by Unknown
PROMINENT INHABITANTS OF MARKFOR
28-XII Again
(At night)
This spiritual El Dorado has no end! At some point, when you get out of the settlement and into the open spaces, you feel like you arrived at the outer regions of this giant state. And suddenly, behind the dense trees of the large park, you see another city popping out of nowhere and the lure of the unknown flares up again inside of you.
“Markfor is for all of us who were born in this ancient Italian land, and share its pride and joy,” Stefan told me tonight. “It is proof that, no matter how many misfortunes Europe had suffered due to the criminal naivety of its own children, the human mind never faded under the Mediterranean sky.”
At some point I asked him how it would be if people from my era and of my generation came here. Would this place change them? He told me that it depended on the mentality with which they arrived. Would they arrive with the mentality of the old times?
He considers this matter for the most part as a purely internal one. He sees it as a question of preparation. Then he said something—I don’t know if he did it to make me feel better—that gave me courage: “In many aspects, your heart was quite prepared for us. And yet, think how long it took even for you to detoxify from the poisons of your time.”
His way of thinking made me smile.
“It’s not a compliment,” he said gravely. “Jaeger is the one who first said this about you in his closest circle in Norfor. And you know well enough that Jaeger doesn’t pay compliments.”
Then I opened my heart to him and talked about all that I had seen in the forests of Filiatura with its freshly washed, light-coloured pine trees, about the crowds that flocked to the docks of the Transportation Cooperative, where they drank iced and sugared mineral water in the shade, about the happiness that fills my heart every time I see couples on the street. I told him that it feels like I have found the right climate for my soul to grow.
“I feel like all this is mine too,” I told Stefan with a chuckle. I was laughing at myself since I was speaking with the naivety of a child, avoiding his gaze.
Stefan grasped my hands, trying to make me look at him, and told me, “Of course they are yours too! They are yours if you feel them yours! That’s how you should feel. You have become one of us; that’s why I’m now holding your hands. That’s exactly what wealth of heart is all about: being worthy to rejoice with everything and live everything. The landscapes, the sky, the songs and all the divine messages of the Samith. That is true richness of life and not spending a lifetime toiling unnecessarily in order to make everything yours! Woe to those who wait to first buy something and have it in their name until they can start enjoying it and feel it is theirs.”
“That’s how it worked in my time.”
“I know… You even had individual ‘land and property registers’,” he chortled somewhat sarcastically. “How did you manage to bring so much misery into your lives? That’s some perception of happiness you had back then!”
I remember that at that exact moment he raised his hand and pointed at something outside the window. “How would these gardens and those flower beds make us happier than they do now if they were our property? Would the relief that they offer to the eye and soul be any different? Trust me… Rich is the man who can enjoy them; not the man who possesses them.”
Regarding the pride they felt about Markfor, he told me that it had as much to do with the beauty and wealth of this megalopolis as it had with the soul of the city; Markfor had grown exclusively because of its intellectual life.
In fact, I remember him telling me that the populations of the production centres in the neighbouring Ragrilia, in southern France, was a lot bigger. “But those are production centres”, he said.
“All you have to do is think about your Oxford with the population of your New York or your London.”
I noticed that Stefan avoided comparing Markfor with the big cities of the North that were also dedicated to the intellect. But the story of the North was old and different. Markfor was born from the intellect; it wasn’t constructed on the ruins of an old industrial and commercial centre.
There was, however, a significant difference between Markfor and Oxford that made Stefan’s comparison inaccurate: in our time, those who went to Oxford were almost exclusively students, while today, all those who come to Markfor are normal, everyday people. They don’t study the spirit and the intellect; they live it!
It must be over a month now that the permanent population has come back from their summer holiday along with thousands of travellers from the southern states and all the auditoriums, halls, museums and venues have opened to host poetry competitions, sculpture and painting exhibitions, festivals and conferences for art lovers and music events. This is their daily routine!
They told me that in their meetings and symposiums they don’t have a single bite and that in their festivals no music that even slightly resembles the Italian music of the 19th century is heard. Opera is not really their cup of tea… In the theatrical plays, however, which are countless, they play everything from Shakespeare, Schiller and the great dramatists of New Göteborg to Evelyn Cornsen and Borodin’s trilogy The Ethereal Paths, inspired by the astonishing Valmandel’s work Prayer Among the Stars’ Golden Spheres. I heard many people speak with respect about this oratorio that is described as being an entire “musical universe” in itself.
