Reconstruction 6.1 (Winter 2006)

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The Playing Card's Progress: A Brief History of Cards and Card Games / Joyce Goggin

Abstract: This article takes as its point of departure the fact that playing and tarot cards have generally been ignored as a topic for scholarly research, and suggests a number of reasons as to why this might be the case. While on the one hand cards are perceived as a trivial object, their long association with the occult and gambling further exacerbates the lack of serious interest taken in them. Moreover, because playing cards were imported into Europe from the East, they have been both directly and indirectly conceptualized as signifiers of oriental otherness and treated as a threat to the stability of western subjectivity. In this article the author proceeds by providing a brief history of playing and tarot cards beginning with their introduction into Europe from the orient early in the 14 th century, which takes into consideration their negative associations. By highlighting factors that have contributed to the neglect of cards in scholarly work, it is argued that the history of playing cards and their representation in cultural production (literature, painting, film) is significant from a number of critical perspectives. It is pointed out, for example, that many aspects of playing cards' history are related to developments in early printing technology and that, at a more fundamental level, cards are also related to writing, economics and subjectivity. Their affiliation with language and writing, as well as cards' role in economics (speculation and gambling) is examined from a Derridian point of view, in connection with concepts such as trace, absence and authorship. The essay closes with an investigation of the relationship between subjectivity and gambling, and addresses this relationship through the notion of "ostentatious expenditure" introduced by Bataille in La part maudite, as well as Richard Klein's concept of the "negative sublime." Issues of transnationalism, historiography, and Orientalism are at the fore of this study, showing how playing cards, and gaming practices, help reify faulty Western concepts of the Oriental "other."

 

The history of playing cards is not only the record of the persistence of a 15 th-century craft [...] but the story of the universal trait of human nature, the allure of chance. And for its gratification throughout the centuries it has employed the artists and craftsmen of all lands and times. Painters and makers of missives and beautifully illuminated manuscript, workers in wood block and engravers of metal and stone and finally the printer and his press; so that its story embodies the romance of all of those, and makes them intimate and understandable things which bring the old past very, very near.

—Katherine Perry Hargrave, A History of Playing Cards

<1> In The Rape of the Lock, Pope's mock epic about a game of cards, we read that "mighty Contests arise from trivial Things" (I:2); and since the entry of this line into the English language, the word 'trivial' has been inextricably linked to the playing card. Utterly ubiquitous, playing cards blend comfortably into the background of experience as a way of passing time, and because they are used as randomisers or markers in games, playing cards are most often seem as a means to an end rather than the focus of attention. It is this ostensible triviality of cards that has discouraged serious study of them and ensures that playing cards persist as arcane bits of the everyday. So while the court cards with their elaborate costumes and antique icons resonate with a deep connection to the past, the rich cultural history of the playing card remains largely untapped.

<2> Yet a further deterrent to digging playing cards out of the annals of the trite and obscure is their association with the occult. Like their cousins the tarots, playing cards are used in the art of divining the future, which links them with mystics and charlatans. The universal "allure of chance", as Hargrave wrote above, and the important role that cards play in gambling, have also helped to curtail serious interest in cards outside of sociology and criminology. Hence, the shady side of playing cards —their association with chance and the occult—amounts to at least as great an obstacle to studying cards in earnest as their supposed trivial nature. But to disregard these aspects of cards altogether and to concentrate only on their secular history is to forfeit half of the story, and perhaps the half most culturally evocative.

<3> In an attempt to negotiate a path between these pitfalls, this brief history of playing cards will focus on selected details and embrace playing cards' unseemly side, while disregarding objections on the score of triviality. My aim is to provide a account of the introduction of playing cards into Europe , beginning with their mythical origins and to follow various aspects of their material development to the recent past. Attention will be likewise be paid to the mystic and occult meanings associated with cards with a view to providing a key to understanding certain perceptions that circulate in popular culture. At the same time, the sections which follow on the material development of cards are intended to work with the mythical history, suggesting approaches to cards in areas such as literature, painting, music film and cultural studies.

<4> Two further aspects of playing cards' development which have greatly influenced their representation will also be discussed in this selected history. The first involves cards, writing and textuality and therefore, my account will be concerned with cards' role as sign carriers that constitute a sort of iconic or painted language. The relationship between cards and language is etymologically manifest in German, for example, where the common word for a deck of playing cards from the 15 th through the 18 th century was Briefe [letter] and those who printed them were known as Briefmalern [letter painters] [1]. Also worth of note in this regard are the numerous acts and laws published over the centuries, which testify to the implicit relationship between cards and language. These include a special ordinance issued to Venetian printers of playing cards in 1441, under the title Lettere Pittoriche [painted letters] (Chatto 82). Also based on the popular perception that cards and language are related, Pietro Aretino published a popular allegorical book entitled Le Carte Parlanti [the speaking cards] a century later in Venice [2]. Indeed, cards and books have frequently shared the path from wood block to printing press as in England, where books and decks of cards were produced by the same craftsmen until the founding of card makers' guilds in the 16 th century [3]. The old names for playing cards—the Devil's picture book, the bible of the gypsies, the encyclopaedia of the dead, the perpetual almanac—retain vivid reminders of cards' past kinship with books [4].

<5> The second thread I will follow connects cards, numbers and economics; a connection which is most evident in card games involving bookkeeping and money. Banking games such as Newmarket and Speculation, and gambling games like Bridge and Poker, rely on mathematical annotation. But more importantly, the score-keeping in these games is based on the same accountancy that is central to modern economic practices such as banking itself, namely double ledger, zero-balance bookkeeping [5]. On the other hand, the link between money and cards is evidenced by the suit of coins, which was in use in many countries in Europe until decks were standardised in the 17 th century, and which is still in use in Spain, Italy, South America and Luxembourg. More dramatically, cards and money have merged at times of economic crisis (the 17 th and 18 th centuries in Canada and New England, the French Revolution, the Weimar Republic) when playing cards were briefly substituted for devalued currency [6].

<6> The little history of cards I have set out to write here does not, of course, make any claims to conclusiveness. My purpose is rather to point out directions for further studies on playing cards in areas such as literature, film, video games and visual culture, where cards games may be seen as forming a parallel structure or narrative, or a mise en abyme which may be helpful in elucidating the context in which they are portrayed. Cards' mystic and occult past will be considered along with their connections to text and money as a means of indicating areas for further investigation in folklore studies, cultural studies and metaphysics where they may be helpful in understanding such concepts as ritual, agency and subjectivity.

Early Histories: A Survey

<7> A less than subtle ideology informs both the focus and argumentation in the first histories of playing cards that began to appear in the 17 th century. Largely nationalist in spirit, early histories attempted to trace cards' invention to one ingenious person who came, quite predictably, from the author's own country of origin. Works written in the 17 th century in Spain for example, claimed that the playing card had been invented by Nicolao Pepin, whose initials were read NyPy, and pronounced as naipe [7]. This theory not only located the inventor of the playing card in Spain, it also 'explained' the strikingly odd Spanish word naipe for cards. Be this as it may, the Spanish nationalist Pepin theory was rejected elsewhere in Europe for obvious reasons, and indeed by the close of the 17 th century Nicolao Pepin had been more or less dismissed even in Spain as a fictional character on the order of Eulenspiegel [8].

<8> Elsewhere in Europe at the close of the 18 th century, card historians had begun directing their efforts toward proving theories of origins which, although possessed of an equally nationalist bent, were somewhat more subtle in their argumentation. Rather than attempting to prove or disprove theories that would trace playing cards to a particular inventor, historians began to place the origin of the playing card in China, India or Egypt. Once a point of origin had been established, the next step was to argue that cards came into the author's country of origin first, where they flourished because of advanced printing technology or a more temperate religious climate. Importantly however, by the close of the 18 th century, many card historians, independent of where they lived, seem to concur that cards made their way from Egypt into Europe early in the 14 th century [9].

