And yet we know that the ancient earthlings, in that blinding vertigo of obscurity and clarity, managed to establish efficient biorhythms and develop a rich and articulate civilization. About seventy years ago (to be precise, in the year 1745 post explosion), from the advanced base at Reykjavik, the legendary southernmost point of terrestrial life, an expedition led by Professor Amaa A. Kroak advanced as far as the desert once known as France. There, that unparalleled scholar proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the combined_ effects of radioaction and time had destroyed all fossil evidence.
There seemed no hope, then, that anything would ever be known about our distant progenitors. Previously, in 1710 P.E., the expedition led by Professor Ulak Amjacoa, thanks to generous support provided by the Alpha Centauri Foundation, had taken soundings in the radioactive waters of Loch Ness and recovered what is today generally considered the first «cryptolibrary» of the ancients. Encased in an enormous block of cement was a zinc container with the words incised on it: BERTRAND US
RUSSELL SUBMERSIT ANNO HOMINIS MCMLI. This container, as all of you know, held the volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and finally supplied us with that enormous body of data about the vanished civilization that have, to a great extent, formed the basis of our present historical knowledge.
It was not long before other cryptolibraries were discovered in other areas (including the famous one in a sealed case in the Deutschland Territory with the inscription TENEBRA APPROPINQUANTE). It soon became clear that among the ancient earthlings only men of culture sensed the approaching tragedy. They tried to offer some remedy in the only way available to them: that is, saving for posterity the treasures of their civilization. And what an act of faith it was, for them to foresee, despite all evidence to the contrary, any posterity at all!
Thanks to these pages, which we cannot regard without emotion today, distinguished colleagues, at last we are able to know how that world thought, how its people acted, how the final drama unfolded.
Oh, I realize full well that the written word provides an inadequate testimony of the world in which it was written, but think how handicapped we are when we lack even this valuable aid! The «Italian problem» offers us a typical example of the enigma that has fascinated archeologists and historians, none of whom has yet been able to give an answer to the
familiar question: Why, in that country, the seat of an ancient civilization, as we know and as books discovered in other la;ds amply demonstrate-why, we ask, has it been impossible to find any trace of a cryptolibrary? You know that the hypotheses forwarded in answer to this question are as numerous as they are unsatisfactory; but at the risk of repeating what you already know, I will list them for you briefly:
1) The Aakon-Sturg Hypothesis, proposed with admirable erudition in The Explosion in the Mediterranean Basin, Baffin, 1750 P. E. A combination of thermonuclear phenomena destroyed the Italian cryptolibrary. This hypothesis is supported by sound argument, because we know that· the Italian peninsula was the most heavily hit when the first atomic missiles were fired from the Adriatic coast, initiating the total conflict.
2) The Ugum-Noa Noa Hypothesis, expounded in the widely read Did Italy Exist? (Barents City, 1712 P.E.). Here, on the basis of careful examination of the reports of high-level political conferences held before the total conflict, the author reaches the conclusion that «Italy» never existed. While this hypothesis neatly resolves the problem of cryptolibraries (or, rather, of their absence), it seems contradicted by a series of reports provided in the English and German languages concerning the culture of the «Italian» people. Documents in the French language, on the other hand, Ugum-Noa Noa reminds us, ignore the subject altogether, thus lending some support to his bold idea.
3) The Hypothesis of Professor Ixptt Adonis (cf. Italia, Altair, 22nd section, Mathematical Year 120). This is without doubt the most brilliant hypothesis of all, but also the least substantiated. It argues that at the time of the Explosion the Italian National Library was, for unspecified reasons, in a state of extreme disarray; that Italian scholars, rather than concern themselves with establishing libraries for the future, were seriously worried about their library of the present, having to make enormous efforts just to prevent the collapse of the building that actually housed the volumes. This hypothesis betrays the ingenuousness of a modern, non-earthling observer quick to weave a halo of legend around everything regarding our planet, accustomed to considering earthlings as a people who lived in idle bliss, gorging on seal pie and strumming reindeer-horn harps. On the contrary, the advanced degree of civilization reached, by the ancient earthlings before the Explosion makes such criminal neglect inconceivable, the more so since exploration of the other cisequatorial countries has revealed the existence of quite advanced techniques of book conservation.
