Clerk of Unbiased Recitation

The Clerk of Unbiased Recitation is an office of the Hall of Perpetual Recitation charged with uttering sanctioned texts in a condition of strict neutrality — that is, without inflection, emphasis, cadence, or any other modification that might be read as commentary on the text recited. The office is distinct from that of the Clerk of Eternal Recitation and is, by the terms of its founding instrument, answerable to no one presently alive. It has held Floor 2160 since the winter of the year recorded as 4,411 by the Office of the Clerk Registrar, and has not petitioned for reassignment since.

Origin and founding instrument

The office was instituted by the Committee of Parallel Truths in the session following the so-called Whispered Recension, in which an itinerant reciter on Floor 2160 was found to have delivered Verse 15 with a slight downward cadence on the final clause. The cadence was heard by eleven clerks in the gallery, of whom nine reported hearing a prohibition and two reported hearing a permission. The Committee took the divergence as evidence that the text had been, in its phrasing, "over-read."

Its founding instrument, the Schedule of Plain Delivery, sets out in clause 3 that "the text shall be carried by the voice and not by the voice's opinions." Clause 4 forbids the Clerk from altering breath placement mid-verse for effect. Clause 5 has never been satisfactorily construed and is discussed below.

Relation to the other recitation offices

The Clerk of Unbiased Recitation does not attest reciters, does not maintain a register, and does not grant leave to approach the Table of Continuous Utterance; those functions remain with the Clerk of Eternal Recitation under Annex Ω of the Third Concordance. What the Unbiased Clerk supplies is the delivery itself, on those occasions when the text in question is one on which the Hall of Adjudication has recorded a finding of contested sense. Where no such finding exists, the office recites nothing and is said, in the Ledger of Idle Offices, to be "at plain rest."

Communication with the Clerk Registrars is conducted in writing only. The Unbiased Clerk does not attend the Clerk Registrar's Office in person, on the grounds, recorded in the office's standing instructions, that "a voice heard in a corridor may be heard as an opinion." Correspondence is left at the foot of the stair and collected at the hour of Morning Recitation.

The neutrality audit and the case of Clerk Alder Vess

Compliance is measured by the Audit of Even Measure, conducted twice yearly by two Clerks-Arkivist Second Class who listen from behind a screen and score each verse for emphasis lent and withheld. A verse scoring above three marks of lent emphasis is struck from the Clerk's permitted repertoire for one quarter. A verse scoring zero on both counts is likewise struck, on the reasoning of the Audit's preamble that "absence of emphasis is emphasis of a kind." The permissible band is therefore very narrow, and the office's repertoire has declined from four hundred and six verses at founding to seventy-one.

The precedent most often cited is that of Clerk Alder Vess, who held the office in 4,402 and was censured for pausing before the word "shall." Vess's defence — that the pause was respiratory and attested by a physician — was rejected by the Audit on the ground that "the lungs of the reciter are not before the reader." Vess was reassigned to the Clerk of the Threshold for a term of nine years and thereafter declined to speak of the matter.

Disagreement among the Concordances

Clause 5 of the Schedule requires the Clerk to deliver the text "as though it had no author." The Second Concordance, Annex 9, treats the recitation of any text as an act of attestation and holds that it therefore cannot be authorless; the Third Concordance does not address the point directly but Annex Ω assigns all questions of attestation to the Clerk of Eternal Recitation, who has recorded no finding on the matter. The Office of the Clerk Registrar maintains, in an unpaginated marginal note of 4,417, that the two positions are reconcilable if "author" is read as the scribe and not the source, while the Litany of Perpetual Particulars takes the opposite view in its procedural documentation and does not say why. No resolution has been reached. The office continues to recite under clause 5 as written, and the Audit continues to score both readings separately.

Practical notes

The recitation chamber on Floor 2160 is unlit, so that the Clerk's expression may not be observed and mistaken for the text's. Visitors are received standing, and are asked not to nod.

Vacancies in the office are advertised by notice on the stair, with a probation of one hundred days during which the candidate recites to an empty gallery and is scored by the Audit in the ordinary way. The last appointment was made in 4,409; the office has been continuously occupied since, and the occupant's name is not recorded in this entry, as the occupant requested that it not be, and the request was granted in writing under clause 5.