<9> The notion that cards originated in Egypt is often related to some form of etymology of the curious Spanish and Italian words for cards, namely naipe, and naibbe. Having long since abandoned the Nicolao Pepin theory, writers on cards reasoned that both Spanish and Italian have the word carta which could quite naturally have signified 'playing card', rather than the foreign-sounding words naipe and naibbe. From this it was conjectured that naipe, and naibbe came from the Hindi and later Arabic word for nabob or deputy [na'ib] and this was taken as further evidence that cards originated in Egypt. Similarly, in Court de Gébelin's Du jeu des Tarots (1781), he attempts to prove that playing and tarot cards came from ancient Egypt, based on the word nabaa which he believes to be the Arabic word for divination or prophet. De Gébelin's German contemporary Breitkopf likewise gives the following reason for tracing the etymology of naipe, playing card, from nabaa, in his Über der Ursprung der Spielkarten: "In Arabic, Nabbaa means: the one from whom a soft tone emerges, like that of the sorcerer Thun. Hence also the origin of Naba the magic drum, and Nabi, a prophet or soothsayer" (cited in Chatto, 26) [10]. And even in Spain when the Nicolao Pepin theory was still popular, there existed a Recopilación de algunos nombres arábigos (1593) [a compilation of certain Arabic names] which also links cards to Egypt through the name Bilham. The entry for Bilham in this work reads "en España el juego de los naypes" [in Spain the game of cards] which name later became Vilhán, or the vil hombre [bad man] accredited with bringing cards to Spain from Egypt (Etienvre 1987: 31). Hence, later in the 17 th century the following was written of playing cards:

Others you will find to be of a different opinion; by way of discretion they recount pleasant nonsense, like the one which holds that Vilhan is an Arabic name. Based only on a whim, it is said that manner in which it is written and pronounced is marked by that language [...] from there attributing the invention of the playing card to those of that sect. (Etienvre 1987: 51, translation John Maxwell). [11]

These theories were later corroborated by archaeologist L. A. Mayer who in 1939 discovered an almost complete 12 th-century deck of Egyptian Mamluk playing-cards in the Topkapi Sarayi Museum, Istanbul [12]. The Egyptian pack that Mayer identified contains fifty-two cards and court cards marked malik, na'ib malik, and thani na'ib [King, Deputy and Second or Under Deputy]. The four suits in the deck are swords, batons, cups and coins, the same suits still found on some Italian and Spanish cards. More significantly, the court cards in the Mamluk deck are called na'ib, which lends support to the theory that the Spanish and Italian words for playing cards are related to the Arabic na'ib, deputy or nabob. And since the Mamluk deck predates the first recorded references to playing cards in Spain or Italy by about one hundred years, it has been taken as firm evidence that playing cards, if not originating Egypt, came into Europe from Egypt.

<10> Works that deal primarily with the mythical origins of playing cards, such as J. King van Rensselaer's Prophetical, Educational and Playing Cards, also argue that cards originated Egypt. Such writers make a link through Egyptian legend to the Egyptian god of death known as Thoth, and as Nebo, Hermes and Mercury in later traditions. According to Van Rensselaer, it was the high priests of Thoth who first devised a system for transcribing language by placing signs representing virtues and vices along with the principle gods (Thoth, Isis, Maut, Phthah and Ammon), on the interior walls of the temple of Thoth. These signs were consulted by casting rods on an altar placed at the centre of temples built to Thoth which, when they fell, pointed to signs on the temple walls. The signs were then arranged in sequences and syntagmatic units to be read and interpreted by the priests.

<11> Among the Egyptian gods, Thoth is characterised as the great inventor. One of his many innovations is parchment, which legend has it, was used for transcribing the signs just referred to from the temple walls. Van Rensselaer and others have conjectured that the invention of parchment gave portability to this semiotic system, making it possible for priests to take the signs with them and to consult the gods outside temples to Thoth. According to Van Rensselaer, and Court de Gébelin before her, these parchment documents were initially bound in book form and known as The Tablets of Fate, The Register of Souls and The Great Book of Thoth Hermes (H.T. Morley 18, 19). Over time it was discovered that the leaves of Thoth's books were more conveniently carried as a pack of unbound, loose tablets which could be manipulated with greater ease, and laid out and read as an augury.

<12> From signs on temple walls, to books to loose parchment tablets, Thoth's system began entering Europe in the trappings of gypsies and pilgrims late in the 12 th century. Over time, these tablets would become playing cards, writes van Rensselaer, who argues that the pips on the suits are the last vestiges of the rods cast on the altar by the priests of Thoth [13]. The first cards then were the "unbound leaves of the great book of Thoth, [which predate] any historical record of cards for gambling", and playing games with these leaves was a later, European development (van Rensselaer 1912: 38) [14]. While they continued to be used in telling fortunes, only gradually did the mystical significance of these parchment squares become obscured enough to permit the playing of games with them [15]. This is why early card games like the game (H)ombre [16], the 'game of man' to which Belinda loses her coveted lock in Pope's poem, were understood as commentary on life as well as an entertaining parlour game. This 'deeper significance' of playing cards' is also thought to be borne out numerically even in modern decks: there are fifty-two cards in a pack and fifty-two weeks in a year, a suit has thirteen cards and there are thirteen weeks in a season, there are four suits and four seasons, each suit being the allegory of a season and an element, there are twelve court cards and twelve months, and the value of the sum of the pack (364) plus one for the joker (365) equals the number of days in a year.

<13> Hence in spite of, or along with, their connections with myth and ritual, cards became increasingly popular in games. Developments in the mass production of cards as well as in their size and appearance reflected the growing trend to the use of cards as instruments of play. One of the first of such developments occurred around 1400, when the cards of the tarot deck were reduced in number to make it more manageable in play. By "a date no later than 1450", writes Chatto in his history of the playing card, there existed "several specimens of numeral cards of four suits, either stencilled or engraved on wood, and evidently of cheap manufacture, or of common use" (Chatto 194). Late in the 15 th century Etienne Vignolles and Pierre Maréchal, card makers of Lyon and Rouen, standardised the deck in terms of size and stamp, and added the queen, bringing the total number of cards to fifty-two [17]. They also standardised the suits in use in Europe and gave us the hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades, which innovation greatly sped the process of block printing (Benham 29, Chatto 206) [18].

Derrida and the Divinity

<14> Playing cards' mythical beginnings as the invention of Thoth, and their development out of the tarot, account for the lingering knowledge in folk wisdom and popular culture that cards are ancient and mysterious. But to take a side step from mysticism to metaphysics, I would now like to discuss what Derrida has written about the Egyptian god Thoth [Theuth] in "The Father of Logos", as recounted by Socrates:

I heard, then, that at Naucratis in Egypt there lived one of the old gods of that country, the one whose sacred bird is called the ibis; and the name of the divinity was Theuth. It was he who first invented numbers and calculation, geometry and astronomy, not to speak of draughts and dice, and above all writing. (75)

In this investigation into the father of the word, the dialogue between Plato and Socrates is read in terms of familiar derridian topics: writing, origins and absence. Conceptualised in this way, Thoth's writing is a medium for the transcription of messages in the absence of the one who wrote them, and the story of Thoth as retold by Socrates becomes a parable of what Derrida performs in his essay, a parable of traces and erasure.

<15> In this same essay, Derrida goes on to write about zero and absence—the absence that is paradoxically inherent in written annotation—and the ramifications of absence in cultures that think in terms of presence and origins. This is related to Brian Rotman's persuasive arguments in Signifying Nothing on the nature of zero as a metasign, which constitutes the 'origin' while holding the place of numbers which are absent [19]. Zero signifies nothing, yet it is the source of infinite multiplication (10, 100, 1000…), the promise of surplus or debt, the promise of presence in the transcription of nothing. Connecting this to language, Derrida writes:

[...] the power of speech, the creation of being and life, the sun [...], the self-concealment is conjugated in what would be called the history of the egg or the egg of history. The world came out of an egg. More precisely, the living creator of the life of the world came out of an egg: the sun, then was at first carried in an eggshell. Which explains a number of Ammon Ra's [the sun] characteristics: he is also the origin of the egg. He is designated sometimes as the bird-sun born from the primal egg, sometimes as the originary bird, carrier of the first egg [...]. It would make no sense here to ask that at once trivial and philosophical question of 'the chicken or the egg', of the logical, chronological, or ontological priority of the cause over the effect. This question has been magnificently answered by certain sarcophagi: "O Ra, who art in thy egg." If we add that this egg is also a "hidden egg" we shall have constituted but also opened up the system of these significations. (87-8)

Indeed, analogies have long been drawn between eggs and zeros, as the expression 'love' [l'oeuf] for zero in tennis implies. More literary associations include the riddle told by Lear's fool about nothing and the egg in which he "quantifies the world out of existence" (Rotman 81) by way of explaining that nothing from nothing leaves nothing. In painting, eggs have allegorically represented both the source and nothing, just as the broken egg that contains a microcosm in Bosch's panel Hell, from The Garden of Earthly Delights (fig. 1). Like the hidden egg of Isis, zero is at once the point of disappearance and the fragile source of not yet realised potential. Eggs iconically represent zero as a metasign, signifying nothing and infinite potential at the same time. Like the egg, speech partakes of a creative power because language has the performative potential to bring into being a state of affairs which previously did not exist. Written texts, on the other hand, mark the absence or death of the recounting subject. Hence, "it goes without saying that the god of writing must also be the god of death", and indeed, the god of death is one of Thoth's many names (Derrida, 91). Just as the place of the 'dead' author is marked in writing, the absence of the mathematical or calculating subject is encircled in the figure of zero. Thoth's system for transcription of numerical values marks the place of the absent counting subject, a point circumscribed by the numeral zero which encloses signifying traces: the possibility of nothing or value.

