The Land of Akbar; Post # 5 (Our Echoes of Previous Genius)

Tags

Adirondacks, Aiden Lair, Arthur Schopenhauer, Dictionnaire Philosophique, Dr. W. Seward Webb, False Smerdis, Galileo Galilei, George Boole, Haslam, Hemingway, Henry Charles Bukowski, Michael Faraday, Nikola Tesla, Philosophical Dictionary, Quatrich, Roosevelt, Theodosius Grygovych Dobzhansky, Voynich Manuscript

 

An echo rang in my head. Two years prior I had discovered, in a volume of a certain pirated philosophical dictionary (which appeared to be a combination of the Oxford and Cambridge versions), a general explanation of an illusory planet identified as THE FIRST EARTH. At that moment, as I sat on a barstool in that Chateaugay tavern, I knew I had an opportunity which afforded me something more precious and demanding to research. I held in my hands an infinite systematic apportion of the previous planet’s history, with its infrastructure and its games, with the echoes of its traditions and a whisper of its languages, with its sovereigns and its rivers, with its natural resources and its Taurus and its Pisces representing the inverted cup, with its calculus and its funeral pyres, with its very own Материализм Томаса Гоббса, a theological and metaphysical thinker. And all of it uttered, reasoned, and with no pretentions or echoes.

Материализм Томаса Гоббса      AKA        Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679)

In the “Eleventh Volume” – of which I have recently been made aware — there are allusions to preceding and succeeding volumes. The fact is that up to now we have found nothing.

In vain Hemingway and I have upended the libraries of the two Americas and of Europe. Josh Crimmins – I have mentioned Josh before, he is the one who found a promising book in Utica – well, Josh was tired of these inferior investigative systems, and suggested that we should – as a team– undertake the task of reconstructing the many and weighty tomes that are lacking; starting from the beginning. He concluded that a generation of First Earthers should be sufficient.

This venturesome conclusion brought us back to the fundamental problem; “Who were the founders of The First Earth?” The plural was required, because a lone inventor – an Aquinas laboring his whole life away in a dark monastery cell– was prodigiously discounted. It was thought that this brave old world was the work of a secret society of people all working toward a common goal.

These previous echoes of our current thinkers akin to Galileo Galilei[1], Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky[2], Nikola Tesla[3], Arthur Schopenhauer[4], Henry Charles Bukowski[5], Michael Faraday[6], and George Boole[7]  (as if such a concept could withstand temporal reasoning) apparently were directed by an obscure man of intellect. Our current individuals mastering these diverse schools are abundant. However, the geniuses of The First Earth must also have been capable of inventiveness and equally subordinating that inventiveness to a meticulous and organized plan. This plan appears so vast that the contribution of each man was infinitesimal. At first it was believed that The First Earth was a mere chaos, and foolish excess of the imagination; now it is known that it was the cosmos, and that the profound laws which govern things in their universe had been devised, at least tentatively.

[1] Galileo Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian polymath. Galileo is a central figure in the transition from natural philosophy to modern science and in the transformation of the scientific Renaissance into a scientific revolution. Galileo’s championing of heliocentrism was controversial during his lifetime. [from Wikipedia]

[2] Theodosius Grygorovych Dobzhansky (January 25, 1900 – December 18, 1975) was a prominent Ukrainian-American geneticist and evolutionary biologist, and a central figure in the field of evolutionary biology for his work in shaping the modern synthesis. [from Wikipedia]

[3] Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. [from Wikipedia]

[4] Arthur Schopenhauer (22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), wherein he characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind and insatiable metaphysical will. [from Wikipedia]

[5] Henry Charles Bukowski (August 16, 1920 – March 9, 1994) was a German-American poet, novelist, and short story writer. His writing was influenced by social, cultural, and economic ambience, ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women, and the drudgery of work. [from Wikipedia]

[6] Michael Faraday (22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist/chemist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction, diamagnetism and electrolysis. [from Wikipedia]

