Jean-Marie Blas De Robles - Where Tigers Are at Home

THROUGH MATHEMATICS Kircher sought a yardstick, a universal language that could reduce multiplicity and resolve the apparent contradictions of the world. He dreamed of a return to the purity of mankind before the flight from Eden.

ACCORDING TO MALONE, of the 6,043 lines of verse in Shakespeare, 1,771 come from his predecessors, 2,373 have been reworked by him and only 1899 can still be attributed to him, perhaps for lack of material for comparison.

“THERE ARE SOME BOOKS,” Voltaire wrote, “that are like the fire in your hearth; you go and get some fire from your neighbor, light it in your own home, pass it on to others and it belongs to everyone.” ( Philosophical Letters )

SAVED BY UMBERTO? “When Kircher set out to decipher the hieroglyphs, there was no Rosetta stone to guide him. This helps explain his initial, mistaken assumption that every hieroglyph was an ideogram. Understandable as it may have been, this was an assumption that doomed his enterprise from the outset. Notwithstanding its eventual failure, however, Kircher is still the father of Egyptology, though in the same way that Ptolemy is the father of astronomy, in spite of the fact that his main hypothesis was wrong. In a vain attempt to demonstrate his hypothesis, Kircher amassed observational material and transcribed documents, turning the attention of the scientific world to the problem of the hieroglyphs […] Lacking the opportunity for direct observation, even Champollion used Kircher’s reconstructions for his study of the obelisk standing in Rome’s Piazza Navona, and although he complained of the lack of precision of many of the reproductions, he was still able to draw from them interesting and exact conclusions.” (Umberto Eco: The Search for the Perfect Language , tr. James Fentress)

STRANGE how I’ve suddenly started finding quotations in favor of Athanasius.

AT THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY there were still eminent scientists who maintained that “the Egyptian pyramids are large crystals or natural excrescences from the earth fashioned to a small degree by human hand.”

MINOR OFFICIALS at the court of Louis XIV: Inspector of fresh butter, King’s councillor for the woodstacks, Treasurer of the emergency fund for wars, Senior and biennial seedsman (works one year in two), Alternative and biennial seedsman (works during the years when the senior seedsman isn’t working), Angevin examiner of pigs’ tongues (has the pig beaten to make it stick its tongue out “in order to see if it is measly”) …

BABEL, STILL … In eighteenth-century Germany the myth of an original language led two honest scientists to abandon two children in the woods in order to see what language they would start to speak in the absence of any linguistic models. The resulting aphasia should have put them on the right track …

KIRCHERIAN MINOR OFFICIALS: resuscitator of oysters and varnisher of dead lobsters.

1 Thank you, God!

2 I give leave to Charles de Créqui, Knight and French Ambassador in Rome, to do everything required to avenge the insult done to the French by the Corsican guards of the Pope. I hereby approve, ratify & guarantee all steps he should deem it necessary to take by virtue of the present message. Done at Saint-Germain, 26 August 1662. Signed Louis & written in his own hand.

On a Javanese pyramid, on the Quey herb & on what followed …

MY MASTER INTRODUCED Cavaliere Bernini to our two visitors with many complimentary remarks. Although quite different in temperament, Grueber & the sculptor appeared to like each other from the very beginning. Just as a cobbler would only have been interested in the natives’ footwear, or a roofer in their way of assembling roof timbers, Bernini immediately turned the conversation to the statues and monuments of Asia, asking if there were some worthy of comparison with those of the West or of Egypt. Henry Roth launched into a description of the buildings of China, arguing very learnedly that though the Chinese, like the Romans, excelled in the construction of walls, roads and bridges, their statues, although often colossal, never reached the refinement & beauty to be found in our countries. They were nothing but coarse idols or monsters & demons whose deplorably grotesque & sometimes even lubricious style owed so little to art that they ought to be seen as the work of the devil rather than of human beings.

Grueber took up the argument. “I agree with what has just been said, even though I have seen some statues in China that do not deserve the disapproval shown by Father Roth, for they often have a nobility & serenity that, to my mind, characterize the outstanding examples of Great Art. However, it wasn’t in China but in the Sunda Islands that I came across the most divine sculpture you ever could see. And I am convinced, Signore Bernini, that even if you had merely glimpsed it you would consider it one of the wonders of the world.”

“That is certainly something to whet my appetite. Would you do me the favor of describing it?”

“Willingly. But allow me first to describe the location: during my voyage to China I took a ship from Tonkin heading for Amacao that was thrown off course by a storm; we had to put in at Batavia, or Jacquetra, the capital of the island of Java—”

Seeing Bernini’s baffled expression, Kircher came to the rescue by bringing over a large globe on which Grueber could point out the places he spoke of as he went on.

“There’s such a large number of islands among the ins and outs of the Indian Ocean that there’s no way of being sure how many there are. Sumatra — there — is the largest, Borneo the second, Java the third biggest. It has been called ‘the world in miniature’ because of its immense fecundity, of the ease with which it grows and produces all sorts of things. It not only gives us pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves & other aromatic spices but also harbors all sorts of animals, both wild & domesticated, which are exported to various foreign lands. There are also mines abundant in gold & precious stones of incalculable value. There are innumerable silks … In brief, it would be one of the richest & most pleasant islands of the East, if it were not too often ravaged by storms the mere expectation of which brings despair & terror to all parts. The islands’ inhabitants claim to be descended from Chinese who in the past were so plagued by the perpetual privateering & invasions of the pirates that they abandoned their homeland & went to establish colonies on this island. The people are of middle height, with round faces, & the majority go completely naked or have little cotton cloths hanging from their belts down to their knees. I consider them the best mannered & most civilized of the Indians—”

“A true paradise on earth!” Bernini exclaimed. “Would that I were younger and wealthier so that I could go to that land!”

“A paradise, perhaps,” Father Roth snorted, “but inhabited by demons! I know for a fact that they’re greedy scroungers, they’re brazen, impudent & arrogant & freely lie to get their hands on other people’s property. These Indians are nothing but two-faced, mealy-mouthed, light-fingered thieves. They’ll flatter you, make promises, swear by Heaven, Earth & Mahomet, until you take everything they say as the unvarnished truth; but if you talk to them one hour later, they’ll brazenly deny everything they said! The language of men, they say, is not made of bones, by which they mean you can bend it to your will without it being constrained by oath.”

Grueber & Bernini were dumbfounded at this sudden diatribe. An uncomfortable feeling of embarrassment spread among us & I could see that Grueber, eyes lowered, was biting his lip to repress a retort to his elder colleague.