Foreign thinkers hardly ever come to Markfor to teach anymore. This gigantic state has its own maîtres, half of whom are born and raised in the city and extremely proud of it. You may happen to run into some of them on the street, walking by themselves, undisturbed, without anyone bothering them with excessive effusiveness. The good old notion of discretion governs this city that knows how to recognise and respect the intimate moments of a person and not bother them by taking it further than calling out a cordial greeting. And I’m talking about names unknown to us, yet very famous nowadays, real stars! Stars that have not risen in the night sky of our times…
Here is where Axel Engelmeier, the mathematics philosopher, has worked all his life and still teaches now, at a very old age. Here is where Kershey does his winter courses on the philosophical approach to culture. Thousands of people gather every night in the temple of Lysborg in Altona for the religious sermon of the beloved Knut Dieter, with the snow white hair and the soul of a child, to hear him recite so exquisitely the “Love thy neighbour as thyself” commandment and listen to his speech on the Mount of Olives. And the list is very long; Rudelin, Brigita Luni, Lestrem and Kirsten Nymark. The latter is famous in the field of history of art. Her annual schedule is this: four months of travelling and studying, four months in isolation, writing and doing research and four months giving lectures. She says that this alternation of time and occupation is enough for her to rest.
My old teacher Jaeger is the only “interpreter” of the work of Alex Jenefelt, who now lives in the Valley. I was very disappointed, though, one day when I went to listen to his lecture. I hardly understood a thing. Granted, Jaeger himself had told me only to go to the lectures of Lain and Astrucci, because there I would understand more.
I understand the phrases and expressions, because I am now very well used to their corrupted Anglo-Saxon, but I can make no sense of them whatsoever. Very well then, I’ll go to Astrucci’s class, to see what this educator of the future has to say. Or better yet to Lain’s. That’s what I’ll do. I just have to make sure that Silvia doesn’t find out and starts crying again for the fall of Andreas Northam...
Koralsen, Jaeger’s very close friend, had fallen behind with his work a long time ago, as Stefan informed me, because of a great love. When Jaeger had asked him whether it would have been better to have missed out on this love, he had replied that “if it was something common then maybe yes, but when it comes to something so unique and beautiful, it’s worth giving up everything to gain this wealth of soul that the memory of it leaves you with.” Koralsen was an expert in analysing and
interpreting Larsen’s songs and especially a particular type of his songs.
Dalia Keetly is as famous for her gorgeous, silky hair as she is for her method of classifying the history of music.
Endless crowds lined up to participate in Felix Diemsen and Duilio Markmatt’s series of courses about the 19th century and I attended as well! I also went to hear the critic Oaken, whom we met in person a few days ago when he was giving a lecture on the great dramatist of their 9thcentury (3300 AD), Inias Valmin. Lucifero had constructed a whole series of courses as well, based on the renowned painting Nostalgic Green-eyed Lady by Nichefelt.
And there are plenty of other leading figures in all fields; study of ethics, philosophy and history, cultural criticism, philosophy of nature and science, whose names I didn’t even try to remember because I think it would be pointless and futile since I don’t even understand the subjects of their fields of study, spanning from Volkic ontology, epistemology, the new cosmological approach and other, unknown to me, spiritual sciences.
Others take on the analysis of major works of art throughout the centuries; Shakespeare, Dante, ancient dramatists like Virgil, and lyric writers of the Renaissance like Victor Hugo and Alessandro Manzoni. They also analyse books like Faust, Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, novels by Dickens—mainly Great Expectations– and Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and several more works by our writers.
It struck me, though, how small the creations of our time are, compared with the great works of their 9th century: a huge gap.
Truth be told, the ancient spirit hasn’t been washed away by either the scientific or spiritual advancement of the new era. On the contrary, I would argue that their 9th century has rather rekindled it, breathing new life into it. Just like the Volkic preaching didn’t prevent the survival of the ancient and Christian values, but rather gave them another interpretation, another depth, another meaning. Freedom, justice, honour, democracy, love, pain, homeland, ideals, struggle for eternity, thirst for knowledge…More or less the same concepts but in new, more integrated forms.
It was no coincidence that I saw the statue of The Gracchi Brothers by Feinrich, the marble sculpture Jesus Praying in Gethsemane by Levertin, and Ethics by Gutorp Nilsen, all in central Markfor, a few kilometres from each other. The latter was a work of incomparable beauty, made of synthetic ivory, a work that manages to artistically capture and portray pain as inextricably linked to mental happiness. The same goes for the masterpiece Towards the Light by the sculptor Pradelli, who is said to be a distant descendant of the poet of the 3rd century. I happened to see all four of them in the same day and in the same area; in the heart of the city.
The other thing I wanted to mention is the respect with which everyone in Markfor treats the old Rome, which still exists but occupies only one fifth of Markfor and is now a new, different city, rebuilt from scratch after the Great Destruction of their -87 (our 2309), which nearly wiped out all the temples of Europe, as they say. I haven’t found out any more details about it yet.
So that’s how I spend my days. Nylienborg, Almetta, Aurizio, Aarl, Rho, Legnano, Arona, Notiburg and Sesto Calente are the next on my list of destinations. And I will visit them all! I’m so happy. Actually, I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve such joy...
LANGUAGE AND ART
29 – XII
(At night)
Another reason why I’m so happy is because I see that my language skills are improving day by day. Back in the villas I hardly ever used the knowledge I had obtained from the language and pronunciation classes that Jaeger and Stefan had given me in the beginning. Markfor, however, is for me a field of infinite opportunities to practice conversation. You can widen the circle of your interlocutors very easily, as long as you can pass for one of them and hide deep inside you any hint of “previous life”, any thoughts on pre-existence and afterlife.
