The Infinite Library

by Kane X Faucher

  For a moment, I was frustrated, since it looked to me like another round of cipher, but when I put them all together in a string, DEARSATROCITATIS, it was just a matter of inserting two spaces to separate the words so that it spelled (de) Ars atrocitatis. The art of atrocity. The prefatory “de” was not correct Latin, but there was probably no way that the cipher-maker could have made the Bacon quote work out perfectly. From there, it was just a matter of trying to locate the book. Lo and behold, the Internet killed the mystery immediately, preventing too much undue sleuthing. There was a book listing on an academic site.

  Title: Secret Atrocity: Prophecies of Anonymous Medieval Authors Attributed with the Composition of the Ars atrocitatis.

  Author: William R. A. Warburg, The University of Chicago.

  Publisher: Lexburg Institute for Medieval Studies, 1977.

  Synopsis: The Ars atrocitatis antedates Codex Infinitum (author unknown) by thirty-three years, although the reported events are chronologically reversed. Ars atrocitatis was originally written in 1315, corresponding with the death of Raymund Lull. The sensational text speaks of a mysterious synthesis of typological elements that have occurred, written in the past tense as if to lend the writer a prophetic affectation in having witnessed or experienced the events themselves. This study follows the many texts that reference or falsely attribute the Ars atrocitatis to a wide variety of credible names in the medieval period.

  The book was, unsurprisingly, out of print, and there were no used copies in the offing. I decided to locate the author himself, but there was no listing for a Dr. William R. A. Warburg at the University of Chicago. I sent an email for some assistance and it was a solid two days until I received a reply that stated Dr. Warburg had left the Philosophy Department a decade ago and was now teaching as professor emeritus at the University of Toronto. Rather than just show up unannounced and be risked being perceived as a lunatic, I found his email and contacted him. His reply was disappointing:

  Dear Mr. Gimaldi,

  I am pleased and flattered with your interest in my book, although it is a bit dated now. I am saddened to hear that it is not available, but I do believe it is in the University of Chicago holdings, and that you may only have to arrange for an interlibrary loan through your host institution.

  All the best,

  W.R.A.Warburg.

  To say that I was peeved would be an understatement; here was a stranger showing interest in a work on such a highly marginal topic, and he couldn't be of any further assistance beyond telling me that I could track it down myself. In my pique and insomnia, I decided to contact him directly in person. I found out when and where he was teaching and waited for him after class. I was determined to satisfy my curiousity about this text, and to discover where I could get a hold of this Ars atrocitatis since it was reported as “missing”, and had never been reproduced for archive and research purposes. I was certain that the book Castellemare referred to me only by call number was this text, and the Yale Beinecke Rare Book Library reported not having it in its holdings.

  Upon further research, I would discover that there were not just one Ars atrocitatis, but several variants. One of them had been in the possession of history's most adept and unscrupulous master forgers of ancient texts, Constantine Simonides (I would later learn something a bit unsettling about this link). Another had been stolen from the Library of Paris by the most highly reputed book thief, Libri. Another had been reputed to have been in the holdings of the Cottonian Library, but succumbed to the great fire of 1731. I had no choice but to pay a surprise visit to Dr Warburg.

  He was giving a class that I decided to sit in on, at the back of a lecture theatre with the slight smell of naphthalene. He was a portly, sagging hulk of an old man in a rumpled suit that was presumably purchased an era ago.

  “So, we come now to the pernicious issue of attributions and the tangled web of genealogical errors in the history of codexes. This grail of truth and authenticity in regards the text, especially ones that are faithfully and unfaithfully reproduced, is at times pure folly. For the sake of argument, let us assume that there is some archetype text, a root book from which is copied several others. Can anyone here tell me what can go wrong in the transit from the root text to the copies?”

  An awkward silence before a student raised his hand and said, “Well, the copyist could make an omission.”

  “Yes, but there is more than one type of omission. One can be by mistake, such as in copying a line that begins with the same word, but having accidentally skipped the first one. For example.”

  He wrote on the board two lines:

  The man was at the gates.

  The man was a Moor.

  “Note,” he continued, “that the lines would be longer, but a copyist in haste might accidentally skip the second line, thinking to proceed to the next without redundancy.

  “The other change would be more intentional, but not bad-natured, such as in not being able to decipher a word or letter due to bad calligraphy, damage, an ink blot, and so on. Any other possible errors? Yes, you.”

  Another student: “I suppose they could just make a misprint, like mixing up two letters in a word, like a spelling mistake.”

  “Yes, and that happened on occasion despite due diligence. Another error can result of substituting or inserting a word by assumption, especially in badly damaged or hard to read texts. Another error which deserves some attention is the tendency for the copyist to act as an editor... By this, I mean those of good intention who wish to simplify an awkward passage for clarification purposes, which may also involve modernizing archaic or abstruse language or obscure references. In such cases, the preservation of the authentic text is secondary to the preservation of its message so that present and future readers may better benefit from it. Any other errors?”

  “Translation error?” a student ventured.