<16> Later in the same chapter, in "The Filial Inscription: Theuth, Hermes, Thoth, Nabû, Nebo" Derrida turns his attention significantly, if briefly, to cards:

Sometimes the dead person takes the place of the scribe. Within the space of such a scene, the dead one's place [la place du mort, also the dummy in Bridge] then falls to Thoth [...]. He is thus the father's other, the father, and the subversive movement of replacement [...] He cannot be assigned a fixed spot in the play of differences. Sly, slippery, and masked, an intriguer and a card, like Hermes, he is neither king nor jack, but rather a sort of joker, a floating signifier, a wild card, one who puts play into play (92, 93).

The figure of the fool or the joker, according to writers interested in the mythical history of cards, is not the transcription of a sign from the walls of the temple of Thoth, but is rather the sign for a statue that was located at the centre of the temple near the altar. The statue was consulted as an interpretant for the other signs because it represented "Thoth, Mercury and Hermes himself", and later came to be represented by the fool in the pack of tarot cards, which "dominates every card in the deck" (van Rensselaer 55). This card, which would later become the joker, represents chance, destiny, fate and death, taking the privileged place of Thoth "who alone could tell to mortals what he had foretold at their birth, when as 'the Writer' he inscribed on his 'tablets' all the events of life" (van Rensselaer 56) [20].

<17> The fool and the joker are clothed in the attributes of Thoth: they wear the trappings of an itinerant, a fool, or a juggler, signifying capriciousness, irresponsibility, luck and uncertainty. Yet the fool and the joker are also the most powerful cards in either the tarot or the playing card deck because their value is variable and they can take the place of any other card. Like Thoth-Hermes the god of death and the father of logos, the card signifies zero, a metasign and the source of all other signs, as well as chance, death and nothing. Thoth, the joker, always "takes a place that is not his own, a place one could call that of the dead or the dummy, he has neither a proper place nor a proper name" (Derrida 93). The joker's improper name then is zero, signifying at once that he is the metasign for all the other cards in the deck, and that having no proper value, he takes any value not his own. He is both the origin and the death of value in the deck [21].

<18> So this wild card that puts play into play marks the place of death, the extinction of ego, the erasure of the subject. Traces of the joker's connection to death can be found in the card's history, beginning in 14 th-century in Holland when cards were still stencilled and coloured by hand. At that time artists who authored decks drew their portrait on a blank card as their signature, to be used as a wild card. Emmanuel Juker of Utrecht produced some of these early jokers and his name eventually became associated with the practice. When Dutch cards found their way into England, card makers there began including their own signature cards known as 'Jukers' for the card maker of Utrecht, which the English pronounced as 'jooker.' Over time, 'jooker' was replaced with the more meaningful English cognate, 'joker.' Later, as the plague began to spread through Europe, card makers began producing jokers wearing a black cap, thus renewing the association of the joker with death and Thoth, the god of death [22].

Recent History

<19> To put the mythical origins of playing cards now briefly to one side, I shall turn to texts that document the introduction of cards into early modern Europe, beginning in the 14 th century. It is often claimed that the first reference to cards in European history occurs in a Catalan epistle from about 1332. However, this reference is difficult to substantiate since the 'Golden Epistles' of Guevara in which it occurs are extant only in translated versions, the first of which is dated 1539 (Chatto 66). Perhaps more reliable then, is an inventory taken of the household of Nicolás Sarmona, Calleón San Daniel, in 1380 in which "unum ludum de naypes qui sunt quadraginta quatuor pecie" [a game of cards which are four-sided] is registered (Etienvre 18, my italics and translation). In the same year there is a record of Rodrigo Borges who set up shop as a painter and card maker [pintor y naipero] in Perpignan, and two years later cards are listed in an ordinance in drawn up in Barcelona against games of chance.

<20> A similar ordinance was issued in Florence on May 23, 1376, in which city elders voted 98 to 25 to prohibit the playing of "a certain game called naibbe, which has recently been introduced into these parts" (Benham 11). An ordinance was also decreed in 1387 by Juan I of Castile against the use of playing cards [23], and in the Istoria della Citta di Viterbo of 1379 the following entry occurs which makes specific reference to card games:

In the year 1379 the game of cards reached Viterbo, which in Sacean speech is called nayb […] It is forbidden to play zara, or any other dicing games, or games practised by the young: [do not play at] bones, tops, rods, cards [N aibi ], coderone and the like. (Cited in Parlett 191: 36 and Chatto 1848: 73, my translation) [24]

In France, one of the first recorded mentions of playing cards is a special set commissioned in 1393 to entertain Charles VI, who had become a simpleton after suffering sunstroke as a child. The document in which they were commissioned is cited in Menestrier's Bibliothèque curieuse et instructive [The curious and instructive library], and it suggests that cards were already well enough known in France by this time to be thought a suitable gift for a deranged monarch [25].

<21> In German, the first known reference to playing cards is the Tractus de moribus of 1377, by monk Reinfelden of Fribourg, which describes cards in detail [26]. Following Reinfelden's tract, cards are mentioned frequently in northern Europe, for example, at St. Gall in Brabant 1380, in Nuremberg, Flanders [27] and Burgundy in 1382, Constance in 1388; 1389 in Zurich, 1390 in Holland, 1391 at Augsburg and 1392 in Frankfurt (Hoffmann 22). In 1472 a Dominican friar named Ingold in Augsburg wrote a compendium of gaming printed entitled Güldin Spil in which he condemns card playing as a deceitful occupation: "Now is that game perfectly perfidious, and just as I have read, so came it to Germany, on the first of the year counted from the birth of Christ, year one thousand three hundred" (Chatto 74, my translation) [28].

<22> Cards entered England about a century later than the continent, but their slow arrival was made up for by instant and wide-spread popularity. The first existing mention of cards is made in an act of the parliament of Edward IV in 1463, prohibiting the import of this expensive novelty from Spain and the Low Countries, in order to encourage card makers' guilds and the development of the lucrative industry in England. Another early English document that refers to cards, often cited as one of the first, is a letter written by Lady John Paston to her husband on December 4, 1484. In the letter she reports a Christmas party at Lady Morlee's home where "sche seyd that ther wer non dysyngs, ner harpyng, ner lutyng, ner syngyn, ner non lowde dysports, but pleying at the tabyllys, and schesse and cardes; sweche dysports sche gave her folkys leve to play and non odyr" (Benham 25, my italics) [29]. Also in England, the first recorded laws of the freemasons' guild date from roughly the same time and prohibit card playing "except during the Twelve Days of Christmas" (Ridley 5).