Talk to them about neutral things: the weather, the new advancements and facilities in urban air transport, yesterday’s mass in Santa Virgo, last year’s maquettes of flower gardens whose construction was delayed so much… It’s the best language practise ever, and it’s definitely working.
As a consequence of the modern, collective type of living with this universal character, the old languages of our time have disappeared from everyday life. They haven’t become obsolete in written texts and studies, but they no longer constitute the common vernacular.
The sense of belonging to one single ethnicity dominates everywhere on earth: “our country” as they call it. Yet the historical memories have survived as has the feeling of moral obligation to the greats of the past.
The intellectual culture has become one throughout the world, but there still exist some individual forms of literature, music, history of science and philosophy of consciousness.
All the different languages that we had, had ceased to exist as a result of the intermarriage of the peoples over the years, as they told me. They became extinct when mainly the European nations became entangled in a terrible civil war and were nearly annihilated (in the medium-scale nuclear war that broke out in Europe in 2309 AD).There had been an alarming reduction of the population due to the perpetual wars, in the past, before the Universal Commonwealth emerged, and humanity was in decline. But the law of history is always one: progress always comes, despite back-stepping, times of darkness and decline. But they say that the “New Dark Ages”—as they call the era starting from our 1914 and onwards—were not in vain. Thanks to that era, humanity took an upward course of evolution. As Soren Kierkegaard, a wise man of our time had prophesied, those dark years were necessary for the progress that came after.
Based on their theory, everything happens for a reason and everyone plays their own special role in the course of history. Nothing and no one is useless or unnecessary. Even the most seemingly insignificant persons are useful in some way or another because the whole is comprised of mere individuals and that whole is the axis of progress and evolution.
INTERROGATION AT HOME
30 – XII
I didn’t go out until late today, because Stefan welcomed me very early in the morning with very disturbing news. Sabba, the sceptical blond in his forties with the outlandish theories, Stirlen’s companion, would come to see me and I had to be at home at a certain time because he was very busy and couldn’t wait long.
As soon as he came in, he started asking me dozens of questions about my life in Markfor and my impressions and if I remember ever being here before. He was accompanied by Alex Wettel Smith, the young saviour of Northam at the time of the accident. I really liked the behaviour of the latter towards me. He had a serene look on his face and seemed quite indifferent to the thoughts that troubled the professor’s mind. A hint of irony in his eyes suggested that he did not agree with his methods. His gaze suggested something like: “If you had believed him from the beginning things would be simpler…” If Sabba hadn’t been present, I would have shaken his hand and thanked him.
These “wise men” of the North are truly unfair to themselves. If they could overcome their selfishness and re-examine their prejudgment that I was merely a case of “split personality”, they would be more human and able to realise and admit their mistake…
I spent the whole afternoon inside. I didn’t go anywhere. I sat and meditated instead. I was wondering how many more new dawns I’m meant to see before I die. No one knows.
NEW YEAR’S EVE
(Just back from Santa Virgo, Markfor)
Tonight we will all stay awake until midnight to welcome the New Year.
I’m standing by my window, looking at this wonderfully lit state. It’s the only time of year that all the lights are on at night. I raise my eyes and look high up above, praying for God to make me worthy of seeing my own world again for I had visited Rome in my former life and that is where Markfor is built. I feel my eyes well with tears. Night had fallen for good.
Three hours before midnight we went
with Stefan and the girls for a short but very moving Mass in Santa Virgo. I noticed that everyone on the street was carrying candles as if it were Easter Resurrection. “New year, a new leaf in life” was their motto. Isn’t that what we used to say as well?
Markfor is the city with the most intense Christian spirit and all the churches stayed opened and functioning until midnight so that they could please all the millions of people that had arrived. The last day of every year, everyone thinks about their year in retrospect, in terms of morality and other inner factors. And when I say everyone, I mean everyone, with no exceptions and not out of obligation. This is their New Year’s Eve. White candles, devoutness and silence. No colourful balloons, no fireworks, no celebrations. And yet you can’t believe the incredible amount of happiness that this day offers.
DEATH AND SPIRIT
1-I-MDX
I date it as the first day of the year, but that was yesterday. Yesterday I couldn’t write even if I wanted to. Nobody does. They spend all day concentrating, meditating and praying. I didn’t see Stefan or Silvia at all yesterday and the truth is that I got tired of being on my own. I couldn’t even read. I was still over-stimulated by the climate of yesterday’s solemn evening.
These people seem to see things totally different from us. About death, for instance, we used to say: “Everything must come to an end. Say goodbye to everything. Life is something unique and unrepeatable. You will not see any of it again. You’re leaving everything behind.”
Now they have different beliefs: they feel that, when you depart from this world, you leave behind all the good deeds that you have done and all the work that you’ve completed and that the only thing you take with you is your inner cultivation and the improvement of yourself, depending, of course, on the path that each spiritual life has followed.
