In the course of their missions, the members of the Institute for the Science of Man have also brought to light a large number of designs and inscriptions on walls and pottery fragments (rock from Cerro Polilla in the sierra of Yvytyruzu, an encampment of Cerro Moroti near San Joaqui, to the west of Paraguay). According to de Mahieu, who has attempted to decipher them, some of the signs could be runic in nature (Les inscriptions runique précolombiennes au Paraguay. Bienos Aires, 1972).193
The conclusion of de Mahieu: ‘In Pre-Columbian South America, in the midst of a mostly Amerindian population of Mongol origin, there are some groups of whites who, from the anthropological point of view, possess a Nordic European type’.
Foreign Migrations in Polynesia
In L’agonie du dieu-soleil,194 de Mahieu asks: where have the white gods, Huiracocha and his companions, gone?
In 1947, the celebrated ‘Kon Tiki’ expedition carried out by Thor Heyerdahl, proved that the sea-journey from Peru to Polynesia was possible. At the same time, he had also provided a basis for the hypothesis of ancient contacts between South America and the Pacific Islands.
For his part, the ethnologist Jean Poirier, former Professor at L’École nationale de la France d’Outre-Mer, in a communication published in 1953 by the Society of Oceanologists of the Museum of Man (L’élément blond en Polynésie et les migrations nordiques en Océanie),195 have gathered and presented a multitude of historical and ethnological testimonies concerning the presence of a ‘blond’ human type in the population of Polynesia.
For the anthropologists, Polynesian ethnicity arises from a stock belonging to Mongolia (perhaps an ancient specialisation of the Proto-Indo-European stock), upon which an important Caucasian branch would have been grafted, as well as a weaker negro element.
‘But there is another element’, writes Poirier, ‘numerically much more important, which has also contributed to the formation of Polynesian ethnicity: it is a blond element, so qualified according to its most apparent characteristic, and which could also be called ‘Nordic’, without raising a dangerous extrapolation’.
Polynesia, moreover, also has its ‘white gods’: Kane and Wakea in Hawaii; Tangaroa and Tu in Niue (an isolated island between the Tonga and Cook archipelagos); Tama-ehu in Tahiti, etc.
When the navigator Cook would arrive at Mangaia in the eighteenth century, the indigenous people believed that he was a reincarnation of Tangaroa.
In Hawaii, local traditions make allusion to a ‘land very far away’, where the trees have fragile leaves and the rivers can freeze during winter. They report also that some ‘white men’ had come to Hawaii on three occasions: ‘the arrival of Paao, the arrival of many men in canoes in the time of Opiri (son of Paao), the arrival of foreigners under the reign of Kahukapu’. The descendants of the foreigners, says the explorer Ellis, are distinguished ‘by the colour of their skin’. He adds that to the Sandwich Islands (formerly of Hawaii), they are called ‘ehu’.
At the same time, the problem of the mythic origins of the fabulous Easter Island resurfaces.
Situated in the middle of the Pacific 800 kilometres from the coasts of Peru, Easter Island had been discovered in 1722 by the Dutchman Rogeveen. Some local accounts mention ‘white foreigners’ who had come by sea. It is in their honour that the celebrated statues had been erected. In the seventeenth century, the foreigners and their adherents would have been exterminated during violent events whose trace has been preserved at various sites: scattered tools, burnt areas, incomplete statues at all stages.
At Paraguay, de Mahieu also discovered ideographic signs of the ‘rongorongo’ type, characteristic of Easter Island.
Bouganville (1729–1811), describing Tahiti, writes: ‘The people of Tahiti are composed of two races of very different men, who nevertheless have the same language, the same morals, and who appear to circulate without distinction. The first produce the tallest men … Nothing distinguishes their traits from those of the Europeans, and if they were clothed, if they lived less in the air and in the great sun, they would also be white like us … The second race is of a medium size, has frizzy, hair, coarse like a horse; their colour and their traits differ little from those of the mulatto’.
Called to the side of the wife of a Tahitian chief, Dr. Maximo Rodgriguez noted that she had ‘very fair complexion, blonde and curly hair, and blue eyes’.