Cards and Text

<23> The northward progress of playing cards, as well as their popularity and availability is closely linked to the rise of printing in Europe. In his A Treatise on Wood Engraving, Historical and Practical, Chatto quips:

[...] it has been conjectured that the art of wood-engraving was employed on sacred subjects [...] before it was applied to the multiplication of those 'books of Satan', playing cards. It, however, seems not unlikely that it was first employed in the manufacture of cards; and that the monks, availing themselves of the same principle, shortly afterwards employed the art of wood-engraving for the purpose of circulating the figures of saints; thus endeavouring to supply a remedy for the evil, and extracting from the serpent a cure for his bite (45). [30]

Because cards and texts are so closely related through the history of their printing, they have seemed an appropriate space for the intersection of the two, or as Hoffmann writes, "[les cartes à jouer] furent employées, plus que tout autre jeu, comme journal ou comme tract" [more than any other game, playing cards have served as a journal or tract] (Hoffmann 43, my translation). In 16 th-century Spain for example, playing cards were used as the central vehicle in a genre of poetic tract called los folletos, which lampooned contemporary political figures [31]. Cards were put to similar use in England, where Rowland's mock epic The Knave of Clubbs (1609), ridiculed the mores of the previous century by representing political figures as court cards.

<24> Cards were associated with print and text even more generally until late in the late 18 th century, by virtue of the simple fact that the backs of cards were blank so that discarded playing cards were used to circulate all kinds of messages (Rickards 138) [32]. Often used as calling cards, the backs of cards also carried invitations and missives, often ribald, as one plate from Hogarth's Marriage à la Mode clearly shows (fig. 2). A card, lying on the floor in the foreground of one of the etchings from the series, reads "Count Basset begs to know how Lady Squander slept last night", capturing both the sexual and economic profligacy commonly associated with card playing (van Rensselaer 1908: 253). At the same point in history, the suitability of cards to the dissemination of messages was being exploited not only for political satire and billets doux, but also for advertising and pornography [33].

<25> At roughly the same time, a somewhat more wholesome impulse led card makers to began manufacturing decks with small texts for the purpose of pedagogy. Decks were published all over Europe containing lessons in mathematics, the colonies, history, military strategy, philosophy and geography. One particular genre of these pedagogical packs specifically exploited cards' relationship with language, and was designed to teach grammar and elements of speech. One pack printed June 1, 1676 was accompanied by a tract on their proper use in which we read: "For as your cards are entitled Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs, so ours are to be called by the names of Orthographie (Spades), Etymologie (Clubs), Syntax (Hearts), and Prosodie (Diamonds)" (van Rensselaer 1912: 304).

<26> Like the many parallel developments in the printing of texts and cards, documents written about cards follow epistemic and paradigmatic shifts observable in other discourses. For example, the first lexical works on cards were florilegia of sorts, such as John Cotgrave's Wits Interpreter: The English Parnassus (1662) which, provided information not only about cards, but also about The Art of Reasoning, Theatre of Courtship, Labyrinth of Fancies, Love Songs, A Description of Beauty, Poetical Fictions, Letters à la mode, and Richelieu's Key to his Cyphers. Cotgrave's work further includes sections on such recondite knowledge as "How to make an egg flye about the room", and instructions for playing "Games and Sports now used at this day among the gentry of England" such as the game of l'Ombre, Picket, Gleek, and Cribbage. Cotgrave then sees fit, in the style of the florilegia, to close his section on social games with an entry on removing corns from the feet (Parlett 56) [34].

<27> In keeping with the dialogical tradition of the 16 th century, a number of dialogues were written on or a round card games throughout western Europe. This trend continued until well into 17 th century, and included dialogues devoted to gaming and probability, courtship, politics and money. I have already mentioned Aretino's famous dialogue, Le carte parlanti (1545) [The speaking cards], in which the greater trumps are allegorical figures who debate with Padovano, a monk, on the subject of gaming, and the manipulation of money and credit. In England, a dialogue was published entitled A Treatise wherein Dicing, Daucing, Vain Plaies or Enterludes, with other idle pastimes &c., commonly used on the Sabbath day, are reprooved by the Authoritie of the Worde of God and Nothbrooke, made Dialogue-Wise by John Northbrooke. The point of Northbrooke's dialogue is, quite predictably, to condemn playing cards on the grounds of the immorality of gambling [35].

<28> Following this genealogy of discourses on cards, it should come as no surprise that the 18 th century saw the publication of the first encyclopaedic works on the subject. Of these the best known is Hoyle's Treatise on the Game of Whist, containing the laws of the game; and also some Rules whereby a Beginner may, with due attention to them, attain to the Playing of it well. Hoyle's treatise was published in 1737 as a comprehensive guide to the game of whist which had, by this time, achieved the status of a social necessity in England. The comprehensive work (which made Hoyle something of a celebrity at its publication, and a household word to this day), was developed by the barrister out of his experience as a "tutor of card games to persons of quality", to be consulted as a reference. Hoyle's compendium was quickly pirated, spawning a variety of encyclopaedic works on cards like the Goren, so that scarcely a home was without a reference book on cards.

Cards, Numbers, Taxes

<29> As I have explained then, from shortly after their introduction into Europe, cards seemed an appropriate surface on which inscribe text, including everything from personal missives and eroticism, to the basic principles of grammar and lessons in mathematics and military strategy. In this same tradition, narratives of the great financial gambles of the 18 th century, were printed and circulated on playing cards. In 1720, the year in which John Law's system and the South Sea Bubble failed, Pasquin published his "Windkaart op de Windnegotie" [Wind Cards on the Subject of the Wind Trade], bearing the inscription "dese niewe Windkaarten worden gemaakte en verkogt te Nullenstun bij Lautje van Schotten in den gold zoekende Haan" [these new bubble cards are made and sold at No-Backing by Little Lau (read: Law) of Scotland, in the Gold-Seeking Cock", my translation] [36]. In England, after the bursting of the South Sea Company, bubble cards bearing inscriptions such as "The Free Holder invites Ye Spendthrift Prodigals to Drown your Purchase Money in the South Sea" (1720) were published (fig. 3). There were also special decks called "Stock Jobbing Cards, or the Humours of Change Alley", printed to celebrate the stock market, a form of economic folly that card players and gamblers understood only too well (Morely 185-6) [37].

<30> But the relationship between cards and economy began much earlier than this; it began, in fact, about one hundred years prior to the first records of playing cards in Europe in the 14 th century. This aspect of the history of cards is related to both their mythical origin as an invention of Thoth along with numbers, as well as to a series of secular developments. As early 1202 works on zero and the other Sanskrit numbers, such as Liber Abaci and Al-Khowarazmi's treatise on the zero, started to make their way into the west with Arabs trading around the Mediterranean. Although compactness of annotation and speed of multiplication were clear advantages to using Sanskrit numerals rather than the Roman system, there was considerable resistance to the system and its base, the 'infidel cipher.' This fear of mathematical otherness had to be overcome, however, as the west was badly in need of more efficient methods of book-keeping in order to expand in trade. More precisely, what was needed was the new double ledger, zero-balance book-keeping, first mentioned in the records of the city of Cairo.

<31> Interestingly enough, Sanskrit numbers, double-ledger accountancy and playing and tarot cards, all entered Europe within a century of one another, all imported from the east. Hence, while double-entry accounting was gaining a foothold in Europe, a simple and entertaining model of how it works was available in the form of score keeping for card games, which did and does involve the double ledger and the zero balance. As an enormously popular pastime, card games were instrumental in familiarising people with the new system of numeric annotation, but more important still, with the use of zero in accounting. These deceptively trivial signifiers, therefore, quietly but persistently imported mathematical innovation into Europe from the East, and contributed to a major paradigmatic shift by making complicated accountancy available in a simple, popular form.

<32> As they grew in popularity, however, cards were viewed by the church as a serious threat to morality and repeated attempts were made to suppress them. The synod of Langres published De Ludibus prohibits in 1404 in which it is written "nous défondons expressement aux Ecclesiastiques [...] de jouer aux dez, au triquetrac, ou aux cartes" [we expressly prohibit men of the cloth […] from playing at dice, backgammon and cards] (Chatto 80, my translation). In 1491 the synod of Bamberg likewise prohibited "ludosque taxillorum et chartarum, et his similies, in locis publicis" [the playing of backgammon and cards and the like in public places] (ibid., my translation). Over the course of the 15 th century, as block printing made it possible to print cards in increasing quantities, the strict enforcement of bans on cards was stepped up. Such bans often took the form public burnings accompanied by sermons on the immorality of gambling and playing at games of chance. For example, Saint Bernardin of Sienna gave a sermon on the immorality playing cards from the stairs of San Petronio in 1423, at which all the cards which could be found were publicly burned. In 1519 in Toulouse, Thomas Illyricus delivered a sermon on gaming, ordering the burning of all the cards that could be rounded up and demanded that the city's card makers burn their precious printing blocks. As a compensation, it was suggested that the cartiers de Toulouse turn their hand to the art of printing religious images as a means of income (Mehl 161). In 1492 at Nuremberg, a Capistran of the order of St. Bernard delivered a three hour sermon in which he denounced luxury and gaming so compellingly that 3,640 backgammon boards, 40,000 dice and innumerable playing cards were presented to be burnt in the public square (Chatto 91, van Rensselaer 292) (fig. 4) [38]. Since Nuremberg, Ulm and Augsburg were the chief manufacturers of playing cards in Europe from the 15 th to the beginning to the 16 th century, there were many occasions on which card burning became a public spectacle, as for example at the confession of Augsburg in 1530. Similarly in England in May of 1526 a proclamation was made against "all unlawful games accordyng to the statutes made in this behalf, and Commissions awarded into every shire for the execucon of the same, so that in all places Table, Dyce, Cards and Bowles were taken and burnt" (Benham 25).

