Where Tigers Are at Home (91 page)

ONCE ONE GETS INVOLVED IN BIOGRAPHY, one has to resign oneself to the role of Sancho Panza.

NEVER LOOK STRAIGHT AT THINGS, but always with a sidelong glance, the only way of bringing out their beauty and their faults. Learned from Heidegger. The parrot, not the other one. Although …

I CONTINUE ON MY WAY, resolutely, without knowing whether it’s taking me closer to or farther away from the essential, without even knowing whether it’s going anywhere.

AMAZING THE ROCK: a process that consists of heating the surface of the stone rapidly then pouring water over it to make it splinter. Loredana … It’s left me shattered.

ALFREDO, TRYING TO CONSOLE ME: Life’s a brassiere, put your breasts in it!
La vida é um soutien, meta od peitos!

THE 36th STRATAGEM. Recommended by Kircher, the truth as the ultimate resort against the plague …

IF ALL CERTAINTY has been lost and the unity between ourselves and things betrayed by a book, it is by another book that the unity will be re-established. We deride this obvious fact so often and so dishonestly that we must be blind, or content to enjoy the happiness of an abandoned animal.

A LITTLE NOTICE on the ferry to São Luís: “Man overboard: if you see someone fall into the sea or see someone in the sea, shout, ‘Man overboard on the starboard side.’ ” I must have fallen on the port side.

“THE STONE IS GOD, but it doesn’t know it is and it is the fact of not knowing that defines it as a stone.” Meister Eckhart. Relate that to Lichtenberg and the dreams of drunk elephants: “Just before going to sleep a dog or a drunk elephant might have ideas that would not be unworthy of a master philosopher; they are, however, of no use to them and are immediately erased by excessively excitable sensory organs.”

NEWS ITEM: In Australia six men became amnesiac after eating mussels …

ALTHOUGH HAVING BEEN
decimated in the Battle of Saint Gotthard in 1664, recently the Turkish armies of Mehmet IV had been going from victory to victory. After having taken the islands of Tenedos & Lemnos from the Venetians, Kupruli Ahmet, the Sultan’s son, seized Galicia & then Podolia. Besieged for months, Crete put up valiant resistance to the attacks of the infidel hordes but in the winter of 1669 we were plunged into despair at the news of the capture of Candia & the complete rout of the soldiers of the true faith.
Post hoc, sed propter hoc
¹
the Church lost its most ardent defender with the death of Pope Clement IX from grief on hearing the news.

He was succeeded by Cardinal Emilio Altieri under the name of Clement X.

The publication of
Latium
in 1671 brought Kircher a chorus of universal praise. Nothing was as beautiful as the plates in that book and it sold out very quickly. My master often talked of giving it a more scholarly continuation, in the form of a
Journey to the Land of the Etruscans
, but the book never reached that stage.

That was the year in which Athanasius adopted the habit of retiring to the Santuario della Mentorella each autumn. There he found the healthy air recommended by the doctors as well as the peace & quiet conducive to contemplation. But far from the vain hustle & bustle of the world though it was, it did not stop people coming to pester him there, sometimes even to harass him.

Thus it was that another controversy, more serious than the previous one, came to shatter the calm of his retreat. In January 1672 he read, in the bulletin of the Royal Society of London, an article entitled as follows:
A summary of the speaking trumpet as it was invented by Sir Samuel Morland & presented to his most excellent Majesty King Charles II of England
. This trumpet was described as an instrument capable of transmitting the human voice over a distance of two or three miles & “useful on sea as well as on land.” Simon Beale, one of His Majesty’s trumpeters, had made it according to the plans of Sir Samuel Beale, Bart., & was already selling them at great profit for three pounds each.

Always inclined to ignore anything that happened beyond their borders, the English had claimed the invention of the Megaphone, one of Kircher’s clearest successes, & not content with adding arrogance to theft, now they were making a profit out of their shameful robbery!

Since it was a major matter I encouraged Athanasius to protest immediately against such an iniquity. Kircher consulted his colleagues & friends; armed with their support he decided not to restrict himself to a simple assertion of priority but
to publish a whole book on the question of the megaphone, showing his superior knowledge & practice in that area.

In May 1675, the holy year of the Jubilee, Kircher finally decided to publish his
Arca Noe
. Following his original idea, he dealt with the history of mankind from the Fall to the construction of the Ark, the circumstances leading to the Flood & the exploits of Noah and his descendants after God’s punishment. The book concluded with a detailed explanation of the origins of hermetic knowledge. My master had taken particular care over the quality of the illustrations accompanying the text & the whole world combined to pay tribute to the appearance of such a marvel. The young King of Spain, twelve at the time, showed his true appreciation of a work dedicated to him; adding munificence to his most sincere congratulations, he ordered the crown to cover all the printing expenses of
Turris Babel
, the book that was to supplement
Arca Noe
& to which scholars everywhere were looking forward with impatience.

His work on the Egyptian tombs already being with the printer, Kircher could have devoted himself entirely to
Turris Babel
, but his great kindness and overhospitable nature hardly left him time for it. “
If you knew the continual burden imposed on me by my affairs
,” he wrote in reply to a letter from Gaffarel, a Provençal, complaining about his tardiness as a correspondent, “
you would not reproach me for this. In this Jubilee year a multitude of visitors, dignitaries & scholars, come in an uninterrupted stream to see my museum. I am so taken up with them that I have hardly any time at all to devote not only to my studies but also to my most basic spiritual duties
 …”

Consequently Athanasius greeted the return of the autumn with great joy & with it the prospect of retiring to Mentorella. We were considering going there when an unexpected event once more gave my master the opportunity to distinguish himself.

