You Can't Read This

by Val Ross

  Word of Lucan’s break with Nero reached the ears of certain men plotting to overthrow the emperor and bring back more honest rule. One winter day early in AD 65, the plotters invited Lucan to join their conspiracy to kill Nero. Lucan agreed.

  This was a deadly mistake. Nero’s spies overheard one of the plotters, an educated slave girl named Epicharis, and arrested her. When the other rebels learned that she was in prison, they sped up their plans. They decided to tackle Nero at the public games, trip him, and drive in the knife. Alas, the group tripped themselves when one conspirator, a melodramatic man named Scevinus, couldn’t resist making a big speech to his household slaves, explaining that he was about to attempt a heroic deed that might cost him his life. The slaves figured out what their boss was talking about. To save their own skins, they told the emperor’s guards. Nero ordered everyone rounded up, including old Seneca.

  Epicharis, questioned under torture, refused to reveal anything. The Roman aristocrats weren’t as brave as the slave girl. Once in custody, they quickly started ratting on each other, hoping it would win them mercy. It didn’t. Seneca, Scevinus, Lucan, and the other plotters were sentenced to die.

  On April 30, AD 65, the emperor’s guards pounded on the door of Lucan’s villa, and announced that the time had come for him to commit suicide. Because he had once been Nero’s friend, he could do it any way he chose.

  Lucan’s family called in a surgeon to help make the death more comfortable. Sitting in a warm bath, surrounded by his wife, servants, family, and friends, Lucan ordered a servant to bring him the last scroll from his unfinished poem. According to the historian Tacitus, Lucan died reciting a passage about a wounded warrior facing his end on the battlefield. He died reading his forbidden masterpiece.

  Lucan’s words had led him into trouble – but at the very end, they gave him strength. As for Nero, the Roman people rose up against him just three years after Lucan’s death. The singing emperor had to kill himself to avoid being executed. His last words were “Qualis artifex pereo!” (“What an artist perishes!”)

  Two thousand years later, university libraries still stock Lucan’s poetry. You can still read Bellum Civile. But you can’t read Nero’s poems. Nobody seems to have thought they were worth preserving.

  The Made-to-Order Alphabet

  SOME LANGUAGES INCLUDE such distinctive sounds that they cannot be expressed in other peoples alphabets. If the people who speak these languages want to read their own stories, they have to find their own ways of writing them.

  ismay flickers across the faces of the courtiers and warriors in the court of Vramshapouh, King of the Armenians.

  Reports are coming back to the royal city of Vagarshabad (near the modern capital, Yerevan), from monks across the land, that Armenia’s children will not, or cannot, learn to read.

  Armenia, east of Troy and north of Ur, is a land of blast-furnace plains and wild mountains. It is so hot around salty Lake Van (in ancient Armenia but in modern Turkey) that the local cats have learned to swim. It grows cooler in the orchards of apricots and almonds that lead toward the jagged, snowy mountains. The biggest is Ararat, where Noah’s Ark is said to have landed after the Great Flood. Part of the Roman Empire since the time of Julius Caesar, Armenia has a proudly independent spirit and was the first nation in the world to adopt Christianity, in the year AD 301. (The Roman Empire, under attack by barbarians, did so a generation later.)

  But by the year 400, King Vramshapouh fears for his country. Some of its people still follow “the diabolical worship of demons,” writes a monk of that time, Gorioun. Meanwhile, church leaders in the Roman Empire’s new eastern capital, Constantinople (modern-day Istanbul), keep interfering with Armenia’s churches, trying to appoint bishops and generally take charge. Constantinople cannot be trusted; its rulers keep cutting deals with the Persians – the enemies on Armenia’s eastern side – to carve up Armenia between them. Armenians can only trust themselves. And King Vramshapouh, looking at the fiercest warriors in his court, knows that his country cannot survive by the power of the sword alone. He needs God on his side, and he needs his people to follow the same God.

  The king and his monks decide that, to unify the country, they must teach all Armenians to read the Christian Gospels. A Syrian bishop named Daniel sends an alphabet to Vagarshabad, and King Vramshapouh orders that it be taught to his country’s young people. But now, two years later, monks are bringing back reports that this alphabet is unteachable.