<33> In discourses on the morality of gambling, however, the stakes may more accurately be seen as economic in nature, with theology providing a pretext. In other words, the immorality of playing cards resides is their role in games in which people can lose huge sums, and historically there have been two ways of dealing with this problem. The first, as we have seen, is to burn or ban playing cards in the hopes that they will go away. The second to tax cards heavily, a solution which may not eliminate cards, but does make then appear to be profitable. As Henry Jones wrote, "that playing cards are articles of luxury, are fit objects for the imposition of a duty, is a proposition which can hardly be denied" (85). Indeed, if one accepts one of Chatto's many card etymologies, the word exchequer, check and card all derive from the Sanskrit Chatur-anga, which seems to suggest a natural relationship between taxes, finance and cards (Chatto 16). So, under the watchful eye of the exchequer, taxation strategies are devised to recycle losses back into the greater economy, and to induce irresponsible individuals to increase general and personal wealth, rather dissipating it.

<34> The earliest recorded taxes on the proceeds from card playing were in goods judged of a value that corresponded to the imposed tax. For example, ordinances were passed in Nordlingen against playing cards in 1426, 1436, and 1439, however in 1440 the town magistrates decided to rescind the prohibition and allow playing cards in public houses where gaming could be contained. This was particularly encouraged on the occasion of the magistrates' annual goose-feast, at which time it was decreed that card players would pay a tax or fine in the amount of one half pound of bees' wax to be made into holy tapers and burned at the alter of a patron saint (Chatto 93-4). As well there are protocols from 1407 recorded in the Mémoires de l'Académie Dijon (1828), concerning inveterate card players who voluntarily signed agreements not to gamble for a prescribed period of time, subject to a self-imposed penalty:

The first [case] is taken from the protocol of Jehan Lebon, notary, and of his clerks Jehan Bizot, Guyot Dizot de Charmes, and Jehan Gros. We read here that in 1407, an agreement was made to abstain from playing for one year, contracted between Jehan Violier de Volexon, butcher, Dijon; Guillaume Garni, butcher, Guguenin de Grancey, tournestier [tournament worker], Vivien de Picardet, baker, and Gorant de Barefort, knife and tool maker, Dijon. A penalty of two gold francs was to be paid to those who did not play, and two gold francs to be charged by the Procurer of the City and Commune of Dijon, to be paid to the city. The second [month] of the year 1505. (Chatto 79, my translation) [39]

It was in England, however, that the most efficient and stringent systems for the taxation of playing cards were developed. The first rigorously imposed tax was levied by James I in 1615, which took the form of £200 per annum, and 5s. per gross on playing cards, and £ 1,800 due on the cards imported by a certain Sir Richard Coningsby in that same year (Jones 85).

<35> By the reign of Queen Anne, the notion that playing cards were a lucrative source of revenues was so well established, that in 1711 a special tax was levied with the intention of raising the sum of £186,670 per annum with the eventual goal of raising £2,602,200, "for carrying on the war, and for other [of] her Majesty's Occasions" (Jones 87). Therefore, it was decided that the duty on each deck should be set at sixpence for a period of thirty-two years, commencing in 1711. All card makers were furthered required to send notice in writing to the Commissioners of the Stamp Duties on Vellum, indicating the address of their establishment for inspection. Failure to comply brought an initial penalty of £50 and £10 for each subsequent refusal. The makers were required to wrap and seal each pack with stamped government paper and special thread issued by the Commissioners of Duties, as well as to use a special tax stamp for the ace of spades. Failure to follow this procedure meant immediate removal of all merchandise in stock, plus a penalty in the amount of three times the value of the goods seized. Card makers were further required to furnish an inventory report every twenty-eight days, after which they had two weeks to pay all taxes owing. Failure to report to the Commissioner of Duties resulted in a fine of £20 for default, and double duty for non-payment of the tax within the time allotted (Benham 69-80). This elaborate system of taxation was accompanied by the stricter reinforcement of a tax intended to "prevent excessive and immoderate gambling" which had already been passed in the House of Commons in 1709. In other words, this series of laws and requirements was intended as a tax net through which no aspect of card manufacturing (paper, printing, binding, gaming) or playing could pass without first paying the price.

<36> While cards as a popular luxury item, emblazoned with monarchs and military themes, presented themselves as fine place to look for revenues for funding the war effort, the government was effectively killing the goose that laid the golden eggs. In 1711 English card makers' guild responded with a five-point report, concluding that they were "obliged to pay a Duty for Ten times more Cards than ever they will sell" such that "your Honours will [...] lay a Duty which it is humbly conceived will bring no profit to the Queen, but inevitably ruin many hundreds of her subjects" (Jones 89). A similar petition was presented by the English Paper-Manufacture Mills who sold one quarter of their total production to the card makers, as well as the importers of Genoa Paper who supplied 40,000 reams of paper annually to the Guild. The petitions were summarily ignored, the Act became law, and it was further required that all cards manufactured before June 12, 1711 be brought to the Tax Stamp-Office to be properly marked for the imposition of duty, with a penalty of £5 to be paid for every unstamped deck found in the manufacturer's possession. To make matters worse for England's card makers, the initial thirty-two year period that this tax covered was extended indefinitely. The tax was also strictly enforced with the death penalty, which actually carried out in the case of an assistant named Harding who engraved a counterfeit duty ace of spades (Jones 94).

<37> The result of these exorbitant duties is an elaborate history of tax-evasion schemes and counter moves from the office of the exchequer. For example, it was discovered that the duty stamp on the outside of packs could be carefully removed, recycled and re-applied to new decks. Old and soiled cards were also bought by the pound, sorted, cleaned and resold free of tax until this practice was discovered in 1756, and a new tax stamp was developed for 'waste cards.' This tax was circumnavigated with the invention of the category 'second-hand' until a new duty stamp was invented for the court cards of these decks to be used on penalty of a £5 fine per pack. When counterfeit duty ace of spades cards were manufactured, the exchequer responded by periodically changing the duty card. As methods for subverting this tax were found, the response was to require that any card bearing the duty stamp be made on a special vellum which itself was taxed, and finally another tax was imposed on the government-printed wrappers required for each deck. By 1897 a new tax of 3d. was imposed which covered the seal and wrapper, which were issued by Somerset House and specially printed for each manufacturer. However, wrappers were issued for second-hand cards sold at clubs and no further duty was imposed provided the words 'second-hand cards' were legibly printed on the wrapper.

<38> In the United States similarly heavy taxes were imposed on playing cards. Government records show that import duty on playing cards was twenty-five cents per pack in 1796 and this sum was collected on 1,552 decks on imports in excess of exports. In 1804 John Dorr, a Boston merchant, paid an export duty of $936.00 on a gross of Dutch playing cards imported through Antwerp. By 1956, it was estimated that over fifty million decks of cards would be sold in any given year, with the exception of years where games like Canasta became popular fads, in which case one could estimate that upwards of eighty million decks would be sold throughout the United States in one year. Considering that each deck sold was taxed, this represents what appears to be a considerable sum in government revenues [40].