And so we come full circle. The darkest mystery has always enshrouded Italian pre-Explosion culture, even though for he early centuries the cryptolibraries of other countries supply adequate documentation. True, in the course of careful excavation some interesting if puzzling documents, highly fragile, have been discovered. I will cite here the small paper fragment unearthed by Kosamba. Its text, he rightly considers, illustrates the Italian taste for brief and pithy poems.
I quote the text in its entirety: «In the middle of the pathway of this our life.» Kosamba also found the jacket of a volume, obviously a treatise on horticulture, entitled The Name of the Rose, by a certain Ache or Eke (the upper part of the relic is unfortunately torn, so the exact name is uncertain, as Sturg indicates). And we must remember how Italian science in that period had clearly made great progress in genetics, even though this knowledge was employed in racial eugenics, as we can infer from the lid of a box that must have contained a medicine for the improvement of the race, bearing only the words WHITER THAN WHITE accompanied by the letters AJAX (a reference to the first Aryan warrior).
Despite these valuable documents, no one has yet been able to form a precise picture of the spiritual level of that people, a level, if I may venture to say so, distinguished colleagues, that is fully communicated only by the poetic word, by poetry as imaginative awareness of a world and of a historical position.
If I have permitted myself this long but I hope not unhelpful preface, it is because I wish to report to you now, with great emotion, how I and my accomplished colleague Baaka B. B. Baaka A.S.P.Z. of the Royal Institute of Literature of Bear Island made an extraordinary find in a forbidding region of the Italian peninsula, at a depth of three thousand meters. Our trove was sealed fortuitously in a stream of lava and providentially sunk into the depths of the earth by the frightful upheaval of the Explosion. Worn and tattered, with many sections missing, almost illegible and yet filled with breathtaking revelations, this small book is of modest appearance and dimensions, bearing on the title page the words: Great Hit Songs of Yesterday and Today. (Considering the site of the discovery, we have called it Quaternulus Pompeianus).
We all know, my dear colleagues, that the word «song» corresponds to the Italian canzone or canzona, an archaic term indicating certain poetic compositions of the ancient fourteenth century, as the Encyclopaedia Britannica confirms; and we assume that the word «hit,» like the word «beat» (found elsewhere), must be associated with rhythm, a characteristic that music shares with the mathematical and genetic sciences. Among many peoples rhythm had assumed also a philosophical significance and was used to indicate a special quality of artistic structures (cf. the volume found in the Cryptobibliotheque National de Paris, M. Ghyka, Essai sur le rhythme, N.R.F. 1938). Our Quaternulus is an exquisite anthology, then, of the most worthy poetic compositions of the period, a compendium of lyric poems and songs that open to the mind’s eye an unparalleled panorama of beauty and spirituality.
Poetry of the twentieth century of the ancient era, in Italy as elsewhere, was a poetry of crisis, boldly aware of the world’s impending fate. At the same time, it was a poetry of faith. We have here a linealas, the only legible one-of what must have been an ode condemning terrestrial concerns: «It’s a material world.» Immediately after that we are struck by the lines of ail.other fragment, apparently from a propitiatory or fertility hymn to nature: «I’m singing in the rain, just singing in the rain, it’s a glorious feeling . . .»
It is easy to imagine this sung by a chorus of young girls: the delicate words evoke the image of maidens in white veils dancing at sowing time in some pervigilium. But elsewhere we find a sense of desperation, of clear awareness of the critical moment, as in this merciless depiction of solitude and confused identity, which, if we are to believe what the Encyclopaedia Britannica says of the dramatist Luigi Pirandello, might lead us to attribute the text to him: «Who? Stole my heart away? Who? Makes me dream all day»? Who . . . » Another canzona («Mine in May, his in June. She forgot me mighty soon») suggests a worthy correlative to some English verses of the same period, the song of James Prufrock by the poet Thomas Stearns, who speaks of an unspecified «cruellest month.»
Did this searing anguish perhaps drive some exponents of poetry to