In a memoir by Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, who was the pilot of Alvaro Mendana de Neira during the time when he discovered the Solomon Islands, we are able to read: ‘The natives of Madalena Island are almost white; they have regular and agreeable traits, beautiful eyes, gentle features, white and well-formed teeth. Most have blond hair; they wear it long and flowing like the women; but some roll them up and twist them upon their heads’ (cited by Claret-Fleurieu: Voyage de Marchand, 1809).196
Concerning the Sandwich Islands, the Maluku, the Marquesas, dozens of testimonies exist of this kind, from those of Jacob le Maire and William Schouten (1615) to those of Carl Frederick Behrens, Wallis, Bougainville, and Crozet, Cook, Parkison, Forester, etc.
Paul Huguenon reported as late as 1902: ‘The families of the great chiefs of Nuka Hiva (one of the Marquesas Islands) call themselves Arri. Their complexion is more fair, their eyes are blueish, their hair has red in it’.
In his conclusions, Jean Poirier distinguishes ‘two layers in the Polynesian blond element’. ‘The first layer’, he writes, ‘goes back to an indeterminate past. It is contemporary with the formation of the Polynesian race: Neolithic, numerically the most important, came from the west; it has penetrated into Polynesia by sea, and into America by the Behring Straight, before descending the length of the western coastline. As to the second, the preferential presence of fair types (hair and, unusually, eyes) in the eastern archipelagos can only be explained by a recent contact with elements of the same type, that is to say of Nordic elements. Now, we know today that the Scandinavian migrants have penetrated deeply into North America. Henceforth, it is only logical to suppose an arrival of these elements in Polynesia’.
12 October 1492, Christopher Colombus arrives before a continent which he believes to be the Indies; he calls the inhabitants Indios.
24 June 1497, Jean Cabot from England, landed on Newfoundland. 24 April 1500, the Portuguese Pedro Alvarez Cabral arrived in Brazil. Around 1500, the Florentine Amerigo Vespucci explored Patagonia. In 1513, the conquistador Vasco Nunez of Balboa discovered the Pacific. In 1521, the Spaniard Sebastien del Cano, survivor of the Portuguese Magellan, brings the last ship back to the port. He was the first European to have made the tour of the world.
Finally, in 1532, François Pizarre undertook the conquest of Peru on behalf of the King of Spain.
Europe discovered America. Once again.
The Vikings founded the city of Kiev, the Norman kingdom of Two-Sicilies, the sovereign duchy of Normandy. Their drakkar go by north Africa to Faroe, from Labrador to the Caspian. They appear as the greatest navigators of history.
A Nordic proverb says: ‘Cattle die. Kinsmen die. And you, too, will die. But a noble name never dies’. The name of Leif Erikson has remained alive. Since 1887, the discoverer of America has had his statue at Boston. He looks out over the Ocean.
*
Le grand voyage du dieu-soleil, a study by Jacques Mahieu. Special edition, 205 pages. 25 Francs.197
L’agonie du dieu-soleil, a study by Jacques de Mahieu. Laffront, 228 pages.198
Les Vikings, créateurs d’États et découvreurs de nouveaux mondes, a study by René Guichard. Picard, 196 pages.199
*
Further vestiges of the Vikings’ presence in America have been found over the course of the last several years. The most important discovery has been that of the ruins of three ancient Scandinavian ‘longhouses’ on Pamiok Island, in Ungava Bay (northern Quebec). The last of these buildings, brought to light in 1972, is absolutely identical to the Viking constructions of Iceland and Greenland. On the same site, a Thor’s hammer and an iron axe i
dentified as Nordic by metallographic analysis were unearthed in 1970. The excavations have been undertaken by Professor Thomas E. Lee from the Université Laval of Quebec, who has published the results in Archaeological Investigations of a Longhouse Ruin, Pamiok Island, Ungava Bay (Centre d’études Nordiques, Québec, 1974). Cf. also Dietrich Lüth, Further Evidence of Early Norse Settlements in the Americas (in The Journal of Indo-European Studies, vol. II, no. 1, spring 1974).
Like those of Helge Instad, these discoveries confirm the reality of the historical accounts contained in the Sagas, in particular the Graenlendiga Saga and Eriks Saga. In this regard we will refer to The Vinland Sagas. The Norse Discovery of America (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1965) and to Vinland the Good, a work prefaced by Helge Instad (Johan Grundt Tanum, Oslo, 1966).