  The king stares at the ranks of burning-eyed, bearded Christians who have worked with him on his national dream. At length the monk Mesrob Mashtots steps forward to speak, and the king settles back in relief, listening closely. In fact everyone in the court listens, because Mesrob used to be a military adviser before he became a soldier of God. He has studied at great centers of the early Christian Church, and has learned to read and write all the languages of early Christian texts – Aramaic, Greek, and Syriac.

  Mesrob tells the court why the alphabet sent by the Syrian bishop is unteachable. It’s too much like Syriac and Hebrew; it has hardly any vowels. (Anyone who has studied Hebrew for a bar mitzvah or bat mitzvah knows how hard it is to read an alphabet without vowels. It’s like trying to guess whether CT stands for CAT or COT or CUT or CUTE or COOT) Because Armenian is a language rich in complex vowel sounds, an alphabet without vowels cannot express enough distinctions. Mesrob says Armenia must find a new alphabet, to teach its children in its own way.

  TO purify his spirit and transform himself from a soldier into a man of God, Mesrob Mashtots is said to have endured great hardship: hunger, thirst, cold, sleeping in caves, and eating only herbs.

  Mesrob bows to the king, his long black beard bobbing almost to his knees, and announces that he will personally take up the challenge. With the king’s permission, he will depart immediately for the city of Edessa, on the border between Persia and the Christian world, to study the best alphabets of East and West.

  This is a bold plan. Edessa in AD 400 is on the frontier of faiths. It is abuzz with heresies and strange ideas, and home to devil worshippers, moon worshippers, magicians, Persian Zoroastrians, Hindus from India. There are Christian sects that follow the Jewish Laws of Moses, Indian-influenced Christians who believe that Christ keeps coming back through reincarnation, and even Marcionite Christians, who worship the Serpent from the Garden of Eden. Edessa is also haunted by remnants of pagan religions from the time of Ur. The place is famous for its holy fishponds, where huge carp, said to have been sacred to an ancient Mesopotamian goddess of war and love, churn through muddy brown waters.

  Into this murmuring marketplace of ideas strides Mesrob, robe and beard flying, followed by his most loyal monks. Like a general, he orders his men to fan out across the city and spend their days collecting a scroll here, a codex there, and consulting all the scholars they can find. The Armenians visit Greek scholars, who speak and write the tongue of Homer, They find men of the south who use the cursive Aramaic alphabet (the language of Jesus), They talk with travelers from the western reaches of the dying Roman Empire, where the Roman alphabet (our own) has been chiseled into stone monuments from Caledonia (Scotland) to Pannonia (Hungary).

  Meanwhile, Mesrob prays for guidance. Every day, according to his biographer, Gorioun, he takes pieces of parchment and tries out “all the variations of letters, thin and heavy strokes, long and short, single letters as well as combinations…” He works in every alphabet he can, searching for the one that most easily expresses, in the Armenian tongue, the opening passage of the Bible’s Proverbs of Solomon: “To know wisdom and instruction, to perceive the words of understanding….”

  And then, according to ancient Armenian writings, “there appeared in his heart before his mind’s eye a right hand writing upon stone … and all the details of all the letters accumulated in his mind as if on a plate….” Some people later call this vision a miracle from God, Whatever it is, Mesrob summons his fellow soldiers of literacy and announces a victory. They h
ave an alphabet – not some foreign hand-me-down, but a brand-new one inspired just for them.

  He shows them his vision, Mesrob’s alphabet has thirty-six characters compared to our twenty-six. Twenty letters seem to have grown out of Greek, eight seem similar to Persian, and one or two are like Syriac, The letters are detached, rather than flowing together as they do in Syriac, As in Greek, Mesrob tells his fellow monks, the letters are to be read from left to right. The monks see at once that this alphabet is complex enough to express the sounds of their own language. With the announcement of Mesrob’s miracle, “There arose from all the churches hymns of praise,” writes the monk Gorioun, “praise glorifying God….”