[7] George Boole (November 1815 – 8 December 1864) was a largely self-taught English mathematician, philosopher and logician, most of whose short career was spent as the first professor of mathematics at Queen’s College, Cork in Ireland. He worked in the fields of differential equations, algebraic logic, and is best known as the author of The Laws of Thought (1854) which contains Boolean algebra. Boolean logic is credited with laying the foundations for the information age. [from Wikipedia]

The Land of Akbar; Post # 4 (Dr. Webb)

Tags

Adirondacks, Aiden Lair, Dictionnaire Philosophique, Dr. W. Seward Webb, False Smerdis, Haslam, Hemingway, Philosophical Dictionary, Quatrich, Roosevelt, Voynich Manuscript

I have a limited and waning memory, in a human form of artwork — charcoal on slab wood – that echoes an image of a Dr. W. Seward Webb; “Seward”, as he was known. He was the man who presided over the building of the Adirondack and St. Lawrence railway. This memorial is displayed in a saloon in Chateaugay, NY. It may have been either the “Hay House”, “The Halfway House” or “The Chateaugay Hotel.” (Memory does not serve me well these days.) The rendering rests above the bronze spittoons and brass rails that kept the inebriates’ elbows off the bar. This, my fellow humans, is the remainder of illusive depths and echoes that at one time had  joined together to make up a thriving town.

I asked Hemingway if he had ever visited Chateaugay which was located just north of the Adirondack Blue Line. He admitted that the farthest north he had ever been was Aiden Lair. I thought to myself that at least the Deep North Woods had been spared his chatter. But he did say that he had once played poker with Dr. Webb in a hotel bar in Long Lake.

In Webb’s lifetime, he suffered from a driven reality, as do so many men of honor. Once dead, as is typical, he was even more the leader than he was when alive. He was tall and enthusiastic, and his unique beard had once been black. It is my understanding he was a native of New York City and graduated as a surgeon from Columbia College in 1875.

He met Lila Vanderbilt in 1877 and they married in 1881. They had four children: Frederica, James Watson, William Seward, Jr., and Vanderbilt. In 1883, Seward entered the Vanderbilt family railway businesses as President of both the Wagner Palace Car Company and the St. Lawrence & Adirondack Railroad. He and Lila often hosted state and national dignitaries at Shelburne Farms, including Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and William Taft. [1]

In his later years, Seward would go to his Adirondack Great Camp named NeHaSane, a game preserve of some 200,000 acres, to commune with  a cliff and a few Tamarac trees.

He and my great uncle had entered into one of those close (the adjective is unwarranted) friendships that begin by not sharing secrets and very soon dispense with conversation. They once carried out an exchange of books and newspapers and engaged in noisy poker games. However, those days had long passed.

My memory of Seward  was him sitting on a lodge porch, with a medical book in his hand, sometimes listening to the irrecoverable echoes of the railroad. One afternoon, we spoke of fishing at Chasm Falls (where rapids sing in western culture’s key of C). Seward said that he was considering a visit to High Falls (where the roar echoes the eastern culture’s sad key of Ab-minor).

He added that the idea of the visit had been sown via a story orated by Norwegian metaphysician who lived in Brushton. Nothing more was said – may God have mercy on his soul – of fishing.

In September of 1926 Seward Webb died of an addiction to morphine.

 That evening I casually mentioned to Hemingway that I had a strange book in my possession . Ernest pleaded with me to divulge the contents of such a book and how I came about possessing it. Much to my chagrin – before I even realized it – he had wedeled the story out of me.

A few days before Webb’s death, he had received a sealed and certified package from Blodgett Mills, New York. It was a book in large print. Webb left it at the bar in Chateaugay where – months later – it was turned over to me by the bartender. I untied the string that held it together and studied the plain brown wrapping which declared “TO: Dr. Webb, Shelburne Farms, Vermont.” There was no return address, however it did have, as I earlier stated, a postmark of Blodgett Mills, NY.

The book was in English and contained 999 pages. On the tanned leather spine, I read these curious words which were repeated on the title page: The First Philosophical dictionary of Mlãn. Vol. VI. Realth to Regnaj. There was no indication of date or city of publication. Also, on the Title page, which lay between two thin gold foils of the same size, there was a raised stamp with this inscription: THE FIRST EARTH.

