Concordance 33, Annex 7

Concordance 33, Annex 7 is the fourth of the six surviving annexes to the Thirty-Third Concordance and the only one written entirely in the negative. It does not establish anything. Its function, as stated in its opening clause, is "to record what the Thirty-Third Concordance has been taken to mean, and to withhold assent from each such reading in turn." It runs to forty-one leaves, of which thirty-eight are denials.

Origin and recension

The annex was drafted in the winter of the year the Librarians record as 33/6, during the dispute between the Office of Vertical Jurisdiction and the Scriptorium of the Lower Stacks over the interpretation of Concordance 33's fourth article. The Office held that the fourth article applied to all floors above the ninetieth landing; the Scriptorium held that it applied to none, on the grounds that the article had never been sealed. Annex 7 was produced to settle the matter and does neither.

Three recensions survive. The first, held on Floor 2140, is eight leaves short and breaks off mid-denial. The second, the working copy of the Annex 7 Drafting Committee, carries marginal notes in at least nine hands. The third, sealed under the Lesser Seal of the Fourth Landing, is the text cited in all subsequent proceedings. Where the annex is quoted without recension, the third is meant.

Structure

Each of the annex's thirty-eight denials follows a fixed form: a statement of the received reading, the words "and this is not the case," and a citation to whichever Concordance the reading was drawn from. The effect is a document that can be quoted against almost any position and in favour of none. Clause 19 is representative:

"It has been said that the fourth article binds the floors above the ninetieth landing. This is not the case. It has also been said that it binds no floor at all. This also is not the case. The article binds what it binds."

— Concordance 33, Annex 7, cl. 19 (third recension)

Clause 27 denies the reading that the annex itself is a Lateral Annex, a denial that Seventh Concordance, Annex Q later declined to overturn and Concordance 12, Annex Δ treats as settled in the opposite direction. Clause 34 denies the existence of Annex 12c eight years before the Seventh Concordance confirmed it. That clause is retained in all three recensions and is the one most often cited in the Tower's own commentaries, usually without comment.

The Ferrant objection

In the Fourth Concordance the compiler Clerk Ferrant raised the objection that has never been satisfactorily answered: an annex composed entirely of denials cannot be cited, because a citation of a denial affirms what it denies. Ferrant proposed that Annex 7 be read inverted, so that a citation of clause 19 would mean that the fourth article binds neither the upper floors nor the lower. The Office of Vertical Jurisdiction adopted the inverted reading in the same year. The Scriptorium of the Lower Stacks did not, and has not.

The schism is visible in practice. A petitioner citing Annex 7 before the Office is recorded as having asserted the opposite of what the annex says; the same petitioner before the Scriptorium is recorded as having asserted it plainly. The Bureau of Annex Concordance keeps both readings on file and marks neither as preferred. In its annual return for the year 33/11 the Bureau notes only that "the discrepancy has been carried forward," a formula it has used every year since.

Practical restrictions

The annex may not be copied in the presence of the original. Copies taken elsewhere must be attested by two Librarians, one of whom must not have read the annex in the preceding year. Concordance 712, Annex D repeats this restriction in abbreviated form and is generally consulted instead of the longer text.

The third recension is stored flat, unbound, in a single linen folder. It is not to be turned face-down.

Relation to other holdings

Annex 7 is listed in the schedule appended to Twenty-Second Concordance, Annex G as a "document of continuing uncertainty," though the schedule assigns it no rank. Its denial of lateral status is contradicted by the entry in Seventh Concordance, Annex Q and, more quietly, by Concordance 19 Annex Gamma, which cites it in support of a proposition it was written to deny. The Medical and Metaphysical Annex quotes clause 31 in its discussion of withheld conclusions and attributes it, in error, to Third Concordance, Annex VII. The error has been noted in the margins of every copy in the Tower's keeping and corrected in none.

Readers wishing to consult the annex should apply to the Keeper of the Fourth Landing. The folder is produced, opened, and read aloud by the applicant's own voice; the Keeper does not read it. This arrangement dates from the Ferrant objection and has never been reviewed.