  At last Mesrob and his band of monks can turn their backs on Edessa’s snake worshippers and sacred fishponds. They begin their long walk home to the land of Mount Ararat. As they near Vagarshabad, says Gorioun, “The assembled courtiers of King Vramshapouh came in a throng outside the royal city to meet them … singing hymns and doxologies. …”

  This is the Armenian alphabet of Mesrob’s time, with thirty-six letters. In the Middle Ages, as the language evolved, extra letters were added and the shape of the letters became more rounded.

  Mesrob’s alphabet is shown to teachers, who instruct the children. The children learn to read. They grow up to teach their own children to read Armenian, generation after generation.

  Armenian monks showed their writing system to monks from Georgia and Ethiopia; while modern scholars of alphabets believe the Georgian and Ethiopian alphabets developed on their own, there’s a legend that Mesrob helped these monks write the Gospels in their own tongue.

  Sixteen hundred years after the time of Mesrob, a young Canadian artist was hiking in the Blue Mountains region of central Jamaica, and he walked into a village of Rastafarians (Jamaicans with religious roots in Ethiopia). Several tall, stern Rastamen with dreadlocks gathered round. Their leader asked the Canadian’s name, and the Canadian told him.

  “Is that an Armenian name?” the Rastafarian asked.

  “Er, yes,” said the baffled artist, nervously.

  “Then,” said the Rastaman, with a big smile, “you are welcome here. We are all children of Mesrob.”

  The Prayerful Pagodas

  STRANGE AS IT sounds, some of the earliest printed texts were never meant to be read by human beings. Simply publishing them seemed to be enough to conjure up reading’s divine power.

  The magnificence of buildings such as the Kasuga Shrine at Nara, capital of Japan at the time of the Buddhist Empress Shotoku, alienated ordinary people who lived in simple huts and were loyal to an older religion.

  ara is an ancient city of deer parks, and massive wooden temples with red lacquer pillars. Somewhere deep inside the Imperial Palace, late at night, Empress Shotoku, the ruler of Japan, and her spiritual adviser, the Buddhist monk Dokyo, sit deep in consultation. It is around the year AD 764 by the Western calendar, and the empress is telling Dokyo that they are both in danger. Although a rebellion by Japanese noble families against the growing power of Buddhist monks has just been suppressed and the leader, Fujiwara Nakamaro, has been executed, the rebels are still a threat.

  As empress and monk bend their heads together, the scene looks intimate. Maybe it is. Some gossips at the palace say that the empress, who is herself a Buddhist nun, is in love with the monk. Everyone says she spends far too much time in Dokyo’s company.

  Her Imperial Majesty speaks in a low voice of her fears. Powerful members of the Fujiwara clan, who would do anything to stop Buddhism, have been spreading stories that she is Dokyo’s pawn – that Dokyo is using her so he can take over the throne himself.

  This accusation makes Dokyo smile quietly. It’s true, the empress is very dependent on him. What, she asks him now, can be done to ensure that rebels never again threaten her power?

  The monk counsels calm. With great firmness he tells the empress that she must make an impressive gesture that will promote peace in her realm, and assure Japan’s Buddhists that she is committed to their faith. She must order a million prayers – darani, or Buddhist incantations – to be copied out and sent around her empire. A million prayers.

  A million? How can this be done? The empress cannot conceal her concern. There are not enough scribes in the whole kingdom to write fast enough. And the rebels could rise against her again, at any time!

  Dokyo is so reassuring, so helpful in her time of fear. He tells her that it is not impossible to produce a million prayers – not if she orders workmen to make use of a miraculous new technique developed in mainland China and Korea, This technique is called printing.

  The Empress Shotoku raises one perfect eyebrow.

  Here’s how it works, Dokyo explains. The prayers must be carved into blocks of wood or cast in metal, with the letters standing off the surface. Then the raised letters will be covered in ink. When pieces of mulberry paper are pressed against the letters – behold! The writing shows up on the paper. Printing, says Dokyo, can produce many copies quickly – thousands, maybe tens of thousands, before the letters wear out.

  Let it be done, says the empress.

  And so, in the year 764, a Japanese empress launches the biggest publishing operation the world had so far seen. Blocks of wood are carved, bronze molds are cast, paper is inked, and prayers are printed. Workers insert the printed strips of paper through holes in the tops of a million wooden models of pagodas (temples), each about the size of an adult hand. The model pagodas are loaded onto carts that set out across Japan, delivering a hundred thousand pagodas to each of ten carefully chosen sites.

