had tried to preserve their own early secrets from would-be persecutors. Whether the authentic survivals contain anything but intellectual dross—dismissing them as dross is the strategy by which positivists reject them en masse —I do not know, but I try my utmost to keep an open mind, and I am proud to follow in the footsteps of men like Roger Bacon and John Dee, who were, before anything else, bibliomaniacs : obsessive and relentless book collectors.”
You are more than proud, I thought—but did not dare say anything aloud.
“Bacon and Dee were men of genius too,” Dupin continued, “and men of conscience, but their first concern, in approaching the matter of ancient manuscripts, was not to judge them as worthy or unworthy, on either religious or scientific grounds, but to accumulate and preserve them. In so doing, they knew that they were running real dangers—that their lives would literally be imperilled by the self-appointed judgers of books—but they did it anyway. Indeed, by virtue of an altogether natural and laudable perversity, they invested more interest in the books that they were forbidden— literally forbidden—to read than in those that they were obliged or encouraged to read. They both suffered as a result of that decision, eventually warranting recognition as martyrs, not merely in terms of what became of them materially, but in terms of their posthumous reputations, which were thoroughly blackened with charges of wizardry and diabolism. It has always been safer, in this corrupt world, not to read at all, or, if one must read, to read the books that one is obliged or encouraged to read, or, if one absolutely cannot help being infected with bibliomania, to operate as a bibliotaph: an entomber of one’s books, and oneself with them.
“There are, inevitably, all kinds of legends that have grown up around the supposedly forbidden books that reside in various bibliotaphic crypts. Some such texts have even been printed—and the great majority of the ones that have been printed are undoubtedly fakes. Some, however, are more interesting than others. I possess a few of them myself; I dare say that the library of the Harmonic Philosophical Society of Paris includes far more—and I could not begin to hypothesize what serious bibliotaphs like Monsieur Breisz of Brittany, who is something of an esoteric legend in his own lifetime, might possess.
“What I do know, however, is that one of the rarely-seen and most talked-about of all the forbidden books is the so-called Necronomicon : an improvised title that implies something like the book of dead names . It is a Latin text, but is usually credited to a ‘mad Arab’ by virtue the frequent allegation that it was originally written in Arabic; its original title is said to have been Al Azif , that possibly being the name of a demon in the demon’s own language. Although I know of no one who has ever seen a copy of the Necronomicon , let alone Al Azif , I have heard various rumors of what the text is supposed to contain. As well as a series of cryptograms that were probably cast initially in the seven-by-seven format beloved by the Pythagoreans—their format is said to be only partly preserved in the Latin text—it apparently contains fragments of a narrative, which Dr. Leuret would doubtless consider to be the very acme of madness, and is certainly very fanciful by any standards, although it is not entirely implausible in the context of my own theories regarding the true nature of reality—for which I have evidence of a sort, although it is not evidence likely to convince the followers of August Comte.
“It is getting late, so I will do my best to be brief. In short, I have no sympathy with the recent revival of atomic theory, and the void theory attendant upon it. I am a plenarist, who agrees with Aristotle that the notion of void is essentially abhorrent. The apparent emptiness of space is, in my view, an illusion; all space is full, but its
You are more than proud, I thought—but did not dare say anything aloud.
“Bacon and Dee were men of genius too,” Dupin continued, “and men of conscience, but their first concern, in approaching the matter of ancient manuscripts, was not to judge them as worthy or unworthy, on either religious or scientific grounds, but to accumulate and preserve them. In so doing, they knew that they were running real dangers—that their lives would literally be imperilled by the self-appointed judgers of books—but they did it anyway. Indeed, by virtue of an altogether natural and laudable perversity, they invested more interest in the books that they were forbidden— literally forbidden—to read than in those that they were obliged or encouraged to read. They both suffered as a result of that decision, eventually warranting recognition as martyrs, not merely in terms of what became of them materially, but in terms of their posthumous reputations, which were thoroughly blackened with charges of wizardry and diabolism. It has always been safer, in this corrupt world, not to read at all, or, if one must read, to read the books that one is obliged or encouraged to read, or, if one absolutely cannot help being infected with bibliomania, to operate as a bibliotaph: an entomber of one’s books, and oneself with them.
“There are, inevitably, all kinds of legends that have grown up around the supposedly forbidden books that reside in various bibliotaphic crypts. Some such texts have even been printed—and the great majority of the ones that have been printed are undoubtedly fakes. Some, however, are more interesting than others. I possess a few of them myself; I dare say that the library of the Harmonic Philosophical Society of Paris includes far more—and I could not begin to hypothesize what serious bibliotaphs like Monsieur Breisz of Brittany, who is something of an esoteric legend in his own lifetime, might possess.
“What I do know, however, is that one of the rarely-seen and most talked-about of all the forbidden books is the so-called Necronomicon : an improvised title that implies something like the book of dead names . It is a Latin text, but is usually credited to a ‘mad Arab’ by virtue the frequent allegation that it was originally written in Arabic; its original title is said to have been Al Azif , that possibly being the name of a demon in the demon’s own language. Although I know of no one who has ever seen a copy of the Necronomicon , let alone Al Azif , I have heard various rumors of what the text is supposed to contain. As well as a series of cryptograms that were probably cast initially in the seven-by-seven format beloved by the Pythagoreans—their format is said to be only partly preserved in the Latin text—it apparently contains fragments of a narrative, which Dr. Leuret would doubtless consider to be the very acme of madness, and is certainly very fanciful by any standards, although it is not entirely implausible in the context of my own theories regarding the true nature of reality—for which I have evidence of a sort, although it is not evidence likely to convince the followers of August Comte.
“It is getting late, so I will do my best to be brief. In short, I have no sympathy with the recent revival of atomic theory, and the void theory attendant upon it. I am a plenarist, who agrees with Aristotle that the notion of void is essentially abhorrent. The apparent emptiness of space is, in my view, an illusion; all space is full, but its
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