot points in watches, compasses, and similar high-end sensitive mechanical devices. For example, some compasses have a concave hard gem embedded at the balance point of a magnetized needle, which is set atop a sharp metal point so as to spin with very little friction. Not only does the word jewel hint at a compass, but in this context it is a bearing, the word bearing being a pun, also meaning direction. I believe that the word jewel hints that what comes next gives us a bearing (or heading) to the casque and is pivotal to finding it. But before we try to understand the final lines in the poem, let’s take a step back and look at the big picture.