  “Yes, certainly that was a common problem, especially if the book was not being merely copied, but translated from Greek or an Arabic language. Errors in translation are quite common, and especially more so among those not so skilled in the root language. Let me add another error of a more psychological variety: the error that occurs in the interval between seeing the original text and actually copying it. So much can occur... An interruption or an assumption or a lapse of memory. Any other possible errors?”

  I put up my hand, and he pointed a chubby, mechanical finger at me as if I were just another of his students.

  “The picture can become more complicated if we braid the genealogical succession of the text,” I said. I could see that he was intrigued and implored me with a gaze and nod to continue. “Say, for example, we have an archetype book written in one hand and continued in another by a different author. Or, perhaps, if the original is lost, and two or three other copies had been made and are mistaken as the archetype, placed in different monasteries. Of course, these monasteries would each claim their copy as the original. Or, again, if the transcription incorporated the marginalia and glosses into the main text.”

  “Yes, yes, this would make the matter more complicated,” he said with a meaningful and serious acknowledgement before turning back to the rest of the student body. “And so I don't want any of us to think that the matter is merely a succession of errors emerging from one original since there may not be just one original. It isn't always so linear, leading from from one sacred original to multiple copy errors. All right, then, I believe our time is up for this week,” he said, now raising his voice to the automatic reflex of students gathering up their items and ready to take flight. “Remember, for next class, to read chapter six on bibliothecarial considerations, and we will take up the curious and unfortunate story of Thomas Chatterton.”

  A few students tarried on, asking mundane questions about their assignments. I remained as well, just in the aisle as if I were some looming interceptor. The students that had posed their questions dribbled away, and Dr. Warburg was collecting his notes and books into his cracked leather shoul
der bag.

  “Yes?” he asked me since I was rooted in his path.

  “Dr. Warburg, I was hoping that this would be a good time to discuss an important matter about a manuscript you are fairly knowledgeable about.”

  “Hoo, I may not be able to oblige... I have a few administrative matters to attend to and some work to do. Perhaps you could arrange to meet me during my office hours.”

  “It concerns the Ars atrocitatis, and I do not think that I can be so easily put off given that I may have some new information on the text to share.”

  “Oh, you must be the gentleman who contacted me on email about the monograph I wrote on the subject. I am very sorry that I couldn't be of any more assistance, but academic interests are fickle, and eventually we wander off to other things.”

  “Recently, someone gave me a text in cipher that, when deciphered through a double-series of keys, supplied the title of Ars atrocitatis. Here,” I said, proffering the text.

  He took it and did not conceal his puzzlement.

  “I do not wish to question your deciphering abilities, so I will take what you say as true. Have you any idea why the atrocitatis is mentioned specifically? This is a rather ancient text you have, and you say it came into your possession recently? Hmm... Have you any idea which library it was once housed in?”

  “Not a clue.”

  “Ah, well, you see, that is truly unfortunate. The information as to where the book has been is sometimes more invaluable than having the book itself, just as archaeologists value the strata of where a piece of pottery is found more than the object itself.”

  “Dr. Warburg, I am not ignorant of such things. I am a scholar in this field.”

  “Oh? I didn't mean to sound patronizing, I am sorry. Your name again... Garibaldi?”

  “Gimaldi,” I corrected.

  “The name is familiar. What have you published recently?”

  “Admittedly, not much. I tried my hand at cracking the Codex Seraphinianus.”

  “Ah, yes. That. No offense intended, but that book is not one I consider very seriously since it was made in the 1970s... I believe the author is still alive, no? A graphic designer or some such thing. I do recall that someone took issue with your decipherment.”

  “Newbold syndrome,” I said. “He was right.”

  William Newbold was a very brilliant and distinguished scholar who had prematurely declared cracking the cipher of the Voynich Manuscript in the 1920s, only for subsequent scholars to demonstrate that he took too many liberties with his assumptions and imposed what he wanted to see in the text. It is something most of us who deal in code and cipher try to guard against, though the temptation when frustration runs high or coincidences abound is seductive. And, in some cases, it is the pressure to publish.

  “I'm sorry to hear that. Perhaps your decipherment, even if it was more fanciful wish than truth, will be validated when the thing gets deciphered.”

  “Dr. Warburg, I know you are busy, and I do not want to spend our brief time here talking about my failures. I have a very focused concern at hand concerning this book you wrote about. Have you ever come into contact with it, or did you focus solely on referential attributions to it?”

  “We all have our failures, Gimaldi, and this one can be considered mine. So you may find me as lacking in eagerness as you to revisit failures. Yes, the monograph deals solely with attributions. Between you and me, and not caught in the black and white prison of published text, yes, I have had the occasion to be in the presence of the Ars atroctitatis. It nearly drove me out of my mind.”

  “Could you tell me more?”

  “Let's go to my office,” he said quietly, obviously disturbed as if I had disinterred something Warburg would have rather left buried.

  “There are a few associated books,” Dr. Warburg began.

  We were sitting like old conspirators around his clogged desk, piles of papers and books like hopelessly disheveled towers of Babel after the obliteration.