In England, the Viking Society for Northern Research (University of London, University College, Gower Street, London WC1), animated by Professors Peter G. Foote (The Viking Achievement. Sidgwick & Jackson, London, 1970) and G. Turville-Petre (Myth and Religion of the North. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1964) have published many works on the Viking expansion.
In his book on La civilisation des Incas (Famot, 1976),200 Jean-Claude Valla provides his own take on the numerous hypotheses emitted by Professor Jacques de Mahieu, and brings new precision to the identity of the ‘white and bearded’ civilising heroes who, between 1050 and 1100, founded the ‘kingdom of Tiahuanaco’ on the banks of Lake Titicaca. ‘These men who, from Mexico to Peru, altered from top to bottom previous cultures of manifestly Asiatic origin, established themselves as the ruling class and gave birth to kingdoms with a level of civilisation comparable to those of Europe, and who introduced a solar cult unknown before their arrival, who are they if not the Viking navigators come from the North’ (Michael Marmin, ‘Les Vikings en Amérique du Sud ?’, in Eléments Nr. 21–22, April–July 1977).201
Professor Mahieu has himself followed these studies. He has documented the results in three new works: ‘Drakkars sur l’Amazone’ (Copernic, 1977), ‘Le tombeau du dieu-soleil’ (forthcoming), and ‘La géographique secrete de l’Amérique avant Colomb’ (unpublished).202
In the United States, O. G. Landsverk, who situates Vinland at the top of New England, has published (in collaboration with Alf Mongé) three books dedicated in large part to ‘runic cryptography’: Norse Medieval Cryptography in Runic Carvings (1967), Ancient Norse Messages on American Stones (1969), and Runic Records of the Norsemen in America (1974). These three titles are distributed by the Landsverk Foundation (Box 652, Rushford, Minnesota 55971).
Foundations
Philosophical
Zarathustra
He said: ‘The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly’.203
The scene takes place in Switzerland, in the Engadine, at the beginning of the month of August, 1881. At the end of a path in the forest, Nietzsche stops at the foot of a rock on the banks of Lake Silvaplana. It is here, ‘6,000 feet beyond man and time’,204 where he first had the intuition of the Eternal Return. He would write: ‘That day, Zarathustra assailed me’.
In the work of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), Thus Spoke Zarathustra is situated between The Gay Science and Beyond Good and Evil. Nietzsche went through a period of great interior suffering then. But it is also the time where he reveals himself to be the most fecund: the works follow one after the other like lightning strikes.
The first part of Zarathustra is written at Rapallo, at the beginning of 1833. On the 15th of February, Nietzsche learns of the death of Richard Wagner. He goes to Rome, then to Sils Maria. The second part is completed in spring. In autumn, Nietzsche left for Leipzig, where he attempts without success to offer some free courses at the University. After this, he departs again for Genoa and, from there, to Villefranche-sur-Mer. He finished the third part at Nice, during the winter. But the publication of the first sections, on which he had based such great hopes, encountered no response.
More isolated than ever, Nietzsche resumed his peregrinations: Venice, Sils-Maria, Zurich, Menton, Nice. In 1885, having composed the fourth part, he decided to publish it himself. He secured the printing of forty copies. But he only found seven people to send them to. This drama summarises his whole life: those who interested Nietzsche scarcely understood his work, those who appreciated it most no longer interested him.
At the end of 1886, the publisher E. W. Fritsch from Leipzig united the first three parts of Thus Spoke Zarathustra together in a single volume. But it would have to wait until July 1892 to see the first edition corresponding to the complete manuscript appear, published by Naumann, also in Leipzig. (A French translation, by Henri Albert, would be released by Mercure de France in 1898).
Some Exaggerated Critiques
The most recent of the ‘versions’ offered to the French public form part of the Complete Works whose publication has been underway, for some years, by two Italian Professors, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. This edition appeared simultaneously in Germany (Walter de Gruyter), France (Gallimard), and Italy (Adelphi). In our country, it is placed under the direction of Gilles Deleuze (Nietzsche, Différence et répétition, Nietzsche et la philosophie)205 and Maurice Gandillac. The collection is comprised of nine tomes in some forty volumes, more than half of which have already been published. The project resumes the one conceived by Alfred Baeumler in 1933, which he had not been able to carry out due to lack of means.