<39> However, over the past centuries card tax strategies, in the cases sited here and many others, have not been entirely successful even though cards may seem such an obvious item to tax. In many cases the proceeds from taxation strategies on playing cards and gambling are illusory because the parallel evasion strategies to which they invariably give rise, make the taxes expensive to enforce and maintain. In order to keep taxes that are subverted at every turn by 17 th-century card makers or 21 st-century casinos in place, new ways of making taxes stick must constantly be invented. This has taken the form of new duty stamps and labels, or the imposition of heavier penalties and stiffer regulations. Yet the same time, the outgrowth of crime and vice even from legalised gambling has become a familiar economic downside, known to economists under the collective heading of 'negative externalities.' Included under this heading are violence stimulated by the high intake of alcohol associated with gambling and reduced productivity in the host community's work-force.

<40> Another consequence of gambling is its impact on gambling subjects, of which the joker lingers as a constant reminder. The rush that gambling offers is the sublime possibility of losing enormous sums, the thrilling but sickening wager of a fortune on the turn of a card. Average and addicted gamblers however, lose sums they can ill afford and frequently end in financial disaster. Gambling debts play havoc with one's financial profile, which is defined in western cultures by the 'rational' accumulation of wealth. In an economy that needs fiscally responsible individuals, addicted gamblers stand out as marginals who lose their subject-hood to a carnivalesque, spectral version of the dominant mode of exchange. This view of gambling subjectivity is rather eerily implied in Buffon's Essaie d'arithmétique morale (1777), which became the foundation stone of modern statistics. In his essay, Buffon calculates 'moral certitude' as a function of a figure derived by calculating the probability that a fifty-six year old man will die in the next twenty-four hours (Kavanagh 25-6). In other words, Buffon's method for predicting and harnessing the effects of chance, as in games of chance, is predicated on a disappearing subject.

<41> How subjects are understood, and how they see themselves, hinges on how they circulate through the greater economy and construct narratives through the expenditures that shape them. Gambling subjects engage in activities that belong to general, or non-utilitarian economics, thus positioning themselves against or outside of the flow of a restricted, largely utilitarian economy. Gambling is a kind of sovereign expenditure, signalling that the agent behind it spends freely: a privilege of the extremely wealthy who make a spectacle of affluence, and of the poor when they forget themselves long enough to make a petty wager. In other words there is nobility, however fleeting, in the upsets and extravagant losses of gaming and the momentary feeling that one has money to burn [41].

<42> Playing cards belong to such moments of extravagance and sublime dispersion of selfhood, in monetary as well as in libidinal terms. Hence, in La part maudite Bataille draws a connection between economy and sexuality, when he describes the notion of perte [loss], in terms of bodily expenditure, as "l'activité sexuelle perverse (c'est à dire détournée de la finalité génitale)" [perverse sexual activity (which is to say, diverted from the purpose of procreation] (Bataille 28, my translation) [42]. For Bataille, sexual perversity falls into a non-utilitarian notion of economy which includes gambling and other forms of unproductive, non-recoupable expenditure [43]. Sexuality activity not channelled into the cycle of human reproduction amounts to a loss in the economy of the body, or as Lacan so aptly put it, "la jouissance, c'est ce qui ne sert à rien" [pleasure/orgasm is that which serves no purpose] (Lacan 81). The non-utilitarian squander of sexual potency goes hand in hand with the ostentatious outpouring of subjective wealth, characterising both gambling and 'emancipated' or 'marginal' sexual behaviours. In light of this it is worth noting that while all sorts of texts and images have been printed on the backs of playing cards, this surface was first, and is still perhaps most frequently used for pornography. Playing cards are then firmly situated in the general economy of non-recoupable expenditures, both where sexuality and economy are concerned.

Conclusion

<43> In Andrew Chatto's history of playing cards he makes the following, marvellously ambitious claim for cards:

A History of playing cards, treating of them in all their possible relations, associations, and bearings, would form nearly a complete encyclopaedia of science and art [...] cards would form the centre —- the point, having position, but no space, —- from which a radius of indefinite extent might sweep a circle comprehending not only all that man knows, but all that he speculates on. The power of reach, by means of the point and the radius being thus obtained, the operator has his choice of topics; and can arrange them round his centre, and colour them at his will [...]. (3)

It is clear from this passage that Chatto conceives of cards as some form of very deep, perpetual encyclopaedia. Throughout Chatto's work on cards, just under the surface of the scienticity that informs his writing, one hears constant cries of amazement with the exotic, and with the infinite reaches of 'all that may ever be speculated upon.' Here, moreover, is a work that strives to present 'hard facts' from the history of cards, yet in spite of itself ends up unconsciously dabbling in the unfathomable depths of mysticism.

<44> In my own very brief selected history of cards, I have attempted to consciously consider cards' roots in mysticism as well as a number of 'facts' from the history of their development. While doing so, I also sustained a discussion of the close relationship that cards enjoy with writing, text, numbers, money and economy, and asked the reader take a lateral dip into derridain metaphysics. What I have tried to show is that playing cards have been a part of western consciousness for a very long time now, so that they draw associations which bear further investigation, leading off in many different directions. As such they can serve as an important tool for understanding subjectivity in, for example, the innumerable novels and films in which they appear. At the same time, cards have a great deal to tell us about monetary and libidinal economics, which may also provide with a key to how cards have been represented in other artistic media such as painting [44]. And chance, which has been such an important force in human experience from economics to artistic production over at least the past hundred and fifty years, can hardly be overlooked as an avenue for further research in game theory and cultural studies. In short, I hope to have suggested a few new directions for research radiating from playing cards, which readers may 'colour in at will.'

 

Notes

[1] Heineken, who authored L'idée Générale d'une complète collection d'estampes [the notion of a comprehensive collection of presses] (Leipzig, 1771) observes that "playing cards were called with us Briefe, that is letters, in Latin Epistolae, and they are called so still. The common people do not say 'Give me a pack of cards', but a 'Spiel Brief' [play letter]; and they do not say 'I want a card' but 'I want a Brie [letter]'" (quoted in Chatto 82-85).

It has also been conjectured that this usage of Brief for playing card is related to Schuldbrief or I.O.U. This is perhaps related to the former common practice of using the back of playing cards for writing I.O.U.'s incurred as gambling debts. [^]

[2] The second half of the title of Pietro Aretino's Le carte parlanti ( 1545) is Dialogo di PartenioEtiro [a dialogue by Partenio Etiro], which is an anagram of the author's name. This seems fitting given the parallels between word games and card games, and the many games which involve both (Chatto 194). [^]

[3] The relationship which has existed between the printing and reading of cards and books may account for the interest taken in the history of playing cards by people from large publishing families, like Andrew Chatto. It may also hold part of the answer as to why some of the very rare 14 th-century cards still in existence were discovered preserved intact in the bindings of old books as reinforcement. (See Chatto 1848: 204 and Hoffmann 15. Cf. van Rensselaer 1912: 231). [^]

[4] The following poem written by P. Pierre St. Louis in 1668, is further evidence of this connection in French:

Les livres que j'y voy de diverse peinture,

Sont les Livres des Roys, non pas de l'Escriture.

J'y remarque au dedans différentes couleurs,

Rouge aux Carreaux, aux Coeurs,

Noir aux Piques, aux Fleurs

 

These books I see with abundant painting

Are the books of Kings and not of scripture.