  “These form a nucleus of writings,” he continued. “Instead of that nucleus of writings that emerge from a single work, these work in tandem. There are several misleading and impossible references in the glosses of the book... I have composed a glossary in the short time that I had with it.”

  He fished through his desk and produced a manila envelope that had been pressed flat and unopened for decades under the papery archaeology of his career.

  “This,” he said, pushing it toward me, “Has never been published, and neither do I ever want to see it published.”

  “Where does the story begin? There must be a story attached to this, how you came to research this subject.”

  “It begins with an unholy librarian, or should we say a custodian of sorts... But a custodian of horrors is what he wants to see brought into this world. His name is unimporta -”

  “Castellemare?” I leapt in. It was as sudden as a surprise slap in the face.

  “Y-yes. It was through him that I discovered the Ars atrocitatis.”

  “How long ago was that?”

  “It must have been... 1975. I became obsessed. Fortunately, now, I am too old and the many ghosts are much swifter than I am to catch them... more so than even back then when I was perhaps the age you are now. Mysteries are the sport of much younger men. You know this Castellemare? He must be quite aged by now.”

  I let this drop. There was no sense in me telling this venerable scholar that Castellemare most likely didn't age a day since he encountered him over thirty years ago. Instead, I took a different tack.

  “Would you happen to know of an Anton Setzer?”

  “Not particularly, but I did once encounter a bastardization of the name of Ptolemy Soter written as Setzer.”

  “The founder of the Alexandria Library?”

  “Yes, very good. And Zenodotus of Ephesus was their first librarian, 280 years before Christ.”

  “In what manner did Castellemare introduce you to the book?”

  “He approached me, in my office. I was teaching at the University of Chicago at the time, dangerously close to my tenure review, and needed to publish something. I was simply out of ideas, and this librarian appeared as if from nowhere and inspired my research direction.”

  “You mentioned associate texts... “

  “Yes, such as Codex Infinitum and Codex Machina. There was another one, I believe, called Spiritus Designata, but I cannot be sure. I found mention once, if memory serves, in a book entitled Codex Obscura, based on the real life of a one Jonkil Calembour, but when this came to light, I had long since abandoned my interest in the Ars atroctitatis. The version Castellemare had sported a metal plate, suggesting that it had once been chained to the shelf of a library.”

  “You mentioned Thomas Chatterton, a forger,” I pressed, ignoring mention of Calembour for now – but this flagged item for further questions would be forgotten.

  “Ah, yes, poor Thomas. Good mind, young and taken with his exposure to what he had found in St. Mary's... Took his own life at the age of eighteen. Quite a precocious boy, studied and emulated the style of old English texts and wrote under the name of Rowley. Received indignant reaction from Horace Walpole. He produced his first rather convincing forgery or fabulation at the age of twelve, and took his life in 1770. The world lost a good mind that had just run astray because of how enamoured he was with the old style.”

  “The reason why I bring this up because I did locate mention that another forger, of highest renown by the name of Constantine Simonides had his own copy of the atrocitatis.”

  “He did, but the thing about Simonides is that he wasn't actually a forger,” he said, and seemingly quickly regretted saying it. I knew why.

  “Dr. Warburg, I am familiar with Castellemare and the Library.”

  “Then I suppose it would not be such a stretch – between us – to make the claim that Simonides, despite his skills, did not forge all the manuscripts he was purported to. Yes, he faked a bundle of them, but not all of them. However, regu
lar scholarship would not be convinced by this claim unless they could also be convinced of the Library.”

  “So it is your assertion that some of Simonides' allegedly forged texts were actually originals from the Library.”

  “Yes, and those he did forge were inspired by the books he saw there. There is a letter between Simonides and someone with a name very close to Castellemare's where the latter heatedly demands of the former to return a few books.”

  I couldn't help but to input the respective roles of Castellemare and Setzer, where Setzer as the artificer would most obviously be the representative stand-in for Simonides, a repeating drama between those who would preserve authenticity and those who would seek to multiply texts as sabotage. I could also picture, with some amused satisfaction, Castellemare throwing his trademark fits over people who refused to give back books.

  “Simonides trafficked in icons and impostures, but he was masterful at it. From Odessa to Athos, St Petersburg to London, he duped even the shrewdest minds with his clever forgeries. But it was not just his skill that helped him along, but the books he stole from the Library. Half of what is attributed – falsely – as forgery are actually books that emerged from the Library.”

  “One wonders why they have not been recollected back into the Library,” I said carelessly.

  “It was too late – they became part of public record, the damage was done, may as well leave them be. They became part of this world's history, and so to pluck them would be superfluous. Besides, Simonides took a risk in what he did and he lost: he was denounced as a forger so the books remain safe.”

  “Have you encountered anyone beside Castellemare who may have had contact with the Ars text?”

  “Indeed I have, but their credibility is a matter of dispute... We are speaking mostly of those melodramatic medievalists, or hobby medievalists with a good chunk of money and no scholastic merit, who torture the air with their talk of conspiracies and mysteries. But one such gentleman, while I was researching in Prague, had told me that Raymond Lull himself had referenced the book twice in his works.”