A Portuguese ship returning from the Americas brought an exceedingly strange savage to Italy. It was not his color that was strange—he was black as coal but we had become used to that for several years now—but the mystery of his language & his origin. From what the captain said, they had found this negro in the open sea off the Guinea coast, drifting, half-starved, in a little boat that was no more than a hollowed-out tree-trunk. After having regained his strength, the man had shown such ingratitude, refusing to learn the language of his rescuers, that the sailors wanted to put him straight back in the water, as a punishment for his barbarousness. Fortunately for him, there was a Jesuit scholar on board, Father Grégoire de Domazan; seeing that this negro had a certain air of pride & nobility, he saved him from certain death. Once in Venice, he took the shipwrecked man under his protection & became interested in his linguistic peculiarity: although the man was able to write Arabic with a facility that left no doubt as to his ability to master the language, he did not speak the tongue of the infidels at all but an idiom completely unknown to those who heard it. Moreover, when Father Grégoire showed the pages written by the savage to some specialists in oriental languages, it turned out that the writings were devoid of meaning.

To cut a long story short, this negro, called Chus because of his color, was brought to Rome to be examined by Athanasius Kircher.

So one fine morning Dr. Alban Gibbs arrived at the Roman College accompanied by Friedrich Ulrich Calixtus, professor of Oriental Languages at the University & a delegate, on this occasion, of the
Accademia dei Lincei
. Six foot tall, with remarkably fine & regular features, Chus came in, handcuffed and escorted by two guards, a necessary precaution because of his numerous attempts to remove his person from the curiosity of interested gentlemen. Kircher received his visitors in the great
gallery of his museum. His first concern was to free the prisoner of his chains, & that despite Calixtus’s reiterated warnings. Surprised, but apparently very pleased at this, Chus bowed to my master; then, turning haughtily to Calixtus, he said in his deep voice, “
Ko goóga! Ò ò maudo no bur mâ ‘aldude!’
”
²

Calixtus started back in fear at the threatening vehemence of these words, but the negro immediately calmed down. Fascinated, it seemed, by the sight of the collections around him, he did not cease to roll his terrible eyes as he looked at one object then another. With a gesture Kircher invited him to sit down, but Chus refused with a smile: “
Si mi dyodike, mi dânato
.”
³
Then, pointing to the books filling one of the bookcases, “
Miñ mi fota yidi wiñdugol dêfte
 …”
⁴

Kircher seemed pleased at his interest. “
Libri
,” he said in Latin, pointing to the objects he was naming, “books.”

“Libi, libi?” the negro repeated in astonishment.

“Li … 
bri
 …” my master said, emphasizing it by splitting the word into syllables.

“Li-bi-li … 
Libilibiru!
”
⁵
he exclaimed, delighted at having managed to imitate such a difficult word.

“That’s right,” my master said, congratulating his guest, “books.” I think we’re beginning to understand each other. “Now something more difficult:
millia librorum
, thousands of books.”

“Mi yâ libilibiru?
Mi yâdii libilibiru!
”
⁶
the negro repeated, slapping his thighs in amusement. Then he shook his head with a very pitying look. “
Lorra ‘alaa … Ha’i fetudo no’àndi bu’ataake e dyâlirde
.”
⁷

“You did well to bring this man to me,” Kircher said to Gibbs. “His dialect is unknown to me although I believe I can see some similarities to ancient tongues. But let us proceed in an orderly fashion. You gave me to understand that he knows Arabic writing & that is doubtless where we will find some way of making progress. Caspar, an escritoire & some paper, please.”

While I was thus occupied, Chus stopped in front of a stuffed hyena & expressed his joy with many exclamations and much slapping of his thighs: “
Heï, Bonôru! Ko dyûde hombo sôdu dâ?
”
⁸

“See,” Kircher commented, “he’s recognized an animal from his country. That is another purpose my collections serve, & not the least either. I am sure that any man, whichever nation he came from, would find himself in familiar surroundings here since nature is our true homeland.”

My master went over to Chus &, showing him the escritoire, indicated his wish to see him describe on paper the animal that had provoked such joy. The negro seemed happy with this invitation. He concentrated for a moment then, sitting down on the floor, wrote a short paragraph in a language that perfectly resembled Arabic & handed his work to Kircher with evident satisfaction:

“You were right,” my master said after having glanced through the text, “this is definitely Arabic as far as the form of the letters is concerned, but it is meaningless—& I believe I know, besides Syrian, Coptic & Persian, all the dialects that employ this script. Let us now try a reverse attempt. Make sure, Caspar, that you note down precisely everything he says.”

Expressing himself by gestures, Kircher asked Chus to read out loud the passage he had written.

“
Gnyande go’o bonôru
,” the negro began once he understood what was being asked of him, “
arii tawi yimbe no hirsi nagge
”
⁹
—at this point he changed his voice to a higher register, mimicking the actions of someone asking for something to eat: “
okkorè lan tèwu
.”
¹⁰
Then, in his normal voice again, he went on, “
Be wi’i be ‘okkataa si wonaa bonôrudün limana be hâ timma sappo, hara du wi’aali go’o
 …”
¹¹