Where Tigers Are at Home by Jean-Marie Blas de Robles Page B
Authors: Jean-Marie Blas de Robles
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. Doubtless that would have struck a chord with Dr. Sigmund, but I cannot believe for one moment that such images can be explained by the “castration anxiety.” I prefer to think that when it came to naming things, mankind instinctively chose the most bizarre, the most poetic expressions.
THE WAY I SEE HIM, Kircher is fairly close to the character of that name in Heimito von Doderer’s novel
Ein Umweg:
a mandarin imprisoned within his own indiscriminate erudition, a mere compiler full of his own importance and his authority, a man still believing in the existence of dragons … in short, a kind of dinosaur whose disciple the young hero of the novel quite rightly refuses to become.
KIRCHER FASCINATES ME because he’s a crank, a veritable artist at failure, at sham. His curiosity was exemplary but it took him to the very edge of fraud … How could Peiresc continue to trust him? (Write to Malbois to check details on Mersenne, etc.)
ST. AUGUSTINE’S VORTEX: “I do not fear the arguments of the philosophers of the Academy who say, ‘But what if you are mistaken?’ If I am mistaken, I exist. Anyone who does not exist cannot be mistaken, therefore if I am mistaken, I must exist. And since being mistaken proves that I exist, how can I be mistaken in believing that I exist, since it is certain that I exist if I am mistaken … Since, therefore, I must exist in order to be mistaken, then even if I am mistaken, I am not mistaken in knowing that I exist.” (Saint Augustine:
The City of God
) As complicated, Soledade would put it, as making love standing up in a hammock …
CHAPTER 4
In which we hear how Kircher made the acquaintance of an Italian who carried his wife’s corpse around for four years …
AS GERMANY WAS too risky for people of our order, it was decided we should go to Austria via northern Italy. We therefore set off for Marseilles where we embarked on a fragile vessel that hugged the coast as it sailed for Genoa. Having been blown off course by storms, we only managed to reach Civita Vecchia. Since we felt sick at the very idea of going back to sea, we did the sixty leagues to Rome on foot.
A big surprise was awaiting Kircher there. By the strangest of coincidences, since our presence in Rome was due to the vagaries of the wind alone, the superiors of the Society were not at all surprised to see Athanasius when we presented ourselves at the Roman College. On the contrary, they welcomed him as one impatiently expected. During our eventful journey, Peiresc’s efforts had finally borne fruit & Kircher had been appointed to the chair of mathematics at the College, in place of ChristophScheiner, who had left for Vienna to take over Kepler’s position. As well as teaching mathematics, it was specified that Athanasius was to devote himself to the study of hieroglyphs, a requirement in which it was easy to see the good offices of his Provençal colleague.
It is difficult to describe Kircher’s satisfaction on hearing this news: at the age of thirty he had a personal chair at the most renowned Jesuit college & could treat the most learned men of his time, those he had admired since he began his studies, as equals.
When we arrived in Rome in November 1633 Galileo had just been imprisoned for the first year of his incarceration; my master took it upon himself to go and see him whenever his work allowed.
With the room he had been given on the top floor of the Roman College Athanasius Kircher had a unique view of the city. Down below he could see the teeming population of Rome—which at the time had more than a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants!—he could view the domes or capitals of the most beautiful buildings ever raised &, above all, he could make out some of the tall obelisks Pope Sixtus V had started to restore.
On Peiresc’s advice he struck up a friendship with Pietro della Valle, the celebrated owner of the Coptic-Arabic dictionary, translated by Saumaise. Between 1611 &
. Doubtless that would have struck a chord with Dr. Sigmund, but I cannot believe for one moment that such images can be explained by the “castration anxiety.” I prefer to think that when it came to naming things, mankind instinctively chose the most bizarre, the most poetic expressions.
THE WAY I SEE HIM, Kircher is fairly close to the character of that name in Heimito von Doderer’s novel
Ein Umweg:
a mandarin imprisoned within his own indiscriminate erudition, a mere compiler full of his own importance and his authority, a man still believing in the existence of dragons … in short, a kind of dinosaur whose disciple the young hero of the novel quite rightly refuses to become.
KIRCHER FASCINATES ME because he’s a crank, a veritable artist at failure, at sham. His curiosity was exemplary but it took him to the very edge of fraud … How could Peiresc continue to trust him? (Write to Malbois to check details on Mersenne, etc.)
ST. AUGUSTINE’S VORTEX: “I do not fear the arguments of the philosophers of the Academy who say, ‘But what if you are mistaken?’ If I am mistaken, I exist. Anyone who does not exist cannot be mistaken, therefore if I am mistaken, I must exist. And since being mistaken proves that I exist, how can I be mistaken in believing that I exist, since it is certain that I exist if I am mistaken … Since, therefore, I must exist in order to be mistaken, then even if I am mistaken, I am not mistaken in knowing that I exist.” (Saint Augustine:
The City of God
) As complicated, Soledade would put it, as making love standing up in a hammock …
CHAPTER 4
In which we hear how Kircher made the acquaintance of an Italian who carried his wife’s corpse around for four years …
AS GERMANY WAS too risky for people of our order, it was decided we should go to Austria via northern Italy. We therefore set off for Marseilles where we embarked on a fragile vessel that hugged the coast as it sailed for Genoa. Having been blown off course by storms, we only managed to reach Civita Vecchia. Since we felt sick at the very idea of going back to sea, we did the sixty leagues to Rome on foot.
A big surprise was awaiting Kircher there. By the strangest of coincidences, since our presence in Rome was due to the vagaries of the wind alone, the superiors of the Society were not at all surprised to see Athanasius when we presented ourselves at the Roman College. On the contrary, they welcomed him as one impatiently expected. During our eventful journey, Peiresc’s efforts had finally borne fruit & Kircher had been appointed to the chair of mathematics at the College, in place of ChristophScheiner, who had left for Vienna to take over Kepler’s position. As well as teaching mathematics, it was specified that Athanasius was to devote himself to the study of hieroglyphs, a requirement in which it was easy to see the good offices of his Provençal colleague.
It is difficult to describe Kircher’s satisfaction on hearing this news: at the age of thirty he had a personal chair at the most renowned Jesuit college & could treat the most learned men of his time, those he had admired since he began his studies, as equals.
When we arrived in Rome in November 1633 Galileo had just been imprisoned for the first year of his incarceration; my master took it upon himself to go and see him whenever his work allowed.
With the room he had been given on the top floor of the Roman College Athanasius Kircher had a unique view of the city. Down below he could see the teeming population of Rome—which at the time had more than a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants!—he could view the domes or capitals of the most beautiful buildings ever raised &, above all, he could make out some of the tall obelisks Pope Sixtus V had started to restore.
On Peiresc’s advice he struck up a friendship with Pietro della Valle, the celebrated owner of the Coptic-Arabic dictionary, translated by Saumaise. Between 1611 &
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