[1] https://shelburnefarms.org/about/history/whos-who

 

The Land of Akbar; Post # 3 (Haslam and Quatrich)

Tags

Adirondacks, Aiden Lair, Dictionnaire Philosophique, False Smerdis, Haslam, Hemingway, Philosophical Dictionary, Quatrich, Roosevelt, Voynich Manuscript

Hemingway and I continued our attempt to analyze deeper meaning from the tome that he had brought back from Albany; whose corruption appears to grow greater, day by day. (But I rant – and have once again – detoured from my path on the story of Akbar)

 

The section on Language and Literature (approximately page 36) was brief. Only one trait is worthy of recollection. It noted that the literature of Akbar was one of chimera — a hope or dream that is extremely unlikely ever to come true — and that its chefs-d’oeuvre and meisterwerkes referred not to reality, but to the two imaginary regions of Tlejnas and Mlãn… The bibliography enumerated four volumes which we have not yet found, though the third – Silas Haslam: History of the Land Called Akbar, 1874 – can, at times, be found in the catalogs of Bernard Quartich’s book shop.

 

 

 

Silas Haslam had written, during the first years of his impending blindness, this elegant book; a masterwork of scholarship. Adding to its appeal are the hauntingly beautiful illustrations, all provided by Haslam’s wife Anna, a Viennese art student who was later treated for schizophrenia and died in an English sanitarium, three years after his death. Starting with a discussion of labyrinthine symbolism seen in prehistoric cave paintings, Haslam traces the development of the labyrinth through Celtic neolithic spirals to the mythic “lost labyrinth” of the Chinese governor Ts’ui Pen. No stone is left unturned as Haslam skillfully weaves an intricate tapestry of mazes across the warp and weft of time: the Cretan masterpiece of Dedalus, the fanciful hedge mazes of the European aristocracy, the twisting letters of illuminated calligraphy seen in both the Scriptures and the Qu’ran — even the religious discussions of Uqbar, the topic of his first book, are likened to mazes. Haslam expertly displays his particular genius in the way he relates the nature of physical labyrinths to other, more metaphysical ideas, such as religion, philosophy, and the then emerging field of psychology.[1]

 

In vain, Hemingway and I exhausted atlases, catalogs, annuals of geographical societies, travelers’ and historians’ memoirs: no one had ever been in Akbar. Neither did the general index of Hemingway’s newfound Albany philosophical dictionary – a copy of Voltaire I must remind you — discuss that name without innuendo and confusion. The following day, Josh Crimmins, to whom I had related the matter by phone, noticed a – gold-on-purple — cover of the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia in a bookshop in Utica, near the corner of Bleeker and Mohawk Streets. He entered and examined the 1st Volume (Aardvark to Dystopia). Of course, he did not find the slightest indication of Akbar.

 

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13481515-a-general-history-of-labyrinths

 

The Land of Akbar; Post # 2 (Hemingway’s Discovery)

Tags

Adirondacks, Aiden Lair, Dictionnaire Philosophique, False Smerdis, Hemingway, Philosophical Dictionary, Roosevelt, Voynich Manuscript

The following day, Hemingway called me from Albany. He told me he had found the article on Akbar, in a copy of The Dictionnaire Philosophique. The philosopher’s’ name was not recorded, but there was a note on his doctrine, formulated in words almost identical to those Ernest had stated the previous evening — though perhaps literally superior. Ernest had recalled: “echoes and fornication increase the number of philosophers.” Ernest corrected his memory by reading the text of the philosophical dictionary that he had discovered in the Arbor Hill/West Hill Branch of the Albany Library.

“For the knowers, the visible earth is an illusion or — more precisely — a fallacious argument, especially one used deliberately to deceive. Echoes and fatherhood are abominable because they multiply and disseminate the story of The First Earth.”

 

I told him, in all truthfulness, that I should like to see that article.