  Even with printing technology, the Hyakumanto Darani or “Million-Pagoda Prayers” project takes about six years to complete. The empress’s pious gesture only adds to the fears that she is going to give the throne to Dokyo, After Empress Shotoku dies, the Fujiwara family rises up again, and seizes power. The Fujiwaras move the imperial court from Nara to Kyoto and force Dokyo to leave Japan, Then Japan passes a law forbidding women to ever again become rulers.

  As the centuries pass, many of the little wooden pagodas disappear, are given away, or are lost to fires and wars. But right up until our own times, a few hundred remain. Inside, their paper prayer strips stay intact – because no one ever reads them.

  Empress Shotoku and her monk didn’t want the prayers to be read. They only wanted to demonstrate religious duty by causing the words to be copied out a million times. The world’s first great publishing effort was about harnessing the power of words to create an effect. Actually letting people read those words had nothing to do with it.

  The Stolen Story

  IN SOME SOCIETIES, certain groups – such as women – weren’t supposed to read or write about “important” subjects such as history, philosophy, or economics. A Japanese woman of the Heian period responded by writing one of the world’s first bestsellers – a novel.

  t is the year AD 1009, and Lady Murasaki Shikibu, normally one of the most composed and dignified ladies in the court of Empress Shoshi of Japan, is frantic. She overturns mats and rummages through chests and boxes in her room in the palace in Kyoto. Where are the papers on which she has written rough drafts of the latest chapters of her novel?

  Lady Murasaki sits down suddenly on her heels, and bows her head into the folds of her silk kimono. There can be no doubt about it. Someone must have pushed aside the paper screens, entered her private chamber, and removed her handwritten copy of Genji Monogatari – The Tale of Genji Someone who could not wait to find out what happens next in the Shining Prince’s adventures with beautiful highborn women … what jealousy, what romance … what dark and unexpected corners of the prince’s character might be revealed.…

  Lady Murasaki’s novel, The Tale of Genji, has inspired artists for a thousand years. This woodcut by a Kyoto artist, Yamamoto Shunsho, was first published in 1650.

  Lady Murasaki is outraged. The latest chapters are not ready to be read. They have not been polished, checked for style, or sent to scribes f
or elegant transcriptions (by this time the Japanese know how to do block printing, but books are still copied out by hand). Genji could have been stolen by almost anyone; the story is very popular. In fact, it is the reason Lady Murasaki was invited to court in the first place.

  After the death of her husband, the governor of Yamashiro province, around the year 999, Lady Murasaki expected to spend the rest of her life behind the walls of her own house. Highborn women’s lives in medieval Japan are limited; they’re allowed to read, but it is thought unladylike if they show interest in “serious” subjects such as philosophy, science, or heroic histories. They are also strongly discouraged from writing using the complex Chinese system, which involves thousands of characters for words and syllables (Lady Murasaki knows how to read and write Chinese-style, but other ladies mock her for being a showoff). Instead, they are supposed to use a simplified writing system with fewer characters, known as onna-de (“women’s hand”), and to use it only for letters and diaries.

  But attempts to control what people read and write can produce unforeseen results. Several classics of Japanese literature have been written by women of the Heian times. Lady Murasaki’s The Tale of Genji is one. So popular are her Genji stories – so real and psychologically complex does she make her vain, self-centered, but irresistible prince and his various lovers – that even men read Genji. One is the regent, Fujiwara no Michinaga, the father of the emperor’s Number One Wife. Michinaga is probably the most powerful man in Japan.

  In fact, it was Michinaga who hired Lady Murasaki to be a teacher and companion to his daughter, Empress Shoshi, and to give her private lessons in Chinese poetry. When Lady Murasaki arrived at court she began to keep a journal of court life. That is how we know that, one day, the normal order of court life has been disturbed: a stranger has gone through her things. This intruder has not taken anything of value. Her silk robes patterned with silver threads are still stored in their wooden boxes. Her fragrant aloe-wood combs; her special containers of cloves and musk and sandalwood, with which she blends her own incense; her brushes, inkstones, and supply of Chinese paper are all untouched. Only Genji is missing.