Such a delay should not be surprising. In the aftermath of the Second World War, the USSR took hold of the Nietzsche Archiv and entrusted it to East Germany. They stored it at Weimar and forbid access to researchers. The prohibition was not lifted until 1950, when all the manuscripts were transferred to the Goethe und Schiller Archiv.
One of the particularities of the Colli-Montinari edition consists in the ‘dismantling’ of The Will to Power, a collection which brought together, in 1906, then in 1911 (Kröner edition), a certain number of fragments composed by Nietzsche between 1884 and 1888. The presentation and classification (by themes, in a non-chronological order) of these fragments has been the object of some criticism, notably by Karl Schlechta (Le cas Nietzsche. Gallimard, 1960),206 who questions the ‘abusive’ influence of the philosopher’s sister, Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. In reality, it can be observed, thanks to a comparative reading of the old and the new versions, that the stated criticisms are themselves strongly exaggerated.
‘At the root’, writes Jean-Michel Palmier, ‘it (is necessary to) be of a singular naivety to imagine that even the image of Nietzsche could be modified. Adding some aphorisms, some notes and some supplementary drafts will not cause Nietzsche to be understood differently, unless one tries to make him say what he did not say’ (Le Monde, 7 June 1969).
For each volume, all the variants, all the corrections, are noted and commented upon — which allows us to follow the development of the work in all of its permutations. However, the translations have been reviewed very closely. In Nietzsche éducateur (Buchet-Chastel, 1961), Christophe Baroni has already brought up many misinterpretations by Henri Albert.
Unfortunately, the text sometimes loses in clarity what it gains in word-for-word exactitude. An example taken at random, in Zarathustra: ‘You want to “make” imaginable everything which is: for you doubt, with a justifiable mistrust, that it is already imaginable’ (Henri Albert) becomes: ‘All that is, first you want to “render” it thinkable, for you doubt, with justifiable mistrust, that thinkable this will already be’.207 A surprising heaviness in the mouth of ‘Zarathustra, the dancer, the light one’.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is a philosophical poem with the rhythm of a musical composition. It has its themes, its Leitmotive, its variations. ‘Compared to music’, said Nietzsche, ‘all communication by words is indecent’.
Zarathustra descends from the heights of the mountain. He goes to men like a hammer to the sculpting stone. He who carries the name of one of the first great moralisers (Zoroaster, reformer of the ancient reli
gion of Iran) proclaims the death of morality, the coming of the Overman, and the certitude of the Eternal Return.
Against the ‘Hinterworlds’
The whole work is completely solar in inspiration. Each page is bathed in the blinding clarity of an affirmation of life. ‘I who am born on the earth’, cries Zarathustra, ‘I suffer the diseases of the Sun like an eclipse of my being and a cataclysm of my own soul’.
Already in The Gay Science we read: ‘Who will sing us a song, a song to the high morning, so sunny, so light, so full that it does not chase away the crickets or the black moods, but instead invites them to sing and dance with it?’208 And in the Songs of the Prince Vogelfrei: ‘Let us chase away the murky skies, the world-darkeners, the cloud-bringers! Let us brighten the kingdom of heaven! Let us roar, oh free spirit of spirits!’209
Nietzsche too intends to be roaring.210 ‘I prefer noise and thunder and accursed weather to the staid and circumspect calm of cats’, he writes. ‘And among men I hate above all those who creep, half-and-halfers, doubting, hesitant drift-clouds’.211
Here again, the air is light which descends from the glaciers. The birds of prey circle in the azure skies, unconcerned by the approaching storm.
Zarathustra denounces the illusions of ‘those of the hinterworlds (Hinterweltler), of the ‘deceivers’ who want to give a transcendental consistency to the world of phenomena. Without illusions, moreover. The idealist who ‘condemns life because it is will to power and because it opposes itself to morality’ (C. Baroni) is incorrigible: ‘If one falls from his heaven, he makes of hell an ideal’.
Heritage and Foundations Page 16