 

A few days later he brought the single, yet ancient, volume to Aiden Lair. This surprised me, since the volume appeared priceless; however, knowing that Hemingway had connections throughout New York City — and the corrupt capital of Albany — it was not an impossibility. I had, years ago, studied the scrupulous cartographical indices of Ukrainian Rеографія which were bountifully ignorant of the name Akbar. I was hoping that what Hemingway held in his hands was not part of that twenty-four-volume set.

 

The tome Ernest returned with was, in fact, a lithographic copy of The Dictionnaire Philosophique. On the title page and the spine – gold print on a purple background — the alphabetical order regarding the range of material that could be found within — (Christianity; Alpha to Omega) — was for all appearances identical to our copy at Aiden Lair. However, instead of 344 pages, it contained 348 pages; all four were located subsequent to the first thirty-some pages. These four additional pages contained a lengthy commentary on Akbar, which — as the reader will have noticed — was indicated by the alphabetical marking on the spine. We quickly determined that there was no other difference between the volume that Hemingway had returned with and the volume we found on the dusty shelf of the Aiden Lair book collection. Both, as I believe I have indicated, are reprints of the The Dictionnaire Philosophique. We read the article on Akbar with great care. The passage recalled by Ernest, the previous evening, was perhaps the only surprising one. The rest of it seemed very plausible, quite in keeping with the customary tone of the work and — as is natural — a bit boring. Reading it a second time, we discovered beneath its primary prose lay a secondary vagueness.

  

Of the fourteen names which were listed in the geographical description, we only recognized three – Xwarāsān[1], Armenia[2],  and Erzerum Province[3]. These three were intertwined in the text in an ambiguous way.

 

Of the historical biographical names, only one — The False Smerdis — whose following words were cited more as an allegory than a fact.

 

“I have both made myself the murderer of my brother, when there was no need, and I have been deprived none the less of the kingdom — for it was in fact the real Smerdis the Magician of whom the divine power declared to me beforehand in the vision that he should rise up against me.”

 

Neither Hemingway nor myself could seem to make sense out of that rather short paragraph.

 

The geographical references seemed to fix the boundaries of Akbar, but its ill-defined reference points were mountain streams, hollows between them and caverns beneath the cliffs. We read, for example, that the lowlands of Mandarin Chua and the island of Achsah (the fourth one in the Delta) marked the southern frontier and, where, on this island, saints procreated; their progeny being philosophers. All this, on the 1st part of the article on Akbar.

In the historical section (I believe this started around page 34 or 35, if my memory serves me well) we learned that as the result of the religious persecutions of the thirteenth century, the conformist herd sought refuge on these islands, where to this day their crypts remain and where it is not uncommon for archaeologists to unearth their echoes.

[1] a historical region lying in northeast of Greater Persia .  [From Wikipedia]

[2]  bordered by Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east, Iran to the south, and Turkey to the south and west .                [From Wikipedia]

[3] bordered by the provinces of Kars and Ağrı to the east, Muş and Bingöl to the south, Erzincan and Bayburt to the west, Rize and Artvin to the north and Ardahan to the northeast .  [From Wikipedia] .  [From Wikipedia]

 

The Land of Akbar; Post #1 (an introduction)

Tags

Adirondacks, Aiden Lair, Hemingway, Philosophical Dictionary, Roosevelt, Voynich Manuscript

 

I must thank two uncertainties for the discovery of Akbar[1]; an echo and a philosophical dictionary.

The echo disturbs anyone who finds himself in a specific ancient dusty great-room which has the odor of yellowing print material. This great-room is located in the once grand summer lodge of Aiden Lair. Aiden Lair may be found with great difficulty (if at all) in the depths of the Adirondack Mountains. The    philosophical dictionary was possibly labeled The Dictionnaire Philosophique, Voltaire, 1764. It was a literal but anachronistic reprint of the Philosophical Dictionary, Stanford, 1995. The event that I am about to describe to you took place a half century ago – therefore you must forgive my memory – for the ‘possibly labeled’ comment.

Ernest Hemingway invited me to an evening meal of trout and venison that he had prepared over a wood fire. He had gathered the wood from the forest behind Aiden Lair lodge. We became engaged in a long dial0gue over how to go about composing a short story by an author who would omit or lie about the facts and not be bothered about the amateurishness of his research. We finally decided that this would permit very few readers to perceive the appalling and boring reality that would face them throughout the entire text.

