An Alchemy of Fragments

 

“As we know, the fragment, the never-ending promise of Romanticism, is still the influential ideal of the modern age.”

While aimlessly browsing in the bookshop (a recognised ‘essential activity’), my eye fell on a small hardcover book, quietly appealing with its hushed tones of black & silvery greys.   It had an old black&white photo on its cover - maybe of a 19^th century museum room, high-ceilinged and empty but for a man wearing a black coat & a hat, standing stiffly next to the entrance doorpost.  A greyish circle was superposed on the top corner of this photo, looking like the pitted surface of the moon (?), almost fully covering another brilliant silver circle underneath.  Enscribed in silvery letters within the circle,  the title stated dryly "Inventaris van enkele verliezen"  ( "Inventory of losses" ). 

The  author’s name (Judith Schalansky) was unknown to me - but somehow seemed to fit the aura of bygone erudition which exuded from the little book.

And what a treasure the little book proves to be! It’s a pleasure to handle, with its firm cover and its pages of a heavy, smooth paper. The chapters are marked by pitch-black pages, each showing a darkly shimmering ghostly picture evoking the chapter’s subject. While manipulating the book to catch the light under different angles, peering into the black, one can with some effort make out the picture of some ruin, or the fragments of some text, or the remains of an ancient map.

“Out of the revealing debris, the architect, who will not build a single house in his entire life, designs the floor plan of a dreamed past and at the same time the vision of an entirely new creation, which fascinates more people in its copper engravings than any structure chained to the ground and the soil ever would.”

The book feeds on the human fascination with past civilizations and long lost cultural artefacts, it cherishes how a few rare remaining fragments can nourish the imagination of generations to come.   Schalansky’s own imagination and dazzling command of language can resurrect a lost tiger species, minutely describing a fight during a Colosseum spectacle in ancient Rome (1) , she can lead us into the minds of 18th century engravers and painters of antique ruins (2), or vividly evoke the lost books & visions of a perished world religion (3).

“ Only the writing will be proved right and will survive, will weigh as much as the material which records it : a lump of black basalt, a table of burnt clay, the squeezed fibers of the papyrus plants, of the stiff leaf of a palm ”

The book embodies the human condition of transience, meditating on the sheer impossibility to remember everything forever  – not even when hewn in stone, nor when kept in bits&bytes, and not even in an archive on the moon (4).   But at the same time, her book is a tribute to libraries and museums and archives, noting how “on periods of extraordinary negligence follow phases of excessive care”.   Her book is also living proof of how the human imagination can travel through the ages and around the globe, only feeding on some lingering old texts & images,  without ever leaving one’s home town. 

Sharing the intrepidity of the explorers & philosophers of bygone ages, Schalansky does not eschew  eschatological visions, including the ultimate end of our universe (5). But for now, here on earth, Schalansky’s own writing, her playful gravitas (6) glimmering with wisdom & beauty, makes one hope that at least the language will remain, as an enduring repository of all human experience. (7)  

 

Fragmentary Notes

1.     Kaspische Tijger – Het Oude Rome / Caspian Tiger – Ancient Rome
2.     Villa Sacchetti – Valle Inferno (on Piranese, Hubert Robert)
3.     De Zeven Boeken van Mani – Babylonië / The Seven Books of Mani - Babylonia
4.     Kinaus selenografieën – Lacus Luxuriae / Kinaus selenographies - Lacus Luxuriae
5.    « het verre uur waarin de centrale ster zal opbranden en samen met de zon al de bij haar ingedeelde hemellichamen zullen verdampen » « the distant hour in which the central star will burn up and together with the sun all the celestial bodies around  it will evaporate”
6.    Schalansky’s melancholy evocations of losses remind one of course of WG Sebald – but her tone is more cheerful, because the losses are from a more distant past and therefore less laden with regret & guilt.     
7.    repositories of words brought to life in a conspiracy between writers & readers – together silently reviving entire lost worlds   
8.    all quotes are from the Dutch version “Inventaris van enkele verliezen”, shamelessly using Google  for the English translation.