Inside I observe different colours,

Red for diamonds and for hearts

Black for spades and for clubs. (Chatto 1848: 16, my translation). [^]

[5] Zero-balance score or bookkeeping is a common feature of most card games, with the possible exceptions of solitaire games. On this point see Parlett 1991: 20. "At base, card games are technically zero-sum games, in that one player's gain is another one's loss and all wins and losses sum to zero." [^]

[6] In 1685, 1686, 1690, 1691, and 1709 playing cards were sent to Québec from the treasurer of France in such quantity that card money eventually replaced even copper coins. Card money was withdrawn in 1719 only to return March 2, 1729 in the amount of 400,000 livres. On this point see Hargrave 312-16 and J.K. Galbraith 51. See also Bilodeau et al. 157-9 and Hoffmann 9. On the use of card money during the French Revolution and in Germany in 1925, see also Rickards 77. [^]

[7] Etienvre cites the following entry from the Tesoro de la Lengua Castellana o Española [thesaurus of the Castilian or Spanish language], 1611: "Dixéronse naipes de la cifra primera que tuvieron, en la qual se encerrava el nombre del inventor. Eran una NyPy, y de allí les pareció llamarlos naipe; pero las dichas Nicolao Pepin" [Naipes is what is said for the first name, a word which encloses the name of its inventor. There is an Ny and a Py, and those who saw it called it naipe; but the said person is Nicoalo Pepin] (1987: 29, my italics and translation). This is also the definition given in the Diccionario de Autoridades [authoritative dictionary] (Tome IV, 1734, naipe): "[naipe] significaba el nombre de su inventor Nicolao Pepin: y de ahì con pequeña corrupción se dixo Naipe" [naipe refers to the name of its inventor Nicolao Pepin, which name, with a slight corruption, is pronounced Naipe] (quoted in Etienvre 1987: 64, my italics and translation). [^]

[8] Although the rascally Pepin may never have existed, his name has given rise to some interesting amateur etymologies advanced by playing card historians. For example, a pépin can mean a mischievous person, a minor problem or a seed in French and derives, claim some card historians, from Señor Pepin's name. Likewise, the English word pip means seed and suit mark and supposedly comes from the French pépin, which found its way into England with 16 th-century French playing cards from Rouen, and supposedly refers both to Pepin and to seeds. On this point see Benham 29-43, and van Rensselaer 1912: 222-3. [^]

[9] In Jean-Marie Lhôte's extensive commentary to de Gébelin's Le Tarot, he attributes this opinion to generalised Egyptomania in Europe, particularly in France, in the 18 th century. See Le Tarot, 82. [^]

[10] Im Arabischen heist [sic] Nabaa: er hat einen leisen Ton, wie die Zauberer Thun, von sich gegeben; davon Naba, die Zaubertrommel, und Nabi, ein Prophet, Wahrsager, herkömmt. [^]

[11] Otros hallaréis de parecer diferente que, a título de discretos, refieren graciosos disparates, como uno que afirma ser Vilhan nombre arábigo, guiado de sólo su antojo, diciendo que la aspisación con que se escribe y pronuncia huele a aquel lenguaje [...] cargando por aquí la invención de naipe a los de aquella secta (Etienvre 1987: 51, my italics). [^]

[12] See Parlett 1991: 40-1. [^]

[13] According to Van Rensselaer, figures from the cult of Thoth "representing a father, a mother, a child and a servant", and four tokens or heraldic devises were also scratched on the rods, dividing them into the suits that have been retained (1912: 37). [^]

[14] Writers who support this theory often use the example of early Italian tarots which were embellished with gold leaf and were so thick and ornate that they could not possibly have been used in hand-held play. Similarly, one of the earliest German decks painted in Stuttgart in 1440 measures 7" x 4", and a French deck painted in 1393 measure 8" in length, which suggests that these cards were not meant to be taken up into the hand (Hargrave 89). For this reason, Chatto conjectures that before 1450 no cards have "been discovered which can fairly be supposed to have been intended, either from their size or execution for the common purposes of play" (Chatto 194). Moreover, until late in the 18 th century the backs of early playing cards were blank, because in early games cards were turned over and laid down by a dealer or banker. [^]

[15] Van Rensselaer writes that "the strange collection of unbound leaves that are the parents of all modern playing cards" came into Europe from Egypt, citing 18 th-century French archaeologist and Egyptologist Court de Gébelin as her source. She also translates the following on the origins of the card from Vol.I, Du Jeu des Tarots, from M. de Gebelin's major book on the subject:

If it were announced that one of the most ancient books of the early Egyptians that contained most interesting information had escaped the flames that consumed their superb libraries, everyone would doubtless be anxious to see such a precious and rare work. If added to this information it was stated that the leaves of this book were scattered over Europe, and that for centuries they had been in the hands of all the world [...] and that no one had even suspected the connection of the scattered pages in their possession with those of Egyptian mysteries, nor had any person deciphered a line on them, and that the fruit of exquisite wisdom is today regarded as a collection of extravagant pictures without any significance the world would be surprised at its own ignorance (216-17). [^]

[16] I spell (H)ombre in this way because the game originated in Spain as Hombre, whence it travelled to France in the late 16 th century, where its name was changed to Ombre. On this significance of this name in the context of Nabokov's novel Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle, see Goggin 1992: 29-31. [^]

[17] Female figures had been eliminated from the tarot in the 15 th and it was Pierre Maréchal and the other cartiers de Rouen who reintroduced the queen to the deck around 1567. [^]

[18] On this point see Benham 29-43, and van Rensselaer 1912: 222-3. On the innovations in card printing which came out of France, I cite the following from Jean-Michel Mehl's Les jeux au royaume de la France, Paris: Fayard, 1990:

Ce système d'emblèmes va peu à peu l'emporter sur tous les autres, sans toutefois les éliminer. Cette 'victoire' du système français s'explique par des raisons techniques. Il offre des silhouettes monochromatiques, constantes, de tailles et de formes simples, rendant ainsi facile la réalisation des cartes numérales. Seuls les honneurs nécessitent des dessins spéciaux. Le succès commercial ne peut être qu'évident (166).

[This system of [standardised] emblems gradually asserted pressure on other systems, without entirely eliminating them. The 'victory' of the French system may be explained in terms of technique. It offers monochromatic silhouettes, consistent in size and simplicity of form and greatly facilitates the production of numeral cards. Only the court cards need special designs. The commercial success of this system is obvious. My translation]. [^]

[19] The understanding of zero as a metasign goes at least as far back as the Algorism written in the 14th century, which explains the capacity of the "algorism-cipher" to act as a metasign in the following manner:

Every number arises [...] from the Zero. In this lies a great and sacred mystery: He is symbolized by that which has neither beginning nor end; and just as the zero neither increases nor diminishes [...] so does He neither wax nor wane. And as the zero multiplies by ten the number behind which it is placed, so does He increase not tenfold, but a thousandfold—nay [...] He creates all out of nothing. (quoted in Menninger 423, my italics) [^]

[20] If van Rensselaer speaks of 'Writing' and of Thoth the 'Writer' with a capital letter it is, I believe, because she means something very akin to 'Writing' in Derrida's sense, that is, she is speaking of the mythical origins of a metalanguage. [^]

[21] In Agamben's "Il paese dei balocchi: Riflessioni sulla storia e sul gioco", he observes that funeral games are a part of the cult of the dead, and that we continue to symbolically include the 'dead man' in games, as in le mort in bridge, or the dead man's hand in poker. Agamben concludes that this is because playing cards (and toys in general) act as the residue of diachrony in synchronic situations such as ritual, and synchronic residue in diachronic situations such as games when they are no longer being played (1978: 81). [^]

[22] See Curtis Slepian's article "The Joker is Wild" in Game (1994) 12-14.[^]

[23] "Mandamos y ordenamos que nigunos de los de nuestros reynos, seà osados de jugar dados ni naypes, en publico ne en escòdido, y qualquier que los jugare" [We mandate and order that none of our sovereigns should dare to play dice or cards, be it in public or private, or any other such game]. Recopilacion de las Leyes destos Regnos [a compilation of the laws decreed by Sovereigns] 1640 edition (quoted in Chatto 67, my italics and translation). [^]

[24] Anno 1379 fu recato in Viterbo el gioco delle carti, che venne de Seracinia e chiamasi tra loro Naib […] Non giuocare a zara, nè ad altor giuoco di dadi, fa de' giuochi che usano i fanciuli; agli aliossi, alla trottola, n'ferri, a'Naibi, a'coderone, e simili. " Cronica di Given Morelli", in Malespini's IstoriaFiorentina, 270. Also cited in Parlett 1991: 36. This same document is often cited as the first reference to cards in Europe. See also Mayer 5. [^]

[25] "Donné à Jacquemin Gringonneur, peintre, pour trois jeux de cartes à or et à diverses couleurs, ornés de plusieurs devises, pour porter devers le Seigneur Roi, pour son batement, cinquante-six sols parisis" [Paid to Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, fifty-six sols minted in Paris, for three packs of cards inlaid with gold and various colours, and ornamented with various emblems, for the amusement of the King and for his edification]. Menestrier, Bibliothèque curieuse et instructive, tome ll, pp. 168-194, 12mo.: Trevoux, 1704. Cited in Chatto 76, my translation. [^]