But, once again, I wander as I traipse around the edges of plagiarizing Borges.

From the remote darkness of the great-room, the echo listened to Ernest and me as we continued our discussion. We found that such a discovery as an echo is inevitable in the quiet of the Adirondacks. Echoes in these North Woods – and especially at night — have something supernatural about them.

Then, once we were sure that the echo was no longer interested in our conversation, Ernest recalled that an unknown saint who had influence over Akbar the Emperor had declared that echoes and fornication increase the number of philosophers. I asked him the origin of this remarkable observation and he answered that it was written in The Voynich Manuscript[2], in its section labeled “Akbar.”

We had rented The Aiden Lair Lodge in its entirety, yet totally unfurnished, except for two cots, two sleeping bags and a magnificent library. The great-room held the library, and this is where we found the The Dictionnaire Philosophique. It was located on a dusty shelf next to a pair of over-used snow shoes. On the last pages of Voltaire’s work appeared an article on The Telugu people.[3] On one particular page of Voltaire was a paragraph on the race, which may or may not have populated the Nicobar Islands, but not a word about Akbar. Hemingway, a bit astounded, poured over every page of the index of the manuscript. In vain he considered all the imaginable codes, diagrams, schemas and symbology. Before we finished the meal of wild game, he pompously informed me of his knowledge — several times. One such piece of information that Hemingway shared with me — even though I implored him several times to stop his incessant chatter — was that Akbar was not only a Mughal Emperor but also a region of Andhra Pradesh or Asia Minor. A second piece of information, once again unconvincingly shared by Earnest, was that this region was named after Abu’l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar. I must confess that I agreed with this conjecture but informed him that his apparent self-importance was giving me a headache. I speculated – to myself — that this undocumented country of Akbar and its anonymous saint were a fiction devised by Ernest to rationalize his proclamation. As I remember, Ernest was not typically straightforward.

After Hemingway departed the library for a cigarette, I located an 1838 Holmes Hutcheson Atlas on a lower shelf (beneath the old fractured snowshoes). Subsequently this atlas also proved to be unproductive in the search for Akbar. This atlas justified my doubt about Hemingway’s grand proclamations.

Later that evening, Ernest and I agreed to forego the Akbar question for the sake of friendship. I only acquiesced to this because he said he would travel to Albany, NY the following day. This I allowed, if only to see what he could find in the libraries and archives of that corrupt city. Knowing Hemingway and his search for a good story, I felt comfortable that he would succeed in locating some text relating to Akbar. We finished up the evening discussing how Theodore Roosevelt had stopped at this very lodge – Aiden Lair — on his way to assuming the presidency from McKinley on September 14, 1901. Hemingway recited the entire story from memory.

“President McKinley was visiting the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, NY. He was rubbing elbows at a social function — where other muckity-mucks could meet him — when he was shot twice by Leon Czolgosz, a member of an anarchist movement. Roosevelt immediately went to Buffalo. McKinley’s health appeared to be on the mend. Therefore, on the advice of the president’s office, Roosevelt departed Buffalo to return to the Adirondack Mountains. Roosevelt traveled to the Tahawus Club near Newcomb, NY in the Adirondacks. Word reached Roosevelt that McKinley’s condition suddenly turned worse. In the middle of the night, Roosevelt became impatient. Against the advice of others at the Club he decided to head for Buffalo. Nineteen miles later, he stopped at Aiden Lair Lodge to change his horses. Mike Cronin, the Aiden Lair overseer, accompanied Roosevelt the rest of the way to the North Creek train station.”

[1] Abu’l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar, popularly known as Akbar I IPA, was the third Mughal emperor, who reigned from 1556 to 1605. [From Wikipedia]

[2] The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438) [From Wikipedia]

[3] The Telugu people or Teluguvaaru are a Dravidian ethnic group that natively speak Telugu. The majority of Telugus reside in the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, and town of Yanam in Union Territory Pondicherry.  [From Wikipedia]