[26] "In the game called cards, the cards are painted in different designs and are played with in various way. In the commonest manner—the one in which they first reached us—four cards depict four kings, each of whom is seated on a royal throne. Each of them holds a certain sign in his hand, some of these signs being considered good but others signifying evil" (quoted in Parlett 1991: 36). Reinfelden's text is dated 1377 and only exists in copy, one of which is on display in the British Museum. [^]

[27] Johanna van Brabant of Flanders and her husband, Duke Wencelaus van Luxembourg were enthusiastic card players and many of their bills to card makers have been preserved in which we read entries such as this one of 14 May, 1379: "Ghegeven Minenhere ende Minrevrouwen, XIIII in meyo Quartspel met to coopen III peters, II gulden, maken VIII mottoenen" [Lord and Lady [Wencelaus van Luxembourg], pay three peters, two guilders, for a total of eight mottoenen, on the 14 th of May, with which to buy a pack of cards.] (Janssen 114, my translation). [^]

[28] Nun is das Spil vol untrew; und, als ich gelesen han, so ist es kommen in Teutschland der ersten im dem iar, da man zalt von Crist geburt, tausend dreihundert iar. [^]

[29] She said that there was no dicing, nor harp playing, nor lute playing, nor singing nor loud amusements, but playing at the tables and chess and cards, such amusements did she give her company leave to play and none others (my translation). [^]

[30] Likewise, in his history of playing cards, C. Leber claims that Baron Heineken, also an amateur card historian, was "persuadé que la première empreinte tirée sur un ais qui parut en Europe était une carte" [convinced that the first wood cut to be printed in Europe was a card] (3, my translation). I have not been able to compare this with Heineken's Idée Générale d'une Collection d'Estampes, Leipsic, 1771. [^]

[31] On the 16 th-century political Spanish genre los folletos [leaflets] see Jean-Pierre Etienvre 1983: 397-415. As Girard and Quétel have so eloquently put it, this is the point at which playing cards became "des fragments d'idéologies mis à plat sous forme d'une véritable bande dessinée" [fragments of ideology, laid out in the form of a veritable comic strip] (ibid. 8, my translation).

Likewise, van Rensselaer writes that Etienne Vignoles of Lyon printed face cards with caricatures of popular figures of the 16 th-century French court, such as the king's banker Jacques Coeur who supposedly became the Jack of Hearts (1912: 214).

Two centuries later, a portrait of Agnes Sorel graced the queen of clubs, that is la reine de trèfle, as a play on her family name. It has also been suggested that the queen of British cards is a portrait of Elizabeth of York, the daughter of Edward IV, wife of Henry VII and mother of Henry VIII. This claim is based on existing portraits of Elizabeth of York in the London National Portrait Gallery (van Rensselaer 1912: 236). [^]

[32] Probably the longest and most ambitious message ever to be written on the backs of playing cards was Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which he composed on the backs of hundreds playing cards, now on display in the British Museum.

It was French card makers who put a stop to the practice of using old cards as note pads. Late in the 18 th century they began covering the backs of cards in order to discourage cheating with a pattern they called taroté, combining the French word for 'plaid' with 'tarot.' [^]

[33] According to Hoffmann, "c'est au cours du 18e siècle que les industriels se sont rendu compte que les cartes à jouer pouvaient servir d'instrument de publicité" [it was during the 18 th century that industrialists realised that playing cards could serve as a vehicle for advertising] (10, my translation).

Currently, the circulation of advertising is one of the principle functions of playing cards. According to Carta Mundi, Europe's largest manufacturer of cards, "[n]o other object so often meets the eye, cards are passed from hand to hand [and] what is printed on them is more penetrating because cards are not played casually [sic]" (Carta Mundi 2).

The relationship of pornography and playing cards has been explored in a 2 volume work by K. Frank Jensen entitled Eroticism on Playing Cards. According to The Playing Card, this text is regularly seized by Customs in England and North America so that I have been unable to consult it. Cf. The Playing Card: Journal of the International Playing-Card Society, Vol. 21, No. 2, 1992, 62. [^]

[34] Cf. the section on the florilegium and pre-encyclopedic endeavours to organize knowledge in Michel Foucault's Les mots et les choses, particularly his account of Aldorvandi's book on snakes, 54. [^]

[35] Other dialogues written on cards and gambling include: "The Anatomie of Abuses, containing A Discoverie or briefe Summarie of such notable vices and Corruptions as now raigne in many Christian Countreyes of the World; but especially in the Countrey of Ailgnia, Together with the most fearefull Examples of God's Juddgments executed upon the Wicked for the same, as well in Ailgnia of late as in other Plases elsewhere, Made Dialogue-wise by Phillip Stubs" (1583), "Del Giuoco; Discorsos del R. Padre M. Tommaso Buoninsegni", Florence 1585, "A short and plain Dialogue concerning the Unlawfulness of playing at Cards or Tables", a dialogue between a Professor and a Preacher by James Balmford (1593), "Sur Mera" a Rabbinical tract on gaming and card-playing written as a dialogue between Medad and Eldad, Venice, 1615, "An Essay upon Gaming, in a Dialogue between Callimachus and Doldedes", Jeremy Collier, London 1713 and "Noctes Ambrosianae" written in dialogue form by John Wilson, 1826. [^]

[36] John Law was a Scottish gambler who 'sold' his system based on rapidly inflating shares to the king of France as a means of alleviating the royal debt. The system crashed shortly thereafter in 1720 and caused a huge economic crisis. Saint-Simon later issued a special post-revolutionary deck in 1793, in which the aces are called "Laws", a play on the fact that John Law's name is pronounced l'as (which means ace) in French, and a reminder that speculation and systemic gambling occasion disasters both great and small. See Morely 128 and Hoffmann 47, 48. [^]

[37] See J.R.S Whiting's A Handful of History, a book devoted entirely to the subject of playing cards that commemorate 18 th-century financial disasters. [^]

[38] This event is the subject of a wood cut by Hans L. Schäufelein, 1519, and it is reproduced in Hoffmann's playing card history (See fig ). [^]

[39] Le premier est tiré du protocole de Jehan Lebon, notaire, et de ses clerecs Jehan Bizot, Guyot Dizot de Charmes, et Jehan Gros. On y lit qu'en 1407, il y eut convention de ne pas jouer pendant une année, entre Jehan Violier de Volexon, boucher, à Dijon; Guillaume Garni, boucher, Guguenin de Grancey, tournestier, Vivien de Picardet, pâtissier, et Gorant de Barefort, coustellier, tous de Dijon, à peine de deux francs d'or au profit de ceux qui n'auront pas joué, et de deux francs d'or à lever par le Procureur de la Ville et Commune de Dijon, au profit de la ville. Le second en l'année 1505.

A similar contract between Jacques Jean and his friends Honorat d'Abe and Nicolas Miol was notarized by Laurent Aycardi of Marseilles, in 1381. The penalty imposed in the contract was 15 florins (Mehl 156). [^]

[40] Irving Crespi, "The Social Significance of Card Playing as a Leisure Time Activity" in The American Sociological Review No. 21, 1956 p. 717-721. Crespi cites Facts and Figures on Government Finance, 1950-51, New York: The Tax Foundation, 1950, and Jessee Steiner, and The Budget of the U.S. Government for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1953, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952. Similar records exist in other countries such as those of the Statistisches Bundesamt Finanzen und Steuern. Reihe 9.6.4: Spielkartensteuer [playing card tax] Stuttgart, Germany, W. Kohlhammer, Vol. 30, 1976. [^]

[41] The implicit reference here is to Derrida's "From Restricted to General Economy" (1978), an essay in which he follows both Mauss and Bataille on gift economics, in order to arrive at his own notion of 'general economy' and of 'sovereign expenditure.' [^]

[42] Susan Sontag makes a similar point in Illness as Metaphor, when she writes that "having an orgasm in 19 th-century English slang, was not 'coming' but 'spending'" (62). [^]

[43] See La part maudite, "Le principe de la perte" [the principle of loss], p. 28-31. It is this same giving over of subjecthood and the sublime experience of dizziness that motivates the strong connection between alcohol, smoking and card playing. This is why cards, alcohol and tobacco are part of the standard iconography of paintings of card players from Jan Steen to Picasso. [^]

[44] On paintings of card players from the Dutch renaissance, see Goggin 2002: 43-62. [^]

 

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